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. >> chief. >> my mistake. there is one more presentation. i'm going to struggle with this. >> can we keep it brief. >> teresa who is the chief of the advisory board. >> good evening. again, thank you all for this incredible

effort and necessary and needed change for san francisco drawing all of our attention to public safety ety and all of our citizens safety. my name is is tracy and i'm a mother and small business owner in the san francisco district in a police distract. i'm in the city of heights and last year i became cochair of an advisory board and at the time my cochair now commander, sharon. so when we started our meeting last january, we wanted to start the meeting by addressing public safety and mention this idea of a well known program in northern california called street smarts. so we began to investigate street smarts and look at -- would it be feasible to bring street smarts to san francisco. i'm happy to

share with you tonight, we're ready to kick start san francisco street smart this spring. many of the areas of of concentration that i've heard tonight are indeed of what street smart is about. my hope is as we get this project under way in the richmond police district, again the spring is that it strengthens and helps to compliment all these other efforts that's happening. everything is important, so -- excuse me. i have a hand out. may i pass these out. >> if you can speak into the mic, otherwise we can't hear you. >> we'll share one of the safety pieces, see if we can get it out there. basically street smarts and commanders can you show the blue side. thank you. the street

smarts branding program is based on this blue sky and white clouds and having a message. we'll focus on five messages that will be shown on street light poles in places where there's high traffic incidents and problems with speed. the different messages focus on speed, so one the messages is -- i have to look at my notes. excuse me. stopping is apart of driving and thank you for slowing down. always a person on on the message as a reminder or a pointer about your traffic behavior and making way for pedestrian and not being on your phone. so over the next few months, we'll launch the program out to all the schools in the richmond district and they'll receive a safety banner that they'll keep. we'll have a website that will

have all the downloadable educational material and basically we'll start to roll the program out in three phases. focusing on education and the students and then secondly focusing on the traffic element. our supervisors who have been supportive. thank you supervisor mar and supervisor farrell, so we'll map and plan out strategy based on the need and try to put the messages where they need to be and as soon as people enter san francisco through the golden gate area, they'll be met with the signs. as they move through certain congested or high speed areas, you'll be met with these signs so i know we'll have a length of support as we work on actually targeting these areas and getting the signs in front of people. the third part of the program is actually going it be a safe driving

pledge and again in hearing some of the speakers tonight, it makes me think we should have our cab drivers have a safe driving pledge. perhaps -- but there's lots of room for improvement and hopefully everyone participates and what else can i say? i'm trying to talk as quickly as i can. let me add that street smarts actually began in dan villas a result of a child being hit and killed and then has expanded to the city of san jose. ten cities of marine since 2002. what we like about the program is that it can be adopted by a city scaled to the needs of the city and again customized depending on the type you like. we're focused

on the five messages. have i left any big pieces out. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much for your work and -- >> to close, a couple of points supervisor kim, those 160 some odd collisions that you mentioned didn't all involve a pedestrian. those are all the collisions that occurred since the beginning of the year. i do want to commit to followup on commander alia commitment, we'll go back one year and that's the statute limitation and we'll start with mrs. stevenson's case so if that person wasn't issue a citation, that driver will be issued a citation and going forward, we're committed to making a decision one way or the other if a decision can be made at the scene and or doing a mail or if it requires

followup investigation. in closing, remember what it says on that sign. the little girl's cite site where it pleads with drivers and cycles to slow down. i think if we can get to the zero fatality goal in her memory, maybe she wouldn't have passed in vein. >> thank you chief. colleagues, i'm going to turn to public comment and i want to begin by just noting that we want to give every member of the public an opportunity to speak, so i know that you probably want to applaud when some people speak, but su sustain from that so we can move the meeting forward. as i call your name, line up on your right side of the aisle. jackie and each one will have

up to two minutes and you can say your comments in less than two minutes, we would appreciate it so everyone gets an opportunity to speak. wendy beck, seany, brand johnson, jc castle, cw johnson, kevin stall, michael, gary mccoy, crystal harris, reverend normal fong, debbie gold, howard bloomberg. >> you can line up on the left side of the room for us and your right side. go ahead please. >> good evening supervisors, good evening members of the police commission. my name is jackie briceson and happy to be here. i would like to say hello to

chief sir and ed and what i want to do is draw your attention to the magic person who has to make this work. the magic isn't happening. see that wonderful sign that says "skate board and bicycle riding prohibiting on sidewalk." i pointed out to ed that i wanted to thank sandra. she works for mta and i'm a member of the access accessory commitment of the mta and i had asked sandra at one of our meeting, we just had the meeting today, to please look into funding because i knew they existed, the no bicycle riding or skate boarding on the sidewalk. find the signs and get them put up. she asked me where i would like to see them two up and i said 8th and market street, so if you were

to go out there by the theater, you'll sea that sign and directly across the street to the intersection at the burger king, you'll shee that sign. this is one person, yours truly going to an organization matt committee and saying this needs to happen. so it's possible to get something done. it didn't take a lot of time. it didn't cost a lot of money and you know i like to say something positive, so again, i thank you so much for the opportunity to have sandra, for her to find this stuff and it got done. you can make it happen. i did it. thanks a lot. >> thank you, next speaker, please. >> good evening, my name is wendy beck and i'm a walking miracle. it's a miracle that i have not killed by a bicycle or a car after countless misses. i'm a walker

and driver who biked and walked in new york city but i never have felt threatened here in san francisco. i had to knock on the window of a texting driver so she would see me when i crossed and i got outrage. to help make vision zero a law, make a law of texting while driving. any things might help by putting more count down stoplights and no right on red at certain intersections and campaigns but the most important thing is to stop distracting drivers by placing unmarked cars at corners and placing more emphasis on moving violations than parking. a parking car, a parked car never killed anyone. thank you for making this a priority in san francisco. >> thank you very much. i'm going it read a couple of more names. >> john alex, dawain, zach

marks, edward and i apologize if i'm my pronouncing your name. next speaker, please. >> hello everyone, i'm crystal harris and i'm a california resident. i've worked for a company, a bicycle company in san francisco for many year and i like to share a story that happened outside of san francisco but i truly believe in san francisco as being an [inaudible] type city. if you do have zero fatalities, you will spread a social movement. my story is that. i was involved in a collision where i was hit broad side in a bike lane in a crosswalk.