the meeting will come to order. welcome to the april 25, 2019 meeting of the public safety and neighborhood services committee. i'm rafael mandelman. to my right supervisor stefani. we believe supervisor walton will be here shortly. i want to thank sfgovtv for staffing this meeting. mr. clerk, any announcements? >> yes, please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. items acted upon today will

appear on the may 7 board of supervisors' agenda unless otherwise stated. mr. clerk? >> item number 1 is ordinance amending that the police code in general that brick-and-mortar businesses accept payment in cash in connection with the purchase of goods and other services. >> supervisor mandelman: we required the legislation to sit on hold until today. before we entertain a motion to send this to the full board, we have supervisor brown's legislative aide, if we have questions or comments. vice chair stefani? >> supervisor stefani: yes, thank you, chair mandelman. i would like to thank supervisor brown for including the amendments and would like to add my name as cosponsor. >> supervisor mandelman: great. and then we also need to take public comment on the item one more time. if there are any members of the

public who would like to speak on it? please do come up. seeing none, we will close public comment on this item. i will make a motion to forward this to the full board with positive recommendation. seeing no objection, we'll pass that. fantastic. we have been joined by supervisor mar. good morning. mr. clerk, please call the next item. >> item number 2 is hearing to examine the number, frequency and locations of home burglaries. supervisor mar, this is your hearing. >> supervisor mar: thank you and thank you supervisor stefani for cosponsoring and allowing these

important issues to be heard. during my campaign for supervisor last year, as i talked to my neighbors in the sunset district about priority issues, one of the top concerns that came up time and again was property crimes targeting homes. and the feeling that home burglaries and home invasion robberies have been increasing in our neighborhood and city. in fact, in november, the day after the election, my next door neighbor was a victim of a home invasion robbery, while my neighbor's 90-year-old mother was at home, two suspects kicked up her front door and proceeded to ransack their home, stealing over $100,000 of property and cash. since december 2018, we have had at least 126 recorded burglaries. and we've had between 23 to 29 burglaries recorded each month. in the last two months, my

office has reached out to nine home invasion or burglaries in the sunset. in one incident on cecilia avenue, a victim informed us her garage was broken into when her family of four was sleeping upstairs. two bikes and travel supplies were stolen, but what was scary to the mother, was that her entire family was upstairs, including her 11 and 12-year-old children. in addition, many in the chinese community believe they're being disproportionately targeted as victims of these residential property crimes. anecdotal incident data can compiled by my office supports this concern. porch piracy has become prevalent with the rapid growth

of online shopping. since our office began outreach, we've communicated with over 30 victims in our district alone. one victim said she had over seven separate incidents of package theft alone and was losing count. in several incidents, neighbors have actually followed or confronted package thieves to support the apprehension of suspects. some are concerned this is leading to a vigilante in our neighborhood and city around a crime that still hasn't been adequately tracked and addressed. the purpose of this hear is to gain a better understanding of home burglaries, home invasion robberies and package theft crime across the city, including historical trend and geographic distribution. i want to understand the police

department and the attorney office's current systems and strategy to investigate and prosecute these crimes. finally this hearing is a first step to identify new programs to reduce property crime targeting residents in their homes. with these goals in mind, i want to -- i would like to conduct the hearing in the following manner. first, i wanted to invite several victims up to share their personal stories and experiences. and then we will have a presentation by the sfpd to provide an overview about residential property crimes. the district attorney office will present about prosecution of the crimes. and finally, sf safety awareness for everyone, where sf safe will present about their work to foster safe and secure homes. this will be followed by public comment and committee discussion. so i'd like to start by inviting

several victims from my district in the sunset district, just to come and share their experiences as victims of these crimes. the first speaker is mr. chan. actually, before we start the presentations, i wanted to state that we have some community members here requiring interpretation at the hearing, so we have an interpreter. and actually, can you identify yourself? oh, he's right here. so if anyone needs chinese interpretation, please talk to richard, the interpreter, or alan, my legislative aide. mr. chan? >> good morning. my name is chan. and i live on 19th avenue. i was a home burglary victim 10 years ago. at about 11 in the morning, we

all went to work, except my son who did not feel well and took rest in the small room down stairs. my son heard a loud noise and then the sound of steps on the upper floor. he was very frightened and then after a while, there were the sound of footsteps of the person coming down the stairs. at this moment, my son's alarm clock rang. it was set to wake him up to take some medicine. the thieves might have mistaken the alarm as if it was from a house alarm system and they left. when all was quiet, my son went upstairs and went in my room and my daughter's room were ransacked to a mess. my son called the police and called me to return home.

at about 12:00, i went back and saw a police officer investigating and taking fingerprints. the front door frame was broken. we'd lost about $300 cash and my wife's diamond wedding ring. it was very scary to hear that burglars were in the house with my son. later our neighbor told us that they saw the three persons flee from our house. but we have never heard from the police department since then. in this incident, we are not only material loss, but a sense of insecurity haunting over our my family ever since. again, on march 11, we had attempted home burglary. our record shows that at 4:09

a.m. in hoodies, carrying a bag into the courtyard and approached to try our front door. at this very moment, our motion-activated camera came on and they were deterred and backed off immediately. we were lucky enough to escape a possible mishap. we sent this video footage to supervisor gordon mar. in recent years, there were more, but not less home burglaries and street robberies. i witnessed many cases of broken car windows in front of our house in the neighborhood. packages, vandalized mailboxes in our community. criminal behavior seems to be the norm in our neighborhood. it is necessary to have a comprehensive plan to review and

amend safety-related legislations to address these serious safety issues. we deserve to go to bed with peace of mind. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you, mr. chan. the next speaker that i want to call up is charlie vaughan. mr. vaughan is a sunset resident and also a general contractor, who has had numerous experiences of burglaries targeting the homes. >> hello, board of supervisors. my crew and i behind me here, and catherine over there, and then a couple of guys that are still struggling to come in, we live and operate a construction company in the outer sunset here in san francisco. fortunately, for the past 12 months, us and builders have been victims of repeated

burglaries. burglars target our job sites, cars, houses, where they've stolen over 80k in tools, and personal items. despite increasing security measures now totalling over $1,000 a month, it persists. the cost of this on the low end is 50k a year and a general sense of low morale and insecurity. i can't state enough how much of a hit this is, not only to us, but arguably, and more importantly our sense of helplessness in the situation. other responding officers have been empathetic to our hardships, yet we have had no follow-up despite repeated calls to our police district. in one case, where our truck was

stolen, i was able to obtain the police report after several attempts. the truck was recovered, the thief apprehended, but no charges were brought. we were able to provide video footage in other cases, yet no investigator provided any follow-up as to what could be done. with little to no perceived action being done on our case, i, myself, decided to see where our truck went and to see if i could find any of the material lost. it was found on new com and keen. there are several tents, three or four box trucks loaded with what seemed to be stolen tools, bikes and appliances. i observed what i presumed were methamphetamine or drug exchanges for the items in the boxed trucks. it seems there is a head to the snake. in most of our cases that we've

seen. although we have speculated extensively ourselves, we're a construction company, not a detective company. we believe it is the city's job and the sfpd should have the resources to investigate these crimes to completion. or at least we should be provided a reason why they can't be explained to us. and then a couple of us have other things to say. >> i'd to thank you guys for taking time out of your day to listen to our issues that impact almost daily. the construction industry has a problem recruiting and maintaining a workforce, with a dwindling middle class,

construction-related fields are an amazing avenue for kids to better themselves. i volunteered years with the sf boys and girls club to introduce youth from underprivileged communities. these thefts threaten the ability to maintain and promote the industry. the construction industry has profited greatly from the tech boom and yet many contractors shy away from the city jobs and the local businesses are few and far between. contractors and their employees shouldn't have to lose sleep at night wondering if their tools and livelihood would be lost in the morning. imagine arriving to work to find out their office gutted completely, not even be able to send a letter and make a phone call. everything gone. that is what it's like for us. everything you worked for, long

sweat and hours, gone. stolen by someone for a quick buck. we just want some help. >> supervisor mar: thank you so much. i wanted to call up an additional sunset community member that has also been a victim of residential property crime. ms. sunny dieng. i believe she's going to need interpretation from richard. >> good morning. my name is sunny -- >> please speak into the mike. good morning, my name is sunny chen. >> translator: i've been living in the sunset district of 21st street over 30 years. the security and neighborhood has been excellent in the past.

currently, it gets worse and worse. there are a lot of thefts and homeless people. my home, two times, packages were stolen. okay, my mom is over 90 years old. she was not able to get out of the house.

so every noon we have food delivery to our house between 12 and 12:30 and those meals were stolen. sometimes i come town a little bit later then the meals were gone. and the homeless people sleeping at this stairwell, the entrance to my house, and twice i was scared by their presence. as a result, i have nightmares at night. [speaking chinese]

>> translator: so i am here to tell you about these facts and i'm encouraging the supervisors and his team and all the city hall members to help us to improve security, increase man power and surveillance, in order to make our neighborhood a good neighborhood to live again. thank you very much. >> supervisor mar: thank you. thank you so much, mr. chan, mr. vaughan, and ms. dieng for sharing your stories -- excuse me. and i think you really helped to bring a human face and highlight the issues that we're talking about at the hearing today. i know we have another number of community members that want to share their stories, but that can happen during public comment. we just wanted to invite some

members to bring a human face and highlight the issues we're talking about at the hearing, but everyone will have a chance to speak during public comment. that happens a little bit later. before we go to the presentation from the police department, the district attorney's office and sf safe about the issues, i just wanted to see if my colleagues might have any remarks. supervisor stefani? >> supervisor stefani: thank you, yes, i just wanted to thank you for calling the hearing and express sympathy for the stories we've heard. thank you for coming out. i too was burglarized over this past year, i was at home with my daughter upstairs. she's 9 years old. someone came into our home and ransacked my son's room and took a bunch of his things. we did not know it was happening at the time. learned afterwards, but it's frightening and i know it's frightening for the people who

just spoke. the package theft situation is very real. i hear it all the time in district 2 and it's something we absolutely need to do something about. supervisor mar, thank you for calling this hearing. >> supervisor mar: thank you. why don't we move to the presentation from the police department. i wanted to invite captain tim to come and again, kind of provide an overview to the trends on these property crimes targeting our residents in our homes. and also talk about the arrest rates. >> good morning, supervisors. good morning, public, members of the public here. my name is tim fall vi, i oversee the narcotics unit, the traffic collision investigation unit and the burglary unit. i have a presentation here where i'm going to cover the crime

statistics that were asked for. and i'll begin the power point now. it's not high enough. okay, so before we get into the different types of crimes, i wanted to give a brief description of the crime categories so we all understand what each -- the terms that are being used mean. i have here on the power point residential robbery. that is the taking of property by force or fear inside someone's home. and it's personal crime, because the victim is present and the property was under their control at the time it was taken. residential burglary is the unlawful entry into a room, house, apartment, any domicile where someone may live with the intent to commit a grand or petty larceny or to commit any other felony. so the next term down there is a hot prowl.

this term isuationed quite a bit. a hot prowl is when a residential burglary occurs and any person from that residence is home. if anyone is in the building, it's a hot prowl. two important things to keep in mind about that. the suspect does not need to know that anyone was home in order for it to be a hot prowl. and the second thing would be that the victims don't need to know the suspect was in their home for it to be a hot prowl. and then package theft, this is when we have unattended packages that are typically dropped off by a delivery company, on a porch, driveway, and they're left unattended and someone takes them. the first three items i mentioned are all felonies. the package theft, depending on the dollar value of what was

taken, a misdemeanor or felony. >> supervisor mar: i had a quick question on the first slide. and home invasion robberies, it's just a term that is commonly used. would that basically be equal to residential robbery? >> so home invasion robbery is a term used and one thing to draw a distinction of, and we look at home invasion robbery, we think of someone coming in deliberately to rob the occupants of the home. where you see things like that, in marijuana grows or people keep a lot of cash, where the victim was specifically targeted because the person knew they had certain property they wanted. another thing to keep in mind, you can have a residential burglary where the suspect does not know that the victim is home, which is a hot prowl, and they confront each other. and if at that point it's to use force or fear to continue to take the property from the

person, it's a residential robbery. home invasion implies a lot of people going in. but you can see how one evolves from another and one is a planned event. but it's the robbery by force or fear inside the home that is the residential robbery. the next slide talks about hot prowl burglaries. this is one where people are home. we're very concerned about this. you can see back in 2015, there were 732. this is city-wide. it went up to 808. 823. and down to 719. i think the drop to 719 is significant. it's a 13% drop from the year before and the reason it's significant is, when dealing with the spike in property crimes, one of the strategies of the department was to bring back a city-wide burglary unit instead of just the station level. because we're seeing that some

of these people were in groups. they don't care about police district boundaries when they're committing crimes. they just go where there is opportunity. we wanted a way to track crimes that were pros -- were the same suspects were crossing multiple districts. but in november of 2017, they brought back the burglary unit and the unit was responsible for tying cases together to present for series, where it's the same suspects going on a spree. and i think it was important that after that -- and they also brought back units like the robbery unit, the investigation unit and we saw a drop right away of 13% in those crimes. >> supervisor mar: so do you have a sense say for the prior five years prior to this? are the numbers pretty steady over time. >> they go up and down.

i've been at burglary for four months, so i don't have that. i did look at old reports, but they were similar numbers. we did see the bump up in the two years, that's when we added the burglary unit back. i want to bring up the next slide, a comparison from april 22nd of last year and this year, hot prowls across the city. i think it's encouraging that after a 13% drop from 2017 to 2018, year-to-date, we see a 33% drop in these types of crimes. if you look at the engelside, i know many of the members of supervisor mar's members from the sunset district, there is 65% drop year-to-date in hot prowl victories. the data did show that it went up a couple of years ago, but the trend is going down and

we're seeing it continue and we're encouraged that the strategy of bringing back the burglary unit has been successful. here's a graph showing hot prowl and residential burglaries. i think you can see the downward trend we spoke of. we've combined in this case the hot prowl and the residential burglary totals together, because as i mentioned earlier, a hot prowl, the suspect didn't need to know they were home. so it's the same action by the suspect, whether someone was home or not, so we combined them here. you can see the drop. in 2015, the city-wide total is 3100. and in 2018, it's down to 2785. that's for the whole city. so the hot prowls went up for a little bit and they're coming down. and the residential burglaries

continue to go down, so there has been decrease in residential burglaries. for the -- again, i'm showing the year-to-date comparisons, so far this year, when you combine the crime categories, city-wide we see a 20% drop in hot prowl and residential burglaries through april 22nd, which was this monday. and again, overall burglaries for residents are down 41% in total in the tearville residency. so getting to the residential robberies, we did speak about the difference and how burglaries can turn into robberies if there is contact between the suspect and the victim and the conduct of the suspect at that point. or if someone targeted a specific residence because they knew there was something inside they wanted to steal.

like i said, sometimes these are burglaries that evolve into robberies and sometimes they're targeted robberies. we look at that information from the victim's perspective and we try to get an idea why the house was targeted. and the lieutenant of the robbery and burglary unit will look to see, is this a group we're following, a series that turned burglary into robbery? if so, the burglary unit will please keep that case and work it as series. if it's not, seems like a one-off, then the robbery unit takes that case. so there was increase in residential robberies. you can see the total went from 51 in 2017 to 66 last year. and engelside and taraval, one increase in the taraval.

the burglary unit has made numerous arrests. they've gone from 20 last year, to 11. so a 45% drop in residential robberies year-to-date. in the taraval district, they went from 6 down to 2. and ingleside they dropped from 5 down to 1. if you look, the difference is nine and those two stations account for the drop in crime. so here's a combination of hot prowls, residential burglaries and residential robberies. these are the crimes inside the residence. that's the trend and you can see the significant drop. the next item is the crime

abatement strategies and what we've done. as i mentioned in november 2017, the department brought back a city-wide burglary unit and robbery unit. other like night investigations that can triage the case in the morning hours, assign it or take the case themselves. based on the success, we've expanded the burglary unit. so another thing we've done inside the burglary unit, i only got there in november. they got there the year before. i'm very grateful the decisions were made to bring them back and the people they assigned. it's a very good group of people working in the burglary unit led by lieutenant scott ryan who is doing a great job directing the activities of the burglary unit. but we've embedded crime analysts with the burglary investigators, so they can do a analysis to link cases together and go after people in a small number, but committing a lot of

crimes. we have neighborhood crime units that were expanded from a pilot station to every district. we have hot spot attention through crime operation prevention, where we take several officers and saturate an area where a crime may be happening. when it comes to burglary, i would invite safe out to my community meeting in may and october and ask them to talk about residential burglary prevention right before people went on summer vacation or traveled for the holidays. the department uses our media relations unit to push out messages when we see a particular crime. the department did a lot of proactive media work to warn people about the problem and get the people to report the crimes. another here, abatement strategies, we're big fans of

people with videos on their home. we encourage people to provide the surveillance footage. when we get a good image from a video surveillance, the department, the investigator will mail that out to every member of the department and see if anybody knows the suspect, if it's somebody they've detained before or arrested before. additionally, we send it out to the nine bay county law enforcement agencies and see if anybody recognizes them as they may be coming from one county to another, and searching opportunities to commit crime. but the videos that we're seeing are getting better. the images are clearer. they aid us greatly in our investigations and we encourage people to do that. so this is a slide with the number for arrests relating to hot prowl, residential burglary and robbery. and you can see the increase over the years from 322 in 2015 to 378. a dip to 368, but then increase

to 465 in 2018, which was the first year of the burglary unit. i think it's significant when i compare those numbers to the total reported burglaries and home invasions and home robberies, it goes from arrests equal to about 10% of the reported crime to 16% over that time period. that is a significant improvement and it reinforces that some of the things we're doing with the robbery unit are working. we're hoping to continue the success. from 2015 to 2018, a 60% increase in the number of cases resulting in arrests. the next item is package theft. i went online and i did a few research -- few searches on various search engines, but looking for tips for people to prevent package thefts. and a lot of the companies that are delivering these packages are now coming up with solutions

that are available to their customers. one large internet delivery company, they've installed lockers at grocery stores around the country. when your package is delivered to the grocery store, you get a text with a six-digit code to open the package. other companies are working on, if you install certain types of locks, you can have it linked to your phone and when the delivery person gets there, they'll confirm you're expecting a delivery, they will notify you to turn on the video camera, they'll give the code to the delivery person who would open the door, drop off the package and shut the door. then the code changes. other things people can do, have the packages delivered to work if it's during the daytime. but the idea is, if there is something we can do other than leaving the package out in public display and create the temptation for the suspects to

come in and steal, we want to make it is they're not successful. these are things that the media relation unit can help push out, share with the public, ways to avoid this. if you have a neighbor that works from home, if you have relatives that live nearby that are retired, have the package delivered to them. those are some of the strategies for combating that particular problem. we don't want to see any vigilantism, we want to make it harder for them to do this and reduce the opportunity for them to commit the crime. i think working with the public, working with the suppliers, the different delivery services, we can come up with solutions to reduce that crime. that is it. i thank you for your time and i'm here to answer questions. >> supervisor mar: thank you, captain. colleagues, any questions?

>> supervisor mandelman: thank you for that presentation. i am interested in the package thefts. and if there is anything that can be done from a criminal justice enforcement response to deal with package thefts? because it looks like you believe that investigating is something that has been useful -- investigating and actually hunting down the folks that are doing -- who are burglaryizing -- >> we don't say hunting [laughter]. >> supervisor mandelman: got it. but the restoration of the burglary unit and the investigative work you're doing is having impact on reducing the number of home robberies and home burglaries that are happening. >> i think we've identified groups that were conducting series. they were being successful, so they kept going, but we were able to put cases together and

link the cases through evidence and other investigative techniques and say, hey, we've brought people in charge and seven different burglaries. in commercial cases, we charged one guy with 19 burglaries. so i think that's an important component. legislatively, i think it was a month ago there was talk of a bill to change these sentencing for package theft to include it as a more serious crime to keep people from coming on other peoples' property. i don't know that has moved forward, but it was something discussed as a way to have a more serious sanction, to dissuade people from committing the crime. you wouldn't leave your wallet on the front porch, but it's okay that someone is leaving a package there. and the person doesn't know the value of the package, they're going to investigate. we want to reduce through

education and other alternative means of delivery, the ability for people to do that. and it's also a seasonal issue. during the holiday season, christmas time, a lot of packages get delivered and we're going to have the message to look at alternate means of delivery to reduce the chances their packages are stolen. again, i won't use a brand name, but some of these video surveillance systems you see attached to front porches are very effective and we're encouraged by the quality of those video images, that we can make more identifications. and some of those investigations remain station level. the station investigators may take those cases if they're local, they'll get the video and they'll put out the video of the suspects or their vehicles and see if there is a similar case, or if they recognize the person, we can issue a warrant for their arrest.

>> supervisor mandelman: it sounds like there -- like the package thefts would not fall within the burglary unit. >> they wouldn't necessarily fall within the burglary unit. >> supervisor mandelman: who investigates? >> the station level would do that. if we saw a series, we would look to the different units. we have a meeting every other week, crime strategy analysis meeting. there is one going on right now where five of the captains get together from the district stations with the lieutenants of all the units to talk about crime surges they're seeing, particular crime problems they're having. they go over what the top three concerns are as far as crime. then the different lieutenants in the investigative units are there to offer solutions or say, hey, we can take that case. if we had a particular case where we're seeing the same vehicle and suspects hitting in districts, the burglary unit

would say we'll take the case and deploy our resources to solve that problem. >> supervisor mandelman: yesterday in the budget committee, we were looking at sort of crime statistics over time. and actually burglaries looked -- i mean, you've shown us there was something of a spike and we're now able to deal with that, but the real sort of dramatic and unsettling expansion of crimes have been around larceny, which i think, would package thefts be included in larceny? >> yes, it's a theft where the person who owns the property isn't present. force or fear is used to take the property away from the person, would makes it a robbery. so the law draws the distinction between the two. >> supervisor mandelman: i can understand why the department would be focusing on the potentially more deadly or dangerous crimes that could result in a homeowner being

confronted by someone in their home, so it makes the restoration of the burglary unit makes sense in that respect. but i wonder if a more focused response would also be appropriate in the sense of package thefts. >> one of the -- >> supervisor mandelman: the other thing you suggested was that one disincentive, one reason that might not be effective, is the potential penalties currently for the package thefts may not be -- is the department's concern that you have a lot of resources investigating the crime when there isn't likely to be effective prosecution or penalty? i'm trying to understand, for the first three crimes, we talked about the strategy and things and trends and then we got to package theft, which is experienced by a lot of folks, and is clearly spiking, and it's

much more on the residents to sort of protect themselves from this particular crime? >> we do that in all crime types. we talk about -- even robbery of cell phones. we talk to victims and talk about ways to conceal your phone. so the first step is education. we're looking at the environment. the one thing about creating the burglary unit to deal with the series and what not, before the burglary unit was created, that was the station investigation team's responsibility. so we've taken a lot of the series work away from them which allows their resources to be used for local thefts like that. as far as the sanctions and what they are, we don't want anyone to come home and find their package gone. we don't want anyone to be the victim of a crime. so sanctions aside, if we see a serious, if we see a -- series, if we can tie them to several cases, we'll work up the warrant to have them arrested.

we'll also investigate to see -- they're right now taking packages off porches and out of driveways, we don't want them to be more brazen and go into homes. so we want to identify the people, want to prosecute them and make them understand there are consequences. by doing that, hopefully we'll keep them from committing more serious crimes. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you. >> supervisor mar: colleagues, any other questions for the captain? i had a few. actually just following up on chair mandelman's questions around package theft. and sort of, with the clear knowledge or understanding that this is a growing problem in the city and then also, just you know, there -- in order to address the growing problem like this, it does seem like data-gathering is critical to developing the most fiving

strategies -- effective strategies to prevent the problem, even around investigation and arrests. so currently, the police department does not track package theft incidents as a specific type of crime. >> it's not a separate crime under the title of larceny and theft at this time. there is no separate report title or end code or line for that. but package theft is not just a problem in san francisco. it's statewide and nationwide. as this problem is more prevalent, there may be more discussions we can have in the future. but at this time, the mechanism is not in place to do that, other than to manually read every theft report. >> supervisor mar: would it be possible for the police department to create a system for tracking package thefts? >> we can have a discussion about doing that. >> supervisor mar: just a couple

of other questions. i guess i would say it's encouraging to the historical data that you presented around residential burglaries, hot prowls, and residential robberies, generally, on the decline, especially in the last year or two. and -- but i think that -- i just wanted to point out that doesn't align with the sentiment in the community and in the neighborhoods where i think there is a feeling that -- not just from the victims, but from the broader community -- that these type of crimes seem to be increasing. and there is just growing kind of fear or anxiety among residents that they're not safe and secure in their homes. i just wanted to point that out. i'm not necessarily questioning -- >> i thank you for the opportunity to present here today, because i think one of the key takeaways from this, when we get the information out

to the public that things are getting better, that there would be less apprehension and then if with we can add onto that with more education about what people can do to secure their homes, increased video on homeless, but like you said, there is a sentiment and with the information we have, we need to push that out, we can do that through the media relations unit and captains can do it at community meetings, but we want people to know, yeah, there was a spike. the department had several strategies in place to address it. the spike is coming down. we're getting down -- last year's hot prowls were lower than they were before the spike by 2%. but that is the correct trend. that is the message we want to get out. we want to know that videos on homes have helped to contribute to this and keep working with us and report crimes. sometimes we go to community meetings and people will talk about an issue, but they haven't reported it to the police.

it's important they report the crimes, so they can get victim assistance through the district attorney office and we can be aware of it for tracking purposes. >> supervisor mar: thank you. just on the data that you presented, on slide number 6, around the residential burglaries, you share that the taraval station, the year-to-date, through april 22nd declined by 41% from 2018 to so far in 2019, you know, that figure that you have for 2019 of 74 incidents, of burglaries, doesn't match up with the figure that we've received directly from the taraval police captain through his monthly community relations meetings, where at those meetings there is monthly reports on the data from taraval. on those reports, there were 87

burglaries noted at the taraval station, so i was wondering if you have ideas why there is discrepancy in the figure of 74? >> supervisors, one of the reasons is his line for burglaries includes commercial businesses. these are schools, businesses that are broken into. his number included that. today, we came to present on residential crime only. >> supervisor mar: okay, that's helpful. my final question around a point that i made in the opening remarks, there is a feeling, particularly among the chinese community, not just in my district, but city-wide, they're being disproportionately targeted by residential robberies and residential burglaries in particular. and just from the anecdotal information that my office has

been able to gather and the victims we talk to in the sunset district, that those concerns do appear to be justified. so i was just wondering if you track sort of the demographic data of the victims? particularly of residential burglaries and residential robberies. and if you factor that into your strategies, especially on outreach and prevention strategies? >> we don't necessarily track the demographic data of the victims and the purposes of investigating right away, we're looking for the similarities between crimes to see if there is a series. if we do see a particular spike in crime, we can put out through media relations and news letters to advise people. i know you made a request for data based on demographics, but i don't have that information today. the department is still working on putting together a response. >> supervisor mar: great. on this topic, the sort of

feeling and claim that the chinese community is being disproportionately targeted by residential burglaries and robberies, what would you say to that? >> well, i look at all the burglaries, so i'm looking at commercial and residential. when i get to residential, one of the things that makes it tough to say there is a correlation or a group targeted specifically, is i don't have the data who make up the neighborhood. so if i'm in a neighborhood and 60% of the residents are from group a, and 60% of the burglary victims are group a, that's not necessarily disproportionate. again -- >> supervisor mar: i'm asking city-wide. >> city-wide, i see a lot of different -- when i see the reports it's different descriptions. >> supervisor mar: i'm asking more around victims. >> yeah, around the victims, like the commercial burglaries --

>> supervisor mar: victims of residential robberies and burglaries? >> i don't have the data on what the total is. we're working on a response to that request for the data. >> supervisor mar: thank you. colleagues, any other questions? great, thank you so much, captain. >> thank you. >> supervisor mar: so we're next going to move to a presentation from the district attorney's office. so i'd like to invite christine berry, the chief of staff, our district attorney. >> sir, you can speak during public comment. that will be coming up shortly. [please stand by]

>> these are the main sections we would use on a residential burglary case. 459, as was mentioned, covered a broad range of burglary. but a 4,591st part penal code section indicates it is a burglary of a home. as were talking about the statistics, that is what we are looking at for the residential burglary. as it relates to package staffed or larceny, does package staffed or larceny, this is a harder package for us. large is a very large category and includes many large theft offences. there is not a separate section that did -- deals with package staffed because that is a newer crime that has emerged as a result of so many home deliveries of goods through large online dealers.

his or all of those are lumped into theft and by their value. they are either petty theft or grand theft, but there's no differentiation if it is taken from your parts are your mailbox , or if it is taken in the store, and a shoplifting scenario. it is a much harder crime for as to give you a very detailed information about, unfortunately , but we can tell you in 2018, there were 16,000 deaths in san francisco, and that is a 14% reduction as compared to -- we have experience a 14% reduction. i would just mention, there is a legislation pending. it is ab 1210 by assembly member lowe that has been introduced to be able -- be allowed to be a wobbler when the package was taken -- when a delivery package is taken from somebody's porch. that is going to assembly

appropriations to either follow airway in on it. it probably will need support to pass, and bart likely bart likely will not be popular in san francisco, but has been introduced and it is moving forward. i should also mention mentioned that if a package staffed involves entering into an enclosed area of the same multiunit dwelling, that can, become a residential burglary. just to give some context, there are a lot of questions about who is being targeted, but we find this quite helpful for us to understand where our work is coming from and if we are responding adequately to people 's experiences in the community. while it is a citywide issue, the vast majority does happen in the tenderloin, northern and mission district. that is where the majority of these cases come from as it relates to our office in terms of arrests that are brought to us.

those are most of the cases and often times, also around housing development we see a height increase of residential burglaries in those reviews -- in those communities as well. just to give you a sense of the work of our office on this issue , this graph will show you the incoming cases by year that i residential burglaries, 72014 we had 137 cases, and in 2018 we are up to 237 new cases for that year, so there definitely has been an increase in the arrests that are presented to us as well as a filing of this cases by our office. you can see at the top. we file residential burglary cases at a rate of 86%. we take action on 92% of those. sometimes people will have other cases are we are able to take other actions. that the number gets higher with those vehicles, and our conviction rate for those cases

is 88%. we do bring most of them and we do secure convictions on the vast majority of those. just to belts off of sfpd's recommendations, our thoughts with things that we can do in addition to what is already being done, his continuing collaboration on what we have developed with our crime strategy unit and the san francisco police department to really focus on the highest offender, the people targeting particular communities are particular neighborhoods and make sure that we give the appropriate amount of attention to those individuals and those crimes. this is an example of a very successful joint collaboration where maggie from our office collaborated with sfpd to identify 12 individuals that were associated with 60 home burglaries and brought a very successful case against them. there was $3 million in stolen property recovered. it was an exhaustive effort

involving -- it is not the typical case, it requires us doing social network analysis, trying to understand social media, interest and people's modus operandi and connect cases that are not initially connected but it -- any questions? it doesn't seem to align with what the captain presented captain presented around residential burglaries by district, because i noticed for the terror about district for example, and what that captain presented