to the meeting of our san francisco government audit & oversight committee and for thursday, april 9, 2015, i'm supervisor yee the chair of the committee and i'm joined here by to my right supervisor breed and supervisor christensen is on her way the clerk is clerk erica major and the committee would like to acknowledge the staff at sfgovtv jennifer lowe and jessie larson who record each of the melting and make the transcripts available to the public on line madam clerk, any announcements? >> yes. electronic devices. completed speaker cards and documents to be included should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the april 21st, 2015, board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you so i requested this hearing because over the

loose few months. >> mr. chair would you like me to call item number one. >> i can't hear you. >> would you like me to call item number one. >> sorry i thought i did that item anniversary. >> on the property crime and the police department to report. >> okay get started again, i requested this hearing over the last few months i've received numerous e-mails and calls raising concerns of car break-ins and this is citywide in fact the four or five homeowners meetings in the last few weeks they were the focus of this issue i wanted to bring the

self-employed and the district attorney's office to address the community concerns and work on effective solutions i believe that the court be part of solution and work together to make the neighborhoods safer so at the time get started call up chief suhr who will give the first presentation. >> good afternoon mr. supervisors and other supervisors and public we have a power point i'm going to give a qualification to the final number because we're trying to put it together from this morning we're going to speak a little bit a little bit burglary and other thefts both commercial and remain and arson and we'll speak of a couple i have the legislation changes that have

also taken place it is not as easily explained other than theres changes we will get a hold on working with the district attorney's office to figure out but i'll explain that as we go the first slide is on auto burglaries there's been a 14 percent in auto burglaries tb 2013 to 2014 we haven't been able to the statistics this next slide for the first quarter of 2015 so in 2011 assembly bill one 09 a jail overcrowding so the state of california gets under a certain jail population that was decided all the low level offenders will get out many are property crimes

and many had multiple convictions in san francisco around 6 hundred it self-mean all those folks were not going to grouting get out but all got out at the same time it changed our patrol system statewide a lot of the numbers are not specific to san francisco but across the state of california there's been an increase in property crime since the in violation of ab one 0910 thousand 3 hundred auto burglaries in 2011 that went up to 12 thousand in 12 and 17 thousand in notifying and nearly 20 thousand in 2015 in the first quarter of 2015 the first two

months we don't have the march numbers p a 49 percent many auto burglaries in the first, few months of 2015. >> the next slide is going to speak of vehicle theft which is also up again, it jumps from 4 thousand 1 hundred plus in 2011 to 43 hundred plus in 2012, nearly 59 hundred in 2013 and 6 thousand in 2014 the number of vehicle theft by four percent is modest a big jump if 2010 and in the first, few months of 2015 an 18 percent increase in vehicle theft we say a property crime situation here in san francisco. >> thefts which do not include

automobile burglary in each year from 11 it bumps up and again up in 2014 a little qualifier proposition 47 kicked in immediately in november of 2014 so a lot of felon offenses that might have been added to the 14 thousands are not counted as felons because their miscellaneous so prior to 2014 petty thousandth the rest i submit e theft changed and a lot of the like a person going in with contains that might intent to shoplifting they entered with the intent to shoplift is now a petty theft under $900 those are

changes that were voted inform this is the new landscape that is not including u including auto burglary through the first few months of the year are up 6 percent and then if you look at residential commercial and residential again, it might seem like an euanonymously it is down seven hundred but all the retail thefts methods only for the last month of 2014 and that's the case as well here on the next slide when that speaks to the first few months where we were in the first, few months of 2014 was prop 47 so a lot of the felons from last year are

misdemeanors there's is a felon misdemeanor category this is the auto theft and total property crimes once the and again, this is a 125id thing not just going on in san francisco all of california is working on this concern and 2011 ab one 09 up in property crime it is about flat between 13 and 14 but in the last few months of 2015 a lot of felons were reclassified as miss

dorms and the total property crime is up 22 percent as you can see over 8 thousand property crimes in the first, few months as far as the arrests as you can see in 2010 that was the last time the police department was at full staffing in 20092010 the arrests go down with the numbers in staff per officer as are the same the last slide i was talk to my folks here we believe that that is an anomaly that is a impurity area it all of a sudden became a 5 thousand but i apologize for that 2014 status is probably more consistent with around 2

thousand arrests which again we're down 15 percent in officers that is about what the reduction is over 2011 so honestly the officers are doing what we can per officer as we get the 3 hundred officers back that kwldz about 60 thousand more shifts worked so the presence of officers along the commercial corridors and we've spoken about the dedicated details but the primary focus has been awhile we'll had this reduction in force is effecting crime so this changes the landscaper we will catch up with crime. >> you mentioned the arrests rate i guess per officer is

around what. >> about the same so you look at 201125 hundred that would have been full staffed at 2 thousand officers now 17 hundred officers again, if you divide it into the number the per capital arrest per officer is about the same. >> okay. >> i guess do you have any colleagues colleagues, we're joined by supervisor christensen. >> i'd like to do maybe have the da give the presentation first, i wanted to then come back and ask specific questions and probably focusing on what are some of the solutions to improve our situation okay. from the district attorney's

office at this point i believe is drew berry. >> hi how are you. >> good afternoon, supervisors thank you for inviting me to speak on behalf of district attorney i have a presentation should be on here sworn asked to join this hearing to talk about property crime

issues in the city i adapting to look at the property crime rate is increasing we saw a slight decrease in 2014 but around 2010 and 2011 our office looked at and understands what the result we can identify was referenced to realignment ab one 09 and take into account to see if it influences the numbers it appears that is not what we're dealing with here in san francisco this chart shows property crime rates other major jurisdictions within the state of california with the realignment with the state initiate and the other jurisdictions are seeing a decrease in their property crime there is a san francisco issue we need to look at more closely

this is covered very well by the chief that is kind of the burglary crimes you're seeing and also interested in maybe a prop 47 impact on the crimes if you look at the cycle we have peeks in september of 2013 and a lot of fluctuation in the crime rate over that time it is a bit early to say whether or not there is an impact from proposition 47 at this point but obviously the police department and ourselves are keep a close eye on the situation and continue to come back to it but at the moment it is difficult to say so - >> and this is sort of a reflection of our work in the district attorney's office the data systems don't allow us to report by crime type of

unfortunately but this is our overall felon filing rate that should have some of it to what we're dealing with today, the new cases as well as the situations we had to revoke someone's parole supervision as caseload in 2009 and 2014 you'll see that is back in 2009 a vast majority of resources on felon cases were devoted to drunk cases we're spending more time on crimes we're talking about burglary and robbery and theft and it rfktsdz in terms of the arrests they're bringing to us i wanted to spend a little bit of time there is interest in talking about the solutions we obviously know there's a problem that property crime one of the

things our office started on a crime strategic trying to view our resources to better identify the biggest crime drivers we see in the city the people that are causing the most problems on the streets from our angle and the district attorney's office to contribute to the over all public safety mission that the police department shares with us and one of the great tools we were able to develop we went to the manhattan district attorney's office and they have an arrest system we essentially copied from them and had the justice programmers here in the city build it for us it gives us an early notification when someone is is arrested one of the main problems we've had closing all the gaps that confusions fails between us and

the police department we have weekly and monthly to update the people we ended up trying to play catch up so it didn't require us sitting down at the weekly meeting and take people away from they're important work rather than relying an, an officer to innovative a particular office in the office we have a technology in place so when someone is arrested and the office decided we're created a notification as soon as their fingertips are taken that information is sent to us to start working on the file that's a huge benefit to us and the system in general obviously phones pagers and similar sound-producing electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting. police make an arrest at the give us the time to review a

report that leaves a short windows to review the case the easily to be notified the more likely to garter the information and make a decision to handle the individual particularly people that are high crime drivers that come in on an offense that might not catch our attention but we know that someone is problematic and laws u allows us to apply all the legal appropriate resources to that individuals and that is what the alert looks like when it comes into our attorney. >> so i think i'll end with that i'm sure there will be questions there are areas with improvement and our partners with the police department in this area and i think looking at some of the more problematic individuals driving those

property crime rings will pay big dpfdz. >> supervisor christensen you have a question. >> i think you are the appropriate person to ask so i want to say that a is pertinent i saw two armed men robbed a tourist an hour ago one of the things property crime is increasing in district 3 and there's been a series of people when we could be caught if the act we've had a couple of cases of people caught realize the same day and committed a crime in the afternoon we have people that have a history of being problematic homeless people on the street and the concern is there is no place to take them where they can be dealt with koala and the public can be safe

from them so i hear this a lot from the cops in the district they're doing their job but the system is not processing the people in a way that keeps trouble from reoccurring. >> those are two separate scenarios in the case with the armed rob they bring the person to the couldn't jail to make a decision whether to file it the legal standard is proximate cause we're held to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt do we have the case to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt we're able to have action on many moment this is not the case one hundred percent of the time unfortunately, that is for a variety of reasons sometimes

we're looking for dna dna or additional witness not enough we found one of the police officers arrived there are a variety of reasons thirty percent gets problematic but would i'll urge to do speak with usful about a case or individual certainly we can do something better we'll make the corrections we take into account our charter to make sure we are charging the cases that come to us and we're vigilant about the work that's our mandate to take that seriously if you have a violent individual. >> actually, i mentioned the burglary the arms robbery i was so stafrld a lot of the property crime are the issues i understand that they're low open

the pecking order in terms of the concerns and urgency, however, if we have serial folks that are breaking into thirty and 40 vehicles over time to me getting those are one or two people off the street allows the police to use their resources better and it prevents that from being spread i don't know if there's a process to prevents them from being an annoyance. >> i wouldn't say that property crime is a priority it is not a different standard for crimes committed not whether the evidence holds us u up not a decision we want to do to disruptive a case but our

obligation to protect the intrieth of the system on the property crimes the thing our office worked closely with the police department it is difficult in a one opt case for a judge to take into consideration seriously we've tried to do in partnering with the police department to know they're the people that condominium multiple of those cases and build a case it doesn't show you one car break in but 10 or 15 we're in a better situation whether to request a punishment and more likely to go forward and we inlate some of the situations we see otherwise we've started a multiple of those with the police department working jointly on a couple of operations i can't go into the calls but they'll bear fruit in

terms of of identifying the people that commit those 50 and 60 in a month i'll be happy to work with you identifying what is appropriate. >> let me extend that question my understanding is that the threshold of the month that would will determine whether there's a feloncy missdemeanor and they go out and do that again and again and it is serial in nature it nerves reached the threshold that will trigger

whether this is a felony or not is there a way to look at it in terms of what accumulative if you do this 3, 4, 5 or 6 times can it trigger it to be a felony or not or something we need to amend the law to be able to do. >> not law didn't allow you to accumulate those values over several incidents it is treated a separate crime we have to prove each break in crime so i think you can consider state legislation that will be challenging with what you're describing i think the value if we have an individual that comes in open a missdemeanor the

options are better and chief suhr similar question because i know that we've discussed that with other officers that is a problem when they don't reach the threshold they don't know what to do with them. >> right i think the thought of prop 47 other counties that are not san francisco that were used to be a single petty theft conviction and regardless of the dollars amount is a felony so tlooerl something that is temple dollars and get convicted and it is other case of $10 it is not san francisco so we've got some

of the most aggressive alternatives to the programs in the country and record low juvenile population it went the other way it couldn't get to a felony for instance, i know that in conversation with many of the officers they don't want to get somebody that as incriminated a relating low two cases go to prison is not fair but the aggregate amount might be 25 hundreds that is significant enough but if you bundle the cascades and present that people stealing to the extent to 25 hundreds or a $5,000 thresholds is more than people can have. >> currently you don't have the

ability. >> no currently condominium and petty theft in san francisco and not get to a felony. >> is this just san francisco. >> no, it's statewide proposition. >> right and i guess when mr. berry when you mentioned that we tried to change this through legislation that is something that the district attorney will support. >> i think the solution lies in focusing our arrests and prosecution effort on identifying the high crime drivers i don't think that the perspective solution are going to do bear as much fruit as trying to identify the folks if are committing the most crimes this is where you'll see i saw

the numbers that are low that makes the prosecution rate low in this area if we want to provide relief to the community and staffing the police department this will give them additional resources to bring those cases to us and both of the departments working on high-level investigations to focus on the crime drivers is the best to change this as we've seen other areas of california it face realignment are not seeing the same cases we need to look at our approaches to fighting those crimes and investigating and presenting rock solid cases that fund in court. >> so chief suhr i'm sorry, i just - one of the things i have those types of hearings let's hear the problems i want to see what we can do

about it. >> one of the things i've spoken to earlier the probation parole system challenged a lot when i was out doing regular work if a person got a probation violation they'll get a year they'll do 6 months now the flashing incarceration is 6 today's to the community doesn't get the relief from the person doing crime or crime now, it's days what we've can you think in the past we've bundled miss don't remembers to get to the cases this is important to put the cases together to present to a jury so we can speaking to people if the district attorney's office we need to figure out how to bundle the miss don't remember