tv Government Access Programming SFGTV November 23, 2017 10:00pm-11:01pm PST
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certain criteria, then the dispatchers -- it was almost like a -- a modified e.m.d. system -- emergency medical dispatch system, where they would go through, and if certain keywords or there were certain questions that were asked. >> right. >> they would make a determination, and they would automatically send a supervisor, they would automatically dispatch fire, they would automatically call for medical. >> right. i'm actually going to cut you off in the interests of time. >> sure. >> but -- i get the idea, but you're beginning to sound like it's an overwhelming -- it had many elements to it. your program had many elements. >> it's very complex. >> how did that get reflected in the department's budget. >> well, that's interesting. in he can on land, because of the complexity of that program, and i believe to this day -- i don't know if they still had this, but i was the only program in the oakland police department that had its own separate budget, and so i had to go through a whole budget
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process every year, and the reason for that was as we were implementing the program, and we were learning about more and more and more costs, there just wasn't enough money in the budget. it was taking away money from other -- other programs, so we actually -- there was a -- a city council resolution, and we actually had our own budget. >> wow. so my final question is -- i'm putting it putting you on the spot here -- we now know what is available to our department as the new model. given what you know about the new model, and i know -- i heard you say that you don't think there's any studies, really, on the new model, given what you now know, given your experience in oakland, what you've been studying now, and what you know about the new model, and its decrease in
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charge, what's your position on -- on starting an entirely new tazer program? >> so if i understand your question, are you asking if i was transplanted back, and i had to start a program, given what's available today... >> and given your knowledge of what it takes to run it. >> well, what it takes to run, it's very -- it's far more complex than any firearms program or d.t. program. it definitely is that, but my big concern is not so much with the work. the work can be done. my big concern is that the weapon that's currently available, i don't believe has enough research on it. i don't think we know enough about it. i mean, it's been out there for a few years, but conspicuously, there are no real independent research, as far as efficacy goes. there is on safety. there's been a number of studies that have been on
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safety, but not on the efficacy issue, and that is the big question for me. one of the -- and just to kind of give a little context to it, i'm probably hypersensitive to an under powered weapon because when we started our test laboratory in oakland, we started to discover what we termed as cold weapons, and these were weapons that were putting out under factory specs, and we started to correlate those found cold weapons with weapon failures, and so i'm probably more sensitive than most to the dangers of an underperforming weapon, and that's my concern with these current weapons. >> thank you very much. >> commissioner melara. >> i have just two very short
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questions. sergeant vigil, the data you presented says that you used tazers four times out of 174 uses of force, right? >> no. which year are we looking at in 2016 or 2017? >> i think it was 2016. >> 2016, the tazer was deployed 17 times, and the response was a give up, voluntary compliance, and then, four times -- is that the four times you're talking about, where it was -- >> yeah. >> four times it was used. out of the four times, it took more than one incident in one incident, a second cycle in another incident, more than a second cycle in another incident, and the last one is miss cycled.
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>> it didn't result in a death? >> that's correct. >> i just want to ask, we've been working on a draft policy, and we've been including some of the your suggestions, but you were under the impressions that we wouldn't have a.e.d.'s in every car and every police officer's car? >> the version that i had seen was that the a.e.d.'s wouldn't be available for every officer that was using them. >> okay. that is not correct. >> thank you sorry. >> that's okay. >> commissioner mazzucco -- oh, i'm sorry. are you done? >> i'm done. >> commissioner mazzucco, one of the questions that i have when they implemented this at the u.c. campus police, you recommended both the a.e.d.'s in the car and with the tazer weapon itself. and how has that been going on u.c.s.f.? have you heard of any problems? >> one thing, i do give chief
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scott credit for reaching out to me in the beginning. this is the first time for any police chief has reached out to me for hearing the evidence and the risks and the benefits. and again, my goal is to use the research that we've done in the real world to try to present those risks and maximize the benefits, and i do believe that we can't take away all of the risks, but we can mitigate most of the risks with careful policy, and i was pleased that u.c.s.f. did implement all of my recommendations. >> thank you. i know that your study ends in 200 #. maybe somewhere down the road. we can add to that study. i also want to thacake a momeno thank your profession. we have two s.f.p.d. officers, one being shot, and one being run over. the doctors at your hospital are modern day saints. the care and treatment they provide for our officers.
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i skbrust want to say thank you for that. when you testified before this commission on june 21st, '17, you told us when you're running the program in oakland, you told us there was no injuries, no deaths, no lawsuits, and no i.a. complaints, is that correct? >> correct. >> and do you dispute the fact that when tazers are being used -- and this is our concern: we want to reduce injuries. do you dispute the fact that injuries are reduced by 60% with respect to officers and suspects? >> well, i don't think there's enough data to make a determination on that because again what we're talking about with that number is the old weapons platform. >> we'll stick with that, because no knows how long it'll take, if we even do that, so with that old data, do you dispute that there's a 60 plus
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percent reduction in injuries to those involved, including police officers. >> i would have to see the study you're talking about. some are better than others -- >> let me ask you this. you're a professional witness. you testify a lot in federal court, state court, skm other countries. you're a paid witness, correct? >> not today. >> did you pay your own expenses today? >> my air fair was paid. >> your air fair was paid? you got paid to come here today. >> folks, let me ask questions -- >> stop, stop, stop, stop. don't mischaracterize what he's saying and don't argue with me. his air fair was paid, period. >> you testify for lawyers quite often in court. >> do i? >> yes. >> yes. >> okay. now my question for you is you have concerns about this new weapon. have you tested this new weapon. you said you've tested 10,000 weapons. >> i have tested this weapon.
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>> what have you found in your studies. >> it puts out about half of what the old weapon put out. >> okay. in terms of voltage, you're saying. >> no, in emergency room its of charge. >> in terms of charge, and was that done, in your opinion, to make it safer? >> i wasn't involved in the design of the weapon, i'm just reporting on the -- my test my test results -- which, by the way, the test results that i'm finding in mylab match up with the published manufacturer's specifications. >> let me ask you one last question. if you were running the program in oakland, you talked about no injuries, no deaths, no complaints, no lawsuits. >> yes. >> did you see a positive effect from the tazers, then, positive effect on the officers and the public? >> by fielding tazers? >> yes, by preventing injuries and death? >> i don't know that it had anything to do with preventing injuries and death. i don't know that officers necessarily think in those terms, but i did see a -- i'm sorry, you said a
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positive effect? >> well, there was fewer injuries to officers, fewer injuries to suspects. >> did i see that? >> yes. >> well, we didn't have any, so i guess yes, you could say that. >> thank you. >> okay. >> thank you very much. >> any other questions, commissioner mazzucco? >> no president, i'm sure. >> okay. commissioner marshall. okay. mr. lionisio, come back. don't go far. just thanks. i remember when i calm over to my office. it seems about six months ago. >> i know. >> i appreciate we had a great conversation, and i appreciate your willingness to be a part of this, and, you know, the fact that oakland is so close makes it easier to look at. well, i've just got one thing. it's really that.
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threw me a loop deloop when you talk about the new weapon that's going to come out. yes. >> but we're hearing all this data and information on the old weapon, so you think throw that out? >> well, it's a different weapon. it's a completely different -- the weapon itself, the circuit that it uses, the output that it has, it's a completely different weapon. it's redesigned, different -- >> well, i get that, but seeing as how people are feeding us all whatever 26 it was, so i'm hearing all this, but you're saying it's almost like we're at the guardianshiping where this weapon was back then. >> right. you're absolutely right. we are. >> right, and so the way we found out about that weapon -- this is just my logical mind -- was trying it out and finding if it had -- this is skbrust my mind. >> yes, although the big
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difference is with the older weapons, there fs a lot more -- >> when they were introduced there was no data on that weapon. >> well, there wasn't, but the manufacturer actually sponsored a lot of studies, and we got a great dale of data fairly quickly with the -- with the x-26. we're just not seeing that same kind of pace with the x-2 or x-26 piece. >> but you see where my mind is sort of going here. when they were first picked up by departments. >> yes. >> other than the -- i guess the manufacturer's claims about them, they were used, and that's when the data was -- began to be collected on them. >> yes, sure. >> so we're sort of with this one, at that same place. >> yes. >> so that's all i'm asking. >> yes. >> okay. that's all i wanted to know. >> okay. >> thank you. >> anything else, dr. marshall? >> no, he's done. >> commissioner hirsch. >> mr. lionisio, i have some
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questions for you again. i'm trying to get a feel, a better understanding, of what your view is, of what you ended up doing in he can on land, so you were there for many years, right. >> i ran the program from 2006 to 2012, so six years. >> six years, and you left in '12, is that right. >> i left? '12, yes. >> and at the time you left, were you satisfied with the program you are overseen or did you feel as if there was a problem with what oakland had done? >> i was -- i was satisfied to a point. we grew so much over those six years, i don't know if satisfaction is a good word to describe it. we would -- we would hit milestones, and then, we would discover, you know, we could make it even better by doing this, and so it was a constant strive to move to the next level, to kind of go where nobody else had gone before,
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and i was certainly happy with where we were going. i won't say that i was, you know, there was some sort of short coming, and i felt that i left, when i retired, but could we have continued? absolutely, i think -- especially given the fact that the newer weapons are coming out, so then, there would be more research to do and those kinds of things. >> and do you know if they're doing that now or -- >> unfortunately, they are not, and you are seeing the results. we had -- i think mr. brave, at one point, quoted something i had in my document where we were having a high # 0, low 90 efficacy rate in oakland, and they're having a 50% now. a lot of it has to do with the management, the administration of the program, the training, your data tracking, critical.
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i mean, we would do -- i think i've described this before, but i would sit down face-to-face with every officer after they used them every single time, and we would go over, and we would debrief it, and then, we would collect all that data, and we'd start to compile that data, and we'd start to look at it, and the dividends that paid were incredible, because what it allowed us to do was modify our policy and modify our training in real-time. we wouldn't have to wait for the next training cycle or wait for the next bulletin to come out. practice of paragraph the next week when we went into class, we were changing and sending bulletins out within the department, and we were doing lineup trainings, and updating officers on the new information and new data that we'd found. it was a -- it was incredibly labor intensive, but it paid huge dividends. >> and at the same time was oakland police department going through a use of force modification deescalation, time and distance? were tremendo
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tremendous -- they implementing those changes, too? >> no. in fact when i took the program over, it was the only new program being implemented. everything else, the negotiated settlement agreements, the policy updates, those things, those trainings had already been accomplished, so that was a big advantage. >> okay. thank you. >> mm-hmm. >> anything further commissioner hirsch? >> no, that's it. >> commissioner ong hing, i'm told that the budget analyst is available by phone. would you like to speak to her? >> was she listening when -- >> no, she was not, but she's available now. >> okay. >> do you want us to call her? >> that's okay. i'll pass.
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>> commissioner? >> commissioner dejesus? >> hello? >> hi, miss -- miss campbell? >> yes. >> hi. this is the sergeant. we're in the commission office, and i think one of the commissioners has a question for you. >> okay. >> i hope you can hear me. >> i can. >> hi. this is commissioner dejesus. one of the questions that i had, i noticed in your report that axon training for officers, we heard from the department that they want to plan their own training, but it looked to me, from your report, that you were taking the perf training, which is a four hour training, and i understand officers are going to do their own -- we're going to develop our own training program, which
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will include when it's appropriate in training to draw the weapon, and perour use of the dgo, do you have an estimate to how much it would cost the department to setup a separate atraining in the polie academy for officers or after overall cost of the academy training. >> no, we don't. what we used is the sheriff department cost as an indicator, so if the department were to do their own training, i wouldn't be able to know that if they were to hire a consultant to help them with the outside training. we wouldn't have that cost. >> okay. i appreciate that. okay. and then, another thing that was really important is we do have a firearm discharge review board, and when i was looking at your analysis, you -- there's -- there's a review of officer involved shootings, which is called a firearm discharge review board, with this new, potentially lethal weapon, the number of reviews that you indicated
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would be an average of 102 tazers peryear based on the percap at that -- yeah, the amount of people that we have, and the tazers that were used in cities very substantial or similar to san francisco, your estimate is 102 as an average. so based on your estimation -- so what would the amount be to review -- well, first of all, is it appropriate to review an existing officer involved shooting setup, and what would it cost to ramp up that particular unit to include 102 potential tazer shootings, considering there are different -- you have different parameters, different legal requirements? >> we did not actually look at that. we didn't -- as we sort of said in our presentation, the rate implementation issues, that we just didn't have enough details on how that was to be implemented, so we looked at sort of the medical costs of
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the 102 i wants, but we didn't know anything about the costs of the department of doing an actual review. >> so i guess -- i read in there in terms of over sight, it would be folded into current over sight, and i guess that's the statement i got hung up on. >> no, i think what we actually said it might be -- i think we said over sight might be incorporated into current process of reviewing, but we couldn't estimate what the plan might be. additional resources might be needed. there could be additional cost if they felt they needed additional resources to skur the review. >> how much would you need for a separate -- a separate intensive review of potential, up to 102 incidents? >> so the question you would have would be the review costs for 102 incidents? >> yes.
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>> i think we could do that by next week. >> okay. and how about the training portion of it. >> and the training -- for in house training? we could also do that for next week. >> and the last thing was data collection. i understand the weapon has a very limited data collection, in terms of how long the thing was held down, when it was -- how many -- how many voltage we want out ant os very limited, so when i looked at the data issue, i thought that would be huge costs. there's also the congrs gregate factors, factors on race, disability, injury, how many officers were present, the basis for the shooting. given that potentially over 1800 pe18 1800 weapons are going to be given to maim and kill, that would seem to be a great cost, and i just want today clarify
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if those costs are included in the report. >> no. we were of the understanding that the surnt data system would be sufficient. my understanding from after we put out the report was that data -- oakland perhaps had tried to use their existing data system and found it not workable. if that is the case, then we'd have to go back and look if the existing data system was sufficient, or if they would need more. >> so would that mean that you would need to reach out to the san francisco police department staff to learn what additional sums would be needed to integrate and link the significant data that would need to be collected through the tazer and other systems we have, such as the existing reporting, sergeant's report, and things like that? >> that's correct. >> how much time do you think you'd need to do that.
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>> we could look at that next week. in terms of the data that would be available, we'd try to do it next week. >> i want to move onto replacement costs and the sheriff's, i know they travel, but they don't travel as much as police department does, and my understanding is they don't use -- their tazers are locked up when it's inside -- when they're working within the jails, i think the tazers are locked up. i'm not sure they're there, and so for the -- for the 10% replacement cost, these are expensive equipment, and it looks like you have them replaced every five years. i'm just considering, did we look at what the wear and tear would be for 2100 units that are out about, jostled, running, bicycles, in police cars, being used. i'm wondering if we have a more accurate picture of what a replacement cost would be, what a percentage of the replacement costs would be? >> what we were told, and what we understood it to be was there was an average of 10% peryear. if it's more than
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that, that's not something that we had data on. the 10% data peryear is the data that we had. >> and did you get that from the police department? >> i believe -- i would have to go back and check on our source. i was not the one who came up with that particular number, but no, i don't think we got that from the police department. >> so -- and this question might be -- if we spread the cost over replacement about over five years, and we divided by the number of deployments, would you estimate a cost of 10,000 every time a weapon is deployed. >> i saw that number out there today. i don't have any reason to validate that number. what we were -- what we were given was an estimate we could work with was 10% peryear. if it's greater than that, we'd have to do more research, because i don't have any source that says it would be other than that. >> and then, you stated these weapons were developed as a weapon as a replacement for guns.
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i just want to clarify these are additional weapons that's being added to the police department. their guns will still be there, cost for the guns will still be there. >> right. we did not think that there would be a -- ours would be the actual replacement or the cost of the weapons themselves would be a new cost, not a -- an offset of other -- of guns or other uses. >> would we have to replace other equipment that the officers have, like, on their belts, would they have to have belts that accommodate tazers, as well as accommodate -- >> that was in our unit cost, i believe, the 2300 perunit, the guns -- the holsters were part of that cost. >> okay. well. thank you. i appreciate that. thank you so much for getting back on with us. >> okay. certainly. >> okay. i have to -- dr. zhang. i was looking at the tazer -- were you there when the
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tazer -- when the tazer put their powerpoint up. so one of their -- if i'm looking at this right, one of their scenario was to use tazer on someone having mental illness, in your study, what did you find in terms of using tazers on those suffering from mental illness, drug or alcohol. >> well, i have to stay that the study contains over half a million arrests, so we weren't able to look individually at each incident, however, it's a real world study, so it did include folks with mental illness and people with existing medical conditions and aggregate, we found the increase in sudden deaths. >> and actually, it was saying
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basically to ignore their warnings, just go ahead and use it if you have to use it, but i'm concerned because their warnings actually say to avoid using it on people with mental health illness, alcohol or drug effects. >> i would agree with that, yes. >> thank you. >> dr. zhang, can i ask you one other question. we have a increasing number of homeless individuals. >> i would say a homeless have less access to medical care, so their chronic illnesses would be less well managed, less -- made aware, so we wouldn't know if they had existing heart conditions, for example, and those do place individuals at
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higher risk for cardiac arrest. >> and would that also be true for homeless people who are taking methamphetamine or stimulants or self-medicating or antipsychotic drugs. >> so certain medications including methamphetamine do increase your risk for cardiac arrest, yes. >> all right. thank you. thank you. i think at this time, i'm done. okay. i'm sorry if i pronounce your name wrong... lionisio. i know i was going to say it wrong. i'm sorry. lionisio, mr. lionisio. i have some questions for you, as well. i just want to clear one of the things up. i keep reading if all we have to do is point this
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tazer, put the little red dot -- light on, or the threat of the tazer is enough to coerce people into action. i'm just wondering, in terms of your training and stuff, what do you say to that? >> oh, it certainly is, it can be effective. there's -- i don't remember the exact number now, but at one point in oakland, when we were looking at our data, we actually came up with a number, and i'm -- it's been a few years, but i think it was something like for every time we fired, there were four times that we didn't have to, that we were able to -- just -- just turning it on and putting the red dot on someone was able to -- >> maybe i'm not asking this right. did you have to have a legal basis to point a weapon at a weapon or is it just to point a weapon at a person to make their behavior more conducive to your liking? >> oh, no, there has to be legal justification, absolutely. it is a use of
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force. >> you have an idea what it might take in terms of data collection, supervisor and weapons testing to ensure an accountable program? >> well, you know, it's funny. i just got a new phone, and i transferred data over, and part of my transfer was a copy of my old database that i had from oakland, and i'd forgeten how much data we collected. it was -- it's pretty extensive. i mean, hundreds of data points -- or of categories, rather, with tens of thousands of data points. everything from the -- from the officers and their training and the -- the -- the -- the -- what was dispatched versus what the arrest was for or the
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intention. we tractked data, just thousands of points of data, and i think that was what made it so successful, was the fact that at any given 250i78, we could run a report, what are our trends. are we stopping -- one of the things that really paid off was just finding out -- especially in an agency the size of san francisco. i mean oakland was big enough, but san francisco's double, triple that -- was finding officers who -- you know, they'd come into my office -- weren't you just here last month? yeah. instead of having to do something like that, we were actually running a report, and we find -- you talked about earlier the early warning system, and we were actually able to contribute to our early warning system, because we'd have people use it three, four, five times in the last question quarter, and we definitely took a look at those numbers, so it paid dividends on so many levels. >> let me ask you this: one of the things we keep saying and
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hearing is officer reduced injuries. is there a scientific study that actually shows that or is this self-reported information to tazer international? >> well, as -- to commissioner mazzucco's question earlier, that's where it's hard to say because there's a number of studies, and the data -- much of the data is self-reported by the agencies, so he don't know what their methodology was, you don't know -- you know, there's just a lot of unknowns, and so you'd really have to kind of drill down, and if you could identify a particular study, i could certainly comment on it, but -- >> well do you know of any study that have taken all of these scientific studies and drilled down. >> i can't think of any off the top of my head. that's not to say there's not any sfl it's your understanding that a lot of this data is self-reported from agencies? >> a lot of it is or was, yes. >> did you ever offer to review any of our officer involved
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shooting or assist our lab to assist or review our use of force. >> i did, yes. >> what happened? >> i haven't heard anything back. real quick, this wouldn't be a detailed analysis, but for a real quick analysis to try and get an idea of what kind of problems you're trying to solve, one of my suggestions was take ten -- select ten cases where -- from each station, so you'd have 100 cases, and pick the cases that you think would best represent a tazer use, based on your current knowledge and those kinds of things, and i'd be happy to go through those things, and we could sit down, go through them, and look at them, say this would be a good time to use a tazer, this wouldn't be good. this would be good if you had two officers. it wouldn't be, like i said, a very detailed analysis, but it would be a really quick, easy
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way to get some quick i data. >> let me look at my thing here. couple things -- just a couple of things. i looked through the notes from the notes from the meeting that you guys were all having back there at the police department, and early on, one of the things you said is what problem is the department trying to solve. did you ever get an answer to that problem -- that question? >> no. that's one of the questions that remains, and i think that 100-case analysis would really help try to pin that down. >> okay. and if you were to start a tazer program in a police department today, given the modern police standards, given this new model of weapon, cost, and so forth, what would you do? >> well, it's -- that's -- i'm glad that i'm not in that position, because i still am a fan of the weapon, the weapon that i used on the street many times. i just have questions
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if this weapon will perform at the same levels as that old weapon. >> and just being on part of this force, do you believe it's the right time to have -- to have tazers for the -- for our department or whether we should hold off? well, again, from what i've seen, and i'm not privy to everything you guys have. i saw the president hold up a binder earlier, and i didn't even realize there was that much data you guys had collected, so i don't have all of the information that you have, but just based on what i know, i don't see that -- that the -- that the -- i don't see the results of the research that would support that, at this point. >> all right. i think those are the questions i have for you. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> see... walsh... there you go.
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>> okay. >> that was the important powerpoint presentation that you had today. i'm just wondering why didn't you present that powerpoint to the stakeholders group at any point so that they could have an input for that. >> 'cause i prepared that for tonight. it literally was not finished until this morning. >> okay. >> a lot of that data, i will say, has been presented in the studies that are with the commission, or has been discussed, so i generally didn't use any data that hasn't been shown, with the -- with the one exception of the lapd study which, as i had said, waited for the efficacy of the lapd -- that's that tracking method has been scrutinized with the 53% in 2015. in 2016, it goes up to 58%. it has been sitting out there, in an lapd use of force and again, that is trigger pulls. it's been used to show that it's an
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ineffective device, so for instance, what you couldn't see on the screen, and i'd just like to touch on it is if you were lapd, and you use a c.e.d., and you use one charge, and the suspect goes down, and you take that person into custody, you have a 100% effective rate. if you go to two, it's 50%, even if you have the same out come, and if you have three, you go to 33%, so the percentage is a little bit skewed. they do not track the way most departments do, and so again, it's just a little bit off, but again, i'd like to point out that they've increased, and they have deployed another 4400 of the x 26 p which is one of the newer models. >> so at some point before you came here tonight, were you able to look at the website of the department of human rights commission, were you able to
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look at the -- what she talked about tonight, the findings that she presented tonight regarding the community meetings, and the community groups? >> i saw some of it. i didn't read the whole thing. director davis was kind enough, and one of the promises we made after those meetings were to address concerns, and they had broke those up into themes, so i did work off those. she had some minor tallies on them, so for instance if one of the community concerns, they jotted down 23 for the number of people who spoke to that particular thing, but there was no total, so i couldn't compare that to 23 out of how many people, but that's what i had originally seen. >> well, i notice her powerpoint was different from the power -- from what we were provided, i think it was two nights ago, but i noticed that september -- that september 12th meeting at bill graham auditorium, 85% of the comments
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recorded were against c.e.d.'s. and then, she broke them down into these little comments, and i guess -- i guess -- i saw this, and i thought that was pretty subtly numbered, considering how -- how focused those groups were, you know, and -- and -- i was critical of the way they were setup, but these are really high statistics or antic.e.d., and when i woke up this morning and looked at the police department -- they listed the comments why they were ae antitazers, but when i looked at the paper this morning, it says critics of tazers say they're incompatible with deescalation, and i'm just wondering if we're going to respect the public and what they say, why would we call them critics when they're the community that are supposed to be included in making this
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decision according to the department of justice, and i'm just wondering if you could speak to that or should i ask somebody else. >> to be honest f, i'm not sur of the word critics, but i end at that -- attended the meetings at sunny daily and bill graham, and i believe these people were passionate, focus, and they had a focus on what was the correct decision. i disagree with it the. i believe the people that were there are highly motivated, and i'm not taking away that from them, but if you look at the entire spectrum of the city, you may have a different result. i think when the doctor refers to sample sizes, where he has 500,000, and he adjusts it to 12,000 for the wake forest study, you may get
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different numbers. what i think we tried to do when we put up is answer those concerns as best we can. i think one area we can always do better is to explain our positions. i i've said this several times. i think we're really good at what we do, we're just not really good at explaining how and why we do it, and i think there's some communication in those numbers that reflect that. >> so i guess some of the things that i hear, and part of the department of justice was that san francisco police officers stop african american and latino drivers more than anyone else, that they're searched more than anyone else, and in fact, in terms of rois, they're mostly minority individuals and many of them are mentally ill, and one of the things that brought us to this crisis was a distrust from the community regarding particular communities of color, and the way i read it is that the -- the d.o.j.'s talked
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about expectations sentiment and information from top experts in the country, but it certainly has to -- would include those communities that are most affected, so far, by officer involved shootings. and so i guess one of the things that came out from all those shootings that we had was a change in our culture of our police department, and -- and what i'm -- what i'm looking at is we have all these working groups, but i don't know if you can sit here today and say the culture within the department has changed in any way. >> i believe the culture has changed, and i think when you look at our use of force stats, i think what you need to look at is the incorporation, even prior to the d.o.j. report of c.i.t. training, which was started before d.o.j., of our c.i.t. and our change in the use of force policy which was started and completed before the d.o.j. did it. that movement with the safe
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safeguarding of life and time and distance has been incorporated. can it get better? absolutely, so i do think the culture of the department is changing. we are slowing down, we are taking time, we are deescalating situations, so i do believe that there's a positive move. i will never tell you that we will be done. i don't think anybody in any law enforcement agency would ever say that. i think the expectations should always be raised once you get there, and i will always strife to meet those levels. >> what tool are you using to measure that, other than you believe that? >> well, i think that i just -- when we look at our use of force numbers shall did-so -- mentioned -- i'm sorry, commissioner, when i was speaking earlier, that question came up from the media. when i first got promoted, i went to special investigations,
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and what was really interesting was it was right after september 11th, so our whole world changed forever, and one of the things that i've tried to carry with me was the 1% rule, and the theory is that order to stop in x as, you always have to be 100% right. the other group that's trying to be adverse to you only has to be 1%. so we choose the higher way of moving forward. we have to be correct 100%. i don't know if it's humanly possible. we strive for it, and we do make mistakes, and we try to improve on that. >> let me move on. i mentioned the c.i.t. training, and you talk about training for only officers that have completed the department's use of force and the crisis intervention team. now i understand part of our
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regular training at the academy, there's a one day deescalation and c.i.t. it's a ten hour course, and then, there's a 40 hours specialty course, and i think we need some clarification about the officers -- if it passes and get tazers, are they going to do the ten hour regular course and the new use of force or are they all going to be required to do the 40 hour, so that's a real critical question. no one has answered that. >> and we've specifically put it in, and that's the name of the class, c.i.t., field tactics, but what i want to say, it is a 20 hour course, not a ten hour course. if you don't learn the policy and why those things interact with c.i.t. in the ten hour course, you don't have any capability with that. >> so you're telling -- compatiblity with that. >> they're only going to have to do the basic use of force
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training for the deescalation and the c.i.t., is that what you're saying. >> not to split hairs. recruits get into the basic academy. i don't want to confuse that, so for the officers who are already out on the street, veterans, let's say, they have to complete both ten hour classes. >> that's what i mean. all this time, i kept saying i thought the 40 hours c.i.t. training which is pretty demonstrative, and it's pretty big, but you're telling me anybody can get a tazer as long as they do the ten hours of the c.i.t. training and ten hours of use of force. >> as the policy stands now, yes. >> not acceptable. i thought all this time we were talking about 40 hours to make them a specialist. okay. so i'm really glad i clarified that. and then, i have a couple of other questions. you guys
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provided these responses to the community forums. i'm really actually surprised and disappointed that you would take it upon yourself to respond to the community when they didn't have a chance to respond to what you say. i'm looking at this and it says there are all those studies out there, but when i looked out there for all these studies so i can look them up, and i look at the first six, there aren't any authors. i really wanted to know if any of these were tazer related studies or anyone from tazer have participated, but there's no authors there, and i also noticed again this is the old weapon. it's just different. the new weapon is less power, different type of arcing type of thing. so i just -- i don't know why
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it doesn't have the author's name. >> i'll take full blame for that, commissioner, but i think the point of this is, when you look at the majority of them, you'll either see the national institute of justice, you'll see the council of canadian academies, and canada health science -- canada has their defense and their national health services look at these devices, not anybody else. the royal military college of canada, etcetera, but i'm happy to provide where those studies have come from. >> but i did look at the canadian one. that -- it's an older weapon. it's really not amicable here, and the second one under that, electrical testing, it's just testing from the manufacturer. it doesn't talk about efficacy of the weapon in the field. >> and that was a confusion i saw in an article, and we've tried to clarify that. we've never said the canadian study testing current was anything to
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do with efficacy. the question that kept being brought up by one of the experts who's testified has been hot and cold weapons. the purport was to show the two new models going through an independent lab up in canada which is run by the canadian government. in those test, each of all those 30 weapons that they tested came back performing within function. secondly, another site i didn't get to was the lapd slide, who has the x-26-p. they just took delivery of 4400 of these newer weapons. the percentage that they return the whole number was out of the box was 20, which would translate to.0045%. the point is the number of 20% that's been thrown around is rather large, and it doesn't include in just talking, reviewing the experts' testimony in his
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submission to his letters, it doesn't just include electrical current, he goes onto say there may be a defect in the trigger or other areas, so it's a holistic look at defects coming out of the box. >> so the first canadian study was in 2013, i thought the new weapon wasn't out. >> the x 26 p. there's a misnomer that we've made a choice. >> i thought the old weapon wasn't even for sale anymore, but that's something else you should clear up. my understanding it's not for sale, but this old weapon -- >> lapd just purchased 4400 x 26 p's. the reason they went with that examines the x 2 was simply the way they trained. they had the x 26. moving forward. it was easier to retrain officers who had it on a very similar weapon. chp was taken delivery of 3600
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x 2, which is the two shot capablity, so we need to look at these devices, and no decision has been made, which has been kind of the debate that's been going on. >> i think it would be important for this commission to know if you're going to use the more powerful x 26, or less powerful x 22. that would be important, also for the community. we're saying it's less than lethal, it's less powerful, but if we're going to be requesting the more powerful weapon, i think we should know that before you put an order in. >> i would defer to mr. brave. i believe the x 26 p and the x 2 have the same output, if that's correct. that's correct. they are at the same output. they're both digital. one's a single shot, one's a double shot. >> we still don't know which
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one it is. >> i agree with you, but i don't think you want us to pick it out of the box. i think we should go through some testing. >> all right. let me look at my questions. i think i got everybody here. all right. i think that's all the questioning i have. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. >> dr. zhang, remind me, your study gave some information about the use -- the rise, i believe, in the use of gun usage when tazers are first introduced. would you remind us when that was? skbl .
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>> so we looked at sudden death, and that came down to 50% over baseline for after the first year. then we looked at officer involved shootings and those went up doubled in approximate the first year after the tazers were bought, and that came back down to near baseline, and then, we looked at officer injuries, and we found no difference. >> now, mr. brave -- thank you, doctor. >> yes. >> taking notes pretty fast, but at the end -- toward the end of your presentation, i believe you gave some statistics about, you know, when a tazer was pointed and when a tazer was actually used, and its efficacy. could you
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repeat that information for us? >> i really didn't go into detail because others presented that, but the numbers are out of the united kingdom, they have found that an 83% of -- rephrase. 83% of the time, pointing it, laser or arcing was enough to get compliance, they did not have to use it. mr. lionisic just said one to four. his report from 2004 was between 66 to # #%. the latest numbers that have come out, they were represented in dublin, ireland is 83%, and that was in a hospital setting, and what i find interesting about that one is that 5 -- in -- even with people who are having mental breakdown problems, in 50% of those instances, they're pointing it or threatening them with it was enough to get compliance. >> but i thought in that report, you said something
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about 12 usages, and then, you broke down what happened in each of those usages. am i wrong there? >> what i said was there have been 15 either papers or book chapters that have stated that the use of the tazer device, because its ability to stop voe lational movement was for the preferred use of force option in order to get someone whose ae experienced a mind-body disconnect captured controlled and restrained so they can deliver them to medical personnel. >> right. >> council, i don't know if you wish me to or not -- >> i don't. >> okay. >> that's okay. thank you. no, i was just stunned. you said council. i thought, which one. was there something else you wanted to add? go ahead.
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>> very briefly, i've heard so much about the under powered weapon. it was not under powered weapon, it was a change in technology. the older weapon had delivered the same amount of charge, whether it was arcing, and then having to go through the skin or are probe does 'embedded. that's why had it to have as much charge as it did because if the charge had to arc through the skin to have an effect, it had to have that level of charge. the newer weapons, the x 3 that came out in 2009, the x 2 that came out in 2011, and the x 26 p that came out in 201 have charmed meter impulse calibration, which means that -- charged meter impulse calibration which means it delivers the same charge whether it's arcing or whether the probes are 'embedded, so it's like it delivers the same charge to get the same effect,
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but it does it with charged meter impulse calibration in order to accomplish that. i don't know if i was clear, but that's what it does. >> okay. commissioners, those are your questions of the experts, so i believe it's time for us to discuss in a civilized and collaborative and cooperative way, our next steps. commissioner melara. >> mr. president, just for robert rules of order, one of the things that you do is you introduce a motion before we can start the debate so that we can -- >> do you have a motion? >> yes, i do. and before i introduce the motion, i want to paraphrase what i'm about to say with the
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fact that there were approximately 100 letters received by the commission office from people who are in favor of tazers but chose not to be here because they were -- they were concerned that they would not be heard as they were not heard at the different community meetings. so with that in mind, i move that the commission approve the san francisco police department to equip police officers with tazers and timize the policy and bring it forward within 30 days. >> i second that motion. >> all right. discussion, we'll lead off with mr. hirsch. >> i'm going to make a motion -- >> commissioner hirsch. >> i'm going to make a motion to amend the motion that was just made, which means we'd have to vote on the motion to
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amend first, if it's seconded. this commission has been focused on the use of force for a year and a half, at least, as reflected in dgo 5.01. deescalation, communication, the goal is to use as little force as possible. that's what it says in 5.01. yesterday, we received a report, and i don't know if everybody read it. it was a 204 page report, a quarterly report, that actually does show that this police department is using much less force now. in this year, 2017, use of force is down 17.8% from the year before. for the third quarter of this year, it's down 32% from the third quarter of the prior year. i think we should let this play
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out further so that these use of force techniques and policies become a part of the s.f.p.d.dna in a way they aren't yet, but they're apparently moving that way, and therefore, i'm going to move to amend this motion and -- as follows: the san francisco police department shall not use electronic controls weapons until the new use of force policy, dgo 5.01 has been in effect for at least two full years. sfl >> so that would be one more year. >> well, it's a year plus. >> that's exactly what it would be. >> december. >> that's what i mean. it's basically just a year from this december, so it would be december 2018. >> the end of the up coming year. >> okay. and that way, i believe it will allow our use of force
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