thank you, good afternoon. if i may have your attention and thank you for being here today at a special joint meeting of the board of supervisors, neighborhood services and safety committee along with our san francisco police commission. my name is david campos and i'm the chair of the

neighborhood services and safety committee. i want to acknowledge the clerk of my committee, derek evans and i want to thank the members of sfgtv staff who is covering the members and we thank you for your services. and derrick fernandez and with that we'll proceed by first taking the role call for the committee and then return to role call for the police commission. >> role call for neighborhood services and safety committee. supervisor campos. >> present. >> supervisor mar? >> present. >> supervisor yee. >> present. >> we have quorum and guest scott supervisor wiener. >> we'll proceed to the role call for the police commission and then the pledge of allegiance.

>> president thomas mazzucco. >> present. >> vice president her man >> xhiser joe marshal. >> here. >> commissioner dejesus. >> and commissioner angela chan. >> present. >> commissioner carol kingsley. >> here. >> if you can join us in the pledge of allegiance. "i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." >> thank you. mr. clerk, if you can call the one item that we have in this special meeting. >> hearing to have the police department present its standard protocol for reviewing, investigating, and reporting findings of fault in the event of a cyclist or pedestrian fatality or

serious injury as the result of a traffic collision. >> great. thank you. we will begin by having some brief inproductry remarks by myself and the present of the police commission and i know that there are a couple of members of board of supervisors who would like to speak and i like to acknowledge chief of police, greg. i know this is an important issue for you and we appreciate your presence and we have been joined by the head of the mta, ed, thank you for being here. again, i want to thank everyone for being here tonight, this evening, and i want to thank my colleagues who are present and the police commission having served on on the san francisco police commission for years and i know how seriously these commissioners take this job and i know this is an issue that they have been paying a lot of attention to and it's a priority to them and to our police department. i want to especially thank

within my colleagues, supervisor jan ken who has just joined us with whom this has been a priority since she came on the board and has been championing the issue of safety on our streets for years and we thank her for her leadership. and london breed was here earlier and she wanted to be here. she could not be here, but this is a priority for her and i know that she and her staff are working closely watching this issue very closely and will continue to do work in this area. let me say that i think that at any time that you have a death or any injury resulting of collision whether it involves a bicyclist or involved a pedestrian or involves a motorist that is always tragic to see that happen. and i think

that if there is -- if there is disagreement about how we make the city safer, i think there's a clear agreement that he with want to have our streets be safe in san francisco as safe as they can be. i want to thank supervisor kim for the leadership that she has demonstrated and i know that she will be talking about her proposal that was just introduced, you know, to basically have zero for san francisco to make sure that we prevent deaths along the lines that we have seen. i think that the discussion tonight focuses on the piece. it's very important in this puzzle and that's the issue of enforcement. i also know that the issue of enforcement is apart of a larger piece. other components that are affective to have a

strategy and a key component is education and information and making sthur -- sure that all of us are aware of how we maintain ourselves safe but each other safe. there's also a very important component that has to do with with the infrastructure of this city and the design of our streets and how as we as a city it make sure our streets are safe not only for motorist and cyclist, but enforcement is important for this strategy and it's tonight that we should focus on and i look forward to that discussion. let me say that i want to make sure that this is a constructive and productive meeting and what i mean by that is i know there has been horrible things that have happened, but i think that it's important as we discuss how we can improve the situation and what many of us see as an

epidemic that it's important for us to focus on how we move forward instead of pointing fingers. i know that there are things that all of us can do better and i know that our police department in this case is committed to making sure that every franciscan is safe. we have the best police department in the country. i really believe that and i think that we have an opportunity to build on the things that we're doing well, that we're doing right and we can always think of how we can do those things better and that is the spirit in which i want to have this discussion today. so with that, i'll ask president a police commission mazzucco to make brief remarks and mr. president, police commissioners, thank you for being in this commissioner tonight. >> thank you supervise campos

and thank you for being apart of this meeting with the board of supervisors and the police commission. we meet every wednesday here at city hall and once a month out in the community so we focus on policy. this is an issue supervisor campos that's going to involve enforcement. this is our fourth meeting with reference to pedestrian and traffic safety in the last six months. we're notified every time there is an injury accident or pedestrian or bicycle accident, we're note notified and the location and we've expressed our concerns. a little background. in our three prior meetings, we've had presentations by the police department and asked for statistics and we've seen great progress and what is happening in the police department on their side of it and we want it hear from the public, but we've seen -- there seems to be a direct correlation and we learned this last

wednesday night when statistics were provided to the commission and that correlation you heard campos talk about enforcement. there's a direct correlation between our staff and the police department going down due to retirements, the number of citations going down due to those retirement and fewer officers on the street and the increase in fatalities and incidents. so there's a direct correlation between that, so part of this puzzle, what we've seen so far with our work with the committee and commissioner loftus has met with the bike commission and another commissioner chan has been involved and commissioner kingsley has been involved so there's a direct correlation between enforcement and the other part of it is getting the word out to the public that everybody really needs to participate. there shouldn't be no finger pointing between bicyclist

and motorist and kars. we have more buses on on the street whether they're school buses or tour buses or gambling buses and buses going from corporations. there's more cars on the street and more people that seem to be distracted thanks to i-phones and other devices. with -- we need to look at this issue and we all have to be safe. going back to fundamentals and basics. the public service is the first problem and the public service announcements and us doing this is a great thing and the second problem has to be enforcement baugs we can talk about evidence, just this morning i walked my dog and i can't tell you how many people i saw on cell phones driving where stop signs seem optional in my neighborhood. those are things we need to correct because where he have to make it safe. i want to thank everybody for being here and. police department has made great mr. -- made great progress and

the chief has talked about this. thank you everybody. >> thank you mr. mazzucco. >> the hearing request to have a joint hearing between the neighborhood services and safety committee with the police commission was a hearing request that followed the original hearing request that was introduced by supervisor jan kim and that was cosponsored by mar and wiener, so i like to turn it over to supervisor kim and to a couple of my other comments who have comments to make. >> commissioner kim. >> thank you and great to be here with the commissioner and president mazzucco. it's great to have a joint hearing between our our two bodies as we discuss an important issue on on our city. i want to recognize the many, many members of the public that are here today. continue to come to the hearing that we have held on pedestrian safety and i appreciate you sticking it out with you. i

know these hearing are long and i appreciate the passion and energy that's involved in it especially from our resident who are -- many who are in our office earlier organizing for today's public comment. i want to thank the press for covering this issue. this is an incredibly important issue here in the city and i think the press plays an important role of educating the importance of this issue and how we can be more thoughtful when driving and walking and biking. the continuance of this issue and i want to thank commissioner campos for suggesting that we continue this hearing with the police commission was an effort to give the san francisco police department more time to present this body with specific data on report. the frequency, locations, of enforcement and the high injury corridors and

intersection. after ending 2013 with a near high record of 21 pedestrian fatalities, everyone shares concerns. already in the first week and a half of 2014, 167 pedestrian collisions as of january 12, this is just in the first 12 days of this year. on tuesday several members of this board, myself, supervisor avalos, yee, campos, chiu shgs introduced a plan for san francisco to inmriment a plan addressing three core areas that we feel would address pedestrian safety. in reaching a goal in ten years of zero traffic fatalities following cities like chicago and new york city who have followed models and sweden and other areas. we

fouk us on energy, education, and enforcement efforts and i'm hoping to hear a very clear commitment this evening from our police department to partner with us on thesish efforts. the resolution kicks it off scombh and we plant to send this to committee and we want as much information on your expertise and what we can do to support the efforts of this city. our combine goals is getting a commitment that sfpd will report and the commission police on a traffic enforcement and collision data requiring officers to participate and share the training. ultimately we want to know that the department is taking collision reports. and those reports are being followed up in the event of serious injury, that they're being prosecuted by a district attorney office. finally, i'd

i i think it's important to examine how the message goes to the press early on and we can discuss public messages around fatality and not saying whose fault it is whether it's the driver or cyclist. >> i want to recognize our office is lucky to work with two captains, captain redman and turnuff who are working with our people to target the most dangerous area. this is coming from a low which continues to be an issue for the police department. redman releases hi location and has been working with our constituent to augment on a basic. i would love to ask that he and our department -- and our police precincts get more

support to supplement these enforcement in the south of market and giving the incredible need that the police district is dealing with now. we he have other folks that would like to make comments before the presentations and thank you to the public for being here. >> thank you supervisor kim. supervisor yee. >> thank you chair campos. >> i agree with supervisor kim and i'm glad -- i'm glad i'm able to be a coauthor of this zero. stressing the 3 point strategy that we'll be taking. pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, even vehicle safety is so important to a lot of this city. and it's really, really a shame that i came in here a year ago thinking that i'm going to put the emphasis on my own district and district 7 to start

addressing the issue of pedestrian safety because at the time within a month and a half, they were eight tragedies in the city and four of the fatalities out of eight from vehicles hitting pedestrian were in district 7. and i want to give thanks to supervisor wiener in looking at the street improving piece and how we can expedite improvements rather than slowing it down with bureaucracy. there's no one strategy that's going to resolve any or solve any of these issues or even to reduce the number of fatalities that we're seeing in this city. we need all three as has been mentioned already. we need to stop finger pointing and have a comprehensive solution. so when it comes to street

improvements, i'm glad we have capital funding to start addressing that issue. we need more additional funding. when it comes to driver education, i introduce a resolution, a campaign yan resolution of zero. to ask for a task force to come together and look at how we could develop a pedestrian safety awareness campaign. that's targeting not just pedestrian but also drivers. a lot of times when we talk about pedestrian safety and education, it seems like everybody is talking about how do you educate pedestrians. but yet that's only half of the problem, the drivers are also needing education. and again, street improvement and just the education piece alone isn't going to solve

this. we have, what i consider a very poor culture of safety in san francisco. there's -- as was mentioned earlier that you could stand on acorn and you can watch drivers on their cell phones going and even when you stand oult side on poke street in the crosswalk, the majority of the drivers will stop when you're trying to cross, but some don't stop in front of city hall. what's going to be done to change this culture, we need to have heavier enforcement. i'm happy that this joint hearing is happening today because i'm really looking forward to a vibrant discussion on how we could start looking at enforcement as a solution to the bad culture that we have in the city. >> thank you supervisor yee and i want no note and i want to thank

all the people that are here, the folks that we all work for, the resident of san francisco and want to note there's a spill over room. if there isn't enough room for those to be in the chamber, you 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 vi