and provided since then there has been coordination with park and rec and they sent over 80 people up to the camp and provided individual trauma focussed counselor and there has also been two groups for those kids that witnessed the homicide. we also have offered a grief group at our wellness center and increased our behavioral health staff by adding 3 part-time therapists to provide drop in services as well as individual treatment before i turn this back over, i just want to add that although trauma can be challenging and difficult and people seek help in many different ways with a trauma informed system children

adults will heal and find resiliency. >> colleagues, i just wanted to take a moment to call out -- she is called and unseen not just for this incident she has an un paralleled level of the professionalism and compassion and i want to take a moment your work is so tremendous and i know it goes un thanked. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> so i'd like to highlight some some of some of the next steps. >> supervisor campos. >> one of the hardest things you deal with when violence happens as a supervisor this is something that you do all of you and i think we're just very

lucky and i know that i couldn't that i couldn't do that job i'm grateful that there are people that are willing to to do that day in day out and it's really appreciated. >> i'm sorry stephanie to bring you back i have a couple of questions for you though, after all of that flattery just a little bit more bear with me. my questions are focussed around some some of the initial response you mentioned about the grief group that's been established i wanted to know, sometimes we have to -- it's important to understand the cultures that we're stepping into in order to help facility and mitigate the healing and not everyone is aware of ptsd and how it manifests in little people's lives let alone adults and i'm wondering if there's some kind

of awareness within this particular case the african-american and samoan community about trauma how it affects people's lives the importance of mental health is there a certain level of awareness or is it stigmatized if you go back to the day where mental illness really went unaddressed. can you speak a little bit to your experience and what you have seen over the years? >> so my experience is it's still a stigma in those communities they do not traditionally seek out mental health treatment but that doesn't mean that they are not taking care of their mental health they just seek it in a nontraditional way. >> can you give me an example of nontraditional? >> we will go into people's

homes and engage in their natural environment try to address and build an ra p.p.o. rt with them and offering them a lot of support. they feel more comfortable with that. going out on activities. we've had staff going out on activities with the youth and take in some of the youth out to i guess the surfing to the zoo different places they have engaged in those types of activities and we find out people are more receptive because we're not calling it therapy but we're able to get them to talk that way and handouts during that time that provided education on the symptoms what to look for in children and also how to take care of yourself when you start feeling those symptoms and how to seek help. >> and the grief group -- is it being utilized? >> it is not being utilizes

we're just now reengaging starting again trying to match the time and we've done outreach and flyers. . because of the stigma people aren't really trying to access mental health so provide support in just basic ways to do that and listen to them have talk line people tend to initially during the crisis they would come and want to talk to you but after a while they just want to check in with you or check in with them to see how they are doing and to talk about some of their symptoms. >> and i would imagine in dealing with a community such as sunny dale we're talking about a community that experiences trauma in a very

compound way meaning there are traumatic experiences unfortunately very often so many of the families -- this is not their first brush with trauma and i can only imagine what is being processed internally so knowing that there's so much happening in the community what can we, as a city where can we begin to step up and provide you the needed support. we'd love to be able to duplicate you and what do you think charlie? a few more fte's in the department maybe we can work on that but that level to provide you the support that you need so you can go out and continue to provide the community the support that's needed do you have recommendations? >> i think that everyone who is

a city employee should have training in trauma practices and i think we should utilize more staffing and that the city could understand that we need to provide some nontraditional things that may not fit in whatever the city regulations are. >> tell me what they are. >> it's hard when you have to search and finding funding for a for a mom who wants to bury her son and helping these families wanting to bury their loved ones due to their religious practices etc. >> are they on on the state level or local level. >> i think they are across the state level. they have a lot of the victims i believe it's up to 75 $7,500 but often times if

you ever buried a loved one it's going to cost you more than that. that 75 hundred dollars only includes a cremation normally burial is like real estate to be honest we do try to to seek discounted rates through a broker but once again trying to figure out how to raise money to help these families and to support them. so those are some of the needs that we have. >> can you go back to explaining some some of the nontraditional methods? >> having more activities and park and rec last year we very much appreciated and sending families to camp they really joint really enjoyed it and some of them asked us are we going to do it again this year

and having community activities as well and job training support finding jobs long-term jobs not jobs that last that last 6 months for people in the community and we also you know go into people's homes and help them a lot of their issues are housing. sometimes it's hard to get better when you stay in the same place and there's other needs that need to be met you don't have food or your heating may not work those types of things and help them and address those issues. >> you are basically describing i think the doctor talks about trauma and growing up in poverty as a trigger in dealing with trauma or triggering trauma traumatic experience working on on on that. >> and also recognizing people have their own coping skills

like adults massages just the basic needs just get a pedicure so you can relax those are the nontraditional types of mental health support that actually work well and they want to talk to you and engage so you can engage the more embedded traumas in them. >> good suggestions thank you very much thank you. so next up i think we're going to hear from the district attorney's office. doctor rodriguez thank you. good to see you this afternoon. >> thank you for allowing me to update you on what we did with this event. working with the boys and girl girls club we

distributed sixty letters to the families. helped them apply for victim's competition a state program that can provide mental health service and see for direct victims mental health services relocation burial and safety services but for witnesses of a chime a crime who are children we have the ability to provide 40 sessions of mental health services at a vendor of their choosing and if there's a mental health need we can actually increase that and give more. we didn't have the contact information for the victims so we had to work through the boys and girls club and send those letters out. unfortunately only two families responded neither of them ever followed up despite ongoing

efforts to try to bring them in for services and we collaborated with a lot of the agencies working on this issue to be able to make contact provide the service and see provide compensation if it was appropriate and worked with dph turf safe start and outreaching to children and attending family meetings and the the last thing covered the funeral and burial expenses for the victim's family and the state only covers 5 $5,000 for funeral and burial when i came on in late on in late 2014 and in the beginning of 2015 increased that to 7500 per person and using additional dollars internally in our budget and pursuing legislation to change the cap statewide because that's not enough to bury a loved one particularly in san francisco. some some

of the barrier can s we had trouble contacting children and families and i understand the need for confidentiality and we tried to work within the system but we really do have some immediate resources that families could access and that was a challenge for us and second is that we are a law enforcement agency so we understand the need to build trust in the community and represent the services that we provide to victims not just the prosecution end of our work and we're working on that. the first lesson we learned is we need a coordinated system to respond to these kinds of events and victim services would like to have a role in that so we know how to bring our resources to the table to do what we can do with these types of events. we're in the

process of securing a team of advocates who will be stationed out in the community and they are the bayview the mission ingle side district and san francisco general so people can trust that victim services not only has resources but also wants to be a partner in helping people people return whole after they have been a victim of crime. thank you. >> thank you i appreciate that update. is that it? right before we bring dea nna up i want to recognize captain macfadden thank you for being

here and i want to recognize bob with rec and park who has been a tremendous partner in helping us in the healing process.

>> we also want to tackle the other side of the individuals that are actually feeling triggered by this event and given the issue that came to hand a year ago and the infrastructure of the club house will be possibly be completed by the summer but the full infrastructure which includes the bulletproof glass will be completed by the summer time. what you see in the next

slide are some some of the summer programs actually being offered and we want to mention that there's different school sites that are going to be offering these programs and different destination sites and again transportation and even though construction is happening at these sites some of these sites are being opened for summer school and families will be able to receive resources or any other type of resources whether it's arts or after school tutoring. thank you. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. mr. chair i'm done with this particular item. >> thank you. let's open this up for public comment. do you have any cards? i don't have any cards. if anyone would like to speak, please come forward. so seeing no public comment we'll close public

comment thank you. >> thank you so much supervisor cohen and everyone. >> i want to thank every one that came out today and talked on this item is it possible that we could file this to the call of the chair? >> yes so there's a motion to continue to the call of the chair can we do that without objection. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> mr. evans please call the next item. >> item number 5 is an ordinance to ban the use of smokeless tobacco products and or any portion of a device and making environmental findings. >> the sponsor is supervisor farrell. >> thank you for having me here today in committee to discuss this legislation to ban tobacco products including chewing

tobacco across san francisco. i want to thank my sponsors mar, tang and wiener for their efforts. i'm pushing for this bill because the negative the negative affects are crystal clear. showing that smokeless tobacco increases the risk of gum gum did these and nicotine addiction and is modelling of smokeless tobacco of family and friends and athletes is strongly associated. as someone who used to play baseball myself i know how addicting the substance can be i believe tobacco should have no place in baseball or any of

our athletic fields in san francisco where it can influence our city's youth as a father of 3 young children i want to send the right message to him to our team and to our city's youth by saying that smokeless tobacco isn't have any place in baseball. and i know this bill will have the effect of the effect. what's shocking to me even as cigarette use declines smokeless tobacco has remained instead over the years. over 500 thousand has used smokeless tobacco for the first time. it's time for our city and san

francisco and california to lead by example by showing our i our youth and the public that tobacco has proven to be harmful. in terms of the law the ordinance in front of us today is very clear clear it will not affect or dictate what players do on their own time or in their personal lives. it simply states that tobacco related products including chewing tobacco will not be allowed at baseball stadiums and athletic fields across san francisco and apply to everyone at the at and t park and the the i recognize this will be a

big change for many and the law to take effect january 1st of next year and i want to thank the coalition that has been leading this effort as well specifically the campaign for tobacco free kids and the american cancer society the american heart association the american lung association the california medical association san francisco parks alliance san francisco medical society san francisco dental society san francisco dental hygiene society and the san francisco tobacco free coalition and the san francisco young democrats that have come on board and certainly at the state level up in sacramento and i believe with the passage of this ordinance san francisco will once again lead the nation in

our antitobacco efforts and another crucial step forward to protect the health of our youth and city and as a father of 3 young children it matters more than anything else and colleagues today i'll ask for your support and what i'd like to do first is call up matthew mires. well, if matthew is not here first of all i have a number of speaker cards. would you like to come up and speak first? okay.

>> i want to thank you chairman mar for the time to speak to you today. i serve as the director of tobacco free kids and i'm in strong support of this measure. as you know ball players aren't indulging in a harmless habit and just as important today they are endangering the well being of millions of kids who look up to

them and mimicking what they do and it's about the health and future of our children and getting kids hooked on baseball is great but getting kids on smokeless tobacco is unacceptable that's why you must act now and pass this proposal. over the last decade cigarette use among high school boys has declined instead ly but during the same period zero progress in the use of smokeless tobacco sadly baseball plays a role in this troubling reality. every time a kid sees one of their hero using this tobacco it's free advertising our goal today is to get baseball out of that equation and with your help we can do exactly that. thanks

again for the time to speak to you today i wanted to thank supervisor farrell and your staff for your commitment to kids and your hard work on this effort we strongly support this initiative and urge you to approve it. >> thank you very much. next speaker please. >> san francisco recreation and park department i just wanted to be here to let all of you know how strongly we support this initiative and this proposal. i myself was also a college pitcher at the university of illinois and that's where i started my use of smokeless tobacco. it lasted 15 years and i can tell you there's not many things more harmful and more addictive in smokeless tobacco it has no place in the athletic fields or

children's lives. anything that our department can do to support this proposal we will definitely do. thank you. >> thank you thank you very much. next speaker please. >> along with my colleague i'm the coproject leader of tobacco use by high school baseball athletes in california and smokeless back become is particularly important in the field of dentistry it leads to tooth loss and also cause of cancer in the pancreas and young boys are more likely to become smokers and nicotine addicts. what we found is

that young males while striving to emulate athletes and general sports participation is associated with valuable outcomes and teamwork and physical fitness and those who participate in sports are less likely to smoke cigarettes but yet the use of chewing back tobacco is much higher.

>> while the reasons that young people use tobacco are complex and baseball may be one of them all it takes is just a few kids and i feel we have a strong obligation to support this ordinance thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker please. >> good afternoon supervisors. i'm with the san francisco parks alliance and our mission is to inspire and promote specific engagement to protect sustain and enrich the parks in the city as well as the recreation and the open space and feel that banning all tobacco related products throughout the city and any playing fields definitely works towards that goal it sends a strong message that baseball

and athletics in general is about getting outside staying active and healthy while at the same time provides kids a safe clean environment where they can play and learn without any outside influences and pressures and distractions and as previous people said it's hard enough as it is kids can turn on the television and see their favorite major league ball players that do chew tobacco and obviously we can't influence the ball players and tell them what to do in their own personal life this legislation would be going in the right direction so the parks alliance strongly supports the legislation and hopes that the that the supervisors will as well. >> thank you very much. next speaker please.