time. sometimes we may have a codefendant case, but it's an estimation. and really we won't know two or three years, but we're basing 40%. we're not disagreeing with that. we believe we'll get in that neighborhood somewhere. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. >> supervisor fewer: i just have a couple of questions. i understood -- i'm looking at your budget request for the year. you're going to renew your request to create an auto burglary team. >> yes. >> how many are you asking for there? >> one -- i'm sorry, three. >> supervisor fewer: three to join the person that exists? >> correct. >> supervisor fewer: so four. i just also want to say, mr. district attorney, that i get that you give me charts that say san francisco hot spots and where the hot spots change,

actually that is something i would expect from the police department presentation and not yours. your presentation, what i want to know, when i look at in your pages, that are not numbered here, but when i look at auto burglary arrest, action taken rate for 2014 to 2018, what i'm seeing is tell me what are these actions taken? because when we look at the amount of arrests compared to what are presented, i mean you can see what i'm talking about. there is all these arrests. and then the action taken is sort of what? what is that mean action taken? >> well, i mean, action taken can be a combination of things, right? it can be a motion to revoke

probation. it could be the filing of the case. if you look across the board -- i can go back further than this -- we're taking action on 81% of the cases. which is, when you go back to 2014, that was 73%. and so we have seen an increase there that we impart attribute to the dedication to the one prosecutor pursuing the case. we're looking at a case and evaluating the strength of the evidence. and we're looking at whether we can get a case from front of a jury and get a conviction or not. 81% filing rate or action taken rate is a very high rate. >> supervisor fewer: what is your conviction rate? >>le work the conviction -- well, the conviction rate, if you look, i'm going back to the budget and finance committee report that you have here. so i'm going to look at the numbers and see we have a conviction rate for -- actually

i don't have that. i know that it's very high. i can get that for you. but i do not have it offhand. i want to say it's around 80% conviction rate in this case. i may be off one or two percent. >> supervisor fewer: of the arrests presented, that would be 507. why am i seeing thousands of car break-ins and 507 arrests presented? why am i seeing that discrepancy and what does that discrepancy illustrate? >> i think that's a better question for the police department, but it's around 2% for car break-ins. so you know, that's where the numbers come from. >> supervisor fewer: so the rest is about 2% of the car break-ins.

so this 507 represents 2%? >> roughly. >> supervisor fewer: and then you're going to also get me the data for the conviction rate of that 507 or 81%, is that correct? >> the 81%, which is 412 in the case of 2018. >> supervisor fewer: then i also want to say, because i actually think that you're requesting that, this is the kind of information we want, right? because it's pertinent to your budget request. i know it's not all about arrests, we've heard that, however, when i see these convictions down 40% and i see the filing conviction ratio down 50% -- >> the filing rate is not down. it's up. >> supervisor fewer: i see the ratio is 79% change. but the filing conviction ratio -- a down 50%.

what is that about? >> it's primarily two major areas. one is some of the officers that are doing this work have brady -- they're part of the brady identification, which means their credibility has been put in question and that creates problems for us. the other part has to do with most of juries expect to see video. when we don't have video, we struggle to get a conviction. >> supervisor fewer: so some police officers involved in the arrests, there is an issue around the brady -- >> they're part of the brady -- >> supervisor fewer: okay. and also the lack of video. >> lack of video. >> supervisor fewer: that's the thing you're finding it's hard to get a conviction? >> it's very hard. >> supervisor fewer: now, that is -- so what is this -- so we see that there are -- i don't

know what i'm looking at and i want to say this is from the bla. i see there is drug sale convictions down 40% and then i see a filing conviction ratio down 50%. what is the difference between those? a filing conviction, these are the ones that you have filed but you don't get a conviction. but then you have drug sales convictions, aren't those two things the same? don't you have to file it to have a conviction. >> yeah, do you know the answer to that? >> good afternoon. originally when we gave numbers to the budget and legislative analyst, they calculated from cases presented to us to conviction. and we said a more accurate measure. and the measure we use is of the cases that we filed, how many of those resulted in convictions. so i think they wanted to represent both the way they understood the question presented to them and the way

that we measure our work. so we measure our conviction rate on the cases that we actually bring a case on. not everything that is brought to us. because many cases are brought to us with incomplete investigation where we can't move forward, so those aren't fair to count toward our conviction rate. the cases where we don't have enough evidence to go forward and watch how many of those result in conviction. that's what we measure as an office. >> supervisor fewer: since there is an issue between the arrests and being able to get a conviction, what is the relationship between you and the police department to say, hey, i'm going to get convictions on these because of the lack of video and also the police officer doing it have this brady implication thing? >> right. this is a communication we have constantly. we're working through it. the police department, frankly,

officers are on the brady list, they're a problem for us to take forward in front of a jury. and when it comes to narcotics sales, increasingly our juries do not believe the word of the police officer alone, so unless we have corroborating evidence in this case video, especially on the hand-to-hand sales, it's hard to convince a jury. >> supervisor fewer: do you know how many police officers are on the brady list? >> i do not. >> supervisor fewer: that's probably a question for the chief. you say you run into quite a few? >> that's what we're encountering. >> supervisor fewer: thank you very much. oh, i'm sorry. supervisor stefani. >> supervisor stefani: thank you, district attorney gascon for being here today. i wanted to follow up on in

terms of building effective cases. i've been a prosecutor myself. you do meet periodically with the police department to discuss how to build better cases and i'm wondering how often those discussions take place? >> so those are daily conversations. and then we have staff conversations, multiple times a month. so at different levels, we have anywhere from daily to multi-times a month. and then the higher staff, we get together once or twice a month. >> supervisor stefani: you said something about the lack of video, because we can't take the police officer's word alone, how much do you think surveillance video help as soon as >> when it -- helps? >> when we have video it makes our case strong.

>> supervisor stefani: then the last thing i want to say, anecdotally, and this is what i hear going out into the community and talking about the public safety. the state of public safety in san francisco. i'm just going to make a statement in terms of, you know, having worked in contra costa county and worked well with so many police agencies, the richmond, the martinez police department, these are all police departments that we worked very well with. i know contra costa county is entirely a different everything compared to san francisco county, but what i'm hoping as we move forward in all of our public safety discussions, is -- and i know supervisor mandel man has reflected on this as well -- what i continue to feel and hear is a blame game of just doing that. and i just want to make sure as we talk about public safety going forward, that we're

talking about it in a way that we're all coming together with the same goal. we know you want to keep san franciscans safe and the police department does, and we know the community wants to be safe and i think it's extremely important that we work together. that the d.a. works with the police department. that the police department works with the community. and that we stop pointing fingers at one another and try to put forth the best public safety system we actually can. i just feel it's built up with me, obviously. and i think going forward we need to focus on how we all work together. and how we can better our relationships with one another. again, not focus so much on who is doing what wrong and what we can do right together. >> may i ask what part of the presentation today you felt was finger pointing?

>> supervisor stefani: i said based on what i hear in the community, i hear it a lot. and i think not filing cases because police officers have brady violations and you need more. or the police officers aren't bringing the right type of evidence to you. when that happened with me, when i was a district attorney, i would sit down with the police officer and say this case would be better if you interviewed this witness. i'm sure that's what you do. but i want to make sure that we are working with sfpd. if there are a lot of officers that have these brady violations, that's something we need to know. if they're not able to successfully take a case to court, that's something we need to know. we need to work with our chief to know why those officers are not effective in the field or in court. do we need more officers because of it? i think that is what led me to this. >> how long ago were you in the courtroom, supervisor?

>> 1995 to 1998. >> the world has significantly changed. in fact, even you look at our conviction rate in the last five years, you're looking at a very different time, where juries are demanding a different level of attention. juries are much more critical than the juries that you dealt with. in san francisco, jurors are very smart. they're much more discerning than they are in other counties. so i think your point of reference is good, but it's a point of reference that is terribly outdated. i think you would find we spend a great deal of time working with the san francisco police department through the issues we have. and you ask a question where supervisor fewer asked, why the conviction rates are the way they are, and i'm telling you what is coming from our line deputies, and that is when we have an officer that has -- that he or she is flagged as being

part of the brady list, that creates a problem of credibility. when the jurors want to see video and we don't have it and they know that officers have video equipment, they ask why? frankly the defender and rightfully so, it starts to point to those. so you need to look at the reality of today. and i think rather than go by anecdotal information on the street, you should take time and look at how the work is being done. >> >> supervisor stefani: we are trying to do that, but we don't have good data. >> you're welcome to come over and provide us with the data you want and we'll be happy to get it for you. >> supervisor mandelman: i had a small point and a slightly larger point. the small point, i started looking at the narcotics arrests and the prosecution slide as well, and i actually would be interested, not now, but in more fully understanding this -- it

seems like the -- as we noted, the filings have gone up significantly. i think that inevitably that is going to push conviction rates down because of your file -- if you're filing more, you're taking more risks and dealing with cases that might be harder to get convictions on. but it also -- these numbers seem weird and that the drug sale convictions are the same numbers for three years. i know these aren't necessarily -- i'm not sure where the numbers came from, but it's your presentation. i am interested in trying to better understand that. i guess the other thing i would say, in thinking more about opportunities around diversion and the fact that your d.a.s or maybe d.a. who has to engage around the folks who are sort of seriously mentally ill, spending name the criminal justice system, but time in the public

health system, i know we've talked about individuals who are particularly challenging in my district, i do get the sense that your d.a.s are significantly overworked. and that as -- or just that their case loads are significant and in terms of giving the attention to those individuals that would help in making those d.a.s part of a comprehensive response that pushes toward the public health side, that there may be a need to expand capacity. >> i appreciate that very much. >> supervisor fewer: any other questions? comments? seeing none. thank you. >> thank you very much. [interjections] address how he doesn't pursue hate crimes when racist whites is calling all the blacks -- >> mr. wright, the district attorney will be back at another session. thank you very much.

now, we have vision zero and officer safety from the san francisco municipal transportation authority. thank you very much for joining us today. and waiting throughout this long hearing. thank you. >> good afternoon. >> supervisor fewer: oh, yeah, good afternoon. >> i'm glen mar. i'm the new interim chief security officer for mta and i am going to discuss what we have done for operator security and what we will be doing for future operator security for our muni operators. on any given weekday, muni operators carry more than

720,000 customers on the san francisco, most of those are residents or visitors to san francisco. our employees serve with distinction, they play a vital role to our city and it's under extremely challenging situations. safety for our customers and safety for our employees will always be a priority for us. you can see in the next slide, this is from san francisco police department. their crime analysis unit. from 2016 to april 2019, crime has gone dramatically down on muni bus lines. it's kind of misleading for 2019, because there is only four months worth. but if the trend continues, probably be around 798. so that's still about 57% drop in crimes. i think it's attributed to

primarily the technology cameras and then also the efforts of sfpd teams that go out and enforce the laws for san francisco. as far as what we've done for operator safety, we start with the barriers for the operators. we have installed barriers for all vehicles, including buses and trolley coaches. that was completed this month, 15th, and so every vehicle in our fleet has barriers. these barriers are split into two components. you can see in the picture, there is an upper door and lower door. then the next slide. so the operator has a choice. we haven't established a poll. we're still discussing it. but the operator has a choice of leaving the upper door open or closed. the lower door has to be closed or it will impede the flow of patrons on the vehicle.

but again, the operators have the choice to close or not to close. operators said closing it, they feel klaus phobic. when the barrier has been installed, the operators do feel safer. the barriers, they're built in barriers when they come from the factory. of course, cable cars will not have barriers installed due to the configuration of the cable car. we have a historic fleet that we will not install barriers, because you have to retain the historical integrity of the vehicles. that covers what we do with the barrie barriers.

now i'll go into the video component. all vehicles have cameras on them. it's 11-13 cameras on each vehicle. we're currently not able to view realtime or live video from these cameras due to the technology. realtime video or live video is only available at our facilities. so that's at our bus and trolley and and. this pilot program consists of trying to connect live video to our transit management center from the mobile bus utilizing wi-fi or cellular. $2.6 million has been budgeted for this video monitoring project. this project includes updating the management system to operate on a single platform. what that means is, through the

years a number of different cameras and video stems have -- systems have been installed and they all have different software platforms. now with this modernization project, we're going through a company and we're trying to get the software all on one platform so every system is -- can be utilized in one area. but also this project includes the realtime video for mobile revenue vehicles. again, i discussed earlier we cannot view live video from our mobile bus us out on the field. this project will try to see in works. if it does work, we can incorporate the realtime video. at this point, both of these are not available. and this is probably a year or two out, as far as the project completed. as far as enhancing operator

safety, we will still continue to utilize high visibility from sfmta transit fare inspectors. this personnel goes out and enforces fare evasion and checks for a payment. they're also in uniform. we have high visibility from police department response team. mrt, the uniform aspect of sfpd for muni. we also use the sft, they're also uniformed officers that supplement mrt. it's supported by a homeland security grant. we're going to provide data to

sfpd for better strategy. we're also part of the d.a. to assure that prosecution for those who assault muni bus drivers, so they're prosecuted. we're trying to tell our operators, you don't have to get in a verbal confrontation with people who are refusing to pay or refusing to get off the bus. so we want to teach them how to talk to the customers in a way that it wasn't escalate the situation. this project begins next year. we also, two months ago, began distributing employee guidelines to all the operators. part of the guidelines are to remind them that the safety is far more important than the fare itself. and last but not least, we started a campaign to remind customers that operators are people, too.

>> supervisor fewer: any questions, comments for mta? if not, i have some. i wanted to ask you about the slide on number 3. this is total crimes on muni? total? >> yes. >> supervisor fewer: okay. that means anything from stealing a cell phone -- >> someone spitting on someone to assaults and robberies. part one and part two crimes. >> supervisor fewer: when a muni operator is assaulted, isn't there an extra charge for that? isn't it more severe than -- i know this question sounds crazy -- >> i believe there is, yes. >> supervisor fewer: and i heard that the muni operators also -- i'm sorry if i missed this in your presentation -- have a direct line to the police. is there a button that they push

or -- >> yes. it's the emergency button on the bus itself. when the operator presses it during an emergency, it activates a signal to our tmc, which is the transit management center, it also activates the video on the bus. the video is always running, but when he pushes the button it marks the video, so we know when the emergency started and gives the tmc the location of where the bus is. so when we contact the police, they can tell the police where the bus is at the time of the emergency. i don't want to get into too much operational security stuff in this setting, because i don't want to give away secrets -- >> supervisor fewer: from what is the response time? >> i cannot give you that right now because this is my 13th day on the job. >> supervisor fewer: okay. congratulations. so maybe we can get that information. >> i will find out for you.

>> supervisor fewer: that would be great. then i wanted to know, what is the financial cost of your operators being involved in incidents where they might miss a work day or so? do you have that calculated? >> i do not, supervisor. >> supervisor fewer: that would be helpful, to find out what is the actual cost in dollars. >> of the time lost? >> supervisor fewer: time lost. everything. replacement. all those kinds of things. and i imagine if they are riding the bus and that bus is delayed, whatever, the fiscal costs of our operator being engaged in an incident and suffering injuries also. >> i will find that out for you. >> supervisor fewer: great. it would be great to know how many officers are out of service

because of incidents that occurred during their work? >> you mean the sfpd officers -- >> supervisor fewer: not officers, i meant operators. >> how many operators are out because of assaults? >> yes. so injuries to them because of dangerous situation. any other questions or comments for mta? are you seeing a rise in any kind of -- illegal activity that is happening on our muni lines? >> i think it comes in spikes. i've talked to the sf police department and phone snatches occur, juveniles on buses that might do that. we have to deploy them to that line to curtail the situation.

then they might have another spike in another district for other small crimes. it's not a trend. >> supervisor fewer: any other questions? if not, let's bring up java cronenberg. >> i'm with the mta, i'm our vision zero task force. i'll try to keep this short and sweet. >> supervisor fewer: thanks for waiting. >> no worries. most of you have seen a version 0 the presentation, so i'll go quickly. the board adopted vision zero, the goal of ending traffic fatalities in 2014 and we're halfway through to our goal of zero by 2024. vision zero is guided nationally, internationally, by the same core principle of saving lives, of having

equitable streets for all users, reducing speed, of making streets safe through engineering tools. and improving and focusing on human behavior that result in crashes. we've had a really robust community outreach process through our entire vision zero work. we recently updated our vision zero action strategy and had hundreds of san franciscans participate in how we are going to address traffic fatalities in the next 2-5 year time frame. and we asked them for all their new ideas. and what came out was a tremendous focus on infrastructure and engineering, but also there is a real desire from the community to have education programs, to have ways for neighbors to talk to neighbors about ending traffic fatalities. and that is what i'll talk about

later. just to sort of give a sense, we're a multiagency policy goal. and we're led by mta, that is where i sit, but we work hand-in-hand with the public health department who also co-chairs with me. i'm joined today by my colleague, commander tracy, who works day to day on the traffic enforcement company. you heard from chief scott today on their approach to vision zero. she's here to answer any additional questions. and i and my team are changing streets to improve them for safety. i know all of you have worked with us on those projects. some of the things we're doing and focussing on the next two to five years is protected bike facilities and transit only lanes as our high impact sustainable travel lanes. we want to make all the sustainable choices the best choice for safe san franciscans

to use. we're working heavily on the quick-build projects all of the city. we just completed one on valencia. we just finished the green paint in the last week. so thank you to the supervisors here for your support on that project. we're also doing basic operational changes to the streets every day, because not every street is appropriate for a parking-protected bike lane, but we want to make sure every crosswalk is visible for all users. and we're constantly evaluating our projects and how they're working to improve them for the next time we build a new improvement. safe people is our education and enforcement lens. so we have our speed enforcement campaigns that chief scott spoke about earlier. we're developing multilingual biking and walking guides and those are starting to come out. if you look at our youtube site, there is work emerging from that effort. we've heard that we need to work

with seniors. seniors are overrepresented and thinking about how to keep older adults safe is critical to our mission. and something we've been focusing on is coordinated response to the fa salt talt. -- fatality. and many different subdivisions within the group, so that when a traffic fatality happen, we're providing the right support not just to the victim's families, but the community, the engineering improvements are on the street as soon as possible. that's something that has evolved and we're looking to continue and expand in the next few years. as vehicles continue to change, and i think we're all starting to see them on the street, we want to be ready for emerging mobility. we have been. i think our scooter pilot is one

of those being thoughtful and deliberative about how we can be sure that every vehicle on the street is safe for all users. and we're working on city fleet improvements. and lastly, data systems. making sure we have the right data to address the issues we're having is critical. we need to understand how new mobility is affecting our traffic outcomes, so having excellent data is one of the pillars of our vision zero efforts. we are deeply entrenched in thinking about how we do this equityably. we're making sure we're doing our work in the most important places, where there is the highest number of traffic collisions. if you live on sixth avenue or 6th street, you'll have the same outcome. we're think being whether we're doing the right things to get

our work done, so we have met c metri metrics. we're going to be tracking. we're updating our website in the next month or so. for those interested, i encourage you to look and see how we're doing. some of our challenges in the coming fiscal year. i appreciate the report from the bla earlier this afternoon. our safe people, enforcement and education campaigns, which we heard from our community was emphasis and focus they would like to see in the vision zero program, think about, develop and expand, is one we have funded through one-time grant sources. that is through the active planning transit sources. that is a really difficult way to do work and it's something we continue to do and we'll do work as we have grants in hand. but in order for us to develop

and commit do the programs that i think the community is looking for, a sustainable source is needed. and something on the infrastructure side, i think that in the coming weeks, with you sitting at the transportation authority, we're looking to expand how we do our quick build. that is a good teaser for the future. from our safe people perspective, any education or enforcement programs we want to expand or enhance, we have limited existing budget for. and the key to vision zero, it's a partnership. and we're really proud of how much work we're doing. and we're not just talking about the budget here, but we've been working with our regional partners at mtc. we've been supportive through the state. fb1 is a big deal for the transportation funding world. we recognize transportation and traffic safety is broader than just the city. and we're talking to all comers

about our work and how to expand it. so thank you very much. >> supervisor fewer: thank you. any questions, comments? so i have a question. last year, we had how many fatalities? >> 20 traffic fatalities. >> supervisor fewer: how many of those were pedestrians? >> i believe last year was 16. it's traditionally 65-70% annually. >> supervisor fewer: so this year, we've had eight -- nine? >> yesterday is 11. >> supervisor fewer: so we're not meeting our goals. >> no. >> supervisor fewer: we're not meeting our goals, in fact, we're going in the opposition direction here, because we're on track actually to have more. we're only four months into the year and we already have 11. last year we had 20. i have to say it's -- i get that we've been -- vision zero i

think is the -- vision zero logo, everything, people know what it's, they're ware of the vision zero, however, we keep having these incidents of these crashes, collisions, of people dying on our streets. and i just say that in my neighborhood, i had two in one month. both of them pedestrians. boefth them seniors. both of them chinese. my kind of demographic who i am and in intersections, right in crosswalks. i think this is completely alarming. i just want to say that it seems as though it's really about driving behavior, too. so i get the infrastructure. we can put all the infrastructure we want. i've had fatalities in my district in broad daylight at a four-way stop. so what i think is needed,

actually more, is really about more education and more enforcement of -- for drivers. i think that san francisco is increasingly a much more difficult place to drive. there is much new infrastructure that people who have been driving for a long time, actually are not familiar with. they don't know how to drive in a traffic circle that actually has a four-way stop. because in europe, there are no four-way stops at a traffic circle. i'm a little confused about it myself. who has the right-of-way there. also, i want to say that -- and protected bike lanes, i think a lot of people are sort of not aware of how to drive around them, or park around them. so i wanted to know, are we vesting in any driver education? i get we have some pedestrian education and education for

bicyclists, but what about doing some investing in driver education? >> yeah. we agree with you. so we have currently going up on our youtube site is driving in today's sf. which articulates the things you're saying. someone with a driver's license, if you're me, i got it 20 years ago, so i don't feel that old, and realize that i am but there are people who may have had 50 years since they took the test. the new infrastructure on the streets, something we want to communicate to the drivers. this slide is relevant. the dmv is a state-run agency and that's where we educate drivers. so the good news is we have a 20-second bit. we developed here in san francisco and asked the dmv to run it. so everyone is going to see a 20-second bit about speeding.

and the dmv agreed to put it in every dmv all over the state of california. if you're in irvine, san francisco, we're using the social media presence. and we're recognizing that a lot of our tools are out there. and we want to share that information and we're using the media we have possible, but we're limited. and that's where more conversations with the regions and the states are critical. to getting to the goals i'm articulating. i will look at the video. this is not blaming vision zero at all. it is just a question, how do we? i mean when you have more and more cars on the street and you have such congestion. when you have people that are on

the streets that are not familiar with the streets. and the tens of thousands every day. when you have streets that are congested but also increasing population of seniors that are cross the streets. that seem be to the most vulnerable pedestrians, quite frankly, when we look at vision zero numbers, so how do we meet those goals? >> sure, absolutely. >> supervisor fewer: i'm just going to say, i think that increasingly, as these factors start to multiply, more cars, more seniors, more -- it is -- we can put in every block in my neighborhood probably wants speed bumps. we can put them everywhere. we are still seeing, even with the infrastructure, that we have invested in and put in, we're still seeing these numbers. >> we also agree with you. so i took the slide out, but in our action strategy, we

articulate four policies that are proven to reduce injuries and fatalities. those are pricing of some variety, called congestion pricing, but it can work in all different ways. automated speed enforcement. so our police are doing the best job they have with the resources they have, but automated enforcement supplements the police officers and encourages drivers to follow the laws and reduce their speed. local regulation of transportation network companies, because i think your point is a lot of drivers are coming from out of the region. and driving in a city they're unfamiliar with. so our ability to regular tlart vehicles -- regulate their vehicles and drivers is critical. there is number four policy and i'm blanking on it this exact moment. oh, urban speed limit setting. the california vehicle code sets how we set speeds at the 85

percentile. it's one that supervisor yee has brought up many times. the task force is coming this year through the assembly to create a bill that will ideally get us to local authority over speed limit setting. so those are the four policies that we're clear. that does not mean we will diminish the work we're doing locally. we'll put speed bumps where they're needed for a long time, but we are looking for a little more assistance. and that is in our strategy and that's something we're working toward every day. and we look for voices to help champion that across the state. >> supervisor fewer: okay thank you. any other questions, comments? thank you very much. now, i'm so sorry that it took so long. we have community presenters. i hope they're still here.

andrew, sam, and wayne from budget justice. and because public safety isn't just about law enforcement, it also is about community, too. come on up and shed some light.

good afternoon, supervisors. the slide will be up shortly. i'm going to begin. my name is andrew zito, i'm organizer with critical resistance. i want to give you an introduction about who we are. the budget justice coalition is made up for 30 organizations for san francisco's most impacted communities, making sure that the city budget serves the needs of the communities. the jail coalition is a group of organizations started in 2013, organizing to stop the construction of new jails in san francisco and for decars ration. we're here today to present some research we've done around the city budget, around criminalization. and ways that we can move towards moving funding away from

criminalization, divesting from criminalization and investing in measures like housing, education and community that keep us safe. the first slide, if we can get it up, highlights -- >> we can put it on -- >> we have the slide. it has my notes on it. >> can we stop the clock? >> supervisor fewer: stop the clock, please. thank you. it's okay, you waited for us. we're happy to wait for you. >> thank you. next slide, please.

so firstly, i just wanted to stay public safety conversations within city hall often turn to solely about more policing and criminalization. today, we're here to try to reframe what constitutes safety for the public. we want to say that criminalization only creates more harm. it's housing, community services and education that makes cities safe. so in this slide, i wanted to highlight that 23% of the general fund goes towards criminalizing our communities. and that is for police share of juvenile probation, adult probation, et cetera. we have four budget solutions we want to propose to you that will, we believe, will increase public safety. the first one is the close county jail 4 and the youth guidance center. there is upcoming hearing about that. the next is about not hiring any

more sfpd positions. criminalizing our communities and more police officers actually increases the jail population and doesn't make us safe. the third is to stop criminalizing homelessness. the fourth is to invest in care in communities, not jails. the three we want to highlight today are housing, education, mental health and substance treatment. last week's budget hearing, there was a resounding need for ongoing sources of funding. there is enough money in the sf budget, it just had to be shifted away from criminalization. so in this slide, we pulled out some numbers. one that i want to highlight is that the city budget around $6 million every year to the mta to fund fare evasion. and we know that fare evasion

doesn't actually stop people from doing it. the criminalization of fare evasion. what we know is that if you put the $6 million away from funding the officers toward subsidizing bus -- muni bus fares, that would actually make our communities safer. in total, there are $66.5 million that we've highlighted that goes towards criminalization that could be revested in community-based safety. so the city has declared incarceration a public health issue and has work groups around alternatives to incarceration. however, we continue to add more police to the streets.

as a city, that is taking a stance against incarceration, there has to be moratorium on the expansion of policing and the police budget in san francisco. you'll notice there is a dramatic spike the same time of arrests at the same time that the largest police class. sam is not able to be here. this slide from 2016, there was a report that at least $20 million was being spent enforcing quality of life laws

in the city. and that number is probably increased with all the sweeps we've been seeing in the past couple of months and last year. so looking at budgets enforcing ant anti-homelessness measures. removal of law enforcement from all actions addressing homelessness will result in fewer arrests and stronger prioritization of resources. currently they assign a team of two officers to each crew and can't make cleanup teams. these officers should be removed. as well as the healthy streets operation center is heavily led by the police department right now. so by ending quality of life enforcement, we can also find these ongoing money sources for increased housing and services.

so about housing. here and in the jail closure report that the no new coalition put out, we know that many people are held in jail when they could be held in housing and community. others residual vat because of lack of housing. if it's subsidized. as some subsidies require exit if a person has been out of the unit for a specified amount of time. the continuum of care, hud subsidies, that 90 days. which can be the length someone is held because they can't pay bail. these were supported by the no jail coalition.

this is just a comparison from what was heard last week. the ask is for $13.9 million for supportive housing. and the supportive housing network also spoke last week. and that is an ask for money and currently we're spending over $18 million on police response to houseless people. policing is not the solution here and it's not the goal -- the goal is not to get the police to better spend the money, because police are not social workers and will never be social workers. lastly, in addition to housing, investment in collocated services will reduce recidivism rates and support community well-being. i'm going to pass it over to talk about education, which as eight of the supervisors

supported the closure of ygc, the board has already recognized the importance of divesting from criminalization and investing in care. >> so the third category of investment that we ask you to put investment into to increase public safety is education. we know that people of color, working class, houseless people, and transitional aged youth are the most targeted in policing. and the majority of people are in san francisco jails. we should be investing in educational resources for the communities. not targeting them for imprisonment. in my 35 years as a faculty member at city college of san francisco, i've seen how city college transforms lives. the statistics show that california community college students double their earnings within three years of earning a

degree or certificate. do we have more time? great, thanks. so i don't have to hurry. and i'm just going to be a few more minutes. california community college graduates have doubled the chance of finding a job compared to those who failed to complete high school. this is also true for students who attend community college without getting a certificate. or graduating. over the past few years, san francisco -- over the past few years, san francisco has actually done a great job of investing in our schools. from increasing the funding of k through 12. san francisco understands the value of investing in our students. and that it's more effective than investing in our criminal

justice system. but did you know that california ranks dead last in america for its spending on students versus spending on prisoners? in fact, california spends six times more per prisoner than per student. the california community colleges is the state's most cost effective system of education. and that for every dollar california invests in students that graduate from college, it will receive a net return for $4.50. sorry. all right. as you decide your budget priorities for this year, we ask that you think creatively about what is considered public safety. reduce the budget that is spend

on criminalization and increase spending on housing, education, and service provision. let's be a leaders in the state with a truly effective program to increase public safety of our communities. we ask that you implement the proposed budgetary solutions that were suggested here. thank you for your time and listening to the interests of the budget justice coalition, which represents dozens of san francisco community based organizations. >> supervisor fewer: questions or comments? so i just wanted to clarify that last year what happened in the budget cycle was we were looked at the bla staffing report for the police department. and they gave -- they identified 203 positions that are being held by civilians. and the police department was

asking for more money to put academy classes through. so i think there were a group of us that said we should actually, instead of giving more money to put the academy classes through, those police officers we've already invested in and trained, they should be out and we shouldn't be investing in new academy classes because we had police officers that were actually not doing policing work. they were doing civilian work. that is where there was -- so there was much discussion and we -- the committee decided to actually fund the classes. and have 50 of those positions be civilian. we will see what the budget cost is. so we actually, i think, there are people on the committee that thought that we should take the

recommendations that the budget analyst and not fund the new academy coming through, but the majority voted to actually fund the new police classes. so that is the extra funds that came in. and it was -- i think that was the purpose of this civilianization, instead of investing in new academy classes. i want to say we'll be having a hearing about incarceration and the cost of incarceration and i want you to come to that actually. and actually, you can meet with chelsea about that and what that agenda looks like. also, i wanted to say, yes, i know about our non-investment in public education in the state of california, which is the fifth largest economy in the world. and we see continually that public education is not funded. this is why i think we need to reform prop 13 and i hope t