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tv   Government Access Programming  SFGTV  December 19, 2019 10:00am-11:01am PST

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criminal justice council. that department doesn't exist today. we need a champion to deal with the policy. we need like -- the reason i transferred it to the department of technology, because we have technology problems and solutions and data sharing that we need to focus on. the policy aspect of it is what we're trying to avoid there. that's what we need to focus a bit on. >> supervisor yee: and i think, supervisor stefani, why i keep on bringing this issue of governance up is about basically the yeses you're asking. what are the policies and, you know, it's something that we should not avoid, otherwise this -- what are we sharing it for. so appreciate your line of questioning. supervisor walton. >> supervisor walton: thank you, presidentie. -- president yee. just a question. is the department of police accountability a part of --
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>> clerk: you will need to come up here. >> don't be shy. >> called it exactly, supervisor. i think that's what i'm known for, is my shyness. [laughter] we're just having conversations just this morning, just because everyone was here. i have worked with the justice and the mayor's office previously and with the d.a.'s office in the past. but we have not been incorporated into the new reiteration of the justice yet. but we just started having those preliminary conversations this morning, when i was just talking to linda in the audience. i will say that before we were even able to have this conversation, as many of you may be aware, d.p.a., when i came over in 2017, was still on the norvel system, which pre-dated lotus notes. [laughter]
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and we were the only department in the system that was still operating on norvel. we didn't have computers. we didn't have the technology. so now we are all up-to-date with our windows systems. we're all up-to-date with the computers. we just got our new c.m.s. system a few months ago, coordinating through bridge and now we're relaunching the website. i think part of the reason that we had not been at the table and participating in the past, was because we weren't able to accommodate whatever information could have come out or could have been shared with justice. and we're just now bringing ourselves up to that space. so this is a really exciting time for us technology-wise, specifically as we are launching our broader transparency and more of the reports, which we're going to talk about later on
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today. and we'll be able to share much more of that information, especially as it dovetails into some of the audit functions, that are expanding with the department of police accountability. so the short answer is not yet. but we're looking forward to sharing that information, analyzing that information and redistributing it amongst all of the justice participants. >> supervisor walton: i hope we see the equity issues that exist with the department of police accountability, first of all, having such anti-waited systems suppose to play a role in oversight and law enforcement. i mean, disheartening is a euphemism for what i really want to say right now, knowing that i'm learning this information. but, secondly, this should already have been in place, d.p.a. should already be a part of the information-sharing system. and we will have further conversations about this. of course, this is not on you. i hope all of our partners in this room see the inequities
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that exist, having this information right now and how we should move forward, accelerate it, movement forward in terms of d.p.a. being a part of information-sharing. this right now is unacceptable. >> and later on i'll have more numbers to share with you about how that role has been expanding, specifically as it ties and correlates directly to the public for people coming in to address and receive information from the agency. >> president yee, i don't have the ability to indicate my desire to ask questions. i have a few of my own. >> supervisor yee: yes. >> i want to thank you for calling for this hearing. also for your diligent and persistent follow-up on this over many, many years. and i think one of the things the city administrator sort of hinted at this. this is a very -- the
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presentation was quite technical and quite in the weeds about sort of the progress that's being made at the level of coordination across departments and data and things that are happening. but what is a little bit missing and why i think it is so important to have president yee involved over these years, the policy direction about what to do with data as it gets coordinated. and supervisor stefani suggested some possible policy direction of where it could take us. and i think probably each of us on the board of supervisors has some ideas about what we would like to use data used to do. and i was not around here in 1999. so i don't know what it was like to have a mayor's office of criminal justice. i don't know if that is the right way to have executive leadership around this issue. but i have also heard from some of the advocates around things like, you know, jail closure and other things. that having some kind of office like that, that is trying to drive change from -- in areas
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related to criminal justice, could be really helpful. and this could be a super powerful tool. but that it's hard to use this tool if there's not clear policy direction and so in the meantime, president yee has kept the fire burning. but i do think it would be -- it may be worth executive thinking some about whether they want to take a more active role in figuring out how to use this tool, that you all are continuing to work on. so thank you for doing that work. i have some, you know, kind of questions, one is a clarification based on the district attorney's office brief remarks. what is the two-year project happening in the district attorney's office? >> good morning again. josie with the safety and justice project. which is a two-year grant and apologies for speaking in shorthand, from the mcarthur
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foundation. >> got it. >> that focuses on safely reducing the jail population. >> that's the thing we're -- that solves all of our problems. >> yeah. exactly. have all of the partners convening on a monthly basis regularly. >> got it. we are due for an update at the board of supervisors. we talked about that probably eight months ago. and we meant to do an update on that probably two months ago and still haven't done it. count on us asking for us, several of us asking for one early next year. >> any time. >> okay. fantastic. >> thank you. >> then i'm also curious about something that mr. siegel i think touched on. master person management. that was intriguing to me. you sort of talked about it, sounds like high users of multiple systems. but what is master person management? >> yes. so the concept of master person management is -- it actually
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starts in the sales role. sometimes where you have say customer records in multiple systems. you may have a customer that's purchasing a particular product, maybe a different service and other products. how do you bring together all of that information about that person, so that you can be more responsive to them. that's how that technology originated. for criminal justice what that's about, is bringing together records in the district attorney's office, the records that might be in the courts. the records that might be in the police department, perhaps even external like the department of motor vehicles. and then even extending that beyond criminal justice to things like health care records, social services and bringing that all together, so that you can have a unified picture of a particular person. and the challenge of that is there's usually different identifiers in each of those systems. it's not as easy as it might sound to do that. there's technology that helps aggregate that information together. and the proposal is to do that for criminal justice. >> what extent are we doing that now? or is that something we're trying to build?
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we're not. we're trying to build the capability to? >> yeah. it's really extending. for an example, you may be familiar with the rap sheet, which is the document that's used for presentation into court of a person's criminal record. that's an example of doing that kind of aggregation. >> how far away from being able to do some of that are we? >> well, again -- five-year plan? >> the plan calls for actually acquiring some technology that helps do that in a more advanced way. and then using that -- sorry, getting too geeky here, it's a service that's available for each of the departments. so that they can understand if they have a record about joe siegel, how can they relate that to joseph seeing -- siegel. >> are there places -- when you mention public health information, my year and a half of experience here is that information typically can flow to health, but not from health. that's generally how other systems use this. >> generally the case.
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>> it would be super great if when someone is booked, that information went to the public health department and somebody from the public health department says, oh, wow, okay, this person is in jail and we need to send a caseworker out there. >> that's right. some agencies are able to do -- you're right. the sharing is difficult because of hipaasome they could send an alert to pay attention for from the health department. >> who does that? >> sorry. other entities? >> yeah. >> l.a. county is doing a little bit of that currently today. >> okay. >> there's pockets of it. always a barrier there. >> but there was a barrier to the criminal justice system letting the public health system know what's going on? >> other than subject to state d.o.j. requirements and that kind of thing. so certain elements like the master person number with the state of california, called the c.i.i. number is protected. so you have to be careful how you share that information. but it can be done.
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>> okay. okay. i think that's my question for you. i think this is for rob. what's your last name, rob? >> castillo. >> so i understand this again. because the courts are in the system now -- >> correct. >> very low level here. so that allows the rest of the system to know things like blank, blank and plank. >> right. >> and if they were to fall out of the system, that would mean these departments would lose access to information about -- can you just kind of spell that out more. >> it would mean that the county of san francisco would have a massive data entry problem to solve. so the courts right now being integrated into the cable 3c.m.s. main frame world, that's a county system. provides us the additional charges to a case, dispositions to the charges, sentencing of
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the case, probation data, sentencing information and so forth. >> so the other departments are interested in that are the jail, the police. >> everyone. >> public defender. so if that information were not available from the courts, because they had had to break away from us, because we were lagging and they needed to move forward, with the integration had not happened, every other department would have to chase after that information and enter it themselves? >> right. we would have to figure out what is the quickest way or best way to make do with wharf -- with whatever the court has, so we don't have some of the officer safety issues that do exist out in the world as far as who is eligible for a warrantless search, based on their sentencing and probation conditions, that arose out of the court's priority. >> police now know if they encounter somebody on the street -- >> who has the condition of probation that allows them to be
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warrantless. >> okay. that's important. and so so you all are again operating mostly at level, like let's make what we've got now work and consider things that may make sense, not a huge amount of policy direction on other things we want you to do with this data. but from your perspective, that's the highest priority right now is keeping the courts in the system? >> well, or working with the courts to -- like i said we're basically on lockstep with the schedules for, you know, one of my team members is fully dedicated to the courts integration, more of my team will be over time, as we get closer to that date. so that we have all of the integration with the courts new system coming into justice, which then preserves that data transfer to the other consuming departments. >> and then i guess the last question. there's clearly the need, and we all experience it in many
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different hearings in many different ways for more coordination, both within the criminal justice system and criminal justice system to departments like public health and others. there's also i think, and this is a little not really what this hearing is -- what i think this system is, but the public also is interested in this data. and researchers are interested in the data coming out of these departments. and i guess, you know, another reason to sort of figure out justice and get it done is that that can become the basis. i mean, the information can be released from the departments themselves. but could also -- but sort of coordinated data would presumably be even more useful for the public and policymakers to look at. >> and more efficiently done through a central aggregator. >> yes. we would be the central aggregator for the raw data. what i was proposing in my answer to president yee was basically to create that de-identified repository, that then would be pushed to data s.f. there's no point in us
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replicating the plumbing that is there in place for data s.f. to securely share county data with the public. so rather than do that, we would take care of the data side, because we understand the criminal justice data and the rules around it. and then once it's in a shareable state, use data assess mechanisms to do that. >> great. all right. thank you. thank you, president yee. >> supervisor yee: okay. i want to thank all of the departments that came and shared their perspective on this. and i want to thank my colleagues on this committee for allowing me to do this. so the two things i'm focusing right now and i'm asking, i'll reiterate is this consolidated budget that we can hopefully support. and for this governance to take
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on some of the issues that we sort of raised and for me to ask after two meetings of the governance committee, whether it's effective or not or are people feeling like there's nobody in charge. i think the way we're structuring the executive committee is really dependent on each of the individuals that are part of the executive committee to be willing -- willing to compromise and to do something that is good for the common good. and be less focused on just their own department. this is a bigger picture than one particular department. and we need leadership from the department heads. so i'll end it at that. and thank you very much.
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so can i ask that you -- >> clerk: let's see if there's public comment on this item. is there any public comment on this item? i will say words about public comment. speakers will have two minutes. we ask you state your first and last name clearly and speak directly into the microphone. if you've prepared a written statement, you're encouraged to leave a copy with the clerk. for applause or booing is permitted in in the interest of time, avoid repetition of previous statements. come on up. >> oh, ken richard. did anyone take the initial report of requesting a coroner's inquest into the matter that was cited earlier, regarding the woman who may have been murdered by a known individual. also do any fines attach to noncompliance as far as turnover firearms in the t.r.o. issue. and where is the city in terms
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of processing cold case material. since a handful of researchers have been incorporating public ancestry websites in their investigations, they have solved dozens of children's murders across the country, for example, and solving cases going back as far as four decades and making positive identification of victims. i believe they've also uncovered at least several serial killers, some retired into suburbs, others having died of natural causes. and i believe they studied the goal of the researchers today used to solve one cold case a week. as technology advances. and, yeah, fortunately an individual had them thinking outside the box and she had an adequate thought platform to post successfully against the --
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[inaudible] and i was wondering if the master of management strategy, someone just mentioned if it was related to the work of ralph hu. he was a civil servant -- well, civil servant of the year 1968. i believe he talked political science. well, police science and wrote a book related to political science. >> thank you. any other members of the public who would like to speak on the item before i close public comment. seeing none, public comment is now closed. [gavel] president yee. >> supervisor yee: yeah. i think one last thing that i brought up earlier, that i want to make sure that we do a follow-up is that justice is actually an administrative code. and i think we need to update that and to reflect some of the changes. so i will be working with i guess either mr. rao or miss
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kelly or probably all of you to see how we can get that done. probably the next time i will mention justice will be probably related to the administrative code. and i'd like to ask my colleagues on this committee to go ahead and close -- file this item. >> clerk: i'll make that motion. and we will take it without objection. [gavel] and thank you, president yee. >> supervisor yee: thank you. >> mr. clerk, can you call our next item. >> clerk: item no. 3, the hearing on department of police cabinet operations on holding the police department accountable. the status of investigations and the fourth quarter final report for 2019, including the number of complaints of police conduct, complaints investigated, complaints closed, number of cases with sustained allegations, police officers involved in complaints, adjudicated complaints by the chief of police, and number of complaints still opened and
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carried into the new fiscal year. >> great. supervisor walton, this is your hearing. take it away. >> supervisor walton: thank you so much, chair mandelman, and thank you to everyone who turned out for this morning's hearing. law enforcement and police accountability is important to all of us. we have. >>recommendations from the department of justice on how to improve police and community. the department of police accountability is one entity created to. >>achieve that accountability and make sure that justice is served when issues between law enforcement and community arise. supervisor haney and i invited d.p.a. to present their year-end report. our office is particularly concerned with police oversight and would like to hear how the oversight is happening. director hand is going to walk us through how a police complaint is handled.
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and we ask when you share your annual report, if you could also share how the new oversight is working with your partnership with the sheriff's department. and i would love to hear a brief update on that. so with that we have director hand here with the department of police accountability. thank you. >> clerk: director, henderson, how much time do you need? >> they've already told me to be short. i will take five minutes. >> clerk: awesome. >> i will take five minutes. good morning. thank you, guys, for having me. so as supervisor walton explained, i have a number of things that i want to present. i thought also that part of the things that commission wanted to hear about was a lot of our reporting information. also a large part of what my presentation is to make sure that people know where this information can be found on a
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more regular basis. a lot of these things i'll be talking about are things that didn't exist in the past, but available to the public, so folks watching this will be able to access this and be able to manipulate or find the numbers that they need as well. and then i thought that you wanted an overview of the d.o.j. you mentioned some of that and some of our 1421 distributions anddy -- disseminations as well. i want to make sure that folks know where to find this information and what actually is going on. a large part of what we have been doing, especially in year, some of our biggest priorities have been in drilling down op the transparency and reporting of information to broader communities. a lot of that, which i alluded to when i was here earlier, has been involving the new operating system, our internal operating system. in the past, that was really challenging and difficult.
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when i first came to the office, that was just two years ago. i mean, folks were still using typewriters in the office. and so we've come a long way. part of the maneuvering that we did around budget restrictions were bringing our challenges to the civic bridge program and working with them. so now our new operating system is running and we're still integrating a lot of the data migration. but we're excited about having that information there. and now we're working on the new website. so the front face of the agency will be more accessible to a broader community. part of what we track and find regularly, and i think this is one of the things that i have been talking to supervisor walton's office about is how people can access and get our information. much of our information is disseminated weekly within the police commission. and all of that information is also available online from the
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police commission websites as well. so weekly the information that i download and give are the number of cases that have income that week, the number of cases closed, up-to-date for the year, the length of time that our investigations has taken, the mediation cases that have come into the office and the number of cases that have been sustained. all of that information can be found at the police commission website as well. monthly i submit regular reports that include a summary of every complaint that has come in, as well as a number of the complaints. that includes a summary of the d.p.a. recommendations, that counter to that from the department, from the police department is under 96.2a. they are obligated to give us the status of sustained cases. we've been having some challenges getting that information back. but it's outlined in a report and i'll get to that on why it's important and what kind of information you get from that
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about our work and what the results of that work is, after people come to our agency and the work that we've done as presented. that information also is found on the police commission website, as well as on our website. the quarterly reports, which is we just had a big presentation about it yesterday to the police commission, because we just revamped how we do all of our quarterly reports. there's a lot of information that's in our quarterly reports. we have always had an obligation to disseminate quarterly reports in past. they were several hundred pages of information. i don't think was particularly helpful of just stats and numbers. the new format of information is now much clearer and much easier to read, with graphs, so a lay person can pick it up and read and see quarterly what's going on with the department of accountability. i just want to mention because we just talked about it earlier, one of the things i think you'll be able to see there is some
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race data, in terms of who is coming into our office and the kind of information and complaints that are being made. [bell dings] i will say, because i just looked at it right before i walked up here, the highest identified race coming into and making complaints with the office are african-americans, at 21%, which is pretty high ratio. 33% of the folks that come in decline to state. but the highest identified folks are african-american. would it be helpful as i'm talking about these things to give you the binders ahead of time, if you want to flip to some of this stuff? >> that would work to me. >> i'm sorry. i just realized that. i'll hand them out to you guys. >> thank you. >> i'll keep going >> that's serious. >> i know. a lot of stuff is online. but the reason that you're getting these big heavy paper documents is because i want people to see what was being presented in the past and what
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it looks like now and how easy it is to read and get all of this information that is all available on the website now. we've really put a lot of work into making sure that our information is transparent and accessible for the public. and i just wanted to show it so you guys could take it back. i know it's a lot of paper to read through. a lot of the stuff that you're getting is summarized in the annual report. so they include like in our quarterly reports, the quarterly report, which measures the dates that casesium in and are completed, so we can track how long it takes us to do our independent investigations. that's really important. unlike a lot of other departments that do this work, d.p.a. is unique in the fact that our investigations are independent from the other agencies. we don't rely on the police department or the sheriff's department to just give us information. we conduct an independent investigation to come up with a lot of our findings with shared
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information. and so the keen report tracks when those reports come in, when the investigations begin and how we're completing that work. the sparks report, another quarterly report, our recommendations from our policies. in the past, there have been voluminous and numerous. we have limited it now to quarterly reports focused on the top four to six top issues. but we've also collected all of that information and made it online, right. so almost any topic that folks are concerned about in the public, they're able to go in and access to see what recommendations the d.p.a. has made in that area, be it body opinion worn cameras, officer-shoveled shootings, researcher pros -- officer-involved shootings. that's all on the website. our e.i.s. reports,
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interintervention services reports. these are all things that are in the quarterly reports. we present them regularly at the police commission. but what i think is most relevant for purposes of this hearing and most relevant for you guys today is the annual report that you guys were previously given. many of the information -- much of the information in the quarterly reports are summarized in the annual report. and so people don't have to try and stay on top of that information, all of the information presented in the quarterly reports and in the weekly reports are summarized in the annual report. so that people can watch the trends and measure and see the numbers about the work that we're doing and how it's being done. i would like -- i would say one of the things that i think is really relevant right now, that since taking over the agency and doing all of this work, focusing on outreach and improving the computer systems.
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we've seen a broad increase in the numbers in terms of people coming to the agency and utilizing the agencies. and while complaints with law enforcement agencies are down in the state and while complaints with law enforcement agencies are down in the nation, they've actually increased here in san francisco. i think that's in large part due to people being aware of the agency, what we do and how we do it, as well as having the outreach and fixing a lot of our technology problems. so now people can make complaints and do things online and that was a real restriction before. our complaints have gone up in the first year. it went up 28% and then it went up another 19% last year. so we're up 52% in the past two years, just in terms of the number of people that are coming to our office and getting information from us. i have the annual report here.
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i don't know if it's helpful for you to walk you through some of the key points there. but all of our numbers are in there, as well as our statistics in terms of what we do, how we do it. but you think it's more helpful, i'm happy just to answer the specific questions that you may have. i mean, i can keep talking. if you have specific things. i know one of the things you wanted to talk about is what happens with complaints and how they come in and what that process looks like. i have got stuff to talk about that as well. whichever direction you guys would like to take. >> supervisor walton: i would love for you to walk through what happens after a complaint. i'm not sure how deep my colleagues want to dive into the report. but i also have questions -- >> i'll bring up my team of experts to join me. and in the meantime i'll hand out an overview that may answer all of those questions. this is what i'm giving them. >> supervisor walton: thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. sarah hawkins, chief of staff for the department of police accountability. thank you for the opportunity
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for d.p.a. to share the work that we've been doing. i have with me sarah our operations manager currently. and we will be talking about what happens when a complaint comes to our office. so a complaint can be generated online, by phone or in person. we always have an intake investigator, who takes those complaints in, interviews the campaignant and then from there the case can take one of two tracks. certain cases are identified at an early stage as potentially viable for mediation. so a case can be screened for mediation or it will go to the investigative track. a third option that i should acknowledge, it could be a referral. so a lot of people will complain about criminal conduct or conduct that involves, for example, sheriff's deputy or a muni inspector. and those cases get referred out. assuming that a case goes into the investigative pipeline, it is assigned to an investigator. that investigator works as part of a team. one of the things that director henderson and i did, when we
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started working at d.p.a., was change the structure so that there's a team approach. so each case is investigated by a team that includes an investigator, a senior investigator and a staff attorney, who analyzes at an early age any potential legal issues, search and seizure or the like. that investigation is completed. the investigation consists of interviewing civilian and officer witnesses, as well as the named officer, whose allegation has been brought against, collecting documentary evidence, anything that is necessary to see what really happened. at the point of conclusion of the investigation, d.p.a. makes a recommended finding, that could be that we recommend sustaining, meaning that we found an officer to have committed misconduct. we recommend a level of discipline, in the department general orders. we men, if it's under ten days
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that we're recommending, that case goes to the chief of police, who either agrees or disagrees with us. we potentially have a meet and confer, potentially the case goes to a chief's hearing. if the officer wants to challenge the imposition of discipline, at which point the staff attorney, who assigned to the case, will make a presentation to a deputy chief and the named officer will have representation. and then the chief ultimately makes a decision. if it's a serious case, where we recommend over ten days of discipline, that also goes to the chief. the chief either agrees or disagrees with us. and then it goes to the police commission. either the chief files the charges or we file the charges with the commission. and then it's litigated in front of the police commission. so that is the short version of the life of a d.p.a. complaint. >> supervisor walton: thank you. and can you share on the 1421. >> of course.
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we just did a presentation on -- we just did a presentation on this last week. so i have that information available also. and i apologize for not introducing these folks. that was my chief of staff sarah hawkins. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is dianea rosenstein. i'm a staff attorney at the department of police accountability. i have a brief presentation or i can give you an oral overview of how we're dealing with the newly enacted law. whatever you prefer. >> it looks really good. just a few slides. >> supervisor walton: i would like to see a few slides. >> thank you. >> we just did a presentation last week. >> so in january, a law went into effect that made many of our previously confidential
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records public. and we have received a number of requests from various agencies, as well as news agencies for pretty much all of our records. unfortunately we have retained all of our records since our inception, which was 1982. and there are several requests. these are the different agencies and news outlets that have requested our records. and there have been several requests that want all records that are disclosable, under this new law, for all officers retired and currently employed. which means that we've got 30,000 plus files to look through, to determine what information is disclosable. we've come up with specific challenges. as my director previously indicated, our data system
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collection was -- i don't want to use -- not good. i will not use the word i want to use. we did not save, categorize and keep track of cases in a matter that would make it easy for us to figure out which cases are disclosable. and i don't think many other agencies did either. because we had no way to predict that great bodily injury, for example, would be an issue or that dishonesty, as specifically defined, would be an issue. so at this point we are tasked with creating a multi-level system to identify the cases that are responsive to these requests. and we have to, by hand, manually review each case to determine whether or not it falls into the rubric of disclosure. so we've dealt with a number of issues that have come up. for example, we have to redact a lot of information. but a lot of information in our
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files is handwritten. a lot of information in our files is not digitized. for example, interviews are still on cassette tapes. so those have to be digitized and reviewed and redacted. >> supervisor walton: is that still the practice? >> no. no, now we have digital recorders. the other issue that we've had to deal with is prioritizing the various requests. because we do have quite a few requests from the public defender's office for cases that are currently active. and for people that are facing trial. so we are trying to do our best. but the bottom line is it really is requiring a person to pick up each file, to read each file, determine whether it falls into the appropriate categories, scanning it. and then redacting it and producing it. and most of our files are a minimum 100 pages, some are like officer-involved shootings are 15,000 pages long.
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so what we have been able to do so far is that we have -- we've identified over 5,000 cases that are potentially disclosable. we've reviewed about almost 2,000 of them. and we had disclosed 18 files so far, mostly officer-involve shooting cases, that were requested by the aclu and the public defender's office. those 18 files are -- were cumulatively over 15,000 pages. we have 36 files that are various stages of production, meaning that they're in the process of being scanned and redacted. that -- i did a quick mathematical equation, which means that each attorney in our office, there's five of us that are doing this, are reviewing about eight files each working day, to determine whether they're disclosable, what we need to disclose and how we're going to disclose it.
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one area that we have completed is the sexual assault review. there are no cases to disclose at this time, in that category. and we've also done a separate -- we've done a multi-level review of the cases. and we have identified at least 244 officers that are currently employed, that have no disclosable records, because they've never had a complaint with our office. so that's great news. going forward we do think that the future is bright for us. now that we have categories that are defined, we can proceed and specifically find evidence necessarily for those categories. we've also had the -- director henderson has created a new case management system, as he alluded to before. this new case management system allows us to identify each case
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to the very end with a drop-down menu as disclosable under the new law. so in the future, the data collection and the ability to identify these cases as disclosable is going to be extremely quick. i understand we also have had some funding for a web portal. i don't know that much about it. our chief of staff can talk about that. and we've also gotten additional funding for staff, that will be hired shortly. so the future is bright. and we are working diligently to get as many records out as possible. we are in partnership with the city attorney's office to help us identify and define the cases that are disclosable, because as some of you, great bodily injury is a little bit of a fluid concept. with that, if you have any questions, i'm happy to answer them. >> supervisor walton: so i do have a few questions.
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in terms of sb-1421, how many outstanding requests are there? and who is waiting for this information? so like public defender's office, citizens, et cetera. >> we've completed in mole 11. there -- whole about 11. there's 16 more outstanding. you have to understand that several are them are for everything that we have. for every officer that's worked for sfpd. we have a collective of news agencies that we have labeled kqed. we have completed for the most part the requests from aclu. we also have a pending request from abc news. several independent freedom-type web organizations, that are expressing to us that they want to remain anonymous. and the public defender's office. the public defender's office has
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several -- has over 30 requests that are individual requests, with various named officers. and then they have what we call an omnibus request, which is a request for all information, disclosable under all categories for all officers currently employed. and we are working with them to help us manage and become more efficient in providing them with information. because up to now, we have received a lot of redundant requests that have caused us to be slightly inefficient. but i think we're working towards identifying a manner in which we can become more efficient. >> supervisor walton: what's your best estimate under the new system in terms of how it would probably take to turn over a request? >> so under the new system, moving forward, it's going to be relatively fast. so cases that have been identified, starting in 2019 as
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potentially disclosable, are going to be take several weeks. the big push is getting up to speed for all the of the cases that were created prior to 2019 and definitely prior to 2017, which is when we had the antiquated system. assuming it's going to take a good year or so before we get up to speed on the cases from the '80s and the '90s. >> supervisor walton: once we're up to speed, a couple of weeks to satisfy a request? >> yes. >> supervisor walton: a couple of days? >> probably a couple of weeks. >> supervisor walton: and then -- so going through the annual report, if we look at -- i'm looking at appendix a, first page which if it was numbered it would be page 27. >> okay. >> supervisor walton: for those recommendations marked as "unknown," how long does it actually take to get a response? and is there protocol that's followed after that? >> so the reason why some of
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those say "unknown" is because we've never received information from the san francisco police department regarding the final outcome. i'm not sure if there's a new protocol in place. i'll letmy chief of staff speak on that. if you have more questions about sb-1421. >> i'm happy to answer that question. the way that we received kind of what i call the loop -- the closing the loop letter was not streamlined previously. so, for example, i mentioned in terms of how a complaint works, that ultimately the chief, after a chief's hearing, makes a decision about what type of discipline to impose. and sometimes we were not notified about what happened next. we have fixed that. so now we should be getting that in a more routine way. it's still not the best fix. we are working with sfpd on a technology memorandum, so that we get this in a more automated,
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shared way. so there's accounting for human error, that will make this more efficient. >> supervisor walton: now when it's unknown, what happens? how do you get the information? >> we get the letter. we do data entry on our side. >> supervisor walton: and then i know currently the police commission is able to make recommendations. how does this work with the sheriff and what kind of report might we expect and when, with the new m.o.u. and the new -- the new m.o.u. that's in place? >> i'll speak a little bit and hand it over to director henderson. so we are just about completed with the grouping of cases that we were referred by the sheriff's department. so we have been focusing our resources on getting those investigations completed. and also hoping to hire new staff to work on those cases, in addition to what we've already had in place. so we should be able to review the cases that we've done and
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report out. i would think the first quarter of next year. >> supervisor walton: and how many referrals of cases have you had from the sheriff's department? >> so the number of cases that the sheriff referred to us was roughly in the 20s. but they grouped their cases differently than we do. so we group our cases by complainant. so let me get you the precise number, because i had our attorney, who is working on the cases, pull it for me this morning. the original spreadsheet from sfsd has 20 cases for assignment. and then for us it turns into 37 cases, one of those cases had 24 complainants. so pretty high number. >> supervisor walton: i saw you step up, director henderson. >> i only stepped up just to correlate it up and we were given a staff of two with the budget process. but that's why it's been such a
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big interruption and such a big process for us, handling this volume and correlating that transition from the number of cases into actual number of cases, right. the number of cases doesn't correlate to the amount of work associated with, for instance, if i tell you, oh, there was an incident that happened yesterday, you just investigate that incident. well, that incident involves 17 people that each one has individual rights that you have to follow and track down. that's just the way that we do it, in order to have independent investigations for these things, where we try to get could be rate -- corroborating evidence. the transition has been difficult, given the limitations from the budget for the staffing needs, for this work. >> supervisor walton: what's your pie in the sky f.t.e.? >> well, doesn't need to be pie in the sky. we can correlate it into what
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the charter mass mandated with the work that we've already done with the police department. if we were doing the exact same thing for the exact types of investigations. i think the budget correlation was 19 or 20. >> so under the city charter, we -- for the san francisco police department work we do, there's suppose to be one investigator per every 150 police officers. and so when we initially scoped out what it would cost, we would want to rebuild the structure that we have with our s fpd work, which means senior investigators and attorneys. and i believe that -- i don't have the precise number, but around 15 to 20, depending upon how many deputy sheriffs are currently employed with the city. >> supervisor walton: that would be if you started receiving that volume of cases. because right now you don't have
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the same volume of cases. >> that is correct. right now the cases come -- >> clerk: please address the panel from the microphone. >> that's right. right now the cases come at the discretion of the sheriff. and they're sent to us. >> supervisor walton: i believe it's time for public comment. >> clerk: any members of the public who want to speak on the item -- i'm sorry. >> did you want to hear the brief overview with the d.o.j. stuff? you told me you wanted to hair a little bit that. >> supervisor walton: yes. definitely. it's relevant right now. >> supervisor walton: yes. >> sorry. wall you're on point. >> thank you. i want to give a little bit of background before i launch into the specifics with the department of police accountability's role with the d.o.j. recommendations. so back in april 2016, after the mario woods officer-involved shooting and the discovery of
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race -- invited the department of justice to come in and do an investigation of the san francisco police department. when trump became president, he pulled resources from that project and there was no written report or product from the work that the federal department had done. so then mayor lee, at the time, asked cal d.o.j. get involved and help. and obviously mayor lee unfortunately passed away. then mayor mark ferrell took it up and worked to get an agreement in place and the m.o.u. where cal d.o.j. would essentially be the oversight body, reviewing the progress being made by sfpd on those recommendations. so they are working with a third-party consultant hillard hines, the same consultant that was used by the federal government to ensure the implementation of these 272
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written recommendations for reform in san francisco police department. what d.p.a.'s role has been is really being involved. there are five areas that were identified by the department of justice and the cal d.o.j. report. and those were use of force, bias, community policing, accountability, and recruitment and hiring. and d.p.a. has a unique role in being involved in working groups that were set up for each of those areas. and then doing policy work related to implementing those recommendations. so the use of force work that we've done is extensive. i'm going to try to really hit the highlights. one part of it was bringing together stakeholders, working with the department and the commission to pass the new use of force policy. highlights include a more restrictive use of force standard than the national standard, that the department
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would use minimal reliance on force. that they would use lethal force as a last resort. it imposed restrictions on shooting at vehicles. it required de-escalation when feasible, created the crisis intervention team, so that officers are trained in crisis intervention when they're dealing with members of the public who are likely to be in crisis. and it prohibited the use of the cart restraints. in the area of bias, the d.p.a. has been an active participant in the bias working group. and a lot of this work is done by our policy director. she's been working in the bias working group to re-draft the department general order, that deals with bias policing. we've also made recommendations that would require written consent for searches. the report found and national studies have shown that consent searches are -- first of all, people of color are searched more than people who aren't.
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the people who are white. and a lot of times asking for written consent is a better national practice. so we've made that recommendation in the context of the bias reform -- sorry. the bias reforms. in the area of community policing, we are working to revise the general order there as well. and then our work in accountability has been revising department general order 2.04, which was passed by the commission recently. and spelled out the department's jurisdiction, the department of police accountability's jurisdiction and investigative authority. it codified the mandate that we investigate all officer-involved shootings. we have the jurisdiction to investigate complaints from government agencies. and that we work with the department to create a quarterly disciplinary review board. so what we're going to do in that disciplinary review board,
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supervisor walton, you pointed out the appendix, which shows what happens with disciplinary recommendations. so this board will meet on a quarterly basis, so that sfpd's internal affairs decision and d.p.a. talk about trends and identified trends and problems in terms of the disciplinary cases that we're seeing. >> supervisor walton: was it hillard and hanson, is there work -- hines. is there work would you say helping you in your role? >> it has started to. so what happened initially in the first phase is that d.p.a. wasn't at the table essentially. and the reason it was cited was that we weren't part of the m.o.u. and so director henderson petitioned chief scott and president hirsch of the commission to get us invited to the table. since then we've been participating in biweekly calls.
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and have been involved much more closely than we were in the first phase. wall -- >> supervisor walton: i find it odd you have to be invited to the table and you're the entity responsible for making sure our officers are held accountable. >> we had that -- >> supervisor walton: a conversation for a different place and time. yeah. it just -- again it goes back to the inequality that exists. and what we're actually trying to accomplish as we try to make changes in law enforcement. director henderson. >> i agree 100%. i echo those sentiments. it was really a challenge that work was being done without us being at the table, specifically as we were reflective of the direct feedback that was coming to the process from the community. the complaints were ongoing. and without having our input or
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collaborative information, it was -- that was frustrating. but we are at least part of the conversations now, if not reflected in the actual work that's being diseasemented. that's done disseminated in a new report that's coming out later on this month. i wanted this as a follow-up -- thank you, sarah, for that presentation. one of the things that she talked about earlier was the bias work. i think that stuff is really important. i will point out, as reflected in the annual report, that you just got, the d.p.a. -- the first bias police sustained case ever in the history of san francisco, which is challengeing that this is where we are, but at least the work is being done right now, in a way that's methodical and thorough. so i hope people do take the time to go through the annual report to see and understand a little bit better about how the work takes place and what's
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being done. one of the other things i wanted to point in there, that's been done for the first time is the analysis of the recommendations from the d.p.a. and the end results in terms of what discipline -- what discipline is tied to the actual cases that come into the department. >> supervisor walton: two questions. one real quick. from the work that the state took over from the federal government, i imagine there were resources, of course, that went to addressing the d.o.j. recommendations. did d.p.a. get any of those resources, after you had to fight your way into the conversation? >> no. no. [laughter] i'm just making sure. no. not one penny. but that -- and while that matters and the budget stuff is important, what's more important is just having that voice of credibility at the table, especially with the role that the agency is playing.
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not just with oversight, but the new audit function that the department is evolving and growing as well. that presentation as well will be presented january -- audit stuff? the first part of the year. >> february. >> supervisor walton: everything should be on record. that's why i want to state that. >> most of the records are in there in the annual report. we have covered a lot of things you've been asking about already. >> supervisor walton: one thing on the appendix i did note, and at the end of this, i want to continue this hearing to the call of the chair, because there's more information needed. i see there was an agreement with basically 81% of sustained findings. but only 36% discipline. so i don't even want you to answer that question. we'll have a deeper conversation later. but that seems like a major