speaking. we provide interpretation like what is happening here today. we submit a copy to an annual report with the report in my hand that we active that shows our language access ordinance. we are working to the terms to feel like they do not proo vied and the well written, thought out policy for limited language proficiency persons. i briefly want to read to you the policy statement at the sfpd for the public and to clarify any concerns that the public may have to take every reasonable step. like to talk about

strategies to improve language access. so paying attention to what is happening in the community with the concerns are and what are the issues we go through as a

police agency. we have some strategies that i would like to share with everyone moving forward. we meet monthly with a variety of stakeholder community groups. we have our monthly community police community relations meetings. we have the community police advisory boards. we have the chiefs community advisory forums. there is a lot of meetings that we have all the time with the public in order to seek their input about language access, about how to deliver services better to the public, and also to promote the importance of reporting crime. our response to incidents, we are working on our expedited response of bilingual officers to calls for service. we're instilling at all levels of the organization, especially the supervisory and officer ranks, about the importance of paying attention to the calls for service that require monolingual speaking and require a certified bilingual officer to respond, and making sure we're coordinating that. talking with our sergeants about

making thur they are paying attention to those calls and getting the right certified bilingual officer to the scene. we are using our cell phones and really proud to announce that we're using some technology by having our cell phone and i will talk about that in a moment, but we also have access to remote video interpretation using american sign language, so this is new technology that the department is using so that we can just pull out our samsung cell phone and have an american sign language conversation or use our interpretation services. we are working with d.h.r. and also very excited to i an announce that for many, many years we were limited to training our officers on five core languages to be bilingual certified. d.h.r. is now allowing the department to certify officers in any language. the language they speak is the language they get certified in and we are working towards that. we continue to provide the

limited english proficiency officers with resources. we have a full-time police officer in our department dedicated to coordinating that, and she is here today, officer carr. and at every station there is an american sign language camera as well as the special victims unit that is what we use for american sign language. the last thing i would like to say on this slide briefly is one of the new things we have implemented is that every recruit in the police academy has the opportunity to be tested and certified as a bilingual officer. we no longer wait a year or two. we do that in the academy and when they graduate on day one that they are ready to perform the interpretation services. next slide please. in terms of strategies moving forward, our language access coordinator works with the stations and conducts quarterly audits. we are very proactive that way. we have an ongoing training for all certified bilingual officers. ewith moved forward on this within the last year.

i mentioned the cell phones. i will talk about that in a moment. we have an advisory group that we meet with on a monthly basis. department of police accountability, domestic violence consortium, police commissioners, the commission on the status of women, and a variety of different advocates that we meet with monthly to talk about how to improve delivering language services. we have been meeting for seven years on a monthly basis. i talked about posting signage and interpretation translation documents, and then we constantly provide limited english proficiency services at community events. next slide please. this is a photo of we took a screen shot of our new language line that ewith're really excited -- the language line we are excited about. 34 commonly spoken languages including american sign language and access to 17,000 interpreters, 240 languages are audio, and it just so happens that we rolled it out at

engleside first and they are the only stations that have this at the moment. and our goal is based on funding, to roll it out to the other eight district stations. it costs about 50 cents to get an interpreter on the line and it cost about $1 if we use the video services. but it is technology that is new and we're excited about it and using this to communicate with the community. >> commander, just briefly. who pays for that? you said it costs 50 cents. who is paying for that? >> coming out of our budget. >> you pay for it. >> a yes. >> go ahead, sorry. >> the last slide before i turn over to commander fong is we have bilingual officers in the department. the question is how many and who is certified and who is able to i a cyst? well, out of the five core language, we have 354 police officers that are certified bilingual officers. 188 in spanish, 104 cantonese,

26 mandarin, 15 russian, and 21 in talagog. and when noncertified officers of bilingual at 58 and we plan on certifying them in their language. okay. at this time i would like to call up commander fong who will talk about the ingleside districts and we can take questions as they come. >> if we could wrap up the presentation. i know president yee has a series of questions and i have a few. we would like to go from there. >> all right. good morning, vice mar, vice chair brown, president yee, and south korea safai. my name is darryl fong and commander of the golden gate division. just like to thank you also for allowing us the opportunity to present on this very important topic today. couple of areas i will cover is the demographic, residential demographics for the ingle zooed district and the respective district stations as well as the

community engagement that is the outreach that is provided to mono lingual communities. the ingleside district is comprised of about 141,000 residents. comprises 6.9 square miles of the city of san francisco. the population is impacted throughout the year by students who attend city college and 70,000 students that come through the district on an annual basis as well as 17,000 riders that traverse through the district through bart. the composition of the district is comprised of 41% caucasian, 4.7% african-american, 37.4% asian, 26% hispanic and 16% which identify as others. station demographics are consisting of 46% which are

caucasian, 9% african-american, 19% hispanic, 15% asian, 9% filipino, 1% american indian, and 2% who identify as others. there are 129 sworn officers at ingleside station. 21 of which are certified in a foreign language. there are 12 that are certified in spanish. one in tagalog. seven in cantonese. and one in mandarin. and during the engagement with communities, ingleside station identified needs within the communities with large number of monolingual speakers. under the leadership of captain jack hart, ingleside therefore established a partnership with drop-in locations to service mono lingual community members.

there are currently four of the drop-in centers, who of which have been established. the first at the apac, the asian pacific community center. the drop-in hours from wednesday from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at mercy housing at the john king senior center, 500 raymond street, and drop-in hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. the valley access neighborhood point. and those officer ours are in the process of development. and at the excelsior community center at 4468 mission street, the footbeat officers as well as the patrol officers drop to and engage with monolingual speakers and other individuals in the monolingual community. these drop-in centers are the core foundation of the effort to

continue to build resilient neighborhoods. the goals are to meet communities with language access needs that have low trust relationship with police in hopes that we can improve or enhance trust with the communities of coming forward and when necessary to meet their concerns. it also allows the members to document new, unreported crimes as well as incidents that have gone unreported to and in addition to the criminal cases that have, in fact, been reported. it is also an opportunity for officers to share crime prevention tips in their languages and translated documents that are provided by our crime prevention partners pedestrian safe to merchants and to prevent them from becoming victims of crimes.

and some of the other outreach involves the deployment of the foot beat officers. it is the priority within the department and engaging with all members of our communities. currently there are two officers assigned along that merchant corridor. they are both bilingual and the officers, in fact, and are here as well. and there are two other officers assigned to the geneva mission street quarter. those officers are not certified bilingual. however, we do have officers that continue to supplement the foot patrol and some of which bilingual and one of the two stations that currently have access to the language video access on the cell phones with a

direct video interpretation for any particular language that is necessary. additional outreach is conducted on a daily basis and throughout the year and neighborhood watch meetings held no conjunction and the partnership with sf-safe and sidewalk walks and to bring educational safety tips and focussing on public safety. in addition, there have been public town hall meetings in response to issues that have arised in the district. we had the unfortunate incident where the 88-year-old elderly female was assaulted in which the supervisor's office and sf-safe and came forward and held a public safety town hall meeting to discuss the concerns of the community.

and outreach campaigns that take place throughout the year as well. in the last year, there was particular outreach pertaining to the blessing scams as well as the healing scams that were plaguing some of the elderly who were victimized in these particular incidents to bring awareness to these particular issues. and again, we work very closely with our partners in the asian media to publicize this information to insure that the monolingual communities are receiving the communities are receiving communication in their languages. other areas in terms of further community outreach are the use of the community police advisory boards. in ingleside district, there are various neighborhoods which are

represented in an effort to bring toward concerns of issue in the community. and visitation heights and valley and excelsior and are represented on captain hart's advisory board. i want to make note of a couple of really important members on his board who really have been instrumental in promoting and advancing and is a member of the asian pacific american community center to partner and establish the drop-in center with our officers and under the leadership of captain hart. marlene tran who was up here earlier and spoke is a prominent

member of the community in ingleside district to help prioritize translation of public safety material during the time that blessing scams and phone scams were happening in the district in an effort to raise awareness to prevent further victimization. she was also very huge driver in ingleside being the first district to beta test this video with the language app and transitioning to the district and consists of a population of about 159,000 residents and is comprised of 33% caucasian and 48% asian. 9.8% hispanic. and 9.1% which identify as

others. now, the station demographics at terval station are 36% caucasian, 10% african-american, 17% hispanic, 6% filipino, 1% american indian, and two that identify as others. there are 105 sworn officers assigned to taraval station, 11 of which are certified in four languages, four in spanish, five in cantonese, and two in russian. >> commander fong. >> are you almost done with your presentation? >> i can wrap it up. >> let's wrap it up. i know president yee has some questions and we want to dive in on the language specifically. >> thank you. >> absolutely. i will go to say that taraval station conducts similar outreach to the respective monolingual communities. they have no current drop-in locations. however, they are exploring those on the merchant corridors

of ocean as well as irving. they engage in multiple events, milk with a cop. and meet and greet merchants and residents on safety walks along the corridors and distributed for issues of concern and work very closely with the asian media. just to touch on the foot beat deployment quickly, there is two officers assigned to the ocean corridor and we have two officers that are assigned to irving street that as well as one on west portal. a very robust representation here and translates to the

description with the representation and does cover throughout the districts. and highlight the commander to address the response time issues as well as meet the needs of the monolingual community. >> supervisor safai, i will make this very quick. i want to tell you one slide. share one thing with you and everyone else here. with the recent changes and to have a conversation and the first line supervisors call

districtly with priority calls waiting to be handled. and the partnership and number two and the collaboration and to re-assess the coating and with that respond. and speaking about that. and having conversations and role call training and on the sage page in terms of response to limited english proficiency calls for service. we are re-issuing policies related to that. d.e.m. is doing a great job on tracking bilingual calls for service. with that, that is our presentation. thank you for your patience and time. we will take questions. >> thank you, commander. if you could stay up, that would

be great. so when we met on the day of the incident, the repriorization of the calls and this might have been misclassified. there was a breakdown in communication and the translation that is clear after being reviewed and he asked for chinese assistance and that happened, but something happened in terms of the priorization. if this has been classified it might not have been lost up in the shuffle and determining if the e.n.t. had come which i think would have been a different outcome. so you flash the slide that says there is a re-assessment of the prioritizing and the chief was

on the record and the string of robberies happening at the same time. so i would like you to respond to that and see what kind of adjustments have been made. i know president yee will dive in on the language part. i want to put a fine point on this incident and what happened in terms of the breakdown in communication. >> okay. so speaking about moving forward, we are asking the conversations now about the priority. that is really an a. priority. what you have described is if someone is injured, a robbery in progress, or a timeliness in terms of just occurred. that is an a. priority which essentially on the average between four and six minutes our officers arrive on scene city wide on those types of calls. so the in-depth conversations we're going to have is to determine the difference between an a. and b. and how much time do we want to have elapsed between that call before it maybe potentially

becomes a b. priority. what i mean by that is if a crime just occurred, is in progress, suspect has left the scene, having a time limit for how long they have left. determinations about ability to capture the suspect and things like that will determine whether or not we keep it an a. or b. >> commander fong said this has not been updated for decades, is that correct? >> i think, supervisor, the deputy director made reference to that it hasn't been re-assessed over a period of time. i will tell you that the department has been working very collaboratively with the department of emergency management and our partners in re-assessing these crime categories and whether or not various other factories need to be introduced. and in this case, whether there was a violent crime that may have occurred or maybe an injury that may have occurred. in addition to the current criteria that's been utilized by

the department of emergency management and determining the category for calls for service for response. and we will initiate and may needed a more immediate response. >> was it not relaid if that someone was injured and if it had been relaid that way, that it would have been given a different prior toization? >> i will -- >> yes, that is correct. the caller did say they were injured to the interpreter. the interpreter did not share that information with the call taker. so that is the finding from the

call. so even if it went out as a b. with an injury and -- so let's say the e.m.t. were called and the police weren't, it probably would have resulted in another call. the average for a b. call, the average response time is actually 16 to 17 minutes. so we really are speaking about an anomaly in this situation and an unfortunate one. but we are in the process and working with the police department to review the categories for a. and b. and we don't make that determination. the police instruct us, but again, we are working together. one of the other things that we are implementing already is a much more aggressive, active dispatching response in which our dispatchers are closely monitoring and what we call hanging calls. so a b. that's been dispatched past a certain amount of time, we're reaching out directly to

the sergeants within the districts to remind them and to get those calls dispatched. >> and just to support what director carol is referencing, active dispatching and what we call active supervising that has really been reinforced in a department bulletin that was recently distributed and emphasized both at multiple meetings that we have had with our leadership and our command and our district stations. they have also held roll call trainings with the frontline supervisors to insure that they are very familiar and that we are working hand in hand with department of emergency management to try to mitigate any issue or incident like this from reoccurring. >> i think my biggest concern before i hand it over to president yee is i am concerned that this is not the first time that this happened. it would be good to know how many times callers have not had

the calls responded to. i didn't see that in the presentation. it could be very helpful to find that information. >> president yee? >> supervisor yee: sure. commander fong, i know in regards to the language issue in this particular case, really the police department have very it will toll do with that, but -- very little to do with that, but what happened for me when i visited the victim at his bakery, it became obvious that there was some other things going on that could be improved. and i know in the presentation you try to address somewhat in terms of how you are engaging with the community and trying to make sure that you have more bilingual staffing, although when i look at the ratios, it is

got a long ways with regards to having adequate staffing that are bilingual. so for me in terms of the community engagement, i want to focus a little bit on that. you mention a couple of things. one would be that there are the community office hours, the drop-ins. i know that you just started the one at 66 raymond. but in regards to the other ones, some of them have been going on for a little while. so who actually shows up for these things? and are there bilingual staffing at the other community offices? >> yes. so currently the drop-in centers within the ingleside district are staffed by bilingual officers. often times there are monolingual members of the community that come to the drop-in to engage with the officers. in fact, captain hart shared a

really heartwarming story with me the other day that over at the excelsior drop-in center at 4468 mission street, money of the monolingual members of the community came up to him and really came up and hugged officer johnny wong and basically told him that it was the first time that he saw an officer who spoke his language. and he was so glad that he could reach out and have that familiarity and that comfort level to actually engage with that particular officer. the drop-in hours or the drop-in centers have been effective. it is the department's really objective is to continue to and the captain is looking for opportunities along his district and the ocean street avenue and the irving street corridor and drop-in hours and centers in the bayview district as well as the central district, both in portsman square and along the

san bruno avenue corridor. >> supervisor yee: how is the outreach done to let the community know that these drop-in hours are available? >> the district captains have various mediums of advertising this information. they work through either neighborhood community meetings. they also have advertise it on their department newsletter on a monthly basis, a twitter page and members of the there are members of each of the respective station cpap that have bilingual members and are members within the monolingual community. so those -- there are different mediums that the captains will utilize for this outreach. >> supervisor yee: and do they utilize the language papers? >> they do. they partner, as i mention, and work closely with the asian

media, both -- well, journal is represented here as well as newspaper, television, as well as other means of communication. >> supervisor yee: and you mention the cpap in which and bilingual representatives of the community? >> one of the priorities that each of the district station captains is it's very important they have members which represent different neighborhoods within their respective district. the reason for that is we want to insure and particularly as mentioned, those communities that are primarily monolingual or have language and english proficiency needs, we want to make sure that we're meeting their needs within the community. that is the reason why a lot of the drop-in centers are being established. we want to bring that and come

to them in the community to insure they know and this community knows that they can come to the police for services or resources that they need. >> supervisor yee: and for captain and we would be happy to find a place on ocean avenue with our office. one of the other things mentioned in the presentation was in and was in regards to beat officers. so in the ingleside station, there are several bilingual officers there assigned for beat. but on ocean avenue, i have been asking for six years.

and i haven't seen much. is there a way you can't appoint somebody who is bilingual to do this type of activity? >> the officers have the ability to sign up based on seniority for a particular shift. that being said, the captains are very diligent in finding the right fit for that particular timent. currently i know captain rainesford mentioned he has increased the foot beat appointment along the ocean avenue corridor due to the really request for additional presence by the ocean avenue merchants and residents. so he increased it from one to two. and we are looking to increase the capacity for bilingual officers and the recruitment unit does a robust outreach effort to try to continue to recruit bilingual potential candidates as well.

but it is a challenge, but while we're working to build on the current resources we have, we're excited about having the language access app which if these officers come in contact with a person of limited english proficiency, they are able to meet their needs by utilizing this as a resource. >> supervisor yee: i would love to be out with an officer when they are using it just to see it in action. i am a little skeptical how effective -- it's better than nothing, granted. but i wonder how effective it is. >> well, one of the things and the advantages of having this video app as opposed to previously where you would call a 1-800-number for translation is there is a face to face. and there is engagement between the officer, the victim, and the translator. i know firsthand that i observe

in interaction where there is a certain comfort level that the victim or the reporter has in being able to identify with the person actually translating on the other side. so i think it's another tool for us to utilize. and we're hoping to continue to build off of that. >> thank you for your presentation. and i really appreciate the work that the police department is doing and there is consciousness about trying to make sure to communicate with the community. i hope we do more engagement with community. i am not seeing as much as i hope to see, especially in my district. for around ocean avenue. in regards to recruiting, this is both the e.m.d. and the police department and recruiting

new officers and other staff in any language let alone being bilingual and double down to true to turn over every stone to get bilingual staff. i appreciate it. and i would like, director carol, can i ask you a question? >> thank you, president yee. >> thank you very much, commander. >> supervisor yee: so i know you mention volex? >> voyance. >> supervisor yee: can you speak a little built more on who they are and how we ended up with them? >> sure. so there is really only two options for us as far as having the services 24/7 at the rate we need it. and we switched from -- we switched to this system about three years ago because they

provided us with a better -- with better response and services basically. this is the state of california pays for this. >> supervisor yee: so their interpretation service. i am just curious, does the m.e. have to provide any training for those staff members? >> yes. so there is training that the other important thing about voyance is we get priority for 911 service. but they are interpreters, so they are meant to be -- to simply interpret the language for the trained public safety dispatchers that we provide. it is not a dispatcher trained. it is not someone who is trained in dispatch. they are an interpreter for the language. if that makes sense. >> supervisor yee: but it may

not be a training as dispatcher, but it seems like there could be some orientation in terms of the type of work and things that you -- that your department needs to be handling, so there anything like that? >> supervisor, voyance does provide specialty training for the interpreter tos for 911 and provide 120 hours specific training to be an interpreter in 911 services. and we actually retain -- the two largest companies in the country are voyance and language line. language line was our service provider and we were unhappy with some of the relays and delays we are receiving in getting interpreters online, so we added voyance. we have language line as an option and both of those as an option and the main one and the backup. but we went with voyance because they specifically had procedures

to train their interpreters for our service, 911 service. they did more specific training and prioritized 911 calls in a way that their competitor did not. and that is why we made that switch. >> i know one of the issues we talked about is even if you had -- and you mentioned it -- had bilingual dispatchers on shift, that they may not necessarily be the ones answering the phone calls. and your ability right now to -- even if that person -- if i were to pick up the phone and somebody speaking spanish, i wouldn't know what they are talking about, but unless somebody is sitting right next to me that is bilingual in spanish, i couldn't say, hey, can you take this call? the person might be way over

there and there is no mechanism. we talked about this. is there any way to have a mechanism where the person that may be available within your own staffing to pick up the call? and be notified and like put through instantaneously? >> i think -- so the first thing i would say is we are -- we have more capacity to do this now than we did a few years ago. a few years ago when we didn't have enough dispatchers to even answer the calls in the time frame that we have our standards set. when somebody called who needed interpretation services, it was almost certain that anybody else who spoke that language would be busy handling another call. now that we are appropriately staffed, thanks to the support of the board, we have capacity -- we have more capacity of down

time and that we can tout on for this purpose puff a u an all the call takers sit in two specific areas, and it works reasonably well as it is now, but i think that you are making a very good suggestion that as our number of call takers grows to have some system in place to formalize that is a good suggestion and something that i think we will do. >> okay. i only have one more question and i know there is another long hearing and this has been longer than i anticipated. and in regards to these calls that are coming in and goes to the police department, who is tracking the time from the call to actually when the police department and in particular to those who are calling in not speaking english? is anybody tracking that? >> so d.m. has been working with

the police department and the controller's office to better crack all stages of response times. and that's a general project, so that is specific to our general response times, but it h help us track services and the d.m. and the police department looks at it and we have been assisted by the controller's office in helping us work our way through our data. >> supervisor yee: how long have you been trying to do that? >> well, that specific effort, the three departments working together, has been the last -- probably the last year or so. but we certainly had department specific. >> supervisor yee: the last year or so that you have been discussing this, but when are you going to finish discussing

and put some action in? >> i was answering specific to the data about tracking the length of time. and if you or any other supervisors have specific questions, i can probably run some data reports for you. >> supervisor yee: so right now you have people actually tracking it? >> we track many different components of our responses, and this is one of them, yes. >> supervisor yee: is the controller coming out with some kind of report on this? >> i don't know specifically what the controller's report is going to focus on. i couldn't speak to that. >> sorry. can i get clarification? i am not clear what you are asking for. are you speaking specifically about tracking language specific calls and so being able to compare language, nonenglish speaking calls to all the other calls? because we do track many, many parts of a call. >> supervisor yee: i guess i am

asking specifically, but if you are not even doing it for general, you should do that, too. but specifically if you are getting a call that's from a chinese speaker, for instance, and i am just asking, who is tracking the time it takes from that call for the police department to actually be present? >> right. so we do that. we do track that information and have that data. we can tell you from the time the call comes to us until ewith dispatch it and until the police arrive. we have that information. >> supervisor yee: and i will talk to you offline about this so that we can sort of end this hearing. i want to thank you all of you for coming and responding to this issue. it's an important issue for the community and for especially the non-english speaking community. there were a couple of incidents that impacted the police

department back to back almost. one in supervisor walton's community or district and so part of what we are trying to uncover is if this is a pattern or not. how often is it happening? and i am not sure if i really received the answer. maybe it's not happening as often as one must wonder. but if you have further information on that, i would love to hear it. i want to also thank the community for coming out for public comments. >> thank you, president yee. supervisor walton? >> one, i want to thank supervisor safai for calling this hearing. language access is very important to all of our communities here in san francisco. as marlene tran who has been a deep advocate on this for years continues to push us all to do

better. i do want to commend captain hart and his team for the immediate responses to getting bilingual officers on monday and wednesday. with that said, that also tells me the ability of the police department to respond and actually make these things happen. so as we continue to push forward, we want to continue to make sure we have more bilingual messaging and that is not just for the police department but across the board for all departments. i am trying to grasp why all our websites in every city department don't have bilingual messaging. that is something that i really need an answer to. and the city as diverse as ours with the resources that we have able to us. also increase translation services for community events and forums. i do think that you should also have your own translators, etc., available to the department. we often times get it provided

within community. but we also need to work on the resources for the department to be able to have their own translation services. and then the last thing is just, like president yee stated, pushing very hard on heavy recruitment of bilingual officers throughout the department and what to do for recruitment of people not necessarily sworn officers but can provide the language support that is needed in the department. i hope we are asking for these things in the budget because i think that it will be helpful especially having conversations but we have a ways to go. i do to commend the work that is happening because i have seen quick responses, so i know the department can make this happen. i appreciate that, but we got ton't coto be laser focused and making this happen city wide. >> thank you, supervisor walton. i am going to say closing remarks. i appreciate all the response and information that was given today.

thank you for all the advocates that came out. i am happy to know there has been a process of engaging advocates. i would encourage the police department and and to pay close attention to many of the recommendations that were made today. even the community meeting that was cited, we in my office had to work overtime to get language access. it was not something that was necessarily provided by the police department. it was provided by an additional outside group. and that was in coordination and we had to do work on our own often for language access, and that might have been because it was the first month we were in office. some of our own misunderstanding of the process. but still, we need to do a robust outreach and engagement with the community-based organizations that are here. one recommendation i and to understand what the community meetings that are happening and

the captain can inform the community of the great work they are doing and the recommendations being made and that can be maybe from the demand staff to board of supervisors. and i heard and others that made specific requests. i do want and i will ask the clerk to have a follow-up information transmitted to us. i still have not had information given to us and has incidents like this happened before? have there been calls that have gone unanswered? we need to know that. we need to know the rate at which people have not had responses. so i to have so thank you to the chair of the for moving this. and a note to the public, thank you for your patience.

this item we heard today had already been bumped one time because of the death of our public defender, so we have been trying to juggle things around, so i appreciate the patience of everyone here. the next item is very, very important to me but because of quorum issue, i won't be able to sit in on that. i have signed on because i look forward to a robust conversation. i think we need to have a healthy debate and i appreciate those who have led on this issue. thank you, everyone, today. we will follow up with the police and the police department and thank you, chair mar for your patience and doing the best you can to juggle both of these really important items and hearings today. and thank you to president yee for your leadership and support for me on this important issue in my district. thank you, supervisor mar. >> thank you, supervisor safai. and colleagues, can we file this hearing without objection? great. mr. clerk, please call item number two.

>> agenda item 2 is an ordinance with the administrative code to require the city to close juvenile hall by december 31, 2021. expand community-based alternatives to detention and provide a rehabilitative, non-institutional place of detention in a location approved by the court. to establish a working group for the development of the juvenile hall closure plan and establish the youth justice reinvestment fund to support community-based alternatives to detention and also support the working group and to affirm the appropriate findings. >> thank you. i would like to recognize supervisor hillary ronen who has joined us. >> excuse me, my name is patricia -- >> and we will have public comment very soon.

ma'am, public comment was closed on that item. mr. chair, we could rescind the vote on the previous item and open comment for the one additional speaker or continue on. >> just a minute. >> ma'am, would you hold on a minute please? ma'am, would you hold on a minute please? you will have a chance to speak during public comment. [speaking off mic] >> ma'am, please. [speaking off mic]

[speaking off mic] >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. we must continue on with the rest of the hearing. thank you very much for your comments. >> thank you. [speaking off mic] >> i want to acknowledge everyone that came over to hearing number two. >> thank you, chair mar.

first of all, like supervisor safai and supervisor mar, i want to apologize for how long it's taken for us to get to item number two. this is very important and so i just want to say i appreciate everyone for being patient and for staying as we address this important issue this afternoon. so with that said, i want to thank the co-sponsors on this legislation. supervisor ronen and haney, and mar, peskin, fewer, and safai. we have eight supporters and that lets you know how important this is to us as leaders in the city and we have heard from our community in terms of the importance and we will chime in and get to public comment. the first thing is that we would

never put in place a system that is worse to juvenile hall and we are proposing an alternative that provides a true opportunity for young people to be rehabilitated.

>> we need to continue to increase the mentorship services provided by people like cory monroe, young women's freedom centre, cjc jay, and more

organizations that provide opportunities to help young people be successful, including me. to give you an example of how the system needs to improve, when i was on the board of education, we had to fight with the leadership of jay p.d. to provide access to the internet in juvenile hall. i understand issues of safety, but there are five or walls that exist to handle this. the lack of access to the internet reinforces the fact that we have not been trying to adequately educate our youth during incarceration, and have been focused on punitive aspects of incarceration. we can, and we will do so much better. all of what i just explained his preparation for how to endure being incarcerated, and how to handle punishment. this is not a job killer, i'm a dog -- dog creator and i have created hundreds of jobs in my career. this actually allows for moral bus programming, and more opportunities for jobs help young people become successful. i want to clear up and dispel a few myths head on.

one, there is a myth that we have not talked to communities or had conversations. we have met with members of all communities, black latino, asian , pacific islander, lgbtq, juvenile justice experts, youth, youth commission, the juvenile justice providers association, formerly incarcerated youth, member, -- labor, and many experts in the field of juvenile justice. there are few talking heads running around claiming they should have been part of the discussion, when they wouldn't know what juvenile justice was if it hit them in the head. we have spoken to all the experts, and in fact, even the chronicle highlighted the failures of the current juvenile justice system. the cost and lack of positive effect for young people and the reduction in crimes committed by young people. two, there is a myth we did not discuss this with the leadership of jay p.d. this is untrue, immediately after i was elected, at the end

of last year before taking office, i met with the latter part of 2018 and told the chief to his face we should shut down juvenile hall and find an alternative, this was said at starbucks on 16th street in kansas, and the reality of this is the leadership of jay p.d. is part of the reason we are here. the lack of innovation, the lack of focus on read ability is imperative. furthermore, the cabin ranch was shut down last june, where is the plan for positive places for young people in the absence? there was never a plan. jay p.d. waited until we decided to close juvenile hall or even taking any steps to improve outcome for young people. that is appalling, as our black and brown use continue to be disproportionately locked down and disconnected to adequate services that lead towards success and change. number 3, there are people that will say the population is down because of j.p.d. i agree 100% that this is part of it. it is also due to the

partnerships with juvenile justice experts and c.b.o. that provide true leadership, individualize opportunities for youth, none of this changes with the legislation. and we are pushing to increase these opportunities for engagement with young people, and a less institutionalized setting. more conducive to learning how to be productive. as i said before, this is not a job killer, but a job creator. we will have more robust programming, and more need for councilors in juvenile justice councilors to come together with plans a fully engage young people and prepare them for successful futures. also, we have a specific workgroup area of focus dedicated to labor that works directly with labor to address concerns, discuss more job opportunities, and continue roles for all staff. i have personally created hundreds of jobs and have never let down labor, whether it was