>> >> city of san francisco >> public safety and neighborhood services committee >> please stand by... >>

>> >>

>> >> >> city of san francisco >> public safety and neighborhood services committee meeting. please stand by... >> >>

>> >>

good afternoon, everyone. this is the public safety and neighborhood services committee meeting. my name is eric mar and to my left is david campos and julie christensen. >> >>clerk, please , city clerk: please silence all

devices. >> we have three items today. >>supervisor eric mar: we will hear public testimony on that item. and following the hearing on racism and bias on the san francisco justice system we'll be having a major hearing on the jail rebuild sponsored by kim and breed. >> item no. 1. addressing hearing on bias in san francisco justice system and investigating officers complaints and district attorney's report. >> thank you, we have a number of speaker cards that i will be getting to. we also have a list of not only department law enforcement and department reps, but we have a list of members from the community from social justice to advocacy organizations as well. i wanted to say that the rules of order for our board are that we do not hold up signs during our meetings and

also as the chair of the committee i'm going to ask if people can do their best to stay within their 2-minute time limit at about 90 seconds, a soft buzzard goes off and a louder one at the end of the testimony period. if people can refrain from clapping and use other means of appreciation can help to get through the process. today's hearings, colleagues is a follow up from our hearing of april of this year to address racism, homophobia and scapegoating and other forms of bigotry within our police department, in particular with police officers that were texting and messaging. this is where officers for justice and

the public defenders racial justice committee, aclu and many community based organizations testified. in a few moments we are going to hear from our various departments and members of the community. but i wanted to acknowledge that we have our public defender jeff dochey with staff and jackie wilson public defender from the racial justice committee. some of you have seen the cover story on public defender jeff dochey in the san francisco weekly newspaper. we also have the director of the office for citizens complaints ms. joyce hicks and deputy chief mckail alley and commander bob moser and city attorney alicia cabrera and district attorney george

gas conand chonsey smith from california and angela chan, our former police commissioner and staff anding agent law office and kenneth freed box on the director on homelessness san francisco and francisco uggarte from sf island. lorena: a lead organizer for catholic arch diocese and lizey for cj for criminal and juvenile justice. the lawyers committee for civil rights coordinator and reverend smith and deacon wade from the episcopal

church. this is to follow-up on to advance the racism and curriculum in police departments and other agencies and methods for officers to uphold civil rights and justice and free of conscious and unconscious bias. i also want to say the context that we are in as we'll hear in the next hearing is the growth of prisons and industrial complex as some call it with critical resistance to all of us or none that are in the chambers as well. advocacy to create a society that really having law enforcement that is serving communities and to reduce the reliance on the prison industrial complex. if not to eliminate it. as we've seen from ferguson to san francisco and oakland to the alex nieto to the grant cases. the problems with racism and bias and policing is a national and

social justice issue and san francisco is not exempt. on an individual level it's important that we'll hear today that we recognize that we all have biases of course and we need to consistently hold ourselves in check and call out these biases when they are kicking in and we need to constantly be developing skills to keep our biases from our actions and keep from reporting and monitoring and chekz and balances. on a systemic level as a city, as a society, monitoring this and resource mechanism to address to this situation within our departments. i want to highlight some harsh realities provided by our administration of justice. these are harsh realities in san francisco. 6% of san francisco residents are

african american or black yet 56% of our males in jails are african american or black. black drivers are three times likely to be stopped for traffic offenses than white drivers. black defendants are more likely to have bail and systematically lower probabilities of pretrial release. they fill the jails more frequently and held more frequently than white inmates. black daefdz -- defendants are more likely to be in prison than white inmates for the same crime. 30% more to be in prison. the state is responsible for, we are responsible for effectively or the states responsible for effective police are so high in this city

and through country. i think many of you can see outside that we have the mayor's of conference from los angeles to sacramento coming to this city tomorrow and i think what you will be testifying and hearing today hopefully is not just heard by our mayor and other departments, but by otherwise around this country as well. the police departments are places that are supposed to be able to turn, where we turn to where we are threatened and victimized. police departments and police are who we are supposed to turn for protection and help and police officers are the only people in our so-called democratic society that can legally take our freedom or in some cases take our lives. when there is bias and discrimination and in some cases blatant abuses of power as we've seen and there is no security or effective policing. thus it's imperative that the police act

collaboratively with the community to prevent racial bias and to better protect the people they serve. institutionalizing critical training for police officers as we have done in the past for communities united against violence in this city. but we need to develop new systems now and i hope that we can ultimately address disparities in bias in jails and thefts and bails and to jury composition as well. we need to also discuss and identify possible solutions such as more effective disciplining of officers who exhibit racial and other biases on-the-job and much better training systems as well as those in related legal professions for racial and unconscious bias in our work. lastly we will hear from not only the 10 point program from our public

defenders office who analyze data and racial disparities on more outcomes within our criminal justice in this city. i wanted to say now that we are now going to hear from a number of speakers but before that i wanted to let my colleagues give their opening remarks as well. supervisor campos? >>supervisor david campos: thank you, chair, mar. i would like to thank everyone who is here. i see our office of complaints, public defender and i know our sheriff's department is here on a different matter but to the extent we are talking about law enforcement, they are a part of that, our district attorney is here. thank you for being here >> thank you for coming here. i

wasn't here at the last meeting. i would like to thank supervisor mar for putting this on the agenda. we are not going to have a resolution for complicated issues when it comes to law enforcement in the relationship with the communities that law enforcement serves, but i think the more discussions we have, the better. i believe that the one thing that we have to do before we move forward is to recognize that san francisco is not unique and that we have issues like every other part of the country the issues exist and the challenges we face is that we have communities, especially communities of color that they do not have the trust we need to have through

law enforcement including our police department. i think that's something that has to be addressed. and as someone who has served as a police commissioner and works for the police department all the time, i think it's important for that trust to be rebuilt. the only way we are going to rebuild that is to face the issue head on. i know it's going to only get worse. we had the situation where there was an effort to have a discussion about this at the democratic central committee and unfortunately the democratic party chose to stick it's head in the sand and wish this issue would simply go away and not even hear the matter. i don't think that's the right approach. i have a great deal of faith in chief suhr and i know he's trying to deal with this issue head on. but

also to deal with this head on, the city also has to put it's money where it's mouth is and we have to give the agencies involved the resources they need to make sure we have a full and complete investigation and that means not only giving the police department and the occ the resources they need to do that, but also our district attorney. i'm very disappointed that the mayor's office did not include in the budget they put forward very small amounts of money so that the district attorney could do a full investigation of what happened. i think that's a disservice not only to the community, but it's also a disservice to the rank and file of the police department who i think at the end of the day will only benefit from from getting to the bottom of what happened. i think there has to

be a complete and full investigation, not only with what happened with the police department and with the sheriff's department and we need to make an investment going forward and having as much accountability and i think the investment in the body cameras it's a good investment but it's not going to be a panacea. law enforcement has a lot to do with it. and as far as the cameras, the same should apply in our jail system as well and that investment should also be made there. i look forward to the discussion, look forward to hearing from the agencies and from the public. thank you, supervisor mar, for putting this on the agenda. >> supervisor christensen >> i think we are very fortunate to have