stop gap as they develop their electronic solution. as the commander said, we'll have close to real time info on more than 20 percent of the citations issued and all the collisions so we'll have much more better data to base analysis that can help the police department most efficiently deploy their resources. and i guess we meet regularly with the police department and share that information back and forth so that the resources can be deployed and now that the resources are starting to come up, i think we'll see much more in terms of enforcement and finally with regard to education, we've been working particularly with the department of public health, but with the police department on developing an outreach campaign seeking grant funding for that. we should execute a contract for that campaign, i believe this month or early next month. we're working together to seek additional grant funding,

such as from the office of traffic safety so that we can get that and the education there and the mayor announced yesterday a step forward in that campaign while the engineering changes are absolutely essential and we can identify the reduction in incidents of collisions that will come from them. they do take time to implement and the mayor felt strongly. we needed something much more immediate and the awareness campaign to really get the message out as the chief relaid that everybody needs to pay attention and everybody needs to slow down, so we're working on a number of fronts, engineering education enforcement to try and address this issue. i'll close again by saying that people shouldn't be dying in our streets or getting seriously hurt in our streets and i think if we all work together

as a city family and with our great community partners we can achieve these goals. thank you. >> thank you, director. commander. >> yes, i'd like it bring up natalie who is the director of membership for walk sff for a presentation for us as well. >> thank you, and thank you to walk sff for their incredible work in this very important issue. >> mrs. verda. >> thank you supervisors, police commissioners for holding and attendinging this meeting. i want you to end the carnage on this streets. i want to pause and

make you think about 25 members that died. had we have a loved one that dies, we know how impactful it is. we have get a lot of data and we get a lot of information, and it's a lot to digest. i want to remind everyone why we're here, to put an end to that. only 20 percent of the trips made in san francisco are on foot. i would love it to be more, but it's only 20 percent currently. yet over 50 percent of the traffic related deaths are pedestrian. that's an injustice. in 2012, nearly 950 collisions were reported. we know for a fact that collisions are actually under reported. so that means every single day cars hit three people that are walking. and the truth is the playing field between a

driver and a human being, a walker, someone bicycling is grossly unequal. when you add to that, environmental conditions in the city such as poor street design, previously a lack of effective enforcement for dangerously driving behavior and violence from traffic crimes. you realize just how dangerous and unjust our streets have become. one in five hospital trauma cases are related to traffic injuries and in fact if you look at violent crime in the city including stabbings and shootings, two times more violent crime comes from traffic collisions

than from those forms of violence. so rather those traffic crimes end in a death like the 6 year old, sofia lew or the 17 year old han chang or brian or 46 year old donald, a resident in the tenderloin or a community leader like elizabeth, whether they end in death or serious injuries like those suffered by monique that some of you may have met or heard of, how stephens who is here tonight whose video i hope to play for you. these crimes cost the city millions annually. and in unsquad -- we've been talking and talking about this and i feel like i've heard amazing

things from commander ali, and i want to thank you personally. we've worked on him on an ongoing basis and three of the things he talked about, i'm hopeful about, with you we've heard pedestrian strategy before and task force before, we need to see things come true. three things to be promising, stop calling them accidents. words are empowering. we should prevent them. the second thing that's encouraging is that they'll be citations so that we treat these things as the crimes they are. so someone knows when they make a decision to speed, they can't mruf it off and go, i don't have to worry about it. and the third thing is that there is a focus to really use data to drive

decisions in the department and hopefully that reporting will go on a regular consistent and a transparent basis. so to sum up before i show the video, i want to urge the city to follow the police department's leadership and example as they're committing to adopting a vision zero. if the police department can do that for enforcement, then mta should be able to do that for engineering and the entire city family should get behind it and fund and get a pedestrian funding and put an end to all traffic deaths. that means drivers, bicyclists, as well as those to are the most unfairly afflicted which are pedestrian. and if i can i would like to show a video. >> go ahead. thank you very much mrs. verda. if we can

have help from sfftv. here we are. >> street was designed to be dangerous. we see fast moving speed ways in the middle of our streets and people turning without looking. it has become a culture in san francisco to drive dangerously. this is our city. the city of san francisco. voted one of the most walkable cities in the united states. population 825 ,863 and cars community on a daily basis. this is my friend jakiya, a hairstylist and an inspiring photographer and enjoying life and lives in the heart of san francisco. walks to work everyday. this is a story for drivers. this is a story for pedestrian. this is a story for people living paycheck to paycheck trying to make it in the big city. and

this is a story about how your life can change in a blink of an eye. >> that day was september 26th 2013. >> i was walking to work and on the end of my block of where i live, i waited for the light to turn green and for the walk sign to come on and as i walked into the crosswalk and not too far into it, i was hit. i opened my eyes and i feel a lot of pain in my head. i barely reached my hand up and there was blood coming out and covering in my hands and i can hear her going, "oh my gosh. it's all my

fault." it was really horrific. i couldn't move my neck or anywhere else. i was a lot of pain and on morphines and i couldn't stop throwing up. >> jakyala lost the hospital with social anxiety and lost of taste and a lost of motor skills and she sought out legal representation that was told by lawyers that she couldn't sue because the person had no assets to sue for. this had her to sort through papers to pay for an accident. the person said that i didn't have the green light. and it wasn't investigating. she wasn't ticketed and unless they see someone hit you and although everyone around says they hit

you, they still don't get a ticket, so while being in the hospital or going back for appointments and speaking with the doctors or nurses and people go, so what happened and i go i got hit by a car in a crosswalk and i go, that person is in a lot of trouble and go, no. none. >> she doesn't have to pay anything and she's -- she got her license and she can hit anyone she wants. >> after talking to jakiya about her experience, we wondered why wasn't the driver held responsible for her actions. to try to understand this situation, we contacted rock sff, a san francisco advocacy group where we met nicole snider who helped explain why our city's policies are the way they are and what is being done to change them. >> even if a person is killed, only 65 percent of people who commit those crimes are actually cited. >> as it turns out, pedestrian

who were hit by cared make up 50 percent of traffic deaths in san francisco. this is nearly four times the national average and the second highest rate in all cities outside of new york. >> our streets are defined poorly and made for cars and not people. we see it because we also don't prosecute and don't penalize people who hit and kill or hit and injure other people. in a lot of our streets like the ones where jakiya was hit, there's two one way street and it creates this freeway like feeling. i can go. there's no other kind of oncoming traffic to slow you down or to kind of think about, so you can see. there's about 200 percent more or 250 percent more traffic crimes than there are violent crimes,

shootings and stabbing in san francisco. but we don't look at them as crimes. we look at them as accidents and i think until we start changing that and understanding these are crimes, we're not going to see any change. >> so many questions ran through our heads as we tried to take in these staggers s statistics, like what can we do to help. >> we worked with the city to adopt this -- it lays out a series of ways to get there from city design and street design, enforcement and working with sfpd and the da's office and sff plays a role in getting that strategy released and coming up with this strategy

and sharing that data publicly and engaging the public. >> what about the people who are suffering from these types of accidents today. these are for our city council members and lawmakers. we ask the personal injury lawyer practicing here in san francisco what his insight is on the occurring situation. >> the way the justice system is set up, unless they kill them, it's intended to compensate somebody. it's rare that it's intended to punish. when you punish someone, you can get punitive damages and in some instances, it's hard to get punitive damages in a case. we probably had 40 cases a year. we only accept cases we think we can prevail on. >> it's frightening and it needs to change. this is something that

we need to be vocal about and we need to tell the police department. we're watching and we're waiting for you to set some policies up to make it fair for everybody on the road because right now it's unfair and unjust and pedestrian, everybody that walks, we all walk, we're all pedestrian at some point. we need to stand up and say, "hey i need to be protected." and whether that's at the city level or the state level or both, there needs to be change and it needs to happen soon. >> it has been four months since my friend's accident in september. she struggles on a daily basis and she's back to work but faces losing her job because of cost that have accrued over the past four months. in one of the nation's

most walkable city, a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle while having the right away. and there's no citations given in order to hold the driver accountable. this forces the parties to rely on the injury coverage. and that makes up for a fraction of the cost. lawyers are then sought out to help recovering the bulk of the damages but when the driver has little to no assets, the attorneys are hesitant to represent the person because the person has to pay for it out of pocket or by agencies which is funded by our tax dollars. this has happened over eight times in the past year and it happened to kajika and it

can happen to any of us. >> tell us exactly what happened. we know a woman is dead and a young man has come forward identify himself to the officers. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> if it's appropriate during this time, i like to extend two minutes to stephen because she's here at the hearing today. >> please. thank you for sharing your story with us and for having the courage to be here today. >> thank you. if it's okay i'm going to read something i prepared. first of all, i'm grateful to be here and i want to thank everyone who has come out tonight to discuss this growing issue. as you've seen i'm stephen, a san francisco resident, hairstylist and photographer and a san francisco lover who is has

become many of the victims of a pedestrian collision this year. i'm here with fellow cyclist advocates. the collisions are happening and changing lives in our beautiful city. we need this city to adopt a vision zero policy. as a victim myself with permanent damage as well as bills and debt caused by the driver's collision, i find it insult to injury that the person who caused the accident isn't responsible for the bills but instead the victim's name is on them. nor is the driver ticketed or treated like they've done anything wrong. so i ask what is their incentive to be a safer driver when they suffer no consequences. you can get a suspended license and go to traffic school for speeding tickets, why not at least that for hitting a human being. thank you. and please support walk sff and the

sff bike coalition and vision zero policy. >> thank you for your courage. >> commander. >> yes. this time i like to bring up layla and my apologies. the presentation has her name misspelled. >> thank you to the bicycle coalition for their leadership on this issue. >> thank you so supervisor campos and thank you supervisors and commission. my name is layla and we're non prove i can been in the city for 40 years. helping the city meet its environmental health public safety and access abilities goals and i'm glad it be here today. there's 175 people here today. we think there's 25 people in the overflow people. we didn't have to work hard to get people

here and we're proud at the bike coalition. we didn't have to work hard to get people here and i say that because i want to say thank you to the police department for the progress we're going to make. i think something is broken. something is broken with the current system. stories like jakya isn't as uncommon as you think. i hear tons of storieses every month, a dozen calls from people who share their stories. they're not here tonight so i want to say take this seriously and i know you are. thank you for making the time and thank you chief sir and commander lee for offering me this time. i want to thank the chief for meeting with us. and i feel

encouraged. i know you chief sir and you know the command staff and i know the captain share the goal of public safety and commissioners and supervisors you do. i believe that cold hardedly. what i'm concerned is we haven't shown the action needed and now is the time to do that and that's what i'm going to focus on. i want to recognize several people have said this isn't just about enforcement. thank you for being here. we've talked about a little bit of education and engineering, you we'll be at your board meeting sharing our urgency and our message next tuesday and the idea of funding has come up several times. funding is always a challenge. i think it's a great timing that our mayor announced in the last day or two that he doesn't think that money from the sunday parking meters isn't needed for operations which surprises me but it's great to hear there

may be 5 to $10 million available for year for public safety and street changing in your districts and focusing on the areas that he need it most. i want to share. the bike coalition shares -- a few folks -- regular folks biking. times have changed. the chief might have mentioned, we've seen a 100 percent increase of biking -- the number of the biking so you're not imagining it. there's families like this. ali and rick and their two kids who bike every single day to school. they don't have a car and they ride their kids to school. more and more people are biking. we want to keep them safe. the san francisco bicycle coalition is proud of our part in that. we're focusing on helping the growing number of bicyclist know their rights and responsibilities, a few images here. we work with the

mta and others to do free education bike classes and we get out the rules of the road. number one road, all pedestrian have the right away. bicycles here it cloud and clear, pedestrian have the right of way. we get out thousands of pieces of messages to people everyday. we're proud of that work. we've seen growing and political and community support for biking. i think supervisor yee and supervisor kim, both of you made this point at the committee hearing, for whatever reason, we seem lag in police culture embrace of the transit first policy. i don't mean to point a finger. there is less awareness of the city's embracing of walking and biking being priority. we have seen

high profile cases. you've seen jakiya's case and you're going to hear many. there's a bias in the police department with those who bike and walk. it's seen as other and something that's not main stream, not well supported. i don't think this is conscious and i don't think it's a majority of people, but there's enough that we're seeing a problem. we've been hearing stories of people not getting reports taken, denied. people told you're not hurt bad enough. that's an injury. you don't need a report. you didn't need an ambulance, so you don't need a report. the police has reaffirmed but for some reason this isn't getting down to the line officers and that's a problem because people walking and biking are being injured. number one injury, they're re-injured and the number two injury,

they're not getting fair treatment in some cases by the police department and that's what we're here to talk about. thank you chief sir. i heard the police department commit to the vision zero and we look forward to working with you. how do we get there? this is a great group of supporters and we're happen to have c cd c and central collaborative and china town trips and tenderloin housing groups on board. i'm going to jump to the three recommendations. none of these will be surprises to the chief because we've been talking to him about about these. the area that i think we're seeing the most progress is improving bicycle awareness. there is a lack of awareness. we're hearing stories where officers are telling us adults, you shouldn't be on the street. you should be biking on the sidewalk.

that's illegal. adult bicyclist shouldn't ride on the sidewalk, yet i hear those instances. we're hearing things for whatever reason the law around biking and i probably would guess around pedestrian issues haven't reached everyone and we need to make sure that happens. thank you to your commitment to training and let's fast track that. fully and documenting all collisions. this is a tricky one to get at because you you don't know what you don't know. if something wasn't reported, it's not going to show up. people being denied and i want to work how do we make sure every person who wants a report taken is given one. finally to focus on five, which you've heard about. we want to focus on the location. that's critical. i'm encouraged that the commission is going to ask for regular updates and i think it is going to make a difference.

i'm going stop there and really thank everyone for this focus and i think i've heard everyone say that the vast majority of these deaths and injuries are preventable and we absolutely want to prevent them with you so we look forward to that. >> thank you very much commissioners. i know that we all have a number of questions. i want to get to public comment because i want it make sure we respect the members of the public who is here. unless there's something pressing, let's go ahead but i want to get to public comment. >> commissioner loftus. >> thank you so much. very quickly. in the grand jury report in 2013, one saying -- it was the correlation between a reduction in fatality and the cities investment in bicycle safety

programs so what's the -- is there room for improvement there to supervisor mar's point. >> i'm glad that the sfta do fund a robust program. there's a whole variety of classes and it's teaching adults how to ride a bicycles and we've seen elderly asian women take that. we're excited about that. the far end, it's people who already know how to ride a bike like myself, but learning urban tricks and tips. it's didn't than around the country, so we focus on urban biking. and one for the taxi drivers. the city is

interested on focusing on frequent driver education. these are drivers who are on the road six, seven hours a day. a ups truck, a lift, these folks are on the road a long time. they should be our primary focus for the next round of education and i think that should be mandatory. >> thank you. >> thank you for that commissioner. commander ali. >> anything else? >> the chief directed me, we're going it look back as far as the law allows, not just moving forward in terms of those citations for the collisions, but we're going to go back as far as the law will allow, reevaluate each one of those collisions and where appropriate issue a citation. one last thing i want to share before turning it over to the chief, in our efforts to do a strategic enforcement, we're making sure that we collaborate with

our law enforcement partners in san francisco namely california highway patrol, san francisco state police, ucpd so forth. the team and his personnel went out today and in a period of two hours, had issued 40 citations in that area today. you're going to continue to see that level of enforcement and you might see him or myself pulling you over, so that kind of collaboration is going to take place and continue to take place on fulsom and 6th and 9th. look forward to seeing a lot of blue and tan out there. chief.