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tv   [untitled]    April 14, 2015 3:00am-3:31am PDT

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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 how did we get here and how do we make change? i can tell you how horrified we were and the reaction in my home but if we don't change it we will experience the same problems. the issues that we're facing in san francisco we have insufficient oversight over the law enforcement agencies and don't have a culture of transparency around disciplinary actions and problems that maybe brewing in the multiple agencies that we work with. number two we don't really have meaningful mechanisms to force reporting of
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misconduct other than obligations we have under brady to turn over potentially excull pitory information and we have limited information on misconduct in the police department or sheriff's department or any other, and third there's too little discipline and too little consequence for misconduct here in san francisco. it's a rare situation that someone is fired for the conduct. there are few cases reported to us for misconduct and the discipline that is meted out is rare, relatively weak and uncertain, so those issues i think are the things that within all of our agencies need to be looking at. i think everyone here is earnest to scrub out the behavior and problems and we have to be honest with ourselves it will require systemic change and not saying that we feel terrible and they're fears that we don't share personally. in our office and you have seen the news that the district attorney asked for
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a task force to investigate this and other issues we're seeing. we have invited other agencies to join us in that. we don't believe we're the only entity engaged in that but the da believes the obligation to do that is not [inaudible] and done immediately and in a way that we stand in front of the citizens and the truth in our heart and the cases are done and they're not tainted so we have launched that task force. we are doing it with existing staff. we are looking into multiple issues in agencies and the racist text messages is what began that investigation. we have made requests of the police department to receive information. we have received some information on the first four officers. we have not received information on the additional 10. it appears not all 10 have been removed from contact with the public. i'm
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not sure [inaudible] recommended for termination. we are still waiting on that information from the police department and have asked for other information that i think it helpful in conducting this investigation. the big concern for us we have become aware of this by reading about it in the chronicle like everyone in the room and it's not a way to provide effective oversight on an agency that we rely on heavily for the cases if in san francisco and we are looking to improve the flow of information in the cases and investigate and root out the kind of behavior that has come to light. in the initial review the da committed to doing a 10 year look back because we're concerned that cases currently in the system were tainted by these officers. we have done a run to see all of the reports that those officers have written in the past 10 years. that is over 3,000 arrests that were
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made. there were 1400 cases that we charged based on the reports and 1600 we didn't proceed on but we still want to look at and the course of the investigation will look at both the charges chases. that is obviously the priority and nobody is in custody that shouldn't be as a result of an arrest from one of the officers and two, anybody with aing or closing -- pending or closed case where the information is critical and we need to look at the validity and the strength of the case and take whatever remedies there that are required and we will under take that with earnest but we don't feel the obligation ends there. we need to look at the cases we didn't bring and see if there are patterns or issues that repeatedly arose in those cases we didn't charge. there was cases where we didn't have
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enough evidence or concerns about the evaluation evidence and see if that is linked to the officers. >> >> and we're hoping to have cooperation of the police department it have a larger look. the concern is this goes beyond these case and but we're committed to working hopefully collaboratively with everybody to identify the breath of this problem and make sure that we root it out. the thing we don't want is conduct a look back. go through 3,000 cases and in a year or two find ourselves with another scandal on the desk and another situation to unravel. obviously the work we do is exceptionally important. we're dealing with people's lives and liberty and has to be done with integrity and not a game but with severe consequences and we
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need to do it to the best of our ability. if i could address the systemic conditions that we may want to consider. create a mandatory disclosure to our officers and making that immediate upon referral to ia so we can flag those officers and make sure we don't process anymore cases with them without having a better understanding what the misconduct might be. secondly i think there needs to be improvement to the discipline structure to make sure it's swifter and more meaningful. there is a backlog with the police commission in disciplinary hearings they're hearing and effective and helpful if that is reduced. obviously if consequences are not handed out in any timely way they're less meaningful. if we don't hand out these a police department won't be sustained
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and people won't stay where they're not supported and we see many of these officers had prior issues that didn't result in termination. i'm not sure of the discipline they got but it's critical outside of the racism of the text messages that we deal with police misconduct in all of the forms and make sure they don't tint our cases or work and thirdly i would ask and we asked in the budget support for our trial integrity unit and asked for an increase with the henry hotel issue and temporary positions that have sunsetted and we have to now look at in this instance 3,000 cases and we have multiple other investigations going that will require meaningful human resources from us to get the work done well and our hope is we can establish a unit that is more proactive and want like to be in the business of avoiding these scandals and look backs. we can't effectively unring the
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bell. if someone is convicted badly or bad evidence from a bad officer we can't fully take that back and would like to avoid that and have a more proactive unit. >> thank you so much for being here. i see more questions. thank you. i want to acknowledge that the mayor's director of public safety is here. thank you for being here. next is the chair of the human rights commission. >> good afternoon president breed, supervisor mar thank you so much for the invitation to be here today. i'm going to be as brief as possible and i'm going to start with thanking the public defender for his overview of what implicit bias is and how important and significant it is to understand and address so i'm not going to cover that ground in explaining it and i also want to recognize what chief sure said about the training that took place yesterday. so last
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year the human rights commission sought funding for implicit bias trainings. we didn't get it in large part because of i think the tardiness of the request in the process but we renewed the request for this and let me explain what we're doing. we came up with the idea of looking to initiate programs and trainings and workshops on implicit bias and associations explaining what they are to city leaders and department heads and looking for ways to address those biases and understand how to make decisions that are free of bias, and i spoke to the mayor about this proposal and he recommended that i speak with mickey callahan who directs the department of human resources and get them on board and i did
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that and resulted in a program between the human rights commission and the mayor's office and others and presented proposals and chose kimberly tappian who is a well respected and experienced presenter on this topic. yesterday we held our first of three trainings, three workshops we're going to be holding, and i believe that all of the participants found it to be useful. they were department heads selected by the mayor to engage in this training and the training was on how unconscious reactions and thoughts affect management and leadership style, how to recognize implicitly associations with gender and
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socio-economic status and features and all of the levels that someone can be discriminated against on, so this is the kind of training we would like to institute city wide. that is our goal that every department head, that each person who works for the city have to engage in this training on an annual basis just like we have to engage in sexual harassment training and other trainings that are antidiscrimination training. >> supervisor cohen has a question. >> yes thank you. can you tell us which department heads were in the train something. >> supervisor i don't have that with me but i can get that to you and again this was not meant to be -- kind of everyone being there at the same time but a selected department heads for us to begin to see how this training can best be presented to the city and how it can be most effective and applicable to the functions that each of the departments has for the citizens and each of the department
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heads have but i will get you that information definitely; so obviously this episode with the text messages is revoltding and deeply disturbing to every person within any level of decency in the city and this is a fairly decent city but these overt forms of discrimination and manifestations of discrimination are more easily addressed than the implicit associations that everyone in this society has that are related to the disgusting revelations in the text messages. not everyone harbors that level of discrimination but we all have grown up in a society and we have been given the messages that black men are dangerous, that black people are
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animalistic or less intelligent and women should play certain roles in society and lgbtq people are not full citizens so these are all messages that we have gotten and on some level sadly are apart of us, so that means that each one of us that serves the people of the city and county of san francisco need to have a duty to interrogate ourselves and look at the way that we feel and when we come upon biases that we do have even when we never act on them consciously we need to understand they're there in the unconscious and without our knowledge they do affect the way that we interact with people, the way that we treat and serve people so we feel it's very important for this effort to take place for this pilot program to continue and hopefully very soon result in city wide trainings that are hopefully supported by the
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board of supervisors and by the city financially. obviously that will be necessary. in the budget's submission we just gave for the upcoming fiscal years we asked again for funding for to continue the pilot program and then to develop in conjunction with the department of human resources and the city with the trainings that we're hoping to institutallize and give. i mean obviously it's so important that we deal with this issue because we have seen how these things affect people; how it affects the people subject to the discrimination; how it affects the people subject to disparate treatment and affects the children in the community when they grow up and learn day-by-day year by year that they're less valuable that
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they're seen as less important and that resources will be spent on some people but not on them, and these decisions by in large -- the decisions that lead to these outcomes by in large are not made consciously but what we do in the city affects people so deeply and begins altan early age it's incumbent to understand all of the things that go into the decision making process and learn how to begin to make decisions that are free of bias or free of bias as possible, and in this training we did learn that there are -- there are ways, there are exercises to begin to address the biases that we all have and these are things that i think we should have to do as city employees so i am hoping that when you review our request for funding that you will join us with that in that effort. one of the other things we asked for this year are is
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funding for hearings on structural bias. the relationship between explicit and implicit bias and the resulting structural bias that gets there are issues to address and we hope in conjunction with the board of supervisors to hold hearings so the various city departments can come and things exist that and the people of city and county of san francisco tell us what needs to done and also the kind of struck uferl issues they have confronted so we hope deeply to work with the board and the rest of the city -- >> supervisor cohen. >> thank you. just a quick
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clarifying question. could you define for us structural bias? >> i actually -- i can give you an explanation that someone that has been given. i think the naacp actually gave -- defines it as bias is legitimizing a a rare of dynamics and (paused). now racism isn't the only form of bias. obviously there is sexism and home phobia, all sorts of things and structural bias is the bias built into the way that we do business. it's been built into the kinds of
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resources that are available and to whom they are available and at what level and based on what requirements. things that look objective but really in practice discriminate against people and advantage certain people over others. >> thank you. it's good to hear that as we go into the budget cycle and which nonprofits get funded and which don't and which pet projects that move through thank you. >> thank you. so i wanted to say it's kimberly pap ion is the consultant that the commission is working with. >> yes. >> and i know supervisor cohen raised other models and i think seattle has a racial justice commission and oakland desley brooks introduced arch ordinance to have a commission there. sounds like there are different models but what the human rights commission is leading sounds like what other cities are
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trying to do and deal with these issues and bias and sexism within the city and it sounds like good work and the mayor is supportive and the department of human resources you said? >> absolutely. it's a joint effort and we began this on our own and the mayor's office and others have joined with us. we will go forward regardless of who joins us or not and one thing i. say and applicable to this hearing. >> >> we that the trainings and workshops should be given on an annual basis but when we think about the police department we believe it should be integrated into the academy and that it should be a part of training in a dynamic way where people once again all of us but specifically we're talking about the police department here perhaps, can check in to see what kinds of biases we have without knowing it because these are all
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unconscious and you check in. you see that you have this bias and then you take the actions necessary to deal with it and it's an ongoing process. it will never be good enough or end because the brain works in a certain way and that's one of the things that the course that we are piloting talks about. explicit bias is just the beginning. you learn what it is and how it works. the rest of the workshop is about understanding how it works in our minds and the ways that we can interrupt it, understand it and flip it, so that is what we're seeking to do. >> thank you so much for being here. i really appreciate it. the last department speaker is joyce hicks executive director of the office of citizen complaiptds that was here at 2:00 p.m. and thank you so much ms. hicks. >> good evening supervisor mar, supervisor cohen and
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president breed, and i do appreciate you inviting me to speak with you this afternoon to address issues about bias in the san francisco police department and how to restore the public's trust after the horrendous racist and homophobic texts that have now seen the light of day, but which the office of citizen complaints was privy to a short time prior to their release, but we were not able to comment on them, and i will say it has been an incredible burden for me to live with the hatred that was reflected in those text
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messages, and one in particular struck me about african-american children swimming in the swimming pool where former sergeant ferminger's children swam and how that would contaminate -- i'm not going to use the word that was used but how what would contaminate the pool and so you know about joyce hicks. i'm a daughter of a tuskegee air man and one of the last surviving and his career was stymied because after the air corps were operated in the army and the arm forced were allegedly integrated my father spoke out about that very thing about how african-americans -- officers could only swim in the swooming pool on the base on a
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wednesday and then they drained the pool and then the white officers could swim for the rest of the week, so i am relieved that the chief has acted swiftly and decisively and is referring not just the matters that the occ uncovered with our limited staffing, but is referring additional officers to the police commission for the police commission to resolve. i not only speak to you as the director of the san francisco office of citizen complaints but also as a board member of the national association for civilian oversight of law enforcement. our president brian buckner was invited to testify before the president's
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task force on 21 ftd century policing on a segment that dealt with civilian oversight of law enforcement. as a result of that testimony and also the testimony of char charlie beck, the l.a. pd chief and others one of the recommendations from that interim report of the task force is that every law enforcement agency should have some form of -- oversight of law enforcement. san francisco has that by charter, but i think sometimes it's forgotten that not only does the office of citizen complaints investigate matters which are confidential and protected by the public safety officers procedural bill of rights you, but we also make
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policy recommendations for improvements in the police department that will improve the police department's relationship with members of the community, and chief sure mentioned some of the policy changes that the department has made and they were based on a collaboration with community groups, leadership from the office of citizen complaints as well, but i know that the hour is late and i do want to talk about the three measures that i think are very important for the reduction, and i will not say the elimination of bias, but the reduction of bias in the san francisco police department, because the previous speakers have said we all carry biases with us. it's how we act on
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them is most important. a second matter that -- well, the first way of addressing bias and it has been discussed previously and that has to do with who is on the san francisco police department? who is recruited? how the police department matters are -- members are retained and are they getting promoted? and just quoting from a couple of recent reports which can be a play book for improving issues of bias and community trust in the san francisco police department those two reports would be the report from the department of justice civil rights division on the investigation of ferguson police department and the other one we have spoken about a lot this afternoon, and that is the task force on 21st century policing,
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and quoting and inserting san francisco police department it should strive to create a work force that contains a broad range of diversity anything race, gender, life experience and cultural background, and i would add of course sexual preference as well. additionally enhanced training to reduce bias in the san francisco police department. supervisor cohen asked which department heads were invited to yesterday's training. i wasn't invited but i invited myself and was allowed to attend. i do have a background in training on implicit bias because of the result of me attending previous training i was introduced to this concept at one of the panels by a national expert on implicit bias in police
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departments and by dr. lori fidel and worked for the research forum and now a professor at university of south florida and does training for many police departments including some training for the san francisco police department because using the occ's limited training budget i brought her to san francisco two years ago -- three years ago and had her conduct an eight hour training that included the investigators on my staff, the attorneys on my staff, members from other civilian over sight agencies throughout the bay area as well as members of the internal affairs division. it was an eight hour training and her model of training is to not just include the members of the
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police department that she iss s if focus -- focusing on but add diversity and additionally we had members from the community and it's extremely important when any of the training takes place on implicit bias that members of the aggrieved communities, the individuals in the communities that have been hurt by bias should be there at that training to tell their stories. otherwise it's in a vacuum and just moving to some of the more detailed recommendations that i have drawn from the report on the training provide initial and recurring training and send a message that bias and discriminatory policing are prohibited and should include
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relevant and ethical standards, information on how stereotypes and implicit bias can affect police work, the procedure of public works and legitimacy on trust and officer safety, the negative impacts of profiling on public safety and crime prevention of the next part is provide training on detecting and responding to bias based policing and other forms of discriminatory policing. include community members from groups that have expressed high levels of distrust of police in other training. take steps to eliminate all forms of work place bias from san francisco police department. additionally president obama's task force on 21st century policing and in the interim report says that police officer training standards should ensure basic recruit and