>> the city of san francisco sfgtv meeting of the san francisco neighborhood services and safety commission occurring september 19, 2013, will begin shortly. >>

>> the city of san francisco sfgtv meeting of the san francisco neighborhood services and safety commission occurring september 19, 2013, will begin shortly.

>> thank you. >> welcome to the meeting of the board of supervisors, neighborhood services and safety committee. my name is david campos and we

are joined by norman yee and mar is in route. >> we would like to thank sfgtv for covering the meeting today. do we have announcements? >> please make sure that silence all cell phones and electronic devices completed speaker cards and copies of documents to be included in the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will be on the agenda unless otherwise stated. >> we have been joined by the deputy city attorney >> if you could call item one. >> item one is a resolution urging for the creation of a

comprehensive pie sickle theft prevention and recovery policy for the transportation agency to develop and quickly implement short and medium term strategies to greatly expand the bicycle parking in san francisco and the standardized best practice and implement a voluntary bicycle registration program. >> this is an item that is introduced by supervisor mar which is a leader on issues around bicycle theft and the theft prevention and i know that he will be here shortly, and it has been co-sponsored by supervisor breed and myself and my president chiu. >> unless there say comment by supervisor mar, the thing to do... here we are. supervisor mar, has joined us. but i do want to say that i thought that the prior discussion that we had about this issue was a useful discussion we got a lot of information because there are a

lot of bicycle thefts that are happening in san francisco and the complications that come of recovering a bike once it has been stolen from you. and the different ways in which maybe the city can institute a system that allows for a quicker recovery. and with that, i will turn it over to the sponsor of this item and again, i want to thank supervisor mar, his officer for their leadership on this important issue. >> supervisor mar? >> thank you. >> and chair campos, i know that a number of us have been working with the bicycle coalition and the officers within the police department on this issue. but this hearing today is really to show how much further we have moved towards finalizing an approach that systematic in san francisco that will help us to curve bicycle thefts. >> in san francisco we are

aggressively moving to increase the trips by bicycles quite a bit more than we are at this current moment. the goal, for our bicycle plan is to increase the mode share of bicycle trips, 20 percent of all trips by the year 2020, that is 20 percent by 2020. i think that this is an aggressive goal and this resolution will help us move it in that direction, much has been accomplished by the bicycle coalition and the police but a high hurtle for increasing buy rider ship is our ever present problem of bicycle thefts and we stated in the last hearing that over 4,000 bicycles which are worth 4.5 million dollars were stolen in the city last year. >> that is over 4,000 bikes stolen last year to the amount of 4.5 million or more. and that does not, even include stolen bike parts from derailers to other seats and wheels, for example, and so

this is three times this bicycle theft problem is three times higher than the rate of smart phone thefts in the city and so it is a problem that might be some what invisible to the general public and if you ride a bike and you have had multiple bikes stolen likevy our my aid peter as well and it hits you right in the pocket book and right between the eyes as well. and it will play a big role not only for the thefts but the bike parking and the issue, and to those that have had the bikes stolen. and the resolution accomplishes three major goals, the first, is we call upon the mta to increase on street bike parking from 3,000 to a number that can satisfy the 75,000 trips that are made each day and it is

great that we have patel from the mca today. and second the resolution establishes a voluntary bike regulation program to aid the police in returning recovered bikes. and utilizing funds that i and the colleagues have allocated in the budget. third the san francisco police department will be conducting out reach on bike theft to help them know how to protect themself from thefts and they have created great out reach materials and sf safety awareness for everyone and really tremendous resources that we have to really push up the amount of educational out reach that we need in our communities as well. and together, this resolution will help us to prevent bike thefts in our city, and in the event that it does occur, it will help san franciscans recover their property more

>> i would like to thank them for their leadership and former, a really a great advocate for bikes in the city, mike caswel who has relocated to la and with the sf police and sfsafe as well. and i would like to thank london breed, and president david chiu and committee chair, david campos for their work as well. i would like to call up deputy police chief loftus and officer matt freedman who have helped individuals recover their bikes as well. >> well, thank you very much for having me today. it is good to see everybody again. and i can talk to you about some of the things that we have been doing since the last time that we have met. if that is okay?

one of the things to combat bike theft is we have started a twitter account. and it is at sfpd bike theft and in doing that, i wanted to try to harass the power of social media and gather the bicycle community together in one umbrella to try not only to get the message out about locking techniques and bike theft safety, but in general i saw this grow into something where people were actually tweeting me pictures of bike theft in progress. and of a number of different things that we could use in turn to put cases on people and it has been really a community effort under this tweeter feed and i am really proud of it and it has grown tremendously and we have compliments from other departments all over the world including the people asking why can't the police department be doing what we are doing here, it is something that everybody can be proud of.

it is a community effort and in doing that, i decided with talking to our legal department, that in order to i guess provide accurate detailed information to the community about who is doing this is that i started to release the mug shots of known bike thieves and it has helped to identify the crimes in progress and again, swre been able to put cases on people where they are in the process of stealing a bike and identify the bike thieves much quicker and so the investigative team can take over and people have responded well to all of this and i am proud of the fact that we are doing something that i don't think that anywhere else in the country is doing this. so, the twitter feed, again has been a fantastic medium to might the bike theft and it has been successful and i can only see it growing in the future. we have done a lot of with the bike chop shops that have been

springing up and the people report these to me on a daily basis and i will in turn take the pictures that i get of them and send them out to the 60 station and then the units will take care of the chop shops. and it has been a great medium and tool. >> tweeter, the tweets from your office get retweeted by so many people, from the mug shots, or the photos to even just when a bike is recovered and i think that it is really, making it more proudly aware of all of the work that you have been doing and also, how innovative and enthusiastic that you are about this and it is important in the process to develop a system. >> there are a few things to tell you about. one is that we started the bike dating program. we don't talk about it too much for obvious reasons but i can tell you that it has been hugely successful and we have already managed to make several

arrests, and return many, many stolen cell phones and some other merchandise that have come up from specifically our bike dating program. and it has been widely successful and i am hoping to continue that program down the road into every single district in the city which i foresee that happening after this resolution. >> i know that when you recover a bike and identify the owner after a period of time, that you even personally, kind of greet people and let them know that my aid peter waterborne whose bike you helped to recover it is a good, direct example that you have a human approach to the people to recover their property, too. and so officer. >> thank you, i appreciate t and we have had actually and we have managed to go down to san jose, believe it or not and actually recover bicycles in san jose for citizens in san francisco and so we will travel and i think that the citizens of the city really appreciate

the kind of presence and response that we have given them. and i will say one other thing. this issue is not just i think, a police issue. it is a community issue and i think that it is a political issue as well. i have tried to reach out many times to the lanecollege president to try to talk to her about the flee market and about how the bikes are being sold there and these bikes, 95 percent of them are probably stolen. i think that a resolution from the board in stopping the sale of bikes at some of these other places where we know that stolen bikes are prevalent is something that maybe the board can get interested in doing. even working with greg's list to post the serial number, if it does not match up, i know that something is wrong here and the ownness on the buyer to make the decision if they want to buy a stolen bike. >> and this is a political issue and a community issue and

a policing issue and working together to solve this problem. >> thank you, i wanted to ask chief loftus if he could come up and i wanted to say thank you so much to officer freedman and also you chief for making this an important issue for the command staff and the police department. >> the police department is dedicated to the program, i think that we have the right people in place and it is doing a great job for us and he is out and going full speed ahead and we feel very good about the program and the partnerships and not only between the police department and sfsafe but also, with the bicycle coalition and there, and this will really have a big win for everybody in the city. >> thank you so much, deputy chief. >> i would like to introduce, right now, you know, morgan saint claire and you know that there is a new director of sf safe and mr.