council, and requirements to connect federally. >> i asked because of my background. i was curious because one thing that was helpful about the cable system is that you could do a check without reporting someone to immigration. i was curious about that. who analyzes the data? you should is the capabilities and the types of reports that we could pull. is their body that will pull the status of reports and doing an analysis on a regular basis? >> each department analyzes their data. the source of the data has to verify the data. they also have to be able to give permission for other departments to use that data. the analysis belongs at the departmental level. what we do is that once the

police department says okay, share the aggregate data, that is when we connect the two so the system can show the reports of the department of women. we don't own the data. the data resides with the department that originated it. >> thank you. >> we appreciate your efforts putting that together so that groups can see trends and recognize issues that we able to deal with. our next line item is a report of the san francisco police department regarding language access. and some of the concerns that were expressed by the assistant district attorney jean roland about issues regarding interpretation. we have ms. sandra marion, from

occ, to talk about language access. ms. marion? >> good evening. commissioners, director - members of the public and command staff and police officers. i'm excited to be here and have the opportunity to talk about the work that many organizations, departments and commissions in collaboration with the police department on language access. i work for the office of citizen complaints, in agency that provides civilian oversight of the police department. i will start our presentation giving a little history and identify some of the projects working on. there are other members of the group here, cheaf beal, officer chang, language liaison,

-- a member of the working group. he will talk some of the challenges that lap, domestic violence victims face and lastly beverly -- will make concluding remarks. she is also another vital member of our organization or our working group. a little bit of the history. six years ago a number of representatives from 22 organizations can together to work with the police department to write language access policy. we came together with the desire to improve services for the domestic violence victims and witnesses and family situations. most certainly those concerns and specific cases were at the forefront of putting together this language access policy.

within two years,the police commission adopted the language access protocol, department general order 5.20. it is one of the best in the country because it is comprehensive and it gives clear guidance. it requires a san francisco police department officers to provide language access or language services to limited english proficient individuals that they encounter in their law enforcement capability, and requires services if a lap person requires assistance. in san francisco on like many police departments there's over 150 bilingual officers and that is remarkable. if you look across the nation, san francisco is at the

forefront at having such a source of bilingual officers. the department general order prohibits officers from relying on children, bystanders, family members to be interpreters unless there are exigent circumstances. once that is resolved, the police needs to have a bilingual officer or an interpreter from line with from language services language services to continue. those in the community, trying to resolve situations of

language access, this language liaison officer appointed through this general order. our work wasn't done when it was implemented in 2007. part of what we wanted to do was put together training, and a brochure for the public so they would know what their rights are and responsibilities. we put together a brochure, translated it into five different languages. it is the way in which individuals can learn about and exert their right to language access.

we continue to do work. there are people who were here, i want to give credit to commissioner chan, the district attorney office was involved, the department of the status on women, you were there at the beginning. and then the police department. there was a willingness in the leadership to move forward, to implement this department general order and to continue with the dialogue on how to best implement land with services that is what recently in the last year, a subset of this language access coalition has come together. we are working on a variety of projects. one of the first was to have another kind of department bulletin for officers who touch upon the common

indicators, signs, in a more complicated situation where the person understands some english but because of the complexity of interaction, the rights involved in the need of accuracy, an interpreter is required. would put together good indicators for police officers. the other thing that we worked on, a work in progress, roll-call training scenario based. that is an ongoing project. we have been working with the department, scripting it out, we hope that it will be rolled out of the beginning of next year. under the project we are working on to enhance services, we devised a multilingual card

so the police service aids, civilians, people that victims might think are officer, -- this is an important mechanism so that domestic violence victims coming to the station to file reports, there is immediate communication so that things can get moving in a rapid manner. on the technology side we are grappling with how to enhance dispatch. we are working closely with lisa hoffman to have a system that identifies the language skills of bilingual officers

immediately and in real-time so that they can be more readily dispatched to the scene and it gives equally important information which is to know if there aren't bilingual officers, waiting on the scene, and can move onto the next level, the language line system. we are working on how do we get officers who want to be bilingual, who want to be certified as bilingual officers, how do they more rapidly get the certification process in place? officers can be certified in mandarin, cantonese, spanish, russian. we are hoping and working with other divisions within the city to get the process moving more quickly. on the street patrol officers, they're using their own cell phones to call language line.

on a real level of equipment, officers need a better way to ask his language line. we are working with the department and think outside of the box. bilingual officers use digital recorders because of department requires them to tape interviews with victims, witnesses and suspects. the department was able to provide 50 digital recorders. we need more. let me turn this over to deputy chief beal, a vital member of our team. >> i don't know if i am a vital member of the group. i was assigned to represent the chief on this group. is and as i walked in the door that day and saw the members

of the group i knew that i was in trouble. i knew the group was going to be extremely motivated, extremely directed, i immediately began getting homework assignments from these women. it's a great cause. i was glad to help. upon request i reissued department goals to have officers apply for certification for language skills. we have 400 officers that have line with language skills and only half of certified. i have spoken with director -- of hr and she assures me that

in the first quarter of 2013, a test will be administered and we will get the numbers that we want. i hope this will be continuing thing with can do a regular basis. also we identified - i was told about issues that we have at psas, and at stations where they did not know how to use a landline. i contacted our academy, captain -- was very receptive. would put together a roll call immediately for all psas. we have a curriculum set up for jan. 2013, a 20-hr. biannual training for all psas. also, ms. marion told me of an idea she had, assisting our

dispatchers in identifying what skills the officers have that are working on the street at a particular time, either language skills or crisis prevention training, whatever that may be so they can see at a glance what kind of officers they can dispatch to any type of situation. director griffin assured me that in january of 2013 we will have the ability to have all dispatchers to see what skills we have out there who ho they should send to assist our first responders. on that, being the newest member i would like to introduce our language access liaison officer, officer chan,

who will give you numbers that he has compiled, he has been with a group a lot longer. >> good evening. my name is eric chan, i've been in this position approximately 3 months. they took away a lot of my thunder because a lot of what they say was what i was going to go over. we are making a lot of headway in the short time that i have been involved. that is a good thing. it is important to know that from what i have seen our department does really reflect our community. we have approximately 400 officers that speak some type of foreign-language. of that 400 or so, most of them, we have 173 that speak spanish, 81 are certified; 91 cantonese speakers, 60 certified; 20 mandarin, 9

certified, 7 russian, 6 certified, 39 tagalog and 5 vietnamese. there is no lag time to getting information on any type of crime occurring. we do use landline with an interpreter is not available, that is the card. most of the language services, including interpretation, we had 1800 calls that required interpretation of language services, most of that was spanis, with about 1060, second

was cantonese, with about 400 calls. sometimes, you may be underreported, it can be a lot higher if not put into the database. as required by the city ordinances, we completed with the lao city ordinances, with city immigration affairs, that was completed on the chief desk for review to be signed. we are making good headway. that is more to be done and i look forward to working with the commission and do more, thank you. >> i understand that there is a line item in the mayor's budget for 500,000 for language

access, can you tell me how that was utilized? >> i can bring you a breakdown. most of it was for the pay an officer uses for bilingual pay, paid $30 some odd dollars per pay period, that total comes up to if i'm not mistaken around $30,000 for just pay. and then translation services, language line, that is the bulk of it. telephonic services, around $32,000. and the budget for the officers, 258,000. >> than that is for --

>> bilingual pay. >> i thought you said 30,000. >> 30,000 for telephonic translation services. >> and then you have any kind of auditing or benchmark with the program to see how things are progressing, if improvements need to be made or things are going right? >> what was the question again? >> do you have particular benchmarks or goals or auditing processes to see have language access program is working? >> regarding lap, limited language proficiency, less than 2% of total calls that they receive regarding limited english proficiency. that is a benchmark, when occ

receives a complaint, the victim cannot get across to the police what happened because of the limits barrier. that is a benchmark. did i answer that? >> i have to say that back in 1998 i work with supervisor -- drafting the equal access to services ordinance and what was surprising to me was animal control department had the most language access. they monitor potential violence in the home because of there's an abused animal there is likely to be abuse in the family. >> in oakland, san jose, what they indicated to me was well, they don't have a formal policy

such as what we have. that many feel good but they are scrambling around trying to figure it out. some of the questions i posted, hopefully that will spark interest in developing an lao project. >> i want to be a strong advocate for a cross agency training; i had the benefit, dr. rossi put this together -- training on domestic violence, cantonese and spanish. officer kathy wong was in my class along social service workers, 911 tech people. the cross training of people, cross disciplinary if possible. >> one of my goals is a

streamlined the process; if we have a pool of authors that want to take the test and be certified, and increase the certification not only in chinese, spanish, russian but perhaps vietnamese, maybe we can get a test going in more regular basis to make it easier for the officers to take tests and be certified. >> commissioner turman. >> commissioner turman: perhaps you can give us sort of a quick description of how the certification process works for anyone who might be interested. >> the certification process is handled by the department of human services. they did the testing. once the announcement goes out, officers have a deadline. they can apply and personnel

submits a list of officers to the department of human resources. they also test for the civilian side in other departments. what they're trying to do with what you cuts is say we are going to test on a certain date we have to wait for more people rather than testing four people now and two later. that slows the process down. as deputy chief beal says, we have 14 in line to take the test, in spanish, and 14 in chinese, 1 in russian. that helps. but waiting on the street waiting for an interpreter, it is great to have someone who is coming.

if we can stream that it's a great call. i am not sure how the civilian part is; for officers it is scenario-based. >> commissioner chan. >> commissioner chan: i am reminded of what assistant district attorney jean rolan said, the importance of maintaining trust. from the moment an officer and an inspector encounters the victim. i think the transformation that the department has had, president chu, i want to commend you for your work that started in 1998, none of this happened by accident.

the moment that someone who does not speak english - it is important for us to keep the safety net going for victims in the city. i want to thank everyone for their leadership to get to this point in my question is, we talked about this a few weeks ago before the police commission. i think you are doing a great outreach to the community. obviously part of my concern that talk about over the last few weeks is in light of recent events in the city. the concern is that women who don't speak english or are living in poverty will have concerns about reaching out of the police department. we want to reassure and reach out. can you talk about your efforts to reach out to communities through various newspapers in different languages and how the department is getting the message out that we do have access to other languages and can serve diverse populations?

>> anytime there is a community meeting, and it is based on a certain ethnicity group, we try to have interpretation service provided. we will post those signs in that language, so if it is held in chinatown or wherever, for that outreach. it is important when the victim makes the police report; it helps if a native speaker is there, eases some of the angst the victim may have when reporting a crime. in terms of outreaching and publications, i don't know everything that we have this is internally where we are trying to streamline and have more officers certified.

>> i know you have been on the job three months, it's wonderful progress. >> i want to add that we are in the process of creating a card that we can all of the stations have, all psas, where the victim comes in, the card explains the process. the card will be printed in five different languages. they can pick the language they speak; point to it, then we know what they need. the officer will get them the service. i want to say that the chief and i especially the chief, he is out there all the time, i

work with public affairs and recently we did an interview on the chinese speaking channel on the chinese talkshow. two days ago, i saw the chief being interviewed on a korean show; he is always trying to reach out to all of the communities that we are approachable, we are here to help, we are trying to provide a service to anyone who needs it. all of us are here to help anyone in need. >> i was also going to recommend that perhaps you also engage -- america media, and san francisco-based pacific news service. you can put something in english and each media outlet reports on their language with no copyright violations.

>> great idea. i want to get that information from you after the meeting. >> commissioner kingsley? >> thank you for your report. >> commissioner kingsley: my questions may be a little premature. do we have any information, percentages? >> approximately 1800 clients accessed either language line or an interpretation service from either