brecht's the morning and welcome to the public safety committee of the san francisco board of supervisors. my name is short -- is john avalos. we are joined by christina olague. we have david campos and we will be joined by the other committee member eric mar shortly. the clerk of the committee -- actually, we have two. dina brady, who is coming on. and our illustrious gail johnson, who is actually clerking her last committee ever on the board of supervisors. after 36 years of service. i have been working with her for eight years and she has been

very capable to work with. madam clerk, do we have any announcements? >> yes, mr. chairman. if you wish to submit comments for the committee, please submit them to the rail to the left. >> call the first item, please. >> to retroactively expand a grant for the calendar year for

does-disproportionate contact in the juvenile district system. >> this is the second year of the grant. we focused on the bayview district because of the numbers of african-american youth and during the juvenile system in san francisco. it is a targeted plan to not only increase the understanding of the patrol officers and all of the officers at the bayview station and the concepts of this proportionality within the system, racial and ethnic disparities that exist within the system, and to increase their awareness and to offer our assistance in the probation department.

this is the second year where we have done it working with the police department. part of our background is with you and all police warrants. some of them are -- juvenile warrants. some of them are not for anything more than just failure to appear.

not necessarily absconding from the court, by just failure to appear. we are moving in a direction of electronic notification. similar to when we get our notices for wealth changes. there is nothing more important around a family right now than what involves their appearance before the court. we are also examining every one of our major decision points within the juvenile probation department. at the front door to when kids are booked into detention, we have a risk assessment to help guide those decisions. and we have employed the services of a nationally recognized expert in racial and ethnic disparity, the hayward burns institute, founded by james bell formerly with the youth law center. they are partnering with us to examine the risk assessment and make some changes.

we are in the process of doing a dry run where we are examining some changes that we made in the instrument to see if these changes can reduce the numbers of the use of color that enter our system. -- youth of color that enter our system. this is a grant to help continue the efforts in the department that will continue well beyond the expiration of this grant. as i indicated, they have preceded our use of this grant. >> just to be clear, this does not include any staffing positions? rex know. >> thank you very much. -- >> no. >> thank you very much. supervisor mar? >supervisor mar: you said it was

a multi-year grant. how far will that go? gregg's to the end of this -- >> it begins this year. >>supervisor mar: for the salaries and benefits, what does that person do? >> tanah red, who found her way to the adult probation department to advance her career we are utilizing our entire staff. supervisor mar: you mentioned james bell. >> he was just a contractor. supervisor mar: thank you. supervisor olague: i would have

to support anything that would ease this issue, the disproportionate number of men of color that are in the juvenile system. if we could get some feedback in a few months, that would be good. >> can i just add one point? the leadership in bayview when the captain was there, now the efforts extend beyond bayview in the interests of the entire city and this particular issue. the good news is that the numbers of users entering into this system is clearly pronounced this last year. while the percentages are slightly the same in terms of

the percentages of use in cassidy representing the use of color, -- percentages of the youth in custody representing the youth of color is the same. >> and i would like to see the recidivism rates. supervisor mar: with racial and ethnic disparities, whenever there is policy having to deal with juvenile, are you looking at the impacts especially on latin-american and african- american populations? >> that is a good point. we deal with racial and ethnic disparity as we examine every one of our policies. we put that on like a lines. supervisor avalos: any member of public like to comment?

seeing none, public comment is closed. can we move this item forward? we have a motion to move forward with recommendations. next item, please. >> item two, ordinands amending the san francisco police code by amending section 65-65 -- amending section 65. supervisor avalos: this item is sponsored by supervisor campos, who is here. supervisor campos: thank you very much, mr. chairman. let me provide a little bit of background about this item. i know we have a number of members from the public that are here and i want to thank them for being here as well.

various entities including churches and health-care facilities as well as welfare facilities have a significant number of customers who are dropped off by motor vehicles and to facilitate that, we have asked the city through the transportation agency to establish a white zone. that is essentially a passenger loading area at the streaker -- street curb fronting the area. when you ask for a white sound, you are required to pay a fee, attend a public hearing, and the matter of request for the creation of a white zone ultimately has to be approved by the city's traffic engineer.

we have seen as we have studied this issue that there are many benefits to having wide zones. one of the obvious benefits is that they reduce the number of vehicles that are double parked on city streets. i think anyone who has used our streets knows that this is a recurring problem throughout san francisco. another benefit of having a white zone is that it alleviates the need for drivers to circle around for blocks in search of a parking space, which is not only bad in terms of traffic, but also bad for the environment. there are many benefits to having the right zones when it comes to having traffic congestion, improving the safety of not only other vehicles, but also pedestrians, and also reducing vehicle emissions. what we have found, though, is that even though there is this

process for the creation of a white zone, there is nothing that actually makes it an offense or makes it illegal to obstruct access to a white zone. which i have found to be surprising. you can imagine that if you are going to have a white zone, you would not want for people to be able to actually obstruct it, which is the way the law currently works. what we are proposing is simply, in a very, and sensible way, adding a new section to the police code that would make it illegal to obstruct the white zone or the adjacent sidewalk between the curb and fronting the building.

by obstruction, we mean the placement of objects, materials, substances or other material on the sidewalk. anytime you take up public space, you want to be sure your crafting it in a very narrow way. i want to thank hillary in my office who has been working with community members and with the city attorney's office to be sure this is done in the most narrowly tailored way that we can do it. the prohibition that we're talking about would apply during the hours that the white zone is restricted to passengers loading and unloading. it really strikes the white -- right balance in making sure that open spaces in san francisco remain open and public. it is specifically targeted to deal with the issue that the benefits of a white zone would

be undermining if there is no prohibition on people obstructing them. it is a very commonsensical piece of legislation. under the legislation, a violation of this amendment would constitute an infraction. it would be a fine not to exceed $100 for the first violation, two hundred dollars for the second violation -- $200 for the second violation if it occurs within a year and up to $500 for a third violation within a year. we hope that certainly -- we would expect that we would have no violations and if a -- an individual is continually violating, we certainly do not want to see that because of the implications to some of our communities in terms of access to the facilities.

even though it took a long time to craft this in the right way to take into concern all of the conflicting interests, we believe this is a very commonsensical piece of legislation and would ask my colleagues today for your support. before i turn it over -- because i have a number of people here to read -- to present, i want to highlight that i have circulated a very small amendment to the legislation that i would respectfully ask the committee to pass. -- to move and to pass. it basically reads as follows. any property or equipment placed on the white stone curb or adjacent sidewalk by the owner or tenant of the premises fronted by the adjacent sidewalk or curb for the purpose of facilitating access a way

that is not otherwise prohibited by state or local law. this recognizes instances where there may be a church or maybe a business that may have something that is placed within the area that is covered by the statute. it allows that flexibility. it is something that we think makes sense and makes the implementation more practical. and we are certainly mindful of the fact that when you do anything involving public space, you have to consider all of the different public -- implications. with that said, i would like to ask john huang of the department of public works to talk briefly about the sta