>> good morning. the meeting will come to order. welcome to the thursday, may 16 th meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. i'm supervisor gordon marr, the chair of the committee. i am joined by supervisor vallie brown and supervisor schumann walton will be at substituting for peskin today. thank you to this committee's clerk, and i would also like to thank the san francisco government t.v. staff for

staffing the meeting. mr. clerk, do you have any announcements? >> please ensure you have silence your cell phones and other electronic devices. your completed speaker cards that you wish to be included shall be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will be on the june 4th, 2019 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. please call item number 3. >> agenda item number 3 is a hearing on language accents -- access, emergency response protocol and response time. namely, but not limited to the robbery of the good orchard bakery in district 11 in mid-january of 2019. >> thank you. before we go into this item, i did want to state for the public that we have an interpretation available for people that have come here that might need it in spanish, cantonese and arabic. i wanted to ask the interpreters

if they might come to the microphone and also make the announcement. like port-mac -- [speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language] >> thank you so much. now i would like to turn it over to supervisor safai and president you -- yee who called for this meeting. >> thank you for coming out today. i want to give a context of the purpose of this hearing. i want to thank my cosponsors for joining me today after the

incident, and bringing a lot of attention and light to this serious situation. this hearing was called in response to a robbery that happened on mission street in my district at the good orchard bakery. on january 19th, after being robbed and injured made a call to 911. the owner who wished not to be identified was injured. he was a monolingual chinese speaker and asked for an interpreter. an interpreter and interpreter was handed over, but a dm staffer was not available at the time, they work with an outside agency. we will hear more about that today from a group called buoyant. after 1230 when the call came in , it was over four hours until police officers or anyone, even an ambulance responded to the scene.

not even an e.m.t. from our perspective here, this is an acceptable. anything over two hours or even a couple of hours is not a good response. coming after four hours is unacceptable. it erodes the faith of our most loanable people in society, and particularly those who are coming from communities that already have barriers to wanting or feeling comfortable with working with law enforcement and government. particularly our monolingual community. we spoke with captain hart, and unfortunately, that was a very busy day. we want to account for that. we want to acknowledge that the commander his here, he was the former head and captain of that station. when he was a captain of that station, officers were sometimes -- there were a hundred 26 officers. today captain hart is down to 96 officers. when we have incidents around

town, i think there was a serious incident happening with a demonstration of officers getting called from all over the city, and what ends up happening is in our neighbourhoods, we are reduced to a skeleton crew. all of that being said, it is never acceptable for there to be no response, and in particular, there was a breakdown in our opinion because of language barriers and language interpretations. we want to know what happened with the communication, we want to know what happened in terms of the response time, and we want to hear from the police department and the department of emergency management on the solutions that they have come up with. i will say, when president yee and i went down to good orchard bakery, chief scott came. he took responsibility, he talked about some adjustments that would be made and they are analysing and categorizing the seriousness of the calls that

come in based on the robbery. again, we will get into the specific questions, but we certainly want to acknowledge that it is extremely important for communities, particularly monolingual communities, to feel comfortable in working with the police. when we went down there that day , we actually came across three or four other individuals that talk about being assaulted, and not even reporting those crimes because they felt uncomfortable in that situation. i want to handed over to president yee, thank you again for cosponsoring this. i know that you have dedicated a significant amount of your career to dealing with having access for those in monolingual communities. >> okay. thank you. i'm glad to cosponsor this hearing with you. as you have mentioned, something fell apart that day in terms of communication or the system itself and today it is about,

let's figure out what actually happened and how we can improve the system. we must get the trust of our residents and business owners that when they call 911, someone actually comes to help them, as he mentioned, i was in discussion, talking to some of the customers and so forth. they mention some other robberies in which they did not even report and they felt like it was kind of useless. this is something that is really bothering me and it should bother all of us that people don't even feel confident that something will happen. we need to reverse that culture. it shouldn't matter whether the collar, the victim is speaking english or any other language,

and thank you very much for having the three languages translated today. this is a good sign. our law enforcement officers work really hard to earn the trust of the community and we all thank them for doing that, but when incidents like the good orchard responds -- response happens, that trust is really damaged. we talk a lot about public safety and how we need to have more officers on the street. i think we need officers who reflect the diversity of our neighborhood and who can properly serve the needs of our diverse communities. we should have -- we could have another 100 officers, but if they can't communicate with our residents, they are not necessarily any safer. so that is my objective in calling with the supervisor this hearing. i want to know how to support our departments so we can

strengthen this relationship between our community members and our law enforcement partners and members of our emergency management team. i will leave it at that for now. i'm looking forward to hearing from the department in terms of your responses. >> thank you. i think we will call up the departments -- or do you just want to do public comment first? >> absolutely, i'm sorry. >> thank you so much for calling for this hearing. it is so important for us to review what happened at the good orchard bakery and to rectify mistakes going forward, because public confidence in our emergency services and response depends on it. 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 time again with property crimes targeting homes and businesses, and the feeling that burglaries and home invasion robbery have been increasing in our neighborhood in the city. many in the chinese community believe that they are being disproportionately targeted as victims of these type of residential property crimes and anecdotal information piled -- compiled by my office. the news that it took four hours to respond to an injured chinese speaking robbery victim has spread in the chinese community and i'm concerned that this incident will discourage the chinese community, immigrants, non-english speakers, and victims from reporting home invasion robberies and home burglaries as well as targeting businesses in the future. i look forward to hearing the information from the san francisco police department and

the department of emergency management so that we can get to the bottom of this incident and ensure that our immigrant and non-english speaking victims report crimes and have confidence in our emergency services. thank you. >> thank you. i appreciate that. i just want to add a couple of things. i think what i would like to do is if we can, i think it would be helpful to have the department speak, but i also want to give the time, i think there's only a few people here to speak in terms of public comment. it might be helpful to go to public comment and allow the departments to do the presentation. did you want to say something? >> i want to reiterate everything that my colleagues have said, because also in inner sunset, i have had many people coming to my office and myself and saying that they are scared now. they are nervous that if something happens there will not

be a response because they feel like the language barrier is there. i definitely want to make sure that we let everyone know that we hear them and that what we are going to -- and what we are going to do to address that. thank you. >> thank you. if we can do that, if folks would like, whoever would like to present some public comment, if you like to come up on this item, i have one card. i don't know if there is anyone who hasn't been able to make it into the room, but in case there isn't, marlene tran from the asian alliance. we have someone here from the filipino community centre, pixie castillo, if you want to line up , and go ahead and speak, that would be helpful. >> good morning, supervisors, i am a former immigrants right -- rights commissioner and a retired teacher from san francisco, and a long-time volunteer immunity activist in the southeast sector, for almost 30 years.

back in the 1980s, crimes were so rampant, were they could not make police reports back then because of language barriers. one tragic incident involved one of my new to english 27-year-old student who died needlessly because her non-english non-english-speaking husband could not contact the emergency department. after the deville -- delay, she died half an hour later at the chinese hospital. in memory of this new bride to america, i invited the emergency department to meet with our newly arrived and non-english-speaking students in visitation valley to ask for language appropriate context, especially for emergency services. since then, i have been lobbying for appropriate access in all our city departments. i have the opportunity to meet with the owner of orchard bakery

he was kind of reluctant to talk about many things, but finally he knows about my work as a community person, so he said that his business has gone down, and i asked him if -- how he could be helped. he told me three things. he hopes the police can provide more street patrols, he wants to see more surveillance cameras to help the police identify interest perpetrators, and he would like to provide resources to help businesses to install cameras in their businesses. lastly, he told me he was very appreciative of the english english-language offices forgiving him personal context information, and of course, i also think captain hart for providing officers for the services in visitation valley. >> thank you. next speaker.

>> good morning, president yi and supervisors. thank you for calling this hearing to draw attention to language access concerns and thank you to the clerk's office for arranging interpretation today. i am the director programs at chinese for affirmative action. we are the lead in the agent for the san francisco language network. the network of san francisco is unique and multilingual, multiethnic, multiracial collaborative of seven immigrant serving community-based organizations, including the african advocacy network, the resource in organizing centre, the central american resource and to, the filipino community centre,. [speaking spanish] -- and people organizing economic rights. it was founded in 2012 and is funded through the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs to conduct community immigration to language proficient communities on their language rights through the language access ordinance. we build community power through advocacy with barriers services

and programs and to improve in-home occasion an occasion of the language access ordinance. in this age of trump, language access is core to upholding century values and ensuring that san francisco remains a welcoming city for all. the xena phobic political climate has already created a chilling effect where immigrant families are afraid to step out of the shadows to access critical services. effective and culturally competent languages support immigrant families to feel safe, dignified and respected as members of this community went accessing community services, which are necessary for living sustainable lives. it upholds the values of century city in a very tangible way, but at its core, language access is a civil right and it is not optional for the city of san francisco and the city departments to provide language access. it is a right that committee members have. the issues being raised at this hearing are not unique to good orchard, although we are very sympathetic to the situation

that happened there. the situations that have been happening on the regular happen in our communities -- >> thank you, next speaker language mac -- [speaking foreign language] >> voice of translator: will provide testimony for the chinese community. [speaking foreign language] >> voice of translator: i live in district three in chinatown and immigrated in 2010. the language access ordinance is very important to me because it

is the most frequently used language help me navigate my day-to-day. i have to travel going to doctors, and even applying for schools. lang port-mac. [speaking foreign language] >> voice of translator: two years ago, my neighbor fell at

home and could not get up. he is an elderly living by himself, so i called 911 on his behalf. there was chinese interpretation on the call, so the ambulance quickly arrived at our door. unfortunately, there were no chinese speaking dispatchers among those who came to our building, so we were unable to inform them that his condition -- of his condition, or his health history. there were lots of questions in anguish when the elderly was not able to answer. half an hour later, the ambulance took him but failed to inform us that he arrived in hospital, his family was unable to locate him. had there been a chinese speaking dispatcher, the elder would understand the causation and they could locate himself and not delay his treatment time [speaking foreign language]

>> voice of translator: language access means basically -- it is the foundation to accessing treatment. i want to use this opportunity to urge city departments to strengthen the implementation of this, especially in these matters of life and death. the department takes it upon themselves to truly implement it and be equally responsible for every citizen, at the minimum, city should intentionally increase and ensure the quality of the bilingual hiring, so committee members, we are always able to exercise the right and receive services they need and a title, too.

thank you. >> thank you, next speaker. [speaking foreign language] >> voice of translator: i live in district three, chinatown in san francisco. i immigrated from china five years ago. i speak chinese to camino kate with my friends, family in my day-to-day, after arriving in the u.s. and knowing nothing about english language, it became a barrier for me to communicate with others.

community education, c.b.o., i learned that san francisco has an ordinance to guarantee language access for city residents like me like port-mac -- [speaking foreign language] >> the language access ordinance affects all immigrant communities and opposes our staff did -- statuses a century city to allow immigrants to advocate for themselves and participate in their communities for example, when the city departments obtain services, we need the title and the services to be delivered in our languages [speaking foreign language]

>> voice of translator: the law need to be implemented adequately. many departments have not hired a sufficient number bilingual staff or provided basic trainings leading to immigrants like me not being able to receive services when we need

them. this is especially the case for emergency situations. i remember one night my neighbor staying at home. the family members called for an ambulance, but the dispatcher did not speak english and was unable to communicate with the community members about my neighbor's symptoms, while the family members spent time locating an interpreter. my neighbor needs the most crucial time for treatment. [speaking foreign language]

>> voice of translator: our city is a multilingual, multicultural community. it becomes the very foundation for democracy and civil rights. today i urge the city to require every city department to adopt uniform standards requiring -- regarding basic bilingual hiring to ensure the quality of those hires in order to enforce it. while we have free languages guaranteeing access under the law, it is the minimum. we hope all immigrants who have access to their own languages to thrive in the u.s. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> before the next speaker, i wanted to make an announcement we have opened up room number 2 -- 263 as an overflow room for those of you who are standing without a seat here. you can go with the room and

still follow the hearing and come back if you are here for another item. next speaker, please. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is amy, i am an organizer. i'm also a resident of district 11. we predominantly organize latino families and youth in the mission mission at excelsior district. so we have a group -- we do a lot of our civic engagement, community outreach, they actually go out and inform community it numbers on the street around language access rights. back in december of 2015, i will share a story about one of our community members. we did not ask her to come because the story is too traumatizing for her to relive. i will share a little bit. in december 2015, they brought in a community member that they had met on the street, and she shared with us that she had a very traumatic experience at one

of the local clinics. for her, she would always go into this local clinic to see her dentist, and she is a monolingual spanish speaker, but when she would go there, she was never really offered any language services, so then it became very accustomed to this. unfortunately, one of the days when she really needed language access, or interpretation, she was having a procedure done that she did not consent to, and she didn't even realize that it was happening after the anastasia had set in. her dr., the dentist had told her that she was going to cover in spanish, that i will come -- cover something, and what ended up happening is that they broke her tooth and extracted it without letting her know. so then this cause a lot of harm , and a lot of trauma in the community because i believe this is not just the first time that this has happened. we just want to say that good faith implementation is not

enough. outside of the language access ordinance, we need a stronger mechanism to enforce the language access ordinance so our communities able to get the services that they need. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. [speaking spanish] >> voice of translator: good morning, supervisors. my name is laura and i am one of the community outreach persons. [speaking spanish] >> voice of translator: you must be a priority for us to provide services in our language as a main focal point of our policies

[speaking spanish] >> voice of translator: our families suffer a lot of fear when they are -- when they come across city workers and they are expecting to receive services that are dignified and with respect and they don't receive those. [speaking spanish]

>> voice of translator: our duty as a city is to get the language ordinance so all the public services and human resources city programs can respond to all the necessities that our communities experience, and to ensure the well-being is a priority. [speaking spanish] >> voice of translator: for that reason i want to tell you the story about josé who was discriminated against after work for speaking spanish. trimac -- [speaking spanish]

>> voice of translator: even though they were working by themselves, they were asked to leave for two weeks for speaking spanish in the building where they were working. [speaking spanish] >> voice of translator: they went on two weeks without receiving pay and the contractor did not do anything but put them on leave, so he wouldn't have to be forced to renew or reassess a different contract. [speaking spanish] >> voice of translator: i know this is not the only case like this, and i think that as a city

we can do better to strengthen the language access ordinance. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good morning, i am a staff member of the filipino community centre. we really urge for a cultural competency and language access, especially in this emergency situation. the filipino community centre is actually next-door neighbors to the good orchard bakery. we are in the same building, and we really want to note that s.f. residents must be prioritized in emergency situations. we have many clients who work and live around the area, and we have also had clients come -- clients complain to us that when they have had called 911, and not being able to get language access, and already being in a very stressful situation, they

feel they are more likely to speak in their language, especially for them. so this is an area of focus to ensure that language access is met. we also wanted to express the fear and disappointments that the situation caused for clients , staff, and our youth. knowing that excelsior is a concentration of immigrant families, we really see that the needs, the general needs of the community are not being met, and so for san francisco, the language access overhaul, to really look and borrow best practices from other city departments that are performing well like the assessor recorder, the department of elections, highlight lessons learned and model access outcomes. we need community engagement, and an approach to linguistic diversity. san francisco can leverage best practices from other states, and municipality such as hawaii,

washington, d.c., building language access infrastructure and enforcement mechanisms respectively. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good morning, i am with the arab resource centre, we provide free legal -- legal immigrations services for communities to empower our arab immigrants. cultural sensitivity and inclusion should be core values and our languish -- in our language access program. we want community members to feel comfortable and safe when speaking to city departments without fear of not being fully understood or being questioned about their religious beliefs, culture, immigration status, et cetera. we have seen a big issue is that dialect and cultural sensitivity have not had their needs met. it raises concern in the community, which is very diverse because it assumes that access to any dialect would be efficient, and that is not the arabic -- the arabic language is

very diverse. to think that one dialect will be a help to the entire communities not efficient. the services should uphold the values of inclusion and be sensitive to the unique challenges that immigrants face on a daily basis, especially when they access public services culturally competent linkage access ensures the services are accurate and can function in a position of power to make the best decision, without making our people feel comfortable, language access and feeling comfortable is -- and being able to access the services will not be efficient. >> thank you next speaker. >> good morning. my name is amy. i'm the immigrant program manager. and a member of language access network san francisco. a noteworthy interpreter, i will be speaking slower so this will be accurately interpreted. as a collaborator, we have

worked to exercise rights to access services in their own languages. and to hold our city accountable with the implantation of the language access ordinance through language spot checks. the spot checks conducted in person over the phone sample city departments to ensure and evaluate the quality of translated services provided by those departments. then we conducted 155 spot checks in spanish, chinese, tag log and arabic from 26 -- from 2016 to 2017. some of the in person visits, we found 40% of the departments we visited violated the ordinance by not informing the public their right to request in language access via basic signage. only 45% of calls answered by staff recognize the languages spoken by the collars, and the language line was used, only one correctly used it to assist a community member. at six sit different visits, we used hand signals and body

language to communicate with community members, which are insufficient attempt to provide competent and adequate assistance to community members seeking city services. worse, some members were just told that they could it be served because they speak a different language. in these cases, community members were denied equal rights and services by not being able to access services in language and not met with compassion or the competency of serving immigrant populations with dignity and respect. the worst violator of the ordinance was the department of emergency management, the police department, and the m.t.a. these are also the very departments that are responding to crisis and the ones that our city residents rely on the most. >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> hello, good morning. i am an immigrant. i was born and raised in syria, i have been here for nine years. unfortunately, we have -- a lot

of my colleagues said today, we have done a lot of spot checking and talk to community members and listening sessions, and unfortunately, i haven't heard one good positive story of getting interpretation or translation, and city services. all i got is a lot of the languages obviously, they do it from google translate, which makes no sense. the letters are disconnected. my other colleagues also said that there are 23 arab countries i am an immigrant who was born in syria, and i speak very well arabic, and i get a lot of difficulty sometimes understanding some other arab folks, especially elder folks who speak heavy dialect, to be understood, and not to put them down, it is really hard, but it is not impossible. there are a lot of good examples in other states and cities that we can learn from to help us grow and be more inclusive, and

help our communities here in san francisco to be more comfortable to see or ask for services, and to be understood, and a lot of times, interpreters speak from different dialects, and one word can actually cause -- can be life and death. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good morning, supervisors. i represent chinese for affirmative action. i wanted to thank the board presidents and supervisors for cosponsoring this hearing, and for the clerk's office for accommodating our interpretation request. language access is not a standalone single issue. it intersects the cornerstone of public health, public safety, worker's rights, and civil rights of limit to english proficient and monolingual communities. they are being violated across all nine which communities in san francisco. this is not acceptable. we know that progress has been

input mental, but these gaps have been perennial. our communities are traumatized. they have been suffering, and trust is being undermined every single day every time a violation happens. all the testimonies that you have heard from land partners and from the community today really points to the need for a comprehensive overhaul that involves all city departments and city governments to fulfil the promise of equal access and participation for limited english proficient and monolingual communities. all of your offices should have received a letter on behalf of the language access network with the following recommendations that we urge you to prioritize and to consider. one prioritizing community stakeholders, and community stakeholders because land has been working closely with different city departments to monitor, compliance, and engage city departments to improve their language delivery, but we know that this is not currently where it needs to be. our track record demonstrates that language access is the most effective when we are able to enter into genuine partnerships

with different city departments so that we are able to be innovative and responsive to the problems that we see in our communities. we urge you to initiate legislative reform and oversight to enhance enforcement mechanisms so we can hold city departments accountable, and to conduct an independent audit so that we are able to tie these different services to budgetary earmarks and to establish and inform administrative standards so we can assess and set baseline standards for how these services are being procured and delivered to our communities. we know that there are best practices -- >> thank you. next speaker. >> i am just curious, we say on the one hand that if you see something, you should say something and we have laws on the local and state books that we should -- both primarily from asian and latin america. i am wondering that similar provisions exist with the

african-american community, whether individuals risk arrest due to relatively petty warrants if they stepped forward to report violent crime, if somebody reports a shooting to the police, do they execute warrants for relatively heavy offences during the course of their investigation? my concern is it might discourage the reporting of crime. i know there is a persistent belief that african-americans do not step forward to provide information to responding officers following shootings, but i have seen the first reaction during the shooting is just to seek safety behind these objects. nobody is particularly curious about trying to identify shooters in the heat of the moment. >> thank you, next speaker. >> good morning. my name is patrick. i am a staffer the filipino community centre. i just wanted to highlight the need for cultural competency in

terms of first responders responding to emergency situations. as was stated earlier, the filipino community centre, we are neighbors with a good orchard bakery, so, you know, their fear in terms of the response and the delay, that is something that we are familiar with. i work with youth in the excelsior district, filipino migrant youth, who have faced emergency situations, and overall, they have the same sentiment. they feel that they need the cultural competency through the language access to be able to feel that they are safe, but also feel like they are being heard. i just wanted to highlight that. >> thank you. any other members of the public who wish to comment before this item? seeing then, public comment is closed. we are going to now ask though departments to come up. the first person is going to

speak is maryellen carroll from the department of emergency management. they have a small presentation for us. >> thank you. good morning. i am the emergency -- executive director of the department of emergency management. before i begin, i also want to acknowledge the members of the public who came up and showed up to speak today. we regret if anyone has had a negative experience calling 911 in any language. we will take all of these comments and feedback to heart, and we want to work with you to make sure you always receive the help that you need when you call 911, regardless of the language that you call in. so i also want to introduce my deputy director who will speak

to you in a few moments, also he is the director that oversees the division of emergency communications and our 911 dispatchers. the department of emergency management embraces the importance of cultural competency and the full implementation of the language access ordinance. as a department, we strive to continuously improve and excel in serving the residents and visitors to san francisco. most of the time, we do good work, and our dispatchers are the very first first responders to emergencies. president he -- the president and supervisors have commended our 911 dispatchers in the past, and their excellent work that they have performed serving our communities and keeping residents safe. however, there is also times that we make mistakes, and the most important thing for us is to learn from these mistakes. in regards to the good orchard bakery, on behalf of dm, i want

to sincerely apologize and express our regret for what happened on that 911 call during the good orchard bakery. in february, i can along with the deputy director went down and met with the business owner and the victim of this crime to personally apologize to him, and to learn more what happened. we explained to him the mistakes that were made, what happened on our side, and the actions that we have taken to improve and learn from those mistakes. we agree that no one should ever have to experience what that business owner experienced that day. i will move into a presentation to give some background and information about 911. our 911 dispatch centre is a combined call-center for police,

fire, and medical emergencies here in the city and county of san francisco. we receive more than 1.3 million calls, both emergency and nonemergency, a year. that comes up to about 3800 calls a day. fifty-five% of those are emergency calls to 911, about 45 % are to the nonemergency number. 80% of the calls that we get our law enforcement related, about 16% are medical, and 4% are fire of the calls, of those 1.3 million calls that we do receive, about one point for -- about 1.4% require language translation. to meet the demand for language interpretation services, 20% of our public safety dispatchers are certified bilingual, and that number is rising. we utilize an on-demand

telephonic service interpretation that is provided by the state of california. the in-house languages that dm dispatchers speak our -- and are certified in a cantonese, manager and, spanish, filipino, russian and french. by the end of the month, we will have, as i mentioned, 25% of our dispatchers will be certified bilingual. the additional languages that we will have moving forward are vietnamese, japanese, and punjabi. d.m. does have one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse workforces among city departments. of our 168 dispatchers, we have 44, this is shown in the chart here, 44 individuals who identify as asian pacific islanders, 32 african-american, 25 -- 27 filipino, 23 as latino, two as multiracial is multiracial and 40 as white.

, the delivery of emergency services requires a healthy redundancy. the combination of certified bilingual dispatchers, and on-demand telephonic interpretation services helps us to ensure that interpretation is always available no matter what the language, and no matter what time of day. given the demand for language interpretation, 1.4% of more than 1.3 million calls a year, we believe we are meeting the man with those resources, however, we are always looking for ways to improve our in-house language capability. so in response, we were looking at, you know, what would it take in order to have on-demand, in the 911 dispatch, dispatchers who speak a language dedicated

to answering languages 24/7, and basically it would take seven f.t.e. per language additional in order to have that capability that means that if we were to staff for the top five languages in-house that we receive, we would need 42 additional f.t.e. a few things to note, in order to ensure that a public safety dispatcher is nearly always available any time, they would need to be exclusively dedicated to that, so that couldn't be answering any other calls. if that means that if the in language dispatcher is on a call , and another call comes in for that language, we would still have to use the telephonic interpretation. therefore, we believe there may be a better approach to increasing city investment in two areas.

one is increasingly record -- increasing recruitment within our bilingual communities, we are always happy to partner with you and bilingual communities based -- community-based organizations to do more recruitment in this area and workshops in those communities. another thing that i think is critically important is increased 911 education to bilingual communities, and especially to newcomers to the communities he may not be familiar with our system. our make the right call program, which teaches the public on how and when to call 911 and 31, and police nonemergency, is an important, and has been a successful program for us. in addition, we regularly conduct presentations, we attend community fairs and work with lang which media to provide 911 education. in fact, the board of supervisors previously funded the make the right call campaign

, which actually had over 25 million contacts to that campaign. 25 million touches to that campaign which we think was very successful. that campaign also included public service announcements and special languages and newspapers , bus adds, radio spots, and mobile advertising. the campaign was very successful , and engagement rates were doubled with similar campaigns specially along the language specific public service announcements. so those are some ideas we have. rob will now talk to a bit more about the nitty-gritty of these calls. >> good morning, supervisors, thank you. i just want to briefly go over how we prioritize calls. i will focus on police calls because that is the main subject

of the hearing. police calls are given one of four priorities, a, b., c., or i , which denotes the urgency of the police response. in addition to that, they are assigned one of about 100 different police codes, which are the specific infinite happenings, for example, burglaries, or a fight with no weapons, or something to that effect. in terms of a priority, and a priority is defined as a present or imminent danger to life, property damage, or the suspect of the crime involving loss of life or serious bodily harm may be in the area and may be reasonably apprehended. it also applies of a major crime scene must be protected, or a juvenile is missing or involved in sexual abuse or assault, or an elderly person or any other at-risk person is missing. a b. priority is when there is

potential for damage to property , the subject may be in the area, the crime has just occurred. a c. priority call is where there is no present or potential danger to life or property, the suspect is no longer in the area , the crime scene is not in danger, or in need of protection , the collar -- but the collar and says speaking with an officer and the above conditions are met. [please stand by]