aids also. and an individual breakdown for the 238 entry level class. of note because we take our responsibility serious, this slide references ain't natural policy that prohibits the release of information. it also notes the appropriate info to provide to the candidate who is in process. just a necessary element to have some checks and balances on what we do. >> do we have any plans for a lateral class during this fiscal year? >> yes, commissioner. we would like to have one either at the end of this particular calendar year or the beginning of the next calendar year. as a matter of fact, the chief spoke to me about that a few weeks ago. we

are actually starting that process now. one other document that i will make mention of is our background investigation -- excuse me, the san francisco police department bulletin 13-094 regarding member inquiries. this is important because we had a number of members in inquiring about the members in process. this evaluation is to ensure the process is done without favor. basically it prohibits members from making background information on people's behalves.

>> our department is current. this will not prevent the hiring of the next class. and for comparison, we also included the city demographics for the city of san francisco. >> commissioners, can i entertain any questions? >> commissioner kingsley first. >> thank you, captain, and sergeant and lieutenant. i appreciate your work on putting this together. my main question you addressed in your last two slides with the comparison of the demographics to the breakdown of the police officers to the community at large which just came in today. so i appreciate the fact that

it came with the earlier packet. substance abuse is checked in the background. can you tell us a little bit more about that because i know you have a wide range of ages probably with the laterals and the new recruits. what kinds of things are you looking for? >> well, if a person has had a past issue, the time and distance is something that we evaluate. how much time has gone by, how much distance has gone by without another episodes. we have to be talking about something relatively small. does the person have a history of behavior, is there a history of alcohol related incidents. one incident may not

reveal a pattern of behavior. people can negotiate those. we are not a perfect society but we hope to have behavior that's indicated since then that doesn't show any type of pattern. we have candidates who have had a particular issue in the past with alcohol and no longer drink. so those are things that we would look for going forward in regards to that. the psychological evaluation also goes deeper into that. i can't comment on that because that's privileged information that they maintain. but they make a recommendation based on their findings to us on a pass or fail for each candidate. >> drugs has increased over the last decades in our society.

some of you have gray hairs and may have been around the department for a while. do you see any difference in recruits in the backgrounds and prior drug use? >> there are some applicants who have, it's self disclosure process. some candidates who do make self disclosure is no longer involved in the process depending on the drugs that were used. there are standards. >> there are standards that are not hard and fast. >> we have criteria and we work with so all candidates are treated equally. >> it's not subjective, their objective threshold standards? okay. good. the triage session that's an interesting component to this. the hair sample for

psycho medics? >> these are basically screenings at each stage. a person using drugs currently that test positive for drugs, there is unfortunately has been and those people are removed from the hiring process. these are basically tools that we utilize. >> the polygraph, i see that's a post conditional offer exam. what is that used, what kind of questions come up with that? >> they reveal the information that you submit on your personal history questionnaire and statements. things about employment, things about drug use, things about theft. different types of integrity questions. >> a lot of that is followed

up. >> to determine if they have come up with something otherwise and we need to confirm the information provided was truthful. >> okay. thank you very much. i appreciate your information. >> commissioner loftus? >> thank you so much for your presentation. i know i was one of those particularly interested in this issue because recognizing we are going to be hiring over 700 officers in the next 5 years, is that right? it feels like a tremendous opportunity when you hear those harvard business studies when they say if you want to train new people, fire half. we have an incredible turnover in the department which means an opportunity to do things better and one of those things is to diversify the department. i don't know if

that's a goal of the chief and i just wanted to say that as a prosecutor, one of the things that i tried to do and found was difficult that it can be difficult for communities that have been disenfranchised traditionally with law enforcement, i found that as a prosecutor i would go to law schools and trying to get people to be prosecutors and people would say, i want to be a public defender and defend people, i would say you have the tremendous opportunity to do justice and the right thing. so my question is, i am getting to a question. my colleagues are a little fatigued. to what extent do we get the recruiting effort to people that go

traditionally or not going online to see themselves as an officer. >> probably our biggest recruiting effort is taken place in san francisco schools. i personally go to schools now that school is back in session at least once a month. oftentimes twice a month to talk to kids about going to class and staying in school and graduating from high school and we bring firefighters and munis and everybody that got a diploma to at least get through high school and if they are job ready and college ready at that point in time, all the dangerous numbers especially for our at risk kids come without a high school diploma. i actually say very seriously this doesn't mean that you can't go to college, but a hundred percent of the people that graduate from college went to high school first and got

their ged. we've gotten some recruits this way. one of the problems is to be recruiting year-round and to tell people you can't sign up. when we get this online testing thing and we go to the schools, we try to get this em to go to our cadet program. we have kids that have gone to our psa program. we've spoken to people thu -- through our foundation to try to bring back money to get the paid cadet program. a lot of former rank police officers participated in. these are all good things to hold kids interest to keep them out of trouble and get them in the police department later on. i do believe our best resource for recruiting people is out of our own schools in san francisco because they reflect the city that we live in and i

still believe that often is the case the best san francisco police officers are the city san franciscoans. >> it appears it's off balance. >> the filipino is ethnicity where asian is a race. >> okay. are we doing something -- >> if i may, the city census data that is provided does not reflect the department of human resources ethnic breakdowns that they use. so the city census information use other categories that are inclusive of other ethnic backgrounds.

the numbers are a little skewed. there was nothing i can pull for direct comparison. >> sure, i understand. thank you. my apologies, commissioner. >> i completely understand. when is that going to be online? >> we are hoping for november. >> our deal was you had to be ready to give a test the week after christmas and for december and/or you have to substitute and regardless people should be able to apply as they have been hoping to one way or the other. >> great, i think one way they want to reflect san francisco in the many ways, there are some communities that are very well represented. we take it upon ourselves to actively

recruit and not just make that the department's problems. i recruit at meetings. i'm going to recruit someone success fully. that's my goal. the section question, it strikes me that background checks is where folks can get knocked out of this process that didn't take this narrow path. i have been always a rule follower but my husband, not so much. when i have kids i have parents that follows the rules and a parent that explains how to get around things. there is benefit m having folks who took a different path to righteousness, to law abiding, is there anything that prevent people from entering into the academy regardless of

demographic status but as a source of life experience to being an officer. >> as far as life experience, we hire all age groups. >> for people that break the rules? >> for people that break the rules there are standards that we hire. we are audited by post. >> the captain used time and distance. some of the people that have applied and myself, the captain has come down and not telling me that i failed in my recruiting effort, i feel this person is a great person, but we'll have a discussion so the decisions then maybe a little time and distance. the conversation is that you just need to be as you are now, but you know what we are talking about and again for reasons we can't discuss, you need to put

some time and distance and demonstrate on some of those smaller woopses and you stay clear of them for a year or two and reply and come back. it's a question too. we look at it as a vocation as certainly all the lawyers do what you do. if it's really meant to be, it's worth waiting for and it's worth staying clear of whatever the stuff was for a couple of years. we do try and put them into something to give them that continuous job history so they don't fall back on. if you can just demonstrate that you are that person for a couple of years, we can usually get around some of the gray areas. >> commissioner dejesus?

>> i just want some nuts and bolts. when people ask me how do you find out about it? i'm hearing the test is going to be after thanksgiving? >> the question will be that there will be a test the last week, an application period the last week in november, first week in december. worst case scenario. >> the application period is open before the test. that's the application process. >> it will be that, the worst case scenario or by november you will be able to take a test online on going. >> so we'll tell people they can go to your website by november. >> yes, the sf gov website. i

imagine if we go to continue use online testing, we'll do a significant press announcement that that's the case. >> all right. thank you. that's all i have. >> commissioner chan? >> thank you for your presentation, i appreciate it. so looks like a lot of questions were covered with the questions that i was curious about too. what was the access for the language ability, i noticed there are more. it's exciting that there is some classes with significant spanish language capability which i think is great too. i wanted to ask is it self identifying language or is there testing? >> yes, it is self identifying for the languages. however, for the languages that the city pays attention to there is testing, cantonese, russian and spanish. >> it's not part of the hiring process, right?

>> it's not part of the hiring process. if they participate that's their choice and they can do that after becoming officers. >> the language ability, is that oral and also written? >> i believe it's oral and i believe that's what's tested. i can't speak to the written. >> just a thing i have noticed around town billboards encouraging people to apply in richmond and geary, i'm wondering if there are lots of billboards around and seems like that's one of the strategies and if the commission can do more to recruit? >> i think the billboards you are talking about, the poa billboards have paid for some billboards where they are putting up certain officers, officer that saved the lady from the burning building. he's on the billboard and they did a campaign iechl -- i think it

the p oa that does that. to me it's like teaing it up and put the ball away. we have an interest card and they take the test. >> thank you. in the interest card is that online? >> there is a physical interest card that you can fill out or i believe you can do it online. >> where is the physical interest card located? >> department of human resources. they administer the exam. >> and then i noticed the same thing about the officers. there is probably a challenge for everybody to ensure the female officers is as high as possible. i think that's an area for all departments can work on. >> we have a really good representation of female candidates in this class and some real quality female

candidates remain on the list for picking up in future classes. >> in graduation i went to i saw female graduates that won big awards for that class. >> if i may address that further, commissioner, we are not provided any demographics from human resources. it's a blind process. as getting into this new list, there has been a significant increase in female applicants, upwards of 80 percent more. it's significant. we knew that was one of our weaker areas if you will and there was a focus on our recruiting effort. african american was low, they improved as well, not at the significance of the female applicants but we are seeing representation in both. it's still early. there is an improvement shown. >> thank you. that's helpful.

>> commissioner sherman. >> thank you for the representation. it's great that you have female officers because i'm noticing 50 percent more of your psa are women than men. and that seems odd to me. what's the -- as i heard this is sort of a farm club for the psa to be a farm club for the actual police officers job. so are we having an issue with translating women from the psa ranks to the officer ranks? >> i can only speak to the fact, we have 40 applicants to get the 15 that we hired to give you an idea of the numbers we ran into. there is an order for each candidate. should a

person be removed from the process we move on to the next candidate. that was the breakdown of who successfully negotiated the background processing was hired. >> i was speaking the candidates in this group of psa's particularly that went from wanting to be a psa, i actually suggested they take that route. the women got the job they applied for and i spoke to them on the day they briefed and asked why they were aiming g low and they should consider being police officers and so we'll see how they turn out. >> we did hire two women in the psa academy. >> thank you. also in terms of your demographic information, are we soliciting and lgbt, you can identify those categories as well. we have an active peg

group and we have a city and a culture that is very tied to that community. what is the issue with it? why don't i see that in here? >> we don't track that information. >> why don't we track that information? >> some of the department recruits feel that anything they ask is compulsory and they don't want to lie. so we believe the discretion in their recruit process fearing there could be some reprisal for asking that it's up to them. >> a simple explanation is that we ask you this to identify these issues just for our tracking purposes to find out and to get a sense of the people in the different demographics. that wouldn't work in this situationcious , is that what you are saying?

>> it's hard to explain the dynamic in a para military organization where people come in and it foreign to them. >> what about an active recruiting process. i see reports that don't seem to have this information? >> for people that are open it's not a problem at all. >> i'm not saying it's a problem, chief. i say don't have a sense of it. >> if you would like, the day they get to the station, at that point in time it's usually no problem. so we can retro, in retrospect we can tell you without putting anyone on the spot. the amount of pressure that these folks put upon themselves, they want this job so bad they so have a picture of what it's like to be in law enforcement that may or may not

be realistic. some of them are not as fit as others, some of them haven't been in school for a while. so we really don't want to give them one more thing to think about. but once they are clear of the gates -- >> for what you say for these purposes but asking an openly gay black man, i don't think it's any harder to identify myself as black other than gay. i understand your position. you are right, i have never been and never will be a member of the para military organization. so i have to accept your word on that. but i don't think identifying yourself as lgbt is a stigma. it's also a status

and a sense of being that many maybe proud of. i don't think there would be anything wrong with asking. i think perhaps we should explore how best to gather this information. i think it would be a comfort to the community and the officers ranks to know this position. >> i couldn't agree with you more. but what often happens, it only takes one believes that police are a certain way and actually the members of our department that is right lgbt find out are pretty cool. but in the process, there could be one that can make it a problem. i don't want it to be a problem for that person. >> he's an entertainment lawyer. can we ask that question?

>> you can ask that question on a volunteer basis. employers do it all the time for demographic information. >> may i jump in too on that topic? it sounds like a large part of what you are aiming g for or addressing an outreach. can that be addressed in recruiting and adding a statement that the department welcomes and is looking for a large diverse group of applicants including members of -- >> we do that. we recruit at all events in the lbgt community. and again i'm not

reticent at all to ask on a volunteer basis once they are clear of the process. i'm just a little bit skidish about asking in the beginning buchlt i -- but i refer to an entertainment lawyer if someone wants to disclose another box for statistical purposes only. >> you might consult with a pipeline. >> that's a good example. i can't get the pride alliance to tell me what the membership list is when they want to know that they are getting representation in the promotional process. it's hard for me to tell the players from the program and i have been told not to ask.

>> before we turn to this, a couple of questions for you. how many go through before we get one recruit in the academy. what's the percentage? >> commissioner, currently we have 1700 applicants on the 29-1. we have started that about 3 months go. we had about 180 applicants hired from triage all the way to someone being assigned you are looking at probably 1 in 10. >> it's about 10 percent likelihood of surviving the background information brought by post for any applicant? >> correct. >> those are pretty hard numbers. >> they are. >> talking about the numbers and the annual audit. these

requirements that the state requires in order for us to stay at the police department, how many numbers are there in the requirement? >> they come in annually and they look at every background packet of every applicant that we hire that graduates from the academy. if the applicant does not graduate from the academy, the point is moot, they never look at that candidate. however, if they graduate from the academy, they look at the packet and it's separated by tabs and they look at things like citizenship verification, medical, that can only be 1 year old or no more than one-year-old and psychological evaluation that can not be more than 1 year old and they look at areas that we have to comply with and there is not a lot of