d or encounter some situations where they ended up doing time or spending time in juvenile hall for something they didn't do, so i guess i am just trying to understand how does that play a role in some of these challenges that we face as it relates to racial bias? >> it's a very good question. whether you're a victim or a defendant you have a right to be treated equally and i think when there is a perception you're not going to be treated fairly by the police then the response from a victim is not come forward or not cooperate or refuse to testify. certainly we have experienced that in san francisco. i think the other thing to look at too i can tell you many of our clients when you look at their case histories were victims. they were victims of sexual assault. they were victims of trauma, victims of

violence in their own community, and the fact that they didn't feel protected by police in some cases causes them not to take the appropriate steps that they otherwise should that a person who is not burdened by those perspectives -- perceptions or experiences might so i think it's very important that we look at the system in terms of the impact on everyone whether it's witnesses, whether it's jurors. you know it's interesting we just had a situation in a homicide case where jurors actually raised their hand when the prosecutor said something to the effect that you just have to be color blind and there are no african-americans in the jury panel and the defense attorney had raised that and the prosecutor said something like you just have to be color blind and a white juror said "that's

a racist statement" and half of the courtroom applauded and the judge solved the problem by excusing the panel so we're definitely seeing people reacting because of what is happening, because of what happened in ferguson and stalt an island and with the black lives matter movement. >> so i going to ask if the members speak at the public comment time so we can get to the chief of police and a few other speakers so the next speaker is greg sure our chief of police and the district attorney and the human rights commission and joyce hicks from the office of citizen complaints. chief sure thank you for being here. >> thank you. good afternoon. i think as reprehensible as the texts were

my stomach isn't where it ought to be. we have expedited this investigation and done by the close of business tomorrow. there will be suspensioned. there will be more than a few officers referred to the police commission with a single recommendation of termination. i cannot unring the bell on these texts. i am as disgusted by them as everyone should be, and we will do what we can to rebuild the damage done by the exchanges back and forth with mr. feringer who sits as a convicted felon who will be reporting for incarceration i believe before the end of the week. to that end it's been mentioned how -- i wanted to correct a couple of things that came up. one, supervisor mar we don't do stop and frisk. i have been very clear on that in san

francisco. constitutionally terry versus ohio. we stop or detain based on reasonable suspicion and we research and/or frisk based on facts and concern for officer safety so i want to reassure you that the program spoken up and received attention in new york city stop and frisk i think i was straightforward and firm on it when originally asked about it a couple years ago. we don't practice it here in san francisco. also there were slides mentioned in regards to narcotics. narcotic arrests were off qift 85% in san francisco prior to prop that time and they're off more and i have spoken to those people and now have trafficking in electronic goods and that seems to be the new trend and it's not lost on

any of you at the board since we talk often about the up tick in property crime really across the state. and then lastly when it comes to some of the objectively that he speaks of he have been together in court many times and upon coming into officer he asked about o adopting double blind [inaudible] spreads and provide a more better and objective result in less false positives. that's something we adopted just about before any other law enforcement agency across the state and we have more things that we do as well but i wanted to correct a couple of things that were addressed. as far as these officers the first thing is and i think it was mentioned earlier how did they get into the san francisco police department at all? so we're

asking for our personnel division to audit their personal history questions and the questionnaires that come through the application process to see if there is a common denominator among them and should have been a red flag and prevented them from being hire. we are randomly selecting other officers who haven't engaged in misconduct at all to think that the red flags in these officers are present with others just to make it an objective productive look. i know that he's made policy recommendations. i know the district attorney has made policy recommendations. other people have. i have been in close contact with the president of our police commission. they are the overseers of policy and discipline. they are the ones that will receive the

allegations with recommendations for termination and i think it's fair to make these suggestions, but i think the proper body to make the suggestions to is the police commission for consideration and we will work as we do already very closely with the occ and policy analysts to make the police department better, and there are many instances of that whether it's our cit training, our creating time and distance bulletin for people only in danger to themselves, what we have worked with young people whose parents were arrested and had unfortunate encounters on police and [inaudible] parents and others in the country are starting to adopt as we don't want to traumatize children anymore they are already by their parents arrested. i would like to speak a little bit on

president obama's task force on 20th century policing. they write in light of recent events that weakened the relationship between police and the communities they protect president obama signed an executive order establishing a task force on policing. trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve is essential in a democracy. in the first pillar they speak to building trusts and legitimacy on police and community divide is the first pillar but the foundational principle under laying the relations between law enforcement and the communities that they serve. he speaks to police officers as guardians and he quotes plateau -- playdoe. only those with the most impeccable character that choose to bear the responsibility of protecting that democracy. that is why

when i recommend these officers for termination they have sullied the rest of the fine men and women that have high character that they speak of and they do establish themselves as guardians and i think some members of the board here know how hard the san francisco police department has been working with the community including developing a community policing general order that we work with supervisor campos and supervisor avalos on in the mission district. the first of itself kind -- >> chief, can i interrupt you for one moment and say that the racist homophobic texts -- do you think they're isolated cases as some have tried to say or is it a symptom of a much larger problem to be addressed in the police department and a culture within the police department? >> obviously every profession

has ts culture and law enforcement has its culture. i think in the san francisco police department we try to do so much with the community and try so hard to be transparent. obviously since these text messages caught me completely by surprise and only came after a criminal previous a federal investigation less we may not have known about them at all so i think erring on the side of caution it's not limited to these officers we reinstituted the racial profiling class that was talked about earlier and going away and thanks to the reverend he asked what happened to that and a grant funded class that i now fund with general fund dollars with some of the original instructors and reinstituted back in january before the text messages came out. this training that was spoken about actually director hicks and i and other top

leadership in the police department and other department heads in san francisco under took under the leadership actually of president of the vhrc susan christian yesterday at the public library and took some of these tests that they talked about so i think it's really important that we institutallize training, institutionalize auditing, really, really look for this sort of -- any kind of indicator we can find when hiring. right now we're hiring as many police officers as when i came in at the 80's and we're working with neighborhoods in at risk communities. we start the a cadet program with the young people and my time as chief and bay view and 900 jobs given to young people in san francisco and 97% are given to people of

color and 59% go to african-american children. we want young people to see themselves in the san francisco police department so they come to us. we want them to join the police department because the best way to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again is from the inside so we have 300 vacancies. if my request of this commission goes as it should we're going to have a few more. i would love to fill those positions with young people that are right minded. >> any other questions for the chief? president breed? >> thank you chief for being here. i just wanted to have a little more information about what the plan is for -- i know that there are going to be recommendations, but there are things that we have heard, that i have heard, that not only are the officers involved and the whole text message situation

but 10 possibly more so can you give us clarity on how many and what the plan is in each of the particular instances? >> sure. so over 30,000 pages or lines of text messaging were combed over, volumes of paperwork came out of this federal investigation. it was working in cooperation with the occ and director hicks that we first learned about the text messages as we were in another box of documents. we shut everything else down and everything was about the messages. we were able to identify 14 officers that were text messages with him. not all 14 officers were engaged in these hateful racist homophobic texts. all of the officers though did something to some degree that was inappropriate against department policy. for instance without jeppizing the process one officer was not in

the area of assigned responsibility and that was clear based on that he was on duty and texted where he was to mr. feringer and not where he is supposed to be and that is not allowed unless approved by a supervisor. others had text conversations where mr. ferminger said a reprehensible statement and instead of as -- as spoken about that was it reported to the department and not in a response and however intended to be dismissive wasn't appropriate either so there will be some of the officers who won't -- that don't reach the same level as the officers that i will be referring to the commission. eric director hicks and i sat down and we want to get it right. >>

>> and those that fall below the minimum qualifications upon the character that we incest upon be dismissed and i am. >> >> going there after this meeting. i have to go over all of the allegations as sustained and sign off of them and sign some suspension letters that are immediate and the letter vs to be served and at that time it's agendized at the police commission and from they take control of the investigations. >> so what's the timeline on this whole thing, do you know? >> there are -- i don't have it off of the top of my head. there are statutory guidelines but it's a quasi judicial procedure once it gets to the commission. >> and i guess this is two questions. number one, so for example if there is someone who retired early who is involved in the situation like this will

they still -- if there's wrong doing discovered will they still be eligible to receive their pension? >> so pensions as is in the case of some of the criminal convictions of late are crimes of moral turpitude which could impact the pension. all of those decisions are made with the retirement department and separate from the police department and i don't know what their feeling is and morally criminal with the text messages it doesn't cross the legislative threshold so i don't know what they would have other than the fact they would leave the jurisdiction of myself and the commission. >> yeah, and i just wanted to say the reason i bring this up is because the fact that we're going to have to look at cases involving these officers and

comb through cases and possibly let people out that probably shouldn't be out on the streets and in some cases let people out who probably were wrongly convicted. i don't know what we have here but that's going to cost a lot of money, and it's -- i mean those kinds of things should probably play a role in the decision especially if someone is expecting to receive a lifetime of retirement from the city and county of san francisco and it's costing the taxpayers a lot of money to go through this process because of their behavior. i would like to make sure that an example is made so that people know that if they are working for this department this is the kind of thing that should never be tolerated and this is not the department for that. >> i appreciate that and certainly within the scope of my authority i will work with the district attorney and the public defender to get them all of the police reports. i believe we did that in regard to

mr. ferminger once he was charged criminally and will do it for the other other officers with this speech and there are a likelihood cases will be challenged. >> thank you. >> supervisor cohen. >> thank you very much chief. the baltimore police department created a professional standards and accountability bureau to create transparency codify officer accountability to help get rid of corruption and best practices for policy and training for the department, and i would like to hear your thoughts around this desire to see a professional standard created here inside san francisco's police department?

>> that chief is a close friend of mine and after being chief in oakland. we sit on the major chiefs together. i will call him tomorrow and see what he's got in place. >> all right. thank you. do you believe there's a need for such a body that creates professional standards as well as accountability for officers? >> well, i do hold my captains responsible for their commands but i think to have an outside -- a unit out of my office whether attached to internal affairs or somehow associated with what we used to call in the police department staff inspection, but over time as we held our ranking members more accountable for their charge that the need for the staff inspection unit because of the 300 officers short in the police department the want of the

public was to see more officers on the street but obviously if we have officers that are not just so i think i would rather know that sooner than later. >> a couple more questions. one of my constituent organizations wrote me a letter requesting that we bring operation cease-fire here to san francisco particularly calling out the boston model and i understand that we have somewhat of a modified version of it through crn and the serious fire has had various iterations here in san francisco and that of which was implemented by the chief before you got here. >> actually it was in 1994. i was actually captain in the mission district. david kennedy who did the night light and boston model brought that to san

francisco and tetd the judge was i believe kevin ryan and we did different iterations of serious fire over time and went to a zone strategy in 2005 under chief heather fong with the deputy chief and john murphy and that was the low year matched last year in san francisco where we had 45 homicides. i am happy to look at that again. >> so from what i am hearing there is a ground swell of support growing for desire to see the model that is implemented in boston serious fire here in san francisco. >> we do have serious fire meetings biweekly ongoing. >> i understand but it takes on a different -- it's not quite based after the boston model. it's not as strong as the model that i am referring to. >> i can talk to -- the boston

model is pairing probation and police officers in the evening hours to do probation -- knock and talks at residences and we do that to some degree but there's not a lot of adult probation officers that work in the evening hours. i am happy to talk with you supervisor and get you to where you want to go. >> i am happy to having that conversation and i want to go back to recruitment and not just that but retention and the next step is promotion certainly a challenge that the department has been facing for some time and it's not just within the police department. i believe there are departments here on the city side that also lack diversity, the fire department also i would argue is equal in being guilty in this area. you mentioned -- you referenced the

cadet program as a training tool. i think what i am looking at is something a little more robust, a stronger effort that has a budget ask, maybe attached to it that is more thoughtful, more deliberate, and actually recruiting and getting folks out from the different parts of the neighborhood and san francisco first is a priority and then from the diffe ethnic community scption what you're doing to make it more robust? >> yeah we're doing aggressive recruiting. we have television commercials. we have retained staff from local community colleges to recruit within the colleges and the local universities. that has netted

us about 26 candidates right now that are in the queue. we have 30 cadets, 21 that we hired last saturday and nine we're hiring and a partnership through the city and sales force ceo mark [inaudible] is going to get some additional ones and that is 40. the recruits that are full time students age 18 and over with an interest in law enforcement and hold them close until they're old enough to test to come to the police department. >> what about the current academy classes or the ones in formation? >> one current class is 12% african-american and the next class that will start in april starts off at 14%. >> what about latinos and pacific islanders? >> i believe that is an equal amount, somewhere in the mid-teens so the focus is obviously the 300 officers that retired -- in fact i see a

couple in the background here -- are my generation so when we came in there was a hiring decree and so a lot of the people retired when we got old we don't have that but i need to hire back in kind and within the law without using any quotas or variety so the method to achieve the goal is to basically fish in san francisco's since i think san franciscans make good police officers and i go to schools to talk about the importance of graduating from school and the myriad of city job and/or other jobs can you get with a high school diploma and once we achieve that we talk about higher education required for the cadet program and a 20-dollar an hour job and anybody that knows anyone present or on television that

has a young person that might even be interested and if they don't -- if they decide they don't want to be in law enforcement it's a still good paying job in school. >> so it sounds like we have a good strong lead with the young persons and orienting them towards the program but i think what i am looking to here hear what other programs -- (paused).

>> >> and we would the chief if he wanted to borrow our officers so his could attend the funeral which i was present at for fallen officer michael johnson. we have enough officers to augment a day time patrol for them so we're trying everything we can to get a police department that looks like san francisco. >> thank you. >> thank you supervisor cohen. i was going to say that supervisor avalos wanted to make a comment and i share a concern that texts -- of course the officers -- the four plus perhaps the 10 or others involved should be held accountable and i realize that susie loftus and the police commission will go through the reforms suggested but i fear the focus on the texts is just the tip of a iceberg and a broader

problem and advocates for many years have been advocating to have institutional changes within the police department address bias and have a department that is free of bias from the hiring to the screening to the academies to the field to the whole department and that's why i asked if it's a few bad apples or a broader institutional problem? and i think you addressed that you're dealing with the institutional changes recommendations from the community but i want to ask you as supervisor breed asked how long will this take and what's the next step after the investigation is done that you're going to be completing soon chief? >> well, the audit and history questionnaires is ongoing. that started had the names. the work with the public defender's office and da's office and any

reports or issued or by the officers in question are looked at for that bias. i think that it's also important to note that the commission -- we were already trying to make sure if not in line but i know the mayor who shares everybody's concerns and we've had many conversations over this that we need to be a police department that the community trusts and goes to and doesn't see this small half a percent of officers or less as indicative of san francisco police officers. however, like mr. hadashi we all have biases and we try to help people and service like we said we would and i insist upon that for our officers so we will get implicit bias training in conjunction with the racial profiling class. we will

continue to put recruits in boys and girls club of color both on and off duty. we will assume nothing and error on the side of caution that we need to touch everybody so in the in service recurring training as well as the basic academy training. >> thank you. i see no other questions but thank you for being here. the next speaker before we get to public comment is christine deberry chief of staff for the district attorney and followed by the chair of the human rights commission and thanks to rich for being here as well and last is joyce hicks before we go to public comment. >> thank you supervisors. thank you for calling this hearing on this important topic. i am happy to be here on behalf of the da and very concerned as well. i want to address the questions by supervisor cohen and