thinking. i want to recommend that everybody gets this book and reads it. chairman mirkarimi: "the new jim crow" right? great book. great book. >> my by she will alexander dealing with the mass incarceration in the age of so-called colorblindness. if we read it, it just might help our thinking on this issue. thirdly, i wish to say that we appreciate all of the data that has been given and all the representation that's come from the various departments. but i'm missing something here. we are missing something. not much was said about what

goals or visions we are setting. i just read an email by the chief executive officer of naacp. [tone] who contends that in this nation we have this disproportion at number of african-americans, particularly -- reverend, let me ask a question so you can keep going, please. tell me about more of the disproportionate representation of african-americans. >> disproportion at number nationally. about 12% of the population. but at the adult level we're about 45% to 55%. of incarceration. depending on what area of the country you're in.

at the juvenile level we are 60% to 70%. at juvenile hall as cross this country. -- halls across this country. it doesn't take a rocket scientist, a philadelphia lawyer, to explain to us that this picture reflects that the bottom of this disproportion at number of african-americans being incarcerated is this unfortunate thing that's still in our d.n.a., racism. something that many of us don't want to admit. i didn't call anybody a racist. i said racism. a certain publicly adopt through policy treatment of a certain people that's been in this country ever since slaves

were brought here. that was a public policy statement. separate but equal. that was a public policy statement. that wasn't one individual acting. public policy defined that. so that we got to look at realigning, redefining our public policy. before we dom grips with this problem -- come to grips with this problem, mass incarceration of african-americans followed by latinos in this nation, this state, this county, and city. i want to finish my comments by saying that on the council i didn't hear anything said about -- from the community at all.

according to the people's religion, african-americans are the most religious group in this nation. though they don't go to church every sunday, gallup says we're the most religious. any sunday morning you will find 5% of african-americans in some church of faith community, mosque, meeting place. 43% of whites. about 30% latinos. and about 20% asians. so if you want to get to the african-american community and

really make a difference, you got to go through the church, the faith community. but we are not doing that. they have begun to do it in the state of florida, and they have had some successful best practices in decreasing the recidivism rate. i don't have time explain those programs. but you can google them on the internet thanks to this age of mass communication. the data and information is out there. and i wish to say that as regards to the police department, yes, we ought to raise a question about why the chief was treated last night the way he was. and i, for one, said i was embarrassed. it was unfortunate that a young man lost his life. we must get the facts as to what happened around that.

but there's no excuse for bad behavior at all. i might be misunderstood by saying this. i'm going to tell the truth. that was bad behavior, and it shouldn't have happened. however, we must keep in mind, supervisor cohen raised the question, why is there this mistrust? in the part of the african-american community with the police department. one great, sage mind said people tend to hate each other because they fear each other. they fear each other because they do not know each other. and they do not know each other because of a lack of communication. going back to my days on this board, i often sat in in

chamber and said we will never deal with this mistrust of the police personnel until we get the patrol, police personnel, in these challenged communities in which they will know the community, the community will know them. but in our police departments there has been major resistance to the idea of officers living in the community and having a beat in the community like they do in certain upscale communities around this nation. and including san francisco. so that we can only, supervisor cohen, i feel in part deal with this question of mistrust when we get more african-american police. i'm not saying only an

african-american can do quality policing, but there's a greater opportunity for one to do it. it ought to be an integrated force, yes. when those officers do not live in the community and the community don't know them and they don't know the community, you are setting yourself up for that unfortunate psychological mindset of you, the enemy and we don't trust you. it's my hope that we can go beyond that and really take all of this data and information and realize that all we discussed here about this realignment will come to not unless we understand, as the commercial said, the only way that maxwell house coffee can be good to the last drop is that you don't just put the coffee in the cup and the cream

in there. you got to have a stirer to stir it up. once you stir it up, you can drink it and say it's good to the last drop. and my question is, who is going to stir up all of this plan? if we don't have somebody who's the czar, who's going to hold all of these departments accountable, we can go over all the plans, talk about all the good things we have in mind, but it will come to not unless we're held accountable to somebody stirring it up. and also the providers for re-entry programs ought to be fairly distributed in the community. there are some major big box agencies that have been getting these contracts. but the culturally sensitive programs get peanuts or the

leftovers. we ought to spread it around, the money and resources. it's just like cow manure. it does nothing to the ground unless you spread it around. thank you very much. low gordon, terry anders, karl, please. pastor bell, judith gallardo, leslie marie. emily harris. >> good afternoon, supervisor mirkarimi. chairman mirkarimi. . thank you for waiting. >> i'm the founder of the recovery survival network. we have been surfing san francisco's ex-offender population from the corner of 16th and mission now since 1997. we know this population. we understand what this population needs.

they trust us because we represent true cultural competency. there's a difference in having a contract and putting some refined words on a piece of paper talking about what cultural competency really means. cultural competency means having people of the same ethnicity and/or of the same mindset working with one another. our agency understanding the needs of this population has developed family of friends clean and sober living network. we are a california association of alcohol recovery resources certified in all of our locations. we currently have 10 s.r.o. master leases. we are extremely proud of the housing that we provide. the house we took older buildings and worked with some of san francisco's housing

development companies that have embraced us. the private sector has been our guardian angel. of -- not contracts, because contracts are so skewed sometimes in a lot of different ways as i think reverend brown brought up. the point of it being is, if there's a will, there's a way. we've all heard the old statement that it takes a village to raise a child. well, it takes this whole community to help somebody re-enter the community and stay. [tone] stay in a positive lifestyle. what we have done is we've developed master leases on 10 buildings. we're in the process now of our building 52 units that we're going to be housing all of our people in s.r.o.'s. we don't have two or three people stacked up on top of each other. i just believe that --

[tone] if the community understands what's going on and they use the resources that a lot of us agencies have already started to implement, i think we will have our realignment problem pretty well solved. that's it for me. thank you very much. chairman mirkarimi: thank you for the optimism. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors. pastor bell. the first thing i want to do is compliment the district attorney's office and the public defender because they're the only ones that have stepped up with some new thinking. this old archaic way of doing business, if we would take that $20 million and pay these youngsters or whoever is coming out, pay them $30,000 a year, say stay out of jail, we'd only spend $18 million. this is crazy. we keep going down the same road. we form these groups, we form these little clicks. and no community input.

nobody has come out to the community and said what do you need? how can you help us? the police department, where's the captain? he's not even here. they're not concerned! and i was one of the ones that stood up and talked to the mayor and talked to the police chief to get them to exercise some discretion and empathy to the african-american community. and, here. look at this. they're not even concerned about a new way of doing things. enforcement, enforcement. you know, folks, come on. this is like taking the fox and telling him to watch the chicken coup. these people have already failed! that's why they're in jail! these people -- the police department, the parole department, and all of these people are the same people who have been sending these people back, back, back, back to jail. and now we're going to turn them right back over to the same people.

[tone] supervisor cohen, i just want to say i would suggest that you pull together a group of community folks, other people in other departments. let's come up with some new thinking. enough of this old thinking, folks. everybody's talking about, well, we're going to incarcerate. we got jail space. i don't want you to fill your jail space up. i want sheriffs out of business. i want the police department out of business. because my people are the ones that are getting killed the most. [tone] my people end newspaper jail the most. supervisor cohen: i have a question. thank you, sir. i just wanted to follow up on a statement that you said earlier. you commended the district attorney's office for suggesting new ways. what did you hear that was new? >> oh, the district attorney, they're talking about programs that officers or people that would go out into the community and talk with people, to help them with their sentencings.

and the courts that they're talking about. just a new way of thinking. forgive me. i wrote one -- alternative community courts and alternative sentencings and those kinds of things. new ways of thinking. i would suggest -- i didn't hear all of these departments saying, well, we've all sat down, talked together and strategized and talked about some new ways of approaching controlling -- criminalology. those are the kinds of things i'm looking for. some new idea of how do we keep these people out of jail. like i'm saying, if you took this $20 million and gave everybody $30 thousand a year and said if you don't go to jail, you get to keep this $30,000, we'd save some money. right? chairman mirkarimi: reverend, the re-entry council i think

didn't have an opportunity to get into all of the programs because that's exactly what the council is, is everybody sitting down and talking about these new programs. so i think the re-entry council needs to promote better exactly what it is you're talking about. of -- because that is the by product of what you're talking about. and you're right, you're not informed of it. >> i certainly would like to get together with them, too. chairman mirkarimi. . absolutely. absolutely. thank you very much. next public speaker. >> my name is karl. i'm here on behalf of the local chapter of the american immigration lawyers association. i would like to emphasize many of the principles that i've heard today. i've been warmed by some of the concepts that i've heard. obviously rebuilding trust in our communities. community policing. those are things that don't just affect the african-american community. they affect the immigrant

populations, the latino communities in many districts in this community, the asian communities as well. we need to implement policies. i was warmed by what i heard from the mental health department with regard to intervention, early intervention. in the communities. putting clinics in the districts. i believe that these are effective ways to gain traction on these issues. i also hope to see more involvement from the sheriff's department. i think that inputting the sheriff in place of the police department where we have issues with rebuilding trust is an important change. one of these places where we see that is an important shift, i anticipate, getting deputy sheriffs to do the booking

rather than the police department. thank you for your time. chairman mirkarimi: thank you. next speaker, please. bithe way, all the rest of the cards that i have here and other people who want to speak, you should just come on up. >> living in the bay view and working in visitation valley, i know what the scommupt about. -- community is about. i also express the sentiment that a lot of money that's supposed to be come willing forward to deal with realignment, enough of it does not get to the communities. so the people who are actually in the trenches doing this work. it is nice to be able to have a

certain segment, being able to get released early. but unless we have some kind of process where we are actually going to deal with job creations and make a reality, not just training but actual job creations where they can be implemented in the various communities. i often woppedered -- wondered what would have happened if on the transit line that they would have had a lot of these young people acting as transit people to deal with the tickets. instead of armed police. i wonder if that young person would still be alive today. there's a lot of money that is being duplicated and being spent in the wrong places. we don't necessarily need more policing. we need a better understanding of who we're actually dealing with. and if we are and were more sensitized to each other, a lot of these problems wouldn't be here that we're trying to deal

with today. the train has already left the stations. prisoners have been overcrowded for way too many years. how many of us is actually going to be in the trenches trying to make a difference when these people get to our communities? [tone] it remains to be seen. i deal with a lot of people recently out of prison. they talk about the frustration of not being able to work. they talk about the anger of do they got to go back and do something that would put them back in harms way. so the reality is that we need to make some money available for community reps that actually work with this population instead of giving it to the big boxes. [tone] i'm glad to see that we have came out in support of realignment. chairman mirkarimi: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is lisa marie. i'm a statewide organizer with critical resistance and

californians united for a responsible budget. having spent some time in other counties also dealing with realignment, it is clear that there's statewide consensus that realignment runs a huge potential of merely shifting the responsibility of overcrowding from the state to the counties. i think that san francisco county is playing a critical role as acting as a model county for other counties throughout california. so i want to appreciate the leadership of the s.f. county executive committee for prioritizing alternative and community aid programming in this plan. and i want to push and encourage this board to take it one step further. there are other bowled and precedent setting -- bold and precedent-setting moves that we need you to take. i think, supervisor cohen, your point around s.f. taking on probation duties, what we saw in l.a. county is a huge red flag for a violation of fourth amendment rights for people. that's a huge concern. think we absolutely need to revisit that and take that

responsibility away from sfpd i think the idea of potentially opening closed jails is terrible. if we open them, we will fill them. we will just continue to have overcrowding in our counties. i think that also needs to be taken off the table and another model moved that s.f. county can take for the state to show that putting people in jail, continuing to crowd our jails is not the answer to any of this. i think there are other precedent and setting moves that you can make that have to do with putting political pressure on sackmaster to push sentencing reform. it's absolutely ridiculous that that's off the table. that that's nowhere around the conversations of realignment and overcrowding. we need leadership through the mechanisms that you have in place in sackmaster to put that pressure on our -- in sacramento to put the pressure on our officials to make those bold moves. i'm still concerned the way i

hear other folks talk about these community members who are going to be coming home to us. [tone] we need to pay attention to how we're talking about them. these are our family members, our people, our children. we have an over relyance on police and imprisonment. we need shift that. thank you. chairman mirkarimi: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> good p evening. curve is to reduce the number of prisons and jails in our state and redirect funding to community-based resources to all of the institutions that we know actually create public safety like job development and all the things that we heard today. so i wanted to also acknowledge the leadership of the s.f. county executive committee in

prioritizing alternatives and community-based programming. and i wanted to encourage that even more funding being directed to work force developments and all of the things that we saw in the budget earlier today so have more of the funding go away from the sheriff's department and towards the services and the communities that are going to create the kind of long-term public safety outcomes that our county needs. and then i also wanted to echo what the previous speaker said around s.f. county being a model to other counties. we're working statewide with a lot of counties on their realignment plans. and i was so excited to hear a lot of the way you all are talking about alternatives through incarceration and programming. and i encourage you to share those models with other counties. because we're seeing a lot of threats of other counties expanding their jail capacity instead of actually supporting people to be successful in the community and stay in the

community as opposed to increasing people's times in the jails. and then curb, a lot of the work we're doing is also on the state level. and a lot of the pushback we're hearing from legislators from the governor's office and from the cdcr is that there's no political will for parole and sentencing reform. and i think that that's not true. and that if we don't actually start shifting our priorities on the state level in the same way that we're seeing happening in san francisco county that we're -- [tone] we're going continue to see an over reliance on incarceration in our state. and then finally, i just wanted to put in a plug that i hope that san francisco becomes the first county to adopt a non-discrimination standard in our city and countywide that prohibit discrimination against people with past criminal histories in employment and

housing. know that's a conversation happening in our county. chairman mirkarimi: i think supervisor cohen may have a question for you. >> great. supervisor cohen: you said discrimination standards. >> one of the conversations that's happening right now in san francisco county is around adopting nondiscrimination standards city and countywide that would prohibit discrimination against any people who have a past criminal history. and that would protect people in employment and housing county and state wide. just wanted to encourage the board of supervisors to support that. supervisor cohen: is this the same as the human rights commission? >> yeah. thank you. chairman mirkarimi: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. james patrick carroll, democratic candidate for

governor. i mean, for -- my career has taken off rather quickly, but i'm the democratic candidate for mayor of san francisco. i appreciated supervisor cohen's comments. listening to ross rattle off the numbers, the various speakers, listening to the demographic and the reality which will be our burden here in the city. and as mayor, i would be -- i'm very concerned to see a population of thousands of convicts overflooding our services and programs as well as housing for marginally house adults and homeless people here in san francisco which we have labored and worked so hard over the past 15 years to put into place. i don't believe the $5.7

million will be enough to cover the programs and services, the recovery programs and the housing which will be necessary . not to mention the job training . and i also have concerns that not only would this not be enough, the $5.7 million to cover all of these aspects, but it is also likely to displace marginally housed adults overwhelming our precious recovery and housing program. [tone] and i believe it would place an undue burden on both the sheriff as well as the police departments. i intend as mayor to create a police watch dog group which would be empowered