>> (speaking foreign language.) >> i wanted to wish you a best wishes and congratulations the community has shifted a lot of when i was growing up in the 60s and 50's a good portion of chicano-american chinese-american lived in north beach a nob hill community. >> as part the immigrant family is some of the recreation centers are making people have the ability to get together and meet 0 other people if communities in the 60s a 70s and 80s and 90s saw a move to the richmond the sunset district and more recently out to the excelsior the avenue community as well as

the ensuring u bayview so chinese family living all over the city and when he grape it was in this area. >> we're united. >> and growing up in the area that was a big part of the my leave you know playing basketball and mycy took band lessons and grew up. >> (speaking foreign language.) >> allergies welcome to the

community fair it kicks off three weeks of celebrations for the year and let's keep everybody safe and celebrate the biggest parade outside of china on february 11th go best wishes and congratulations and 3, 2, 1 happy enough is enough. >> i grew up volley ball education and in media professional contrary as an educator he work with all skids whether or not caucasian hispanic and i african-american cumber a lot of arrest binge kids my philosophy to work with all kids but being here and griping in the chinese community being a chinese-american is important going to american school during

the day but went to chinese school that is community is important working with all the kids and having them exposed to all culture it is important to me. >> it is a mask evening. >> i'd like to thank you a you all to celebrate an installation of the days here in the asian art museum. >> one time has become so many things in the past two centuries because of the different did i licks the immigration officer didn't understand it became no standard chinese marine or cantonese sproupgs it became so many different sounds this is convenient for the immigration officer this okay your family name so

this tells the generations of immigrants where they come from and also many stories behind it too. >> and what a better way to celebrate the enough is enough nuru with the light nothing is more important at an the hope the energy we. >> (speaking foreign language.) >> relative to the current administration it is, it is touching very worrisome for our immigrant frames you know and some of the stability in the country and i know how this new president is doing you know immigration

as well as immigrants (fireworks) later than you think new year the largest holiday no asia and china those of us when my grandparents came over in the 19 hundreds and celebrated in the united states chinese nuru is traditional with a lot of meani meaning. >> good afternoon my name is carmen chu assessor-recorder i want to wish everything a happy new year thank you for joining us i want to say.

>> (speaking foreign language.) >> (speaking foreign language.) >> i'm proud to be a native san franciscan i grew up in the chinatown, north beach community port commission important to come back and work with those that live in the community that i grew up in and that that very, very important to give back to continue to work with the community and hope e help those who may not be as capable in under serving come back and giv >> hi. welcome to san francisco. stay safe and

exploring how you can stay in your home safely after an earthquake. let's look at common earthquake myths. >> we are here at the urban center on mission street in san francisco. we have 3 guest today. we have david constructional engineer and bill harvey. i want to talk about urban myths. what do you think about earthquakes, can you tell if they are coming in advance? >> he's sleeping during those earthquakes? >> have you noticed him take any special? >> no. he sleeps right through them. there is no truth that i'm aware of with harvey that dogs are aware of an impending earthquake. >> you hear the myth all the

time. suppose the dog helps you get up, is it going to help you do something >> i hear they are aware of small vibrations. but yes, i read extensively that dogs cannot realize earthquakes. >> today is a spectacular day in san francisco and sometimes people would say this is earthquake weather. is this earthquake weather? >> no. not that i have heard of. no such thing. >> there is no such thing. >> we are talking about the weather in a daily or weekly cycle. there is no relationship. i have heard it's hot or cold weather or rain. i'm not sure which is the myth. >> how about time of day?

>> yes. it happens when it's least convenient. when it happens people say we were lucky and when they don't. it's terrible timing. it's never a good time for an earthquake. >> but we are going to have one. >> how about the ground swallowing people into the ground? >> like the earth that collapsed? it's not like the tv shows. >> the earth does move and it bumps up and you get a ground fracture but it's not something that opens up and sucks you up into haddes.

>> it's not going anywhere. we are going to have a lot of damage, but this myth that california is going to the ocean is not real. >> southern california is moving north. it's coming up from the south to the north. >> you would have to invest the million year cycle, not weeks or years. maybe millions of years from now, part of los angeles will be in the bay area. >> for better or worse. >> yes. >> this is a tough question. >> those other ones weren't tough. >> this is a really easy challenge. are the smaller ones less stress? >> yes. the amount released in small earthquakes is that they are so small in you need many

of those. >> i think would you probably have to have maybe hundreds of magnitude earthquakes of 4.7. >> so small earthquakes are not making our lives better in the future? >> not anyway that you can count on. >> i have heard that buildings in san francisco are on rollers and isolated? >> it's not true. it's a conventional foundation like almost all the circumstances buildings in san francisco. >> the trans-america was built way before. it's a pretty conventional foundation design. >> i have heard about this thing called the triangle of life and up you are supposed to

go to the edge of your bed to save yourself. is there anything of value to that ? >> yes, if you are in your room. you should drop, cover and hold onto something. if you are in school, same thing, kitchen same thing. if you happen to be in your bed, and you rollover your bed, it's not a bad place to be. >> the reality is when we have a major earthquake the ground shaking so pronounced that you are not going to be able to get up and go anywhere. you are pretty much staying where you are when that earthquake hits. you are not going to be able to stand up and run with gravity. >> you want to get under the door frame but you are not moving to great distances. >> where can i buy a richter scale? >> mr. richter is selling it.

we are going to put a plug in for cold hardware. they are not available. it's a rather complex. >> in fact we don't even use the richter scale anymore. we use a moment magnitude. the richter scale was early technology. >> probably a myth that i hear most often is my building is just fine in the loma prieta earthquake so everything is fine. is that true ? >> loma prieta was different. the ground acceleration here was quite moderate and the duration was moderate. so anyone that believes they survived a big earthquake and their building has been tested is sadly mistaken. >> we are planning for the

bigger earthquake closer to san francisco and a fault totally independent. >> much stronger than the loma prieta earthquake. >> so people who were here in '89 they should say 3 times as strong and twice as long and that will give them more of an occasion of the earthquake we would have. 10 percent isn't really the threshold of damage. when you triple it you cross that line. it's much more damage in earthquake. >> i want to thank you, harvey, thanks pat for

>> i view san francisco almost as a sibling or a parent or

something. i just love the city. i love everything about it. when i'm away from it, i miss it like a person. i grew up in san francisco kind of all over the city. we had pretty much the run of the city 'cause we lived pretty close to polk street, and so we would -- in the summer, we'd all all the way down to aquatic park, and we'd walk down to the library, to the kids' center. in those days, the city was safe and nobody worried about us running around. i went to high school in spring valley. it was over the hill from chinatown. it was kind of fun to experience being in a minority, which most white people don't get to experience that often. everything was just really within walking distance, so it make it really fun. when i was a teenager, we didn't have a lot of money. we could go to sam wong's and

get super -- soup for $1. my parents came here and were drawn to the beatnik culture. they wanted to meet all of the writers who were so famous at the time, but my mother had some serious mental illness issues, and i don't think my father were really aware of that, and those didn't really become evident until i was about five, i guess, and my marriage blew up, and my mother took me all over the world. most of those ad ventures ended up bad because they would end up hospitalized. when i was about six i guess, my mother took me to japan, and that was a very interesting trip where we went over with a boyfriend of hers, and he was working there. i remember the open sewers and gigantic frogs that lived in the sewers and things like that.

mostly i remember the smells very intensely, but i loved japan. it was wonderful. toward the end. my mother had a breakdown, and that was the cycle. we would go somewhere, stay for a certain amount of months, a year, period of time, and she would inevitably have a breakdown. we always came back to san francisco which i guess came me some sense of continuity and that was what kept me sort of stable. my mother hated to fly, so she would always make us take ships places, so on this particular occasion when i was, i think, 12, we were on this ship getting ready to go through the panama canal, and she had a breakdown on the ship. so she was put in the brig, and i was left to wander the ship until we got to fluorfluora few days later, where we had a distant -- florida a few days later, where we had a distant

cousin who came and got us. i think i always knew i was a writer on some level, but i kind of stopped when i became a cop. i used to write short stories, and i thought someday i'm going to write a book about all these ad ventures that my mother took me on. when i became a cop, i found i turned off parts of my brain. i found i had to learn to conform, which was not anything i'd really been taught but felt very safe to me. i think i was drawn to police work because after coming from such chaos, it seemed like a very organized, but stable environment. and even though things happening, it felt like putting order on chaos and that felt very safe to me. my girlfriend and i were sitting in ve 150d uvio's bar, and i looked out the window and

i saw a police car, and there was a woman who looked like me driving the car. for a moment, i thought i was me. and i turned to my friend and i said, i think i'm supposed to do this. i saw myself driving in this car. as a child, we never thought of police work as a possibility for women because there weren't any until the mid70's, so i had only even begun to notice there were women doing this job. when i saw here, it seemed like this is what i was meant to do. one of my bosses as ben johnson's had been a cop, and he -- i said, i have this weird idea that i should do this. he said, i think you'd be good. the department was forced to hire us, and because of all of the posters, and the big recruitment drive, we were under the impression that they

were glad to have us, but in reality, most of the men did not want the women there. so the big challenge was constantly feeling like you had to prove yourself and feeling like if you did not do a good job, you were letting down your entire gender. finally took an inspector's test and passed that and then went down to the hall of justice and worked different investigations for the rest of my career, which was fun. i just felt sort of buried alive in all of these cases, these unsolved mysteries that there were just so many of them, and some of them, i didn't know if we'd ever be able to solve, so my boss was able to get me out of the unit. he transferred me out, and a couple of weeks later, i found out i had breast cancer. my intuition that the job was killing me. i ended up leaving, and by then, i had 28 years or the years in, i think. the writing thing really became intense when i was going through treatment for cancer because i felt like there were so many parts that my kids

didn't know. they didn't know my story, they didn't know why i had a relationship with my mother, why we had no family to speak of. it just poured out of me. i gave it to a friend who is an editor, and she said i think this would be publishable and i think people would be interested in this. i am so lucky to live here. i am so grateful to my parents who decided to move to the city. i am so grateful they did. that it never

ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the chair has called the meeting to order. can you please turn off your electronic devices, as they tend to interfere with the equipment in the room, and can you please rise for the pledge of allegiance? i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america. and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. commissioner mazzucco, i'd like to call roll. >> please do. [ roll call ]

also with us tonight, commissioner, is the chief of police william scott and the department of police accountability paul henderson. >> thanks very much, sergeant kilshaw. and ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our october 17th, 2018, san francisco police commission meeting, and it's great to see we have a big crowd here. good job, captain yick. just to give you a little background, we as a police commission meet at city hall every wednesday night at 5:30, and we deal with the same crowd of folks that show up. i think some people live outside city hall and they come in for our meetings, but once a year for each district station, there's ten, we go out to that district and we meet with their community to see what's going on in their community and give their captain an opportunity to make a presentation and talk about what's happening and hear

from you, the community members. what are your concerns in the taraval police district? so it was taraval's turn on the wheel here, so takes a lot of work to bring the television station here for everybody, and all the commissioners, i have to tell you, from my perspective as a commissioner, this is the best part of the commission, because we go to ten different districts during the course of the year, and you really learn a lot at those meetings, so we expect to hear from you, what you're concerned about in the district, in the taraval, but we also do things a little differently, too. ordinarily we just go into our meeting, but when we're out in the community, we have the commissioners introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about what we do in our day jobs. this is allegedly a part-time job, and the term allegedly is a big job. we like to give the community background about what we've done in our careers and what we do. and being we have so many new commissioners, there's four new commissioners tonight who have

their first neighborhood meeting. i ordinarily start at the end, but i'll start with myself and then move to commissioner dejesus, and they'll give us an idea what we do. >> had to throw that in. >> vice president mazzucco: so i'm commissioner mazzucco. i'm uncomfortable tonight, because i'm in complete enemy territory. however, i will say my son, thomas mazzucco jr., is a graduate of st. ignatius, he's a wildcat and now an attorney in san francisco, so i do have some st. ignatius connections. i'm born and raised here in san francisco. i raised our two children here. my wife is a native san franciscan. careerwise i served as an assistant district attorney like you for ten years in the san francisco's d.a.'s office and after that an assistant united states attorney in the united states attorney office, recruited by bob mueller, kind

of a popular guy right now, i served under him. and i served under kevin ryan, a graduate of st. ignatius high school, who is u.s. attorney. in addition to being police commissioner, i'm a partner in a law firm, so it's a honor to be here and i'll turn it over to commissioner dejesus. >> commissioner dejesus: okay, that's a tough act to follow. i'm also a native san franciscan, i'm not a wildcat, but my son is a wildcat. i forget how big this school is. and i live in the mission, i'm an attorney, i was in the public defender's office for ten years. i do -- i do -- now i do -- i'm trying to think about it, workers' rights, workers who are dying from cancer, caused usually from their employment, so that's what i do now. that's it. i got the longest tenure on the commission, is what he was trying to say.

>> vice president mazzucco: commissioner hamasaki. >> good evening. i joined in june of this year. i am not a native of san francisco, but i've been here for 24 years, so i get a little bit of a hometown credit at this point. i think i've earned it, slowly. in my life, i'm a criminal defense attorney, primarily private practice. i work in san francisco and practice throughout the bay area, and i'm also really involved in our local legal bar associations. i'm the president-elect of the barristers club of the bar association of san francisco, and also serve as the treasurer of the asian-american bar association of san francisco. i have a 4 year old that i hope

to follow in petra's footsteps and send them to this lovely institution some day. beautiful school. >> vice president mazzucco: thanks, commissioner hamasaki. commissioner brookter. >> commissioner brookter: i actually go by d.j., d.j. brookter, currently the deputy director of a nonprofit organization, where we design programs to help folks in uninsured communities get back to work and sustainable careers, and we also dabble in education to help folks further their education. i actually got the opportunity today, i was at john o'connell high school all day today and got the opportunity to speak to young folks who are juniors and seniors in high school about college and actually about workforce development. been on the commission now for about two months, so probably we're the definitely the most junior on the commission, but

it's definitely been a lot of fun. i live out in baby hunters point, originally from fresno, california, and moved here in 2010, so been in the city roughly eight years and doing work in community, around community, and for community for those past eight years, and really i want to say thank you for allowing us to be here today. >> vice president mazzucco: thank you. commissioner taylor. >> commissioner taylor: the most junior and the latest. hi. my name is damali taylor. my day job is i'm an attorney. i'm a white collar attorney at a law firm here in the city, and if none of you know what that means, most people don't. so i spend about almost ten years as a prosecutor here in san francisco, both first at the d.a.'s office and then at the u.s. attorney's office as a federal prosecutor and then i rejoined my firm last year until what i do now is helping businesses and individuals who are in trouble or not in

trouble, but just want advice on criminal, legal, regulatory issues. so that's what i do for a living, but i love this city, and have worked and served the city for a long time, and i'm excited to be able to do it as a commissioner. >> vice president mazzucco: thank you, commissioner taylor. commissioner elias? >> commissioner elias: i'm not a native san franciscan, i grew up in lettuce and broccoli fields, first came to the area when i was accepted at uc berkeley and have been here ever since. currently i work in the labor division's office, enforcement division, so what i do is i basically go after employers who do bad things to their employees, by not paying their wages, cheating them out of money that they have rightfully earned, when they are not able to take sick time because they are sick or the employer doesn't have a policy, the labor

commissioner comes in and forces certain labor laws, well, various labor laws, to make sure employees are treated correctly and with respect. so that's what i do during the day. prior to joining the labor commissioners office, i was a public defender for nearly 11 years at the san francisco public defender's office, and i think that's all i have for being a lawyer. in addition to joining the labor commissioners office about eight months ago, i also recently got married, so there's a lot of new, fresh things that are happening. so i'm trying to figure out what to do in a new job and a new marriage, so any pointers or advice is probably greatly appreciated, so i am happy to be here tonight and look forward to meeting you individually and listening to you. >> vice president mazzucco: commissioner? >> commissioner hirsch: my name is bob hirsh, i'm also a lawyer. that makes six out of seven.

we have one regular person on the commission. i grew up in new york city, but i came out here to go to law school many, many years ago, and i've been in san francisco for about 40 years. i've been a lawyer here for 39 years. i was a labor lawyer for many years representing unions. i then became the general counsel of an investment firm in san francisco for many years, and for the last 11 or 12 years i've been an arbitrator and mediator, which means i'm on my own. i function as a private judge or a mediator in labor disputes, in commercial disputes, securities matters, depending on what it is, and i've been active in law enforcement matters for many years and joined the police commission a year and a half ago. the late mayor ed lee appointed me, and i miss him. >> vice president mazzucco: thank you, commissioner hirsh. so, especially for the members of the criminal justice class, you'll see that we as a police commission are the liaison

between the community and the police department. our responsibility is for the department general orders, their policies, their procedures, we deal with discipline when officers are in trouble. we sit in a judicial capacity like a judge, and there's hearings as to whether or not the officers have committed the offense they've been charged with. you'll hear from the dpa director, who's a st. ignatius grad. it's like a courtroom setting, so we're in charge of determining whether the officer should be suspended or terminating. we're responsible from hearing from the chief, who you'll hear from later. those are some of the roles we have in the commission. there's a very diverse background. we have public defenders and former prosecutors all on the same commission, and that gives us the opportunity to look at things from many different perspectives, and that's how we function as a commission, we understand the criminal justice system. it's a very hard job for the new commissioners. they are starting to realize

that, but it's worth it. we're here to hear from you, the community. without further adieu, we'll move on to our first line item. and again, the difference between this meeting is tonight you're going to hear from the police chief about recent activities, you're going to hear from captain yick, and then there will be a lot of questions and we expect to hear some questions from you. sergeant kilshaw, by the way, sergeant kilshaw's son is also a graduate of st. ignatius high school and she's a graduate of mercy high school and i think her husband is in the audience and connor is now working in washington, d.c. yes, and also the anniversary -- sergeant ware, who is here, his son -- you're also a graduate of st. ignatius, and his children graduated from st. ignatius high school. >> sergeant ware's anniversary, too. >> vice president mazzucco: wedding day. [ applause ] they sent their daughters to sacred heart cathedral.

very smart people. you'll also notice our officers are wearing pink patches like this. it's for cancer awareness month. in the san francisco police department, many members have chosen to change their patches to represent that, so you'll see a lot of our officers with pink patches. and just to tell you how we work as a commission, that took the full commission to meet to determine to change the uniform regulation just for one month. it required public comment, it required input. the police officers association was involved, the uniform makers were involved, so that's just one of the small things that we do. so that's why you'll see the officers wearing pink tonight. so now let's get into our meeting. >> secretary: commissioner, items 1, reports to the commission, 1-a, chief's report. weekly crime trends, provide an overview of offenses occurring in san francisco. significant incidents. chief's report will be limited to a brief description of significant incidents. commission discussion will be limited to determine whether to calendar any of the incidents

the chief describes for a future commission meeting. >> thank you, and good evening, chief. >> podium just for you. >> good evening. commissioner mazzucco, commission, director henderson. i will -- actually, can i start with a brief -- >> vice president mazzucco: please, do. >> so, it's a pleasure to be here. thank you guys for hosting us. i just wanted to give a brief introduction of myself. oftentimes you probably read about the police department and maybe see me on the news from time to time, but it's really important to know who your chief is, and i'll introduce a couple of our key people that are here, as well. so my name is william scott, or bill as i've been called since i was a child. i have been the police chief here since january of 2017. before me moving to san francisco, before i moved here, i was in the los angeles police department for 27 years and

about three months, where i ended there as a deputy chief in the lapd, so spent 27 here and really applied, i think, 61 people to be the chief here applied with me, and very competitive process, and i was very, very fortunate, blessed, and happy that i was selected to be the chief of the san francisco police department. so, it's really a pleasure to be here and serve you as your chief of police. i wanted to introduce and my right-hand man, i'm going to give an overview of the police department, but sitting next to me over there is our chiefs of staff, hector, who is also a native san franciscan. and the way the police department is structured, just like any large organization, you really have to have somebody that's got their eye on the ball and the business at all times, and i am responsible for that and accountable for that, but i am in meetings from the time i

get to work, to the time i get home, so while i'm in the meetings and doing the community meetings, and meeting with the mayor and city hall and all the things i have to do, somebody's got to really be paying attention and getting the work done and driving the things happening in the department and coordinating. and really the chief of staff is one of the main people that actually helps me as a chief get that done. we also have another assistant chief, tony chaplain, who's not here tonight, but he coordinates our operational side of the department, which is over half of the department. he has the airport bureau, the still operations bureau and special operations bureau, so if you see the s.w.a.t. officers or are flying out of the san francisco international airport, that's all under our operations side of the house. we also have five now deputy chiefs, we'll have six shortly. five deputy chiefs, and we have a deputy chief in each of our bureaus. so operations bureau, special

operations bureau, airport bureau, the administration bureau, the professional standards and principle policing bureau. am i missing one? no, five, there's five. i'm sorry, five. hopefully, six one day, but five for right now. so those are all the bureaus that take care of all the business in the department, and we have roughly 2,300 sworn employees and about over 300 non-sworn employees, so everybody that works under the sfpd umbrella works in one of those bureaus that i mentioned. it's a very large organization with a lot of moving parts, takes a lot of coordination. and in the operations burro comes the real heart of the department, which is district stations. we have ten district stations, you, this school, and most of you that live in this area belong to the taraval station, which captain robert yick is here, and he's going to talk about what taraval is doing to keep the community safe, and he is one of ten district stations.

and really that is the life blood of our organization. with any police department. we always say the patrol officer, the patrol sergeant, the lieutenants and the captains are the backbone of the organization. and i truly believe that to be the case. not to minimize the administrative part of what had to be done, the investigations and all the other things that have to be done, but when you call 911, you're going to see a patrol officer. when you call 311, you're going to likely see a patrol officer, so that's really where the work gets done and it's the biggest part of our operation. so that's an overview of the san francisco police department, and i will start out my report with just an overview of the citywide crime trends, and then captain yick is going to talk about taraval on a more granular scale about what's going on in taraval. so, citywide, i actually come to report good news. we -- and i'll break it down in violent crimes and property crimes, because the way our crimes are reported, for those of you that are interested in

criminal justice, what we call part one crimes, those are all the serious crimes, and every law enforcement agency in the nation has a report to the fbi what their crime statistics are at the end of every year, and those are the part one crimes that you see, the chronicle does a story on how san francisco is tracking, it's usually going to be on those end-of-year crime statistics. so those crimes are murder or homicides, rape, robberies, assault, burglaries, motor vehicle theft, arson, larceny, or theft. overall, our city, we're down in violent crimes and total crimes, and property crimes. so our total crimes, we have had 50,060 for the year, which is a large number, but we're down -- sorry, that was this time last year. we're down to 46,280 crimes year to date, which is about a 7.5% decrease in crime. now, that's the difference of

about just short of 4,000 or right around 4,000 crimes. when i stand up here and talk about statistics, it's really important that everybody really understands we're talking about people and people being victimized, and sometimes when we talk statistics and percentages and we're down by 100 or down by 500, it's easy to lose really the point of this, is that these are people that have been victims of crime, so i don't want that to be lost on anybody. so when they talk about numbers, think of people. think of your friends. some of you have been victims of crime, so it's really important that we do keep an eye on what our crime statistics are, because that really drives how we patrol, where we put our officers, how many officers do we get. so these numbers represent people. overall we're down. so in terms of our violent crime, our homicides this time last year, we had 52. right now year to date we have 39, which is a 25% decrease in

homicides. our rates are down. we had 341 this time last year, we had 322 year to date. our robberies are down. we had 2,607 last year. year to date, 2018, we have 2 2,496. and our assaults are down to 2,118 this year. where we're up in crime is human trafficking, which, fortunately for us, is a small number, but still an unfortunate number, because again we're talking about people that suffer some very, very serious crimes in terms of being human trafficking victims. we had 97 year to date as opposed to 51 this time last year. so that's something that we definitely want to get a handle on, but we're definitely up in human trafficking. our overall property crime, we are actually up in burglaries by almost 500 burglaries, so that's not good news. we have 4,002 this time last year, we have 4,501 year to

date. motor vehicle theft down to 3,437, reported arsons are down from 210 to 188 this year. and our larceny thefts are down from 36,522 last year to 33,172 year to date. now, we always break out when we report our larceny. we break out car burglaries. car break-ins. that's a huge issue in the city, and really it's a huge issue in this region. and i don't know how many people here have been either suffered car burglary or you know somebody that did, but it's a huge problem for us. and the big scheme of things, a lot more people get burglarized and victimized on that particular crime, so we have been really focused on reducing that number and bringing those that we catch to justice over

this past year. last year we were up. it was almost a record. it was a record year for us. 31,000 car burglaries, which was about a 25 -- over a 25% increase from the previous year. so from 2016 to 2017, we have put together several strategies and measures in place to try to curb that number, and one of the main things that we wanted to do was really get in front of it and try to prevent these crimes from happening. one of the primary roles of law enforcement is crime prevention, and when we aren't successful at preventing crime, then our next priority is to apprehend those that actually commit these crimes. car burglaries are very difficult crimes to catch. citywide, the numbers of people we catch are low in the grand scheme of things, 2.3%, which is a big number, however, what we know and what we've seen and our experiences and the people that

we have caught, there are very few, we believe, amount of people. and some of them do this for a living, they commit a lot of crimes. so we try to focus on those individuals that are prolific and we've had a lot of success doing that. being strategic with our plain clothes operations under cover and focusing on the crews we believe going from community and community and victimizing people. and we've had a lot of success with that. so we're being very strategic and surgical, and as a result of our crime prevention, if you guys haven't seen it, you probably will see either a poster or on the back of an mta bus a placard that says "park smart." and what we are asking the public to do is to don't make yourself an easy victim when it comes to car burglaries. oftentimes, you know, we get lax and don't think it's going to happen to us.

we leave our purse, computer, backpack in the car and that is a crook's delight. that's who they want to go after, so people that make it easy for them, because they don't like to work for what they get. they want the easy targets. so we really have been pushing the public message of park smart, don't leave property in your car if you can avoid it. lock it in the trunk if you have a trunk, but make it difficult. make it hard for people to victimize you, and so that messaging, along with increasing foot beats, along with deployment strategies we've used in different parts of the city, we've gotten this number down by 15% year to date, so i'm really happy to report that. and last thing i'll say before i turn it over to captain yick is, you know, policing is very labor intensive, but anybody that wears a uniform will tell you, we cannot do our jobs without the support of the community. the officers that are standing in the room, the sergeants, we

can't do our jobs without the support of the public. we do only what you all allow us to do, and we have to do our jobs right. we have to be respectful. we have to be professional. justice is just that, we have to be just in how we carry out the laws, but we can't do it without you, so the most resilient communities, our communities that are tight and stick together and communicate and communicate with us about what your needs are, and we want to hear from you. the captain wants to hear from you, and i want to hear from you. so, again, i'll finish this where i started, it's a real pleasure to be here and thanks for having us and hosting us tonight. and in the back of the room, we have a lot of our operational command officers there, deputy chief mike redmond, mike, raise your hand. mike runs operations, field operations. then we have the commander who works -- works under chief

redmond, but she's in charge of five district stations, including this one, so that's where a lot of the executive work gets done in the department, so mike and ann, thanks for being here. and i'll let captain yick introduce taraval officers. >> chief, can i ask a question first? i want to ask about human trafficking. do you have any sense that there's actually an increase, or are we just now learning more and getting more data? >> i believe there's an increase in reporting. we did, working with some of the advocacy groups this past year, we actually implemented with the commission a policy that really the purpose and intent was to enlist the cooperation of some of the folks that are out being trafficked. and a lot of these folks are people that work in the sex trade, and what ends up happening is oftentimes they are reluctant to report the violence

that happens against them, because they are afraid that -- if they report it, then the things that they are doing to make a living, like working in the sex trade, is going to come back and bite them and we are going to arrest them for that. so basically, we in working with the advocacy groups, our policy now is, if you're being, you know, brutalized by the person that's trafficking you, we're not really worried about the misdemeanor sex violation or the low-level thing. we want you to report it. and ironically after that bulletin got put in place, we saw a spike in the reporting of these crimes, which is exactly what we wanted. because these are really, really heinous crimes, and people are -- it's a really, really heinous crime for people to be trafficked, and some of the things that happen to them when they get trafficked. so we believe that's part of the increase, that people are reporting it more because they feel comfortable coming in and reporting it. so we'll see if that trend continues, but nonetheless, we have to address those crimes,

because they are terrible crimes. >> thank you. >> thank you, chief. briefly, we have the director of the department of police accountability, paul henderson, here. i thought he was going to be on vacation. he is what handles all of the investigation of a lot of the discipline against the police officers, so i'm going to let paul speak for a few minutes. also, the human trafficking thing, that started -- we as a commission wanted our officers to treat the women and sometimes men that were trafficked as sometimes victims. when i was in the u.s. attorney's office, we had a takedown of massage parlors where women were trafficked from overseas in asia and held hostage in massage parlors and what happened is brutal, it's terrible. it's not a victimless thing. so that's one of the things we do as a commission, and you'll see that's why the numbers are up and hopefully we're taking

care of that problem. director henderson. >> i'm happy to be sent on vacation again, if you want to send me on out of here. i take orders very well. so, good evening, everybody. thank you, it's also good to be here. i, too, am a native san franciscan, fourth generation. so i grew up here in the bay view, and i attended st. ignatius college preparatory for young christian men and women, although it was just men at the time, which tells you about how long it is. i know i look really young. but it was just men at the time when i went here. and this is -- i'm so excited actually to be back here and see so many of you in the audience, to see the kids hearing and learning about not just how the criminal justice system works, but how policing and public safety works.