have quarterly block meetings around safety. we work with the captain there, to sort of give them important information of everything that is coming up. and what to look out for. we did that around the city. that is something we implemented most recently. along with what we do during establishing a neighborhood watch, some of the things that we did begin implementing is inviting our neighborhood prosecutors from the d.a. office to address the neighborhood groups. having the board of supervisors, your aides, come out to neighborhood watch groups. and also the mayor's office of neighborhood services. we found that while we were establishing our neighborhood watch groups, that the residents had a lot more questions outside of our purview, so we decided to introduce the mayor's office and different departments and how they can call upon those services in their neighborhood. so there is ten meetings that take place, with the 10th being a celebration of getting their

group together. and they meet over -- it takes about two months or so. some groups meet after work. some meet on the weekends. some like to double up the meetings, but we do take our time, going out to meet with the constituents to ensure they understand each step and how they can work closely with the city departments and their local police station. if it's a multiblock, or if it's a whole neighborhood, we sort of meet at one central place to get them involved with that. so a lot of things that come out after there is an unfortunate incident that someone experiences, we do come out and do a residential community survey. it's a free service. it's conducted with the resident and one of my staff who goes all around the entire home, the front doors, the entryways, around your shrubbery, how

things are positioned, lighting and if you have your own personal camera system, which systems will gauge to get the whole view of our home. and also to introduce you to your local officer in their neighborhood. you receive a free written report, it's about 35-40 pages after the survey is done. and it takes about two weeks to get that completed from the date of initiation. and so another thing we do want to add, we do surveys and it's crime prevention through environmental design and those are popular in the multiple unit dwellings, apartment complexes, we come out and meet with the hoas. the last slide is more of what we do, that i spoke about, that you guys have. finally, we have the save the date for the summit that is

coming up in july. >> supervisor fewer: great. colleagues, questions, comments? yes. project safe presentation. >> do you actually have the slides to hand out, the ones that you presented? >> no, i don't. >> can you send them to us? >> yes, i can. >> thank you. >> supervisor fewer: i just want to say i've had a neighborhood watch group in my neighborhood and this is how you get to know your neighbors. and neighbors' phone numbers. if you see something weird happening. and actually this is a big component of public safety. police officers cannot be everywhere. but we all have to look out for each other and i can't say enough about project safe. i think many neighbors have called for assessment after attempt

attempted burglary in their home. any more comments? >> supervisor stefani: i wanted to echo that. i have neighborhood watch groups. you've been so wonderful. your work is definitely part of the public safety process and we can't thank you enough. thank you. >> supervisor fewer: thank you. >> president yee: same here. i've been to quite a few project safe orientations and so forth in my district and i guess one of the things you didn't talk about, in which a few years ago when i realized how underfunded you were, that was probably three or four years ago, and your workload for the organization had increased so much, but your budget was flat for many years.

so there was a little bump in, hopefully, a little bump in the budget a few years back, so the question i have is, is it still adequate? >> well, when i first came, yes, organization wasn't receiving enough, but i was advocating and continue to advocate to have at least 1.5 staff person in each -- for each captain in their district. so that way, there could be someone that is totally focused on neighborhood watch and the other person working in tandem with the officers around the residential surveys. right now, each staff person is doing both. as you know, as more people hear about neighborhood watch, we're doing double duty to establish the neighborhood watch and also providing the security surveys around the city. it's very busy for us across all districts. not one district is, you know,

more busier than others. we have over 300 neighborhood watch groups in each district. and they want refresher, they meet quarterly, we come out. it just depends on what their concern is at that time. i'm advocating for more funds for staff. it's something i'm continuously doing. >> which is good. again, i think at the time -- were you there? >> no, i was not. >> president yee: i didn't think so. it was some comfort level, or uncomfort level for sf safe to advocate for more funding through the police department. and i think -- i'm hoping that chief scott and his police department will look at what you do and advocate for the program, because i know that even since i've been a supervisor, how much more work you've done for our

district. and certainly, it's not just the neighborhood group -- neighborhood crime watch groups, but you know, i'm telling all my residents, go to the assessment of the house, so you must be getting a load of that. so -- >> yes, our services are based on requests. we receive about 30 requests a day. >> supervisor fewer: what is currently your budget? >> we currently receive a little less than a million from the police department. >> supervisor fewer: and all fur funding comes from the police department? >> that's correct. >> supervisor fewer: less than a million. 300 in each district? >> yes. >> supervisor fewer: okay. that's very helpful. thank you very much. i just wanted to know about the

language capabilities. >> we are all bilingual and pro-fish in enter /* -- proficient in the languages we read, write and speak. >> supervisor fewer: thank you very much. our next speaker is our district attorney. >> good afternoon, supervisors. how are you? >> supervisor fewer: good. >> what i'd like to do is go over some of the areas that you requested. i gave you a brief overview and then certainly i'm open for any questions you may have.

>> supervisor fewer: mr. district attorney, did you have a power point for us? >> yes. we do. right there. >> supervisor fewer: thank you very much. >> okay. so what we're going to talk about today is the burglary unit, and i want to talk about leads and how that impacts drug markets in the city. i also want to touch briefly upon administrative requests we have, because we're reaching a breaking point. if we don't take care of some of this, we're going to have to take people from other places to do this work. it impacts constitutional mandate, both for victims and defendants. it's the law today and almost

crime, but for murder and using weapons of mass destruction, now actually qualify for mental health diversion. i know some are a priority. and then sentence review, which is something that is coming to us quickly because of new state legislation. beginning with auto burglary, you probably heard or read an article by "the chronicle" recently, that talked about one or more district attorney, who basically is a one-person unit handling the burglary -- review of all the burglary cases from the police department. herself, handling 30 cases. unfortunately, the workload is about 300 cases a year, so some of the work has to go to a general unit. but when we do have that unit do the work, we get much better results. it's just simply a matter of being able to dedicate the time,

the attorneys that are working in our units, do not have the luxury of time. the next slide is a quick overview of since the team been in place, you can see what our filing rates on this case has been. and you see also -- >> q1 incidents? >> i'm sorry, q1, 2014, but you can see progression from 2014 to 2018 and you can see the difference in filing rates. 2014, to 81% consistently for the last three years. i'm sorry? we're on the right slide now? no, we're not.

i'm sorry. you can see there what the filing rate is in this case. very briefly, the next slide, you see a review of something that probably both of you are aware of, but this is what the hot spots are when it comes to auto burglaries. no surprise, the areas where there is a lot of tourism. then moving onto the next slide. it kind of breaks down by the hot spots. you can see what the year today, i think the first quarter of 2019 versus 18. good news, we're down 45% city-wide in this hot spot. you can see obviously there are some that really experienced major reductions like the fishermen's wharf. there are a few that have had a slight increase.

but overall, there is 45% reduction, which is good news when compared to the fact that we had a reduction already in 2018 to 2017. so we're continuing to see a good trend in this area. next slide is what the auto burglary team is. it's one attorney as i mentioned earlier. she is handling roughly 33-50 cases. there are 300 cases a year. so a lot of the cases go back to the general units, whether it's misdemeanor or felony unit. you can see the workload for those attorneys is somewhere between 100-150 apiece. so it's a significant impact on the work. we've asked for two other toe s attorneys to handle the work. that is part of our budget request. the next area i want to move into, one you talked about, it had to do with drug sales. and i apologize again, because i

have a different slide. i don't have that one slide in my presentation, but basically, what we are looking at is how do we deal with the problem? i was very supportive of what the chief was saying, arrests are certainly a component to the work, but i think that we want to be careful that we do not assume that arrests are going to be the solution to the problem, because the problem is very -- is complicated and it's much more than simply arresting people and for that matter, prosecuting them. but for those arrested, basically we see that 35% of those are -- 5% are going to the unit, 22% to the general felonies unit. and this is a rough estimate, we were asked to provide this information very quickly, and it doesn't get into all the details, but 2 million appears to be the rough number for prosecuting drug cases. i suspect it's higher than that

if we take into consideration all the support staff. the next slide that i have here is, you can see the number of cases that are presented and we're looking for drug prosecutions between 17 and 18 fiscal years. you can see there at the top, 747 cases have been presented. we have taken action on 86% of the cases and 107 of those cases were discharged. next slide goes into lead. i know the chief mentioned this program briefly, but for those not familiar, it started originally in seattle and it stands for law enforcement assisted diversion. basically, the goal is to try to identify as many people as there are out on the streets, whether they're buying or selling or a combination of both, which is usually the case, and try to understand what their needs are and where it's possible, connect those people to, whether it's

counseling, housing, you know, many other types of services. i'm trying to get them into a path to recovery and away from the drug scene in the streets. we have a pilot program where one of the cities or counties that was selected by the state, funding will be coming to an end soon and we're hoping that will continue to be funded through the general fund. area that i wanted to touch upon briefly, because it important for you to know what is happening. in the administrative side, especially body worn cameras, this is becoming a huge issue for us. the san francisco police department implemented the usage, the body worn cameras, what that translates into, we have to review all the footage that comes with every arrest and that workload is increasing significantly. we're looking at around 3200

hours of review every month and that number is only going to grow. and it really has two components that are important. one, we have constitutional obligations under marcy's law to protect identity, so we have to review and redact the video. and then under the u.s. constitution, we have obligations of discovery to the defense. and making those things happen in a timely fashion is becoming increasingly more difficult to do. and we're having to use attorneys for the work that should be done by para lilles legals, so it's one of the things you pay up front, or pay on the back end. we're not being efficient. if you look at ratio of support staff, it's running 685 cases per person. when you're talking about the time it takes to review body-worn camera and redact, it's very significant. just to illustrate a point. if you have four officers has

respond to a scene over a violent incident and they're there for half an hour, you have two hours of video. every moment of the video has to be reviewed, because you don't know if it's on the 29th minute of the last officer that you review, that there will be information that is critical to provide somebody's safety or support, or frankly, to inform the way that we're going to proceed with the case. the next thing also an area you did not ask for, but i'm taking the liberty to offer it to, is mental health aversion. the bill which is now the law, provides that most cases can be diverted if there is the right set of circumstances around mental health component or whatever the criminal behavior was. we support that. i think it's the right way to do. we hope one day we will not have our jail be the health institution in the count, but

that requires a new level of work and review. we're anticipating that we will be addressing around 1800-3,000 cases that will be petitions for this type of work. this work requires a tremendous amount of time and expertise. so that is the area that i'd like for you to also consider. and then finally, sentence review unit, we've had legislation that has passed in the last few years that increasingly requires we look back at cases, convictions under different state statutes. that requires high level of expertise by the reviewing attorneys and this is only going to increase. if we don't address this on the front end, we'll have people on the front line do this work because they're constitutionally required. with that, i'm ready for questions. >> president yee: thank you for

your presentation. and it's good to see the work, the change in terms of increasing. i'm just wondering, conversely, has there been things that you've done in the past where the amount of staff time needed to focus on those issues have decreased? for instance, since the legalization of marijuana, are you spending less time on those issues? because it's not just, you know, it's kind of odd to see only one side, everything is increasing, when maybe there isn't anything decreasing, but can you -- >> yeah, to be honest, since we've been prosecuting cases for many years in the county, it's had little impact. we prosecute very little cases. marijuana is not an area we have concentrated on. but i do want to say something that is a policy for you to

consider. marijuana is now legal, but what we're doing as a county and many others are doing the same thing, by creating so many hurdles for the legalized sale of marijuana to occur, you're encouraging, again, a street market of marijuana sales and i see also this therapy and what is occurring. so generally white population will buy marijuana from legal establishments, they can pay the higher price. the poor and generally people of color are often having to go and buy their marijuana in the streets, so you continue to see the inequities even with the law. we're making so many things so difficult for the legalize to be implemented, that we don't -- >> president yee: excuse me. i appreciate your speech about that, but -- >> it's a good policy. >> president yee: that wasn't my point. that was a bad example.

i'm just asking, are there any examples? if none, just state it. >> there is none. i can give you, for instance, the homicide case to years ago was a box of material. the homicide case had to be loaded on a cart. the complexity of our work continues to increase. it has now decreased. >> supervisor ronen: yes, thank you. i have two questions -- or one question, one comment. in terms of the mental health diversion and ab1810, when you are able to divert someone, where do they go? >> great question, because we don't have enough places to send them. so we continue to be challenged by the fact that even though we have a lot of services, we do not have enough. it's a combination. we work with non-profits, with the public defender. we work with the courts. we try to be collaborative in the way we handle this work.

it's just there is a lack of resources to do the work. >> supervisor ronen: because 1800-3,000 cases a year, that's quite a lot of people to divert into programs. i'm wondering, do you have statistics on how often there is a space available for people in a program? i'd love to see the data on that. >> yeah, we can get that for you. but i can tell you anecdotally, that often people, because they will have to stay in custody longer in order to take the services that are available -- >> supervisor ronen: because they're not available. -- because they're not available, they keep coming back again. but i can get for you how long it takes for the availability. >> supervisor ronen: i would appreciate that. because i think -- ab1810 is great. >> it is. >> supervisor ronen: diverting people, but when i was visiting, i believe it was the bay area

health court, that was what i was hearing. was that people, it ended up being ineffective alternative because people had to stay in jail longer so what was the point? >> yeah. i think if we want to address the street sales of drugs and homelessness, we need to address mental health in a big way. >> supervisor ronen: absolutely. and then you hadn't mentioned it, but i wanted to state for the record and for the committee, that your request around the human trafficking unit is a big priority for me. one of the major tracks in the city for sex work, where there is a lot of human trfing is in the mission. and we've, you know, at times, it's cyclical in the area.

you have one or two attorneys currently working on the case? >> we have one attorney. >> supervisor ronen: she is amazing. kim is incredible. this is not a job for one person. >> as you know, we're one of the capitals of human trafficking. and we haven't touched the organized side of human trafficking. we nibble around the edges, but 50% of human trafficking is tied to organized crime. to make those cases require much resources. i know i kept hearing the little bell going off, i wanted to be respectful, but it is there in the power point. >> supervisor ronen: and not only have we not even begun to address it, these are very complicated cases -- >> they are. >> supervisor ronen: they go across the state and the country.

>> for instance, we had a case a couple of years ago, a single defendant initially who started trafficked at age 14. she was reluctant to become a witness. we were working hard. kim hunter said you're doing a great deal of work behind the case. by the time she was done, we were able to identify 20 victims around the country. we were able to bring one from austin, texas, that was one of our star witnesses and we got a successful prosecution, but frankly, we spend hundreds of hours preparing for that case. and then it was a multi-week trial. >> supervisor ronen: yeah. i just wanted to say that is a priority for me. thank you so much. >> it is for us, too. thank you. >> supervisor fewer: supervisor mandelman. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you, chair fewer. thank you for being here. i want to talk about the mental health diversion. we talked some about this in a hearing, i think we had in the public safety neighborhood

services about access to mental health services, bayview health services and the jails and the broader population. i think we heard similar statistics around the number of petitions that have been filed and that is since -- is that since the beginning of this year? >> yeah, that just started. just in the last year, six months. since october. >> supervisor mandelman: since october. so 131 petitions have been filed and the police department is bringing those petitions? >> mostly, although there is private counsel. >> supervisor mandelman: i think it's something like 40 -- i mean there was concern about whether the willingness of the judges to grant those petitions -- >> yeah, but in fairness to the bench, they need alternative. if the bench doesn't have a place to send the person, then they have to -- they have to go through the traditional route,

right? and the problem is that we don't have sources. [interjections] [interjections] michael? [interjections] so often, it does offer the ability of resources to go in the diversion program, then they don't have alternative. >> supervisor mandelman: i thought, that, too, although the judge was suggesting it wasn't a lack of resources. people have to wait a long time, but he was sort of indicating

that he wasn't declining to authorize diversions. that eventually -- i don't know. you certainly need more resources for diversion. i guess i'm trying to think a little bit about how we would get from the 131 petitions that have been filed up to 1800 to 3,000 a year. where did that number come from? >> if you look at the public defender estimates that 40% of his work would qualify for this. that was the assertion made by our former public defender, which i agree with. i believe he's absolutely right. all you have to do is sit in the hall of justice for day and you can see the intersection between mental health and criminal behavior. so we're just anticipating that as everyone becomes more familiar with this, and in cases are coming through the system, we'll see a significant increase primarily based on the extension

from the -- estimation from the public defender. >> supervisor mandelman: and the 3,000 would be 40% of the case load? >> it depends, because sometimes we do the math of our cases a little different. he counts one defendant at a 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