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tv   Government Access Programming  SFGTV  October 24, 2019 10:00am-11:01am PDT

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>> good morning, everyone. the meeting will come to order. welcome to the october 24th, 2019 regular meeting of the public safety and neighborhood services committee. i am not valemount and, the chair of the committee. to my right -- i am raphael mandelman. the chair of the committee. i want to thank san francisco government tv for staffing the meeting. mr. clerk, are there any announcements? >> thank you. please ensure you have silence your cell phones and electronic devices. completed speaker cards and documents should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the november 5th, 2019 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. can you please call the first
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item? >> number one is a resolution declaring a state of emergency regarding pedestrian and cyclist fatalities. >> supervisor haney? welcome. >> yes. thank you, chair mandelman and thank you for having me back, committee members. i feel like i am an honorary member of this committee at this point. thank you for hearing these very important items. i authored this resolution with president yee declaring a traffic safety state of emergency on pedestrian cyclists -- pedestrian and cyclist fatalities with walk s.f. immediately after the tragic death of benjamin dean and the injury of his wife in the tenderloin after a driver ran a red light and struck them both, but this is about even more than one death in the tenderloin, which i know there have been many across our city. we have lost 15 pedestrians and
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cyclists to preventable violence on our streets this year. in light of the lengthy and informative hearing on tuesday at the sfcta, i will keep my comments brief and described the emergency actions called for in the resolution. the city has set bold goals to get 20 traffic deaths by 2024 and yet we continue to see avoidable deaths and serious injuries happening on our streets. every day, on average three people are hit by cars across the city. the injuries and fatalities are happening on just 13% of our streets, many of which are in district six. this resolution is about taking emergency action, but these are not new ideas. we need the board of supervisors , and sfmta, and the mayor and other agencies to meet the urgency this issue requires. we have to work together to identify the funding and do whatever it takes to implement these emergency actions before more lives are lost. here is what we are calling for
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with this resolution. number one, double the red light cameras at major high injury intersections. currently there are only 13 red light cameras across the entire city with a handful more planned just a few years ago there were more than double in operation but because of changing technology, most of those have been removed and not replaced. well recorded -- recorded crashes are down, we have to use every tool we can and red light cameras are a tool. specifically we need to identify which intersections would benefit most from these cameras, identify funding plan and install new cameras by the end of next year. number two, expand parking control officer enforcement. they have many competing needs but we have to prioritize enforcement of behaviors that are making our streets deadly. cars that are blocking the blocks and preventing people who are safely crossing and cars that are blocking on -- blocking off bike lanes. sfmta should be giving scorecards in conjunction with the reports that sfpd is already
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giving -- doing and present a plan for expansion. number three, increased enforcement by the sfpd to 50% focus and that the level consistent with past enforcement numbers. this directive came from air breed earlier this year with the support of supervisor if you are there more traffic officers on our streets, but there is still work to be done. sfpd shall produce an immediate action plan to get to the goal of 50% specifically on hi injury corridors and an adequate level. sfpd's quarterly reporting to the committee should be disaggregated by high-end record doors to make sure the efforts are targeted. number four, identify solutions to lower speed limits and actual speeds to 25 miles an hour lower on the hi injury networks. we have some constraints placed on us by the state, but we can be creative. sfmta recently agreed to lower the speed limit in front of an area where a young boy was hit a few years ago and that is great news. what about the other streets where we are not taking
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advantage of this single opportunity? where else can we make changes immediately? are there streets on the entry network where speeds are over 2? can we put in speed bumps? speed kills and we have to use every tool in our toolbox including advocating to state leaders. number five, pedestrian blocks. certainly this is something that i have spoke out about and the sfmta and the board has been a partner on to look at what streets can actually be made for people entirely and i know that a number of my colleagues have also expressed interest in studying these opportunities in their districts, certainly in the tenderloin we are very willing and prepared and supportive of moving forward. our goal of this resolution is for the mayor, the board, the sfmta and other agencies to take emergency action and set us up for a clear plan. i have a set of amendments to the resolution that incorporate
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language requested by sfmta as well as language that identifies specific emergency actions. it also reflects that unfortunately as since this resolution was introduced, we lost another life of a pedestrian on our streets. i would -- there are no planned presentations. that is probably a good thing, especially after the long conversation about this at the c.t.a. this week, but the sfmta is here if there are any questions. >> great. thank you, supervisor haney. thank you for the expedited process this morning. i don't see any comments or questions from my colleagues. okay. so we will open this up to public comment if there is any public comment on this item? seeing non, none, public comment is closed. >> there was a lot of public comment when they all came when we were going to hear it before.
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>> supervisor walton? >> thank you so much for bringing this resolution. i just wanted to go on record and state that we have seen an increase in car and traffic deaths in district 10 as well, and along with homicides we want to see -- we want to see an end to all of these avoidable deaths i would like to sign on as a cosponsor as -- of the resolution a everyone know we are currently working on neighborhood safety plans in district 10 and a pre neighborhood that includes strategies to avoid strap -- traffic deaths, along with our vision zero plan on homicides and violent crimes. thank you, again, supervisor haney for bringing this resolution forward. >> thank you. >> and for not calling the cavalry. [laughter]. >> thank you for the cavalry for being here. thank you, supervisor walton. i appreciate the amendments and would like to be added as a cosponsor as well.
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vice chair stefani? >> i want to say that i appreciate the resolution would also like to be added as cosponsor. >> supervisor haney, our first move is to accept the amendment. i will make that motion. we can take that without objection. i will move that we forward this to the full board with a positive recommendation and we can take that without objection. inc. you very much. >> i appreciate it. thank you. >> now our second item. clerk, please call the next item >> number two is a hearing on police staffing levels, the police department's recruitment strategy and process, attrition and retention of officers, progress towards civilian isaiah and of appropriate positions and details regarding the demographics of the department including age, race, gender,
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sexual orientation, disability and others. >> this is president yee's item so i will recess this for five minutes. we will be back with five -- in five minutes.
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will
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>> we are reconvened. president yee, the floor is yours. >> okay. did recall the item already? >> we did. >> thank you. as many of you know, i have been raising the issue of adequate police staffing for several years now. in june of 2018, almost a year ago, the budget and legislative analysis -- analyst provided the
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board with a performance audit of the san francisco police department so we could better understand, number one, how to put the police are deploying police staff, that is funded by the general fund, and number two , how uniform staff is allocated to administrative versus patrol duties. one major finding and recommendation of that audit was that in light of an increase in property crime in our city, with public demand for more officers on the street, the san francisco police department should put as many administrative positions in as possible. this is best practice is recognized by major law enforcement associations including the international association of chiefs of police and adopted by most major law enforcement departments in the country, but san francisco's
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ratio of sworn officers to civilian staff remains higher than the national average over its peers. while there is a need for sworn officers with certain administrative and nonpatrol positions, there are also opportunities that we have not taken advantage of to produce cost and operational efficiencies for the department. that is why i asked the controllers' office to provide us with the analysis of the civilian efforts made so far. that is the sole focus of today 's hearing. we will not close this hearing, but we will continue it and it will be called again for the full police staffing analysis that i requested that will be completed by the end of this year. this police staffing now is one that i have tossed the department to conduct with
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experts in the field to provide the board and the public with the report about their staffing needs and the manner by which the san francisco police department determines its staffing levels throughout its different divisions. again, we will be holding a hearing specifically about this topic in early 2020 when the analysis is complete. at that hearing, we will also be asking the presentations from the city's human resources department and police department regarding a bunch of things including how they are recruiting new officers, graduation rates from academy classes, attrition numbers, demographics of the department versus the city, and our department's rate of retention of trained officers. every year during budget time, this board is asked to support the departmental budgets.
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we rely on the departments to tell us what they need in order to carry out their assigned responsibilities. this is important when it comes to the nuts and bolts of running the city smoothly. for example,, if public works doesn't have enough resources, that impacts the level of quality of the services that we are providing to our residents, businesses, and visitors. at the same time, we have to be vigilant. that we are being efficient with taxpayer dollars and making the very best use of these resources to get the most value possible for our residents, businesses, and visitors. as we seek to increase the number of officers serving the city, the san francisco police department should have a plan in place as a key component of the effort to maximize the number of duty officers providing direct public safety super -- services
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and it should give us a basis to determine if we need to adjust the charter's mandate of 9,171 fully duty officers. i want to add that another piece of analysis i have asked for is, again, it's very exploratory at this point, but we know that we have many, many police officers assigned to the airport and whether or not that makes sense to the city when some of these police officers, or many of them , or all of them could be deployed in our city streets instead of at the airport. i want to thank you, my colleagues, supervisor stefani for cosponsoring this hearing request and we are really looking forward to the discussion. supervisor stefani, would you like to make any comments? okay. who is presenting?
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>> good morning, supervisors. my name is peggy stevenson, i am the director of the performance unit and the controller's office by way of background, we have been engaged and looked at police staffing and multiple analyses over the years including prior civilian analyses and just to refresh everybody's memory, there have been a series of studies of civilian over time. we engaged an expert consult with the police executive research -- research forum back in 2008 that produced -- the
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study was published in 2018 and then last year, we worked with the police department on a command staff review of civilianization in their department where we validated their work, compared it to the prior recommendations that had been lined up by all the prior expert studies that i just mentioned, and compared it to some industry best practices so that a new set of civilianization proposals could be made for your last year's budget process. that was done in response to the request by supervisor yee. a memo went out from our department to all of you that was published on our website well in advance of your budget hearings last may, on may 13th if you're curious about any of the detail, it has appendices which list civilianization recommendations that occurred in each of the prior years and how well the police department had done on fulfilling those. that is available to the public on the controller's website.
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may 13th publication date. by way of summary, i will say that if you look over that period of time, there has been a lot of progress on civilianization. about 60 positions from fiscal year 12-13 until 17-18 when we were looking at it again. these civilianization came from a variety of studies listed above and changes that were occurring in the organization at the time. most notably the sfpd's civilian -- the civilian eyes to research and analysis functions, technology functions, permits, property management, facilities management, contracting, and fleet management, the bulk of all of those things were done over that period. i will just say, at the same time, and leading into the last budget process, there's still a lot of functions as supervisor yee noted you noted that can be civilian eyes -- no further study is necessary to move forward on these so just put
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another way, the department -- specifically in fiscal year 18- 19, the sfpd received 25 new positions for civilianization. at the time of your budget hearings in may, many of those were complete and others were underway. the sfpd can update you on progress on those positions, same concept for fiscal year 19- 20. i mentioned the analysis that they had done working through their command staff. they identified an additional 50 positions that could be civilianized. my office reviewed and validated their analysis. some of the functions that were identified there included records management, media, police commission, legal bureau, professional standards and
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community engagement. you will recall this discussion from your budget hearings, and then during your budget process last spring, they received approval for 25 of those 50 positions. again, these are broadly agreed, approved, and budgeted. the challenge is a realistic staffing plan in hiring and the sfpd can update you on their progress. lastly, they have an expert consultant currently at work doing staffing analysis to inform staffing and organizational design broadly speaking. civilianization is part of that, including civilianization and bureaus where we know it needs review including investigations, special operations and administration. we will work with them as the findings come out from their consultants, to validation, and be prepared to validate and comment on any civilianization proposals that come forward for your next budget process. finally, just as a point of interest, my office has been engaged with staffing studies
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and workload studies with the police department for many years , during most of the years i have been director of this unit. at the moment, last year we finished our culture service analysis that took cab data, did a lot of cleaning and review taking out outliers, working with the sfpd to understand what you can observe and data about the time they spend on calls for service versus administrative time, versus officer on duty time and understand how those things are varying by time of day, day of week, and geographically, and build a series of dashboards so that the police department, captains, and command staff can look at those things on an ongoing basis. we did a lot of years of studies it was a one-off, a snapshot of data and analysis. then we have to do the whole thing over again a couple of years later. this is continuously updated and is available for use by the captains and helping them with their deployment decisions. that is a piece of work that was
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done last year, and then in the current year, we are in the next phase of that with them when we are looking at response times and how response times are affected by the decisions they make on deployment and understanding that broadly, and again, building interactive dashboards that they can use to try and improve their performance on response times. that is underway. and the next few months, we will hopefully be wrapping that up and we will look forward to sharing the results with a broader audience. the calls for service analysis, in case you wanted to look back, our presentation on it was published on the controller's website on may 8th, 2018. i will stop there. i'm happy to answer any questions you would have for me and i know the sfpd is here to update you on progress. >> just a quick question in regards to our there -- i forget the total number that we looked at from three years ago, was a
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200 or so? have you done an analysis at all on those or do you still need to do further deep analysis of some of those positions? >> we reviewed everything that had been done in prior studies and the appendices are in our memo. we reported progress on the sfpd 's filling of all of those. in the aggregate, i would say that the 60 positions that have been filled between fiscal year 12-13 and the start of our last analysis, and then i would have to check back, which i can do maybe while the sfpd is updating you to see how many remain unfilled. i would have to look it up in the appendix. >> just in regards to the process of the analysis, i'm just curious, where there certain civilian jobs or certain positions of the 200 or so in certain departments that were easier to analyse and whether or
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not it was consistent in terms of the department's sub- departments sub departments that would have organizational charts did they all have organizational charts or can we get them to get a better sense of why those decisions were made in the first place? >> yes. they all have organizational charts. many of the functions were quite straightforward. i think it is typical of police departments with detention between using uniformed officers and civilians, and for a lot of years in my observation, the police department had uniformed career law enforcement people trying to manage technology projects, managing basic administrative functions like records and property. they have mostly successfully transitioned out of that, and their analytical staff is the
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same. i have experienced much better dynamic where they now have professional analytical staff doing statistics, stat, staffing analyses, so there are a lot of functions like that that i think we would all agree were pretty straightforward. i think now part of what you will hear from the police department in the current study is there having to go more to a task level, so there may be departments were even though the bulk of the work is done by non foreign people, technology, for example,, they believe that you still should have a uniformed person as the director of that. it could be for a variety of reasons, not necessarily because they have technology expertise, but because the relationship with other command staff is better managed by someone with a law enforcement career. i can see both sides of the conversation like that. the task level analysis i think will yield more opportunities for civilians where once you
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really jewel down into some of those jobs you will be able to identify tasks that should be performed by a civilian and those which really require law enforcement backgrounds. >> in your own report, that's why i asked that question. i don't know the exact words, but it didn't seem to be consistent in terms of the different departments and the police department. is there an organizational chart >> i guess i'm not sure what you are asking. we can and have had complete organizational charts from the police department. that has never been an issue, but the task level analysis is time-consuming and so maybe if you were thinking about positions in your chart, you're looking at something where there is a uniformed person working there, the function is understood to be something that
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has many nonuniformed tasks to it. the drill down, there is -- they are time-consuming. we didn't do that for fiscal year 19-20 budget process. there just wasn't time. i think we will see some of those results from the work that is undergoing with their current consultant. >> okay. thank you for your update. i guess, who will come up? is it miss mcguire? it is you again. >> morning, supervisors. i am available to answer any questions you have or provide an update on the staffing analysis and commander ford is here also to speak on our hiring progress with respect to civilians. >> give us a high-level update in terms of the numbers because right now there were a lot of numbers thrown out and we started at a certain number and
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then from two years ago, how many of those positions have been civilianized, and what is the subset that is considered seriously to be civilianization but haven't gotten there yet? >> okay. we did have, actually pulled up a report from the controller's office from earlier this year and about 54 positions that had been identified previously as civilianization positions, all of them have been filled save for two which were no longer applicable, meaning the position no longer existed in the format it was at the time, and then the 25 positions from -- that we got budgeted, and 25 positions in 19 -20, so commander ford can speak to the status of those. >> welcome, commander. >> good morning.
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good to see you all. all right. pertaining to fiscal year 18-19, 25 positions budgeted for 18-19. of those, 13 have been filled to date. another six or being created through the official classification process with a minimum qualifications are currently being built out. we also have six more under the fiscal year 2018-2019 where the examination rituals for the final six positions are being established and being constructed in that process. it is forthcoming very shortly. the 13 that have been filled are pretty much done and completed. the additional six pertaining to the background investigators and the remaining six pertaining to six technicians. it brings us to a total of 25 for fiscal year 18-19. moving forward to fiscal year 19 -20, we also had 25 civilian positions budgeted for that fiscal year timeline.
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three have been filled to date. currently 11 more currently being screened to determine if those are viable for the advancement to the interview process and we have another three positions in the background investigations process. three more additional will come to fruition as those examination materials are currently under construction. finally, we have two additional positions recently posted via job announcements. we have two more that the examination process is for and it will commence on october 29 th of this year and then the final position is a civilian position and it is pending eligible list authorization. so that pretty much covers the 25 positions budgeted for 2018- 2019 and the 25 more for fiscal year 19-20. >> i'm just curious, as you are doing these positions, what is the game plan in terms of what
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do you do with these officers? >> the goal is to obviously fill these positions was civilians that are currently being held by sworn members and have those members back on the street in some capacity and serving to serve as an outward facing entity with the public. the ideal situation would be to have those officers transition back into patrol and complement our patrol staff. >> right. i guess i am asking is there -- do you have a plan? or is this pretty spontaneous what happens? >> i don't think it is ponce -- spontaneous, sir. there is a concrete plan in place as we transition these officers out of these civilian positions. they are being strategically placed into the control force and that is being done through command staff and our staffing deployment unit, and our strategic management unit which is led by director mcguire, and
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all staff services division. >> so i don't want to drag this piece on, but i would love, unless other people want to hear , i would love to maybe have a little bit more detail of how that happens, this plan that you have as we put officers back on the streets. and if some of them are actually lieutenants and so forth. what happens to them, i don't know. maybe if we could do this in my office. >> sure. whatever is easiest for you. >> i could also have a briefing in my office. it strikes me that it might not be the easiest thing to move someone who is performing a function that could be performed by a civilian who may have been doing that for many, many years and then turn that into -- term that person into a police
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officer in the station, going out, doing police work that we sort of think of as police work. you could -- i don't know if this is what is going to happen, were you could imagine this. >> we do have a reentry process to get those officers back into fieldwork if they transition back into those arenas. but just to be frank, we all have a patrol pedigree. some of us have transitioned into administrative positions in the past. i am one of them. i went to administrative position as an officer and had to transition back into patrol. we all have the same starting point. we all started as patrolman, per se, and started in the unit. even if you transition into an administrative position, you are essence you are still a patrol person. you still have that pedigree. so i would like to think that the learning curve and reacclimate and back into patrol shouldn't be that hard but we do
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have a process that is specifically designed for that process. one other thing you mentioned about lieutenants and supervisory personnel, the bulk of these positions are held by line staff, if you will. so that is why the bulk of them will be transitioning back into a patrol capacity. i think that is the ideal scenario. >> that would be really interesting to see. that is not an easy transition. >> it is challenging, for sure. >> vice chair stefani? >> thank you. thank you for your service and for being here today. with regard to the reacclimate and process, at that point in time, are they then going through the additional training such as c.i.t. and our new use of force policy training? >> there updates. >> okay. >> we also have our c.b.t., which is our continued professional training, which all officers are required to go through every two years.
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even if you are in an administrative position, you are still in the arena where you're going for updates and dealing with people with mental health updates and mental health issues and all of the nuances of patrol are still reinforced every two years as a patrol person even in an administrative position. >> thank you. i also have a question, too. for me i think that special attention made to our police force in public safety and civilianization is something that i think it's a high priority in san francisco given what we are seeing with property crime rates. i am wondering whether or not there is any process for prioritizing these positions through d.h.r. it sounds like we are still having difficulty filling some positions or they are waiting exams or i'm not sure, but it sounds like, to me, that there needs to be a push at d.h.r. i don't know. this is just what i am reading.
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and if we could be helpful with that at all. >> i can certainly say that to your point, it is a process and, you know, there are some layers to the process of transitioning people in and out of positions and things like that. but i think, in fact,, i know, we are doing as best job as we can. i know we are staffing diligently -- working diligently to do the proper assessments to see and identify where people should be placed back into patrol. so i would like to think that we are making a concerted effort. it is a process. there are layers to the process and, you know, it is not a quick fix for sure but thankfully for fiscal year 18-19, we have 13 of the 25 filled and the remaining 12 are different junctures, but these are coming down the pipe
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in terms of coming to fruition. they should be coming on board shortly. and with respect to fiscal year 19-20, we are still in the first quarter of this fiscal year give or take and so we already have three, and then we have 11 more that are right behind the three that have already been filled. they are going through the interview process is very shortly. once those come to fruition, that will be 14 of the next 25 and then we just have segments and chunks of 23 that are at different phases of the process, but i am confident that we can get this done in a timely manner and transition our people back on to the street. >> maybe i will jewel done a little bit more on that because i want to understand looking back to the 25 in the 18 and 19 budget and where we -- how where we are now is different than where we are in may and the last assessment. when they did their assessment in may, they noted the sfpd had
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received 25 new positions for civilianization. nineteen of those positions where for january 1st and six positions were registered for april 1st. our budgetary goal was that everyone would be hired by april the controller in may noted progress in filling these, but 12 positions are still awaiting exams or specifications and required assistance from the department of human resources and recruitment has not begun. so it sounds like, and i didn't entirely follow your break down, it sounds like 13 are filled, it sounds like those 13 were kind of understood to be filled or well on the processing may, and then there was a challenge for the remaining 12, and there was urgency around hiring them. have we made progress under those 12 since may? and how? >> can i jump in really quick? i want to clarify too why i was asking and based on your response. having been a department head, i
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ran the accounting -- the accounting clerk's office for two years. i know how difficult it is. i know the impediment sometimes with d.h.r. and i feel like the priority here is urgent and i am wondering if d.h.r. feels that same way and whether or not -- i know the police department is trying. i don't have any difficulty in believing that. i know it is. i am just wondering if there is any, if you are having any trouble based on what supervisor mandelman just said with d.h.r. and whether or not we can assist in helping you get the message to them. i don't know, basin what i have read, whether or not we need to get the message to d.h.r. that we need to really prioritize. we are going through this with d.p.h., too on other things in terms of making sure that if there is a problem and we need to hire immediately, that we
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find a process and a way to do that. i am feeling like there is some -- based on what we are reading, that there may he some stalling or something that is blocking this for some reason. >> or at least that the urgency that we feel, and i think that folks the folks in the department feel, about getting people into these positions is somehow, something is happening where it takes a year or two years to get something done and it seems like it should be on a much shorter time frame. what is up with that? [laughter]. >> i will defer to the director. >> thank you. >> i'm the executive director of management bureau. the 12 positions, the 13 filled, all the people are in their seats now. the 12 positions that are remaining, there are six each of
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two classifications. so the first classification is a brand-new classification in the city. it is a background investigator and the classification just got approved this week, posted on the website. >> how long does it take? >> it takes quite a while to get a new classification. it is a long process. so that is run by d.h.r., but they have to go through the civil service commission, they have to approve all the job duties, make sure doesn't overlap with any other job classification. they have to certify that it has to be a new classification, and then they also have to, and i can't speak to the whole process ,. >> do you know how long it took to create this classification? >> i hesitate to speak on that because they don't have all the materials in front of me, unfortunately. >> can anyone let us know? >> yeah, we can do that. >> i would love to know how long it takes d.h.r. to create the
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classification. >> and they also have to work with the unions to get representation and those sorts of things. it is a complex process. the other six positions, we are using an existing classification , but we have to put some additional specifications on that classification in order to use it. >> do we assess how we do this? this is more of a d.h.r. world then a police world, but do you know if there is thoughts about how to make these processes run faster, more effectively, and to get people hired in a timely way >> you are right. >> you may not be able to answer this, but getting on my soapbox for a minute. i am a believer in public services. i want public sector workers doing jobs that are important to
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our residents. if we are not able, if we have a set of rules that make us unable to hire people expeditiously to do the work of the people, there is something wrong, and we need to fix that, but we are only going to be able to try to fix it if the folks you have to do the work every day are able to identify what these problems are and let us know. so i have, not in anyone here, with some frustration around this and would love to try to better understand how to be able to hire people. >> i guess maybe i'm a little bit more reserved on this frustration since i have gone through this for several years now, yeah,. why is it taking so long? but whether it is specific to this effort, and like i said in my opening remarks, i am not
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going be closing this hearing, when we hear it again, we should bring the department of h.r. here to explain to us, and maybe in a broader sense, because i feel like this is not unique to the situation with d.h.r. i would consider having a specific hearing on asking d.h.r. to explain their process and using these as examples of why it is taking that long, and we have several examples. we have several examples from different situations, so if all of us want to do that, then i will go ahead and take the lead on it and ask for a hearing. >> vice chair stefani? >> i was just going to say, i just told supervisor mandelman that i was going to request a hearing on this. i would be happy to be part of that, of course,.
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>> you, too? [laughter] >> president yee? >> is there going to be public comment? >> we will take public comment if there is any public comment on this item. i will tell you some things about public comment. you have two minutes. we ask that you say your first and last name clearly and speak directly into the microphone. if you have prepared a written statement, you can leave it with our committee clerk for inclusion in the file. no applause or booing is permitted and in the interest of time, speakers are encouraged to avoid repetition of the previous statements. good morning. >> my name is jaclyn renaud and my question is with the tension between civilians and police that are already assigned to
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these jobs, how is this going to benefit, and with this analysis, how will this benefits them trying to get people hired. if that makes sense. sorry. >> thank you. we don't respond during public comment, but we put your question on the record and one of the supervisors make it back to you. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> there were 700 individuals taking the exam together in one auditorium. there were about 600 individuals taking the exam when i was finished. i decided to deselect. if you acknowledge past drug use that terminates the hiring process, and if an individual
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were to lie about an issue, it is more likely perhaps that they would lie about other issues and i believe there are approximately 130 officers who were in court and this has undermined successful prosecution of suspects in predominantly drug related charges. so is it then possible for the department to drop the inquiry into past personal drug history and focus their attention on present hair samples, nail clippings, and cheek swabs instead? also if the d.a.'s office has an aversion towards prosecution and it will not reduce criminal incidents and it will increase budget expenditures in terms of additional employees and staffing levels. there is very often an adverse relationship between the number of efficiency. >> thank you. is there any other member of the public would like to speak before i close public comment?
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seeing none, public comment is now closed. supervisor walton? >> just a quick question because i am aware of tensions that sometimes to exist between sworn officers and civilian staff, so how does this work to address that relationship? and i was reminded by public comments. >> can you say that again, please? >> we are aware of tensions that exist sometimes between sworn officers and civilian staff, and as we talk about hiring and the transition and bringing on more civilian staff and the shifts and changes, how does this work to address that relationship as we move forward? >> i don't know if there is tension, per se. i think there's differences in understanding. as a sworn person we have a different