can go to room 263. now if we can hear from supervisor mar. >> i wanted to thank our chair of the neighborhood services and safety committee, chair campos to bring us. i watch you on tv and it's nice to see you across from the room from us as we put our heads together to come up with better strategies to keep our communities, especially the children and vulnerable population safe. i wanted to thank chief sir and commander ali and deputy chief bill for their presence in our committee for several hearings that we've held on the safe issue. it's really frustrating, though i'll say, to keep thinking about how we have already set up pedestrian safety advisory committees. i believe jack did that in 2002 as we set up the first peace act. when former mayor nuson set up his task force

that took years for them to develop their plan that is in place as our san francisco pedestrian strategy, it's really great, but the commitment to fund key strategies to keep our children and vulnerable population safe -- i think the solutions are where we put our money where our mouth is, and it's funding and funding whether it's the bicycle funding. i'm going to have to leave the meeting early because of an association government meeting but i'll follow this with my staff peter. street blog has been covering it year after year. and in january in streets blog when the strategy first came out that it's a largely unfunded vision to make our street safer and i strongly

and support my colleagues resolution which i'd like to sign on as a coauthor but i think really the solution is how we put money towards strategies and how our bicycle coalitions have been working on for years. i want to say in response to the mayor's announcement by press release a few days ago, and some comments from the police on the unfortunate death in december, i wanted to say as supervisor yee said, there has to be a lot more sensitivity to victims and of collisions and accidents and blaming the victim and is wrong and i think we have to come up with strategies that are not starting from a blame the victim approach. i also wanted to add to that my office has been working like others on a number of different projects,

but i think the transportation authority and other suggestions of add quit funding for a lot of these safer streets projects are the critical thing that i hope comes out of this hearing as well as supporting the new task force that this resolution that supervisor kim, yee and campos are proposing, but a critical thing is how we put the money toward the new action plans that will be developed so thank you to all the community organizations that are here and i look forward to working with you for fully funding, add quitly these plans to make our streets safer. >> thank you supervisor mar. >> supervisor wiener. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you for calling for this hearing and it's great to be here with our colleagues at the police commissioner and i'm particularly glad the police commissioner are here and it's important for them to hear directly from us because when we get sigh lows and vice

versa, it's great to hear from each other. over the years in san francisco, we have passed many resolutions on pedestrian safety, the mayor's floor issued many plans and they're unanimous at the board and unanimous support. it's like mom and apple pie to have pedestrian safety. the voters overwhelmingly pass proposition b and emphasize pedestrian safety, but what we have seen overtime that we can pass as many resolutions and ordinances and ballot measures and mayors can put out plans, but if there isn't followup and strong buy in and support and political will from our elected officials and from our departments, the situation doesn't improve. and this really is about political

will and accountability because our policy making bodies in san francisco in particular the board of supervisors and the mayor have spoken loud and clear that we want improvements in pedestrian safety and it's a matter of executing and making that happen. we're finally ending the era of negligence when we didn't have police academy classes and allowed our police department to astro fee in size. we're having a police academy classes and re-growing the size of the department, so that's fully staffed. and we need to make sure and the voters need to make sure that we at the board and the mayor are held accountable so when we have a bad budget year whether it's this year or next year that we don't cut academy classes and reducing traffic

enforcement which is the first thing to go in bad budget years. we need to be held accountable for that and have the political will to make sure that we get our police department the full staffing and then we need to hold the police department accountable to make sure that our staffing increases, we get consistent enforcement. that it's not just hot spots on based on complaints that we have consistent traffic enforcement throughout this city all the time because we know that if people don't get that there's much of a risk that they're going to get caught whether it's rolling through a stop sign or any other kind of unsafe behavior, people are not going to comply with the law and they have to understand that there is a risk and we need to make sure that there is a risk that drivers will be cited if they're violating the law. we also need to make sure and this is not just about us, but it's really about, i think, general understanding in the community that we're operating from actual facts and i agree.

it's not about playing a blame game or finger pointing, but we need to make sure that the people know the facts and we see even outside of city hall and you see it all the time on comments, on online and on facebook and discussions that people have that this is all about the pedestrian who is distracted and talking on their phone and therefore is walking into an accident and getting injured. and you hear that all the time and every time you raise pedestrian safety of people who push back and say, pedestrian just need to stop being on their phone and stop being distracted and the fact is and these statistics have been consistent that 2/3 are the blame of the pedestrian. it's the facts of a situation. it's not the case that we've seen, this unacceptable level of pedestrian accident because

pedestrian have gotten more distracted. human beings are distracted. that's the nature of being a human being, but the fact that 2/3 of these accidents are not the fault of pedestrian and the additional fact is when you're driving a vehicle, that vehicle when it hits someone is a deadly weapon and when you're driving a vehicle or you have an enhanced responsibility to be safe in driving that vehicle. we need to have the political will to make sure that we are making necessary safety physical changes to all streets. it's critical to have enforcement and critical to have good driver and pedestrian and bicycle education. very important. you we know that our streets can be designed better, that there are physical changes we can make to make it safer for people it use our streets and to make it less likely that people will be in

accidents. last year i authored legislation that supervisor yee cosponsored with me to try to reduce the amount of inter departmental jams. every time we have a proposal to bold out an intersection and separate a bike line, it gets bogged down in seven department departments that have to sign off on it and sometimes it dies together or gets so watered down it that it's not worth doing. the legislation was supposed to help clear that log jam and unfortunately we still continue to experience resistance and we're having an on ongoing dialogue with the fire department about that because the policy making bodies have spoken that we want these projects to happen and the departments need to execute on

that policy directive. and so i look forward to continuing to improve that process in making sure that we're fixing our unsafe roads and making them safe for everyone. thank you. >> thank you supervisor wiener. commissioner turman, did you want to say something. >> i have listened to the comments of supervisors and there's so many messages and so many things in there that this commission agrees with us. public safety, rather one section of whether it's drivers or bicycles, 2/3 are responsible for the accident or 1/3, we're looking for solutions as well to eliminate these type of incidents. we have -- you have before you a police commission that is dedicated to looking into this problem and

working with you to solve it. we were not part of the previous meetings so this is -- we're pleased to be invited here to hear what both our department and what other presenters especially the public has to say about these issues. it's something worth being addressed and we're here it listen and address it. you won't find a more committed police chief and department who is ready to move on these issues to hear on the recommendations and do what we need to do so protect san francisco. i do want to take issue with -- i know there was recent reporting. it was not the intent of the department to blame any victim or anything. these are sensitive issues, so whatever is said can sometimes be twisted and come out wrong. it was from a

desire to factually discuss what the issue was and how an investigative -- what the investigation background was showing. we're not hear to blame the victims. we're here to report on information to share that information and do what we can to make sure these types of incidents get resolved. we don't want our citizen whether they're pedestrian, drivers or bicyclist to feel they're at threat when they are on the streets of san francisco. san francisco must be a safe place for all persons. we have an earnest desire to provide information and get information and to correct these errors and as vice president of this commission working daily with the department from all the way up through the chief to the ranks, i can tell you that we're here to address this

issue in earnest and we thank you for being invited today. >> thank you very much commissioners. i know that -- supervisors, that he -- that we want to get to public comment and i want to turn it over to greg sir and they have a presentation, the police department along with the municipal transportation agency and included in that i know our some community partners and i want to under score that two organizations have played and continue to play. the san francisco bicycle coalition as well as walk sf. they're advocacy on this issue has literately saved lives and we are grateful for this contribution and with that i am pleased to introduce our chief of police, chief, thank you for being here. welcome to this joint meeting. the floor is

yours. >> thank you supervisor campos and president members of the board and the concerned public. here with me is the members of the command staff and every district station captain to respond to the questions. and it's important to the police department and the leadership of the department from the legislative body and from the citizens. i want to start my comments from last august with regard to what happened when sadly a bicyclist omaly was killed on the 6th and fulson and our initial investigation was lacking. the investigators failed to find a video recorder, the witness testimony put mrs. malack as being most at fault.

that was wrong. thankfully a concerned citizen in the area found a video at an auto repair shop and gave it to us and we were able to revisit the investigation and get it right and work up a package which is at the district attorney office being reviewed for a decision. even if a charging decision isn't made, a citation will be made which is new over my time in the police department which is being to be quite a while. further i'd like to apologize for the conduct of my sergeants who compounded the initial poor performance of the police department by deciding to have a teachable moment during a visible which regardless of whether they

was education and to distract from the visual is wrong. i couldn't feel anymore badly about it and again i have apologized, but if ever asked again, i'll continue to apologize because it wasn't the right thing and the right time and it wasn't respectful of mrs. malack and we're betser than that. to supervisor's mar comment -- he somehow suggested that there was a cultural competency issue has being responsible for commissions. we had talked prior. we had talked to the reporter at the time. the message was that we pain takingly tried to do everything we can to put all of our education and awareness out in the culturally confident way. we recently

came out with a language of limited english video to do just that so everybody gets the messages that we're putting out. so again i apologize. the victims shouldn't be anything but mourn and respected when they fall. pray to this sort of thing and again it's inexcusable and to apologize. we have been working and to that end, i can tell you right now supervisor kim said she hoped that we would commit to do quarterly report and we agreed to do that last scombens we would work collaboratively towards a goal of zero fatalities annually in san francisco. i think we start every single year with that hope and if everybody would work with us to get there, i think as the staffing comes in, the enforcement will get us there. there was a

particular paragraph in our newspaper earlier this week that said on new year's eve, little sofia, six years old struck and killed at poke and ellis, to please slow down. that has to be the message for everybody. the fatality of the vehicle far exceeds that of any other motor transportation, supervisor wiener has corrected 2/3 of this years pedestrian fatalities involved of vehicles but sadly last year we had a fatality where the pedestrian was killed by a cyclist, but that can happen because of the speed that that cyclist was going at and that cyclist as charged we have adopted a new practice in the police department, at least in the knowledge of the sitting police officers that had never been done before

and i'll let commander ali speak to in his presentation. i want to close with this distraction thing with regards to drivers. 40 of drivers surveyed by 200 people, and 19 percent admitting to being on the phone. 16 percent of all young people under the age of 20 that are killed in car collisions, it was determined that they were engaged in some sort of distracted driving when this happened. so when we speak to pedestrian who might be distracted, we're asking you to protect yourselves. it's safe on the curve. you are in harms way when you enter the street and sadly there's a lot of people being distracted and a lot of them have been getting tickets lately and there's going to be more of that. we're

committed to a new normal in san francisco whereas again, our staffing bumps up, so will the tickets and enforcement is never popular, but we're committed to making the city safe as we get more and more crowded and we have more people that gets more bicycles. there was a recent statistics, there's 90 percent more bicyclists than last year. we have more cranes in san francisco than any other city in the country. we have more work sites. it's a crowded place. san francisco is where everybody wants to come. we want everybody to come and when they get here, we want them to be safe. so with -- i'll close maybe later but i want to thank not only ali who will make this presentation, but my partner hear in traffic safety, director ed. i know he's committed to

this. i know he's a pretty advate bicyclist himself. whether you're a driver for sure or anybody else, if you can finish that text or if you're a driver, just let it go. just pretend you're in the shower or something. don't pay attention to it until you get parked. natalie from walk sf, thank you for yourselves and nicole's partnership in working on strategies. laeh and she's no shrink -- she'll speak about the laundry list she gave us and what she would like to see and most of that has happened. in fact just now role call is in san francisco are seeing the

2007 educational video with regards to bike safety and it's being freshened out and out in the next six weeks and tracy taresoco where they actually were afforded a certain budget here by the board of supervisors, thank you for that supervisor mar and they have a plan that we would like to take city wide and she'll talk to you about that. without further or do, commander ali. >> good evening members of the police commissioner and board of supervisors and of course our public we come. give me 30-seconds and i'll start this power point here. >> i'm nick ala, the commander

assigned to mta and responsible for in part -- in large part of the traffic safety strategy that is implemented in our city. what i want to do today is give you an over view of is it statistics as traffic fatalities in 2013 and policies and procedures in our efforts to make improvements in this year 2014. i'll advance to slide one. in december of 2012 we implemented the focus on the five strategy. that strategy in large part was based upon an analysis of all traffic collisions done or traffic collisions that occurred between 2006 and 2011. that analysis provided us an identification of the top five

collision factors in all of those collisions. they were drivers operating their vehicles at unsafe speeds given the conditions of the roadway. red light signal violations. a drivers failure it yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. those being both unmarked and marked crosswalks. the drivers fail to yield while making a left or you turn. failure to stop at stop for unlimited lines. i'll advance the slide once more. >> as we look at the analysis of our traffic fatalities in 2013 as it related in this slide to pedestrian fatalities, of the 2/3, drivers were involved, the primary issue here is drivers failure to yield to pedestrian right away at

crosswalks. within our department, a strong emphasis is on conducting traffic enforcement operations. the analysis of those collisions over that five year period have helped us identify not only the most problematic areas city wide, but police districts. that's the foundation from our police captain behind me conduct their monthly activities in terms of the allocation of their resources. additionally, they take into consideration activities that are taking place within the prior month, concerns from citizens expressed by way of e-mails at their community meetings and what have you and they look and direct their resources on a regular monthly basis. but a main stay within

those enforcement operations are -- under cover operations as it related to stings and crosswalks where you may have an under cover officer in regular clothes acting as a pedestrian where uniform personnel are ready to cite that individual. that's the main sting of our operations. this year we're hoping to significantly impact obviously a high area of concern in terms of a violation point for pedestrian fatalities. motor vehicles, we have two instances of unsafe starting. i think in large part because of the operations we've had over the years relative to the cleb rags with other law enforcement agencies our city and highway patrol and the university of california at san francisco, ucsf, san francisco state, us park police, we have

significantly impacted the number of fatalities where driving the influence has opinion an issue. so in this case we have two. we obviously want to reduce that further to zero. lastly red light and stop sign violations are both from having one. where the primary factor was a pedestrian, there were six occurrences of the 21 total fatalities in 2013. jumping off the page, the jaywalking was three occurrences and not obeying a traffic control signal and lastly a pedestrian outside of the crosswalk. i think it's important, many of the steps that we took to safeguard our pedestrian who have come to fusion and we would have had lower fatality rates. the challenge was the month of december. an

incredibly violent in regards to 7 pedestrian killed just in the month of december and that's significant when looking at a total of 21. >> commander, i meant to ask this question when you were on the first staff >> marshal. >> that first slide, the analysis of the 2012 report for the collision factors, is that involving all collisions or just pedestrian or that's any type of collision. >> that's all collisions. >> okay. >> all traffic collisions. >> thank you. >> i'll advance the slide one more time. moving onto bicycle fatality in 2013, we saw an increase from 2012 and 2012 we had one.

2013 we had four. you have one instance where a vehicle was turning a vehicle in an unsafe manner that called that collision and three others you have vehicles turning unsafe where you have to wait the right away and allow the vehicles coming towards you to proceed before you. and one instance we had a bicyclist entering the roadway from the sidewalk and then lastly a tragic one as well, a bicyclist who was aside a large commercial vehicle and lost footing. the unfortunate thing, even when there's a tragic error in judgment as in to time and distance, there has

>> welcome to our first committee meeting for thursday, january 16, 2014. i'm norman you won't and i'll be chairing this meeting. i'm joined by supervisor xhoovm. the committee would like to acknowledge the staff of sfgovtv yes, sir, i didn't