and there's going to be -- there will need to be for this project a major filling of that whole sidewalk area and increasing the grade to 20%, i believe, for that whole length of sidewalk. so, it's really more than just the curb itself that we're talking about. and it is -- it does slope both ways there and i hope that we are careful in how we examine the hydrology. that's all i have. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. good afternoon. my name is joan varney, and i along with bob own the property at 1569 hampshire street, adjacent to the proposed development at 54 through 62 peralta. i am here today to urge the committee to continue this item in light of the new information

from william sandavere professional manager of clear water [speaker not understood] and study related to the proposed street encroachment at 54 peralta. we as neighbors need the assurance that this development is not going to have a negative effect on the flow of rainwater that often races down the steep roadway in the winter rain. the analysis presented by the developers has been -- has been termed inadequate by mr. vandavere as a representative of clear water hydrology and we feel it would be prudent for them to follow the amended guidelines set by him to try and determine a plan that would do the least harm before moving forward on this project. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. my name is carl [speaker not understood]. i live at 8 peralta, same block. i'd like to read a short thing here. i believe no one should have a

right to make any park, that any park of the already steep sidewalk steeper. some of our residents would not be able to utilize an even steeper sidewalk. within this one block in question on our side of the street, there is an elderly man who requires a wheelchair, one woman past 80 who uses a walker, another woman past 80, a man in his late 70s who has need he knee replacements and uses a cane. others in their 70s. these residents could not tolerate any part of the sidewalk made steeper. this is to notify the committee that if this construction is granted without disability issues addressed, you can rest assured there might be lawsuits with requests for punitive damages. * please contact public works department disability access coordinator kevin jensen at 30 van ness avenue. i tried to get in touch with

him, but i'm not computer savvy and nobody answers their phone, you know. so, anyway, i would appreciate it if this would be looked into from a disability point of view. >> thank you. thank you. >> are there any other members of the public who would like to comment? my name is lou randal. i live at the corner of peralta and [speaker not understood]. as you go through, there must be some traffic controls put in before construction starts. we've had one car destroyed from people speeding up holiday without a stop sign and making that right turn in front of my house. every one of the trucks that go in and out of there have had to make a u-turn in front of my house to get there and there's no stop signs from holliday or on peralta. and traffic kohl has to be part of your consideration in doing this. * control

i went through dpw to try to get speed bumps put on peralta. they said they need a study [speaker not understood]. but they denied it. they said it couldn't be done. [speaker not understood]. one car totally destroyed by people speeding. [speaker not understood] thank you. >> thank you very much. are there any other members of the public who wish to comment today on item number 4? seeing none, public comment is closed. mr. fong, would you like to respond to some of the comments we've heard? >> supervisors, john kwong for department of public works again. i'd like to thank the neighbors and citizens for providing that video. the video actually provided more clarity i think to the members of the board in this case. if you notice, they're showing the rainwater is actually

running down along the retaining wall where the gutter line is and it continues to run down. and at the very end when they were showing upstream, there was a driveway cut immediately above it. so, if there was rainwater that was jumping and it would jump theoretically as they suggested, jumping over the sidewalk, jumping over the curb onto the sidewalk, it would have happened previously. the picture doesn't show that. the video didn't show that. also they showed the sidewalk that's running down behind the retaining wall. while it was wet, there was no runoff. there was no rainwater that was noticeable running in a stream like a [speaker not understood] in this case. so, there's nothing that was happening that we can demonstrate that can be clearly demonstrated even on the rainstorm that they're suggesting. finally, there was a previous video that showed rainwater running along the yard at the front yard area further down on a previous video on the last presentation that we provided. well, one thing we recognize. with the construction of the

building as proposed, the footprint of the building, all that rainwater that would normally run down the hill as rain would be capture and had brought into the rainwater leader that would be discharged into the sewer line. that would actually reduce the amount of runoff that would run down the street. there was a suggestion also by an applicant, by one of the citizens here, that disability access was not considered. the department did as part of the evaluation the design to the disability access coordinator who evaluated the existing condition and the modified condition and determined that in this case it was an improvement over the existing condition and satisfied all the requirements as identified under book title 24 in a-d-a. >> can you address the issue of does it change -- in term of the change of the grade in the sidewalk? one of the public commenters mentioned that. >> yes, supervisor. it did change the grade, and actually in one instance it improved it. previously the property uphill

of this site reconfigured a silo to show a 35% slope through the sidewalk area. this design reduced that 35% slope to approximately 16%, which improved the configuration of it and also made it a little less steep specifically. so, there were some improvements made to improve the walk ability of the sidewalk. >> thank you. anything else? * >> those are all the comments. the suggestion to continue the evaluation, we do not believe is appropriate only because in this case the reviewing engineer stating that there were concerns, but from a factual perspective stating that [speaker not understood] this satisfied the requirements. the concern was mostly over a quick software analysis, not

necessarily detail of the design specifically. so, we believe the design was appropriate. its was evaluated correctly, and we don't see a reason to continue it even further as requested by some of the citizens who don't want this to move forward. >> thank you. colleagues, any questions? >> if i could ask one question. the rainstorm thats depicted looked like a typical rainstorm. if we had a significant event, 20, 50 year rainstorm event, would that change your analysis? >> no. actually in this case, the analysis that was done was for the hundred-year storm, which is for every rainstorm is a 1% chance of happening, which is very rare in this case. and given the height of the curb, which is between 4 to 6 inches, given how steep that street is, as you can see how quickly the water is running down the street and entering the catch basin, it would actually be -- the height of the water that would go down on a major rainstorm would also be very low in this case.

because you're in essence, the gravity is going to pull it down the street instead of having overflow and jump onto the sidewalk. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. >> colleagues, any other questions? president chiu, at least nominal -- >> colleagues, obviously there have been some questions raised by the neighborhood, but we have heard from our department of public works their position to the contrary. big suggest that we move this item forward but without recommendation given the issues that have arisen. i know the district supervisor will likely be weighing in on this issue at the full board. but given how long this issue has been out there, in order for us to make a decision my suggestion is we move this forward without, again, the necessarily the support, but moving it through the process so that we can have a final vote on this at the full board. so, that would be my motion. >> thank you. further comment? >> i was going to say the same. i'm happy to second that motion to move it forward with no recommendation and also give our district supervisor an

opportunity to weigh in as well. i know [speaker not understood] is watching this hearing. regarding the public comment about traffic cowving work that can be done on peralta, i'm sure they have taken that into account. thank you. >> i do agree that it's appropriate to put this forward with no recommendation because i think it is important for the district supervisor who is most familiar with all the surrounding circumstances to weigh in at the full board. last time this was at the full board, supervisor campos did send it back to committee, and i think we vote -- the board unanimously supported that request. given the holiday next week, we have two weeks between now and the february 25th board meeting. so, ample time for discussion. so, colleagues, if there is no further discussion, can we take that motion without objection? that will be the order. is there any more business before the committee, mr. clerk? >> this completes the agenda for today. >> thank you.

we are adjourned. [adjourned]

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>> good morning and welcome to the thursday, february 7th, 2013 meeting of the board of supervisors city operations and neighborhood services committee. we have been joined by supervisor yee, eric mar is in route. we also have been joined by supervisor scott weiner, we want to thank the clerk of the committee derek evans and we want to thank the following members of the stgtv staff who are covering the meeting today. jessy larson and melokian and we also want to welcome the member of the public that are here and who are watching.

>> make sure to silence all cell phones and device and complete the speaker cards and copies of any documents that are included to part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items today will appear on the february 29th agenda unless others stated. >> thank you and if you could call item number two, please? >> item number two is a hearing, calling on city agencies including the police department and district attorney's office to report about the increases in robberis on city streets and public transit. >> this is an item that has been introduced by supervisor weiner with my co-sponsor ship. >> thank you very much, there chairman and thank you for your support on this item. today, we are going to hold a hearing on robbery trends in the city. and specifically robbery trends around smart phones and tablets and electronic devices where we

have seen a sharp and alarming frequency of those robberies sometimes turning violent. this is an issue really around the city, it seems like everywhere that i go, every community meeting that i attend, whether it is in my district or anywhere else. this is what people are talking about. and they are talking about it because it seems like almost anyone that you talk to in san francisco, these days, they, they either they have experienced something like this where a smart phone or tablet where they were robbed, or they know everyone who is experienced it or they know someone who knows someone. this is something that is impacting a lot of people, either directly or in directly and there is a high level of concern understandable related to these violent crimes. so, as i noted, these criminals are especially targeting people

with mobile devices, more and more people are carrying smart phones, because i think that we all know that recent surveys show that 45 to 50 percent of adults own the smart phones nationwide, which is i am sure much higher here in san francisco, these devices costs hundreds of dollars and it is an ipad and it may cost 700 or 800 dollars making them valuable and visable targets for thieves. on muni, buses and light rail, the people with iphones and tablets are targeted at well. the thieves will wait until the doors are about to close on a bus or light rail and then grab the devices and run out of the door making it hard to pursue them. >> the thefts of these smart phones and tablets have become such a common practice in our city and cities across the country, that it has learned a

name as recently reported in the new york times called apple picking. one study by the fcc 30 to 40 percent of robberies in several major cities involve cell phones, last year the sfpd reported that more than half of the 4,000 robberies between january and august in san francisco involved smart phones or tablets. new york city reported that more than 40 percent of all robberies involved cell phones, and los angeles, reported that 25 percent of all robberies involved cell phones. these robberies sometimes turn violent, whether or not the victim fights back. we have seen some very alarming instances, for example, in my district and the castro and in college hill, where people were attacked in addition to having their phones robbed. and these robberies don't just take place in central locations where people people congregate. recently, for example there was a rash of armed robberies of

smart phones in corbit street in my district and a quiet residential area in broad daylight in the middle of the day. so people are understandable alarmed. we need to address this critical public safety issue by employing strategies and catching the criminals who are perpetrating these crimes and educating the public on how we can all, protect ourselves understanding that the police cannot be everywhere at the same time. >> we will have several speakers that will provide us with information about the state of the world in this particular area and what we are doing to address the problem. we have representatives from the police department, district attorney office, and from the mta. we did, anticipate that the ctia, wireless association would be able to attend unfortunately at the last minute there was an aunavoidable conflict and not

able to be here today. i do know that both the police department and the da's office continued to work very closely with wireless carriers to coordinate and to see what we can do to make these targets or to make these phones and these tablets less appealing targets and i know that there has been a lot of talk about bricking, and finding ways for the phones to actually just be killed remotely. so that they don't have any value. i am sure that we will hear about that today. so colleagues, if there is no introduction comments, mr. chairman? >> thank you, supervisor weiner. i want to add a couple of points and i want to thank you for introducing this item and this is something that is happening not only in certain neighborhoods but it is actually happening city-wide and as you know, we had a community meeting in vernal heights a few days ago that was

attended by supervisor weiner and avalos and myself and we had over 200 people who had been concerned. i think that it is really important to make sure that law enforcement in the city are doing everything that we need to but that the public also becomes more aware. i think that it was rod coming off of muni and trying to get an iphone taken from me. we as individuals can do to protect ourselves that are safer in terms of being alert of our surroundings and thank you for this and make sure that more people throughout the city

are aware of what is happening. >> i know that there are a lot of businesses that have been targeted for robberies from banks to jewelry stores and most recently about two weeks ago, clement pharmacy in the outer as well. and so we are interested in the different strategies being used to reduce the number of robberies in our city, especially in our city as district. >> thank you. >> so now we will hear from the san francisco police department and commander senes is here? >> good morning, community members and the members of the community. my name is hector, senes and i am the director of the investigations in the san francisco police department. i prepared this to address the crime in general and including

robbery and so i will just go this and point out our strategies to address specifically robbery and cell phone robberies in the city. we did notice that year to date statistics for 2013, 2012, there is no change in homicides as the committee did note. some of the strategies that we did use to combat the cell phone robberies and the zone deployments where we utilize uni formed and plain clothes to conduct them. the foot beats and etc.. with a series and a trend, we will meetly contact these teams and deploy them to the areas to

sat rate these areas where we notice an uptick in robberies. we conduct operations with known offenders, so if we know individuals that are on probation or parole, we will target for continued enforcement to see if they are responsible for some of the ongoing robbery and to prevent any future robberies. again, we do saturation patrols in the neighborhood canvases and conduct under cover surveillances and recently a series of robberies on portland and we saturated that with uniform and under cover officers and we will do directed enforcements with buy bus programs and reverse and even decoy and robbery decoy operations and i can tell you in some of the operations my, officers have come back to me and tell me that they will sit there with specifically their cell phones and some of the more popular devices and see if they will be targeted but the reports that i get back is that

there are so many people out there with the cell phone devices in their hands playing games or listening to music that it is going to be very hard for them to be specifically targeted for us to we do the tracking as well with the newer apps on the cell phone device and most recently, the court land series, we were able to obtain the account information from the victims and using the phone finder app and we are able to track that phone and apprehend the suspects in that case. one of the projects that we are implementing is to have each station have computers that can access the icloud, or google or any other platform so that if a

victim has any of these applications we can access this ask try to ap prehend the suspects. >> again, we will use on-line resources to try to track some of the stolen phones, we will also do a traditional investigation strategies such as finger prints and videos and photos. >> we have been able to identify with the surveillance videos from the pharmacy robberies and some of another robberies from the surveillance cameras outside of the businesses and nta will speak to how they utilized their muni surveillance video as well. >> we have investigative conferences every day. to identify crime trends and to identify the series and to identify who is the likely

suspects are and what districts they may be or in ating from or targeting. how do we or what do we do to prevent these from occurring. how do we educate the community or the officers? we issue press releases. we announce and tell them the kind of performances such as having your device in your happened and be aware of who is around you and who may be following you. there are some of the other under cover officers reports that they will see the individuals who are, looking for people, to rob. they will follow them and see them with their device and they will begin to follow the suspect and see if they are going to attempt to commit a robbery and many times, they say as well, they see so