e and well. what we recommend as a solution is we want to see a task force that includes the naacp, community leaders, the chief of police, the leadership and any other group and organization that is willing to engage us in a debriefing on racism. we want to have mental health professionals that are there available to us so that our members can tell you how we felt, how we have been hurt by being a member of the san francisco police department. we risk our lives on a daily basis because we love to do this. we are here as your servants. however for us to be disrespected at this level is inexcusable and we are asking you to help bring healing to the members of the san francisco police department. we ask you to allow us to engage those who are the commanding officers of

this police department in conversations as to how we have been disrespected; how we have been distreated; how we have been victims not only of racism but homophobic behavior of others who have been allowed to abuse us and misuse us, and again i want to say that it is not only incumbent that the city and county train the leaders, but you got to start with the rank and file. bring us some healing so that we can in turn do the job that we have been sworn to do and the manner in which you can be proud of. i thank you for your time. >> thank you president williams. next speaker. >> good evening reverend richard baker is my name. when i was preparing to come here i couldn't help but think of the

old testament prophet daniel around the fifth chapter of the work and the king called him in and said interpret the handwriting on the wall, and it's clear that the handwriting on the walls of these chambers and indeed the halls of justice here in san francisco reflect the fact that there is an utter disrespect for the african-american citizen in this city as well as the purported disciplinary process that is imposed by the san francisco police commission. we have to look at the disciplinary record of our police chief gregory suhr who is a defendant in a case pending set for trial on april 20 brought by kelly o'hare. and in that case the

court filings -- it's all a matter of public record indicate there is a disregard for the disciplinary process in san francisco because our own police chief has what i consider to be a staggering disciplinary record himself koording to the -- according to the court file scption failure to report some complaints and charged lying to the fbi getting a security clearance, his involvement in the faheato gate scandal and release of protesters and suspension in 2009 for his failure to report a domestic violence ins incident. is there any question in your mind why the police officers of san francisco felt at liberty to exchange racist bigoted text messages? the handwriting is on the wall. we need a new police

chief in san francisco. we need to stop the rhetoric and the ignorance of the rights of african-american af people in the city and i will close african-americans come into contact with the police department more than any other racial group in this city. i live in the neighborhood and the hood. i live there in the heart of it and i love it but i will share with you we need the police -- the african-american community needs effective and lawful policing as victims as well as persons who are alleged to have been involved in criminality. i thank you for your time and your attention this evening. >> thank you reverend baker. reverend townsend. >> thank you president mar and president breed and supervisor cohen and let me say that the

problem here is first of all if we believe that the owner people that saw the texts were the four officers and the other 10 or 12 then you're probably too naive to be living in america number one because america is a dangerous place. and it's a culture and a psychology that sets up in the police departments all over with many officers. (paused). >> >> because no other police officer will say something and the thin blue line will hold fast and even officers that don't like it that do not like hearing it that it's like a punch in the gut is not going to say anything because to talk out of turn jeopardizes their future, their promotions and so

forth as not being a team player and what the department has to understand and just as they ask us in our community when we see a crime we need to tell the police about it. when they see crimes of this nature, social crimes they have to tell somebody about it and do something about it. that can not be a one way street. there has to be cooperation from the departmentand i don't think the chief's actions have been strong or swift enough. we tried to tell him a year ago and when this happened i thought how much greater would have been if the chief said yes we have some problems and we implemented a community policing program that

we implemented sensitivity training and that we implemented recruitment. it probably would have been a one day story. thank you so much. >> thank you reverend of the i will call a few more names. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, but i'm going to call a few more. [calling speaker names] next speaker. >> hi. i am monica berlin and i have made police reports for the last eight months about the physical abuse of my son and san francisco general hospital on july 6 when i took my son there called the san francisco police department to come out and take a report about my son and the san francisco police never did

anything about it. i then found these photographs of my son being sexually abused from the fraternal fathers family and they live in piiveg heights and have a lot of money the police haven't done anything about these crimes. i became so distressed that i told the office of citizen complaints after making two complaints to them they was going to shoot this person and i never said anything like that my whole life. i was an ad min assistant and gentech and worked for the u.s. attorney's office in the federal building ironically for the department of health and human services for the office of general counsel. i was relieved from the san francisco jail

last week after spending two months for felony charges after making criminal threats and just from being frustrated with the police that refuse to do anything and now i haven't seen my son in four months. i saw him before his dad bit him in the face and there was a witness and the person made cps reports and they haven't done anything and the police haven't done anything and i think it's convenient that greg suhr left and heard the important things that people had to say and he took charge of this case and ignored it -- >> thank you. >> and i think the police department is shameful -- >> thank you. >> [inaudible] >> next speaker. >> hi. i am christopher hite and with the san francisco public defender's office and chair of the racial justice community and san francisco public defender's office. what

i see is occurring right now in san francisco and plays off of reverend brown's comments there is a felonyization occurring in the african-american community and the african-american community areas of san francisco and that is what is happening with the criminal justice system in regard to blacks in san francisco, and the problem is really focused on those areas. that's where you see the explicit and implicit bias and that's where we see it as public defenders and what we did with the plan for reform and you have a copy of it and i focus in the discussion and what i think as councilmembers you should focus on is the implicit bias training, is the assignment of people of color to the black communities and blown communities and incentives that you can provide for officers to

serve in those communities. >> >> either financially or some other way so officers of color serve in those communities. what commissioner -- director hicks said with regards to body cameras san francisco has the ability financially to put cameras on police officers. it serves as a deterrent and an ability for us to evaluate what is actually happening. independent counsel and the use of complaints instead of grand juries when prosecuting shootings by police officers or beatings by police officers and lastly statistics have to be mandated by the councilmembers on traffic stops and this is where i would differ with chief suhr that detentions occur when you. to call them stop and frisk or not they occur everyday, all the time in the black and brown communities in san francisco. there need to be

statistics of that. >> thank you. (paused). >> >> it was an experienced -- amazing experience listening to the speakers today and from the chief and what we experience is 100% different from the things said in this chamber here today. tonight despite all of the nice speeches and nice feelings many of my clients, future clients are going to get pulled over.

their passengers are searchd and go into jail and i will walk into a holding tank where there is a small population and filled with african-american youth and older people too and a lot of the proposals all seem to be in house, so the police department is going to look at something and the da's office is looking at something but the fact that we know about the racist text messages is a complete freak accident. it's a fluke. the chief of police who was supervising the officers became the da. therefore he couldn't do the investigation and asked for a federal investigation. sergeant feringer asked to be on bail even though he was sentenced to prison and they released the text messages. this is like someone breaks

their arm, goes to the doctor, finds out they have cancer and removes the cancer and thinks maybe we shouldn't go to the doctor anymore. we need an independent investigation. ferguson had an investigation that revealed tremendous things about the city that the police department and da's office and no one locally was interested in getting into. we need outside investigation of san francisco so the city can be proud of the justice system we have. thank you. >> thank you. [calling speaker names] next speaker. >> my name is angela jenkins and i appreciate the hearing today and i want to thank you for the opportunity to encourage our leaders to look fearlessly at the policing and congratulate this committee for voting to divest from funds that in part cruelty to animals is very

important that we look at that and it's a big move forward. it takes tremendous courage to prevent cruelty to animals and proof that the city earns to be known as a humanitarian hero but if we invest time, energy and funds into systems, structures, organizations that repeatedly dehumanize african-americans, other people of color can we really truly call ourselves a humanitarian hero? my suggestion of going forward have been reiterated and spoke of. in particular i would like to address the patrol specials, particularly under san francisco police department. i personally had an experience where there is bias there as well. i surface this and sent it directly to the internal affairs committee about five years ago and i haven't

heard from it. there was a statement that was questionable by a person under the auspices of san francisco police department. i will follow up with that but i do congratulate the committee today. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello. with a bay area organization. i'm going to talk about three stories which i think exhibit both structural racism this the system, dehumanization of clients in the system and implicit bias. as far as racism one of the things the community can do to understand what is going on is literally walk into any of the departments in the hall of justice and look at the

individuals coming out and question whether this is explicit or implicit bias in arrests or charging or in negotiations or is it a question of putting resources in the wrong area? maybe there should be more resources in youth development programs or things of that nature so young people are not caught up in the system. dehumanization and imagine a situation where your young son or daughter has been accused of a homicide. a judge looked at the case and said there is no evidence and threw the case out and you're going to trial on a lesser charge and the district attorney comes in and says sorry i am charging with a homicide again and now plead to a strike because i'm going to use this as leverage against you and you're

a parent wait a second. my child was looking at a couple years and now they're looking at life and think about whether that could happen to any individual in the city besides an african-american in a project here and that has happened to clients of ours. the last point is one of explicit bias which is there's something called gang task force in san francisco -- >> please wrap up. >> -- where they collect information not when there is an arrest but they collect information about young people to put in a file. the young person with his siblings in san francisco and the entry by the police officer is "hanging out with future gang members." think about what is says about the explicit or implicit bias of the officer and labeling them a

gang member. >> thank you very much. (change of captioners).3 4 f1

>> >> this becomes institutionized. my personal recommendation is there training that comes from the people institute for suv viling and beyond. i do want people to understand that to work on this, to understand and dismantle institutionalized racism one needs a analysis and understand how the race construct happened historically in this kuntgy how the police department and law enforcement are one of many that carry on institutionalized racism with the city perepech waiting that. it is a fwo day training and don't think anyone can undo racism in 4 hours or a workshop so it thaz to be a commitment.

i also cu-mind the [inaudible] police board and value input from the community. the community needs just js when the community sees justice maybe you restore the relationships between the police department and community. i reiterate the police killings that happened, there has to be a sense of justice from the community. >> [inaudible] attorney with the drug policy allys. thank for start thg conversation about the issue. in order to get a broader picture to not only look at aarrests by san francisco fleece department that leads to state prosecution squz also those referred to federal prosecution. a recent filing by the federal public

defends office indicated a joint operation between the san francisco police department and the fram drug enforcement administration led to 37 arrests which caeries mandatory minimum sentences mptd these are low level drug crimes. the startling thing about that statistic is all 37 defends are african american. now, all the data and the research studies presented in the federal case indicates that drug selling-it knhs from all racial and ethnic backgroundss however these 37 cases are all african americans. i know the chief said drug arrests decreased in the city, but it is also important to look at the federal level because that is a

critical component. thank you once again for the opportunity to present here today >> next speaker, mrs. cruise >> thank you. president breed, supervisor mar, i thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight and i'll be very brief. it has been a long evening. what i will say is i stood at this very podium months ago and said ferguson is everywhere and i was shamed for that. for saying that i may say that this structural racism exists in our city and it does and we are seeing that come out of these investigation that are outside of the realm of the investigations that we can do inly. i urge city departments to look at the opportunity for

having outside investigations that are not tainted by the culture and the ingrained racism, the cultural bias, the homeo phobia, the bias we see even just in how mentally ill people are treated by the police and how poor people are treated by the police. i think that when we can start to address the racism and address the bias at all levels, at all phases from beginning to end, it is never ending battle that we face, a struggle. in my own self and grew up in a racially charged house in the deep south and i struggle with bias. we all do and if we are not willing to look in the mirror

as you said, all of us, how is thishering going to move forward when this board was accused of being strong armed by the poa? how will we move forward and heal san francisco. >> thank you. mr. mohammed >> i got the answer to that. first of all, let me say supervisor mar and supervisor cohen and breed for calling the hearing. i'm representing san francisco black and brown alliance and stand with the naacp and [inaudible] anyone and everyone who wants to see justice in san franciscof. let me straight forward. i received a letter from the department of justice in regards key documentation between 1995 and 2015 with the san francisco police department. the one thing is clear, they are speaking about

no racial profiling in san francisco. that is interesting because when we request documentation from the sfpd, a lot of times they send us to the sheriff department and say these documents don't exist: want to know how many murders happened in san francisco from 1984-2015 and say they can't provide t. they provide it from pressure from a attorney. my point is this, san francisco has got to be aware that this is a monster that is out of control. it is wise to bring in department of justice because pin other cities like cleveland and philadelphia where the chief at that time charles ramsy said we can't control this, it is too political so we need outside help. we shouldn't stress our resources and man power and

woman power to disregard the fact that san francisco has a lot of issues that are happen ing in terms of black and brown and housing, drabrown was speaking of. it is wides for the mayor to step out of the comfort zone and say i'm calling on the department of justice because other cities have called on the department of justice. it only makes sense they come in >> thank you mr. mohammed. next speaker and if there is anyone else that would like to speak, line up >> good evening supervisors. my name is arlong drummer and i was in the first class of women police officers back in 1975. during the week i came across some documents i came, some depositions and gaichb tothe federal judge in 1976 and 1978 and going through-i want to

read this. i was a supervisor in the [inaudible] an office called up to the [inaudible] unit and he was giving a report of a stolen auto and he should have said v staned for victor and k standing to xng and when we got to the n he said the n word. what you are talking about now has been going on for 40 years. i made a report then and nothing was done. the officers feel they can get away with saying things like this is there is no frowning-there is nothing-they were not punished then