>> that is okay, i mean -- >> i wish we did. >> for routine mental health needs there is the psychiatric emergency which is right on the campus. the psychiatric team is the last place that they would want to go. it's a traumatizing place. >> there is capacity to ensure that someone if you present at 3:00 a.m. and have urgent mental health needs you will be seen by a provider. >> okay. >> seems like afte after assault is an urgent mental health need.

>> i agree. if we could have services to provide mental health services that would be awesome. there is a real need for sure. >> supervisor sheehy: maybe we could hear back with a little more detail in the future about what the need would be. >> we would lover t love to tal. >> supervisor ronen: thank you so much. next i would like to call up a representative from the police department, not sure who is here representing? >> good morning. my name is greg and i am the commander of the investigative division. i was representatives here from the special victims unit as well and the director of the crime lab should you have specific questions for them. first, as others have mentioned i want to thank you for calling

this very important meeting this morning so we could hear some of the stories and concerns that survivors have had with how the police department and other agencies have responded. as i have sat here for the last two hours, it's been an incredible opportunity for us to hear what they think we can can do better and should do better to provide for these survivors, so having those individuals that went first to hear the stories i think was an excellent segue to where we are moving to. i know today that you probably have a lot of questions for the police department about what our response is, so i am happy to provide what the role is of special victims and you may have questions about where their cases go and one of the most important things i would like to discuss is what we can do to be

better as a community with law enforcement, the hospital, victim's advocates and so forth. just to start, when an initial officer responds out to a sexual assault, it may be assault and when i say sexual assault, we will term it as a rape or some similar crime, that crime may have just been committed or it might be responding out the hospital to take a report for an incident that happened hours or sometimes days before, but their role in that is to comprehensively obtain all the information that they can from the victim or survivor and document as best they can in an incident report the facts of what happen. after that initial response, and

if they weren't at the hospital they would provide to the victim the opportunity to go to the hospital to receive treatment in terms of sexual assault kit that would proceed on and go to the special victim's unit. they would provide to them resources that we have and they have training on and information that is available for survivors and victims and they contact a special investigators unit where the investigator responds out at the time depending b on the circumstances of the time or the investigator will get in contact with the survivor generally within the next day when the report is obtained to obtain information in furtherance of the information. in the hospital they will allow the individual to have representative of their choice and they sometimes will interview them with the trauma nurse where th.

at that point it is the investigator's case and sometimes with a partner following up on all the leads they have in the case in support of a prosecution. the sexual assault kits are sent to the crime lab and they are tested and those results and toxicology evidence are provided and he or she will take all that information in the interviews and make a determination on whether or not they have enough to present to the district attorney for a prosecuting and charging decision. that is if someone wasn't arrested immediately at the scene. what i am hearing today and i know you probably have questions on it. the investigators at our special victim's unit and all units within the department, whether they are first responders or the

investigators following up on the case, their role is to obtain the factual information in support of case, but what i know we can do better is how we interact with those survivors during that time. what information we provide, how timely we are in it, how we respond to questions or concerns and how we deliver the message. what we have heard today is sometimes something said to the survivor and in the manner it's said is less than acceptable. special victim's unit has done a lot in the past several years, but one of the things bev upton said earlier and she thought it was poly anish and i don't think it is at all, how we as cmg can

respond better for it. you talked about trauma recovery, supervisor she sheehyi know you probably have individual questions about cases and so forth. >> supervisor ronen: thank you appreciate it. appreciate that you appreciated sitting and listening to the survivors and their experience with your department and your unit because that was one of the main purposes of this hearing today so that you can hear what i'm not just hearing from these survivors who were brave enough to speak on camera and in a room full of people and officers about their experience with your department but with advocates who work with hundreds of sexual assault survivors who have told

me these stories that the women have told me, i ran the stories by several advocates, are typical, so you have a real problem in your department. i don't know how officers are chosen for the special victims unit, i don't know how they are trained but something has got to change. this blaming the survivor for the rape whether it's language, talking about how much she drank or you know her need to take responsibility is outrageous. i can't believe we are having this conversation in san francisco in 2018. i remember when i was a teenager and i would see movies about the way women are blamed for what they are wearing. you were raped because you were wearing a short skirt and you would think that we would have progressed from those times and from these stories the and we haven't progressed at all.

i hope that you're as out raged and as worried and upset and feel the same urgency that i feel today to make major change because these stories were unacceptable. the quotes that you heard today were unacceptable, and the fact that we have a special victims unit and it was those investigators and those officers that you would imagine would have more training that were the ones treating survivors in this manner? i can't even imagine what's going on for officers outside of this department. i have to say i am angry, i am upset, and i am appalled, and i appreciate that you are taking this in the way that you are and presenting in this way, but something has got to give and it's got to give right now, so i would like to hear more specifically after hearing these stories, what's going to happen next? what's going to happen when you leave this room and talk to the

chief of police today? >> well, i think there are some things that have already happened that i would like to tell you about and things that we can address. for the past four or five years we have had excellent partnerships with many advocacy groups that are embedded in our special victims units that help us to deliver the best service to our members and that is somebody that has been positive and bewill p continue to do. as far as the training for our officers, any officer or investigator who is assigned sexual assault is required the o througthrough mandated post-trag of how they investigate assaults, and part of that is how to investigate with survivors and how the message you give them is delivered. as you mentioned we can get a lot better at where we have been

and where we need to go. one of the things i wrote down here today as we talked and looked toward a more holistic way for the city to deal is it is specific training for our investigators that are there within the advocacy groups and victims to come in and talk about their stories without specifically the case, this is how i was spoken to by an investigator and this is how i felt and this is why i felt that way because that is the way an officer can realize how i said was not empathetic and not with dignity and not with the respect that the person deserve. we have had that but that is one of the comments we will look back with the groups we will work with training specific to the officer. we tell our officers, we ask

them to look at survivors in two ways, if that was a family member of yours, how would you expect that department to investigate that crime if it was a loved one and how would you expect your loved one to be treated? if you look and you investigate and treat your loved ones and these survivors the same way, then you're generally going to do your job because you realize how personally it affects you. that is one of the things we will be moving forward to. what we have done that was spoken about earlier today is made quite a few changes to how we approach this. right now when a sexual assault examination is done, we have a policy in place, that kit is picked up and delivered to the crime lab within five days. the police commission policy is they want the results back to the investigator and provided to

the victim is 120 days, state mandate is longer. our average turn around now is 20-30 days, so we are well within the 120 days. there has been discussions in the past are old cases , or you read about a victim back from 1993, those results she had are the results of us taking every sexual assault kit and testing every one of those. we have no backlog within the police department. all of those were tested and what happened is we would then reach out to those victims and talk to them about the case. the problem with that is that you retraumatize the victim but you don't want the victim or survivor to think that you have forgotten. we have made changes and there

is no backlog. those results are there. toxicology reports, which another individual spoke about today, is under the per view of the medical examiner's office, so better to talk to them about the delays but it's important to have those results for us to move forward. we have policies in training and we work well with the department on how investigators will be assigned sexual assault cases and how they will be assigned and that is something that we will continue to get better with the policies and procedures. we have increased our staffing of our special victim's unit. a year ago we were 35 and now we are at 45. we have added 10 or 11. the other thing that we have implemented is we have a shadow program for our first responding

officers because someone who is a special victim's investigator may have better bedside manner in how he or she delivers it, but obviously that is a case that isn't happening as well, but part of the shadow program is to bring them up to the unit to see what is the role of the investigator and how can i do better with the needs of the victims, so those are programs we will continue to do. the biggest thing is getting together and having consistent training and information that goes to the investigators where they can see that the people are concerned with how the message was delivered and how we can be successful. >> supervisor sheehy: what is your standard to initiate an i rest. what i am hearing is that women are reporting sexual assault and they know who did it, and it doesn't sound like an arrest is

taking place. wondering what the standard of evidence is that you are requiring in order to have an actual arrest because that seems to be when i get to the heart of it, there is a lot of discussion but i don't see arrests taking place. at the minimum, that is what people want to see, especially if they know who the person is. my question is it seems like the bar for an arrest in this particular type to have crime seems to be set higher than perhaps in other crimes, and if you want to break it down to one of the core issues that there is not alignment on, is why is that standard for arrest so high in this particular type of crime. >> excellent question. there is a couple manners in which an individual can be arrested. there are times where there is a sexual assault that occurs and the officers will respond out

and the suspect will be there and the officer at that time believes based on the statements that obtained that there is probable cause to arrest that individual. if that is the case, they have to present that to the district attorney within about two days. within that time, we will not have sexual assault evidence kits. there is many things that we have to follow up on. the district attorney at that point will make a decision on whether or not even though we have probable cause whether they have met what they believe is the burden of proof. i will let them discuss that. in the incidents of the cases we heard today there is not an immediate arrest. the officer will take the results of the sexual assault kit, the toxicology interviews and videos and all the

information that they have and they will at that point present that to the district attorney if the investigator believes he or she has probably cause to make an arrest. sometimes we get in discussions with the district attorney and they will say there is not enough for me to prove burden of proof at a jury trial. we can present them an arrest warrant and they may or may not approve of it based on what they can prove, so if the officer does not believe that he or she has probably cause they can't consciously move forward to make that arrest, but if they do they move it on to the da. >> supervisor sheehy: this is where it's breaking down for me, so who is making this decision is it the district attorney or the officer or is it in some

cases the officer and in some case it is district attorney? why isn't there a consistent pattern of how you do this, and what is the linkage between the officer and the district attorney response for doing this? i am hearing just not a clear path for moving forward on these crime. i am hearing that immediately after because you haven't been able to get your forensic evidence which you say you will have within 30 days, so that means evidence is not going to be presented for 30 days. i have a whole series of question. maybe first let's get to the decision point and then i also want to get a little bit more sense of what an investigation looks like. >> so in an immediate arrest incident, we will provide the information to the district attorney. we may physically arrest them and charge them with a crime.

the district attorney in that instance may at that time say there is enough evidence now that i believe a sexual assault occurred and re-file those charge. they may instead dismiss that charge because they want the arrest of the evidence before they have enough to prove. in an immediate arrest, the district attorney makes that decision within 48 hours whether they will move forward or need investigative step. where there isn't an immediate arrest, the investigator will take an arrest warrant to the district attorney and if it is not signed because they are the ones that are the prosecution, then there is no arrest made on that case. there may be discussions where there is no arrest warrant offered because the investigator and the da doesn't believe there is probable cause.

maybe there is more investigation that needs to be done and that is closed or enactive. >> supervisor sheehy: what information do you need? you have victim's statement, right? you have evidence that a rape took place? you have the victim's identification of the suspect? why is missing here? why do people go two or three years with nothing actually taking place? >> i think you are asking what the district attorney will need for the prosecution. >> supervisor sheehy: do they go and interview the suspects? >> of course times they will. >> supervisor sheehy: of the cases described today do you think the suspects were interviewed? >> i don't know whether or not they did. >> supervisor sheehy: so it would not be automatic that the

suspect that had been identified by a survivor would be interviewed by the police? it's not automatic? >> no, because the suspect in that may not want to or may not talk to the officer. an attempt is made but they don't have to be compelled to make a statement. in that instance there, the investigator will try and contact the person that they have identified to try and interview them. >> supervisor sheehy: what would it take to come pell an interview with the police an arrest? >> they are not compelled at any time arrest or not. >> supervisor sheehy: i agree they have their right to not -- the right to silence, but just the fact that you hear about serial cases where it's not clear that there has ever been an engagement with the police officer by the suspect and that

is what i'm trying to get to at least. is this a sense of impunity that there is absolutely no consequence until -- and that the whole burden of proof lies on the survivor and not on the suspect, and that's what i'm trying to wrap my head around is that you're investigator has to be convinced there is probably cause and people are innocent until proven guilty but they should be brought in some way into contact with the justice system when the survivor is very clear on who did the crime. >> right. >> supervisor ronen: before you answer that, we heard two cases today. we heard a case where jane doe came forward and she said can you please go -- i know i was

drugged can you review the footage from the bar to see if there was evidence of the perpetrator of th dropping a drn my drink. my friend said i was not acting like myself. i was in a taxi, could you interview the taxi driver. the investigator refused to do any of the above. you had another survivor, tiffany who said two other women were raped by the exact same man in the exact same way in my workplace and they would not interview those women. you are not only having woman come forward and suggest how you can collect enough evidence to have probable cause to make an arrest, and they are being refused and that evidence isn't collected and how is the da being able to charge a case when the evidence is not collected in the first case.

we know these cases are hard to prove to begin with and have few women come forward to begin with. we know one in two women are sexually assaulted in this country. i cannot believe that my daughter has a 50% chance of getting sexually assaulted in her lifetime and yet when a survivor is coming forward and saying here are these ways that you can collect evidence in this case, they are being refused it's mind-boggling to me that this is happening. think about the case of someone who has been drugged. the perpetrator has pre- meditated this crime. he has gone out and obtained a drug to drop in someone's drink and then rape her. this is not someone who hasn't done it before or isn't going to do it again, and to think that case isn't investigated with everything we've got is shocking

and absolutely unacceptable. i think we have to take this hearing and take this testimony and say let's blow this all up and redo it because this system is not working for survivors of sexual assault in san francisco. with these stories and what we have heard today and if frequency of this heinous crime iin our city, we have to look at all the systems and to the investigators and to all special victim's units officers are trained t how they interview survivors, how they determine probable cause and the robust nature of their investigation, how they work with the district

attorney's office to bring these cases forward. we have to relook at everything. we could have this dialogue back and forth and you could talk to us about procedure until the cows come home, but i think what we have shown here today is that we have some serious work to do and a serious breakdown in our system. we have another hearing and we have the da's office and medical examiner and i don't know if you have any additional thoughts that you want to get on the record before we end, but i had to say that because i don't know about you commander, but i've been shocked to hear these stories. >> the first question is what is your clearance rate for sexual assault. i know that it's 10% below the national average. can you give me the statistic

is? >> i don't have that in front of me but i can get it to you. do you have a period of time that you are looking for. >> supervisor sheehy: your latest. >> okay. >> supervisor sheehy: then the second question is we heard that there is an epidemic of drug-related sexual assaults, has your special victim's unit are they aware of that? have they paid special attention to that? have they looked at best practices on ways to deal with drug-related sexual assault. >> our special victim's unit is aware of that and there has been drug-related assaults occurring for a long time and there is special training that the investigators can go to recognize cases of a drug-induced sexual assault. >> supervisor sheehy: that is recognition, but not investigation? >> recognition is a part of it.

how you would investigate it and what you would be looking for from the information and stories and the information they get from a survivor or suspect or witnesses as they work on their investigation. without getting into specifics of cases, i think you and everyone that has come up here today has clearly identified concerns and things that we can do better as a police department and how we respond to those individual. the answer to that is coming up with better practice for our investigators for them to be as well trained as they can and how they deliver services including the other city agencies and that is the one key thing out of this that i think we can grab on to and who would take the lead, the advocates, police department,

department of publidepartment o. >> supervisor sheehy: aren't you alarmed that the san francisco general hospital reports 21% increase in sexual assault over the last year. are you aware of that statistic? >> i was not aware but it is definitely alarming. >> supervisor ronen: next i would like to call up a representative from the district attorney's office. >> good morning. this has been a very sobering hearing for i think all of us, but before talking about our department and the specifics of

that just recognize the very real pain that all of these survivors brought forward today. we do hear much of that in our office in the work that we do in our child and adult sexual assault unit but the courage that it takes in to come to a public forum and share what is undoubtedly one of the worst moments of their lives is brave and not wasted. i want to offer an apology on the behalf of attorney gaskon and our office for anyone that was not treated with dignity in our office. we are committed as we have been before this and we will double down that we make sure we do our best work for everybody that we

come in exact with especially for a crime as difficult as this. a couple of things we have underway and things that we think that we can do moving forward. -- a couple of the things i think that have gotten better that are worth talking about and then the space for continued improvement as we all heard. in 2015 it came to our attention that there was a significant backlog of rape kits within the san francisco police department and it was a huge concern is. we applied for a grant that the manhattan district office was funding. we were conditionally accepted for the grant on a solicitation from our office. we did not at that point have

the support of the chief of police to pursue that grant, so we were denied, but good did come of that. it did result in the commission taking up the issue and general fund dollars being allocated to the testing of those kits, so i think the story that you read highlights the cone certain we d around that issue and the current command staff shared in the concern around that issue and hopefully those days are behind us, but that is a an impediment to investigation and prosecution. we are aware of two challenges for us, and one is how our interaction with individuals occurs. the we have made changes of staffing within those units to

make sure that we are responsive to that. we have had numerous meetings with some of the survivors here today as well as many advocates who have a good line of communication with our office and we have tried to be responsive to their con sense. concern. s -- we want to make sure that we have appropriate training for those individuals when they enter those unit. we have specialized advocates and district attorneys, dr. rodriguez can speak about the training she has done for that unit so we have an understanding of how a victim may present in that moment. we have also secured a grant for

vulnerable victims that could be used for many purposes within our office, but we chose to apply that grant to reducing the caseload of one of the das in our sufficients so he or she should focus specifically on the victims of sexual assault and that has allowed a caseload of only 20 instead of 40 which most of our prosecutors carry in the unit. these bring improvements and they are certainly not the entire solution. we pride ourselves on being a learning solution -- we continue that commitment. in terms of drug facilitated sexual assaults, i think there is much, much work to be done by ourselves and the san francisco police department to improve our work in that area.

we have learned a tremendous amount from some of the more recent case. if we didn't have a good investigation, prosecution is unlikely. we are the downstream participants of an investigation in almost all cases and we have done our best to intercede and secure collection. we do often have a lot of discussion with the police department and try to just identify additional information that would be helpful for us in building a case but much of that is lost in the early stages if not collected. we heard about videotape and one of the most challenging areas as it relates to drug-facilitated assaults is any drug in the system of the victim. we have learned from jane manning and others about experts in this area and we are su pursg

that and how that crime happens and how best to pre- serve and collect the evidence. we are now accessivity engagedded in thengagedwith then this area. we are looking into whether testing of vomit can be pre- served as potential evidence and we are hopeful that would be a strong piece of evidence for us to use in cases where we have a hard hill to crime in terms of proving there was involuntary intoxication of individual. we are working on bringing to san francisco a symposium on this issue where we can bring topics perts f.b.i. so we can education ourselves and partners

within the system to make sure that we are doing our best work to understand challenging cases to prove but cases we know are real and make sure we are doing our best work by the survivors of those incident. i do just want to say that whether we are able to bring a case is not an indication of whether we believe somebody about what happened to them, and that may get lost a lot of times in this process but i think it's important to reiterate that we don't disbelieve individuals and the accounts they are bringing to us and what we are doing. i have so much emotion for this topic, but what we are trying to do is our very best work to maybe sure we have evidence that is adequate and sufficient to prove a case and that we are not wrongfully accusing an individual and we can bring people the accountability and

piece of mind that they are seeking, at least the piece of that that justice system can offer. -- i will allow dr. catcherorg to do a brief presentation. she does have a slide on the improvement. >> supervisor ronen: we are running so behind. we do have a copy we will make available for everyone of the public, but we are going to have to skip that. sorry dr. rodriguez. >> just to talk about a couple things that we could do moving forward. some of the shortcomings is around the initial evidence collection and we do have in some areas supplemental police reports filled out on domestic

violence and in some other areas and we would like to explore whether it would be possible to develop a supplemental report so we can assure that we are getting the maximum amount of evidence available, video cameras, vomit, whatever the case may be to help us put together a case. that is something i expect from commander's comments something they would be eager to approve with us. we have received complaints and been responsive, but we are looking to have a more formalized process so that is clear to the individuals so they don't have to have the where with all to advocate for themselves -- i just wanted to tag ob to what beverly upton

said about a coordinated response and i think there is opportunity to look at the way we do child abuse and assault investigations as a multidisciplinary team and consider whether that might be appropriate and if there is a facility that might be better than the fifth floor of the hall of justice, we just don't have a nice space to offer anyone, and that might be a possibility. i hope about as a city we can talk about whether a family justice center is something that we should look to doing and we have had conversations around this and maybe this is a time to revisit the way that advocates and law enforcement and community agencies can come together on this and provide better support. >> supervisor ronen: thank you, i really appreciate your presentation and your response very much. i don't know if this is a question or comment, so respond as you see fit.

i know that from my discussions with advocates that drug-facilitated rape cases are hard to bring forward and we are going to do our best to have the latest technology and latest response to collect the physical evidence in the best way that we can. i as it should be, the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a very high standard and i get that too and i'm grateful for that in our democracy, but there has to be a point where it's not going to be 100% or 80% even likelihood that you will prevail in a case but that you bring that case forward because there are consequences to actions and even showing that

consequence for action through a trial and through charges being filed is important to the feeling out there that you can get away with this crime with impunity. especially given the nature of the crime, the likelihood that it will, that a perpetrator will -- we are going to make copies for the public -- that the likelihood that a perpetrator will offend again. i know deciding to bring charges is not an exact science and that discretion is built into our system, but i guess i know these are difficult cases to bring forward, but we have got to do the best that we can otherwise this feeling of impunity will

continue out there. >> sure. i think we are sensitive to that and some of these cases are currently under investigation and we cannot speak about those, but that is our work and our public defender would expect us not to file anything and our ethical duty is we only file the cases that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt contemplating the defense, and that is a real obligation that we have for obvious reasons, but that doesn't mean that we can't find evidence that is appropriate in these cases and i think we haven't done it in advance of some of these incidents happening and these are where we are learning some very hard lessons about how to try to capture more evidence to be able to prove these cases and though that is very little consolation i'm sure if any, we do understand that and we are now very well aware of it and active

in trying to do our best there. >> supervisor sheehy: i used to be in the da's office and there is a question about how aggressive you are in su in purg cases and what i hear is you are not going to be a case unless you are 100% sure that you will win. i think you are short selling your attorney. i saw this in domestic violence. we took a hard posture towards this even though some of the cases would fall apart because the victim would recant. like domestic violence which often is a serial crime, once you identify them as being an aggressor maybe they might be the second or third time be able to get a conviction, but what i

see here is you don't get to the starting line that your standard of having an arrest is so high that no one gets arrested. yes, they are difficult cases to prove, but if there is three individuals who have been asalted in the same way and no charge is brought forward, i have to question that. it doesn't -- you know somewhere the system is failing completely. there has to be better interactions with the police department. i see you have neighborhood da's why aren't the embedded das within the special victim's unit in order to make sure that this line of evidence doesn't break down? you know these decision points, i get the sense that you are kind of punting and putting it all on the police, and really you are the one who gives them

the ability to make an arrest. at a minimum people want to see an arrest. that is a fair expectation. again in domestic violence that the rules are different and arrested take place but i don't see arrests taking place in this time. >> we present to a juror judge e to make the decision. we bring many cases and those are not what we are hearing about today we are talking about the cases wher today. we bring many case. >> supervisor sheehy: how many were brought last year? >> i don't have numbers of cases brought, but we can certainly get that to you. >> supervisor sheehy: yeah, because i looked on here and i

see what 400 victims of san francisco general alone, so do you think you've got single figure cases that were brought, three figure cases that were brought? you have no idea coming to this thing no idea how many cases you had and how many convictions? >> i have some of that information but don't have the answer to the first question. >> supervisor sheehy: when i was at the da's office there was a lot of attention paid to the rate and their concern for having a high batting average overweighed their willingness to pursue just cis. 2016, 75%.

2017 70% and this year so far 100%. >> supervisor sheehy: that tells me you are not bringing enough case. you are only bringing ones that you can win on. if you don't try cases you can't bring people to justice. yes, you may lose, but someone was arrested. we know now that someone committed a crime. we may not be able to convict them, but the next time they will think twice. if they do it again there is that prior arrest on their record. >> if we can prove the case, we will file the case. >> supervisor sheehy: 100% conviction rate means you are not trying case. >> just the year before it was 67%. it fluctuate. that is stats through march of this year and there was one trial and we won that trial. >> supervisor sheehy: since i used to be a victim advocate, your victim advocates aren't

really available to survivors until you have booked someone, right? >> no. gina can speak to that. >> that is not true. last year we served 8500. >> supervisor sheehy: i didn't make a statement i canned a question. >> last year we served 4250 victims of uncharged case. >> supervisor sheehy: do they get an advocate in every case. >> yes 436 last year. >> supervisor sheehy: when do they come on the scene? >> as soon as the case is reported to the police or we get the referral from the trauma recovery center -- the next day it's usually within ten hours

that respond. >> supervisor sheehy: thank you. >> supervisor ronen: uh-huh. >> supervisor ronen: lastly i would like to call up a representative from the medical examiner's office. just very briefly. i am sorry. this is such an important topic it's hard to cut short right. if you could just hit the highlights without going through the presentation that would be great. >> of course. i am the chief toxicologist and with me is the toxicology supervisor at the office of the chief examiner. our main mission is for death investigations but our forensic

laboratory dus does testing fori and sexual assault. >> supervisor ronen: we understand that you are testing the rape kits. >> we are not. >> supervisor ronen: sorry you are testing the dna. >> not the dna. alcohol and drugs for us. we are toxicology and we provide a service from the sfpd, analytical service. we are not directly involved in the case in terms of its triage wand testimony in the court subsequently if it gets to that case. >> supervisor ronen: sorry i cut your off. >> no problem. this here is a chart depicting

the level of trueing that might be found in a case sample. some of the laboratories are able to detect at this level indicated by the black arrow and it requires that the sample must be collected within that short window of time. >> sensitivity is lower in our testing which means we can detect drugs for a longer period of time. >> it's not just about the increased sensitivity, the lower levels of the drugs that we can detect for but the scope of compounds. in our laboratory all samples regardless of action h we look for a wide variety of compound and this includes drugs associated with drug crime and drugs for abuse. >> we test for amphetamines, psychotics, muscle relaxants, opioids, and other miscellaneous

drug. that form as comprehensive toxicology panel. >> it benefits in cases like this one where we might have found alcohol. >> it may be voluntary or involuntary but it is still a drug-induced crime if the person is incapacity. >> we work very closely together to improve the process. >> earlier sample collection is a great improvement in the last 12 months and a general increased awareness of forensic processes. that is what we have today. any questions? >> supervisor ronen: yes, thank you for that brief presentation. really quickly, i know there is

these designer date-rape drugs called functional analog, in other words, i am sure there is constantly changing drugs on the market used to facilitate date rape are you able to test for those? >> if they are known there are panels that we test for specifically for date rape drugs is tested for on our panels and the hundreds and hundreds of drugs that we test for and these designer drugs are specifically targets these type of crimes and we are always keeping our eyes open for new drugs that arise in the market. our testing performs a certain technique that can be looked a at. it's a new technique.

it's an unknown test that we can look at for certain drugs that we might not realize at the time ofenof incident. >> supervisor ronen: thank you so much. so i want to just thank everyone who was here today. this was a very difficult and emotional hearing. i want to thank supervisor sheehy for giving me this latitude and conducting the hearing in a way that puts survivors voices front and center. what we have revealed today is there is deep deep systemic problems in san francisco in our handling of sexual assault, and i think that we need to address it, address it urgently, and perhaps look at it from outside the core department of general

hospital and the police department and the da department and even the medical examiner, that we need need someone who is is overseeing this process and coordinating. i will be working with survivors and advocates and my colleagues to bring forward some ideas of performing and fixing this broken system very shortly, and with that i don't know supervisor sheehy if you have comment. >> supervisor sheehy: i want to thank you for calling this hearing. i want to thank the survivors who came out today. yo you are stories are just overwhelming and your courage in sharing your stories, i want you to know that we heard. i appreciate your leadership because something has to change. we are not taking these crimes seriously. we are not.

i think that we are worried too much about our 100% conviction rate and not enough about the people who have survived these assault. i hope that we can work on beverly upton's suggestion that we can put a team in place because it doesn't start at the moment that someone presents and there should be a multidisciplinary team that is there to assist people because one of the things that i really heard was loa loneliness and not being heard and not being respected and not being treated as someone who had suffered a horrific crime, and the fact that we don't care. we set systems in place and we simply do not care is not right. so again, i will work with you supervisor ronen, thank you for

taking this on and thank you for your leadership. >> supervisor ronen: thank you so much. i would like to make a motion to file this hearing. >> supervisor sheehy: without objection. thank you. do you want to postpone? i am so sorry.

>> clerk: members of the public, we are still in session. [gavel] would you like me to call the item mr. chair. >> supervisor sheehy: yes, do you want to call the item. >> clerk: thank you. agenda item number 2. [ reading item 2] >> supervisor sheehy: we shall continue this if there is any public comment. would you guys like to continue? >> given the comp hen sieve