supervisor avalos: good morning and welcome to the public safety committee of the san francisco board of supervisors. my name is john avalos, and i am joined by christina cohen. our thought -- christina olague. our other member is not able to make it today. supervisor olague: motion to excuse supervisor mar. supervisor avalos: we will take that without objection. we are also joined by supervisor cohen. she is most welcome to be here. the hearing is sponsored by her. could you please call item one and share with us your announcements before the --

that. >> all persons attending this meeting are requested to turn off all cell phones and pagers. if you wish to submit material for members of the committee, please submit an extra copy for the file. if you wish to submit a speakers card, please but it by the container in front of you at the real to your left. supervisor avalos: thank you. if you could please call the first item. >> item 1, hearing to discuss public safety policies and programs implemented by state departments such as the san francisco municipal transportation agency in san francisco police department on city-wide muni lines, including the enforcement of fair collection -- fare collection. supervisor avalos: thank you. the item is brought to us by supervisor cohen, who is here. supervisor cohen: thank you for

hearing this item. this past year, there were a number of violent incidents on muni, the giggling happening in district 10, one of which dealt with an officer-involved shooting of an individual who was originally stopped by a fare inspector. in the wake of this event, this incident, i have been working with the mta and sfpd to better understand the policies and programs they have in place currently and to obviously offer a public voice. this request is in direct response to any particular the harding shooting. the request has come from the community, so i am honored to bring this to the forefront today. today, we will hear from both and the staff on this particular issue, and we also have a representative from the san francisco police department,

should there be questions for them. without further ado, thank you, mr. chair. first up, we have the mta director, ed reiskin. >> good morning. very happy to be here. want to thank supervisors cohen -- supervisor cohen for her leadership and bringing forward an issue that is very important to us. since i am here, i want to reflect on and apologize for the rush hour this morning. we had a very unfortunate occurrence where we had a private vehicle drive down into the portal that disrupted all the subway activity for this morning. the police have arrested the individual who was driving the vehicle, and i say this not just because it is timely, but because i think it is indicative

of the partnership we have between the police department and the mta. the police department folks work very expeditiously and quickly to book deal with the individual but also to assess the incident to perform their investigation and work with us to get service back for the hundreds of thousands of people that we served each day in the subway. that really is indicative of the partnership we have with the police department every day, that we are grateful for coming to the matter of the subject of today's hearing -- that we're grateful for. coming to the matter of the subject of today's hearing, the board two weeks ago for adopted a new strategic plan for the agency for the next six years, and we established four goals. the number one goal was safety. it is the strong conviction of the agency that people need to feel safe when they are riding

muni. people need to feel safe if they are driving a bus, riding a train, riding a bike, driving a car. transportation needs in order for it to be effective for everyone. we deliberately made safety our number one goal, and our strategic plan, and it reflects the value of the agency and the importance we place on public safety within the mta as a broader construct then just crime, the safety of our employees and the public in terms of collisions between vehicles or bicycles or pedestrians, but crime on muni, which i think is more the topic of this hearing, is really front and center. we certainly want people to feel safer riding anywhere in the system. we are at a good point in time,

not only because we have leadership from the board and adopting safety as our primary goal, but also because we have great leadership from the police apartment. greg sur has appointed i think one of the best of the command staff of the entire police department to be the lead for the sfmta. you will hear from the commander shortly. we have an outstanding working relationship with the police department to the commander, and what we have done is we have fought together. really a lot of our safety enforcement portfolio -- we have brought together really a lot of our safety enforcement portfolio. as well, and his traffic enforcement, fare enforcement, parking enforcement -- it is traffic enforcement. she is also assisting with

traffic issues. really everything safety enforcement related brought together under her leadership, which i think is really moving the ball forward. i think you will see in her presentation or our chief officer, some of the statistics showing that some of these efforts are bearing fruit. we do have some problem areas that you will hear about as well, but i think we have very good, focused leadership, and we have the entire executive team of the mta aligned with the goal of safety as the number one priority of supporting them and executing their tasks. we do certainly see safety has more than just enforcement. it is an education and outreach component that is very important as well. you may have seen some of the ads we have on buses and trains, encouraging people to act in a way that is less likely to make

them victims of crime. we had an ad campaign that was recognized with an award by the american public transit association at its last annual meeting because of the quality and effectiveness of the campaign, but we still have work to do in terms of safety on muni. we will talk to you about some of the things we're doing both on the enforcement side, the education site -- partnerships with others, including the school district, but i want to thank you again for holding this hearing. i have another meeting after i take any questions you have, i will chided is it that to it, but leaving you in good hands. they will all be able to walk you through what we have to present an answer any questions you might have.

supervisor avalos: colleagues, questions for the general manager? ok, we will go on to the next stage. >> good morning, chairperson, supervisors. my name is reginald mason. i am director of safety, training, security, and enforcement for the sfmta. today, i will have the commander speak to you about the partnership between our agency and the police department and how we perform enforcement on the muni system. she joined us in may of last year, and before that time, we had issues regarding how we did fare enforcement and security on the system. we met and devised a plan of using the comstat statistics to

target high-crime areas. as you will see in the presentation, shall go over some of the hot spots in the way we do our saturation that you will get a better understanding and the public will get a better understanding of how we perform enforcement. i will turn it over to her, and then i will be up here with her for questions. >> supervisor -- supervisor avalos: is that for your powerpoint? do you want to be able to speak from the microphone? then i guess. thank you very much for holding this hearing -- >> yes. thank you very much for holding this hearing and giving me the opportunity to tell you what we're doing with our partnership with an g-8 to make our transit system one of the safest in the country. i look forward to walking you through this presentation and answering any questions you may

have. currently, the sfpd and sfmta have agreed to utilize comstat data when coming up with enforcement plans city-wide on our transportation system. i read every single muni report of every crime that occurs on muni. we input the statistical data into our comstat system, and the information is disseminated to members of the mta and to every district station police capt. the reason is to engage the captains in creating enforcement plans to deal with issues that occur on transit within their police districts. this next slide, what you will see is something that is typical of what we give to them. this is the citywide comstat weekly report that went out on

november 16. as you can see, it is fairly comprehensive. what we have is city-wide incidents by month of occurrence. you have city-wide incidents by day of occurrence, which shows the ebbs and flows of when most incidents are occurring. interestingly enough, the midweek is when we have the largest peak. it also shows it by our a recurrence, which indicates mid- afternoon is a peak time for incidents that occur on muni. it then takes it by incident code, which goes through, as you will see, the various crimes and things that occur on muni, and then it moves to buy immune -- by muni line. each district captain receives a graft exactly like this that is

specifically for their own district, which shows where they are having issues, what the issues are, and i am in direct communication with the district station captains in terms of the things that are happening on our transit lines. what they then do is provide me with a monthly muni enforcement plan, both in operational or format and muni enforcement calendar, to address the issues. this is a northern station calendar that was developed back in november to deal with the different times and different issues that you see in that district. every district station captain provides not only this but a muni enforcement operations order to deal with the issues on transit in their districts.

the next slide -- what you will see is the muni-related incidents from prior year to month to date incidents, and this is from the middle of november where you can see each police district. where you see any -- a minus is where crime is at in the district. as of the middle of november, we are down 40% in muni crime. the bayview district is right around 3%. you will see that, for instance, the northern district has a 31% rate, but what i am very proud of is when i took over at mta, i worked very closely with the captain. we were at a 46% rate back in may. we brought that down over the last several months, and it continues in a downward trend, and that has a lot to do with

both her officers and the mta folks that work directly for me. the next slide explains the resources assigned to the mta from the police apartment. besides myself, the staff are comprised of one captain, one sergeant, and seven uniformed officers that are responsible for the -- the sergeant and seven officers are responsible for uniformed patrol. we have one sergeant and four k- 9 teams, comprised of an officer and their dog. they basically deal with issues relating to bomb threats and possible devices on our system. they have been highly successful. we utilize the dogs when we get reports of suspicious packages, and they are able to go in and make a determination if there is in fact a problem, and they are able to get transit moving,

which is something we are very supportive of. their primary responsibility is to muni metro rail system, but we put them wherever the need is. there secondary responsibility is to assist transit fare inspectors, which they do about three days a week. they work a staggered schedule and are on duty approximately 13 hours per day. supervisor avalos: is this group -- what portion of the work order with this cover? >> there's two pieces. the muni enforcement peace is where these folks fall under, and the traffic peace is where our motorcycle and traffic company falls under. they would fall under the peace of muni enforcement. supervisor avalos: do you know what the allocation is for this?

>> of the top of my head, i did not come prepared with those figures. i apologize. the second set of resources is the muni task force. these are officers funded by a fema tsa grant. their primary duty is they target the most problematic lines. they work in plain clothes, and they work a variety of not only decoy operations, robert operations, but they also conduct investigations regarding incidents that occur on muni. one thing i did not include in my slide because it is information that i just got, that i am incredibly proud of is that in 2011, this team of officers were assigned 130 cases. of those, they sold 127