their ph.d. or on the way to get their phd? i know we had some in the past. >> one of the problems with that is that they would have to have already credibility in the department and have gone through peer counseling with the critical incident, and so one of the issues of having a staff that -- president mazzucco: my question is simple. is there an officer that has a ph.d. or is going through the phd? are there any that you are aware of? how many are going 3 program now that may be helpful to your unit? >> i do not know. i do not know. commissioner chan: that was one of our questions, asking if there was a psychologist, any concerns before we return them

to duty, and we were told at the time that that does not happen. it used to happen, but it currently does not happen. we would like to reinstate -- ok. >> that is what this would do. commissioner chan: ok, so that would be helpful. has there been a needs assessment done of what officers would like? and needs assessment? >> i know i would like to have something done for returning vets. mhn does cover a whole veterans section, but it is not in our contract. i would like to have our returning vets be mandated to come through a process before being sent out again to the war zone, and something like that, i know they do get their psychological assessment prior

is more thorough, and something like that i think would be very valuable, and i think that protecting our officers from sending them right out to places that would reinforce their trauma would not be in their best interest. i think we need to take care of them and give them a break, but i think that would be something i would like to do. commissioner chan: a needs assessment has not been done? >> i think they have done a good job think that we could give them more support. commissioner chan: i would like to come back and have a potential action item to find out what we can do to support furthering the unit, and also, i think we should probably conduct and needs assessment to see what officers might want. we see this on the disciplinary

end. these issues come up after the fact, and i know they're very difficult. we want to find a way to address this on the front. >> i am currently meeting with all of the officers at all of the stations. i am doing two again, so i will add that as one of my questions to seat. i know that the officers right now really do avail themselves. i know kevin is almost at everything that i get called out to, too, but i will add that as a question and have a report for your note. the final meetings will be by christmas. >> -- commissioner chan: i am sure they are really appreciative of your making these visits. they like having the chief there. that is different than some private. so with regard to the needs assessment though, i think there should be a public one, where you talk about it and show the

command staff at the cheaper the cares about the issue, but i think there should also be an anonymous needs assessment so the officers can fill this out. >> we can certainly do -- yes, we can do that. >> if you draw up a form, i will pass it out. commissioner chan: i know sanford's vesco has looked at best practices. have we looked at other cities and then incorporated that into our work? >> yes, we have probably the most progressive, and the only thing that i think we are missing is an aspect on prevention that i think needs to be done. i worked with a subject matter expert in suicide and did put together a three-hour video for intervention on prevention, so we can do like an eight-hour course at the academy, and i do

not think that is a problem, but i think that needs to be dealt with sooner than later. commissioner chan: thank you. president mazzucco: i think you do a great job, and i hear your name all of the time, and i think we want to help you out. what we see in terms of discipline. we had several suicides. it had an impact on the commission, and that is why this is coming up, so, please, keep up the great work. it is appreciated. thank you very much. commissioner: you can cancel her on her ptsd stuff. -- council her. present -- present -- president mazzucco: i am sorry.

we now go to the other sections. >> a couple of matters have come to the commission attention that the public might enjoy knowing about, and i thought you might want to comment. one is the new expanded email system, making that communication between the community and officers more available, and then the second was the fact that the department is preparing a video to be included with the it gets better web site, so i think those are two very noteworthy matters. >> so for the first time ever,

every member of the police department has email for the first time ever. the policy has gone out of what it is, why it is. we do need to explain it. what it is, why it is, how it will be used, and now there is training on how to access it, how to use it, how you are expected to use it. we will work on this before it goes out, but it is pretty straightforward, and it is email. to some people, it sounds like we should have had before. maybe we should have, but we have it now. as far as the "it gets better" video, the giants actually were doing that, and then i had a conversation, and she had the idea that if it was ok with the department, we would do it. i believe we are the first law enforcement agency in the

country to go forward with it, and we are now working with a producer from apple, and there is another body that is helping with it, and we are hoping to have that. more officers that i can count have come forward to want to be on the video to try to just reassure youth that it gets better. president mazzucco: line itemsb 3. -- item 3 b. clerk: item 3b, the occ director's report. >> we participated in the night out activities last night that were held in various locations the road visiting, and between

this by staff members and of, -- between the five staff members and i, we read at the bayview as well as at a community center, and in addition, we visited two other locations, and that concludes my report. president mazzucco: thank you. any questions for a directorhickes -- director hicks? next item. clerk: item 3c, the commission reports. president mazzucco: i will turn it over to the commissioners. vice president marshall: the bayview meeting. to me, it was a disaster.

the chief was asked by the community to come out into engage in discussion with members of the bayview community. i guess there were about 300 people there, and i would say 290 of them did not get a chance to speak. he did respond to the call, and i must commend the chief for hanging in there in what i would say very turbulent, and i do not use that word lightly, evening. but the first picture i have is that she tried to speak and somebody standing directly next to him, flanking him as he tried to speak, and this was one of the active protest. shutting him down as he attempted to get a few words out. i actually asked the gentleman to move. i decided i had better not say

anymore, because then we might have another problem. i guess i felt really badly, if i can use that word, for all of the people who came to have a dialogue. that bothered me the most. it is one thing to read your opinion and have your say and not to let anyone else of their opinion or their say, and there was a time that they actually told the chief he could leave. he did not. he stuck around. he actually came back and tried once again, so the chief was just standing there in the face of what i would call vitriol, not being able to respond adequately. i have to give you a lot of credit for just staying there and listening when you could have left. i thought you handled it very,

very well, and i thought in your remarks afterwards, you handled it very, very well, and i think you did yourself a lot of good, particularly where you were the captain that evening in your subsequent engagement with the community. and for that reason, i asked the chief to come on to the radio program sunday. a lot more folks got to listen to that. there were some types of questions that should have been ousted that night that were asked on sunday, and the chief responded, and they went back and forth. i have heard a lot of good things about that show. they came up to me to say "great show" and really got clear on the issues. one of the things that was asked about was protocol and muni and all of the things that should have been asked.

i think it went a long way to clearing everybody around policing issues in general and that incident in particular, so i want to thank you for coming on. i also want to think another for coming on. both law-enforcement in the supervisor working together on this issue, so i want to thank you for everything that you did at that particular time. i think it was serving well moving forward. >> i appreciate it. president mazzucco: thank you. commissioner kingsley? commissioner kingsley: i attended the two events, and one was at a community center. and yes, the of the one, on

noriega, which was more of a block cut off between 45th and 46, so they were two different ends of this very large geography of that station. both events had terrific food and music and a lot of events for the children, and children in particular in joining getting into the police cars and seeing how they work. i think what struck me most is that these events really were taking charge of the community, which was terrific, and were well attended. the police officers, and captains were there and a number of police officers, and i think our commission, to thank them for being there and having that presence. there were a number of other community services that were

present and available, too, and then, also, thanks to the occ for its presence and staffing at several of the stations, as well, so i think san francisco did a terrific job on that event. >> it was. it was a great event. president mazzucco: commissioner chan? commissioner chan: first, i went on my ride along in the tenderloin. thank you. the capt. works extremely hard. i think i strutted around 5:30 and came back around 9:00 something. he was still there. i wanted to order him to go home, but i did not want to abuse my power.

i enjoyed getting to know the tenderloin station. the reason i was there for a crisis intervention program to see what the officers encounter on a daily basis, and i wanted to see what we are dealing with. i went on a ride along with two officers, and the both of them gave me a lot of hope, because the captain obviously knew who to choose to show me on this ride among. these are exactly the kind of officers i would like to see applied for the cit program. you cannot make them do it, but they are exactly the kind of officers i would like to see applied. they have to average and were extremely professional. they went out of their way to get out of the patrol cars, talk with people in the community, and this was not just for show. they knew their names and new their lives. there were several committee members on the way to connect.

there was one particular woman who had been involved in dealing drugs and taking drugs, and they had helped her to get housing. she was still up and down. there is no absolute basics test ban the neighborhood they are in, but they were able to connect the members with services and still work with them even when they fell back down, and they were doing what they should be doing, so i appreciate that experience and to take that to inform the cit program, so i have to pick their brains for feedback. the second thing i want to report is i did attend the conference this last week in washington, d.c. i attended in my staff capacity of the asian law caucus. i did see a sergeant there representing the san francisco police department, and what i took away from the experience is that we're all doing great things throughout the country.

there are things in tennessee and also in minnesota where they have outreach to immigrant communities. i would like to bring that back to talk about, because it is almost like our ambassador program but coming out of the police department and strong connection with immigrant- serving organizations to try to deal with the barriers of have a trust and also the language issues, and looking at the language access report that we were provided with, i noticed that there were some areas where the police department is very strong, but there are other areas where we did not receive a check, where we have some work to do, so in the coming weeks and months, i will bring up some proposals. president mazzucco: ok, any further commission reports before we move into the items for consideration? item 3d. clerk: item 3d.

president president mazzucco: wih reference to items in the future, as we talked about earlier, i would like to see it and made available on the 17th. a brief report about where we have been and where we're going to go. >> are we late that day on august 17? or do we have a lot on our calendar? but we do tend to be over- achievers. >> we have a report that evening. as far as the other closed session items, we have one at length the issue and then a couple shorter ones. a total of four.

>> with regard to the secure committee's report, i submitted a question about that report and how it jives with the custom report. i would ask that to be brought back in a few weeks, two or three wednesdays from now. i just want to make sure they are consistent. with regard to the unit and how to further improve on that, given some of the recommendations, i would like to schedule for us to have a longer discussion about that. looking into, the 17th we have disciplinary hearings. the 24th we might be going dark. >> we will be going dark. city hall will not be made available. commissioner chan: maybe september 7 or 14 would be a good time.

or if that is too soon. >> when do we have our priority discussion calendar? next week. before we schedule anything else, can we please, as a commission, decide what our priorities are and then calendar accordingly? since that is next week. >commissioner chan: that should be fine. i imagine when we have this discussion, this will be a priority. we should schedule this. if you have a concern, we can wait to schedule. >> we have seen these issues brought up. prairies' change. -- priorities change.

things move along. this is one of those urgent ones we need to get on top of. i would like to get that in september unless there is objection. >> my only concern is, i think we should do it with a priority list. if we do this so that -- mightn't concern is coming up with things anyway. that is all i'm saying. we have to do it one way or the other. if we're going to add to the list, let's go ahead and do it. i cannot see the two things going together. you know, we talked about it at the retreat. my concern is that some, on and come off and then you follow it. that is my only problem.

we have not reviewed or revised it. it is hanging out there. we are ignoring it. if we're not going to use it, that is fine. we can do that. the only problem is that it allows you to -- the danger is that, remember, this came up because nobody agreed it should happen. let's resolve how we're going to do it. either we're going to integrate it and use it or forget it. >> thank you, commissioner marshall. i would like to see it as a living document. we bring in an consider the new interests that have come up but we also keep an eye on the priorities we set initially. we keep revising but with an eye

toward what needs immediate attention and also what we want to calendar to make sure we are addressing all of our priorities and all of the matters we need to attend to. there are some things that the commission has responsibility for but has not addressed because we have not calendar ed it. we need to build that into our scheduling and priorities. commissioner chan: i do not mind holding the discussion but i am going to move it as a top priority next week. vice president marshall: then it goes on the list. you see the yin and yang. if we do not want to do it, that

is all right. but we agreed to do it. my concern is that we will come up with something that drives everything else. that has happened in the past. the priority list was to do long-range planning, looking at things over six months or year. i just want to resolve that one way or the other. it is just sort of hanging out there. maybe we could figure out a new list. my thing is we are going to use it or not. >> adhering to a risk -- list might be a handful. all of our priorities get thrown out if we get a new chief. issues pop up. it is the nature of the

business. we have to be somewhat flexible. sticking to a list is --. maybe there could be a compromise. vice president marshall: we could make it a recurring document. then we do not have that problem. >> i will make my motion next week. president mazzucco: any public comment regarding these items? >> could evening once again. i have a quick comment. on a subject that maybe, you do not see mentioned much. i looked at a lot of police officers to discharge weapons. i see there is no discussion on the ones that committed suicide

with their own weapon. i bring it up to you because last year i went to the board of supervisors. no one in this city knew about this person or had contacted him. later somebody did at my suggestion. i bring it up because it is something that is not discussed anywhere. i would like to know if the sfpd has information on these people. what their predicament is when something like this happens. you have a fallback in terms of contacting their families? to discuss something like this? in afghanistan and iraq, they have 30 to 40 suicide to month. i have never had a problem with the sfpd.

my problem is with the man on the street that was getting out of control. most police officers have a tough stop. i see it as a taxi driver. they face all kinds of problems. maybe some of these are keeping them alive. i would like to know if they are. are the percentages in mind with other cities in terms of suicide? and do you keep any statistics on that? what is your plan on a monthly basis in terms of officers that have committed suicide and the reason for it. i would like to know out of curiosity. i have read all of the discharged guns. for a police officer to put

himself and you just put it down as a policy, that does not explain anything. it does not explain anything to me. i think it should be a discussion of future discussions in terms of what happens to these officers, how long they were in the force, not in the force, that sort of thing. that is pretty much it. i would like to see more discussion on that. thank you for your time. president mazzucco: any further public comment? public comment is closed. >> item number5, public comment related to item number 7 including whether to hold item seven in closed session. president mazzucco: any public comment? hearing none, and next item. >> a vote on whether to hold item 7 in closed session.