who the killers were. all we have is that a crime was committed. some guns were found and that's it, sir. we need more than that today. i'm requesting more of that at the o.c.c. starting now. thank you for your time. >> thank you. next speaker. >> i want to thank the commission for finally doing something about the patrol specials. it is not enough. the report calls for their disillusion. their complete termination. doing that tonight is more than you have ever done before that i know of. i want to thank you, but it is not enough. the report says they should be out of business. i don't know what has taken so long. it has been eight months. you have until may 28 before you can do a charter amendment. time is awasting.

thank you. >> mr. johnson, how are you? >> steve johnson, the police association. i just want to bring up the fact that i mentioned to a couple of commissioners. that i can't see where when the o.c.c. does an investigation, police officers have to document the traffic stops they make and when someone forgets about that, how is that a citizen complaint? i don't get that. they always use it as an added allegation against the officer. that just doesn't seem right. it has been going on too long. they should notify the police department, the chief's offense or whatever. in an interview, a personal interview with the officer, that takes at least six months. they think there is something there, they should notify the captain of the station, the lieutenant, the sergeant. something can be done right away. it doesn't have to be a physical complaint or an interview or anything else.

same with 849-b. certificates of release. it is another item that the o.c.c. uses to put an added allegation on any of their investigations and sustain it because maybe it did occur and maybe it didn't. but the real important matter here is whether or not the officer is purposely forgetting or made a mistake or forgot the document the traffic stop. a lot of times when officers address the o.c.c. said i did put the information in the computer and the computer maybe didn't take it because i remember doing it so that is more o a matter for the police department to deal with instead of the o.c.c.. we could certainly cut some of their workload down by moving some of the issues over to the police department where they belong. thank you very much. thank you mr. johnson. my further public comments? >> good evening.

commissioners, thank you. chief, sir, congratulations. i'm looking forward to working with you for a long time. everything i have heard from all the officers in the station, nothing but praise. one of the things that you were addressing that seems to be on everybody's mind is a lack of qualification -- i would like to see something of this written into our rules and regulations holding us to the same standards that you hold the police department to. if the officer cannot -- he should not be out on the street. i concur with you 100%. and as far as lieutenant pera, i have talked with him many times over the past couple of days. i will continue to work with him. i will continue to hunt down our officers and speak to them in person and i will even offer to

bring you that information that you requested personally to make sure that it gets here. one of the things we have found out is that lieutenant pera went to the police commission office to look for paperwork that was missing and did find some, so that tells me there is a little bit of lack of forwarding records. as commissioner dejesus says, i would like to see some kind of record access and retention policy that we can all agree upon so these records do not get out into the wrong hands and pass the sunshine act and also with the city attorney's office to let you know about the update with our training. i have instructed everyone of the officers that i can get a

hold of to get their personal certificates of any training that they have received put together. we are forwarding them to our -- one of our senior officers, sam reyes. he is going to be in contact with sacramento to find out what each and officer needs as far as additional training to bring them up to at least a level three. my hope would be in a few years it dwose goes up to a level two and a few years after that a level one. one of the things i would like to also mention, the last meeting you were talking about, the kind of calls -- most of these what you would classify as c priority calls, barking dogs, a suspicious person hanging around. it was said that person should call 911 but we know c priority calls take quite a long time.

i've heard of some hanging for 318 minutes. to the general public, that is not acceptable. again, i would like to say thank you. i concur with your insurance regulations. if you can hand this to supervisor mass ukea. president mazzucco; i'm not supervisor. thank you. i will hand it back to the lieutenant. i want to thank you for your hard work this week. you have been working with him. i really appreciate it. >> i am trying to whip a few people into at least a compliance mode the idea of the -- 1918 organization has to

change. >> thank you. >> good evening, commissioners. chief, congratulations. i've never heard of a police chief or police officer referred to this this city as someone with heart and spirit. i'm heartened by that and i look forward to working with you. i'm a citizen activist, very concerned about public safety in my neighborhood, glen park. i just suggest quickly that it might be helpful to the commissioners and perhaps more effective in your data gathering and communication back and forth, if the officer could speak immediately with lieutenant para and also if he would be given more than just three minutes. i think he is more than just a public member. i concur with the chief taking these three officers off duty

immediately. i approve of that. i'm a citizen. i'm concerned about safety in my neighborhood, not only from criminals but also from unqualified officers so i definitely support you on that and thank you for your concern. i do like the distinguishing between very serious and immediate public safety issues such as lack of weapons, qualification and paperwork. there are two different kinds of offenses and i think they should be treated differently. thank you for recognizing that. i would like to say that my concern is not so much what happens with applicants who go into the background check division. that takes approximately a month. i have no reason to doubt that. what i'm concerned about is the initial application and the communication loop which is not being completed between the liaison officer back to the applicant. i have two examples. one wrote you commissioners yesterday and another is almost

an ideal case. i spoke identical case. i spoke with him today. one was above level three. he submitted his pact two years ago. because of the change of liaison officers, there is a failure of continuity of records. there was by a former officer two years ago, a liaison officer promised to explain to both officers what is the precise medical language that is required in their medical clearance. that promise was given to the two applicants. or it was given to officer warner. because of the transitions and the change in her passing, it never got back to the officer. lieutenant hicks, lieutenant has reviewed the packets and apparently these officers are qualified. i don't know. but i would only ask that you look into that, please.

these gentlemen want to work. we need them on the streets helping us. we may stand to lose some officers who don't understand they must now comply. we need to have good officers who are qualified and go through the process quickly and fairly. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> hello, i'm mibling dening. i'm -- michael dening. i'm personally a big fan of the full specials, not really because what they are today but what i believe they can be for san francisco. it is clear that this relationship between patrol specials and the san francisco police is one that needs a lot of work and i'm sorry that commissioner marshall isn't here because i really liked his

analogy because he was talking about the unruly plate round and how he came in here to make sure the rules were being enforced. i think the situation we have here is to be frank, i think anybody that is an objective observer here can see that the whole police specials program has been in neglect by the san francisco police department for a long time. there has been no enforcement or no communication or very little. so i think what we have here is a situation where we have a problem relationship and that the only way we're really going tosoever this relationship here is not by coming in and letting one side of the discussion come in and point the fingers at the other and say you're breaking the rules and any playground supervisor that saw people in that position would give both sides a chance to address each other in a timely way and make sure there was a good

communication about what the rules are and make sure everybody understands what their responsibilities are and making sure that the relationship there is civil. and so i think that's what i'm here to speak for. i think there is a lot that can be done. here to benefit this relationship. it is going to take -- it is not going to take finger pointsing. it is not going to -- every side has to acknowledge the fact that there has been a problem relationship here for a long time and that borte parties are involved in that -- both parties have been involved in that relationship and it is not for people to come in now without really getting into it and pointing the finger at the other and saying you're the violator and since i'm the bigger and most powerful, i'm going to declare you guys get punished. we have acknowledged that there are difficulties with the program. i think that if the police department is being honest with

themselves, they will have to accept some responsibility for the relationship also and hopefully as a result of these discussions that we're having, we can have a good discussion with the specials, the police force and the clients who are hiring the specials to be involved in this discussion in a meaningful way that leads to conciliatory environment. so thank you very much for your time. and for your interest in this particular issue. >> thank you very much. any further public comment on these items? hearing none. i would like a further update report on the chief's report regarding the status of those three things. number four, please. >> item number four. discussion and possible action to adopt revised police commission procedural rules governing trial of disciplinary

cases. >> this i turn over to commissioner hammer. he has taken the lead. commissioner hammer, all yours. commissioner hammer: thank you, president mazzucco. i've been on the commission a little over a year and whatever we call it, there were a lot of cases on our dockets. i call it a backlog. in squgs the city attorney's office, -- discussion with the city attorney's office, existing rules, to speed up the hearings to get to a faster resolution, last year i worked with commissioner mazzucco. we coim up with something we adopted a year ago this months. case goes on for days and days sometimes when they didn't need to. setting up detailed schedules.

aspirational timeline to finish cases. we would -- a hearing within 90 days of following charges. when i first got here the docket was about half of what it was over a year ago. kudos to a lot of hard work from commissioners. over the course of that last year, i think it has occurred to many of us some possible improvements to those rules. one of them, we started looking at the docket where the oldest cases were. somewhere where someone other than a commissioner could hear a case. sometimes a retired or former commissioner or an outside lawyer hears these cases. when you look at the docket you see some of those cases have been here two or three years. when you look deeper, we had to change it buzz he or she is very and there was no oversight and

those cases go from a year and a half to two and a half to three and a half sometimes. i set out working with him and we worked together to come up with a further tweak of these rules to address the hearing officer issue. she on her own end went out to combine two separate sets of rules. we dealt with ordinary hearings. there was a separate set of rules we didn't touch. that's where part of the existing problem was. we should have one set of rules. and through a lot of work, i have one set of rules. i want to very briefly go over the major changes. so most of the changes were directly to address the concerns of hearing officers. one of the things we talked about as a group is adding a commissioner as a monitor to any

outside hearing officer. if the case gets bogged down the commissioner could bring it back to the commission if need be. these rules a ed to -- a monitor. we have significantly tightened the rules surrounding the selection of outside hearing officers. there will be cases floating for months and months. they set very tight timelines that we negotiate. the p.o.a. has input during this process as well. with the president's permission, days they have to complete this process. that takes away a huge hole in the procedures. secondly, we went on to tighten the -- we implemented -- the same timelines we have for

ourselves. finish within 120 days. we have instituted the time limits on hearings so again, even though that person is often paid a good amount of money, they are expected to limit those hearings to an hour and a half per side even though they have leeway to give more. on the back end of the hearing, sometimes we wait -- it could take three to four months. these rules set a very tight timeline. 21 days. then a tight timeline for the parties to respond to that report. so i think with these rules in place if we follow them and the commissioners monitoring it, we're going to solve this problem entirely. but while we're in the process of making these changes, the last one i think was a response to commissioner kingsley or chan. that we'll provide if the president wishes to, he may

invite the "outside the lines" hearing officer to -- outside hearings officer to come before the commission. that's in the rules. at the discretion of the president. we did a few other tweaks in this set of rules. at times officers complained they haven't gotten discovery in a timely fashion. on the back end, where you had a case like this, where there were very late discovery motions, it requires the accused officer at least 21 days before the hearing date to have filed hor his or her discovery motions. we also clarified the issue of -- motions and the time in which that should be done. do it early.

finally, a minor issue. some of these things lingered after the fact. sometimes we visited cases three, six, nine months later and still haven't agreed on what we decided. to file the proposed -- 14 or 15 days to reply within 10 and it is done. while it is still fresh in our minds we can rule on the findings of the facts. i'm open to questions. i have consulted with the chief, with the o.c.c. with the new chief, you were not chief then but chief suhr gave a good recommendation. it is the last innovation which i'm suggesting. all of us have held a conference

on the telephone. most of us at some time have had settlement discussions i think and tried to do it early. but we have never institutionalized early on when that case comes to us we are face-to-face with the parties and put it on the table with the two conflicting sides, to put both positions out there and then us acting as the middle person in an early stage to try to bring a resolution. i have sat here too many times. i think we all have. why didn't we do this settlement two years ago before waiting two years? what this requires is that one 15 calendar days a face-to-face meeting not just with the officer and his or her representative but with the chief very early on and listen to what the officer's side is, perhaps facts that didn't come up in the investigation or perhaps because the chief is

confined to only 10 day's punishment under the charter. that is an early stage where they said you know what? i only have 10 day or i can do it within 30 days or 60 days. it would be a chance early on for the chief to exercise a little more authority in conjunction with the commission to put them on the table early on. if you have been here long enough, you know certain kind of cases are -- and we often have to wait until the end, six or nine months later to get to that point. i think with the commission, the proposed resolutions, i think that is a potential face-to-face meeting really early on to possibly solve some of these cases. >> we all applaud your hard work and the results. both yours and miss blitz. thank you very much.

there is a tremendous amount of progress and good work here. i just have a question on a point of clarification that has to do with that first two-week period where, you know, the hearing officers set up the date and so on and so forth and to have that initial -- person just to clarify, can that be done in two steps? >> it is a good question. the way the rule is set up, within 15 calendar days that the commissioner will have this meet. there are two parts really. one is the scheduling part and one is the face-to-face conference. having talked with miss blitz, within his or her discretion, the most important part is the representative and the officers. i think that is provided for in the rules.

>> right. >> commissioner chan? >> thank you for all your hard work. i think of all the commissioners, you have been single handedly responsible for improving our disciplinary rules. i've seen you report this at least two or three times single handedly and appreciate that you also walk the walk. you handle to resolve some of our oldest most complex cases so now they are off our dockets. i appreciate all the hard work that you have done. i should have asked these questions earlier. my apologies. i had a question about the suggested timeline that we used to have on page four of -- a total hearing time of three hours. i found that suggestion helpful so then i could use that when i talk with a party when they ask me for three weeks i can say actually our guidelines say

three hours. i'll only deviate if necessary. >> subsection 1, it makes it a little stronger. >> great. >> it had the word suggested. this makes it clear in the ordinary case, they will be an hour and a half each side. >> great. thank you. i'm glad that is already in there. i will continue to emphasize it. then on page 14 on the discovery piece, i noticed there was a shift from 14 days to seven days. i just wanted to know the reasoning behind it. >> again, i think we're all seeing cases rather late in the case. somebody saying they don't have discovery. the department in my view is going to seek to terminate a police officer, they should have all of their ducks in a row.

certainly within a week of filing those charges, everybody ought to -- that's the idea to try to make it tighter. part of the problem, commissioner chan, we haven't really reached that 90-day and 120-day resolution. that has been our goal. every week we -- makes it much more likely we will hit that. that's why we try to make the timelines tighter. commissioner chan: that's what i figured. i wrote down good in a lot of places. i appreciate that the deadline as to when discovery concerns are brought up, i find that discovery concerns are brought up a day before the hearing. i appreciate that. commissioner hammer: these are real life cases. commissioner chan: page 21. i only have a few more and then i'll be done. page 21 is -- asks about open and closed session. just explain to the officer they

can make a request for either. should there be a time limit placed on that too? >> commissioner hammer: they have a right to their -- different rights. the charter and state law. i haven't been in a hearing where people asked for open hearing. that has to be fluid. there is a form which the city attorney has devised and we have used. the officer waiving his or her right to closed hearing. that's ordinarily under subsequent cases, they have a right to have closed hearings. commissioner chan: thank you. excellent answer to every question. page 25. my last question. since we have been kind of combined, penalty and deliberations into one evening, keeping them separate but combining them into one evening so you don't have deliberations one day and then a year later the penalty phase, that can

happen. i think there have been several months in delays sometimes. i want it stated clearly and if it can't, i understand that you can actually have penalty the same evening or same session as deliberations. as we have moved into this practice -- i have actually received motions from parties complaining about putting those two on the same evening. commissioner hammer: that is in the rules. i will actually refer to my teammate over there. you're putting us both on the spot, which is good, but i believe that is already in the rules. perhaps she can find it while we continue to talk. commissioner chan: thank you. commissioner slaughter: an enormous thank you. a benefit to the commission, the department, and the officer, getting a swift, fair and thorough process. so commissioner hammer thank you

very much. following up on that, this last item that you just raised today orally i think could be the most important of all, which is mandating an early face-to-face meeting to talk about what this case is really about and do we really want to spend a tremendous amount of time and resources to do so? fine, we'll do it, but let's see if there is a chance to resolve it soon. i think that could be a tremendous innovation. hey, lawyers get used to going to court. you file motion and forget -- pick up the phone and see if we can solve it. great idea. thank you very much. i guess my last question, and this could be for miss blitz as well. with respect to the open versus closed hearing, i agree it has