government and military have to step in to take down crime when it gets out of control, so please, think about what you are doing, addressed the issues, and keep the citizens safe. there are a lot of children, a lot of good people that are in bed areas that do not have the right or the money to move anywhere. they are stuck in a bad. that is just filthy. crime. our generation of children have to be thought of, so does the world, so if you do not think now, it will be serious. you have to take crime down. you have to look at it seriously. thank you very much. president mazzucco: thank you. any further public comment on these items? seeing none, public comment is closed. please read line item number four. clerk: a discussion regarding

implementation of language access services. president mazzucco: thank you. i will turn this over. >> thank you for giving us this update and for preparing it. i also want to recognize that we have a couple of folks an audience in have come here to give an update from the community about how language access is going. we also have someone from the occ with a recommendation. >> good afternoon. i am the department language officer. i am here to give you an update on the department's records to make our service is fully accessible to link -- to limited english proficient individuals of the city. the protocol for providing this in accordance with a language access ordinance is detailed in our general order, 5.20. recently, the department

discovered a form that was not translated into the five core languages. it was entitled unlicensed drivers, hold harmless. the language access officer has received this from eight approved vendor, and a request for immediate translation has been submitted and approved. during the last update to the commission regarding implementation of a general order 5.20, commissioner chan raised concerns about calls for service that involved lep persons and number two regular reports about the it department language access at birds. regarding data collection, a general order 5.20, part 0, number two, they shall collect

lep data, and those that require an incident report. i am sorry. lep stands for limited english proficiency. regarding these contacts, they are, number one, spreadsheet provided by a telephonic interpreted service, number two, computer assisted dispatch records where is certified language person is used, and number three, a survey filled out by every department member assigned to the bureau. out of the three, the most accurate services are the spreadsheet and the computed s -- computer assisted dispatch records. please be aware that telephonic interpretations far outnumber at the scene usage of bilingual

persons. unfortunately, language services asks department members to provide either a case number or another number before any interpretation takes place over the telephone. as you know,cad, computer assisted numbers, both composed of nine digits, and the first two indicate the year of the gregorian calendar. emergency management dispatch. on either hand, a case number is only generated when it is involving an incident report. the spreadsheet provided by language services does not specify whether a call for service involving telephonic interpretation resulted in an incident report. therefore, the language access officer faces a severe obstacle

in collecting the kind of data required by number two. to overcome the obstacle, the language access officers submitted a memorandum in january to his superior asking permission to have services change one of the pre questions. they should not ask for a case number or a cad number. instead, they should ask only for the cad number, and then they can remotely looked up the numbers and determine if an incident report is made. the language access officers currently awaiting -- excuse me. i have been recently informed that the administration has approved that, so yes, today.

commissioner: we are not waiting. >> also, using a survey for members of the bureau to calculate data. dispatch service or members of the airport bureau is provided by san francisco international airport communications staff. as a dispatchers are not part of the department of emergency management. additionally, they use a different computer assisted dispatch system that is compatible with the system used with the san mateo county law enforcement community. the reason behind that is because it francisco international airport is within san mateo county. as a result, the san francisco police language access officers cannot access data from the airport dispatch. therefore, on january 3, 2012,

myself and one of my supervisors, we had a meeting with the airport dispatch supervisor. the airport dispatch supervisor indicated a mechanism can be put into place where sfpd contact with lep could be used. however, a supervisor added she has to receive approval from her superiors before any further action, and i have yet to hear from the supervisor and will be anticipating to contact her next week -- i am sorry, tomorrow. and regarding regular reports to the police commission, the department commitment to the general orders is unshakable. therefore, we are making every effort to overcome the obstacles and to collect the data so the language officer can provide a precise reports dictated for the police commission.

commissioner: thank you. thank you. it is great that your problem solving. i wanted to see if any other commissioners had any questions before we ask some people from the community to come on and shared things. any questions? ok, thank you, officer. we may call you back for a few questions. >> thank you. commissioner: we have beverly year, and you did present to us last time. thank you for taking your evening to come back. >> i am honored to be here, and anything we can do to work together with the police department and the commission to

approve language access, we are so pleased to do so. thank you, and good evening. we were here in the first week in december, and i think we have made lots of progress. i want to start by thanking the officer. i think he has been so proactive and has shown incredible leadership around this issue. i think one of the first pieces of the recommendations that have been implemented is that we are having a meeting tomorrow at mission station with the community. language access officers, and some inspectors and lieutenants, agreed, from the special bid terms unit, so that is happening tomorrow at 11:00, so the recommendations are already starting to move forward, and we are excited about that. i also wanted to make sure that some of our other advocates that have some anecdotal information to share with some other communities as well have some time this evening, so i am

excited to share some experiences from one of our consortiums measures, and they were quite a lot in the spanish- speaking community, and i want to bring one person with us to talk about some of the aniston of information she has received to give us a better picture of what survivors of domestic violence to our lep might be facing. and then i believe that heidi has a global perspective that she would like to bring to us, as well. thank you. >> hello. thanks for having us here tonight. this is all very timely, because unfortunately, we had a fairly adorable interaction that occurred, one in december. this is unfortunately but the

same client. we had a client in our latina program. spanish, very limited english proficient, and i do not think she can speak any english at all. she built up the courage to make a police report, and one of our people accompanied her to the police station to do so. unfortunately, she did not have experience at that station. there was no attempt made to find a certified translator, and the language was not even brought up as a possible option, and the latina program co-manager was asked to translate for the police officer, and the client, it is against our policies to do that, and she informed them of that. after three hours of waiting at

the police station, the client broke down and said, "i want to get out of here. i do not want to do this. let's go." so the latina manager and the client left the station. they talked a lot about the interaction and decided to make another go and make a police report, and this just happened on monday. we were talking the day before yesterday. did not want to go back to the same police station, so our staff person to occur to a different one, and unfortunately encountered a very similar response in that she was not provided a bilingual police officer to speak with. there were no attempts made to translates using the language mine, and again, our staff person was asked to translate on behalf of the client and communicate with the police officer.

and again, we are looking at another five hours, because the staff person was told that someone should be coming, someone who is bilingual, to take the report, and it just never happened, and unfortunately, she was there with the client for five hours. and i know that is definitely not the way any of us want to see this type of situation play out, and so we are very appreciative of the opportunity to get solution oriented and assure our clients that when they do decide to take that very difficult and sometimes unsafe step to report an incident of domestic violence, especially if they are modeling will, spanish- speaking, do not speak spanish or -- if they are monolingual,

and can feel good about it. commissioner: this is separate. why is your staff policy not to do that? why is it yours that policy? i am just curious. >> yes, well we make it pretty clear that our role is to support the client, and they are not certified translators, so, of course, there is also a concern that something could go wrong with that, that their translation capabilities could somehow be called into question, if this is something that is prosecuted, and it does kind of tape with a focus from i am here to support the client, and that is my directive, and your attention is put in a different direction if there is a translation going on, and some of the people, even though they are bilingual, may not have

very great translation skills. not everyone feels comfortable doing it either. >> many organizations have that policy. part of it is also concern in those limited resources and that you are not translating things that you are not qualified to translate. i want to point out that we provide access, and there is no exception for if you come with someone who happens to be bilingual. commissioner: can i ask you, please, how many usually come in with some time notice put some notice of time before they go to the police department? they know they are going to the police department. there may be hours or a day of that nature. >> for clarification, how many

of our clients typically know ahead of time that they are going to go to make a police report? >> for example, in the example that you made, there was a one- month period of time between these two visits. >> if they do not call 911 when the incident occurs, we arrange for that because that is something we need to schedule for internally, so we did but we have noticed a day or two ahead of time sometimes. i have seen it though where a client may be coming in for a case management appointments, so they might be scheduled with a staff person, and then they decide, you know what, we are here, let's just make the report. commissioner: is there a number available that they could call

in advance if they know they will need an interpreter? >> certainly, we can arrange that if there is a workup case, but as commissioner chan said, we are committed to providing full language access 24/7. there are some major issues here. the first is, let me ask the inspector, let me give you my card. the last thing we want to do is the domestic violence victim with the courage and fortitude to come forward in a very difficult time, we want to make sure that that individual is treated with the dignity and respect that they are entitled to, so i apologize. >> thank you. >> this is not something we want to be associated with. the other is that we have an incredible training opportunity here. this should not happen to anyone. maybe to get some more directives out to the troops so

no one else has to experience this, and the other thing, and would like to encourage you or maybe discuss with the victim about generating an occ complaint. i am not going to sit up here and defend bad behavior. that was inappropriate and should not have happened, especially someone who was so traumatized, as in this anecdotal story. >> thank you very much. we have our own issues and capacity issues offering service provisions in spanish. it is something that we have a need for in terms that it can be hard to range, and certainly why we are coming tonight is we want to be solution oriented, and i really just from the bottom of my heart appreciate very much your response. thank you. and we would be happy to discuss how to use this incident as a catalyst for better interaction with the police

department in the future. >> blankey. president mazzucco: -- thank you. president mazzucco: being a former prosecutor, like a lot of policies, again, there is no excuse, but a lot of these cases, it is a serious life or death situation, and sometimes things need to be acted on swiftly with knowledge of the whereabouts of the perpetrator. i would probably appreciate it more if the manager could at least give us some fundamental information to the officers so they can start the process. the officer that speaks the language. i think that goes to the protection of the victim, going back to a household where there is an issue. again, i understand what you said and what the commissioner said, but they should be proficient enough to be pleased to tell the officer at the statement -- station that he

beat her, he is still in the house. icl domestic violence cases have gone, and it is never good, so i appreciate that there is a little more flexibility on your part. vice president marshall: that is the spirit. i really just wanted to know. >> understand. i want to say that the manager did, indeed, do that. provide that very fundamental information, but where she but she really needed to put a battery as when it got to the declaration, and she felt completely out of it. president mazzucco: thank you for what you do. vice president marshall: we will make sure the department does

its part. commissioner: thank you. we have another. her organization is one of the primary areas of help. >> thank you all to the commission tonight. i just want to follow up and say it is heartening to hear the response he provided just now, and we mentioned we were back here in december. we have had some clients situations that happened during the course of 2011, in particular one where there was some follow-up reporting and some real challenges and barriers that resulted, so we look forward for some continued discussion on how that can be improved upon going forward. i just want to close by saying we are really very, very i think excited about the fact that the commission is really working so closely at try to implement and move forward really concrete laid these orders and the recommendations in particular of

the occ that have now been prevented. they are really good one. bobby my organization and i think other members here really want to advocate that after the december commission hearing, the occ did follow up with a letter, and in particular, recommended for implementation purposes there would be certain things to try to really focus on, and we just want to say that we support those things and like to request that there could be some time lines, maybe some benchmarks to try to implement these in particular. the roll call training to have that occur within a 60-day period from now, would be to really doable and achievable and something that they could really move this process forward. as far as the issuing of the departed bulletin, a directive, that is something that also we feel could be hopefully

accomplished in a 30-day period from now, and then as far as the and hanson were implementing the current sfpd protocol, including to me lep protocols -- including two of -- the lep protocol. we look forward to what is happening between them and the community, but we would also encourage that that be something that be on going, perhaps on a quarterly basis, and i think that would be something to help continue this process moving forward and continue to have some good positive outcomes with are addressing these issues, so thank you very much. president mazzucco: commissioner turman?

commissioner turman: can you remind me of the reporting criteria? >> i am sorry. i do not have it. in summary, i can tell me there is a report. oh, thinking. -- thank you. it is on the last -- page 6. do you have a copy, commissioner? commissioner thurman: no, i do not. >> can i just read this? it starts with one of the requirements is a yearly report to the police commission. the department shall provide it, concerning number one, the number of calls for service and contact involving an lep person, and that would be where a case

number is generated. number two, the manner in which interpretation services were provided. number three, any complaints concerning language access whichever and forward it, and number four, the department resolution to any language access complaints. so far, there is a separate report that i have to do for the officer engagement in immigrant affairs, and it is a requirement for quote unquote tier-1, such as the police department. the report, some of these reports, the specifics are dressed in that report, as well, butthere are some others, like a biannual report for the department efforts in addressing language access.

commissioner: how does that fit into the report? access was requested but never received? >> cents a case number was not -- the officers, therefore, it no report was made, there would be no record. commissioner turman: that is a situation that we need to fix. that is a situation that we need to know about, that the commission needs to know about an address. >> yes. commissioner turman: thank you.

commissioner -- >> thank you. there are those that provide this really important service, and they can lead us know. the request is not even catalogs because the person did not receive the service. the response you really get. it is important to have. commissioner turman: i agree with you wholeheartedly, and i appreciate the comments. >> i also want to make sure that we have summoned from the office of citizen complaints present the recommendations that were outlined. >> good afternoon, from the office of citizen complaints. the evening, vice president marshall, director, members of the public. after the december 7 hearing, and met with stakeholders and

talked with the police department and formulated some recommendations to address the kind of issues that you heard about tonight and on december 7, as well, and the recommendations that we presented to the police department and presented to you last week presented the report, but the recommendations really are simple and that we are looking to see roll call training as soon as possible, based on the scenarios that you have heard, and also, within our own agency, we have that 24 language access complaints in the last two years, and nine of those involved training failures and policy failures, so we have got plenty of material that we can use to effectively create roll call training to be responsive. iannetta aspect would be to provide a department bulletin within 30 days to address some of those issues. ongoing is the concern about getting better information between officers who are responding and also dispatched

to enhance that protocol between dem and the police department. we are looking forward to the meeting between community stakeholders and the police department, because we have a format to just really address these issues, and i really appreciate the responsiveness. >> thank you. i want to give the officer a chance to respond if you of anything you would like to close out with, and also see if the commissioners had any further questions and also ask you when the annual report is coming out, what the best time would be. i do not think we have seen an annual report for at least one year. >> the department would certainly not want to excuse -- as soon as we can resolve how we can get the incident report generated calls. as soon as we can get that together in a place where the