tv Government Access Programming SFGTV July 9, 2018 11:00pm-12:01am PDT
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i've been assigned to certain things there. if i had known, i would have compiled a dossier of everything. i can't do it from peopmemory. >> supervisor cohen: i thought you would have known. you have been here. been here for 14 years. are you willing to terminate sfpd officers in closed session once satisfactory information has been presented? >> without saying names, we've terminated a number of employees, a number of sfpd officers have terminated themselves, early retirement sorngs that would not happ-- sot would not happen. that's easy. yes, that's what i've done.
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>> supervisor cohen: okay. thank you. i'm going to let -- i'm going to back off a little bit and let mr. peskin. >> supervisor safai: want to acknowledge that we're joined also about supervisor peskin. >> supervisor peskin: i was here for number 3, but having watched the work of the committee and the questioning by committee members as well as president cohen, dr. marshall, first of all, i want to start by thanking you for almost a decade and a half of service on one of the tougher commissions. i absolutely appreciate the notion that we should all come from a place of fairness. but as we talk about implicit bias or more importantly explicit bias, when we're in the
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world of reforming things that there seems to be widespread agreement, need some amount of reform, coming in and -- it depends on what the issue is, but there has to be some notion that things are out of balance and that there is an affirmative obligation from the decision maker, in this case, a member of the commission, that one has to restore that balance. and so, i guess, here's my question -- my question is, do you think -- and i say this acknowledging that bargaining units and labor units, and bargaining because the police association is not technically a union, do you think that or have you witnessed and experienced actions by the police
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association that you think inhibit the reforms that the commission and the board of supervisors and the mayor's office both under mayor lee and chief scott, do you have a sense that the p.o.a. has inhibited those, whether it's through meet and confer or through other methods? >> that's a good question. first of all, like any union, it has negotiated right to do what it does. i will start there. when, in fact, in this case, the association, objects to something, a policy that we put in, a policy we're trying to put in, i don't -- obviously, first of all, they have the right to disagree. do i think they should do it? i think, why would you do that? that's what i personally think,
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why would you do that? do you want to spend all this money? i think this is where policing is going. by the way, they've never stopped anything, they did not stop body cameras. they may not have liked it or litigated against it, but they did not stop it from becoming policy. the last that they put on the ballot, what are you doing that for? okay? they wanted it faster and more and i didn't think it was a good thing to do because they had already done that. >> supervisor cohen: but you signed on. you signed on to the prop h. >> i didn't sign anything. >> supervisor cohen: okay. my apologies. excuse me. >> so back to you and what i
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think is one thing. but it didn't make sense to me. i said that to a bunch of people. did i go on the radio and say it? i probably won't asked at that point, but it didn't make sense to me. we had passed the taser policy. we had passed the issue and put it to the voters. it's their right. they could have voted away the commission. they could have said the chief should be fired. no. i don't know if people want vocal opposition. >> supervisor cohen: people want leaders to stand up and lead and take a position. this is a policy discussion that has torn this city apart for at
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least 10 years and my recollection is that you were really -- you implicitly -- >> may i say this -- there are plenty of ways to lead. there's your style. there's your style. there's your style. my style. the thing is, to get something done. >> supervisor peskin: if i may, chair safai, dr. marshall, i heard what you said about in matter of fact a p.o.a. has never stopped these things, but in so far as i think there's a sense of agreement that reform takes time and changing cultures takes time, would you say that the p.o.a.'s action has delayed -- >> hasn't stalled anything at the commission level. >> supervisor peskin: did not stall body cameras? >> give me a bible. has not stalled anything, anything, at the commission
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level, that we could legally move forward on. not one thing. >> supervisor peskin: i'm not saying when it finally comes for a vote and you say aye or nay, but in the process that you ultimately as the policymaker at the commission oversee, do you think the implementation, say, of body cameras could have, would have happened faster and gotten to the commission sooner would it not have been for actions undertaken? >> well, well, since they are involved in the -- in all the decision making process, i don't know if they stonewalled that process. i don't know if they said, i'm not coming to a meeting today -- that you would have to talk to the people that met in the group. but in terms of -- no. if you ask me, no. when it comes to the commission moving things through to get to the process that we vote yea or
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nay, i don't think they've slowed up anything any more than any other interest group out there not with the commission. >> supervisor safai: any other questions? i just want to say i know that -- i want to appreciate president cohen's work. we spent, as you probably saw, 7 1/2 hours interviewing and vetting additional members to join the police commission. i know she spent a lot of time and staff time. a lot of the questions you are being asked today were asked of every new member or applicant and i think the reason -- and i actually was asking a lot of the questions on meet and confer based on my background working with organized labor. >> supervisor cohen: did you ask any today? >> supervisor peskin: not yet. i'm asking now. thank you, president cohen.
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i think there's a general misunderstanding of meet and confer. one of the reasons why is that it's been highlighted specifically as it pertains to a lot of the change in culture and policy and workplace rules for folks in the police department, but this is a concept that's applied across all of organized labor. for instance, we were talking about the officer of supervisor ronen has proposed the creation of a new office as it is in regard to victims of reign and p.o.a. and all the effective barge -- bargaining units -- and we were briefed on that -- will have the opportunity for meet and confer. i think it's been highlighted explicitally over and over again
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in regards to the police department particularly with the p.o.a. and i think because we're dealing with the issue of life and death. it becomes that much more highlighted, so when people say, we have the opportunity for a body camera or we have the opportunity for an additional mechanism with less lethal option for force, so it is highlighted over and over again. so i appreciate supervisor peskin's questions and president cohen's questions because it's an important concept. when it finally gets in front of you as a commissioner, you say, we've created this new policy as it pertains to tasers. now we're ready to go here. and the first thing that the bargaining unit asks for is meet and confer. so here we are in this conversation and it does take additional time. i just want it highlight that that is something that is done in every bargaining unit in the city and county of san francisco. it's not just the police
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department. so i think that supervisor peskin's question is a good one. it does impact implementation and the timing of it. so when we're dealing with life and death, it's more highlighted. how do you tackle that? once it comes to you, 95% of the policy is discussed, but immediately, if it's a workplace change or a new mechanism for using force or whatever it may be, that's something that then the barge anding unit wants to weigh in on and that goes to h.r. they meet with one another. whatever it may be. how does it impact -- >> so generally we give advice again about what we can or can't do. and there's generally a person appointed from the commission to represent us.
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it's getting harder and harder for civilians to serve on anything. generally it's a lawyer. a labor attorney, someone who has experience in that, who would be better than myself or others, who would have to have a learning curve going up in that. we're used to that. commissioner mazuko has done that before. we designate somebody from the commission who has the expertise in that field, to go and be part of those conversations. >> supervisor safai: we just put a new commissioner on, commissioner elias, who is working in the field of labor. she is an attorney. she works with the department of industrial relations, i think it is. she's working as labor
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investigator and workplace rules and so on. so she understands the concept of meet and confer. she understands the concept of workplace rules and so on. so just so you know, just for your information. that's important. >> maybe we can ask her next time. [laughter] >> supervisor safai: maybe. president cohen, do you have some additional questions? >> supervisor cohen: perhaps closing remarks. the city attorney makes recommendations and the board makes the decisions. you take it under advisement. i'm looking for a thought process, rationale, a strategy, on how you go about discerning between the advice that the deputy city attorney has given given what you know to be the facts in the case given what you are hearing in public comment. so it is not easy to do, but i'm not walking away with a good understanding of exactly how how
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that works. and, you know -- >> if i can clarify, the thought process is to sit down -- a lot of this is in closed session -- with the other commissioners and talk about how we want to proceed. >> supervisor cohen: okay. so for the members of the public, you may think this is adversarial. it's not. dr. marshall and i have worked together hand in hand for years. i grew up listening to him on the radio. i have been invited to the radio. >> what have you called me publicly? >> supervisor cohen: i don't know. uncle? we have a relationship. i don't know the answer to that, little bit of a trick question. >> i do. [laughter] >> supervisor cohen: okay. so i just wanted to just make sure that in highlight of what supervisor safai has said, every
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question i've asked has been nuanced for dr. marshall but i've asked for each candidate that we evaluated that is interested in serving in this capacity, because it's incredibly important that we have people grounded in reality and understand the community most adversely affected by law enforcement and also beholden to the oath that we take to ensure the police commission as any commissioner and anybody in this city, is fair and impartial. so that's the motivation between my questions. i wanted to get an understanding of the candidate's ability to speak to the racism and implicit bias that exists. believe it or not, there are people that didn't even understand the 272 d.o.j. recommendations. there were people that applied for this position that didn't even know what a department general order was or how many of them are out there and which ones are being worked on
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currently. there are a myriad of opportunities to continue to better our police force. peskin, you and i know, that we worked hard on the m.o.u. agreement. so we have one of the most handsomely paid police officers, police force. in budget committee, we dealt with the issue of if we want to add 250 more cops on the streets in the next four years. these are very, very serious matters to what supervisor safai said, borrowing from my talking point, these are life and death issues. they're life and death issues that have a positive or negative impact on everyday people's lives. but something that's important as i see supervisor stefani and yee here, there is a budgeting implication to this. how much can we absorb? how much it will cost us? tasers, for example, when it was administered in los angeles, within the first year, they
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settled a $5 million lawsuit for a death because of a taser. so it's presented as if tasers are the only nonlethal weapon. that's incorrect. there are a host of choices between gun and taser. for some reason, this city and the police department is rabidly focused just on tasers. there are other opportunities. and i believe that the commission has not done due diligence in exploring what options are available. i don't want to spend too much time because tasers is one element. carotid restraint is another, in which is a highly charged -- i'm not done. >> there is no carotid. >> supervisor cohen: that's correct. i understand that. i don't need to be corrected.
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i don't need to you mansplain or correct me. i'm speaking now. i understand the carotid restraint policy what it is. i was there in part of that conversation and watched it, but i saw the deliberation and consternation in the policy body, that being the police commission on who was where and on what and i want to say affirmative i that dr. marshall was in favor of keeping carotid restraints in place because he believed there was no other restraint america nhis um available. police officers said they were afraid. okay. i don't know if they're afraid or not afraid. the point is, i want to make sure that this body is doing its due diligence in the vetting of every single applicant for the police commission. before i came in, you were ready to send this out of committee without recommendation.
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from my observation, i don't think very many thoughtful questions were asked. that's alarming, because this committee is supposed to vet and move things forward. i will leave it there. thank you for allowing me to present my questions and my level of understanding. i want to thank the members of the public that have taken time. i see people coming to the police commission, not just the one here on the fourth floor, but in the neighborhood and in the entire community, same folks are consistent and showing up and are also articulating their concerns in 3-minute intervals. i want to thank them for that. thank you, mr. chair. >> supervisor safai: a lot of the reasons why we didn't ask a lot of the same questions is because it's the same applicant coming in front of us. so a lot of the questions were asked the first time around, but i appreciate you making that point. i do also want to say for the record that i did have a
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conversation with mayor-elect breed and she is on the record in support of you and so what i was going to say before we finalize the motion was that some of the reservation last time at the full board of supervisors is they wanted -- folks wanted it wait until there was an election, the election was over, and wanted to give an opportunity for the incoming mayor to make a statement. that statement has been made both to me directly as well as in the newspaper today. i know that mayor-elect breed has spoken to you as well. if you want to share some of the questions she asked you or direction or important things she had for the police commission, now would be your opportunity. >> did i want to serve again? [laughter] would i be willing -- everybody thinks it's an important job, obviously. and everybody wants the department to continue, continue to move forward.
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and i -- that was -- and thanked me for my willingness. >> supervisor safai: okay. great. now back to supervisor yee. >> supervisor yee: i have to make the statement in regards to the rationale for the motion. i think it's an opportunity to have it heard at the full board once again and this process is kind of weird. the recommendation did not come directly from the incoming mayor. and i want to give her an opportunity at the full board to make that statement. i would like to make the motion to send it out of committee without recommendation. >> supervisor stefani: i would like to second that motion for
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the same reason. it was my understanding that when this was ovoted at the boad of supervisors, one of the rationals was that the next mayor should have a say in who is committed to the police commission. we understand that mayor-elect breed is supportive and, therefore, i would support supervisor yee's mission to send it to the full board without recommendation so the full board has a chance to weigh in on this. thanks. >> supervisor safai: great. i think that we can do that without opposition. the motion would be to send it to the full board without recommendation as a full report -- >> the board loses jurisdiction on july 17. >> supervisor safai: we had to hear this today.
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>> supervisor yee: got it. that's agreeable. >> supervisor safai: we can do that without objection. thank you, dr. marshall. see you tomorrow. please call the last item. >> clerk: item 3 has been called, but for the members of the public, it's the charter involving the privacy first policy. >> supervisor safai: and we have supervisor peskin. >> supervisor peskin: when i first came for this item, i was going to say good morning, but good afternoon. thank you for considering this charter amendment that i proposed back in may. it was during the cambridge-analytica fiasco as well as a time when the sit quo has been grappling with its own privacy policies in the context of emerging mobility technologies, like blue go-go and scooters and transportation
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services. i think it's quite important that we move on this issue now while these events are in the public consciousness around the fundamental issues of privacy. and i'm cautiously optimistic that the voters will confirm that they do, in fact, care about how their personal information is treated in this evolvin evolving era of traditional database world that we live in. this charter amendment proposes 11 privacy principles. they're on pages 2 and 3 of this pretty short, 4-page, 5-page charter amendment. and these 11 principles are geared at protecting the city's residents and visitors from wanton abuse or use of their personal information. it's a basic concept. if you are a private entity and
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your business model is based on the sharing or acquiring the personal information, consumers have a right to know how their information is being used and should have the right to ascent to the use of that information. the city has a duty to keep our house in order and keep pace and this charter amendment contemplates that as well. functionally, the principles set forth in subsection e are not binding and are set forth in the charter amendment and guide the city as it develops rules and regulations around privacy issues, like the transit first policy. we've intentionally left them general enough to be widely applicable to any circumstance and yet specific enough to provide guidance to the city for decades to come. subsection f is the meat of the proposal and it deals with the city administrator's duty to
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present to the board of supervisors next year a proposed ordinance that the city would rely upon regarding its own conduct, as well as the conduct of private third parties. i've discussed this provision with city add my straighter kelly, who cannot be here this morning, but is aware of this provision and said she could fulfill it should the measure pass. i'm sure we will be working together to ensure that whatever ordinance passes marries these principles and acknowledges the real world before us. with that, i'm here to answer questions and concerns, but i'm hoping that the committee can adopt this second, final draft today and move it one step closer to the november ballot. i want to thank my staff, lee hoeppner, who has immersed himself, as well as the co-sponsors, supervisors yee, cohen, kim, safai and fewer and i want to acknowledge the city attorney's office. there's been a number of deputy
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city attorneys who have worked on this, margarita gutierrez, paul zareski, john givner and the city staff who participated in its crafting, jackie fong, linda gurl and her staff as well as the m.t.a. that provided invaluable input. with that, collegues, i'm happy to answer any questions and hear from the public. >> supervisor safai: did you read into the record the amendment roughly and broadly? >> supervisor peskin: because it's a charter amendment and i have copies from the public, it's somewhat different from the first draft. >> supervisor safai: do you want to give us a broad overview of the changes and then we'll take public comment? >> supervisor peskin: yes. it's not amendments, per se.
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it's a second draft. it's 16.130, privacy first policy. subsection a states that the principles stated in subsection e constitute the privacy policy. it says that subsection b said that all parts of city government are authorized to implement the principles of the charter amendment. subsection c says that the board of supervisors has the ability to adopt ordinances pursuant to the charter amendment. subsection d defines what personal information is. subsection e is the actual policies engaging with and informing individuals likely to be impacted by the collection, storage, sharing or use of personal information, ensuring that personal information is collected, stored, shared, use
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pursuant to a lawful purpose. allowing individuals -- access information about them. solicit informed consent to the collection, storage and sharing of personal information, the discouragement of the collection, storage, and use of information that may identify a person's race, religion, creed, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability or other potentially sensitive information. subsection 6 is about deidentifying data sets. section 7, adopt policies for requests of personal information from government entities. the list goes on relative to retention and securing of data and then subsection f, as i discussed earlier, requires the
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city administrator to prepare an ordinance, though it does not bind the board of supervisors relative to the adopt or amendment of said ordinance. i think that encapsulates it. >> supervisor safai: thank you. any members of the public wish to comment on this item, please come forward? we'll take public comment now and then we can ask additional? if any of members of the committee have any additional questions. >> yes. good afternoon. i'm peter muirfield, executive members of library users association. i went while this meeting was in session to the clerk's office to get the file and got the first draft. i'm very disappointed to hear what seemed like a lot of changes and i just asked here for a copy and was in
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consideration of the first draft. >> supervisor safai: okay. >> so i'm rather concerned about the procedural matters here. let me start out by saying that i very much appreciate the concern about privacy, that this appears to represent. and the motivations for putting it forward. i think privacy is extremely important and certainly in the library it's important. so i'm very glad it's been taken up and being considered. from the first draft which is all that i had a chance to briefly review, there are some concerns that i would have with respect to who is doing the evaluation. where the definitions of what is personal information which in
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general terms seems restrictive and not broad enough and where the information would be disclosed. i would like to see it, as well as the public. and who carries out the policy. currently it looks like mostly the departments will continue to carry out the policy. i'm also concerned with a matter of amending the sunshine ordinance, which i haven't studied in terms of its intent or its scope. let's take the library as an example, the library is not saving when it has a number and book tag. the availability of that is a problem and if it -->> supervisor safai: thank you, sir. if you would like to submit something, please do. any other members of the public
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wish to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. supervisor yee? >> supervisor yee: i wanted to thank supervisor peskin for bringing this amendment forward. as you know. i was able to create legislation around emerging technology at the beginning of the year, which there was a task force created to look at how to deal with emerging technology in the future and whether it should be an office that deals with recommendations and anticipating what we might see, rather than dealing with new technology and the matter of something happens and reacting to it. and one of the principles we
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have put in that legislation as a guiding principle has to do with this particular item and so i am very happy that supervisor peskin is putting this forward to strengthen that principle we had in that legislation, which is around the whole issue of how do you share information and the privacy to information. so thank you very much. >> supervisor safai: supervisor s stefani, anything? this will continue one week. >> supervisor peskin: to the individual that commented, there was concern expressed that this would undermine the sunshine ordinance and i wanted to be very clear that subsection i says that any changes to a voter-approved ordinance cannot be inconsistent with the purpose
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or intent of that voter approved ordinance. so the purpose of subsection i is to give the board of supervisors the ability to strengthen existing voter approved ordinances consistent with the privacies of the city as adopted by the voters. >> supervisor safai: we always have the clause about anything inconsistent with other sections. so that's very important. thank you for adding that. we don't want to undermine any other great work that's been done prior. >> supervisor peskin: correct. and to the committee members, this is an overarching statement of policy that will be heard around the state and the nation. in and of it envelope, the meat is the deliberations that we have with licenses, contract, entitlements and the things that the city grants a benefit in that we want to limit or
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prohibit and that would be the result of our work with the city administrator's office. >> supervisor safai: great. okay. let's make a -- i think we can take a motion to accept the amendments proposed by supervisor peskin without objection. those amendments are accepted. and we don't need to make a motion to continue it for one week, do we? we will continue it for one week to the july 16 special rules committee meeting and take a final vote on that to meet the deadline. thank you, supervisor peskin, for your hard work, along with staff and everyone else. >> supervisor peskin: thank you. >> supervisor safai: any other items before us today? >> clerk: that concludes our business for today. >> supervisor safai: okay. we are adjourned.
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so i want to thank everyone for being here today at the civic center bart station. we are all here today because we care. we care about our commuters in san francisco, we care about the residents that visit and work in our city. we care about the people on -- the residents who live in our city. we care about civic pride here in san francisco. civic center and the bart station is at the heart of san francisco. it is the door way to our city
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government and city hall, it is -- that's better. it is the doorway to the plaza, to market street and mid market, the growing part of our downtown corridor. this is the heart of san francisco. it has become unfortunately a glimpse into the homeless and behavioral health issues that we have here in san francisco. it is not safe. it is not acceptable anymore. so today i'm proud that we are announcing a partnership between our san francisco police department and part that is going to increase staffing here at civic center bart station. san francisco police department, we are going to be increasing foot patrols by over 300 hours per week. bart is also going to be increasing their staffing levels as well.
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we need to make a difference for the commuters that use bart. we need to make a difference for san francisco residents and we need to make a difference for visitors who come to our beloved city of san francisco. let's also make sure to know that this is not a police matter alone. i'm proud to be joined by barbara garcia who runs our department of public health. this is also a public health issue and an issue that we are going to be dealing with through our healthy streets operation center. bart is now going to be a participant in this effort. we are going to coordinate with our homeless department, with our department of public health, with our department of public works. this will be a coordinated effort to make sure that civic center bart station once again is an area at civic center station that we can be proud of. at the end of the day this is building upon a lot of initiatives that we have focused on over the last six months
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around homelessness, around behavior health on our streets, around the cleanliness of our streets. this applies to every area of san francisco as well including our bart stations and our city. civic center bart station has been the example of what has gone wrong and now our city government in partnership with bart is stepping up and making sure that we have a plan into the future that will once again make our civic center bart station an example and a symbol of pride for the residents of san francisco as they commute through here. so i want to thank everyone for being here today. i'm going to turn it over to our police chief, bill scott. >> we are increasing and chief scott can -- actually, why don't i let chief scott talk about it. >> good morning, everyone. first of all let me thank mayor farrell for his leadership.
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the last month he introduced the idea that we had to collaborate better to get things done in this bart, in this platform to make it safer and make it cleaner and to make it the pride of our great city. at that time he brought all the parties together and asked us to draft a plan that would address the issues and concerns that have been repeatedly voiced by members of our community. although the platforms between our community platform and the bart platforms are shared underground in this corridor we do, between chief rojas and our folks, we knew that we had to work better and more collaboratively to get these problems solved. both riders in both systems go back and forth to school, work and visit the many great tourist attractions in our city and the idea that each system or each department is responsible for separate law enforcement duties in this platform cannot be a barrier for us working together.
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the only concern that we have is that people when they come here and take public transportation that they feel safe, that they have a clean environment and that they are able to go to and from where they need to go to without worry and without concern. i agree with mayor farrell wh e wholeheartedly that the only way that will occur is all these people standing here working together. this partnership we believe will do just that. the san francisco police department, as the mayor said, we have a healthy street operation center, better known as hsoc. we use that initiative to collaborate efforts between our various city departments to address the very issues that we have in this bart station. with that we will be increasing our footly presence almost five
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fold by nearly adding approximately 500 patrol hours a week to this effort. we believe that will make a tremendous impact and enable us to do what we need to do to keep this platform safe, clean and for our residents and our people that use this transportation hub to enjoy it. i'd like to thank keith carlos rojas from the bart pd who has really been a partner in this and we believe jointly that we will really make a difference in terms of realizing mayor farrell's vision to make this the safest transportation hub in this region by working together our officers will be able to respond to immediate concerns and more appropriately proactively work to identify on going behavior that we get calls about all the time that contribute to threats to public safety.
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additionally, we will work in partnership with all of the city agencies and organizations under the healthy street operation center initiative that i mentioned to be able to get the individuals who need help to that help. so with that i'd like to turn this over to chief rojas and thank you this morning for being here. >> good morning. chief carlos rojas with the bart police department. i'll keep my comments brief. we are very excited with this new partnership with the san francisco police department. while historically we worked well with the san francisco police department i think this has really refocused our commitment to the civic center station that is truly the gateway to san francisco for many people. as both mayor farrell and chief scott stated this is one team and it doesn't matter if it's a san francisco patch or a bart patch we are in it together and we want to make sure that our
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riders feel safe in our stations as well as throughout the city and county of san francisco. we do cover a very large area and there isn't a better partner than the city and county of san francisco so we are very excited about this. i would be remissed if i didn't also recognize our board of directors for their leadership and then allowing me to do the difficult job. director joe is with us today if you want to say a few words. >> thank you very much. member of the bart board of directors. i think it's clear that anyone who rides bart or anyone who rides muni comes off at civic center station the problems that we are seeing aboveground with homelessness with drug addiction are really coming down into our stations. bart is not a social service agency, bart is not a public health agency and the only way we can get to grips with these problems is indeed collaboration with the city of san francisco and with the other cities and counties that we serve. that's why this is such an exciting
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moment because not only are we starting to collaborate much more deeply with the san francisco police department and the bart police department because ultimately our riders are not particularly concerned whose badge it is, they just want to know that they are going to be safe. we are independent -- integrating much more deeply into problems and i think that's something that's going to be critical to making sure that our riders and muni riders have the safe and clean experience that they deserve. so i'm going to hand it over to barbara garcia at the department of public health. thank you. >> good afternoon. barbara garcia, director of health. i want to thank mayor farrell for all his support in the last many months of expanding services for us. many of those services will help individuals who people are concerned with who are seeing open drug use and mental health
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issues. i also want to thank the san francisco department of -- the san francisco police department and the bart police. we've been working for many months with both of these agencies to identify individuals who they have been concerned with for many years at times. we have those individuals in our hands in terms of their names and we are identifying them and trying to get to them and trying to provide support. so we really are doing an individualized approach to this and we are also looking at the issue of ensuring that today we have our homeless out reach team from our homeless department as well as our street medicine team and they will work together to make sure that we are working with individuals as they come across them in bart, leaving bart or in the surrounding areas. i'm very proud of the work and collaboration that we've done and i can tell you that we have worked and have helped individuals that both of these entities have identified to us
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and it's complex work. many of these individuals have long term mental health issues. they deserve the kind of support they need. we are going to refocus on this and really provide as much support as we can to individuals. this is the end of this press conference but we are going to be taking questions, not from the podium but from the side. i want to thank all of you for coming today and being interested in this issue. thank you so much.
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>> we have a wonderful adult ceramic class. we offer over 10 adult classes in morning and evening. it accommodates people who work in the day, people who work in the evening, people who are day people and night people. we try to cater to the whole group. it's beyond just a clay lesson. it's really a lifeless on. when you meet people you never know what's underneath. sometimes they show you what they want to. and you kind of expect that it's just going to be that. but it's never really what's on the surface. it's really what's underneath the surface . that's what i try to get at when i do my clay. the camaraderie that we have here. we have students that have been for for many many years. we have students here for the
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