code 1203.018, which the legislature has said for local jurisdictions the sheriff has the able to place people on em as they deem feet. -- fit. so this legislation really originates from state law, which gives the sheriff the authority to do. based upon this vetting process we are addressed concerns from other agencies regarding who would be placed on em and those safeguards have been placed into legislation. low level offenses -- >> i understand what's happened. i'm asking take a step back. what's the policy rational. i get it -- i see the sheriff is here and granted the authority to do. why though? >> we are doing it because most of the people or a good portion of the people pretrial on low level this is one tool for a

person who cannot afford bail to be able to be reviewed to determine whether or not em might be an alternative to incarceration to help the reentry process, to help throughout the course of the case. if a judge determines a person is on em and that person is placed in the community, that person is still accountable to the court, accountable to the em review by the sheriff and the person can be brought back into custody if they violate any of the terms. >> i want to get back to the bail question in a second. part of my question is what we're facing in every single district in our city, we are not only facing with -- before a few of us got on to the board of supervisors a number of years ago city hall didn't fund a police academy over you years. we're seeing property theft and property crimes across every

single neighborhood spike in the last few years. i see it in my district, talked to all of my colleagues, we sigh it all the time and the police, when we start to have violent crimes, of course the police are going to be deployed toward violent crimes, as it should be and we have them here as a city, but what we're doing is having -- from my perspective you're having an increase or spike over the last few years on low level property thefts and i hear from my residents all the time about this. and we have police with inadequate staffing levels to deal with that because they're deployed elsewhere. we're talking about proactively when we have some of the lowest jail counts in history, releasing more of the low level offenders. i'm having trouble rationalizing that and my residents are going to say why are we doing this? >> i think the first point is this, that the court is the

ultimate decision maker in anybody being placed on bail or released from custody or on em. that is not going to change. whether the court sets bail today on this particular case of a certain amount, that review in 30 days or 60 days is not going to change that person's risk,. what we're saying and trying to show is there are certain individuals who have bail already set who have already gone through that first vetting process. the court has said we want bail set at a certain amount. there are some individuals based upon their behavior, their programming, their classification levels and history, that the sheriff is privy to that the da and courts are not privy to, we could take that information to the court and say judge, please take another look at this person. they will be a good candidate for em to be able to be in the

community, be supervised, be accountable and the concerns you have about future criminal behavior is going to be reduced. they'll be accountable to the court and sheriff's department and brought back into kus - >> i don't see how why released on em they're going to be more accountable than they were before. they're going to be released on recognizance, but initially it was talked about lowering our jail population. i understand that's a priority. again, given where we are as a city, what we experience -- the roster's full, so i'm going to stop with the time here, but as we hear from our residents and see in our neighborhoods, property theft up tick all the time, our da have grave

concerns here, i'm struggling with this overall program, i'm struggling with all the sudden it popped up on our board calendar, but i certainly wasn't briefed on it and it came as a committee report last week which is generally something that's something that's been fully vetted and so i have grave concerns about it. i will seed my time right now to other folks, but want to come back to some of these questions down the road. >> happy to answer any specific questions you have, however, with regard to the procedure with committee, perhaps the committee members could give you a background of how soon it got to the board of supervisors. i would indicate that for someone who's put on or, someone who bails out, there's no concern about what accountability they might have. what is their risk factors once they're out of custody? there's really no difference with people who might be placed

on em rather than bail. they're out of custody with the same issues anybody out of custody is going to have, whether or or bail, but they'll be monitored and continually updated with regard to performance on em and less of a risk than those on or bail at that point. >> getting back to the original intent, wasn't it all about overcrowding of jails >> i believe that was the big motivator. >> wasn't it the wasn't that was articulated, not about the people who can't meet bail. >> there's difference parameters to the 1203 section. this specific one is for in lieu of bail. >> thank you supervisor farrell, i'm going to carry on the line of thinking so i can also understand it. and let me also just start with a couple of comments. i don't think there's anyone in this chamber who doesn't think we should do what we can to

reduce the number of people incarcerated. supervisor farrell referred to the up tick in property crimes and by the way, i was just alerted our police chief was here earlier. he wanted to speak today. i understand there was a shooting in the bay view and he had to go down for that, but i understand there's someone here who can provide a couple of perspectives with what he wanted to say.

>> if this policy were to become law, many of the offenders that would be released are property crime offenders and we don't want to seem them released into our communities right now or ever. we need to leave this power with the courts where it currently resides. thank you. >> so to ask you a couple questions about those comments -- i had a chance to speak to the police chief earlier and he raised this issue of up tick in community crimes, and we looked at burglaries around the city and showed that in southern station, burglaries are up 7% year to year, northern station up 8%, park station up 18%, in

the mission it's up 42% and my district is up 62%. individuals who may not have used violence in property crimes, but who are serial offenders in this area, there's more of a likelihood under this policy that those individuals not violent, that there's a greater likelihood that they would not have the attention to make sure they see their day in court and i woender if you can respond to that. >> i think first of all it's important to point out that those low level offenders are going to be the people that the sheriff is going to look at and evaluate to see if they're going back to court. once the court looks at the person's back groubd and history, all those considerations are going to come into play for the court. what's the person's criminal history? what's the person's violence history? what's the person's history for coming to court or dodging court? all those considerations are going to be taken into

consideration by the court to say yes or no to em and all those considerations will be placed on the sheriff's list of what to look for to bring somebody forward for a possibility of a court review for em. this is not carte blanche like i said, for the sheriff's department to let everybody out. this is the exception to the rule so those people who have proven in custody over the period of supervision time that they don't have behavior problems, their history, violence history is not something that would preclude them from em. understand that all em criteria which indicates who can and cannot get on em is very strict. that's not going to change. that's still going to be held in place. what's going to be added to those restrictions is if a person in the legislation has a certain low level offense,

they've proven themselves in custody, that might be something the court will want to look at to reevaluate their decision on bail or em the power is still with the judge. >> my understanding of the system, and this is from some of the my time working in the law enforcement system. when you have low level non violent offenders we have many programs where we do release those individuals without even em. at the end of the day, we have judges who make decisions based on what prosecutors brings to them, as well as the information that a public offender and criminal defense attorney brings to them and those are judges making ultimate decisions on this and you're asking us to allow the sheriff's department to make another layer of decisions after a judge makes that initial decision? is that my understanding? >> i think looking at it that way is not accurate. what we're saying is the judge

at the arraignment after a person is first a regged and brought to custody, the judge makes a decision based upon the limited information known at that point, the rap sheet, history, appearance in could you repeat, that type of thing and nature of offense is taken into account and say bail is set. what the legislation calls for and what the sheriff has are tools and information that the da and court don't have on that first court date. there are at least 30 or 60 more days that the sheriff has to review, including criminal history, including- >> sorry, the criminal history the da has all that >> but the sheriff's office does too and they have ability to look at that -- >> if you could stop there. da has the rap sheet so what additional information will the sheriff's office have? >> performance in custody. >> other a 30 day period. >> 30 to 60 days or more, gang

affiliation, programming, performance in custody, those type of issues. the person's history is pretty much known to the court and da at it is first court date. those cases where there's a big risk or violent history within five years or other types of problems with regard to their history, they're not forwarded to the court. >> i'm trying to understand this. everyone has the information on that first -- you're saying what the sheriff's information is what everyone can observe about an individual in the intervening time period between that arraignment, 30 days later, 60 days later. >> criminal history, no. i'm talking about classification, programming, behavior. >> the oh thing i'm wondering is you refer to these folks as

low level offenders. violent felony or serious felony charges would preclude evaluation under this legislation. >> which i appreciate. i think for many misdemeanors are often viewed as as lower level offenses, but felonies are more serious. >> all right, supervisor cohen. >> i wanted to associate with some of the comments supervisor farrell was talking about. this seems like a meaty and substantive issue that's

dropped on our desks and so i want to make sure i understand what we're looking at. the sheriff is making an argument sayinging please give me the authority to petition judges, petition the court on behalf of folks that i have in custody that qualify and meet an eligibility, and i believe these are the guideline used to determine if a person will meet the eligibility requirements to qual for em, which is electronic monitoring, which is also known as -- >> home detention. >> and also an ankle bracelet. >> correct. >> for the listening audience at home want to make sure we're communicating here. as it stands right now the sheriff does not have that ability to petition the court, is that correct? >> it's for pretrial detain knees, no. >> and so can you explain to me for what reason he does not have that -- the sheriff does

not have that power? >> it's statutory. >> it's statutory. and so has something changed between the previous sheriff and this sheriff or has there been some change that we are -- we've par sip >> which gives the sheriff the authority to do that with local board approval. >> so 12.-- >> 1203.108, that's basically em for inmates in lieu of bail or basic legislation. >> this is a state law? >> correct. >> okay. i'm -- see, i'm putting the pieces together. there's a change in the state law locally that will change how we deal with -- >> the sheriff wants to implement that state law locally and it has to be approved by the board of supervisors. >> since this is a state law

are there other counties going through this process or others who have already granted this? >> they have the power to do that. i have not become aware of who does or doesn't. >> sure. when did this state law change occur? >> this is an advent of ab -- >> ab 109. >> good afternoon, sheriff, this is an ab event of 109 state prisoner realignment. there are many counties throughout the state of california and it's not just for overcrowded reasons whatsoever, but because of the immetous that's put on mu municipalities to begin to investigate em for pretrial population because most of our jail populations throughout all

urban centers -- i appreciate the newness of this discussion to some of the supervisors here, is that i doubt that the adult probation department or even the public defender would support this legislation if in fact they thought that would increase public safety risk or in any way subvert the paramount concern of public safety, which is why they came to the move down this road. now, if this road is too soon for some supervisors because i'm hearing some misinformation even in the comments that has been misunderstanding in the comments that have been shared, i'll be more than happy to make sure our office gives you a briefing over however period of time so you understand what the contrast is. there's no way shape or form that i as sheriff and that this

department would want to do anything to forward any risk or compromise to public safety, but the notion that i heard being put out there, whether this is true in the perception or not of some, that we would unilaterally put what we are proposing is the same way that there's a response mechanism by the da and court who often asks us could we put a sex offender or somebody for child important electronic monitoring, we have the right to say no and we often do. but what we've noticed though, by the way we've said no to people being put on em, it's happening anyway, a cottage industry has erupted that is not supervised by the sheriff's department and by state statute, all em for sentence

population supervised by the sheriff's department. to allow somebody to be be put on,m even after we've rejected it, and we're trying to reign that practice in. if this detail is, you know, much too much to take in here on the fly, if you'd like to postpone or have it delayed and we're more than happy to give a complete and full briefing. of course we'd be happy to do that. >> i have more questions. i think with all your work you see the crime statistics that president chiu rattled off. i mean, there was a shooting 30

minutes ago at third and oakdale so i am representing a part of a constituency that is on edge when it comes to public safety and we need to look at this from a very broad perspective, so i am not prepared to vote on it, or if we do call the vote today i think that i would be voting no because i just don't have enough information and i'm happy to continue this conversation, sheriff, and i am a little surprised that we weren't given a briefing on this because this is a very serious topic, one that touches all of us. now, i have one question real quick. when you say -- when the judge grants em and you've indicated with you don't support this decision, what kind of recourse is there? do you in em so what we're

proposing is just a process and that process is to inform the da and the judges because that process doesn't exist based on kufrnt law and that's what the state law allows us to do. any notion that we would be putting somebody out who's involved in a shooting or robbery or anything like this, this is something that completely departs from what we're even thinking or talking about, but ultimately it's da and judges who would have that decision. >> my final question is i understand that the da and the committee, is there a representative here today? no. did they send a communication to the mayor's office, the da? you read a letter -- a statement from the chief, i'm wondering if there's a statement from the da. >> mayor's office to the

president, no, ma'am we don't have a statement from the da to read. i can ask for da to come here. i know they're opposed to this legislation. >> to the same that a public defender supported it. >> this highlights the point, that that information was never shared, didn't know chief steel was in favor of it. all i'm hearing is from opposition so i don't know what other offices have -- how you guys have dealt with this particular matter, but this is something that i'm taking very seriously and i'd loov to hear what some of your other thoughts are. >> supervisor wiener. >> thank you. actually, i don't have an issue with the process or timing here. my understanding is that this has been in committee sever times.

i aem assuming it came out of the committee report simply so the two reeds could be before the board goes into recess so i'm prepared to vote on this today. i do have concerns about this. i want to associate myself with supervisor farrell's remarks and president chius, but i want to focus so far has been on the pretrial em with bail. the legislation also makes a change for post trial for convicted inmates and it does so by eliminated the requirement that be placed on em as a convict that you have to have been either minimum security or low risk and so it looks like the sheriff's

department is leaving or something. i have questions also. can i ask questions too or -- yes. i don't know if you just heard what i just said, i think it's been appropriate so far on the pretrial em but in terms of post conviction, there's a change to the law eliminating the requirement that people who are convicted in custody has to be either minimum security and low risk and that's being eliminated. why is that? >> that's the state law. that's just amending the state law total 3.016 it deleted forming local law to that code section. >> are you saying we have to do that? >> what the legislation is just conforming local law to state law. >> are we able to go beyond

state law? do we have -- so they -- >> this is not going beyond state law. >> for example, the state law required before that for someone who's convicted they had to be eligible for em, they had to be minimum security and low risk. that changed in terms of what allow eded counties to place people on em who are low risk. do we have to stick with that standard of state law or can we go beyond it and say we still want people participating in em who are convicted to be minimum security and low risk only? >> i would have to reread it. my understanding is to implement that it has to be approved by the board.

the state law says you don't need that requirement, this legislation is just conforming to that. if you don't change the current legislation that won't change. >> so we can -- we don't have to make this amendment in terms of people who have been convicted. we could limit em for people in san francisco for people who have been convicted in low risk? >> i would have to discuss that with the city attorney. >> i'm just trying to pull up the section of the government code right now, but -- these two sections of the code authorize the board to create a program so the board could adopt a program that authorizes the sheriff to use em in a more

limited set of circumstances. >> so just to be clear, currently is -- currently under san francisco law for people who have been convicted of crimes and in county jail to be eligible for em they have to be minimum security and low risk offenders. is it the case we can just stick with that limitation despite the fact that state law would allow us to eliminate that limitation? >> yes, the state law authorizes the boards to adopt a program and prescribe rules for that program. >> so we can be more limited than state law. >> it's not just that state law changed and we have to conform, the sheriff eefs department is asking the supervisors to make a policy choice