met. in during the wine country fires, the department was able to deploy 13 emergency management professionals to help our neighbors to the north respond and cover from these deadly fires. overall, san francisco was able to deploy over 200 of our city and county family to help fight fires, assist with law enforcement activities, work in the eoc's, local assistance centers, inspect buildings, manage shelters, and assist in the economic recovery activities, so in all, these grants support 39 individuals from five departments: 14 at the general management team at the uasi, 13 at the department of emergency management, five at the police department, three at the fire department, three at the general services agency, and one at the sheriff's department. finally, i would like to express my appreciation fto th

community for allowing us to apply for these grants. although the recommendations of another task force have yet to be finalized, we fully participated and eagerly await the results. prioritized scenarios with disaster response elements and encourage city departments to ensure their employees acting in an official capacity -- the second item we have before you is a resolution approving the mou between the city and county of san francisco and 11 other bay area counties. as we have discussed, this mou allows san francisco to serve as a fiscal agent for the region and would allow the uasi management team to continue

critical regional projects such as interoperational mass care projects and operational shelters, so thank you and i look forward to comments or questions. >>supervisor cohen: all right. thank you. colleagues, we have a significant number of cards -- speaker cards. before we go to the public comment, just wanted to see if there's -- all right. we'll go to public comment. all right. i'm going to call folks. please -- thank you for your presentation. >> thank you. >>supervisor cohen: call folks up, and just lineup over here and first, we will hear from elen brostki, barbara briggs, craig denton, shawn sex ton, and philip white. these names are in no special order. i'm just reading them as they were handed to me, so please cue up when the speaker's finished, we can get through

this relatively quickly. are you ellen? [ inaudible ] >>supervisor cohen: yes. i appreciate this. i've been running this committee for a while . i've got more names -- >> i'm not ellen. i'm alexi. ellen had to go to work. i'm a member of jewish voice for peace, as is ellen. we are a member of the stop urban shield coalition. we have a bay area chapter, although we are a national organization. our focus is on true equality in israel palestine, focusing on palestinian rights. but we're very concerned about urban shield, and it's not an obstruction, it is a real life

situation that militarized policing -- including participation in past urban shield trade shows. so -- so we have a direct concern about this issue, and you know, hearing the presentation, the whole requirement for the nexus on terrorism, which is our specific concern wasn't even mentioned, and that is the crux of our opposition. so if this was about fighting fires, we're about interested in true securities for our communities, which is not militaryized so called war on terrorism exercises. and until the memorandum of understanding needs to be rejected if it's going to be

revised to address those concerns, and we believe this issue is not new to you, but neither is our opposition, and we will be here asking you to reject the mou and not participate in oush urban shie. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is jim more srissey, a i'm employed by alameda county. i'm deemed as the mes branch coordinator, and acknowledge that urban shield initially started out as a primary law enforcement tactical competition. it has evolved well beyond that. for example, this year alone, there are about 240 tactical team members competing in our ems medical branch, we had 700

people involved. we trained well over 200 physicians, nurses, paramedics, involved in all aspects of emergency care, prehospital, in hospital. we actually created a scenario based on real life, a horrific event, the pulse night club shooting in orlando, we trained or responders here to better dale with the horrific events that happened in real life. granted, i don't agree with the terrorism nexus that happens, but we have to deal with what happens. all of our responders are well trained, well coordinated and have a true appreciation for the multidisciplinary approach to emergency management. we have seen time and time seen the successes of urban shield. i have travelled all over the country and the world taking the lessons of what i auld the

interdependent triad of fire, emt and police working together. i teach and train internationally, and i can't say that there are lessons that we can't improve with urban shield, but it is a far greater good than it is any harm that's caused. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> my name is john labindsey pullen, and i will be submitting some materials for you to review. people say it's evolving the measures, but measures taken so far have been ineffective so far in stemming problems. these include alameda county task force to review urban she'd, which concluded that

that task force did not have macy to speak on -- legitimacy to speak on urban shield matters. we have a company, strategic operations incorporated that uses racial stereo typing in its targets. this was declined -- the contract with this company was declined by the alameda board of supervisors, but in the same scenario that mr. marsdey talks about, that contract was nevertheless used -- >>supervisor cohen: sir, if you'd like, you can put your hand down on the overhead, and -- >> face up, please? >>supervisor cohen: face up. there you go. thank you. >> the next one is that the alameda county sheriff also hosted the oath keepers at the at urban shield fair, and then,

there was also a scenario which used terrorist role players wearing kaffias, of course, representing arabs to signify who are the terrorists in our community. there was a completely military scenario with supposedly a hezbollah encampment in alameda county -- >>supervisor cohen: sir, your time is up. [ inaudible ] koeb cone your ti >>supervisor cohen: your time is up. [ inaudible ] >>supervisor cohen: thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. after the last speaker, i've got a card from tariq saman, mohamed -- i'm sorry, i just can't read your writing. woods irvin, mohamed check, it

looks like, eleanor levine, laura kiswani. >> thank you, chair and supervisors for giving me the opportunity to speak. i'm just introducing myself. i'm shawn sex ton. i'm a captain with the alameda sheriff's office, and i had significant roles in urban shield in the last few years. and i just wanted to talk about one component of urban shield. yell command is an exercise that prepares all of the emergency management and manage operation center staff for any kind of disaster, whether it's man made or natural. and the whole purpose is to create an event that tests our regional capablities. and we've had these tests since 2013, and each year, we test a certain event. this last year, we tested our

community -- or our availability to distribute our commodities in an event of an earthquake, and these are the types of things that yellow command prepares all of our regions and our emergency management centers to respond to. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> good morning. members of the committee. my name's philip white. i'm a training and exercise planner with the bay uasi that's based out of dublin california. like mr. massey and the speaker before me, i've had specific leadership roles in the urban shield programs. specifically i have over 30 years of experience in the fire service, but what i want to talk to you today is about how urban shield has modified or changed from its origin, which was primary law enforcement, as

mentioned, to today, where it's multidisciplinary. we have fire, police, we have public health, and more importantly, in response to some of the concerns that were raised earlier in the year by the stop urban shield folks, we put together the green and gray area commands, which for the first time we now started bringing into this unique training opportunity, citizens from different teams, as well as creating a fair zast -- disaster fair for people to come learn about how they can be more prepared, so i'd just ask you to consider the items before you with the modifications that have been made without further amendment so that we can go ahead and continue to see this exercise occur every year. it's a unique training opportunity. one of the things is that there's some things you'll obl get one chance to go ahead and get it right. this isn't like sports where there's next year. you can create a new team or do something different. when you have an emergency, you

only have one time to get it right, and our goal here with urban shield is to make sure that they have an opportunity to do these things multiple times so that the one time they have to do this, they come to house or a friend's house or a family member's house that they're going to go ahead and save the lives, create greater security and ensure that everyone goes home. thank you very much. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> afraid i'm going to say a lot of the same things that people in front of me said. my name's craig denton. i'm with the san mateo county sheriff ease office and member of homeland security division. i'm here representing san mateo fire agencies, san mateo ems agencies. on behalf of those entities, i would like to express our support for the urban shield training exercise. planning, training implementation and evaluation are some of the cornerstones of

emergency response. the urban shield exercise creates this environment and we must develop strategies, work together, coordinate emergency responses and evaluate current emergency operation plans. urban shield is an all hazards multiple jurisdictional training that leaves all those participate in an overall state of readiness. communities and local governments are given the opportunity to activate their emergency response units and trarn for the betters. all officials request use the exercise to evaluate the processes and repair the deficiencies they may find in their response and recovery plans. we're all aware of the recent disasters that have affected alarm and small communities across the country, and we are

under obligation in strengthening our communities and mitigate against, prepare for, respond to and recover from threatened or actual natural disasters, acts of terrorism or other manned made disasters. it's for these reasons that san mateo county supports urban shield project. thank you for your time. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. sharif, tashwen, nick. >> hi. good morning, everybody. my name is -- sorry. sorry. >> laura, mengarni, and laura irwin, you're free to cue up in line. >> sorry about that. my name is sharif sakut. i'm a resident of san francisco where i was also born and grew up here, and i'm here to tell

you urban shield is incredible racist and islamophobic. it is also using military weapons that have been tested, used and perfected in our homelands homelands and brought over here to use in our communities. in addition to any of this racist programming, just this year, the oath keepers were present at the program. sheriff ahern himself has supported pahrump's policies, and the alameda retweeted earlier this year white nationalist richard spencer, and these are the kind of policies that they're put

forward. what we really need is housing, we need community based alternatives, when we talk about sanctuary, who are sanctuary for. an emt, when he was speaking, he said he did not agree with the terrorism nexus, but that's the way it was, but that's throwing our community under the bus. there's a very real fear here. we need these community based alternatives. urban shield is racist. you have the power to pull out completely, and i hope you make that right choice. don't be an accomplice to this racist islamophobic program. thank you very much. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello. my name is tariq. we believe our city, our countries should be well prepared to respond to emergency and natural disasters. that's exactly why we're opposed to urban shield.

approving urban shield you're approving programs that support violence against minority communitied. in germany, they killed 8 people by police, and the u.s., by cap ird ta ita is hundreds. paragraph prf urban shield is built on the belief that we are at war with a domestic enemy that must be neutralized. we have seen how this results in police treating our communities as the enemy, particularly black people, arabs, muslims, and poor people. urban shield is supposed to exclude international teams

from countries that with the documented rights violations. this should be extended to u.s. teams from departments with documents civil and human rights violations. people, we people in the bay area are actually afraid and scared to just walk by police when we are in kaffia, the picture that you saw, we wear it all the time, and i am proud of it. when i'm walking on the street, and i pass a police, i am terrified. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you four your testimony. next speaker. >> good morning. supervisors, my name is mohamed shek. i'm with the stop urban shield coalition. this was at this year's urban shield expo. this was a sniper rifle that was raffled off to

participants, and not juchlt law enforcemen juchlt-just law enforcement, but anyone who was present was able to buy a ticket for the raffle. urban shield started off as this law enforcement thing and has evolved. now, the urban shield fair that you saw a picture of earlier, with the oath keepers, now, the oath keepers are an extremist organization identified by the southern poverty law center, extreme antigovernment organization that came as a result of president obama being elected as the first black president. these are the kind of organizations, these are the kinds of politics that the sheriff of alameda county represents. recently, the sheriff's department got a reward from the federal government, $1 million because of his participation with federal law enforcement agencies, particularly around immigration, so participation with ice and encouraging that

participation. now, the san francisco board of supervisors, in february of this year, voted almost overwhelmingly with the exception of yee who actually wanted the legislation to go further, called on alameda county to suspend urban shield. what we're calling on you today is to make good on those values, on that vote, and to pull out of urban shield, but also to reject the mou as it stands and to amend it so that you all have the power to not participate and to not actually fund these -- this kind of highly militaryized racist program. to say you can't fund the mou -- [ inaudible ] >>supervisor cohen: thank you. thank you. last group of cards that i have, tessa, david sparrow,

dennis n. barrett. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is woods irwin, and i'm a member of the stop urban shield coalition, and like others here, i'm also here to urge you to reject and amend the mou with the bay area uasi. so as has been mentioned, the primary architect of urban shield is alameda county sheriff ahern. as has also been mentioned, the support of racest and xenophobic policing determine straight -- demonstrated through the recent receipt of $1 million because of collaboration with i.c.e., the inclusion of the oath keepers in this year's expo, and the inclusion of teams from countries with hone

human rights abuses. it is imperative that san francisco continue to show leadership as it did in february , and that when it passed the resolution to urge alameda county to stop funding urban shield. as the fiscal sponsor is dangerous to continue to participate in a program that the residents here regularly articulated militaryizes emergency response, making our neighborhoods more terrified places to live and work in. it's dangerous to capitulate with a program such as this seen by clarifying movements like black lives matter as black identity extremists. today, you can vote to reject and amend the 340d u as it stands, pull the city and

county out of urban shield. urban shield cannot be reformed. alameda county released its recommendation in this -- >>supervisor cohen: thank you. your time is up. [ inaudible ] >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker, please. >> any way, trying to get that up there. my name is eleanor le vine. >>supervisor cohen: and eleanor le vine, you need to clip your document. it's upside down. >> never like being upside down. >>supervisor cohen: okay. >> okay. i work for code pink for peace, and many of you know our organization has worked hard over the years, beginning with the start of the iraq war to end war and to replace war with

peaceful solutions, and we feel the same way about urban shield and uasi funding, that militarization never brings peace, it never brings democracy, it never brings freedom to people, and what i'd like to address just quickly is the issue of a culture of fear that exists in this country which has led to the increased military spending around the world that our defense department, our militaries have unimaginable amounts of money. and that kind of culture of fear has now trickled down to cities and to counties like uasi funding and urban shield. do not be fooled by the thought that we are going to be overcome by people trying to get to the united states by ferry boat, by foot, if that's

imaginable, by airplane, by whatever means necessary we have for the democracy we have in the united states. do not be fooled by the calls to faear that we are increasingly seeing in this country. exercise your right to speak up and to look at alternative ways to maintain a democratic system and to make sure that freedom and democracy are extended to everybody. do not succumb to a culture of fear, because if you do, you are going to go down a road where there's nothing that a military response that you are rely on and will bring you to the kind of response that you can rely on -- [ inaudible ] >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon.

my name is laura kaswani. i'm the president of the arab organizing center. i was also a member of the alameda county task force on urban shield and a member of the stop urban shield coalition. i don't want to repeat a lot of what's been said. i just want to make clear that the issue at hand here is urban shield, and the other issue directly related to that is alameda county sheriff's ahern who have proven to be incompetent at addressing the ongoing issues of racism going on here. we have heard about the oath keepers, we have heard about his rayist comments and tweet. on a personal level, as a member of the task force, the person that was recommended by the sheriff to be part of the task force, mike grant who is

connected to the oath keepers, participated in the task force with very many months with some of the people here in the audience and myself and others, and after the task force sent me an extremely racist e-mail, and directing that hatred toward myself and the organization that i represent. this is the type of mentality that the sheriff's department holds and 'emboldens and in terms how urban shield allows to play out. you have the chance, when we found out sf was a fiscal sponsor of urban shield, we were pretty excited to know that our city would take a stand and make sure that this racism would not continue. we don't have four years to waste. we need you to do something now. reject this mou and make a difference. thank you.

>> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is angela jay. i've had the privilege of serving on civic boards here in san francisco. i'm on the police's community policing work group, and i've been on the veteran's affairs commission. i stand here as a citizen very concerned. many times san francisco likes to see itself as the humanitarian in the group. the police department's to say we're going to keep forwago fo we're going to keep working on the issues that are plaguing our police department, but to see it struggling to find humanity in its citizens, to even think about bringing in a militaryized frame of mind is a step backwards. one thing that i'm very troubled with, i don't want to

see this, we don't want to have emergency services people thinking militarization is the way to move forward. i remember learning that we wanted to move to be a guardian, moving away from the warrior culture. i remember sitting here in this same chamber watching us vote on tazers, why are we always coming up here concerned about weapons, where are those weapons going? my concern is if we move from a warrior mentality to a sanctity of life caregiver culture, why do we need any weapons? why do we need to militaryize anybody? only a warrior needs a weapon. only a warrior city needs a weapon. a peacemaker sees this human being. they don't see threats. so i'd ask you to pull out completely of any urban shield situation. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker.

>> hello. my name is nick, and i'm a resident of san francisco. just want to repeat and encourage the board to reject the current mou and to demand as a fiscal sponsor how the funds are used and san francisco should pull out of urban shield if we plan to be -- continue to be the humanitarian that we want to continue to be, we should not approve urban shield. there are residents that were here that were living in the east bay, as well, and we should look out for them, as well. >>supervisor cohen: next speaker. >> hello. good afternoon. my name is humberto desilva. i'm here representing a community based organization called 67 suenos. we represent mostly folks that

are undocumented themselves as well as mixed heritage families. so one thing that i want to provide testimony to is the various stories that my students have shared with me of experiencing swat raids of experiencing ice raids or things that come directly from the influence of urban shield and so i've heard the stories of my youth that have experiences of flash bang grenades being let off in their homes, the front doors of their homes being tored down, as well. paragraph so i heard from other folks that there's a shift in the program to move away from this type of militarization and to emergency response, while i hear that, i think that the positivity that they are, i guess, suggesting doesn't necessarily makeup for that, so one thing that i'm also thinking about is how at the

end of the day, the funding comes from the department of homeland security and has that requirement of nexus for terrorism, and so that's one thing that worries me because if the concern is really emergency preparedness and helping folks out in that matter, i would hope that then maybe that type of programming might come from a fema, for example, or center for disease control, right? but if the funding's always going to come from dhs, it's always going to have that hook to it, and that desire, and that need to respond to terrorism, so that's one thing that i want us to think about. while we heard that there's a move away from that, i feel that based off where the money comes from, it's always going to have that piece connected to it. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: next speaker. >> hello. my name is masa larson, and i live in the richmond district. my supervisor is sandra lee

fewer. i'm a member of jewish force for peace, and i see san francisco known as a community of kindness, of culture, of kindness for its people. we are a sanctuary city, and what i see with urban shield is a method by which we're militaryizing police, we're heightening racism. you heard this from many people who reported that, so many people from people of color, from muslims, islams, and people of color, and poor people. i just don't understand why we even want to be part of this. there's no part of it that really is good for us, because it comes in a package. it might have some good parts, but it has a part that's so bad, that we should not be part of it, so i ask you not support urban shield. >> hello.

my name is colleen irwin, and i'm petitioning the board of supervisors to stop urban shield. most recently i've worked as a nurse practitioner orthopaedic at san francisco general. i've experienced disaster preparedness firsthand. health care workers are on the front lines. the california and the national nurses association have come out to stop urban shield in part because of the swat team training competition. the outcome measure is not the effectiveness of deescalation of violence or the most live saved, the winning team or outcome measure in the training is the most deaths. as nurses, we recognize that our patients are our community. they are also our neighbors,

they're workers, they're grandparents, they're friends, and i think the board of supervisors, it's disturbing to think that our greatest threat is from our members of the community. that's not the point of view that we hold as nurses, and i don't think that's the point of view we should uphold in disaster preparedness, so i urge you to stop funding urban shield. >>supervisor cohen: are there -- >> good afternoon. my name is amina coleman. urban shield is nothing more than a swat team, weapons hosting and training fair. those their for profit vendors may say their equipment is necessary for emergencies, research shows that police use swat raids in things like

warrant deliveries and drug raids. communities of color should not be terrorized. san francisco has -- has committed to deescalation and the minimal use of force in policing. urban shield undermines that. this mou expiration provides san francisco to recommit to moving away from warrior style policing and further criminalization of communities of color. we urge you to follow through and take the opportunity to amend the mou. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speakers. >> thank you, supervisors for listening to us. my name's david sparrow. i'm a member of jewish voice for peace, but i'm here as a long time resident of san

francisco. i hangout a lot in the mission district. i'm old, i'm white, and i don't have to worry about police violence, for the most part, but you know that other people do, and as an activist, i've seen the effects of that on people. like, a couple years ago when the san francisco police were gunning people down at a pretty good rate, like six people in three years, the voice in the streets was obvious. people were scared, people were angry, and the police chief was removed, the shooting appeared to stop or slow down, it made a major difference. same thing. if police are coming down the street in tanks, like they are in some places, if police are armed for combat, and you walk down, you feel like these people feel threatened by us, these people are not here for us. they're scared, and it totally

changed or greatly changed the whole atmosphere of living in the city, and so while i really sympathize with the fire people and the emergency medical responders who feel they're getting some help from urban shield, but as has been pointed out, it doesn't seem like you can separate those things from the main core of what it is, which is militaryizing the police, so we need to somehow dramatically change it so those two things can be separated or pull it out. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you so much. next speaker, please. >> my name is dennis, and i'm currently serving as the police chief in the city of dublin, and prior to that, i served at the u 15d i, assigned as the program manager, and i was closely involved in all the planning and all the training. i'd like to say that you've heard a lot about urban shield,

and that's -- that's what -- a lot of concern here, but we have to look at the bigger picture. this training exercise including plaining, training, and the exercise, so if you step back a bit and look at the training part of the program, the training serves law enforcement, ems, has met, and ordinary citizens, and what happens in the training is first we identify deficiencies and weaknesses, and then, we improve the training. during -- since the inception of this program, over 1,000 courses have been provided. over 26,000 students have been trained, and we go through the cycle over and over. after urban shield, we go through a cycle where we identify weaknesses and areas for improvement where we change the program for the next year, and we go back to the planning

cycle, and we have all the disciplines and treatments to help plan the training. so this is part of a cycle that's very important, so if you do not improve the authorization today to enter into the mou's, then this will stop the training portion of the program until this is completely approved, so i would urge you to approve the mou's today so we can continue with the training and begin planning the next urban shield and other exercises. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, madam chair and supervisor's. my name is brent catelis. there's no doubt in my mind and from the perspective of thousands of people that have been involved in this scenario, and i'm sure that the majority of the 8 million people in the bay area that urban shield has

been greatly involved in disasters, whether it's natural related or terrorism. the fact of the matter is whether the particular incident, natural disaster or earthquake or a bomb going off in a building, we still need that collaboration between the first spoenders, and we did not have that before urban shield. other cities have seen it, taking the benefit. i'm always mazed at the relationships that have been built among private sec ton public health trauma doctors, fire, ems, emergency managers, those did not exist before. i didn't have relationships with the managers over here in san francisco or the sheriff's office, san mateo, previous, even neighboring jurisdictions, it was pretty common for there to be tenuous relationships. there is a place for tabletop

exercises that used to be the norm. there is a place for that and disaster management. however, the real benefit is having the real boots on the ground, having real world exercising and implements resources and equipment to ensure that they're working to best protect our citizens, and i appreciate your time with this. thank you. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. next speaker. >> hello. my name is charlene. i'm speaking on behalf of tashnuanin, who had to leave. i'm part of the stop urban shield coalition. i just want to speak briefly about recently, i had the opportunity to go up to santa rosa in the wake of the fires to volunteer there, and my experience there was really

powerful in seeing community members stepping up and taking care of each other during this crisis, and volunteering at the shelter and not the military. so the military presence there was very strong when i was up in santa rosa. there were national guard members around, and what i experienced with that was a lot of fear at the shelter that i was supposed to be at was supposed to be a sanctuary shelter, and yet, their presence was known, especially in the wake of the hurricanes happening recently and i believe it was the florida sheriff's are coming and talking about shelters being places to round up undocumented folks? it -- you know, so just keeping that in mind and linking it back to urban shield, i want to call on san francisco as a

sanctuary city to take the lead and set the example for other bay area cities? and to -- to show sheriff ahern, whose priorities are clear, that he is -- stands with the racist and xenophobic trump administration, and it's pretty simple. urban shield is a racist and xenophobic program that prioritizes militaryizing our communities -- [ inaudible ] >>supervisor cohen: thank you. your time's up. are there any other members of the public that windould like speak? has everyone spoken who'd like to speak? all right. thank you. public comment is closed. supervisor yee? >>supervisor yee: thank you, chair cohen, and i want to thank the public for coming out.

thank you, i guess not so much public, but people from the different jurisdictions to come out and express your -- your point of view. i heard many things that were pointed out today. what most folks are concerned about is the things that some of the speakers, that out of towners talked about other aspects of uasi, and those are very beneficial. we know that. the urban shield -- what i didn't see, and it could have happened -- happened elsewhere. i just didn't get the information -- that earlier in the year, there was a lot of talk about how this helps coordinate everything and so forth, moving our departments, and i didn't see any evidence from the urban shield weekend that there were actually interdepartment --

interdepartment collaboration between san francisco fire department and the police department and the -- and so forth. it seems like they were only individual teams that went out for these exercises that had no coordination between our own departments. that's something i would love to support if that was the urban shield. the -- there were other comments earlier in the year and that really wasn't brought up today that this urban shield training is the only unique opportunity for us to be involved with it. i'm just talking about san francisco. i can't -- for those out of towners, if that's what their values are, that's fine, but i'm talking about us in san francisco. but i realize that in the last six months, there's been opportunities for us -- the different departments -- the

police departments and so forth -- to get further training in pretty similar stuff, whether it was for the mass demonstration piece, there was opportunities there. there were -- so in a way, it's -- there is he aa l's a l contradictions when people come and testify. i'd like to say, in my point of view, some of the things that public speakers pointed out is that urban shield is sort of a conflicting issue for us in san francisco. on the one hand, it promotes public safety through tactical training, and on the other hand, it instills fear in every community it aims to protect, so i don't know how to resolve that. and i'm -- as i mentioned earlier, i'm totally really unhappy about the timing of all this stuff, and it seems to happen over and over again.

>> supervisor: yeah. >>supervisor yee: so today, i would like to do something further, but i think what i'm going to try to do is at least continue to reflect our values -- or at least my values, and hopefully, our values in san francisco around these issues by not necessarily modifying or amending the actual mou's and so forth, but to look at -- what we did was look at the -- the resolutions that accompanied these mou's. i'd like to amend those to have some reflection of hopefully, what i think we value in san francisco. so let me point those out. for item number 18, i'd like to make a motion to amend the

corresponding resolution with the following language that's already -- which is already reflects in the whereas clauses, provid clauses, provided by the department of emergency management, restating san francisco's option to the militarization of police, so at the end of page 5, i'd like to include to further resolved clauses, one that read that the board urges that no city or county of san francisco personnel shall attend any exposition or vendor shows or vendor shows that include military grade weaponry or semiautomatic weapons as part of this grant. and be it further resolved the san francisco board of supervisors intends to establish a set of guidelines for the city and county of san francisco personnel to participate in exercises funded by this grant. so that's for item number 18.

and for item number 19, same thing: to amend the corresponding resolution with the following language to reiterate, san francisco stands on the problematic elements of urban shield. i would add, after line 18, on page 3, whereas clause -- clauses, the city and county of san francisco does not condone training that promotes militaryized policing or stereo types pertaining to race or religion in counter terrorist programs. whereas the board of supervisors is concerned about the san francisco serving as the fiscal agent for programs that are incompatible with our values and goals and have signal interests in -- in cooperating our principals as priorities for uasi programs in the mou. and whereas if uasi funding is used for programs that are

incompatible with our value and goals, the board of supervisors may consider legislation restricting the city's participation in the uasi in the future. so those are my motions to make amendments to the -- to resolutions. >>supervisor cohen: all right. thank you. supervisor tang? >>supervisor tang: thank you. thank you, supervisor yee. i really appreciate the amendments that you have brought forth, and i want to thank the public commenters. i certainly hear you on your message. i think i can speak for everyone here at the board of supervisors that we do not support our public law enforcement officials targeting certain communities and so forth. but personally, i do support us being prepared in handling emergencies, being able to respond to acts of terrorism, whether they are committed by foreign individuals or even our own u.s. citizens, which has happened in this last year. in any case, one of the things

that i am -- i want us to actually separate out is the fact that the training itself is very valuable. i know i saw these pictures. i don't know that this is happening in san francisco. i heard a lot of comments about alameda county, other jurisdictions, but i do feel that we in san francisco, we do have specific guidelines that we abide by. not wanting to target certain communities, is important, so again, i wanted to say, that not knowing the specific photographs and where they came from. but the expo, i do not like what is going on in the expo. i like what supervisor yee has put in here, that we're restricting personnel in san francisco from participating in the expo. i could not believe when i heard that people are auctioning off weapons. that is absurd to me. now with that said, i also propose to the group, is it any better to have alameda county

be a fiscal sponsor instead of san francisco? this grant funding is going to continue to be provided to other jurisdictions, so do we want san francisco to be the fiscal sponsor, where we have, again, certain values that i think are in line with what yours are, or do we want a county like alameda county to take over that, and that's something that actually scares me and frightens me, so again, i know we've kind bundled the issues about the expo versus the training, and i think we need to separate that out. i wish we could tell other jurisdictions what to do, and that they would listen to us, but certainly, i think our message is loud and clear at this board of supervisors. so i support the vast majority of supervisor yee's amendments, but i think to item -- i think it's item 19, on page 3 and 4, the two whereas clauses, where it says that we are concerned about san francisco serving as

a fiscal agent, and also, where if you -- that we would actually consider restricting our participation, again, that frightens me about another jurisdiction that has values that we don't agree with would be a fiscal sponsor of this, so again, i heard a lot of the public comments. a lot of it was centered around other jurisdictions. i didn't hear anything about san francisco per se except the fact that we are a fiscal agent. i think it's really important that we equip all of our different departments, whether it's dm, fire departments, public health, police, you name it, i think it's really important that they not only get the skill set on paper but also hands on training. i think it's really important that when an emergency situation arises, that they know how to respond to it, and they don't just kind of think about it in theory, but they put it into practice, so all that said, this is a very

difficult situation, i think, for all of us, because we share all the values that all the public commenters said when they came up here and have said in the past. but at the same time, wanting our city to be well positioned -- we are a huge target here in san francisco. we are a big city, very dense. people may want to commit things -- issues here and problems here, and i want our city departments to be able to be well equipped to respond to that. so -- so again, i will be supporting the vast majority of supervisor yee's amendments, but the ones on -- for item 19, the two whereas clauses, those -- those give me a little bit of pause. >>supervisor cohen: supervisor yee? >>supervisor yee: thank you, supervisor tang, for your comments. i -- i want to explain a little bit. for the two whereas clauses

that you're referring to, the one -- the second one or the first -- the first one that you're concerned with, which is the second one there, i think it's part of my thinking right now that we're going to try to -- my approach seems to be moving towards trying to influence what urban shield may be in the future, in terms of, as i mentioned earlier, i saw one exercise where it actually incorporated the deeffectratsc methods. what i'd like to be doing in the future is having the legislation that's going to come forth to say that we want a bigger percentage of the exercises to reflect that. i mentioned that i didn't see

any opportunity for our city departments in san francisco to coordinate things. i'd like to see stuff like that being incorporated also, so we're coming up with a list -- we're looking at alameda's set of principles, also to see what we can say for urban shield, for us to participate, we need to see some -- some movement that can change it in the next few years, so that's -- just to explain this whereas clause, there's going to be some follow up legislation, and that follow up legislation is what i'm describing as my approach tack tang thank you, atack -- >>supervisor tang: thank you. and i understand your approach. we're trying to encourage other counties what we consider to be the appropriate thing here.

again, my worry is that these other jurisdictions will very happily want to be a fiscal sponsor, happily take the money, do what they want and still not actually change anything about what they do in these trainings and the expos. that is my concern. and so that's why i think it actually is really important that we are the fiscal agent, the fiscal sponsor, so that we can actually have a little bit more leverage, whereas we pull out of all of this uasi funding, do we have a seat at the table? i'm not even sure, at that point. so i'm trying to get at the same goal that you have, but it's just if we don't have a seat at the table, how do we instill all of the different values that we have onto other jurisdictions? >>supervisor yee: i'm just as sensitive to your comments. that's why i put it as a whereas clause, and the third

one is probably more questionable for you in regards to if we're actually going to consider legislation, you know, that was restricting us as a fiscal agent. so i think what we can do, then, is for maybe the amendments from item 19, that we vote on each whereas clause. >>supervisor cohen: all right. i'm going to jump in here and share a few of my thoughts as this whole conversation has been unfolding in a past here. first of all, i want to say that dem, you should have done a better job in working with supervisor yee who voiced a y concern in wanting a say in the