dedicate and quality of life officers and they make a difference every day that go out on the street. so much so that as a mentioned, i think we have 69% -- 69 of our officers trained in crisis intervention and two liaison officers. and the two liaison officers were identified our top 15 people of concern to us when it comes to mental health issues. i am very happy to say within the last eight months we've been able to get two housed and three united with family members which was an absolutely great accomplishment by the c.i.t. officers but it was in conjunction with all the other officers. we identified the 15 so every officer knew the issues around each individual and knew to take appropriate action.

the document of any interaction with these people builds a case. we got five of those individuals off the street and we continue to work to help the other 10. officers work with dpw and rec and park have been fabulous collaborators resolving issues in our district and the officers take the enforcement action but they're first protocol is the outreach trying to get these people housed and off the street to the best of their ability. traffic safety is an important part of our duty. i think our officers definite are doing the traffic enforcement.

we work closely with mta and the traffic unit, sfpd and they've been great anytime we have an issue at any particular intersection they support us and have been a great resource for us. we do typically every week we do three to six operations. we try to do one on each shift and try to do pedestrian each week because a lot of our collisions involved pedestrians. so we try to target that aspect of the traffic enforcement. that is on traffic safety. that brings us to our

statistics. so our crime statistics are looking pretty good. our home side thank goodness we haven't had one today. our rates are down from 6 to 3, 50% reduction. our robberies down 9.5%. we're hoping we can maintain that. assaults are down 17.95%. i'd like to think that's because of the 10 arrests we made at the end of april. and human trafficking is at zero. and property crimes, burglaries are down i think because of the educational outreach and officers being proactive up terms of the construction workers and having all the information with them and hopefully i think that's having the desired effect.

we've also increased the number of arrests made when it comes to burglary suspects. i think that plays a role in that number. motor theft has gone up 10.89%. as you know staffing is an issue across the city. we've had to be very strategic and specific in what we're targeting. as we look at motor vehicle thefts you don't know it's stole enwhen it's driving in the district and it takes a while for the victim to realize it's stolen. we see a trend so we'll do focussed enforcement in that area.

i'm an advocate for traffic enforcement because it creates high visibility for us and that's one avenue of approach in trying to bring the vehicle thefts down. arson is down 100%. we can't get better than that and theft from vehicles are down 9%. our traffic enforcement, i know the desired number for our focus is 50% so we do have some improvement. but we also on the upside increased our traffic enforcement. not only do we do traffic enforcement we do some operations where we pull over drivers violating the law but don't fight them.

we hand them out a flyer advising them it's a couple minutes you're going to save running the stop sign or red light. it's not worth causing a death or paying a fine etcetera. we try to spend some of our time on the enforcement side of things educating opposed to giving a citation and creates good will and the officers love it because everybody's happy. it's a good way for us to interact with the general public. i think people are quicker to think about running the stop sign again or the red light. that's traffic enforcement. and community partnerships of which we have many. i can't tell you how many arrests we've been able to make

because of the community involvement be it they're make the arrest for us or making the expeditious phone call and we get out there and they give us the information and we make the arrest. that's happened so often. i'm so appreciative because i definitely believe the more community involvement we have the more successful we will be. and safer we'd be as a community. going through the different organizations that we work with. rec and park fabulous partners to us. anytime we need them. they've been great as is s.f. safe and they come to meetings and there's so much information and such a networker i'm surprised every time they come up with a new idea. just excellent.

our city attorney. mark wolfe we've had a couple code enforcement issues he's had to resolve those. we work with our a.d.a. vietnam. california highway patrol at the dmv on oak and they assist us when we're having issues around inside and outside. the california university and department of public health and works they all worked the probation and parole department. they help us when we have an event in the district there's extra visibility and we appreciate their assistance. and the lark street youth services and we've listed all

the different neighborhood groups that attend our advisory board and they're instrumental in assisting me and bringing basically all the information from their particular neighborhoods and we work on how we can change things and haight street and traffic enforcement is what they wanted to work on this year and hopefully we'll bring in innovative ideas for how people drive around the city. i'll let you know. my group is really great and they attend every meeting and do great work. finally, i have a community meeting every second tuesday of every month at 6:00. so in addition we do many

district event. the annual sock drive and we're handing out socks and my homeless outreach officers and if you're out in the district you know what the cold is like even if you're in the bay view suffering the heat we're out here suffering the cold. the sock drive is around december, january. we have the toy drive and go to the 420 event in the district every year, the kids games and the fun fest at gratton elementary the north panhandle association block party and walk to school event, haight street fair and opera in the park, cold valley fair and coffee with the cop is my favorite event because we meet people who don't typically come to my meetings but are quick to share their experiences in the neighborhood

and sometimes you only get a feel for what's happening in the neighborhood and they tell you something they think something can be done about and you find there's things you can do. that's one of my favorite events. and we got a couple photos from our coffee with a cop and different events. national night out and some fun times. so that brings me to page 16. what we stand for. it is paramount people in our district feel safe. i hope that people when they see how our district is doing crime wise and the different preventive efforts we're making they do feel safe. one of our goals is certainly to maintain a 10% reduction across the board an all of our crimes. if we can maintain that it will

be a great thing and i think we're succeeding right now. the quality of life. i feel believed we have highly trained -- feel blessed we have highly trained people and four great quality of life officers that do extraordinary work each and every day. i'm very grateful for that. then trust and accountability. i'm a big believer in that and transparency. any complaints that i receive i always look into it and make sure we're doing all we can and doing it right. we're all capable of making errors. i'm capable of that myself and we like to look at what happened and address the issue and retain everybody. if one person is capable of a mistake everybody is capable so we try to make sure it doesn't

happen and explain the importance and why it's important to do certain things. i think that goes a long way because when people call you about concerns they have sometimes there can be a misunderstanding and other times it's something where we haven't done the best possible job and we try to correct that and i think it builds trust and we have to be held accountable for everything we do. i think that's very important. community engagement. i think that is probably the most important because as i said as we're moving forward the community are going to become vital in our success. the community is vital but more so because i rely on them all the time and we rely on them all the time for reporting purpose and for telling us what's going on in their neighborhood and for

feeling safe enough to tell us when a crime is happening or even if's -- if it's a concern about a person that's a menace in the neighborhood we urge them to report so we can build cases. the community engagement and partnership is certainly important for our success and changing the community. resources. and police give us more officers city wide. i think everybody agrees when you see an officer you feel safer. if we can't recruit more officers we'll be challenged in trying to make that happen and i certainly believe and know from the community having our officers on the vote or up at the fixed post they notice that and appreciate that and it just

makes them feel safer. so then diversity. of course that is super important that we reflect our community and that we as an agency continue with our differs. of course i'd like to see more women. we're only at 15%. i think that's very important. i think everybody's bringing something different to the table. at park station we do a variety of operations we ensure everybody has the opportunity and encourage everybody within our unit that is diverse. whatever operation we're doing we try to have a mix and match of everybody. everybody's having equity opportunity and i think -- equal opportunity and i think that's important to building careers and building people. i think that might be it.

>> commissioner: i have a question for you and we'll see if any other commissioners do. this department has worked hard to get all officers trained in crisis intervention. i think the department's at about 50%. you've managed to be over 75%. i'm wondering how did you manage to do that? >> i cracked the whip. no. i took the training myself and thought it was a super great training. i'm a big advocate of it. i thought because of the team dynamics that it addresses it's probably one of the first trainings we did that allowed and talked to one another and i thought it was an excellent training. i've really pushed and i'm a major advocate of the training. i think it was an excellent phenomenal training. one of the best trainings i've taken. >> commissioner: thank you.

any commissioners have questions? yes. >> commissioner: i'm glad you keep mentions you need officers every time i look at the boundaries i'm always surprised at how big the district boundaries are for a lot of our stations and not only that how how far they are given the congestion and hills and the traffic. the idea you have to get from the inner sunset to 17th street and castro or the panhandle. it's so large. the question i have for you is if you had our druthers, how many officers do you think you would need to run the district efficient efficiently? >> for starters, let me be very clear. when i say we need more officers i mean city wide. we're not just particularly in my district. how many more? whatever number of officers you get, you try to be strategic in

terms of how your deploying them and what you're doing. the more officers you have, the more you can do. like what's your minimal and maximum? i would say if we had 80 plus. give us 15 plus officers we'd love that. >> commissioner: in addition to what you already have? >> yes. >> commissioner: i like that you're avoiding eye contact. >> i understand what our staffing is like. i understand this is city wide and other station have more challenging situations. i'm not here saying i don't understand how things are being assigned, right. i'm just saying as we're in the budget zone and i don't want anybody to think that we -- and we all know. i'm in the saying anything new. we're trying to recruit more officers.

it's difficult. i'd love more people to come into the profession. i think it's a fabulous career and would be great if we could figure out a way to get and encourage people to join. my officers are doing a fantastic job in maintaining what they're doing. >> commissioner: every community we go to there's just not enough officers. they do well with what they have. they always need more. >> commissioner: commissioner elias. >> commissioner: first, i want to commend you on the crime prevention strategies you have. i think they're phenomenal and a wide variety of strategies you've employed and it's obvious the community involvement and making the community feel safe and inclusive very important. i'm happy about the burglary

outreach program. how many officers do you have? just one? >> we have two. when we have a backlog we start with two and we get two to four a week. that's very manageable for one officer to go out. now, let me say, everything as they that's happening on that is because of the hard work of all my lieutenants and in particular my fifth lieutenant who has been extraordinary in terms of organizing all the operations. i may bring the i'd yeah, he puts it into -- idea, he puts it into operation with other lieutenants, sergeants, officers. i know it's because of all the work of not me but the work the officers do each and every day. >> commissioner: that's great.

i didn't note the drug stats. do you have those statistics? >> not now. >> commissioner: that would be interesting. >> we track the narcotics arrests every week but i can get that to you. >> commissioner: it would be interesting to see and informative to see what the reduction in them have been to do the buy busts because i know it take a lot of officers to do the operations. i think that data's important.

there's a lot of collaboration between the sister stations for a variety of operations. >> commissioner: it would be interesting to see the data. >> sure. >> commissioner: the other question i have is what is the captain's problem solving team. >> that was a group we put together. essentially what they do is they really are the people who are out there. we take the six of them which allows them to do different operations. they may have a crew up and we'll have a couple down and they have involved in the fret

operations. it allows us to do operations without having to pull from our patrol and we also give them the opportunity to train. it's great experience for all these people to do an hones their skill set in terms of what to look for when you look at people doing different kind of crime, drug, narcotics crime is different than somebody out to steal something from a vehicle or commit a robbery or assault. we give them te opportunity to be involved differenthe opportu be involved different operations. we call it a team because they're task driven and target enforcement. if we see an issue rising we have them go saturate a particular area.

we're seeing burglary at a particular location they look at that. >> thank you for being patient. we had a conversation on the way in about the great work you guys are doing here at park station. i had two quick questions. one that i had and i wanted to make sure it's a clarification as we look at motor vehicle theft that's breaking into vehicles? >> no, the actual vehicle itself is getting taken and the theft from vehicles is where they take something out of the vehicle. >> commissioner: okay. one question i had was around

the quality of life issue and you said we have a quality of life officer. >> right. >> commissioner: i want to hear what that entails. i think of what we do in safety with respect and assume and hope all our officers are concerned with quality of life every officer is trained in how to treat everybody with respect but in particular when you deal with the homeless population and as i said we have a high -- not a high percentage but we certainly have our share within the panhandle, haight street, buena vista park. we have two quality of life officers and two other officers. they deal with the homeless possibility every single day -- homeless every single day. they know the outreach and reconnected them with family and

we have the success of three reunited with family and one was a serious person who drank and picked him up from san francisco and i think if she'd waited another week he wouldn't be with us and a week ago he called to thank the officers. they are there every single day dealing with people and do everything they can to encourage them to go into rehab and go to the navigation center. they're highly trained in interacting with these people. >> commissioner: hi.

i'm going ask an impossible question. whenever we go to any district station we always hear we need more officers. when i talk to anyone in the community it's the same, we need more officers. yesterday a neighbor was talking to me about a homeless encampment in my neighborhood and just going to the grocery store in the morning and being threatened and having folks trying to steal her money. you couple that with the tension of budget talks and there's a constant political push to reduce the budget of sfpd and in the midst of that trying to recruit officers and making it an attractive job which is essentially running towards those to protect strangers.

i don't know how do you that. i don't know if you haved a -- have ideas how the department can continue to attract the best and brightest and the most compassionate and committed. >> i'd love to have the answers to all that. i recently had a conversation and we're obviously challenged. somebody was saying we're not now the highest paid so people are leaving our department to go to better paying departments. i think commuting, if you think about it, officers if you're computing outside the city you're adding at least two hours to get in and out, right? bottom line, so few people can afford to live in the city. there may be another

conversation that we were having was i do think and i didn't think it from a recruitment angle but there's a schedule called the platoon schedule and i always thought it was a great idea because it allows teams of officers to work together. it's more easy to supervise and control and train and more accountable but but would be more challenging staffing wise. that might attract more people. it's an interesting situation we find ourselves in. plus i think there's so many other careers outside of the police department. i still think there's a lot of people who love the idea of this

job. i just don't know how we can get them into the city. i think san francisco's more challenging because so much of our job is dealing with what's happening on the streets which is more social work than police work. a lot of what we do is basically trying to help people. essentially you want to get them into rehab and yet they're not interested. like i say, people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol you always hear the story everybody knows somebody who's addicted and you wait for them to hit rock bottom and think they'll go to rehab but if the streets of san francisco are not rock bottom i'd love if we that'd power to force them into rehab. that would change in my humble opinion what's happening in the city right now because we're

allowing some we're calling them homeless but they're really drug addicts and we hit rock bottom and we are helping them to continue this path when i know as a family member of mine or friend of mine i would love for somebody to come in and say sorry, you don't have a choice, you're going rehab. >> commissioner: very much. >> clerk: the public is now invited to comment on item 2. >> commissioner: we're opening up for public comment is this general public comment? >> clerk: just item 2. >> commissioner: just on the presentation. any public comment on the presentation? that's closed. next item. >> clerk: line item 3, general public comment.

the public is now welcome to address the commission regarding items that do not appear on tonight's agenda but within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission. they'll address statement to the commission as a hole and neither police or or commissioners are required to respond to questions presented by the public but may provide a quick response. and individual commissioners and police and dpa personnel should refrain from entering into debates or discussions and pub public comment is limited to three minutes. >> commissioner: we're open enning it up now to -- opening it up to public comment on any item. come to the podium, if you would. >> i'm mike daily and live in the fremont district in the

ingleside area. we're coming up on 4th of july and we had an abundance of fire works the last few years and some of which started fires. i want to give a public announcement in support of the captain in ingleside with volunteer efforts to put together a mitigation effort to stop the use of illegal fireworks in the city. station websites have the program. it's excellent work by them. thank you so much. >> commissioner: did you say ingleside? >> good evening. my name is david crommey. a resident of this district over 38 years. you can imagine how many captains i've seen come and go

but none as effective as captain bailey i'm proud to say. she listens and doesn't say the thing i've heard so many times over the years, i know what you're talking about but we can't do anything about that because of this law or that and everything else. captain bailey finds a way to do it. i feel much safer on the streets now. year inundated with these transient kids with their dogs and backpacks who travel through and for a while they were ganged up on in ashbury and it made it unpleasant and the kids aren't bad they're moving through their lives and the kids talk to each other and it's not pleasant. it's much more pleasant now. i'm a little reluctant to praise

captain bailey because you may think there's other problems in the department and maybe she could help and i'm sure she could but please let her stay here. >> commissioner: thank you. >> i'm a resident of the district. i'm going to praise captain bailey more but i think her ego will balloon so much if i spend all my time doing that but to echo what david said. it's a noticeable difference from before she was our captain to now. the buy bust operations and stay away orders and foot beat patrols have all made a huge dent in improving the quality of life for the residents. one thing i wanted to bring to the commission's attention i didn't hear mentioned tonight is the number of members of the transient population who have out of state warrants who come

to our district and specifically haight street because it's perceived as a lax police environment. i read captain bailey's newsletters and 75% of the time it mentioned a person has a warrant from x county in x state 37 and there's a perception there's a lack of enforcement on haight street captain bailey has done a good job of reversing. we get not homeless butenforcem captain bailey has done a good job of reversing. we get not homeless butthere's n haight street captain bailey has done a good job of reversing. we get not homeless but traveler population you can see watching netflix and getting drunk and with their dogs and they're passing through. i think if we had more police officers who could walk the beat it would be more of a visual deterrent and more work could be done to make sure haight street was a lot cleaner. and to respond to one of your

things, wa do i know, i'm a random person in the audience. how we get more police officers when i see comparisons to other cities of how many police officers we have per resident in san francisco compared to new york city i feel like if that information was made more available to the public and there was some article in the chronicle or communication effort to show san francisco actually does not have the police force you may claim compared to new york and chicago. we don't have as many i think you'd get more public support in hiring more officers and making a bigger impact on the quality of life of the residents. >> commissioner: thank you. >> good evening, president hirsh, commissioners, captain

bailey and officers and members of the community. i'm zach dillon by the public defenders office and i've attend the meeting the last couple weeks. january 1st there were files that were made public with officer involved shooting and sustained allegations of sexual misconduct and dishonesty. my office made a request for these records january 2nd and we've tried to get access to the records that are now public and this commission is to going to decide a policy for the release in the next hearing i believe july 10. we have partial records because they're still held by the city attorney and they're voluminous

and we received two records from sfpd also partial. it's worth noting to the commissioners about making requests and all the records so far including these today are to our initial january 2 request and not to the small requests we have made subsequently. this is it the last opportunity i have to address you before this commission meets to sign a policy july 10. i don't know if it's being written actively or edited from the previous policy. my colleague will discuss some issues we think that could be addressed in the policy. some issues we've anticipated seeing. and in the previously published policy from the may 8 meeting, requiring dpa and sfpd to coordinate on the release can

create an environment where the files are being coordinated on what to release and in the previously published policy about notifying officers before a record release and this can be achieved in one fell swoop by notifying all officers this law exists. if they have one of these categories of complaints in their records it's subject to be released. and of course officers are notified when a complaint is made and what the outcome of that complaint is. they're already aware if they have something on one of the four categories of information in their record. and can be made aware generally rather than delaying a release

of records. >> commissioner: thank you. i just want to respond briefly. that is that i've asked the commission office to work with the police department and put together a working group to address 1421 and i've asked them to please include the public defenders office so you'll have a representative as well. >> thank you. >> good evening. i'm a law student and an in tern at the public defender's office. we assume a policy is being drafted or contemplate various departments that involve sb1421 and i want to identify two particular issues that may be of use when drafting the policy. first, definitions of what actually constitutes dishonesty

under the statute and great bodily injury. right now it's nebulous what it means under the statute. does it imply an intent or fraudulent issue or having specific act to constitute a per se dishonesty and as we dependent on the evaluation. having clear id guidelines to what is or not dishonesty will not only help the trens parns for the -- transparency for the public but help determine what falls under and what would not. second, i asked that this commission and the dpa are empowered to note any falsehoods uncovered during an investigation and to even if

it's for an ancillary matter. during my review of the openness reports to the dpa i came across situations where an officer's side of the case was different than the factual statement the dpa had come to and i asked the dpa and the commission empower the dpa specifically to look into these issues of dition -- dishonesty as they come up so this is another option when they go for the reports for ancillary matters. this department and commission has the opportunity to rethink the process for true transparency. going forward, these requests may not be held behind a pra request. they're public and can be published online. the dpa and sfpd could publish the reports the san francisco public defenders office has received online because the information is public. in an effort to eliminate the

need for redundant requests and to ensure and become a model of transparency for the public, i ask that the sfpd, dpa and this commission get this information p published online in a centralized location where everybody can find it. >> commissioner: thank you. >> commissioner: if i may comment briefly on that the case law surrounding dishonesty is robust and has been around for a long time for those of us involved in criminal law and sfpd and courts and judges. i would disagree there's disambiguity on dishonesty it's been litigated and litigated and those ambiguity in what constituteses dishonesty going tie officer's credibility. >> in an effort to fully understand i called a bunch of the police departments and different agencies in the state

and the response i got is it's just going off the feeling of what an i.a. officer says. it's more of an effort to solidify what is and not. i'm not asking for specific this is and this is not. just so it's written in the policy. >> first off i want to say i want to talk about my son. i come every wednesday and if you guys are going to have underpolice commission in other neighborhoods i come to those because i don't want him for that. my son was murdered august 14,

2006. august 14 of this year will be 14 years i've been on the battlefield fighting for my son who went to school, who was due to graduate from school yet he didn't get to because someone took his life right in front of my house and they were talking with the neighborhood in the presentation and that's where i live. that's where my son's life was taken where people come in from other neighborhoods because they don't like someone else. they shot my son for helping out for hollering out and saying run because he knew someone was going get killed that day and they shot my son. 30 rounds from a semiautomatic gun into my son. a mother like me cannot forget

that and will not forget that. my son had no chance. he was full of life. full of life. and someone took that from me. and his nieces and nephews, his sisters. still the case isn't solved. people saying nobody wants to point the finger but what do we do to solve these cases in san francisco? we talk about crime prevention. a part of crime prevention is also solving crime also. we need to solve them so mothers like myself and fathers can heal. i shunt have to come here -- i shouldn't come here i should go to graduations not funerals.

there's other people of color dying. i've said this before and i'm not prejudice or anything but if my son was a little white boy with blond hair and blue eyes would he be living today? would he be alive? i think so. i think he'd be here if he was. but he wasn't. he's a little black boy. we need to heal our communities. i still ask the poa put this out there. where were you when i was murdered? put these back on the busses so the perpetrator can see their victims because if they're still out there walking around and living their lives like nothing happened, then we're letting them get away with it and it's going to happen again. i guarantee you it will.

it may be somebody else's innocent child's life that's taken. we don't want to wait until it hits your home. it hit mine. and i'm still suffering. we talk about mental health, i suffer every day. i'm tired of it. i'm tired. i take my pictures. >> commissioner: your time is up, actually. >> his father. it's me. this is my son left on a gurney dead. see what i'm saying not just hear. >> commissioner: the anonymous tipline for anyone who has information 415-575-4444. 'other public comment? -- any other public comment?

good evening. >> my name is carol gossinger i live in the district for 45 years. for 45 years people have been concerned on the travellers on haight street and when i grew up in chicago if there were more than three or four people standing on a street corner there'd be a squad car in five minutes saying what are you doing, break it up. they wouldn't let people linger just standing there and now, i don't want anybody to be like the chicago police god forbid but i think if there were more police or squad cars or police officials around the neighborhood and watching for

trouble, maybe those people with warrants would get the message and say, it's not the place to hang around anymore because there's a lot of police around. there's somebody on every corner. so a few weeks ago i e-mailed captain bailey and she sent me an e-mail immediately like the same day. a long e-mail. i was concerned about the kids on the street and in the park at haight and stannion and concerned about the rumor there may be a navigation center between the two children's facility and stadium and pavilion. i was thinking, well, captain bailey's done a great job controlling what's going on in the neighborhood and haight street and i was concerned about what would happen if that navigation center went in and all the kids would hear about it

and they would think you have to dom haight and stannion and get needles and food and everything. they would maybe sit in the park like 40 or 50 people sit park. she assured me in the e-mail the police would do everything they could to make everything safe if that should happen. they'd make the neighborhood safe. i would be hoping if that ever happened, unfortunately, you would allow her to have more police in park station. like four or five more police officers so they can control that situation. okay. >> commissioner: any other speakers? okay public comment is closed. next item. >> clerk: item 4 adjournment action. >> commissioner: is there a motion to adjourn. >> so moved. >> commissioner: all in favor. opposed? okay, we are adjourned.

thank you all.

>> i view san francisco almost as a sibling or a parent or something. i just love the city. i love everything about it. when i'm away from it, i miss it like a person. i grew up in san francisco kind of all over the city. we had pretty much the run of the city 'cause we lived pretty close to polk street, and so we would -- in the summer, we'd all all the way down to aquatic park, and we'd walk down to the library, to the kids' center. in those days, the city was safe and nobody worried about us running around. i went to high school in spring valley. it was over the hill from chinatown. it was kind of fun to experience being in a minority, which most white people don't get to experience that often. everything was just really within walking distance, so it make it really fun. when i was a teenager, we didn't have a lot of money.

we could go to sam wong's and get super -- soup for $1. my parents came here and were drawn to the beatnik culture. they wanted to meet all of the writers who were so famous at the time, but my mother had some serious mental illness issues, and i don't think my father were really aware of that, and those didn't really become evident until i was about five, i guess, and my marriage blew up, and my mother took me all over the world. most of those ad ventures ended up bad because they would end up hospitalized. when i was about six i guess, my mother took me to japan, and that was a very interesting trip where we went over with a boyfriend of hers, and he was working there. i remember the open sewers and

gigantic frogs that lived in the sewers and things like that. mostly i remember the smells very intensely, but i loved japan. it was wonderful. toward the end. my mother had a breakdown, and that was the cycle. we would go somewhere, stay for a certain amount of months, a year, period of time, and she would inevitably have a breakdown. we always came back to san francisco which i guess came me some sense of continuity and that was what kept me sort of stable. my mother hated to fly, so she would always make us take ships places, so on this particular occasion when i was, i think, 12, we were on this ship getting ready to go through the panama canal, and she had a breakdown on the ship. so she was put in the brig, and i was left to wander the ship until we got to fluorfluora few days later, where we had a

distant -- florida a few days later, where we had a distant cousin who came and got us. i think i always knew i was a writer on some level, but i kind of stopped when i became a cop. i used to write short stories, and i thought someday i'm going to write a book about all these ad ventures that my mother took me on. when i became a cop, i found i turned off parts of my brain. i found i had to learn to conform, which was not anything i'd really been taught but felt very safe to me. i think i was drawn to police work because after coming from such chaos, it seemed like a very organized, but stable environment. and even though things happening, it felt like putting order on chaos and that felt very safe to me. my girlfriend and