tv [untitled] August 30, 2012 6:07pm-6:37pm PDT
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the chief would send traffic solos at what help because they are up on broadway constantly stopping people and its big help. the commander in chief has let me borrow and when they're there, things are a lot more quieter. there is still violence there. there is like 30 or 40 cops on broadway and they're still fights coming out. it is a constant bad behavior. >> chief, any ideas? [applause] >> is that on camera? >> those chairs are tough. we will be with the group. i would like to see mr. butler's traffic engineering proposal and we will come up with some stuff.
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i know trish was talking about coming up with a more localized holding area and to work with the sheriff to see if we can activate something like the way we do for large demonstrations where we anticipate large numbers of arrests. we might be able to do that on a temporary base this on thursday, friday, and saturday night. we will figure something out. we do push extra people toward broadway. we have the events in the southeast sector the last couple of months and we are spreading it then. we will figure it out. -- we are spreading it sen. >> it appears -- >> >> i just want to say that
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the supervisors have passed a number of pieces of legislation passing regulation of tour buses. we would be happy to work with the advisory committee and make sure how we can extend that some of those and help think about what we can do when a local legislative level to make sure we are keeping these buses in line and all of the spillover effects are not bleeding into that neighborhood. that is something in our house -- we would want to work with you on to sticking of local legislative solutions. >> one other question i have is to be responsive to the question of citation issues? it is unfortunately not a new issue. it's a challenge. do have a district attorney assigned to the station? >> we do.
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melissa rodriguez. >> i have worked with her and she is assigned to the station and at the former chief to make sure -- my recommendation is to schedule a meeting of you guys could have. >> we have had a meeting about this issue. we have been siding and i have enforcement plans along washington square park and fisherman's wharf. we have been citing the bad behavior and a people from the advisory board would e-mail me pictures of vagrants with their pants down and passed out on a washington square park and the minute i get them, show them to my cops and they say this guy was arrested yesterday and we arrested him again today, but just in and out, and and out, but it's not solving any thing
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when we are enforcing the law and they come right back out. >> you may want to try restraining orders for some of these individuals in washington square. what truly more than once, i have seen start respond an officer godfrey respond. maybe it's time for that d.a.'s office to work on a stay away order. sal's like they have places to go and are not necessarily homeless. i could probably identify five or six of them. >> they can bundle cases. if they are offenders you see routinely, one and fraction alone is one and fraction, but if you have 10, if you have 88 assigned to that issue, that seems like a big concern.
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>> i would wonder how many times you have to bundle them before something happens? >> my recommendation as a partnership. i was a citizen and worked at that d.a.'s office and was concerned about car break ins. on one side, they say there should be more arrests and the other side says there should be more prosecutions. when we sit and the room and say we don't the same offender is getting out, that is probably where there is a solution. there are other folks that i know that d.a. said being responsible to community concerns is a priority. there are some system things we have to work on but it starts with people like you insisting on it. i would recommend a process that
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is collaborative in nature. >> thank you for your report. what is your sense in terms of the quality of life on broadway? what is your sense as to how much of the problem can be attributable to the party bosses and how much is attributable to other issues? >> the party bosses play a big part. the clientele, the venue, the club's and what kind of customers they cater to -- we don't have many problems with the strip clubs, but it is the other clubs or the violence is coming out. >> land we are talking about party buses, is directly, there have always been a lot of tour buses that come through the area that run towards by commercial
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entities. here with party buses, i don't have a good feel for exactly what you are talking about. are there party causes it -- is it a more generic term that applies to tors that might be night >> oh, ok, so there are companies that are running like businesses -- >> with stripper poles in the middle. it is a stripper pole in some of the buses, and they're allowed to drink on the bus. >> so is this a new thing? >> no, these are basically like a rolling bar. so somebody basically said there's drinking on the bus, the
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driver doesn't drink but everybody else on the bus drinks. they're for hire recently there was a story in the south bay where a young gal was actually thrown from a party bus and went over an overpass and passed away. so, there's people contemplating legislation. as it was stated earlier they get off the bus drunk and it goes from there. it's a work in progress. >> so in terms of the numbers over the years, you're saying they've always been there? >> right, but not to the current degree. >> not to the current degree. so is there like a 30%, 50% 200. do we have a sense of how big an increase we're getting? >> i think every year it gets bigger. it's over 100%. because before i never heard of them. but now the last few years i know it's been in the mid poling area, broadway, you see them all
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around the city now on the weekends. >> ok, well thank you. another question on a different topic. you reported 30% increase in auto thefts. can you give us an idea of why you think there has been such a marked increase and what your thoughts on are in terms of action to bring that down? >> i notice several months we had over 30 stolen vehicles when usually we have about 20 per month in the district. and i looked at our crime statistics, and the last month we had a downward trend of about 55% but that was because there were two arrests for auto theft. usually an auto thief will not just steal one car but he'll steal maybe 10 or 20 cars.
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so with two arrests that brought down the crime rate considerably. we just have to catch some more auto thiefs. but the good news is that 90% of them, they are recovered. looking at the statistics in the central district, 70% of the autos stolen in the central district are recovered in the central district. >> so in terms of prevention, is there a message that can be sent out to the community in particular if there are basically mass thefts by a few people, then do we know their m.r.'s, things people can watch out for? >> sometimes people just leave their keys in their car. sometimes, some cars are easier to steal than others. what i would recommend is having the car alarm or a club or a
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kill switch. a lot of these auto shops they have different mechanics to prevent car theft. >> and are a lot of the cars, are they rental cars? >> some are rental. i don't know the breakdown, but some are rental. most of the cars that are broken into are rentals. >> ok. you know, thank you for that. i i was interested in some of the statistic you gave but maybe there were more key questions. one had to do with the seniors, 15% of the central area institutes seniors. it seems like that might be high. is that high? a high average when you compare it to the other stations with other districts, police districts? >> i don't have that but i can get it. i don't think -- we're pretty randomly disputed in the city. >> ok.
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all right. the other -- thank you, the other statistic was the 5,500 calls per officer, or per shift. you know, how does -- no, no, i understand it's per month. but in terms of how does that average out per officer or shift as compared to, let's say the mission or some other -- >> the mission is much more busy. when i was there, averaged about 10,000 calls a month. and then the central, there's a lot of calls, but a lot of calls are community-related calls where simply have a lot of beat men, a lot of times people come up to them and start requesting the report or talk to you, and lot of those don't sometimes go on the stats. but i think 5,500 for 1.8 square mile area is pretty busy.
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>> ok, thank you. >> thank you captain tom for your great presentation and for being so prepared for us tonight. the snacks are really nice. appreciate that. also the interpretation for our community members. so, the other commissioner already asked about the broadway quarters, i'll go past that. i should say i do park right there next to all the strip clubs because my office is down the street and that's the cheapest parking i can fibet. i do see what happens at nighttime there when it transitions into evening, so i have sympathy for the people that leave in that community. in terms of the china town area, i wanted to ask, i remember last time the commission came to this district we had some complaints from seniors and questions about howí, ++ get more access to
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officers to report any concerns they have. i'm wondering how that's going, what the clunecation is like. that's down the street. >> they did call me yesterday and i set up a meeting with the association. i'm going to add another beat officer in china town. i was thinking about having a beat office ergo by the association once in a while and if they want to actually come and make a report, because they express concern some of their residents didn't want to come to central station to make a report. so maybe we could have office hours possibly, a certain time. but i'm going to discuss that with the association. they wanted a two hour meeting with me and i was agreeble with that. >> that sounds like a good idea. actually i remember that being an idea that came up at the last commission meeting a year or two ago and that being the resolution that these officers actually have to go into their main community room and have office hours that they feel comfortable reporting any issues, there's more language capacity.
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a good idea to pick that up again. also want to compliment you on your community outreach. i started reaching out to them to attend this meeting. before i could get to them, you already had. that shows how hard you're working in this community, already reaching out to the various non-profits that are serving this community. so thank you for that work. i wanted to also ask about the occupancy rooms, the s.r.o.'s located in china time. i think some of the dentist housings, families living in very tiny rooms. any issues? >> we haven't had a lot of issues with the s.r.o.'s that i've seen. stuart, have you seen anything? no, it seems like it's pretty quiet. >> good to know. and then, on your presentation you had mentioned there's a large variety of language, languages that your officers speak but there wasn't a number of how many officers speak the various languages. i don't know if you know off the top of the head how many are speaking officers you have? >> i do, nine officers who speak
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either cantonese or mandarin. >> do you find that to be enough or are you required additional language? >> we actually use the language yesterday. you know, we could always use more. i think we're pretty good for the city. because a lot of our officers do speak and two of our civilians, the p.s.a.'s, they speck cantonese also. >> that's good to know. those nine officers stay pretty busy. >> they're always asked to call for translation, that's why we've seen three requests today walking through the station. >> lastly i wanted to ask you about the public, private partnerships. you list a lot of organizations in this area and you said you meet with it regularly. is it one meeting, or do you -- >> no, i meet with them day and night. we meet at least monthly. i go to a lot of meetings in
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this district constantly. it's great because they let me know what's going on and they really embrace the police in this community. so they not only invite me but always invite the beat men or the car person. they want to be informed. it's a two-way street so we have an open dialogue with all these different private, public partnerships. >> sounds like you're making the most of that resource in that community, which is really great. ok, and then actually my last question is about the asian scams, i think we mentioned it earlier. how is that going? i appreciate that they talked about the impact on their client and appreciate the department's work. what else is being done? >> i was at a senior center today talking about it. we had the financial crimes unit, at 777 stockton street. we showed the video regarding
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the asian scam. also the chief and commander biel has gone on chinese television to talk about the asian scam. i've been on the radio with david chan from safe. we had a call in about the asian scam and people are calling in to us, telling their experience. we had a tip line in cantonese, and we told the callers or listeners, to call in to this tip line and have officer sam nune do all the follow ups. we did out in the community with flyers, posted flyers all along china town. we gave video of the re-enactment to all the banks in china town, our beatmen leon and stuart, passing them out to the senior centers. we wanted to educate the community about this. first i thought everyone knew about the scam, and then
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suddenly we started having them again. so we had to do more. also created an asian task force of five people who to help financial crimes. they just focused on this scam. and three of them are bilingual. they did a lot of work for them so we worked in partnership because i felt that financial crimes didn't have enough manpower for the magnitude of this crime. and the chief, we had the chief's blessing on this because he knew that this was a very serious crime that was affecting the elderly, and they were losing their life savings. >> i think it looks like you did a ton of outreach and education. i'm sure it's having an impact. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> anybody else? >> good evening, my name is commander mike biel. i'm a commander of the metro division.
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i promise youly be working diligently with captain tom to put together a plan. also using resources to put together a plan to address the broadway issue. just so we understand on broadway what we're doing right now, what we have going on right now is our new staffing, which will take effect on monday. we'll increase our staffing on a night watch over at central station from 25% of the officers to 30%. there by increasing it by about five officers at night. so that would give us from what we have now on broadway, on any given weekend, four to six officers, increased by another two o three officers. that's number one. the next to tweekeds in a row we're going to have our d.u.i. checkpoints focus on broadway corridor. we're also going to put in what we did during the spring, right before the end of our last fiscal year, we had a big push be our teams working overtime,
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when ever possible, some added hours in the back end of their schedule, to stay on broadway until 4:00 in the morning until everything settles down. we're going to implement that back again, and i'll work with commander lawson. perhaps one squad of plains clothes officers on broadway. another thing that we can do is bring in some outside help from outside districts with wagons. sometimes the visual of having a couple of police paddy wagons on broadway street is something that will really help to kind of enlighten the folks. on stolen vehicles, commissioner kingsley, i want you to understand that most of the stolen vehicles we have in san francisco are older vehicles with a totey, honda-type brands. vehicles almost 20 years old. not the newer high-end vehicles, those are harder to steal. but the older vehicle s are just
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so easy to stealment i won't get into that on television, but those are the most for joy riding or point a to point b. that's why we recover so many of these vehicles. put your mind at ease, a lot of these are open, unlocked, left parked for days on end and people jump into them and just drive off and somebody will report them stolen a few days later. as far as the asian scam, i know we've done so much with that, so much outreach. one other thing that came to my attention, it was an idea brought from a very insightful asian reporter, that going out, reaching out to the community and finding people that are leaders in the community, so they can go out to their groups. that's what they'll be doing next month. i am working to train, so to speak, a number of people and i've got a number of volunteers who want to be trained and they'll take that information out to their congregations, to
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their community groups and speak to them and just pass the word on. because the more information we get out there, the fewer victims we hope have and find. we are getting a handle on this case. knock on wood, we haven't had a case in a while. this most recent one where we learned a woman had been scammed had actually been scammed earlier in july. and had a bag of her belongings under her bed and had to wait eight weeks before she could open it. we think we've identified some of the main players, we've seen a marked decrease in what's going on with these scams and hopefully we don't have any more victims in the near future. i hope i've been able to answer some of these answers. party buses are a problem. we're going to do everything we can to ensure that the broadway corridor is as safe as it can be.
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unfortunately it's a whole thing with the venues out there attracting a group of people. we have to be aware and i'll work with captain tom on what kind of is coming up in advance so we know what type of entertainment they'll be having because it attracts a different type of crowdment we'll put our resources there when they need to be there. ok, hopefully that answered some of your questions, thank you. >> commander, i just have one question and i'm sure you might have addressed it. given what commissioner chan mentioned about a number of stations that have a large population of chinese community members. i imagine the information that we're learning about the scam is shared with other areas where potential vick -- where potential victims could reside? >> it was mentioned earlier, we also working with the hong kong police department because they've been victim mized in hong kong also. we just spoke today about getting a video made through our resources in hong kong to have that video brought over here. we can use it also for our
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population, so everyone can get the message. and yes, we are throughout the entire city. >> great, thank you. >> no, my questions have been asked and answered. i will say this though, commissioners. i just want to say this is my first community meeting in this building, so i want to say kudos to the commissioner and whoever it is, particularly for the translation services. i remember a meeting we had here one time when we did not think about that and at the last moment we pulled out headsets everywhere. so we were prepared. i hope everyone appreciates that. i'm sure the community does. so nice job. >> thank you. >> well ladies and gentlemen, this wraps up our meeting. i want to thank everybody who helped prepare the meeting from the station, from the captain, the command staff and the members of the community that came for the record. and again this was very interesting. we will continue to address the broadway corridor, washington
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