protection ordinance that this board of supervisors put in place, give people more time to pay things back. i think it's going to be an essential tool. good news is, if you look at how many businesses are small with the limited having 49 employees or less, quite a few is not the majority of small businesses. [please stand by]

>> great, thank you. if you can go back to the slide on the amount of money that was put out. it was a little bit misleading. i know it's not intended to be that way. at the end of the day, and you were with me the other day when we walked my commercial corridor. so every single one of the small business owners have said they're absolutely tapped out. they have no intention of taking on anymore loans and some will be faced with the decision of do they try to stay in their lease if the landlord will not negotiate. they will file for bankruptcy and walk away. i am hearing that story over and over again. i think you told me that half of the money that went out, out of the 28 million, half was grant and half was loan. is that correct? >> it's even a little bit less than that. it's closer to 70% loan, 80%

loan, and we now flipped it the other way around. >> okay, so 70%, 80%, so you're talking about $7 million or $8 million in grants and the rest in loans and 24 million going forward. so you done about 8 million in grants and going forward, you want to have another 18 million? >> yeah. >> so then we will have done about 25 -- maybe 25 million in grants? so you have about 15 or 18 coming down the pike. my concern and my biggest concern that i heard, and i want you to respond to this. i know you're a former small business owner and you work in that world. the things i'm hearing over and over again now is they need access. very similar to the way we've done it with our rests --

residential tenants. we have our rent relief program that then has the ability to negotiate with the landlord. all of the stuff you laid out with the negotiation. the landlord knows there is money there but they have to do some forgiveness. they have to do some negotiated forgiveness. what's your reaction to that and your thoughts? after you, i'm going to call up the small business commission and then we'll open it up to public comment. i think we have a few people that want to comment today. >> sure, there is no question that pairing those businesses as they head into the negotiation is helpful, right? they have a grant and they can agree to use it or not use it for the landlord, that's a wonderful negotiating tool. i think the challenger we have

so many businesses with so much background that it's my professional opinion as a locality, there is no amount of money at a local scale that will be big enough to get across the myriad of businesses that have 10, 20, 30, 40, $100,000 in back rent, which is very easy if you look at the average retail rent before the pandemic hit was hanging at $4 a square foot. it's very easy to see even one of these businesses having $100,000 in back rent. when you add -- >> right, i get that. so what i'm saying and i heard the bla say that 80-plus percent

of those are small retail. a lot are in the cafe, bar, entertainment, restaurant. they might not have the luxury of waiting for these federal programs to come down. if we accelerate our ability to get them some cash to negotiate, it may buy them the time they need. again, i said it in my opening remarks, i know colleagues also agree with me on this and you do as well. many of these businesses are what makes san francisco special. they're the backbone of our economy. they employ thousands and thousands of people. i just understand oewd was moving and doing the best they could in the beginning and the money that we put in and $7 million in grants given the circumstances, i don't think it's enough. if you say we have 15 million, that's helping 300 or so

businesses. i understand there may not be enough to get to 400 million and that probably includes every single business out there, but if there were a number there that we could get to that was helping zeroing in the businesses with a smaller gross receipt, i think we have the ability to save thousands of businesses. that's just my opinion, but we can talk about it further. colleagues, do you have any questions for the director before we go to the small business commissioner? anyone? okay. perfect. if you can hang around director, i appreciate you taking the time to put this presentation together on short notice. commissioner laguna? >> i am here supervisor. are you able to hear me? >> do you want to say a few words? do you have something you want to share and then we're going to

public comment. >> absolutely. first of all, it's a delight to see the director and she's a welcome edition to oewd. i'm excited to see her here. i would to thank you for your leadership and supervisor haney as well for pushing for and advocating for small business. you know, i think when i'm out in the community and speaking to community members, what i heard over and over again is i haven't gotten anything from the city. no help, no assistance. in many cases, they will say i applied, i didn't hear back, i followed up, i didn't get anything. you see people sort of sarcastically saying to each other, did you get anything? do you know anybody that got anything? you know, so i do want to echo the director's remarks, which

you acknowledge. the city is limited in exactly how far towards the 400 million they can go. i think to your point supervisor, there are, i think targeted activities that we can do, targeted investments that we can make, that i think we will get a good return on that investment in both saving jobs, which i think should be first and foremost in all our minds for the benefit of the public, the small business community employs nearly half of all private sector workers in san francisco. so this isn't, you know, just a second thought or consideration for our economy. this is a critical lifrnl -- linchpin. this is the fundamental pillar that holds up the entire city. i wanted to add some color to the remarks about our

forthcoming survey, which you know, i heard what the director had to say about how little we know about this fundamental pillar of our economy. we don't know, for example, the demographic make up of business owners. we don't know various different geographic, you know, how many small businesses do we have per district, what is their revenue by ethnicity, revenue by gender. i mean these are sort of interesting and critical data points to know when we're talking about how will we invest city dollars? obviously we want to invest wisely and do it in a way that we're going to get the best return on our dollar. a couple quick data points. i know it's been a long hearing so i'll be brief. no surprise, most of our small businesses are under $1 million.

to the director's point, in annual revenue. there is a substantial cohort that is up to 6 million. i think the clue lies in the second stat. most are sole proprietors. there is a second cohort that is 11 to 25 employees. those are largely restaurants, which makes sense because you need staff to serve customers. most of our small businesses, over 50% have been in business for over 10 years. so this is not a fly by night or if we put money into it, they will be gone next week kind of deal. these are folks that have been around a long time. not surprisingly, most of the economic damage has been in the arts, which has been devastated, personal services, surprisingly one that i don't think is on everybody's radar, it makes

sense when you think about it, real estate. they saw a big decline of people operating apartment buildings and stuff like that. so a big decline in revenue. in terms of permanent closure, that was concentrated heavily in restaurants. we were seeing a lot of permit closures in restaurants. so not surprisingly, given that the cohort of small businesses also employs the most people, we all know this, the biggest hit to unemployment has been in the hospitality sector and it's nearly -- and i believe it's still more than double any other sector both locally and statewide. so, the parts here where we can make a difference, most of the business that responded to our survey has less than two months cash on hand. so, they are hanging on by their fingernails and you know, it's a

sad fact that i have to report this and it's also a sad truth that none of us are going to be surprised. that pain is disproportionately felt among latinx, asian, and black business owners. that's not to say there aren't white business owners who are struggling, but it is more concentrated among minorities and when you look at where the pain is felt geographically, not surprisingly it includes your district supervisor, and it includes bay view, d10 where you see a lot of the intense need. 70% of our respondents across all categories said they need capital. they need access to capital. so, i think that's what is really critical. i know going into the pandemic, there was a lot of open questions about how much money

does the city have? there was talk of a $2 billion budget deficit or i don't remember the exact number. that got turned around a bit and so now we're looking at, you know, an unexpected money coming in thanks to ironically prop 13, i think that's what is driving that. with that money coming in, you're seeing a renewed call from the small business community. you have a whole bunch of money you didn't know you had and where are we? how are we going to get help? are we going to make it? how are we going to nakajo -- navigate off this cliff? some are not going to be able to partake in it. i'm familiar with supervisor

preston's legislation that he introduced to try to make an effort to help with the commercial rent, back rent owed. i certainly appreciate the effort but even looking through the legislation, it looks like it will not be applicable to the restaurant industry because there is a requirement to be closed completely and of course restaurants were never required to be closed completely because they were allowed to continue to provide deliveries an pick ups. so my concern, you know, while i'm certainly hopeful that the effort returns results, my concern is that we still haven't adequately addressed where the need is largest. the restaurant relief fund that the director referred to is certainly fantastic. the people that have been able to get it and avail themselves of it, it looks like it will

make a material difference. as you noted supervisor, the money is gone. it is dried up. so now the fund is over subscribed. i think we know from those of us who have worked in the city, we know that minorities and folks that speak english as a second language, they will disproportionately be in the group that were not able to take advantage of the fund. so, my concern is really sort of concentrated on these outlying districts, not to in any way diminish the scale of need all throughout the city. when you look at the intensity of need, it does seem to have epicenters throughout the city and i think we should give a lot of consideration to investing in

a way that the investments are synergistic. i'll shut up now. >> thank you. no, that's fine. it's really important. you made another point that i think -- i heard over and over again. some of this, if we're able to create a fund that is targeted towards many of the businesses that have been around for some time. helping those businesses helps san francisco. so i really appreciate you hitting that point. >> yeah, i think just to briefly touch on that. there is a missing middle here with businesses that makeover 2 million in revenue, there is nothing out there for them, or very little. >> right, not only that, many of the businesses i talked to and you emphasized not being able to avail themselves of city programs, there are certain requirements, you have to have a certain number of employees.

you have to have x and y and lot of the ones i spoke to just didn't fit into that as well. so, again, i think that -- i appreciate your point. if colleagues don't have anything to add, i can open it up to public comment. >> yeah, real quick. >> supervisor haney, you're back. go ahead. >> with a new painting in the background. >> yes, thank you. >> that's district 6. so i wanted to ask a broad question. it was sort of a theme that one, we have done a lot. we are doing a lot. on the issue of the commercial and the business debt that it's such a huge astronomical number that we are more deferring to

some of the state and federal programs, the federal programs in particular. even that has not been enough. i guess this is sort of both a question for director and commissioner, if we -- let's say we did have a program that was local. if we had a $50 million program, whatever it is. where would we have the biggest impact? also, how might we design something and have we given any thought to something that could be designed that navigated some of the unique challenges and limitations in this space? one of the things we have -- we developed programs now at the federal level, at the state level, and at the local level for residential tenants that forgive some amount of rent.

if they pay a certain amount and will pay most of that and all of that, but is there -- i mean are there things like that, that have been developed that we would want to expand or how far are we along on stuff like that? you know, a landlord forgives half the rent. if we pay the other half. where are we on that type of thing and is it something that we're too late for? is that thing we can put money into if we were to bring it to the table in the near term? >> sure. i'll try to answer that. so the concept for using leveraging money that the tenant avails themselves of in order to negotiate that is a very robust strategy and certainly should be something that i'm hopeful that as folks start to get money from

the new grant programs and just to be clear, when we said the restaurant revitalization program is oversubscribed, most of the money hasn't actually gone out the door yet. so we know lots of different restaurants that have applied and they haven't heard yet. so, i do believe that we are still going to see more money flowing into some of our restaurants than we're aware of right now. i do think that with either a grant or loan, you know, when you end up having someone, a tenant getting a pot of money, whether it was structured as a grant or low interest loan, it absolutely will allow them to have that kind of leverage in a real estate negotiation. i don't mean to overemphasize the importance of getting more resources in terms of experience

mediation and legal into the hands of these negotiations, but when we look at one of the things we did in advance of this and trying to look under every little rock we could, i became very interested in a program that acting director actually identified in philadelphia where they managed to find a way to mandate that mediation had to occur before an eviction could be completed. they removed their own eviction moratorium, commercial and then they had this new sort of forced mediation. i sort of compared it to c coups -- forced couples therapy before you're able to get a divorce. so into the landlord-tenant relationship, so far has

resulted in avoiding about two-thirds of what were going to be evictions. they have been doing this on the commercial and residential side. the problem is that our california state law is so clear around non-interference and the contracts and rights of a landlord to exercise their contracts that we don't have a legal mechanism to have that much of an intervention, but with that said, portland, l.a., we're seeing increasingly other cities that have similar constraints around not being able to literally mandate it, really increasing their investments in those resources and mediation and legal support. when i say legal support, it's not litigation support. it really is an impartial experienced person who probably

has a law degree and has language capacity stepping in to have a cost benefit trade off. the other thing we're hearing is that some of our landlords, they're not even at the table. they have been hiding behind their real estate broker or their attorney, or their families, and you know, they have been actually waiting for the expiration of the commercial eviction controls in order to negotiate. so again, if i had that $50 million, i think the first thing i would do is take some of that and really pour it into getting more and expanding our pro bono legal support, which i don't want to say during the hearing but we have ideas on how to do that. >> so that and supervisor safai is happy to work with you on that as well. i think one of the things we can do and i want to make sure you

have a chance to respond too. if we can make sure like we done with tenants facing eviction, but doing this for the next six months when it's such a critical time. every small business in our city that needs that legal support has access to an attorney to help them renegotiate. we're doing it in different languages and outreach and all of that, that could go a long way. it's not a substitute for some more work we need to do with direct assistance and that kind of thing, but i recognize the leverage in this space is not the same. we have to more rely on maybe the legal support in combination with some more targeted grants that are available to certain folks, to be able to have that on the table as part of a potential negotiation in some way. i don't exactly know how to do it. sorry commissioner, did you want to jump in? >> yeah, i'll be super brief.

so i want to echo what the director said and also sort of flag that there is the lower landlord tenant clinic, which is receiving assistance from the city providing us legal services. there is case, which i think is out of berkeley if i recall. so that's good. just to introduce a new concept here, something that is -- you know, that could be really important and relevant in terms of how we allocate our resources. i've long advocated for something that is an economic impact score. so, the concept is pretty simple. there is obviously a big difference between a business with one employee that is making

$1 million, versus a business with 50 employees that is making $2 million. in the latter case, the business has more revenue, but it is having a much larger impact on a larger group of people in terms of the city economically. so i think, when we issue these grants, we use this single unit of measurement, which is what was your revenue? or how many employees do you have? i think we could probably come up with a more intelligent matrix that would enable us to really get not just a good return on our dollar, but really directly help a larger number of workers and more vulnerable communities for every dollar spent. finally the last thing, you

mentioned what are some ideas that are working, that are out there. you know, an idea i saw, i convened a summit with spur along with -- sorry, i'm blanking on the name. we brought together tenants, we brought together landlords, and we brought together banking. the idea was just to brainstorm. what could we do that would work? every time you try to do anything that touches on real estate, they turn out 500 to 1 and you get ever swa -- swamped. one idea that came out of that, government can't really directly regulate rent or get involved in interfering directly in contracts, it does have a lever available to it via property

tax. so, at least with respect to not the big large commercial landlords, but some of these small family-owned landlords, you know, where you have a property that's been in the same family for a couple generations or you know, maybe one that is owned by one business in the building and it runs into four or five other businesses. there may be an opportunity to do an arbitrage with property taxes. the idea that was proposed, it was by a regional bank in northern california. it was essentially that the city would not necessarily waive the property taxes but they would defer them over a long period like 20 or 30 years. in exchange, the landlord would then likewise defer the back

rent over a similar lengthy period and the idea here is that the landlord gets an up front benefit of not having to pay a large property tax bill and the tenant gets the ability to stay there and stretch this out over a longer period of time. it takes a lot of negotiating effort a you have -- off the table. i don't know how practical that is on the city level because some have state -- >> yeah. so commissioner, at the local level we have little control over the property tax unfortunately. >> fair enough. [please stand by]

and i want toreemphasize that . i know supervisor safai touched on that but the last thing i'll say as we continue to have conversations about commercial rents and how we are also doing everything we can economic recovery around our businesses in the city i think it's important that everybody understands that because we know the mantra of economics and market but the reality

intervention report that our colleagues and i provided to make sure resources are poured back into our economy we wouldn't be able to make this major governmentinterventions that come up with as a collective are important in the recovery of all our businesses . in the recovery of us in san francisco as well >> chair haney: i think it's a good point and we don't have to look that far back in our history to understand the last economic recession with the subprimeloans , central government directly intervened to save every single one of those institutions but it's good. and that was based on decisions that they knowingly made to invest in the subprime market and they still got a lot.

these are businesses in our city past to shut down as a result of the pandemic. many of them tried to stay ope . many struggled to stay open. many of them did everything they could. and at the end of the day, we have to figure out a way to have more as supervisor walton said more direct intervention to help these businesses survive and i can't emphasize enough how important it is to employment the culture make up ourcity and how it will impact us going forward . with that said ... sorry, that was myson . with that said, if we want to open it up unless any other members of the committee at any other questions, we want to open it up to public comment.

there might be just a few people and then we can close. mister jalipa. >> can you open it for public comment please? >> checking to see if there are colors affect you. please press star agreement now to be added to that you. for those alreadyon hold continue to wait until the system indicates you have been on muted . that is your cue to beginyour comments . do we have any callers waiting? >> 4colors in the queue. let's read the first one .

>> caller has been on. >> if you can hear us, begin your comments. >> i will circle back to the caller. next fall. >> this is wine involving, president today is for small business. i want to thank all the leaders in the city have gone above and beyond our small businesses during the pandemic, especially mayor reed who has gotour backs . supervisor, ronen, mandolin stood up even when it's not convenientto do so . bring 1000 has been mentioned which is we were locked in life and death covid against the defendant giant predatory online businesses coming for us

they want to put us out of business and i guarantee you that they are hoping that coronavirus pandemic precipitates that allow them t defeat us . they know that we have a lot of vacancies they know that we have a planning code permitting process that makes it really difficult to open new businesses in san francisco they know there's a small group but in san francisco who successfully stop any reform or any work around making it easier toopen a small business so they even have to compete . they just have to for us to defeat ourselves and they can swing in and take over. we need to do something and something now andthat's why i appreciate supervisor safai bringing this up . we appreciate the notion laws would be passed that would tell us we don't have to pay rent,

but unfortunately we are already seeing landlords pushback on that. we had a borrower say i don't have to pay rent, i'm a landlord. higher lawyer and we will ask the court there's no guarantee you will win in the end which is hard for small business people and based on precedent work out well for them so we need to dosomething about the future small business now . wehave a giant budget surplus and we understand that . c1 we archiving everybody for 2 minutes, next speaker please. >> caller: my name is lori and i executive director of the golden gate restaurant association and i appreciate all the work everybody has done and has been doing. i think we all have basically covered a lot of ground on what

i was going to say but i want to reiterate that any financial relief we can get for our small businesses and in particularare restaurants in san francisco is required . i was briefed today not to contradict the director but from representative blumenauer that he believes all of the rrs funding has been paid out already and tomorrow they will be introducing language to put in another request for 60 billion. we will see what happens in dc but these funds are desperately needed and these are grants which many of you guys have said are definitely the best way to get money into peoples andassuming that you have the funding to do it . many small businesses were given the payroll protection program and they were difficult to access so as we move to our new reopening we knowthat we have a long slog . we've got at least four years to get back to pre-pandemic level and downtown it could be

a lot longer if we see remote work continuing. i'm going to give you numbers from a recent survey of area restaurants a colleague of mine did from aoc consulting where we got numbers back where we saw 20 percent in 2020, 20 percent of our restaurants experienced commercial rent abatement of some sort. average was four months of abatement . 20 percent received the girls and 60 percent received some form of a discount up to 80 percent of the base rent or a hybrid of that but in 2021 which many of us continue to b closed , that was a much smaller number. less then half. >> thank you for your comments. nextspeaker please .

>> caller: i wanted to first begin by thanking sharky laguna for his tireless work promoting these momentary saves to small business but i want to comment on what ben was saying that the key to resolving this crisis and addressing our small business concerns seems to me to be a regulatoryquestion as much as it is a financial one . so while i as a member of the public might appreciate a small token, very useful saving of small businesses that would be found in the releaseassistance packages , the relief i'm more interested in personally are some of our regulatory burdens as we see empty storefronts, we know the regulatory burdens and permitting process are going to obstruct our cities capability to address them but i want

tackle that point that mister lehman made and reiterate one of my own that the nightlife is a substantial question of that we gather people in san francisco and that our economic uniqueness . so building these gathering places can be done andshould be done in more hours than just 9-to-5 day through friday . it always has been and the sf mta schedule as well as other pieces and prohibiting people from gathering in parks is detrimental to the city overall and if we prevent them gathering in parks and especially at night we had an economic boom associated with it and that's in style right now so i want to thank ben whitman sharkey for their tireless work and hope that the city looks forward to opening in this space. thank you.

>> next speaker please. >> you have been onmuted . thank you. >> there are no more callers in thequeue . >> great. supervisor safai. >> supervisor safai: i know it'sbeen a long day and i'll be real quick . iq director of injuries he had making room on this committee . it's my will that i'll continue to work with after what we've heard today through the small

business commissioners and mall business entertainment representatives and others and all of the hundreds of small businesses that i've spoken to overthe last month, year. i think we're at a crisis point . when this commercial kitchen moratorium and most likely will end in the next threeweeks , we're going to be faced with many businesses having to make difficult choices .i think that if there is a way for us to create and it sounds like the sweet spot is businesses withgross receipts between 1 million , maybe five or $6 million direct intervention program that can help them change the balance of negotiations to stay in their commercial rents. if there's a way we can directly intervene on top of what we already are doing, i appreciate director sofus saying they're going to shift

the remaining dollars. we have a plan to get there using mediation and the tools that we have but we need to step up our efforts becausewere a while , until maybe the end of this month we haven't really had the threat of massive evictions but we will and we will extend that in many ways. but many businesses are faced with really difficult choices so i'm hopeful that we can do something in this upcoming budget. i'm hopeful that we can circle back with the mayor and her team at all of your colleagues to have something that would be direct and targeted towards the small businesses and i appreciate director sofus being on the job for maybe three weeks, two weeks and already beginning hitting the ground running.thank you again chair haney and hopefully we can have something that will help many of these small businesses and their employees survive and

thrive as we reopen our economies . >> chair haney: i want to thank everyone for being here and there presentations, and you share safai for your leadership and you have my commitment to work with you on this budget process and i apologize for beingoff-camera. my computer has been on so long today that it overheated so i'm on my phone . before we vote i will need to excuse supervisor ronen from this boat. should we take a vote on that first?i want to make a motion to excusesupervisor ronen from this boat. is there a second ? seconded by supervisor safai. >> on the motion offered by chair haney to excuse

supervisor ronenfor the duration of the meeting , vice chair safai. [roll call vote] >> you have 4 aye's. >> chair haney: i want to make amotion to file this hearing . seconded by supervisor safai. call for a voteplease . >> on the motion offered by chair haney to file this hearing, vice chair safai. [roll call vote] you have 4

aye's. >> chair haney: this hearing will be filed and are there any more items in front ofus ? >> we have no further business mister chair. >> chair haney: thank you everyone. really took this

program under her wing and pushed this program to the place where it is, and i think you're seeing the fruits of all that labor and continuing work in our decrease of use of force, and just in a better way, not only as people but tactically how we deal with individuals. the second is sergeant kelley kruger. for those of you that didn't

get a chance to meet kelley or deal with kelley, she had a nursing background dealing with psychiatry and mental health issues, so she brought that great background and professionalism to this job, and she's also lucky enough to be moving and and hopefully enjoying a retirement. kelley really focused her energy on some of the hardest places that the police and neighborhoods had to deal with and getting those people the help with our city partners, and getting those people into either facilities or getting treated to get the help they need.

i am lucky enough to work with c.i.t., and sergeant molina will be presenting the 2020 report on end of year report. >> thank you for having me today. this is kind of my favorite time of the year to come before you, the wonderful working accident work that our officers do every day in the streets of san francisco. what is the purpose of c.i.t.? well, the purpose of c.i.t. is to safeguard lives, dignity, and liberty for all of those people who live, work, and be in san francisco every day. how do we accomplish this? we accomplish this by building rapport with our communities [inaudible] takes pride in providing the highest level of service to all the communities,

especially those individuals that are diagnosed with mental health issues and other disabilities, like substance use and other disabilities. [inaudible] we truly believe that incarceration is not the answer, especially when people are suffering from mental illness, and due to that behavior or because of the illness, they engage in some justice related crimes that are minor, so we do everything we can in the c.i.t. unit to divert those individuals to treatment whenever it's possible. next slide. so the c.i.t. is composed of four components, and i will ask, as the presentation moves forward, i will discuss each of

them. it's training, field unit, [inaudible] program, and the working group. so training, and i want to take a minute to thank you, commissioners, whoever was back here in 2011 for pushing this forward. you passed resolution 1118 that mandated the san francisco police department to start this training. it was your efforts -- i think the president at the time was angela chan, president chan, who took this under her wing, and sarah, sarah from d.p.a., who were some of the force behind this program, and now we can see the fruits of their work in requiring the department to conduct this training and allow the officers to be exposed to all of the wonderful things that we have in the c.i.t. program and learn more about what it is to be

suffering from mental illness and to be suffering from different types of illnesses on the streets. i just want to thank you for doing that. let me tell you about the training. we had two components in the training. we had the 40 hour crisis training program and the ten-hour [inaudible]. i just want to remind the commissioners that the best practice across the united states is 20%. most departments are only required to train 20%. the san francisco police department made a commitment under the leadership of greg sur, in 2016, to train the entire department. as of right now, we have made a lot of progress on that. as i say, last year, it was a

challenging year because of covid, so we were able to do only three training sessions before covid hit, and we were in shelter in place. however, 2021 is looking good. as commander walsh said, we have scheduled 20 sessions for this year, and so far, we have done six, and number seven will be done by tomorrow evening, so we're moving forward, and we're very hopeful that we will accomplish this goal of training. we'll have 20 training sessions for this year. and as you can see, our rank-and-file has continued to train. i have a commander in the class right now, and captain nicolle jones from ingleside, and i have different command staff scheduled to take the training for the rest of the year, so we're moving forward training the officers, but we're also training our command staff.

next slide. partnership with the department of public health. back in 2016, late mayor ed lee asked the department of public health to create a deputy that would assist people in crisis. they created crisis intervention specialists. there's a group, i think right now we have four of them, that will respond with the police on special requests to people barricaded inside their home or any time of mental health issues, health concerns, and they will assist in providing the police department with health support, and i'm able to call them on the police department, and they're able to call us when they need us out in the field. so it's a very good program.

we have a strong partnership with them. in 2018, we went to 25 people barricaded crisis calls. in 2019, we went to 28. in 2020, we went to 78, so the calls for service doubled. when everybody was sheltering in place, obviously, the san francisco police department still responded to people in crisis calls for service, and we reached out to our partners in d.p.h., and they would respond because they were also following some guidelines, and some of them actually responded from home in the middle of the night, so i just wanted to give them a shoutout because of all

the work done by the san francisco police department. so the c.i.t. liaison program, this program was listed in our department general order 521 -- 5.21 that requires for the police department to create a c.i.t. liaison program. basically, what this is, we have a sergeant who's a police officer and a supervisor assigned to each district in the city, and they will be handling all the low and medium priority calls and crisis calls, and they're not able to handle those situations, they will kick that up to our community. but the main users are mental health crisis users, and they will contact the department of public health when they need

it, and if they're not able to handle the situation, they will go up the chain, and they will contact a crisis unit for support. next slide. i cannot say enough about the crisis working group. the commission created this back in 2011, and i think they have some veterans there. they've been there now 11 years, and they are the force behind this program. civilians, obviously, had a great commitment. we have the public defender's office, we have d.p.a., we have nami, suicide prevention, we have the mayor's office on disability. we have suicide crisis counselors that are committing their time. hopefully we'll be able to continue that work.

the main thing is the officers getting the training that they need. we revised the curriculum. all the classes required in this program are reviewed by the c.i.t. working group. we meet on the third wednesday of the month, from 10:00 a.m. to noon. commissioners, we would love to see you. if you could see the program, you would see the progress the department is making. and also, you're in the civilian part of it, because also, there's people that have lived experience that attend these groups, and they talk about whether it was a good encounter or bad encounter with the police. we always improve on this, but i just want to thank the civilian group. i know that some of them are watching, probably listening to it, and i can tell them that

newspaper of this work can -- none of this work can happen without them. 2020, i think this is a year that we're all going to remember. i think one of the biggest issues that we saw in the streets was wearing the masks, especially when we were responding to people in crisis calls because we're not able to communicate and see the body language, see the facial reactions when you're dealing with somebody in a crisis, which is very important for us when we would train in crisis response, right, we learn how to deal with body language, and with wearing a masks, you can't see that. another big one was responding to people's homes because there was certain procedures in place where dispatch would have to call that individual and make sure they asked them certain questions. you know, are you sick?

have you been having the sick symptoms before we enter the house and assist the family in crisis. so we all lived the same experiences, and 2020 was a challenging year for all of us. in 2019, 25, and in 2020, we had 78 crisis calls that required the -- our host initiation team to come back out and resolve in getting a safer solution for somebody who was in a behavioral health crisis. so it was a very demanding year. there was a couple of weeks that it was every day, when we were going out with our hostage negotiating team to negotiate with someone in crisis, someone inside their homes. next slide. and calls for service.

in 2020, police officers responded to 16,451 calls and 800 disturbed persons. they responded to 3,695 persons attempting suicide, 5150 mental health detentions, i just want to clarify, some people get this confused because they see the 5150, they think that those are the people that we conduct to men -- commit to mental health detentions. those, those are radio calls. when it goes out to our police unit, it is described as a 5150 call. that doesn't mean that the person -- we only had 457 mental health detentions. i just wanted to clarify that, that we actually had 2,308

calls, but i will get into that as we move forward. 800-cr, we responded to 98 of those. usually, in past years, we had 33, 34. in 2020, we responded to 98 of those, were people were in a mental health crisis, substance use crisis, and were in possession of weapons. crisis response, we went to 37 of those, and when dispatch lists this out, c.r. is crisis response, and it's [inaudible] if the person is not hurting themselves, not hurting anyone else, and the officers creating time and distance, when they respond to these calls, they get response where they need to be, and they respond as a team.

that's the meaning for the c.i. behind these calls. in total, we had 20,950 calls last year. now total calls, we went to 28,968, with a total of 45,978 calls, so this is very much the same category from the year before. i think the year before, we responded to about 50,000. so we're still having a heavy lift when it comes to crisis calls. out of the 49,578 calls that were responded, we have 2,808 mental health detentions. as you can see the breakdown, the racial breakdown, out of

those 49,578 mental health related calls, we only used force in 51 incidents. what does that mean? that means that 999% of the calls we went on, force was not used. 999% of the calls we went to, force was not used, so that's 0.01% of all the crisis calls that we went to, and you can see the original breakdown. next slide. mental health calls for services. so how the force was used in those 51 incidents. so out of those 49,578 calls,

eight uses of force were a result of checking on the well-being calls. those are the 910s. 23 resulted from the 5350 calls, radio calls. 19 results from the 800 calls, and one of those, of course, was a suicidal person. a total of 51 incidents. and during those 51 incidents, 71 types of force were used. so every time that an officer used force, it might be one or two officers. so on those 51 incidents, 71 different types of force was used, different levels. once again, out of those 49,578, and 51 incidents the use of force, we used force that was used was physical control, 28. pointing of firearm was 12, and that's significant. and the reason why it's

significant because as you commissioners know, whenever you're an officer in san francisco display a point [inaudible] less lethal bean bag shotgun, by policy, we're required to provide lethal cover. so as you can see, as you go down the ledger here, we have six of those incidents where the officers displayed an e.r.w., which is less lethal force. so when you look at the use of force pointing firearms in crisis calls, it was only six because the other six were required by policy to have their weapons out. [inaudible] six were others, and that can be from anything

from an officer using their elbow or they knee in trying to restrain someone, and an instrument can be a baton. we had 26 officers complaint of injury, complaining of pain. so if you do that math, 48, and that adds up to the 51 incidents, because incidents also involve people that are involved in separate or differing incidents through that year or one-year reporting period. we had two individuals that were involved in two incidents during the year that force was used, so that becomes a unique person. we only had 48 people unique

involved in second of force, but we had two people involved in second use of force in that same reporting period, and then, we had one individual that did not complain of pain, did not say anything, so that made the 51 incidents. hopefully i made that clear, but i can elaborate later on. some of the weapons that were used, two blunt weapons, nievs, and -- knives, and other things. next slide. and this is the current trend, so this is what i was talking about at the beginning that i'm

so proud of the men and women in san francisco for this department. as you can see, the trends that we have engaged since 2014. in 2014, we were averaging 4,636 mental health detentions a year. if you can see the down trend how, as we progressed, our numbers are going down so much that in 2020, our mental health detentions had gone down to 2,208. that's a difference of over 1900 in that period of time. this is a result of training that we're doing for our officers and also connecting people to services in our communities. and the use of force, also, as you can see, in 2018, we had 113 uses of force. in 2019, 65. 2020, 51, and so finally here, we have 18, so we're in the

middle of the year, and i don't want to jinx myself here, but i'm hoping that will stay the same trend, and we'll have less than 51 to report to you next year. and once again, i would like to point the fact that force was no used in 99.9% of the calls for service that we went to. next slides. i think that's it. i'm sorry i went a little fast, but i know we're limited with time, but i'd love to entertain any questions, and i think that commander walsh and i will answer questions if you have any. >> vice president elias: thank you, lieutenant. i am obviously a big fan of this program, and i have been privy to some of the meetings earlier on, and i have to say i'm really impressed with the trainings and the working group that you have led and created, so thank you for all of your effort. i have a few questions, but before i begin, i want to give

my colleagues an opportunity to ask any questions they may have, or comments. i don't see anyone's name in the chat. >> if i may, vice president elias? >> vice president elias: sure. >> just to piggyback on the statement that you made. i've going on presenting to the commission three years, and these are tangible change that's we can see. big kudos to the work that you've been doing. let's continue to keep it up and make sure we get to that 100% mark for all of our officers and to continue to utilize this as, again, a model for training that yields tangible results to the department, and i'll yield my

time back to commissioner elias. >> thank you, commissioner brookter. >> vice president elias: i also wanted to commend you on the report that you had, as well as the presentation. it's one of the better reports that sfpd has, and i'm sure that people will tell you that i go through reports a lot, and very critical of the department's reports often, so -- but on page 16 of your report, you indicate that -- or there's an indication that san francisco is one of the worst cities in the state for post detention follow up treatment. based on your stakeholder discussions, and the working groups that you had and the outreach you've done in the community, what can be done to change this? >> we need training facilities, commissioner. if we can advocate for treatment, we have so many programs right now responding to acute crisis, but we have no places to take them.

i know that ucsf is building -- yeah, is building up a -- they're going to have a building here in china basin that's going to be geared towards mental health, but that's ucsf. we need something from the city. i know that mental health s.f. is working on that, and i have talked to supervisor ronen on separate occasions about all the programs that she's involved with and some other communities issues that had come out in this district that she's assigned to, and also, i want to commend her for doing what she's doing. i think we need more accountability. you guys are the guys that keep us in check. we have you, we have the state, we have local ordinance, we have d.p.a., we have all these people -- we have civilian groups, so we have to answer to

a lot of people, and sometimes we need that from other agencies, too. we need to find answers to how we can improve services in the city, especially providing training facilities. it's huge. we average about eight to nine mental health detentions a day, and sometimes these people just walk out of the same facilities within hours, and we need to stop that. we need to provide services. this is vulnerable populations. this is people in need of treatment, and basically, it's just a revolving door. as you can see on the page that i just described, commissioner, i made two examples of that. through the years, these are two individuals. these are two human beings, and they have been 5150 45 times. one has been 5150 45 times in

2016, and the other one has been 5150 43 times in 2016, and we're still dealing with those individuals. it's something that our officers do every day. we take them to facilities, hoping that they'll get treatment. san francisco was listed as one of the three worst cities in california for mental health, and that's the state auditor who said that. and that's the reality. that's the reality that we living with in san francisco, so i think that we need to find treatment. we have to have treatment for substance use disorders and mental health illness, and they go together. a lot of our residents here in san francisco that suffer from mental illness are also using

drugs, and they're self-medicating. they're self-medicating and also having organic mental health issues. but thank you for having me. i think we need to ask that question. >> no, i know it's important. i know that oftentimes, people who suffer from mental health often suffer from addiction to try and self-medicate, which, you know, most people -- some people don't understand, you know, the medication given to mental health patient oftentimes doesn't help or treat the issues, so the people who suffer have to find, you know, other alternatives. >> we spend hours -- commissioners, sometimes we spend seven hours dealing with someone who's high on methamphetamine or suffering from an organic mental health issues, and we know that the

drugs make it worth. that's what i want to commend our officers for creating the time and distance and spending that time before resorting to any use of force. >> vice president elias: my second question is a two-part question. i know we had made progress, but we're still behind on getting all of our officers training on the 40-hour course. i know the scheduling and all of that, but if you could give maybe a brief update on where we are on that and how do we get all of the officers trained in the 40-hour course. and then, my second question is, on page 13 of your presentation, we see a decline in the use of force over the years when it comes to mental health-related incidents, and i was hoping you can briefly explain how an officer's thought process differs when considering use of force when the officer has engaged in the

40-hour c.i.t. training versus not having engaged or been involved in the c.i.t. training when it comes to these kinds of situations. >> so can i come back to the first question? >> vice president elias: yeah, sure. >> and i'm sorry. i wasn't listening to your last question -- oh, it was how long -- >> >> vice president elias: yeah. how long is it taking to train -- >> yeah. we need money, because obviously, we had the cream of the crop when it comes to instructors, but also, we have to pay them right, but we have to have a budget for that, so that would be my first act. it takes about $4,000 to have every session, and because of covid, we now have migrated to virtual training, so we're able to do three days in one day

on-line in-person training. the in-person training is necessary because we put the officers under scenarios. whatever they learn in three days, they have to practice on the fourth day, so that's work. it's working for us, and it's giving us the flexibility of having 2020 trainings, and i want to give a shoutout to my officers -- [inaudible] >> -- and there's so many that come and help out, but because of their efforts, this training is happening. as you know, we're losing officers, too, so our numbers go up, and then, they go down because people are retiring or they're moving onto other things. so this year, we're making up from last year. so last year, we're only able to have i think three sessions, but this year, we had 20.

so if we can get 25 officers in each training, obviously, that would be a big push for that. so far, we have accomplished that. so far, the officer has trained 1,303 officers, and as of tomorrow, we will have even more. tomorrow, we finish another one of the trainings, and we would love to see you. honestly, just pop into the classes and see what training they're receiving because the training is so important, going back to your second question, because we learn about -- so not about mental health -- so much about mental health illness, suicide -- substance use disorders, suicide by cop.

our officers are being trained on how to look for alternatives to hospitals, right? because like i said, a hospital and jail should be the last resource, which i'm a true believer in the community healing process, and we make referrals to the [inaudible] clinic in san francisco. also with the department of public health. we call up and see if there's any possibility for them to go to hummingbird, which is another facility associated with san francisco general. we're diverting our residents to something else besides an emergency room or jail. >> vice president elias: great.

thank you, again, lieutenant molina. i think commissioner yee has some comments or questions there for you? >> commissioner yee: thank you there, madam vice chair. i just wanted to commend c.i.t. ng for all the hard work. i know it's a very important part of the rounding out our services to our -- back to the community and making sure that these people that come through the system, and i'm hoping that the department of public health and mental health do step in and provide this service to our community that is surely needed. my question to lieutenant mario molina is how many more teams to -- i guess do we need to have to address these mental health -- because i guess once the city opens back up on june 15, i believe, there will be

many, many challenges for us in the san francisco police department, and it's just, like, right now, it's in. i -- i'm hoping i'm wrong; that once june 15 pops open, we will be facing many -- we won't be facing many of these challenges that will come out where people will challenge us in the police department. so i just want to see what your perspective is once june 15 does open. >> thank you, commissioner, for your question. basically, nothing changes. we still respond to crisis calls even during the pandemic. as you can see from the 2019 report, we went to 50,000 calls in this year, and in 2020, we went to 49,578, so the calls for service is basically staying the same.

there's -- here's patrol, so we have all of our officers coming to the training, so they are our eyes and ears. the annual report was 44 pages of work, but we wanted to make sure that the department, the commission, and the city of san francisco understand the process of crisis response, and that's why it took us that long, and also, it's very detailed on how crisis happens and how force was used by officers because one has to understand. a lot of people think that the escalation is something that we just do, and people just deescalate with us, but it's not. deescalation is a process. we offer it, and the people receives it that are able to do it, then it's a successful encounter. so to answer your question,

it's -- i'm hoping, i'm hoping that we're still the same as 2019, 50,000, in 2020, 49,000, and hopefully, that will decrease. so far, i see the same trend. i see the same trend in calls for service. at 8:00 a.m., commuters are coming into the city, until midnight. those are the busiest times for our officers for mental health, crisis calls for service. and you also have the days of the week. as you can see in my report, they're pretty much even. it's just seven days a week, the same trend. the only time that it slows down is a little bit after midnight until about 6:00 in the morning. so we'll continue doing the training, commissioner, and hopefully the commission and the city will back up the san francisco police department when they need to have these

things out and respond to the calls for service. >> commissioner yee: thank you, again, lieutenant mario molina, and your team, and i wish everybody the best going forward and once the city opens up. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. >> vice president elias: thank you, lieutenant molina, and your team. it was a great report. seeing no other comments or in the queue, sergeant, can we do public comment on this? >> clerk: yes, ma'am. members of the public that would like to make public comment on-line item 3, the public comment on the c.i.t., please press star, three now. good evening, caller. you have two minutes. >> so commissioners, i've heard two lengthy presentations by the department of public

health, and was wondering, where was the police presentation? now if you study what the police do, they shouldn't be having a greater measure or portion of their work involved with the crisis intervention team. and i say this because the san francisco public health has to strengthen their behavioral department. and i have a woman that they hired from new york, and it's going to take about ten years maybe to figure out what's happening in san francisco, just like it's taken us about 30 years to figure out after what president reagan did.

the bottom line is these mental challenges that we have on the street is compromising our quality of life issues, and i admire what the crisis intervention team does, much as i admired the work done earlier by people like angela chan and some others. i've been monitoring this for 35 years, but this is not about putting each other's backs on reports or something. this is about finding out adversely impacted innocent people on the streets of san francisco on our transportation system and in our neighborhoods, and that burden should be put on the san francisco health department. thank you very much. >> clerk: thank you, caller. vice president elias, that is

the end of public comment. >> vice president elias: great. thank you, sergeant. please call the next line item. >> clerk: line item 4, presentation by john alden, executive director, oakland's community police review agency. discussion item. [please stand by]

director henderson is doing here in san francisco. one of the things i find especially interesting about the oakland model, it has changed tremendously in the past few years. a few years back, there was a ballot measure that significantly rewrote the powers of what was in a complaint review board that had fairly modest jurisdiction and altered the powers of the police commission in a way much more similar to the powers this commission has. since then we have been working on a variety of policy ideas and your commission president, president cohen asked me to come by and talk about a few of

those. i made materials on two specific policies you would find of interest. it is my understanding that sergeant youngblood is going to share the power point. we'll go to the next slide please. here's an overview, i would like to tell you how we create policy in the city of oakland and the role that the police commission has there. there are a lot of similarities but interesting differences you might find useful. i would like to talk about our probation and parole policy, which i think is a groundbreaking policy nationwide and one i think is of particular interest to folks in san francisco and a new policy we're working on now called the armed and unresponsive person's policy that has to do with how police

react and address situations in which people are found asleep or unconscious with a weapon near them. and we have a variety of other policy projects we're working on as well and would be happy to answer questions if you have specific ones. next slide please. our authority comes mostly from the city charter. it could be expanded or changed in the future by ordinance but in 2016 and 2020 we had the key policy developments and as a result of those, the oakland police commission can initiate the creation of a new policy by suggesting it themselves and creating it for the police department and also approve -- it must approve a certain set of specific policy changes that the police department may make,

particularly use of force, racial profiling. in the city of oakland we have for a long time been subject to a negotiating agreement as a result of a civil suit brought by a plaintiff quite a few years ago that our police practices are under the super vision of a federal judge. many of the changes we make in the city of oakland ultimately have to be approved by a monitor in that case. obviously you don't have that here in san francisco. those policies subject to the negotiated settlement agreement are policies that can be altered and changed with the permission of the federal monitor and ultimately the federal judge. one thing i think is interesting about our process, our charter requires that the commission act upon any police department proposed changes to policy within 120 days. at least in my experience when i

was working in san francisco there wasn't such a deadline at the time. perhaps you have created one since. i find that deadline pushes everyone involved to proactively work on policy. it prevents policy from getting back burned because other more seemingly urgent things tend to come up on a day-to-day basis. it pushes all the interest groups involved to come to the table also. there's no advantage obtained by waiting or saying you are unavailable or not showing up at a meeting. these policies have to move pretty quickly and i think that really forces people to have a robust, thoughtful conversation earlier than they might otherwise. in our system, they can be submitted to the city council and if there's in fact significant dispute between the police department and the police commission, the city council ends up resolving the dispute,

that has been rare to the best of my knowledge. there's no policies where the city council had to resolve those differences of opinion. although on occasion they have provided some advice to the department and the commission to go back and resolve differences they had proactively without coming to council. next slide please.

we'll have not a sworn member of the police department and not someone who works at our agency but rather than independent chief of staff to the commission who helps the commission organize strategic plans about how they're going to prioritize different policies over the course of a year. and other projects. we envision this process rolling out more staff with time and we like that this position is going to have independence from the police department and oversight agency that the commission supervises. that is slated to start this summer and will be a key part of the development process moving

forward. we're also going to have an inspector general's office to research policy and audit policy compliance at the police department. i know that pursuant to some charter language in san francisco, your dpa has been doing audits like that for the controller's office. in this model we have a separate agency doing only that with full time staff members that do only that opposed to controller staff or dpa staff. in addition to research in policy and helping the commission draft new policy and checking whether the police department complies with the policy, the inspector general is going to provide assistance to the police commission in assessing the police department budget when it goes through the cycle. our police commissions are required to provide feedback to the city council in developing the budget every budget cycle and so we're going to have full

time dedicated staff for that purpose moving forward. next slide please. we make sure we have a set of public members, commissioners and set of folks in an ad hoc working group. this is not a regular standing committee. it's a one time group that may work on one policy for a relatively short period of time. for that reason, the groups have flexibility if their meetings are public or not public. we have tried both public meetings and meetings that are not public, with these groups, i would say there are pros and

cons to both approaches. i do think some people, including some members of the public who might participate tend to be more candid in meetings not open to the public but there's an important aspect of public transparency in the process. we have tried a couple of models in this regard and will continue to try several more to see how we want to strike the balance between candid conversation and making sure there's enough public access to the process. regardless of how public or closed that process might have been, we always make sure the final process comes back to the police commissioner for public hearing. and we have in addition to that, the hurdle of making sure the policy changes are approved by the federal monitor and other stakeholders. we make sure those are done before they come to the commission so the final process is at the commission. sometimes they trigger a confer

process afterwards. next slide please. one policy i think is especially remarkable, not long ago in the city of oakland as we have continued to have a conversation about race and equity in policing, many in the community and particularly in the black community in oakland expressed a concern there are many aspects of opd enforcement practices in the field that were racially bias. we have engaged dr. jennifer eberhart to work with us on rooting out ways there might be racial policing in the city of oakland. she did a groundbreaking study in the language police officers use in the course of traffic and

pedestrian stops that showed a significant disparity between the way officers spoke to black residents in oakland and white residents in oakland in ways that created measurable differences in the formty and respect used and using that material, we have been able to substantially change the way that officers conduct themselves during enforcement stops. during the course of the work, one of the things we realized in the city of oakland was that we had been using a practice i think most law enforcement agencies have been using a long time. when officers would make a stop that was otherwise lawful, they would as a matter of course, most of the time ask the person they stopped if that person was on probation or parole and if they were, whether they had a search clause, meaning as a condition of probation or parole could be searched at any time and they would conduct the search. even if they didn't have a

specific reason why they thought that individual would have contraband or evidence of a crime. it was a standard practice. so anyone on probation and parole would find themselves being searched with great frequency. pretty much any time they got stopped for a traffic ticket for example. we also found the searchs had extremely low return on evidence of a crime. it was very rare they showed the person searched had conducted any kind of criminal activity or had contraband on their person. as we were thinking about this, we realized that this practice was deeply unpopular with the public and really undermined the relationship with the community in general. it created the impression that opd officers were searching for the purpose of searching. this was demoralizing to a lot

of people and as i think you might expect, we found in oakland the population of folks on probation and parole and subject to this issue were disproportionately people of color, particularly black folk. on top of that, we realized that just asking the question can come across as quite demeaning. we were concerned that just as there had been a pattern of language used with folks who were black when they were stopped by officers for other things, using this language would only further make worse the perception of racial bias in the relationship with the community and frankly is just, i think, something that makes a person feel they are not being treated fairly. just even being asked. so it was clear we needed to change this practice in a dramatic way. so we have created a new policy

that prohibits officers from asking about probation or parole status as a general rule unless they have a specific reason why.

the frequency of searchs yielding evidence of a crime have gone up. instead of searching everyone, oakland officers are only asking the question when they have specific intelligence about that individual. not only do we think it's improving community relations but an important step to treat the community justly but it is making officers more efficient and locating crime more quickly. i'm looking forward to a formal study about the numbers. i'm hoping our office will be able to do that in the near future. so far, the numbers are a fairly short period of time. but we're looking forward to seeing if we can actually demonstrate through data that

this policy has been successful. before i move on to the next policy, if it's appropriate for the commission, i would be happy to answer questions about this one if there are any or if it's the pleasure of the commission, i'd be happy to go on. >> president cohen: i think given the time requirements for the presentation, it's best to power through. >> the next policy was inspired or became clear it was important to work on it because of the deaths of two oakland residents. in both cases these men were found unconscious, unresponsive

and contacted by police officers. in both cases they were awoken suddenly by police officers and in the course of being startled, officers at the scene thought they might be reaching for a weapon and shot them. and both died at the scene. we concluded there has to be a better way to handle the incidents. together with the community and oakland police department over the past year, we created new policy in this regard. we spent a lot of time looking at the details of both of these shootings to see what we could learn from them. this link would take you to some of the materials for the work in more depth. some of the policy changes that we introduced as a result,

requiring officers to create time and distance of course as we now do as part of deescalation and to communicate with neighbors in the area once the scene is secured to learn about the particular individual. we're starting to create specialized teams that have the ability to respond better to these scenes, that includes a cit kind of response and making sure we have some officers who are behind full cover and armed in case there is shooting. but making sure they are well trained to be patient and take their time and those officers are fairly few in number. some issues there are too many armed officers who weren't sure what their role was and making sure there are designated teams to do the arrests and other teams in full cover if needed.

and making sure the supervisors were not making the arrests and had legal cover, we found its best so the supervisors had the ability to watch the scene and give instructions and we want the supervisor to be the only one issuing instructions to the person inside the vehicle or someone designated by the supervisor. so we don't have multiple officers with conflicting instructions. we also came up with specific techniques to wake them.

next slide please. so far this policy has just been completed in january 2021. it is technically still being rolled out to staff. but the principles behind it are ones that anyone could choose to adopt even if not required to adopt them. the fact that that started to become part of the culture in oakland has helped in at least one case. we do have a case from just a couple months ago in which officers started implementing the procedures with a man found asleep in the car with a gun next to him. not only were they able to secure the scene and make sure the community was safe and take the time to figure out how to wake the person. in the course of the process,

community members there recognized this man, knew who his family was and contacted eventually through a local activist group were really successful in reaching the chief of police and getting this individual's mother to the scene and she was part of the solution. we think it's the first policy of its kind in the country and we're eager to see how it performs as we roll it out over the next few years. next slide. some other policy projects i would be happy to talk about on another occasion, our k-9

policy. we're talking about if we want the unit to have the dogs actually bite or just merely bark among other issues. and putting together a bystander policy. we are dramatically changing the use of force in the near future, including the inspector general at all of the force boards. that's the proposal. we'll see how it goes. and we're beginning to have conversations about changing our racial profiling policy and it will be i think especially valuable to have a community based conversation about that issue. those are the things we'll work on in the future. i'm happy to answer questions. >> president cohen: thank you for the presentation. i see director henderson is in the chat, so i will begin with

him and then i have some questions and i think my fellow commissioners may have. director henderson? >> i really love the yield rate stuff. i presume -- do you have statistics on the yield rate being low when it was just subjective versus the change or higher for targeted searchs. >> i don't have that with me. i have asked some of the folks at opd to generate a new set for me. i would be happy to get it to you. >> and i heard you talk about trying to get a focused study on that. i would be really curious. i feel that would be super helpful for us to watch as well. i would love to follow up on that. and you were talking about the force boards, i presume those

are the group discussions addressing use of force that gets reviewed by an audience and inviting specific targeted agencies to sit at the conversation? >> yes, that's right. we have two kinds, a more robust for level one uses of force, anything that results in a fatality or significant bodily injury and another one that tends to move faster for lower levels of force. those exist now. we're expanding the way other agencies, particularly our oversight agencies are involved in the boards. >> who are the other partners who sit at the boards with you guys. is it just you guys and the department? >> the city's attorney office is involved and several divisions within the oakland police department involved. they have a use of force team that cues up each of the

hearings. and an internal affairs and civilian oversight that goes hand in hand with those. and city attorney involvement to give legal perspective. the federal monitor sits in on some of those, usually select ones and more often than not the executive use of force boards. those are the only agencies involved. the oakland police department has internal office of the inspector general right now and eventually they'll be moved up to civilian inspector general and we suspect they'll be involved as well. >> supervisor ronen: i had a --

>> president cohen: i have a couple of questions. how does the agency work given the fact it's under a consent decree. how is that dynamic. >> i would say in most regards it would be in any city that has a strong commitment to civilian oversight. i'll give you a couple of examples. one example, on each case that is investigated, there's a parallel in internal affairs. we're discussing if we still want to do the model. we might be switching in the future to only having a cpra investigation. but for now we have these two parallel investigations and a process in which the chief of police and i sit down and talk about each of the cases. particularly the ones that are sustained and we think there might be discipline. if we can't reach agreement about how the case should be charged in the first place, then

that disagreement about charging regardless of the level of discipline involved goes to the commission to resolve. in that regard, we tend to have very robust thoughtful conversations and sometimes the federal monitor will sit in and listen to them and report back to the judge about how the conversations were going. overtime they are graded as a whole on holding officers accountable. >> president cohen: is it your -- who determines or recommends discipline for the discipline cases? is it your department and then the chief and if there's a conflict between the amount of discipline, how is that resolved? >> the community police review

agency and then the police chief have a disagreement about the level of -- well ordinarily we talk about what we each think the discipline ought to be. if we don't agree on the discipline, that difference of opinion goes to the commission. we've had cases that the chief and i have agreed that an officer did commit misconduct and what it was and what rules were violated but didn't agree about the level of discipline to impose. those go to the commission and then resolved there. after that, officers have due process rights and as i'm sure you are familiar, there's a two step process in that regard and go through that process after the commission's involvement. one interesting difference, the

difference of opinion could be as modest as one of us believing a three day suspension and the other a five day suspension. just the charging decision in that regard goes to the commission to resolve. clearly there are pros and cons of that model but puts the commission in the driving seat early in the stage. >> president cohen: the other question, the racial disparities, i think you mentioned it during your presentation and one of the questions i had was what are the racial disparities when it comes to stop and searchs for people of color in oakland. that's the first part of the question. and the second part is how has dr. eberhart helped when it comes to stops in oakland. >> we have a whole series put together. i might be able to share in your chat a link that might be useful

in that regard. she has done studies for us as i mentioned on language that is used and also on traffic stops. she came out with 50 recommendations. she has helped in a wide variety of ways. in particular i think one of the things that her studies were able to point out is that we had a fairly high rate of traffic stops in which black motorists at the end of the traffic stop had no definitive end, they were not cited or arrested or any other outcome of that sort. simply released. it makes you question, what was the original reason for the stop and why didn't it result in

something more. we have changed some of our traffic stops and we have noticed that the number of stops, the net number of stops of african americans in oakland have dropped over a thousand per year the last few years. overall the number of stops of motorists has also dropped across the city. i don't think we're all the way there. we noticed the total number of traffic stops for a six month period in oakland had been around 14,000 and then after starting to think more carefully

about how we were doing the traffic stops, that came down to about 11,000. this was about three years ago. that was how we saw this drop, it was the drop was disproportionately among african american motorists. the number of african americans stopped is still more than half of all stops in the city of oakland. we still have a long ways to go. if you look at the statistics in the past few years, depending on the numbers you look at, the city of oakland's total population is 25-30% african american and we expect more stops for that reason but over half is still much higher than we want to see. we're continuing to look for ways to figure out how to reduce

the disparities. >> president cohen: it's interesting. the other thing i found fascinating, the language. how is the system set up in order to track that? it is fascinating and seems like a great tool to utilize when it comes to sort of airing out biases and little things like that i think snowball into bias treatment. >> that's a fascinating study put out in 2017 and she worked with a team of linguists to look over body-worn cameras from stops made in oakland. they went through the footage of the stop to hear what the officer was saying and see how folks were reacting.

and they -- with the help of linguists, they put together a series of conclusions about -- or series of theories i guess you would say, what kind of language conveys respect and what kind of language tends to convey formality and which tends the make people feel more comfortable and respected in the course of the interaction with the officer and how often these specific phrases were used in traffic stops. for example they looked for instances in which an officer would give some words of apology. i'm sorry to stop you today. pardon me for interrupting your day. and then they look to see how that landed with the audience. after surveys they found that language in particular really coded highly for respectful behavior for people on the

receiving end. as they went through the camera footage, they found those kind of remarks were noticeably more common in stops of white than black motorists. another example would be many people in the focus group found they reacted negatively to the officer using informal modes of address like calling people by first name or informal modes of address like hey manor hey guy. and instead of saying mr. smith or mr. jones. as a result, she found those kind of informal titles and use of first names instead of last names were dramatically more common in black stops and after surveying black folks in the community found that was significant indicator of disrespect to them personally.

the last one that jumped out to me, put your hands on the wheel. that phrase was used disproportionately with black motorists more often. that was one of the most glaring findings of the study. at a minimum, the officer may think i'm up to no good even if that's unfair. we try to have officers do that if there's a safety reason opposed to just when they might think to do it spontaneously. that study is available on our website, too. >> president cohen: i would love to post that on our website. i'm going to turn it over to my

colleagues. does anyone have questions or comments for mr. alden? commissioner brookter? >> commissioner brookter: no questions. i think -- one, thank you john for coming out. as we're having the discussion and conversation, thank you for coming out. it's a lot to digest. congratulations for the four year appointment to this position as well.

>> commissioner byrne: it's go have a different perspective on how different police departments deal with different issues. i appreciate it. >> commissioner yee: i have no questions for john. but thank him for his report and sharing some of these insights on how police accountability can happen and probably moving forward look to see more from him. >> vice president elias: thank you. we are able to see all the advances dpa has been doing

throughout the years to really step up their game in terms of being transparent with the community when it comes to the discipline cases and policies of recommending. i hope you can take all the great work director henderson has done and utilize that as well. >> absolutely. i especially liked the report with greater detail of the kind of complaints and i'm going start working on that right away. >> vice president elias: his transparency in terms of the kind of cases and fact patterns is i think the community really appreciates that. thank you. let's turn it over to public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who want to make a public comment regarding line item 4,

press star 3 now. there's no public comment. >> vice president elias: of course not mr. alden blew them away with his presentation. thank you again. i appreciate it. sergeant, next item, please. >> clerk: line item 5, dpa presentation. discussion. >> vice president elias: director henderson, i'll turn it over to you for a very anticipated presentation i'm excited for. >> thank you so much. we are happy to make this

presentation. to give some context here, we have heard from other jurisdictions now, we've had data about policing and race throughout a variety of sources already. even our complaint that we come in and present about both in the weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual report kind of conversations we have publicly. but i think what we need more of and now for tonight this is what the commission has specifically asked for was to hear what the community is seeking in terms of response and in terms of what the solutions are. so that's where i think tonight is kind of important and significant in terms of how do we address some of the disparities that have shown and are proven to address racist disparities in the work done.

just to give context, san francisco is not unique in some of these challenges and these disparities have been proven, are not up for debate, all throughout the nation. i think that highlights why some of the conversations about solutions are really important. what we have done is come up with our own recommendations and we have made recommendations in the past in the same areas but have reached out to stakeholders and partners as requested from the commission with community organizations to solicit their recommendations as well. one of the things we also did was open up the topic for discussion and input and submission for the same recommendations on our website as i articulated last month or several weeks ago as well. a number of folks have had the opportunity to make the same recommendations for submission

as well. basically the one recommendation we have seen share and communicated about over and over again with the stakeholders has been to address the stops. i think we just heard from other jurisdictions about addressing that problem as well. so in the presentation that follows, you're going to hear a lot more about that recommendation and a number of others. including the recommendations from the dpa specifically and from the organizations and individuals who are here proposing them. this has been a long process to get all of this stuff together and we've had a number of date changes and schedule changes but i'm excited that folks will have an audience and be able to give voice to their concerns

directly, not just to dpa in the form of complaints but to the department directly as well as to the commission directly as well. i think that's really important having a seat at the table of decision making. i think it can make a difference and i'm eager to share the presentation with all of you and to hear the voices for the folks who care about this work as much as we all do. so i will introduce germane jones from my legal team. he should be on here with a slide presentation. >> vice president elias: i have to say i'm excited. i see we have some heavy hitters that are going to present.

>> they're the voices we hear from regularly or frequently as well. giving them this opportunity to make a presentation directly to us, i think is pretty significant. it's an opportunity to address long standing problems in new ways that actually may move the needle forward. >> vice president elias: they have been on the ground doing the work. i'm excited. >> yes. germane, are you there? >> yes. thank you vice president elias, commissioners, chief scott and members of the public. i'm the dpa staff attorney and here to briefly discuss the three recommendations. as director henderson previewed, we saw significant overlapse across the groups we spoke to and one of the most recommended

was ending pretext stops. so the first recommendation from dpa is we implement a sort of recommendation feedback loop. the idea of looping from recommendation to action comes from president obama's 21st century of policing. this can really take a few different flavors. we have seen this work successfully with 272 cops doj recommendations where sfpd built a tracker online to see the work they were doing, compliance measures and department progress. the example on the screen is from the use of force audit you are all familiar with. the final 10 pages of the audit have a chart with each of the recommendations. the sfpd response to the

recommendation and status. that work is being followed up by the audit department and controller's office. i would like to point you across the bay, not to the city of oakland this time but to the city of berkeley. their fair and impartial policing working group. it includes all of the outstanding legislative direction from the berkeley city council and policy recommendations that come from external groups. going back to 2017, it includes similar to this, our use of force audit and includes the berkeley police department responses, proposed timelines and status. we have seen several reports presented to the commission from groups over the past few years but rarely know what happens to the recommendations. we don't know if they have been

accepted or rejected by the department. the department on the status of women gave a presentation in january 2020 on pathways to promotion, including nine key recommendations to increase diversity to the department. and in february, cpe recommended seven recommendations to address racial disparities. we believe some of the recommendations were addressed by doj work but we don't know which recommendations are still under consideration or any have been rejected.

as you know the commission has given us the go ahead to introduce a provision parole and waiting for subject matter on that. our office is working on a draft pretext stops. we hope to have the draft done soon. hopefully we get the go ahead to sfpd. can i have the next slide

please? our third recommendation for the commission to lead a community accountability and transparency group. this is based on the community model used by 43 police forces in england. it comes to us from a senior investigator who served as a u.k. police officer for several years. we have seen the decrease in rate of stops, searchs and use of force when we look at data for black and hispanic residents. but they continue to make up more than half of all uses of force and are significantly overrepresented in stops and searchs. our hope is that these groups will operate like a working group but with a special focus on statistical data. this data is often presented before the commission quarterly. and members of the public can address the report in public

comment. the public doesn't always have the ability to ask questions in formal settings. this is starting to sound like a repeat of director alden's presentation but we hope this model can serve as a place for the community to voice their concerns and tell us what they want to see from us in terms of data. and adapt to include trainings for group members on stop and search policies and presentations from dpa on cases related to allegations of bias and stops while reserving overwrites. the goal of the group is to have the community be a part of the process of defining equitable policing. we've enjoyed working with members of the community and hearing their concerns while we work through this process and we look forward to working with the commission, the police

department and our community partners to continue addressing stop and search disparities. i would like to pass it over to director henderson. >> great. if we get more questions, you stick around germane. please. thank you all so much. i do just want to thank the folks at dpa and the staff that really worked really hard on this the past few months. every time the schedule changed, most of them were doing the heavy lifting coordinating with a broad number of folks to try to communicate what the changes were to get it to tonight.

i will be asking the commission to take action on the feedback loop. while i think they are equally important, the feedback loop seems crucial to address the concerns raised over and over again asking what are the solutions, why isn't something done and addresses many of the criticisms that we face as a commission as a whole from folks who say what happened to this issue. many of the issues have been addressed or recommendations have been made time and time

again. i would say things like the audit recommendations that are measured and go on our website but no response to them. other jurisdictions have passed san francisco to address these, even just to let agencies and the commission know about what happens to recommendations or orders to the department that don't just disappear into a black hole i think is very

important. it's an opportunity for us to catch up with reforms on the right side of history in terms of accountability. i don't want to dwell too much. you have heard the recommendations. we're happy to answer questions about them. i equally weigh the voices of the community. and i would say beyond the community, these are real stakeholders that have unique perspectives about what has been happening with policing from their perspective of their work and focus for many years. i would like to start introducing some of the voices. starting with mr. brian cox. >> thank you.

>> thank you. i think we should end quality of traffic stops. doing a traffic stop because licence plate is paper, it doesn't consider the harms it causes. often they risk the members of our communities. using it as a tool to criminal behavior is needle in a haystack. and it becomes an excuse to turn people over because of a hunch that criminal activity is happening. there's a joke in law enforcement when it comes to racial profiling, it never happens but it works. it is time for the joke to end. end jaywalking. support for the laws rest on the ideas that it makes us safer but the data doesn't present a compelling argument to support

that. it shows the logical response is not more enforcement, more crosswalks. the u.k. creates more crosswalks and have half the deaths that the u.s. does. analysis from different cities across the country demonstrates blacks receive a disproportionately number of jay walking tickets. it begs the question, why continue to enforce laws that don't work and double down on systemic racism. just because they're on the books? because we haven't imagined a world without them. it is time we should. and end baseless searchs during a traffic stop. stopping someone for a broken taillight is not a sign of other

prohibited activity. it's just a malfunctioning taillight. it shouldn't end with them being searched. it's just a fishing exhibition to generate probable cause. driving while black is a truism. [indiscernible]

it is time to shift our thinking in how to protect communities from those harms and these three policies are a small step. thank you for listening and i'm happy to answer questions. >> commissioner elias, should i go through all of them or do you want to take questions after each presentation? >> i think given the time restraints of the numerous presenters, go through and then we can open up for questions and discussions. >> that's fine. okay. thank you. next from police practices expert with a long history with

the city and dpa. john. the stage is yours. >> thank you. if we could go to the next slide. i want to thank germane for his work on the issue and leadership to pull together slides from some of the correspondence i have sent. i have documented in great detail plans to address this issue i have shared with the commission twice this year as -- pardon? thank you. i was told to prepare three or four minutes which is barely enough to scratch the surface of this topic. i'm going to have to go quickly. if you have questions, that's fine. i cannot emphasize strongly enough, if this issue is going to be addressed, it has to be

addressed in a serious manner in a comprehensive manner in a way i can't get to with three or four minutes. the first slide is to give you a sense of my background. i have been around a very long time and i know san francisco can do much better, can do a lot more to reduce the other agencies because based on my experience, other agencies are not doing more and having more success. i've been struggling with how to communicate this. my oldest daughter was 5 years old when i first started trying to get san francisco to get serious about racial disparities. she turned 30 last month. now i know some commissioners have younger children, maybe grand children, if you don't want your kids to grow up to adults with the same sort of severe disparities, it is time to act and act on recommendations that have been long impending. next slide please. i appreciated the presentation last week sergeant youngblood if

we can do the next slide -- thank you. i think it was sincere and well intentioned but not the history. first ordering race data on stops in 1999. we have better quality now thanks to former supervisor cohen's legislation. but the statistical profile has been clear and well publicized repeatedly since at least 2002 and the report discussed is only the latest in a series of reports stretching back decades, the most key recommendations of which were not implemented which is why we have the disparities. i appreciate chief scott's efforts but he is in fact, the sixth trying to address the issues unsuccessfully. we're in our third mayoral administration and there have

been too many police commissioners to count who have all said the right things about wanting to address this issue and yet here we are all these years later. the inaction on the most important recommendations is why these disparities still exist in san francisco. i'm going to disagree with director henderson. he is correct these disparities are not unique to san francisco but they are nearly uniquely bad in san francisco. we have some of the worst disparities amongst big cities in the entire country. you just heard from john alden expressing concerns about the disparities in oakland, they're half of the size in san francisco. we can and must be better. the consequence of not doing better, because the disparities have been here so long, entire generations of young people in san francisco, entire generations of police officers have gone through the ranks in an environment where the

disparities are normalized. have been treated as though they are the cost of doing business and it is not. as though there is nothing to be done to help it and there is. and as though these disparities are acceptable and they cannot be. we cannot have six times disparities on searchs. 11 times. -- six times on stops, 11 times on searchs and 12 times on uses of force. 12 times. we can't go through another generation where we know we are treating people of color radically different than people who look like me and commissioner byrne. it's going to take a new and specific commitment that hasn't been made before by the police commission, it is going to take targets and goals and benchmarks. if you want to reduce disparities you have to articulate where you're going to

hold people accountable to it. there needs to be sustained urgency and follow up and accountability. any comprehensive plan that will address racial disparities has to look at the three factors that are the drivers of racial disparities. i only have time to give you one example each of things that can and should be done that other agencies are already doing. it requires proactively rooting out bias. not being reactive and wait for cases that make it through the discipline system, rarely is an officer going to blurt out a racial slur on body camera video. but profiling board, ripa board in the best practices report recommended five months ago, i brought it to your attention then, that every agency in california needs to do a social media review of officers because

of the well documented problem of some officers in law enforcement with biases and affiliations with white supremacist groups. that is not me talking, that's a body set up by the state of california under the office of the attorney general. they are saying we need to do this and saying it is needed to drive down despaircies, why hasn't san francisco done it. number two, take on strategies driven by implicit bias. we have known for a long time, the wider the discretion in officer activity, the more likely it will be infected by implicit bias. there's no greater discretion than enforcing minor violations. that's why pretext stops, they

are stops not really about the legal reason for the stop, that's the cover. we're not really interested in the broken taillight. we want to know if you have guns or contraband in the vehicle. it puts officers in a position of guessing who they're going to stop and who they are not. it is a widely discredited enforcement tactic. the aclu recommend it be eliminated in san francisco 19

years ago. far too much of the department doesn't see this as a problem that needs to be fixed. the department's approach to changing the culture officer my observation is largely top down.

the right leadership signal coming from the chief and down the command staff, the training element in the academy is important to reinforce the leadership messages and accountability is key. what is missing is the most important form of culture change, the officer to officer responsibility for changing this culture. you have some very good people in this department. you also have some knuckleheads and unless you empower and protect the good people to start enforcing the sort of culture change you need who prioritize getting rid of the disparities, the problem won't be solved. there's a gold standard for doing this, the georgetown university able program. if you want officers to

intervene, but the things that are important, we know you have to practice. steph curry can make three pointers because he practices. we know this from policing. we have officers engaged in the most difficult sensitive parts of their jobs and that's why we have firearm simulators. this department unlike other agencies does not practice this key thing. what do you do if your partner expresses a racial slur. what do you do if your sergeant engages in conduct that looks like misconduct or seems to be targeting african americans. if you do not have your officers practice doing that, they won't do it when the situation comes up and sending the message it's okay. if you want to change the culture, you will empower the officers and give them the officer to officer power to move, not just top down but from

within the ranks so this agency can finally keep up. finally make progress. i end the correspondence, i have spoken too much already, i tried to offer a framework about how it should be talked about and briefly, the san francisco police department has been entirely too reactive to the issues. it needs to be proactive. the sfpd has been willing to be non racist. if we hear about or learn about self expression of the explicit racism, we'll do something about it. unless it systematically commits to being proactive, we're going to keep having the same disparities the way they have been for 20 years. thank you for your patience.

>> thank you so much. next we have -- >> vice president elias: mr. king. >> can you all hear me? good to see all of you. good evening chair elias and all the other commissioners. i was so inspired by the last gentleman who spoke, john crew and all of what he offered. i think one of the things i'm not inspired by is, this is not to put anyone on the spot, but i have been watching chief scott during the presentation and all of the presentations and he seems like he's engaged in other

conversation, not necessarily listening and or present and it left me with the impression of why am i here, right? i would really appreciate if he at some point would rewatch all of the presentations but also tune in at this moment. i think this is really critical and none of us are here to waste time. i do want to underscore what i'm going to share with you all. we can go to the fourth slide. i want to reinforce a few of the principle points i made during my last presentation in december. which is that these institutions have not only a history but a culture of white supremacy and white racism and anti blackness. i think we have to contend with and embrace the reality that

this culture and all of the institutions, and specifically that of law enforcement, a component, a main component of criminality was built around the black body. you hear tony morrison saying white racism is something that is a profound neurosis. you have 50 years ago, the theory that white racism was a mental illness. even the book in 1975, in relationships of whites with blacks, whites exhibit the behavior of psychopaths and it is underlining in a deep evolutionary history. understanding that context and that all of these institutions

were built on that foundation and it's not that just white people adapt in anti black police value or cultural system or behavior pattern, it is that is the american behavior pattern. the cultural system that we function in is simulated and performed and enacted by all. it doesn't matter if the police force is predominantly white or black, the culture of anti blackness is pervasive. i think we need to begin to deal with in law enforcement why there's such a need to oppress black people. why is there such a need in this country to continue to oppress black people. i continue to be alarmed by the

outcomes of the disproportionate numbers we see concerning black people. it's interesting because in the earlier presentation they spoke about how the law enforcement in oakland when they were detaining people, they were saying are you on probation or parole. i experienced that first hand when i was in a graduate program. all of that said, i'm going to go through the recommendations quickly. sorry. if you can go to the fourth slide, i think it's about two down, i shared that -- i talked about what i was going to share. i think there needs to be hard core, hard hitting anti racism training that focuses on the history of law enforcement in different communities and the types of laws that law enforcement have enforced against certain communities, such as the indian removal act.

you have consistent laws that target the black community that up until the 1960s state by state at some of the federal level that protect white people from black people. we need to look at that history and understand how that has shaped cultural norms that mr. crew spoke about in his presentation and begin to root those out when certain behaviors show up. you can go to the next slide. next one. i think this all needs to be supported by san francisco police department locating and instituting an inspector general that can work with the department for police accountability and that can potentially be supported by

coaches who are able to provide follow up support, developmental support to support the anti racism efforts once they have taken place. and also provide the coaching they would provide, it would be documented so it would begin to be placed in the files of officers, staff, whomever. so that -- and ensure that these patterns or these behavioral patterns in these situations when they're occurring, they're documented and demonstrates a pattern. i think there should be a no tolerance policy. if you go to the next slide, i discuss this. i'm sorry, before this.

supported by those who can provide on site support for officers. one of the things i recognized while doing training, wow, these individuals, the jobs are strenuous and stressful. you have people working within the departments at this moment whose stress levels are tremendously high and they have little to no outlets to provide ongoing support. they are overworked and don't have outlets and they hold it in

and then they are expected to come back to work and be regular. i don't think it makes for a good culture overall. the next slide is centered around the policy i talked about, the sfpd and mr. crew talked about this as well, need to adopt and expand a no tolerance clause in the use of force policy that -- it shouldn't have to take five times or 10 times the sfpd or officer detaining, stopping

through san francisco, that type of anti black behavioral be embraced through the police department and allowed by the police commission for someone to go through progressive discipline process. like there needs to be a no tolerance clause here. that this is what we stand for. it be adopted and put into the racial equity action plan. i heard some of the efforts they're undertaking but none of them stood out to me as anything that is going to substantially change black life or the black experience in san francisco. i also want to ensure that progressive discipline is progressive. they follow the city's policy, adopt a very strict approach to

navigating the city's current policy which begins with a verbal warning on the second offense. it's a written republic mend on the third offense and on the fourth, a recommendation for termination. if there was a situation or case to apply this policy, in the most stern hard concrete manner, it would be this. it would be in this particular case. that's all i have to share. thank you for inviting me back. if i can provide support in the future, let me know. >> vice president elias: thank you mr. king. it is good to have you back. >> thank you mr. king. i want to point out, there's a lot of information there. i appreciate the reference to the race equity action plan. that is super important, too. i wanted to reference some of

the stuff that mr. crew was talking about in his presentation. there's a lot you guys are just getting the summary from folks as they are presenting but throughout the past few weeks and months, we have gotten a more full picture of the presentations and i want to remind the audience and public, the broader records are online and can be found online from the presentations as well on the police commission website. with that, the next presenter the officers for justice association. captain williams. are you here? germane, are you still around?

>> i'm here. >> kind of walk us through the recommendations. >> sure thing. the recommendations were sort of two buckets. there was one of the buckets is just ensuring more diversity and black voices in the entire policing process. that sort of hits recommendation one, two and four. specifically increasing diversity and new leadership on the command staff. including a member of color on the incident review board. i believe that's the serious incident review board and ensuring black instructors and community involvement in training. two recommendations that captain williams had, to carry either a bond or professional liability

insurance similar to malpractice insurance for doctors. this is a model i looked into and saw it is being used a few places around the country. and the final recommendation, require mental health evaluations every five to 10 years. she mentioned officers dealing with incredible amounts of stress and needing an outlet and ability to talk to someone. those were the recommendations. >> thank you mr. jones. let me go to the next presentation. the next presentation is from wealth and disparity in the black community with felicia jones is the founder. the presenter should be on the line. mr. pointer, the stage is yours.

>> thank you. i have been listening to the presentations tonight from the other community members as well as all the other people who have input -- given input to today's proceeding. it lets me know that the concern i have always had as it relates to policing in san francisco and in general is well received in some quarters and progress is being made but there's so much work left to be done. so while i can certainly give a pat on the back to sfpd for the work it has done and progress it has made, there's a ton of work left to be done to lower disparities and discrimination in my opinion that you see at the hands of sfpd. specifically on the black community of san francisco. a grassroots organization that is essentially focused on these issues and borne out of the

death of mario woods and his legacy and all the other bloodshed on the streets of san francisco by victims of police abuse. we have heard many statistics and data today as it relates to the way in which policing is being carried out on our streets. in the way that the disparities are affecting certain segments of our community. i'm not going to go into all of the statistics. there are a lot. many of which are generated by the department of police account ability, receiving information from sfpd. i do want to keep in mind that in the context of policing within the bay area, we have to understand that san francisco has a rich history and is thought of as progressivism and acceptance and tolerance and fairness and equity. people point to san francisco as being the leading light in that

regard. but when we shine the light on policing, we realize it is falling short. what i mean by that, there's clear facts and data to support that there's an anti black racial disparity taking place within the ranks of sfpd. if you have been following the headlines for years, you will know it was rocked by a texting gate scandal. what does that mean for the officers who carried out the duty as public officials on the streets of san francisco. it has played out in the department of justice came in and did a study. we know san francisco pd has made progress there but there's

a number of initiatives that have not been carried out and frankly the community wants to know where that's at. that what we hear as the black community are here to discuss tonight. looking at a telling statistic. many of us are familiar with george floyd and look to these far off places to where we think policing has gone wrong or needs to be brought into the 21st century or agree that was a bad situation. what about here? what we look at the national statistics, san francisco is the third worst place, city in the entire united states as it relates to the disparity and arrest and shootings of african americans. this is a city that currently is less than 4% comprised of black

people but they top the charts as it relates to the amount of times they're under arrest and likelihood of receiving force at the hands of a police officer. there are many studies that show when the data is collected, if you look at the yield, i know some of the other presenters talked about this earlier, if you look at the yield as it relates to the times the black person was stopped on a pretext stop or tags are not valid or air fresher in the rearview mirror and officers think we're going to find guns, dope, something in here, the yield rate is considerably lower for african americans. to me that's not just policy, it's culture. it can't be stopped by pretty

paper or policies that we need to enact this. this is training, this is also rooting out those officers who have either came into the force with biases that many of us have as it relates to everyone. everyone has bias. but the difference is when you have a badge and gun. that is a mind state that must be dealt with. when you look at the statistics, they're shameful that san francisco is being a lotted as progressivism and liberalism would fall number three as it relates to the disparity it affects black people living in

san francisco. we can go to the next slide. some of the other data that has been talked about tonight. black people 10 times more likely to be arrested or endured use of force than white people in san francisco. once again, a small minority. once again, that means to me there's being targeted, not only targeted but condoned and the bureaucracy has been complicit in that. as i mentioned earlier, the department of justice came to town out of the blood that mario woods and others shed and started looking at these trends

with sfpd. we know there are 272 recommendations and 94 findings but the ultimate conclusion can't be hidden in numbers. well, we're significantly substantially compliant. but when the current numbers still reflect unconstitutional policing, substantial compliance does not win the day. when you have people being stopped as if this is an apartheid stage. forces being used against blacks at a disproportionate rate, we can't say we're substantially compliant with the doj recommendations. i say we have to meet all of the recommendations and then continue to move forward and take the lead of constitutional, socially equitable policing.

all 272 recommendations need to be meant. the big part of the next slide in terms of dragging the police department along is gathering the data, making sure there's a response when a request comes in. but also publicizing and including the community as it relates to the data being gathered but also making it available to them. dpa has done a job as it relates to putting it up on the website, releasing reports.

repeat offenders, officers who don't seem to be able to get it right, they are using a disproportionate amount of force. they are involved in repeat acts of officer-involved shootings, those officers need to have the most scrutiny. they should not be given a free pass to go back into the community and police where they

can offend again. we all know the average officer doesn't use their gun in the course of their career. these are facts. we also need to track as it relates to the way discipline makes it out. there's equality for black officers and white officers and everyone else, is it coming down fast and hard and evenly based upon who is the perpetrator of the police violence. these are important things to send the message of accountability. where the data gathering, where the data is crunching, where the data reporting begins to me is where the disparity ends. focusing on officer involved shootings and serious incidents.

looking at transparency and going down to one of the things i think will go a long way to leading that -- it's okay to

just leave it there. another tool that can be used for that is body worn cameras. i won't go into the most recent incident because i think it's familiar to all of us. if it weren't for surveillance cameras which were fortunate to be there, we would be in a debate about what took place at the time that person was shot. the cameras protect the officer? as it relates to providing the factual basis as to what took place. so it protects the city coffers from liability? but it also protects the public. because we have a way in which to determine what took place. all police officers should be wearing cameras. we're right next to silicon valley, the tech hub of the world. you mean to tell me there's not a camera that is small enough for an undercover officer to wear to capture what they're doing?

i don't want to continue tonight's meeting too long, but i want to end on this note saying until sfpd is committed from top to bottom and city bureaucracy not only in the police department but those who give the budget and money are at the table to make sure this is a comprehensive approach, we're going to continue to have this cycle. where we stop diminished disparities in one aspect to see it affect in other aspects. thank you. >> vice president elias: thank you mr. pointer. always a pleasure to have you here. >> and i appreciate you reading the audit into your presentation as well. thank you. so that's the speakers that we have. i think most of the speakers are here and available for questions in case the commission has

questions for any of them. >> vice president elias: great. before i turn it over to colleagues for questions and comments, i want to thank you director henderson for organizing this. thank you germane and your staff for putting this together. i know it was a difficult feat but i really am so energized and happy to see it come together and all the great ideas and people who came and spoke today, thank you to the presenters. i think the ideas you are presenting are really amazing and i think that perhaps director henderson, if i could task you with one more thing, to create a working list of all of the recommendations and solutions that the presenters have outlined in the presentation, so we can have a working list for the commission as well as the department and see if perhaps some of these recommendations we can implement and where we go from here. i think that would be beneficial

to both us and the department. >> i'm happy to do that. i think creating that list begs the question what happens with the list. >> vice president elias: we're going to create it and then i think -- what we may do -- i'll put it on the agenda on a quarterly basis or sooner to see where we are in terms of getting things checked off the list. we can have conversations with the department and see where we are to see if we can implement some of the recommendations. as each speaker so eloquently put, we know the problems and statistics and we know there are racial disparities and now we need to focus on solving them and what do we do to make them better. >> i'm happy to do it. my retort would be even if we can't do all of the suggestions, that we at least address the

theme loop suggestion, a specific response that what i think increase both transparency and level of accountability for the recommendations in terms of more direct communication. that's what i would ask for. i will follow up and make the list. >> vice president elias: great. at this time, i want to turn it over to my colleagues for questions and give the chief an opportunity. i think having him chime in would be also helpful. but before i do that, i'm going to turn it over to my colleagues. commissioner brookter. >> commissioner brookter: thank you for that. i second the notion of really being able to look at this and have it looked at quarterly as recommendations outside of the

doj recommendations. i want to commend you for bringing the crew together. the fact that brian, we heard you and are able to see you on this platform, i think really speaks to our collaboration as the department and also as dpa. john crew, bringing energy and i know i can speak for my fellow colleagues, i wouldn't want to wait another two decades for things to actually get done. mr. king always a pleasure to hear you speak. would love to hear from yolanda. it needs to be all parts. we understand recommendations and what needs to be done in the department but it also takes resources and community and commission and dpa, it takes all

of us to really drive home in a push a lot of this forward. i'm looking forward. anybody who knows me knows i'm solution based and we get the presentations but what is the action. what is the plan of action. what are we going to do moving forward. how can we implement some of the things we talked about today. looking forward, one of the recommendations given about a community group we might be able to put together sooner rather than later and as we all know, legislation and policy can take some time and what can we do immediately in the here and now to really begin to continue to move things in the right direction. i just appreciated the presentation. i would love again if we can continue to get this quarterly and be able to report back on where we are at a commission.

it can change if we all work together. i didn't have any questions as much as each presentation brought different things we have talked about on the commission but just again, what needs to be done. we're moving in the right direction but still have a long ways to go. i thank everybody for presenting. >> vice president elias: thank you. commissioner byrne.

>> commissioner byrne: i found it fascinating about what the city of oakland pretextural stops and indicated that they have adopted similar policy on stops. i would be curious for chd statistics. i know the theory of sunset legislation, we can try to do something sooner rather than 20 years. put a sunset on it to force the commission to come back and look at it a year or 18 months time to see what the effect is on racial disparities, on crime rate and all that without the ability that we have gone through all this trouble to put

this policy into effect and then we have to go to the trouble of it's not working to undo it. the idea to look at it and forced to look at it in a specific period of time i think is good. it allows us to be bolder than we may normally feel reluctant to be. this is the -- what i said last week, 96 report to me was a revelation. i was aware of the racial disparities but not to the degree in the report. thank you. >> vice president elias: thank you commissioner byrne. commissioner yee? >> commissioner yee: thank you

madam vice chair. thank you mr. henderson for putting together the panel. it was enlightening to hear the speakers speaking on this point. and looking forward to. remarks about ensuring that 272 doj recommendations are fully implemented as soon as possible to make sure the police department in san francisco is up to the 21st century policing policy. and also to look forward to the new recommendations that are coming down or presented today on the list. and working with my fellow commissioners to ensure we do the best for our people in san francisco. as a life long citizen in san

francisco, i spent about 40 years working throughout san francisco, i have seen it from northeast, southwest, the rich and the poor. i worked in the neighborhoods that were disenfranchised and where bias was present and work there is still ongoing. thank you. >> vice president elias: and chief, before i give you an opportunity to respond, i would like to again thank the panelists for speaking. i think some of the ideas that you had were amazing. i'm going to ask that you leave your contact information in the chat or provide it to the commission office so we can make it available should the community want to reach out to you and further engage in the solutions. i think that john crew had an amazing recommendation and i

would love to hear some of the benchmarks that you envision trying to implement. mr. king, the body worn camera review is an excellent recommendation. i think the mental evaluation recommendation is a great one and others they presented as well. and as well as mr. pointer's analysis of deescalation recommendations. i think those are all great ones as well as the fact that the reality is that another issue that -- or recommendation i think is prevalent, the ending of pretextural stops. we need to seriously look at that and take an act on that

recommendation. >> i thank all the presenters for presenting their thoughts and ideas. some of those ideas are not new. so they are under consideration. the one thing i've said to the commission and i say to all of the presenters, there's a thoughtfulness and balance of balancing the impacts of whatever policies we end up coming up with, with really one thing not discussed in this discussion, safety of the community we're here to protect. when we look at the job of the sfpd and members in terms of crime, we have to be thoughtful about constitutionality and all that, and we have to be

thoughtful about the impacts of policy. such as prohibiting enforcement on tinted windows. some of the laws are there for good reasons and the reasons are safety. and my only ask of any of this, let's be thoughtful and balance about policy changes as best we can understand the impacts of the policies that we're putting in place are because sometimes there are unintended consequences that counter the spirit of what these policies are. and that's why i also ask for discussion and all the groups presented, you also have an open door to the police department. i thank director henderson for putting it together and we need to be able to work with these various members of our community as well and some of them that have presented, we do have great relationships in terms of working relationships but that

door is always open. the san francisco police department is willing and we'll listen to all ideas that will move us forward. we will move thoughtful and when we present to the commission, we want to know the impacts on the other side of it. i want to thank everybody for their presentations. >> vice president elias: thank you chief. i think it will be helpful once director henderson puts together the list to give the department an opportunity and the community to continue the discussions and get you the data you need in terms of how the recommendations will play out. i think mr. king had something to say. >> i just wanted to make a comment that i understand the spirit of what the chief just conveyed and i also think that in the way that crime or

criminality is viewed, there's a focus on what the members of the public are doing, the civilians. what about the crimes that are committed by the sfpd in terms of violating the constitutional rights of civilians and that going unaddressed. right? there's a way that in the system, in this culture and institutions, crime is legitimized in terms of you all are the authorities on who is committing the crimes but i grew up in a neighborhood and still live in a neighborhood where people's rights are violated and that's what we're dealing with. so to turn this in another direction, to talk about protecting the people in the neighborhood, i don't feel protected by police. i am with and around people, family members, other community members larger work i do in the community of black people who do not feel protected by the police.

so which citizens are you referring to when you talk about protecting citizens. because there are many black people who would agree with me. and that's why we presented here tonight. so i think i would encourage you to really think further and to understand -- to accept what you know as a black man living in america, i would encourage you to accept what you know to be true and not try to walk this objective line where you think you have to toe the line because of your role. we have too much data, we have too much empirical evidence, not just in san francisco but aacross the country. for you to not acknowledge that, to act like we're talking about some object -- some unimportant insignificant issue, it's

unacceptable. i want to encourage you to be more empowered. it seems weak. >> vice president elias: okay. director henderson, i think you had one final comment before we turn to public comment. we need to get to public comment. >> i was going to say i think i can shovel things around and i want to try to prioritize your request to get this to you before the end of this week, the working list. would you like a draft of the feedback loop? >> vice president elias: sure. >> great. i think that will go a long way with this as well. >> vice president elias: commissioner brookter had recommendations as well and i will be asking to put on the agenda the department's response to some of these to give them the opportunity to address them. >> great. >> vice president elias: thank you everyone for this discussion. i would ask you to stick around

for public comment. so sergeant? >> members of the public who want to make public comment regarding line item 5, press star 3 now. you have two minutes. >> hi, i'm gloria and i appreciate the presentations. i was really appreciating mr. king's presenting. i wanted to speak about commissioner byrne's comment about disparity and he mentioned the chp in oakland. i want to say that i would like to build a bridge with commissioner byrne and feel free to reach out to me to get to know more about the nitty gritty

of what's really going on here in the city. i was born here in '69. as far as disparities, go to any traffic court, san francisco, alameda county, you'll see nothing but black and brown people there in court. they're not stopping white people like us. even right next door, they stop at district 10 and park in the gas station and hide and anybody black and brown make a u-turn there, they stop and getting new revenue for the city. commissioner byrne, feel free to reach out to me. i'm elected member on the board i'm not hard to find. and i wanted to make another comment about what mr. king said about us not feeling safe.

just last month, three security guards and two police officers on me accused of stealing and instead of invoking the act on the soft call, they said it was a misunderstanding. >> clerk: caller you have two minutes. >> i appreciate every presentation. it distresses me that many of the presenters were forced to rush through their presentations. and this is the first time i

think the community has really been able to present to you. i wish you had spent more time listening to them. having them give their entire presentations, i can imagine that you're not going to have a chance to hear this again. it's just going to be forgotten about the community voices. i really hope you will relisten to the presentations and you will look at their presentations and really take them in. this is some powerful information and i think you should be reading it and understanding it. this is something that i don't think any of them are really getting. thank you. >> clerk: caller you have two minutes. >> i'm david and i'm a resident of district one and volunteer

with wealth and disparity. i wanted to thank all the presenters for the effort they put in. i thought everybody had great recommendations and i appreciated the question that director henderson asked, what are we going to do with the list. i think it's really important that we take these recommendations and look at them closely and we being the police commission hold themselves accountable. if you're going to the community organizations and asking us for our opinion, it's important to hold yourself accountable. i did appreciate vice president elias' commitment to review these quarterly. and i hope that the police commission follows up on that. and i thank all of the presenters and special shout out to mr. pointer who we have worked with.

i appreciate how you represented our organization. >> clerk: we have one more. good evening caller, you have two minutes. vice president elias, that is the end of public comment. >> vice president elias: i look forward to the continued conversation like commissioner brookter suggested when we bring it back, we hope to have you back with us to see the progress we made and updates on recommendations. thank you again. sergeant can you call the next item please. >> clerk: line item 6, public comment on all matters for

closed session and whether to hold closed session. >> would you mind indulging my brief public comment. i do not believe you should discuss in closed session item number 8b i am unclear why you would think a change in the policy on domestic violence is covered by the act. this department has publicly committed and told the department of justice pursuant to recommendations that it claims to have fulfilled that it is only negotiating with the poa matters that are mandatory under

the act. mandatory subject to bargaining or limited to changes and policy to change the fundamental working conditions of police officers and even if they do, are not fitting within the progressive. i have seen on policy after policy, this commission continuing to go in closed sessions to confer with labor negotiators on matters not covered by the act. you did it on the bias based policing general order and 5.03. and it is a violation of the brown act to go behind closed doors as a body to discuss policy matters that is a matter of law must be discussed publicly. perhaps you can ask for all parts of the conversation you have about that policy why it is a mandatory subject for bargaining. i appreciate what was said on

the prior item about the department having an open door to input but it doesn't feel open when the input goes behind closed doors for negotiations with the pao not covered by law. it is not consistent and significant deterrent to engaging with the department if you are giving them closed door veto power over what should be public conversations. thank you very much. >> clerk: that is the end of public comment. >> vice president elias: thank you. next item sergeant. >> clerk: vote whether to hold item 8 in closed session. action. >> vice president elias: can i get a motion. >> so moved.

>> vice president elias: a second? >> second. >> vice president elias: thank you. sergeant? >> clerk: (roll call) you have four yes's. i will take us into closed session.