today is january 25, 2018. and this is the regular meeting of the san francisco human rights commission. it's 5:41 p.m. madam secretary, will you please read the roll call? [roll call]

>> you have a quorum. >> thank you. now we'll go to public comment on items not on the agenda. this is an opportunity for members of the public to address the commission on matters that are within the committee's jurisdiction, but not on today's agenda. we would ask public comment to address any comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or department personnel. pursuant to the rules of government, the commissioners will not enter into debate or discussion with speakers on items related to public comment. please note that a lack of response is not necessarily a sign of agreement or support with the statements made during public comment. with that, is there public

comment on items not on the agenda? seeing none, we'll move to the next item on the agenda. >> number 2, adoption of minutes dated january 11, 2018. >> colleagues, these minutes were circulated and i will entertain a motion. >> motion to approve. >> second that. >> thank you. is there any commissioner comment on this? seeing none, is there any public comment on this item? seeing none, madam secretary, would you please read the roll? [roll call]

>> motion passes. >> text item? >> number 3. presentations on data collection policies and practices. exploring the strategic role that data and its collection play in creating a diverse, inclusive and equitable society for all. burns institute. department of health, unified school district. public defender's office. san francis san francis san francisco sheriff's department, police department, and coleman advocates. >> first, we'll welcome james bell, burns institute, who will discuss national best practices. welcome back, mr. bell.

>> thank you for extending time for me for future remarks before we hear from people that are decision makers in the city and county of san francisco. as resident of san francisco for over 35 years. i've never experienced this kind of conversation since the displacing of residents in what used to be called the fillmore and other neighborhoods during the "urban renew alloy -- renewal"phenomenon. we know that neighborhoods change, but now we're called to monitor that change not withstanding market forces. market forces care little about equity, but i believe that government should. so how do we apportion goods and services and maintain communities in this context?

obviously for me, i believe that equity is how any county must proceed. and in this gumbo of multiple interests, we must be informed of cross sectors by data so we're not relying on what we see in our individual experiences but what we know across experiences. for example, in neighboring los angeles regarding the problem of homelessness, i want to read an excerpt from "the new york times" yesterday, where it says, "as the homeless population has grown, the old stereotypes of single men, mentally ill or addicted have been upended. now the crisis not just in los angeles is connected with

another of the state's challenges -- an overheated housing market. many of those falling into homelessness have jobs but pushed to the streets by skyrocketing rents." this, i ahmading, is data, that they're using for tackling a problem by bringing new facts to light, this as they seek 8,000 volunteers to go out and count homeless people. ucla has done a recent study of highly segregated schools by school district. you can go on-line and see this analysis they find that san franciscans are as separated in their schools as jackson, mississippi, and i'm sure many times san franciscans don't compare themselves to folks in jackson, mississippi. but once again, the data should

inform how we engage equitable solutions to this problem, data done by the ucla study, has revealed. in rochester, minnesota, the board of supervisors is gathering data on the impacts of incarceration on the families left behind by assigning health workers to the families and children of the incarcerated parents. we know who's going off to do time. why don't we give counseling to the families and children of the incarcerated parents. we all know -- nadine burke's book coming out this week, about trauma and how incarcerated parents can bring trauma. in kansas, officials are examining a 20-year difference in the life expectancy for neighborhoods that are only two miles apart. two miles apart, 20-year

difference between 63 and 83 in those neighborhoods. yet data, yet again. we have commissioner carter here that will discuss what is happening in ramsey county as a supervisor. there they're called commissioners. we know that equity will not happen without common facts upon which we can rely upon to make difficult decisions. we cannot have uncommon facts about how we're going to divvy up these resources. we're supposed to be the city that's forward-looking, experimental, and innovative. why on earth, i keep asking, 2 we not combine cross systems, indicators of well-being, to determine resource allocation? why don't we have equity metrics in each department? we'll hear more about that, i think, from commissioner carter.

so before i take my seat, i want to read an excerpt, an op-ed from david brooks in this week's "new york times" that i considered to be earnestly naive, but something i hear in san francisco all the time. "but there are some of us -- i'm quoting -- that are uncomfortable with the whole identity-politics drill. we believe that while racism is the central stain on american history, racial conflict is not inevitable." he goes on to say, "so by reducing inequalities -- show me any place in america that's done that -- by integrating in daily life, san francisco is one of the most segregated cities in terms of housing and schooling -- we can etch endly make our humanity more salient and

differences less so." he continues, "we believe that america has made strides in this direction." i don't know where. that's my editorial comment. "and it's everyone's responsibility to make racial diversity a creative spark and not hositility." earnestly naive. san francisco is on the verge of permanent racial hositility. and without equity metrics, what's left of communities of color in this count yy will not believe any agenda conservative or progressive are in our interests because we don't know what the equity metrics are. and i hope that we can stop that from happening and i hope that

tonig tonig tonight's presentations to this body can make these words live in action. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you, mr. bell. [applause] next, we'll invite commissioner toni carter, elected commissioner from ramsey county, minnesota, to the podium. welcome. >> thank you. let me see if i can get my bearings a little bit. it's wonderful to be here with you. i've had the opportunity to come last night, to see the city, to feel the warmth of people. and many of whom are working together with a focus on escalating the work you are doing to make sure that san francisco is a place where all can grow and thrive. and i say that knowing that that is not easy work.

i come to speak with you about the work we do in ramsey county minnesota, and see if i can figure out how the slides work. okay, thank you. great. i will come over here a little bit -- i don't have to do that. >> mr. miller will. >> so i'll tell you a little bit about where i come from. it is my hope in sharing with you some of the characteristics of my county, whose central city is st. paul, minnesota, ramsey county, and sharing with you our motivation then to not only be a diverse community, but to being a community that works for all. sharing with you that we have many of the same dilemmas that present here in san francisco

and that we are determined to move our work forward so that we can dispel the story that there will always be a bottom and so that we can ensure that all within our community can grow and thrive. st. paul is the county seat and the capital of my county, ramsey county. the population of ramsey county is 540,000 people. half of the county's residents actually reside in the city of st. paul. and my work as a commissioner is elected out of a community of about 80,000 people in a diverse section of st. paul. in 2013 in ramsey county, we began to focus our deeper understanding of our characteristi characteristics, our strengths, our needs, our assets, and on

population data as critical to informing the work that we do to ensure that we have a healthy and vibrant community. that would be in public safety. in employment. in health. in justice in housing. in all areas of life in our county. our foundational document, which was called "building our future," drew four simple, but pervasive conclusions. first is that our people are our future. the second is that we needed to employ intensity of land, that that would matter as we worked to serve our people. that new partnerships, different than the traditional partnerships we've held on to for a long time. and in addition to many of those partnerships would make a difference in our ability to change. and that we would build on the

existing foundation of work and relationships, assets, needs, and understanding of our community. so amongst minnesota counties, ramsey county, you should also know, is the very smallest in land mass. it has the capital city. it is the most densely populated. it has the greatest percentage of people of color. and we are also home to the region's most racially and ethnically diverse community, with the largest share of skilled workers who have languages that are other than english. we consider that an advantage. and are working toward ensuring that we utilize our diversity advantage in this global economy. the slide shows ramsey county in 2016. there's a much bigger regional picture that impacts us as well.

the minneapolis-st. paul greater twin city's region population of color will more than double by 2040. that's our projection, a little different than here. while the nonhispanic white population will remain about the same, as it is depicted on the slide today. the region is depicted as an immigration gateway and it's expected that we will grow by thousands of new residents through international immigration through 2040. as i said, we welcome this growth, as we do believe that diversity is a strength in the global marketplace. i want to share just a few more statistics then about our demographics. overall in ramsey county, we are home to colleges and universities, more than any other county in minnesota. and ramsey county's education statistics look pretty good. of residents 25 and over, 16% have a graduate or professional

degree, as compared to 11.2% nationally. 90% have completed high school. 40.4% have a bachelor's or higher degree. the national averages are 86.7% and 29.8% respectfully. however, as the slide shows, significant racial disparities also exist in education. 95% of the white population has a high school diploma, only 82% of black or african-americans in the population do and just 68% of the asian population has a high school diploma. that's a difference of 13% and 27% respectively. and these disparities exist at the higher education level. with 47% of whites, 37% of

asians. we recognize that our future economic growth will depend on an educated, highly skilled population. in income, 2016 median householdin come was $56,104, compared to the u.s. median of $53,889. 11.4% of families in ramsey county live below the poverty level. and nationally, 11.3%. so just about the same. with higher average incomes in ramsey county and with poverty rates on par with the national level, significant racial and economic disparities also exist. you will see on this slide, or on this slide, okay, that racial

disparities in income and poverty rates exist. so there's nearly a $23,000 annual difference in the average incomes earned by nonhispanic whites and people of color and 22% difference in the poverty rate of people of color versus nonhispanic whites. a recent report showed that employed blacks in ramsey county actually earned just 39 cents on the $1 earned by whites. [please stand by ]

swee within ramsey county. all are involved in achieving all of these goals, boldly for

all people in ramsey county. and they are wellbeing, health and wellbeing at the center of all decision making. we are envisioning the opportunity to strengthen individuals, families and our entire community through effective safety net, services and innovative programming and working with our community to focus primarily on prevention and intervention, clearly services that are needed and even deepen services appropriately to help all. and with the focus on environmental stewardship. the second, prosperity is a goal that we developed from an initial determination we had to address our demographics. in a community where our population of color is 35% and doubling by 2040 and where we

are impacting by what we in minnesota call the silver tsunami. the white men who have traditionally been our work force are aging out and we are not able to, based on our demographic projections, see a work force given the fact that people of color have so traditionally been not included and not prospering. that will drive us forward. it is an economic imperative and of course the right thing to do to make certain that those who have not typically been included are. we can only grow and prosper if that is the case. the prosperity measurement came from our determination initially to combat communities and neighborhoods of poverty. we realize looking up one day that ramsey county had the

greatest number of racially concentrated areas of poverty. but knowing what we know, about the diversity advantage, and the opportunity to have a work force that can be globally competitive in this global economy, we determine that cap actually means real capitalist areas for prosperity. our initial goal of combatting economic poverty turned into a realization that we could create economic prosperity in communities typically deprived. the opportunity goal is about enhancing mobility and ensuring opportunity for all residents through our program, through education, employment and economic development that focuses on those areas and people most needing that

opportunity. and finally, we know that we can only do this work if we can see and understand what our realities are today. if we can envision the future that we want to achieve and if we can keep our eyes on the progress that we need to achieve as we go. our organization, based on this bold vision, our mission and the goals that have been described has been combined into four service teams to focus on the four goals we talked about, to sherri sources, to be able to get out of the silo mentality of only having a resource in one department, able to address a client in that department. to sharing inside those service teams and even across the walls of those service teams with our

county manager and strategic areas of the county manager's finance, human resources and policy and planning work serving all of those areas. the goal here of course is to tool ourselves to better meet the needs of our community. i want to share with you, and i'm not going to keep you all night, and then i promise i'll go unless you want to see all the data that backs this up. i want to share with you that ramsey county's strategic plan mirrors the vision, mission and goals that you just saw. it also includes for the time and this past couple of years, strategic priorities that outline the deep work that we need to do. focusing on data, organizing that data, translating it across departments and also together with our community partners to ensure we're talking about the same thing and measuring the

same thing. and within ramsey county, utilizing those levers of our work to drive equity. with a strong focus on community engagement. these are our strategic areas of focus right now. i won't read through them all, i know you can see them. but we are focused on equity, with community engagement, although you see it as one line, embedded, equity and community engagement throughout every strategic area. yes, we're looking at ensuring we're bringing in talent and that our employment is equitable. that we're attracting and retaining. we're focused on procurement, we're focused on ensuring that our continuum for young people and for their families is as it should be to address their needs and our opportunities to grow a vibrant community.

we're integrating data across platforms together with our partners again to ensure we're talking about the same people, the same goals and able to address the data practices concerns. which are many for us in minnesota to ensure that we can help our families progress. overall, we are focused on ensuring that in each area we have measurements that will help us to understand the work that we are doing for equity and for all. finally i'll say, i'm not going to go through these pieces but let me stop on open and accessible public data. finally i will say that it is so important to us to know and to share data and information that we have committed to an open data portal. now, the information that we need to make decisions based on critical decision points across all areas, first of all, is not

all there, but as we build it, will be shared with our community. and so the information we have collected, working with the -- with james bell and our juvenile initiative, just as you have built your juvenile detention initiative, have helped us reduce young people who spend time in detention facilities and help us to reduce the number of young people who actually are in out of home placement for correction purposes. that data is disaggregate, as is much of the data across units of service by race and ethnicity and will be shared on our open data portal. that is so we can be sure that in working with our partners, we

are talking about the same things and accomplishing for our community, our goals. i will leave you with this thought... we cannot address what we do not look at. and so of course your work to ensure that data is collected, to know those who are most in need, and to mind the opportunities you have for prosperity, from what could have been positive and disparity. your opportunities are great. i look forward to partnering with you and san francisco from minnesota and the more partners we have, the more vibrantly we address the work together, the better opportunity we all have to succeed. thank you. (applause)

>> thank you so much. we have a speaker that has a time constraint. i just want to check in. you're fine. okay, good. so happy to welcome theodore miller from hope sf and senior advisor to the mayor. welcome. >> thank you madam chair and director davis. theodore miller, tremendous to follow commissioner carter and my friend mr. bell. i'm here on behalf of the mayor. i'll try to be as quick as possible. i want to say loud and clear we at hope fs believe in common equity methods across the common. just underscoring what commissioner carter said, we

need an entity like human rights committee to make sure the city has bold policy for that it's ground in data and all data is not created equally. there's a specific type of data we need to focus on, this was underscored in commissioner carter's comments. if we go to the slide here, first, a quick word on hope sf, the first program creating vibrant mixed income communities, we represent sort of growing force of four neighborhoods across the southeast, 6,000 households essentially. this work comes out of the 7 corner street study. in terms of the data we need to focus on, i'm going to emphasize race, family and place. not all data is created equally. hope sf emerged in 2005 a 7

corner street study that indicated the vast majority of welfare, juvenile probation and child mental health cases emerged across seven street corners in the city, six of which are around public housing. the theme of place and why it's so important. what i'll emphasize on this slide, it's hard for the audience to see, across the life course, there's sort of four key buckets of data we need to focus on. i would consider these family wellbeing indicators. number one the concept of healthy birth on the early stage, academic efficiency. three, family justice and four economic power. these are what i consider longer term outcomes and determinaters. this city has kind of stood behind loose and thin measures while we have seen the outcomes go down the drain. we'll explain what it means.

we at hope sf as an initiative and many of my colleagues are here in the room, it's collective impact initiative and we focus on results basic accountability. we're having the robust conversation about data and we want to look at transparent decision making, long-term outcomes to make sure the population as a whole is better off. i mean things that land on the long-term in families and households so folks are actually better off. so this slide just gives us a sense of -- so we're speaking the same language. we have results, we have indicators, we have performance measures. and so for us, what we have seen, i get into some of the indicator data, we can measure if we're focused and share the information items which help quantify the achievement of a result. folks are better off in terms of

economic power and healthy birth and academic achievement and better off in terms of family justice. and then there's the performance measures, measures of wellbeing, the land and programs. san francisco has been good at spending money and allocating resources, but the question is are we better off in term office longer term indicators. as an example focusing on economic power. this slide is difficult to see. in the slide deck commissioners, you have a sense of what's happening to the wealth in the city and county of san francisco. we know there's a 50% black/white employment gap and we know it takes about $80,000 a year for a family of four to survive in the city, yet our households get by on about $16,000 a year and the poverty level is about $22,000 a year. this is an economic power

indicator we want to track. this is another slide here that just shows the racial disparities across income in terms of our rise and tides, listing all -- that has not been the case in san francisco. i'm going to focus the next few slides on the visualization. it's sort of tricky to see with the captions here on the slide deck, but this will just give you a sense of why place is to important to focus on. this gives a sense of the unemployment rates by census track. the redder, the more unemployment, it's closely located around the southeast sector of the city. the next few slides, i'm going to talk about the african american population of the children in the city. it looks somewhat spread out, western addition, parts of the tenderloin and you'll start to see the displacement of folks,

focusing on the measure of place as a key indicator. so again, in 2011 you wonder what happened, where all the folks, african american children in the city. moving to issues of family justice, again, underscoring the point that not all data is created equally. for family justice it's often the case we focus on an indicator like violent crime. in this slide deck you see the violent crime rates across the four communities. you see a sdra dramatic decline over violent crime in the past six and seven years. we have great partners from the da's office and police department to help make the violence go down. is this the only indicator we should look at. if you look at the shootings we continue to have in many of our communities, that indicator may

be insufficient. and so the next few slides are a representation. i took it straight from one of our young people, a young person who lives in west point. the number one issue he was focused on was gang violence. even though he lives in a community that seemingly has a reduction in violent crime, violence and safety is still a key issue for him. we focus on not just the violent crime rate but another indicator, a perceived feeling of safety. we know households and families don't feel as safe in our neighborhoods as some other folks do across the city. lastly, i'll talk about the academic proficiency indicators that we look at as a city, again, not all data is created equally. we believe in focusing on race, family and place. this slide gives you a sense of the net change from 1990 to 2010 in the educational composition. you don't have to be a rocket

science to understand we have lost vast majority of folks who have less degree. the focus on place is so important. what we have learned from hope sf, you have to look at this visually. i'm going to go to a few slides on the map to dramatize this even more. this is san francisco in 1990, this is the population with a bachelors degree or more. it's somewhat evenly distributed across the city but the see the lower income areas on the east side and avenue is higher population of education. as i go through the slides watch how much darker san francisco gets in the areas that don't have the bachelor degree or more. in this last slide deck, as you get your $4 latte, they're being

served by folks with bachelors degree, and the lower end are in the southeast part of the city. so we've made progress in terms of sharing data, there's a shared youth data base some of my colleagues may speak to that shares across juvenile probation. our chief of juvenile probation is here but we're not where we need to be to realize on a shared metric. we believe at hope sf that the vision is -- that is vision is indeed for realizing and repairing what public policies have broken. you'll see across the wellbeing statistics, this is child mental health clients, in the southeast part of the city largely. juvenile probation clients, largely in the southeast part of the city. and in the shared juvenile probation and mental health

cases, largely in the southeast part of the city. i'm going to close with this in the interest of time just to say that our challenge is to build an enduring partnership about families. i didn't mention as much, if you focus only at the individual level, you'll miss a lot of life course impacts. i know you have an extensive slide deck from me there. we think about three key factors around data. number one, the perception, there are structural factors tied to race, the blocked access to social and economic wellbeing. the federal climate that is largening the pressures. we have pathways where displacement is largely used to deal with the labor

inequalities. consider hope sf a partner of yours. we believe strongly race, place and family should be key components we focus on. thank you. (applause) >> thank you mr. miller. before we move on with the speakers, i want to acknowledge the fact that june williams is here as a represent from senator harris' office and ellen nance is with us tonight. you're welcome to be with us as well. i want to invite dr. bennett -- may we adjust the presentation schedule just a little bit, miss deberry has a time crunch. welcoming christine deberry.

>> i appreciate the indulgence. apparently everything is scheduled on this date. christine soto-deberry. pleased to be here before all of you and to present on this very important topic. can you hear me? sorry. i'm not tall enough. >> it's good. >> latino, i'm short but in heels. >> but powerful. >> i'm going to be as brief as i can. i know there are many presenters with a lot of interesting information. i want to extend that i'm happy to have conversations away from this commission meeting with you the public or commissioners to fill you in on the work we do. we have a lot of passion around data and equity issues it imindicates. i won't cover everything here tonight but we want to be a partner with you in this effort.

so traditionally district attorney offices are not big for data, concerns over what it may reveal, for our good fortunate, our office has incentive to collect data and react to it in positive ways to lead in important areas people expect us to work on. to speak directly to an issue that this commission has asked, we actually just today at the re-entree council released a racial disparity sample. the reason it took so long, the

data in san francisco and criminal justice system is deplorable. and if james bell did not speak to that, he was being very polite. he's worked with our data and knows how terrible it is. we worked very early on with a researcher to address racial disparity in our process and we were told our data was so dirty and incomplete they couldn't do the analysis. we had to spend several years until we could find researchers in higher education to put students to work to create complicated algorithms to pull the information out of our case management systems. it's an ongoing struggle and i hope part of the work this group will take up is the investment in justice and trying to give it adequate resources to be able to complete the onboarding of our all case management systems and the sharing of the data across the systems so important

projects like this don't become six year endeavors but closer to a reasonable timeline to answer important questions about how we do our work in a more timely way. the study we just completed is at sfdistrictattorney.org, you can see all the results there. we asked professor stephen rafael to evaluate all of our decision points, racial disparity, who we decide to charge, what types of dispositions we offer. there are disparities. the vast majority are explained by appropriate criminal justice factors that pre-exist such as the arrest charge or the individual's criminal history, nonetheless there's work remaining to do and we're engaged with both those researchers and others to make

sure we continue to challenge ourselves, our policies and our practices to be equitable in the work we do every day in our courtrooms. one interesting thing that did come from the study that was conducted was the value of proposition 47 for reducing racial disparity. i raise it here today, it's one of the rare policies we see working on reducing incarceration and gives the greatest benefit to african american men, above anybody else. that's a pleasant outcome that warrants evaluation and is the type of policy we want to prioritize across criminal justice if we're going to look for areas to reduce mass incarceration and we can simultaneously impact the community's most impacted by the

policies. i think we have come to a good policy to be replicated. so -- this graph shows the impacts we have around prop 47 and dramatic arrests in relation to other population groups. so as i mention, the data systems within san francisco for the da's office, we have a case management system called damien. we input the information about the cases we're processing, that system does not contain race information. the information we have on race comes from the court's management system, which unfortunately has very outdated categories that don't even account for ethnicity. latinos and other asian populations are not even

categorized in the court management system making it difficult to do a racial disparity study or anything else related to race and equity. this is hopefully an issue with justice to the resources to help facilitate the court moving over to a new system and other agencies on boarding can be improved. the places we keep race data of our own that we have confidence in, victims around the city and the services we provide to them and to build on a statement from theo earlier, it is an important area of the public safety conversation that we often don't incorporate in the conversation. we know very well overrepresentations of individuals accused or suspected of crime but we don't spend a lot of time talking the victims of the crimes and the sense of safety in the community they reside. okay. sorry. can you go back one?

so this will just -- that is very hard to read. it's in the handout, easier to read. it will show you for example african americans accounting for about 6% of the population in the city but 19% of the victims. and for latinos about 14% of the population and about 30% of the victims of crime. those may be numbers that the commission wants to consider further. this data we review along with all the other crime data in our monthly da stat, please stand by...

third largest proportion of latino prosecutors at 10.1%. this does not count our support staff or investigative staff within the office, which would certainly take those numbers even higher. and in addition to diversity, we spend a fair amount of time on our office working on implicit

and explicit virus we also brought in kimberly papion to work with us on exercises and put that out to the office to make sure it's front of mind for staff. because of the importance of the work we do and the implications that we have. that was a whirlwind. i apologize. i don't want to take up anybody else's time but i'm happy to answer anybody's questions or be here after. >> thank you for being here. you, like the speakers we have, it's an introduction to what you are doing in your departments or jurisdictions so we can begin our conversation about what we believe our city should be doing and bringing in the city agencies. so we'll be happy to have you back and look forward to take a deeper dive into the justice with you and the public defender's office. >> thank you for your leadership

and for the presentation. since our administration is anti-muslims, anti-daca, anti-immigration, what are some of the things that you are doing to safeguard data that's being collected. and >> probably the most concerning area for us is probably around immigrants, in terms of the fear that people have about coming forward and working with us and we have done as much work -- fair amount of work telling people we have no plan to work with i.c.e. we have a policy where people

who are victims of violent crime they can apply for a u-visa. and we file more of those than anybody at least in the state the vast majority are not granted, unfortunately, even under prior administrations, but we have a robust policy of making sure that people are aware of that right and facilitating the application the other effort we've taken is training all of our staff on the potential for i.c.e. showing up in the court houses, as has happened in the country, both texas and pasadena, california, to make sure that we're aware what we can and cannot do should i.c.e. show up looking for victims, witnesses or defendants, to make sure we're a good partner in the city family. so we've trained our victim advocates to be that support for anybody that comes to the courthouse, expressing fears or concerns about immigration consequences within the building, bue