rom the sheriff's department, sheriff ross macareni will join us. miss deberry, why don't we hear from you. >> good morning, supervisor cohen, thank you for calling the hearing. happy to be here today to talk about prop 47 on behalf of our district attorney, george gascon. there is a powerpoint, i have no idea how to make it work. >> that's okay, we have talented people to help you. >> i think we emailed it. >> which copy is yours? >> this is the cover page. i can start talking while she works on that so not to waste everyone's time. as this committee is well aware, district attorney gascon drafted this ballot in november after the state legislature was unable to pass a similar

measure -- that's police department -- that's okay, i can work without it if i need to. >> this was the only item. >> no, district attorney. >> sg govtv, do we have the overhead project or? >> i have my notes on it. the district attorney drafrted this measure in keeping with the work he did when he came here as chief and as his time here as district attorney trying to make sure our criminal justice resources are focused on the most violent members of our community and those we can find alternatives for and we are eagerly looking for those and trying to make sure as the country is having a conversation around incarceration and how do we deal with public safety and incarceration in ways that are smart, keep our community safe

but don't end up with every member of the community being incarcerated. these are difficult conversations obviously and we are going through a big transformation in the country. this effort in california is being looked at around the country as other states grapple with their overflowing jails and prisons. the idea was to give low level people rather than being branded with a felony conviction to have an opportunity to make amends to their community for the crime they have committed and then be re-integrated in their community hopefully in positive ways that allow them to move forward and still keep the community safe. >> i just want to make a note that your presentation is on the desk top on your computer. everyone's presentations are loaded on the laptop. >> thank you. >> so sf gov tv if we can turn

to the laptop. >> the measure did pass in california with essentially a 60 percent support around the state and then our own county here in san francisco at over 80 percent, indicating obviously that there is wide public support for thoughtful reforms of our criminal justice system that balance public safety with opportunities. i think most people know what prop 47 did, so just very briefly, it reclassified a small handful of nonviolent property offenses to misdemeanors as the supervisor indicated at the gibing of the presentation. those are listed there for anyone who hasn't reviewed the legislation prior to today. what prop 47 did is also permitted people that had already been sentenced, had already completed their sentence, an opportunity to have that reevaluated. so people that were serving prison sentences had an opportunity to petition to have their sentence reduced from a felony to a

perform, as do people that are currently on probation or in county jail have an opportunity to petition for that. there are thousands of people around the state this state prison right now. >> so is this legislation going to be retroactive? >> yes. >> can you define for us what that means? >> if you were convicted of possessing cocaine for your personal use and were in a county other than san francisco and were sent to state prison for said offense, you could now ask to have your sentence resentenced so you could ask that that felony be reduced to a perform, generally resulting in your release from state prison because performs are not eligible for state prison time. if you were serving a county jail sentence for possession of cocaine as a felony, you could petition to have that reduced to a will misdemeanor and then there would be an evaluation of what your sentence should object that misdemeanor. is there additional county jail time that should be served or

should you be released at that point. >> what happens if you are in state prison now and you've got multiple charges and one of them is possession and another one is rape? >> only the drug possession is affected by this. anybody that had a very serious violent past, child molestation, rape, murder, certain types of gun use, are ineligible for prop 47 reductions under any circumstances. those people were specifically experimented because the idea here is to get to offenders that don't pose a big public safety risk so obviously people that have been in a different category with other crimes either in their past or connected to their current offense are not eligible. but if an individual was there solely for the drug offense and had it reclassified as a misdemeanor they would be eligible for release. in san francisco we had 6 people who were eligible and of those, 4 turned out to be

eligible. the other two had past offenses either in their past or in their current case that made them ineligible. >> what does prop 47 go into effect? >> it's in effect today. it went into effect in november. all of our law enforcement agencies have been taking a thoughtful approach over the last number of years to this issue, we don't have large numbers of people in state prison on drug possession charges but arbd the state there are large numbers of people that are being released under those circumstances. >> do you have an estimation as to how many folks will be resentenced? >> in san francisco? around the state, each county is calculating that and it's an on-going conversation but here in san francisco around the election it was 40,000. so if

i show you --. >> i can wait until you get there. >> so just the slide before this, one of the most important parts of the measure is that the savings that the state will experience from this are now meant to go towards supports for victims, funding educational programs, rehabilitation programs, particularly drug rehabilitation programs and mental health programs, some of the things that lead offenders into the system to begin with, and those savings will be distributed to the counties on an application basis. to your question, supervisor, what are the impacts of prop 47 on san francisco, i'm sure we will all, each department will probably have numbers. in san francisco there's always a challenge with data, that's one of the things we've been striving hard to improve in our office and hopefully acss this system can work on improving with these savings. in san francisco we had 4 people that were released from

state prison. at the time prop 47 passed we had 15 people serving county jail sentences that were eligible for resentencing and we have approximately 900 cases that are potentially eligible of people that are on probation. and we are in the process now of going through those files. about 300 of those are drug cases and about 600 of those are in the other categories. and we have worked out a process amongst ourselves, the court and the public defender's office where we are doing a review within our offices and stipulating on the vast majority of those cases to avoid additional court costs and hearings on most of these matters so we expect we will be able to get through this in a relatively painless way. we're chipping away at that 900 number. >> recently the board of supervisors through the general fund funded a couple analyst positions to the district attorney's office and i wanted to know if these new analysts are going to be the ones

working through this particular data. >> no, the analysts we got was from a grant we received from the federal government to work on smart prosecution and what we're trying to do with that grant, we've come several times requesting analysts through this process. we're really trying to be able to analyze crime patterns and our responses to them and make sure that the district attorney's resources are focused on the most important crime issues in the community and the way we do that obviously require being able to cull through massive amounts of incident data, arrest data, filing data, and try to understand what are the crime drivers and how do we get to those so we can get to the most serious crime and most serious offenders. so that individual will be working on that project with us, not this specifically. on this project what we have right now is attorneys in the office are going through their files of cases that were on their face eligible based on the charge and reviewing the individual's criminal history to see if they

have any disqualifying offense in the past and to confirm that the facts of the case apply to the appropriate charge and if they are eligible we stipulate on this one-page report and submit that to the district attorney. we expect that should culminate in the next couple months, it's just a matter of people having the free time to go through those files but we expect to do that quickly. we had 375 cases that were open that we had charged as felonies before prop 47 passed and we reduced to misdemeanors once it passed so those have now been moved through and they are now being treated as misdemeanors. the final category of cases impacted of this are people who 10 years ago had a drug conviction or a property crime conviction and now say i'd like to come back and have that reduced to a misdemeanor from felony so it will reup my housing or employment opportunities. that is sort of

unfolding before us. it depends largely on people reaching out either to the public defender's office or another agency to ask for assistance in getting that reduction. when they get those then there's obviously a court proceeding in which we're involved and we don't quite know what that will be, it's very dependent on how many people reach out for that assistance. >> once people are released and their crimes have been reassigned and they are a misdemeanor now, how do we make sure the population is receiving the appropriate reentry support? >> adult probation i think will be able to speak to that portion of it. all the 375 cases that were reduced to misdemeanors were not currently on probation but the 900 cases that we're going through now, adult probation is in that conversation with us, they are reviewing those individuals' files to see what kind of report they need and i'm sure they will speak to that in their presentation about how they are planning to reduce those cases. >> is there some kind of body

coordinating this or are you facilitating this discussion? i'm just trying to understand the structure that's being reated and put in place to go through these files. >> right. so we pulled everybody identified, the public defender identified the cases they had, reidentified the cases we thought were eligible. everybody has pulled their files. >> are you all in the same room, are you doing this by email, how is it physically working? >> we're not all in the same room, no, that's not exactly possible. each department is pulling their files then we have a conversation about each individual. i think individual x is eligible for reduction in their case, do you agree, adult probation says i think this person is eligible, do you have a plan. >> do you have an agreed plan that you are meeting like on wednesday at 3:00 we have a conference call where all the

entities involved are coming together? that's what i'm trying to understand. >> no. >> to me it sounds still informal, there's no real structure figured out yet. >> the structure is figured out but it's not done in a formalized we all sit down with our files in the same moment because everybody has different staff assigned to them with different free time. everybody is absorbing this work into our existing workload. we don't have an individual that is assigned to reevaluating all the prop 47 cases. at the moment the da top assistant is doing it with the top two managers so we want to be sure they do it correctly. they have less free time to do this but they want to squeeze it in. so far we have no problems, we have a great relationship with the public defender and the court is happy, since it's only 900 cases we feel sure we can get

through that in a reasonable way. >> as a representative of the author of the legislation i'm interest ned hearing anything about unintended consequences. there's been discussion about the dna profiles of the folks that are released from prison from the state's data base. what's the fix for this? >> i'm not sure about the state data base. >> sure, the pd will expand more in their presentation, but there are dna profiles that exist in a data base, i believe it's called cordis, if i'm not mistaken, there may be approximately 230 of these profiles taken out of this data base. this is a data base we use to help us solve crimes, particularly when it comes to sexual offenders. so folks whose crimes were originally

charged as a felony and now they are a misdemeanor, because of this reassignment their profile will be taken out of the data base. how do we remedy this. >> for a long time anybody who was akueszd of any felony could have their dna swabed. if you were arrested for a burglary or murder were at equal risk to be swabbed. >> that's my question. so what's the answer? >> so i think that that will be worked out if the police department or other agency wants to bring legislation forward in this legislative session in sacramento. >> so which legislators did you work with in sacramento to get this legislation introduced? i don't have that information. >> we didn't work with legislators. it was a ballot measure. so the state legislature took this up

senator leno introduced this as state legislation, he was unable to secure the votes, the governor vetoed it, so we went to the ballot. >> so the voters have spoken i get that. if we need to create trailing legislation has state senator leno indicated he would be willing to introduce this legislation? >> i know several of the district attorneys around the state that were very opposed to the measure are working on changes that they want to see happen. i expect that we'll see multiple pieces of legislation in this coming session dealing with changes or clean up that people want to make. >> so if we in our group discussions find that there may be some changes, would the sponsor of this legislation, the district attorney, be willing to help us carry this legislation in sacramento? >> i think we would certainly be open to sitting down and talking through any concerns

that yourself and the police department have in *r and trying to find solutions to those. if it's legislation we should have that conversation absolutely. >> quick question. i'm not quite sure if it's appropriate to ask you but i'm going to and if it's not, you'll let me know. how do we begin to prioritize the spending of the anticipated savings on the local level? do you have any thoughts about that? >> i do. we need to have a conversation around justice reinvestment. we explored that when we created it several years ago. because there are so many new answers to public safety and our budgets i think it's difficult for the mayor's office or sometimes even yourselves as supervisors to really understand where savings might be found and how to reallocate those or when we need to shift our priorities to different types of law enforcement efforts, why those are critical to our work because we develop a level of expertise doing it every day that's hard to replicate. we don't have currently any space

where we have any conversation around justice reinvestment. we're obviously at a point right now where our jail is half empty and there's a lot we should be talking about around that and we don't currently have a forum where that happens. that is an issue that arose around realignment and it is raised again by this ballot measure and the savings and i think will continue to be an on-going issue as san francisco and the country begin to reevaluate how we're going to spend our public safety resources. we've seen a reduction in felony filings so we're anticipating making moves within our office to increase the size of our misdemeanor team at the expense of our felony team so we can handle that increased case load there. it won't be a direct savings in terms of personnel but

hopefully those cases will be processed more quickly. a felony will take more time for someone in our office than a misdemeanor case, they often resauchl quicker because the consequences are less severe so there should be court savings and the misdemeanor cites, because they are cited out at the place they are committed we don't see those for 3 months. we won't see those for 3 months from november. >> so you don't be have a suggestion on pilot programs. for example, i think the district attorney's office partners with two organizations; would these two organizations be on the priority list. >> i think things we should be looking at as a county is increasing the amount of drug treatment programs whose metric shows they have been successful treating individuals, as well as mental health services. those are the two larger

drivers driving this sort of thing and so we need to make sure there are services for those individuals to keep them from re-offending and hopefully get them on a path to keep them crime free and we need to invest in crime fighting since we will be freed up from some of the burden of doing felony drug cases we now have an opportunity to really start diving into violent crime and figure out how to solve those more difficult changes we have as a community. >> thanks very much. colleagues, do you have any questions for the district attorney's office? thanks very much, miss deberry, good to see you. next we're going to hear from a representative of the police department.

>> good morning, supervisor breed, cohen, tang, my name is commander robert mosier, i am here to present on prop situation -- 47 on behalf of the chief. i want to talk just a little bit more in depth about the particular crimes that were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors. drug crimes, simple possession or personal use drug crimes under three specific sections of the health

and safety code were reduced. that included heroin possession, cocaine possession, concentrated marijuana or cannabis, and methamphetamine along with other controlled substances. basically there was no limitation on the amount possessed as long as it could be indicated for personal use. stolen property, a theft or receiving a stolen property if it is less than $950, that would be reduced to a misdemeanor. commercial burglary, if the theft is under $950 if it occurs during normal business hours that would be under 950 and any theft related crime under 950 including theft from a person, automobiles, firearms, animals, theft of an access card, would all be reclassified as misdemeanor along with forgery and check fraud under 950 as well. these crimes can be charged as

felonies under certain limited circumstances. if the suspect in the case is a registered sex offender or if they have committed a list of certain prior felonies the majority of which or all of which basically are crimes of violence. the important thing to note is in the sections stolen property, commercial burglary under 950, that's really the highest category in terms of numbers of crime that we see here in the city on a monthly and annual basis. in terms of the impact of our existing practices, department general orders officers are inquired to issue a citation and release suspects at the scene with certain exceptions that being if the person does not have sufficient id or would have an active warrant for

their arrest. that means when officers do encounter a prop 47 crime out in the field they cannot make custodial arrest, they would have to issue a citation at the scene unless they have one of those certain exceptions that would require a booking. the other big impact on our operations would be the requirement for a silt citizen's arrest form. being these felonies are now classified as misdemeanors, like all misdemeanors if they don't occur in the officer's presence that means the officer would be required to obtain a citizen's arrest from the reporting party. an example would be for drug crimes, if a citizen called on a case, if the officers got there and the offense of a drug crime does not occur in their presence, the officer would have to go

back to the reporting party and request a citizen's arrest in order to effect an arrest. a lot of times when we get reports of drug crimes they are anonymous so it remains to be seen how that's going to affect reporting in the long-term. once we do receive a misdemeanor case, that case is forwarded to the district attorney's office for charging. the impact on jail overcrowding, we can anticipate that since we would be making less custodial arrests given the fact that we have the misdemeanor citation requirement, that would result in a lower county jail population in terms of the people that we would be sending as a police department because we would be citing these individuals out. some potential issues or concerns: first let me address the property crime threshold.

prior to prop 47 the threshold of property crimes was increased. it was 450, it was increased to 950, not as a result of prop 47 but just prior to prop 47. however, prop 47 also eliminated the prior theft conviction to make the petty thefts with a prior a felony. now they are not felonies, they are misdemeanors. basically a felony request that would require a custodial arrest, with that new threshold of 950 and there is no situation where a prior theft conviction would come into play, most suspects that are arrested for a property crime would be released at the scene unless of course they had a warrant for their arrest or some other reason that would require us to book them and take them to county jail. of course that would leave them in a potential situation where they are at the scene and

could go and commit another theft offense, being that we cannot make a custodial arrest. for drug possession for personal use, prior to prop 47, persons in possession of drugs for personal use often chose to address their addiction through drug court in order to avoid a felony conviction. it remains to be seen how many of these people will opt for drug court to address their addiction now we're talking about misdemeanor convictions that they are attempting to avoid as opposed to the prior felonies. as was mentioned previously, prop 47 is retroactive, which means anyone who has ever been arrested for a felony offense is now considered to be a misdemeanor under prop 47 could have that prior felony reclassified as a misdemeanor. the impact of that remains to be seen in terms of the state dna data base which was touched on earlier in miss

deberry's presentation. if in fact dna samples would be required to be removed from that state data base, you can imagine the impact that that could have on investigations that rely on dna samples such as sexual assault investigations, if we have a whole pool of individuals whose dna are now removed from that data base. of course that remains to be seen. in terms of number of cases that we're seeing, of course the data is limited because we're really only talking about a short period of time since the law was enacted. in november of 2014 the department saw a total of 82 prop 47 cases, basically felonies that are now misdemeanors and of course cases, 18, or 22 percent of them, qualified for citation release under department general orders. in december 14 the department saw a total of 76 prop 47 cases

and of those 35 qualified for citation release, or 46 percent. how does it impact our budget? really the anticipated cost savings for sfpd are expected to be negligible and i'll explain why we say that. officers are still required to follow many of the same procedures they would be required to follow had they been making a felony arrest. that includes the initial response the initial investigation which could include canvasing the area for witnesses, taking witness statements, locating potential evidence, the authoring of a police report, the booking of evidence, the confirming of the subject's identity, preparing of a misdemeanor rebooking packet. officers with the exception of preparing the misdemeanor rebooking packet, would have to go through all

those same steps had the case been a felony arrest. so in terms of the actual response to the crime it's really not anticipated to change substantially. really as we -- in conclusion, as we can see from the police department standpoint how this is going to affect us or how it is affecting us operationally, really the impact of how it affects crime is going to remain to be seen over the course of the next coming months and year and we'll be able to have a better picture. questions? >> thank you very much. i wanted you to go back to this previous slide. >> sure. >> it talks about potential issues and concerns. the third bullet point