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tv   Police Commission  SFGTV  October 16, 2023 12:00am-2:01am PDT

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to the republic for which it stands. our nation under god, individual liberty and justice for all. vice president carter, if i could take roll, please. commissioner walker here. mr. benedicto present. mr. yanez. present commissioner byrne here. commissioner yee is in route. vice president carter. stone. you have a quorum. also with us tonight, we have chief scott from the san francisco police department and acting director sarah hawkins from the department of police accountability. sergeant, could you please call the first item? line item one weekly officer recognition certificate presentation of an officer who has gone above and beyond in the performance of their duties. sergeant kevin quadro star number 1253 from the robbery unit. good evening,
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commissioners. chief scott and director hawkins. i am captain mahkota of the major crimes unit , and i'm honored to be here tonight to present to you kevin, sergeant kevin. quadro. quadro of the robbery detail. sergeant quadro is a 11 year veteran of san francisco police department, having joined the department in 2012. sergeant quadro is the grandson of retired sfpd sergeant elmer quadro, with whom sergeant quadro shares the same star number. number 1253. sergeant quadro began began his career at tenderloin station and then was assigned to the mid-market foot beat. sergeant quadro was promoted to sergeant in 2018 and was assigned to patrol at mission station. sergeant quadro transferred to the robbery detail and has been an outstanding member of the robbery detail since 2019. sergeant quadro is a dedicated, hardworking investigator. the running joke in the robbery detail is that he spends as much
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time helping his coworkers on their cases as he spends working on his own cases. while not entirely true, it does show his dedication to helping his colleagues and the residents of san francisco. sergeant quadro has also fostered and maintained numerous relationships with fellow officers throughout the department and is constantly collaborating with fellow members of the department, both in the robbery detail and members assigned to other department units. sergeant quadro also works well with law enforcement members from other jurisdictions as well as successfully collaborating with members of the district attorney's office. these relationships and collaboration are invaluable to the robbery detail, especially when the detail requests assistance from other units and conversely, when those other units request assistance from the robbery detail. just as important, sergeant quadro treats all victims of crimes who he's
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committed to helping with empathy and compassion. as stated before, sergeant quadro is quick to offer his help to everyone of his coworkers and share his experience. when asked . sergeant quadro is respected and eager to assist when called upon by his supervisors for specific tasks and is always quick to recognize obstacles and potential challenges that his supervisors may need to be made aware of. sergeant quadro will always answer the call from his coworkers and supervisors on duty or off duty at and at any time of day or night. sergeant quadro is very well respected and liked throughout the entire san francisco police department and the community. recent only sergeant quadro invested in an incident that occurred in april of this year where a straight a street robbery occurred and during the course of the robbery, the victim was shot by one of the suspects. as the
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victim was seriously injured. and has endured numerous surgeries. sergeant quadro dedicated all of his energy to this case. a painstaking, five month long investigation by sergeant quadro led to the identification of the involved suspects and their locations as multiple arrest warrants and search warrants were obtained. sergeant quadro coordinated with outside units and jurisdictions of the on the execution of the warrants, all of which occurred outside of san francisco, including one that occurred in a differing state. all suspects involved in this violent robbery were arrested and the arrests and search warrants also led to additional, unrelated charges and additional evidence from the incident. that will be very useful in the successful prosecution of the suspects. most importantly, i think, as you can see, sergeant quadro is a dedicated husband and father. to three young children. i present to you and i'm honored
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to present to you sergeant kevin quadro. sergeant, thank you so much for your service and for your incredible work in that one case that was highlighted by captain cota. absolutely no pressure, but i would invite you to say a few words if you're so moved. sure obviously, i want to thank my family for coming out. it means a lot. sorry it's a little emotional. next week, i want to remind this commission and the chief and everybody on the meeting of this commission on the 18th marks a six year anniversary for officer elliott tinkle. he was critically injured recently. he had some tough conversations with elliott . he's still fighting. so i remind everybody that that's on our minds in the police department. and thank you again
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for the award. so. so the san francisco police department recognizes the sergeant kevin quadro star number 1253 of the robbery unit as the officer of the week. thanks. thank you, sergeant quadro. you know, i was prepared to say something else, but i just want to point out that you know, this moment that was meant to be for you, you took the time to think about elliott, and that just says a lot about you as a person and you as a man. and i think your family, hopefully, they're very proud of you because we are. so thank you very much. thank you, chief. appreciate it. commissioner walker. congratulation guys. thank you so much for your service and for
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being here and for your compassion. thanks. it says a lot out about you, about all our officers. that's how that's how you approach your job. and how you show up. and i want to thank the family, too. hello there. thank you for being here with your papa. first public speaking . yeah, she's probably better than i. thank you very much for everything you do. thank you, commissioner yee, one also thank you to sergeant coder for all you done for us in there in the city and the community. thank the family. that's one of the most important things for the officers that the families here to join your. guess recognition for your certificate. so again, stay safe out there. thank you again. for members of the public
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would like to make public comment regarding line item one, please approach the podium. good afternoon. my name is doctor miller. i'm a longtime resident of san francisco and i'm here on behalf of the disabled community and many patients that i've had in regards to the ongoing ada violations on the city sidewalks. i'm sorry, general public comment will be called next. this is just on line. item one, the officer recognition. oh, i'm so sorry. i'm jumping the gun. well, i want to also thank the recognition for the officer who did an excellent job. and i spent many years at san francisco general helping helping you guys and gals out when you guys have been in crisis. so again, thank you to him. and i'll come back and share my concerns in a minute. thank you all. thank you. thank any other member would like to make public comment regarding line item one, please approach
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the podium and there is no public comment. line item two general public comment at this time, the public is now welcome to address the commission for up to two minutes on items that do not appear on tonight's agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the police commission or under police commission. rules of order during public comment. neither police or epa personnel nor commissioners are required to respond to questions by the public, but may provide a brief response. alternatively you may also submit public comment in either of the following ways email the secretary of the police commission at sfpd commission at icgov.org or written comments may be sent via us postal service to the public safety building, located at 1245 third street, san francisco, california. 94158. if you would like to make public comment, please approach the podium. good evening, everybody. i uh, something a reminder. i think it's for everybody. it's like the there is no possible all
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good issue for from lies. it just doesn't work. so that's the problem. we have to, uh, face the truth at some point because it's going to come at us no matter what. so it might be very violent if we wait much longer. the other things i want to say, i really don't care if people don't like me. it's not the problem. and i think people don't like me. that's exactly because i'm not supposed to be liked. it's just i want everybody to be happy. so there is no favoritism. so i really don't care. just to let you know, uh, let thing i think maybe i said that last time. the key now to solve the problem because we have to bring solutions, right? otherwise it's remember to own yourself. you own yourself. so you don't take any crap anymore. that's it.
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including lies. because it doesn't serve you. you know, your happiness. and that's the way we're going to solve the problems. because if you pass the word, everybody is going to own remember to own his or herself and you protect yourself. it's your private property. so after that, it's respect to each other and it works automatically for the common good. is that okay, andre . hello again. i hope this is the appropriate time. uh, my name is dr. miller. as i mentioned earlier, i'm here on behalf of the disabled community and many patients who have disabilities. unfortunately, there are many issues going on in san francisco, and it has collateral effects on everyone. but of grave concern to me is the are the ongoing ada violations for passageway on city sidewalks. i understand i've been working on this for some time, that the police are also involved and they're supposed to be a police response. unfortunately, it
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seems to be in disarray. and i understand there are priorities which can lead to discrimination . i believe. however, i believe that we just don't have a clear response from the police, especially in the lower polk street area. and there are lots of reasons, but it's not being attended to, whether it's fleet week, whether there's a funeral, whether there's, you know, priority is, i believe, disabled people deserve the right to be on the sidewalk and if the police are involved, we need some clarification an immediately and assistance calls on the board remain open for weeks and are closed responses. when i've been there have been where we can't do anything. so there's not any communication coming from the top in terms of what can and can't be done. but my understanding by the ada and having spoken with the department of justice is if there is a sidewalk violation, there are no exceptions. 24 seven, there needs to be clearance on a sidewalk for feet for all people. it impairs people's passageway. we request police assistance and the message is not getting relayed and the responses are not happening. so we appreciate whatever i can do to help to
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work with you. there are certain streets that are, especially myrtle, between polk and larkin. it's in grave concern. and the last thing i request is in the lower polk street area near the hospital there on van ness, there tends to be an increase in criminal activity. and i would really suggest that because it's on the borderline between northern and tenderloin, a police outpost be stationed. i really appreciate that. i appreciate everyone's support and i'm here in good faith. thank you for listening. hello. hi. good evening, everyone. i'd like to use the overhead and i'm here about my son, aubrey abercastle, who was murdered, is not showing up. okay. could you start my time over then? i didn't see it. i was looking over there. okay. first i want to. i want to thank brooke
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jenkins, the da, for finally getting my son's headstone. it's in the ground now. i have something i can go look at now. and stand there and talk to him . and it's a beautiful marble headstone. and i thank brooke jenkins for that. and i texted her and told her thank you. she told me at my son's visual this will be the last year your son go without a headstone. i went 17 years without a headstone on because of the grief and the trauma that i've been going through and the money that i didn't have anymore because it cost a lot and didn't want to realize that my son was gone. but again, i thank brooke jenkins for what she's done. and i also am still asking, when is it going to be another investigator to come and
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investigate our children's murders. to pay tipsters some kind of money to investigate their murders? my son's case is still unsolved. and even though i have this headstone and it's somewhat of a victory, but it's not a closure for me. so again, i want to thank her for that, for helping a mother out like myself and i'm still asking for help from everyone here about solving these unsolved homicides and hiring someone to come and pay tipsters some kind of money so that our cases can be solved. thank you. any members of the public that have any information regarding the murder of aubrey abacus, you can call the anonymous 24/7 tip line. at (415)!a575-4444. and there is no further public comment. next item, please, sergeant, line
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item three consent calendar receive and file action family code 6228 incident report release quarterly report 2023. quarter two sapd and dpa's sb 1421 and sb 16 monthly report sir. motion motion to receive and file. second, any member of the public that would like to make public comment regarding line item three the consent calendar. please approach the podium. and there is no public comment on the motion. commissioner walker, how do you vote? yes mr. walker is yes. commissioner benedicto yes. mr. benedicto is yes. commissioner yanez. yes. mr. yanez is yes. commissioner. burn. yes. commissioner. burn is yes. commissioner yee yes. commissioner yee is yes. and vice president carter oberstar. yes. vice president stone is. yes. you have six yeses line item for chief's report discussion weekly crime trends and public safety concerns provide an overview of offenses, offenses, incidents or events occurring in san francisco, having an impact on public safety commission discussion on
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planned events and activities achieved describes will be limited to determining whether to calendar for a future meeting. chief scott. thank you. sergeant youngblood. good evening. vice president carter overstone commissioners acting executive director. sarah so i'm sorry. hawkins i know i'm reading. henderson i'm sorry. sarah executive director. hawkins today's chief report. i will start with just overall crime trends and keep it, keep it very brief. overall our violent crime, we are up 3% in that category. homicides we're up by 242 homicides compared to 40 this time last year. the good news is our total gun violence is down by 3. that's about a difference of five crimes from this to five shootings from this time last year 162 compared to 167 property crimes is down overall 6. and with that, there's a 7% reduction in in in
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car break-ins, which is quite significant. so we still have a lot of work to do in that regard. but definitely it decrease is better than an increase year to date burglaries are also down year to date in terms of our homicides, our clearance rate is 75. and in terms of our gun seizures, to help address the firearms related crimes, we are at 851 year to date compared to 814 this time last year. ghost guns. we're starting to catch up with last year. we're at 158 compared to 160 this time last year. a couple of significant incidents for the week. we had a homicide that was reported in the 200 block of mission this was on october 7th at 1:57 a.m. over night. the victim, along with several companions, were confronted by a group of subjects during the altercation. shots were fired and the victim was struck at least once the victim was transported to san
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francisco. general zuckerberg and unfortunate he passed away from his injuries. this is an active and ongoing investigation . no arrests at this time. there was one shooting for this reporting period that occurred at mission and cesar chavez on ten, 823 or october 8th at 8 p.m, the victim was walking when he heard a gunshot. then felt pain. he was self transported to the hospital out of the city and the injuries are believed to be non life threatening. we had a couple of significant arrests. the first one i want to report is a aggravated assault on an 80 year old elderly victim. this occurred on october 5th at 7:50 a.m. at bay and lion street in the northern district. the victim, who was 80 years old, was walking his dog when an unknown subject approached him and hit him in the head with an unknown object. the victim fell and hit his head on the sidewalk and was transported for his
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injuries. surveillance footage was located and the identity of the suspect was developed. the suspect was later located that day by northern officers and was taken into custody without further incident. so i just want to say, hats off to the northern officers for sticking with this and following through and that resulted in an arrest of a very callous suspect. there was a retail theft operation during this reporting period as a part of our retail theft efforts to reduce the number of retail thefts in our city. this is a part of our series of what we call the retail blitz operation . and this occurred in the san francisco center with the assistance of the highway california highway patrol. they're organized retail crime task force teams of uniformed and plainclothes officers, basically conducted operations at the retail establishments in the san francisco center and observed nine individuals from
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various stores stealing property from inside the shopping mall. these individuals were swiftly arrested and all the stolen property was recovered. so that is a part of an ongoing effort. we will be doing more of these these types of efforts as we have obtained funding through the organized retail crime grant, $15.3 million department was granted. so that will give us more room to add capacity to these types of operations, which is a good thing. there's an armed robbery series, a really good arrest here between the dates of september 26th and october 4th, three armed commercial robbery robberies occurred in and around the mission district between midnight and early morning hours. the robberies involved taking over of businesses, forcing victims to the floor or into back rooms at gunpoint. in two of the robberies. the victims were pistol whipped. the loss in each robbery included currency and merchandise. and in two of the incidents, the
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business is atms were also taken during the robberies. atm machines is during the course of the investigation, it was determined that these robberies were committed by the same suspects. one of the suspect was identified as a 32 year old san francisco resident and the other suspect was identified as a 33 year old male. on october 4th, several units participated in an operation to take the suspects into custody. both suspects were taken into custody without incident. subsequent only a search warrant was was served at one of the suspects residence. evidence was recovered, including two pistols and merchandise stolen in these robberies. all evidence was seized in both suspects were booked on several counts of robberies, kidnaping and assault with a deadly weapon. false imprisoned and two counts of use of a firearm during the commission of a felony. so this these two individuals were very dangerous individuals and good work by our team to take them
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into custody. one of the robberies also include included a robbery of a norm's market. this was at 2200. bryant two victims were inside of the norm's market when two same two suspects with firearms entered and physically assaulted. both victims. the suspect robbed one victim and left with the market safe with contents valued at $9,000. we did obtain good evidence and the suspects were booked. that was one of the robberies that they were booked on. also report and really unfortunate incident on the 7th of october. this was during this past weekend during fleet week. there was a rooftop party where a bunch of individuals, bunch of people were were watching the blue angels and unfortunately, one of the ladies that was up there fell to her death into the street. despite life saving efforts by the responding
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emergency personnel. she succumbed to her injuries. so no rooftop parties are a fairly common in san francisco. my public safety message to anybody participating in rooftop parties is, number one, be careful. a lot of the roofs that these parties are being held on aren't permitted to do that. there's not railings or anything to keep people from tumbling off if they get too close to the edge. so please take caution if you do participate, our advice and our message is we ask you to refrain from participating in a rooftop party when there's they're not designed for that because they are extremely dangerous. and this is not the first time that we've had people falling off roofs either to their deaths, deaths or serious injuries. so more more to follow on that in terms of public messaging, particularly around fleet week and some of our events where people have these types of
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parties. lastly there was a swat incident which we've had a number of these. and for the public swatting calls are basically fake calls, emergency calls that are usually generated by either a computer or some type of hacker. and the purpose you see the target of the calls, the purpose is to get police and other emergency responders to show up at the person's location in either house business. and we've had many of them at schools in our city. so this is an ongoing issue and an ongoing problem. it uses a lot of law enforcement resources and oftentimes fire personnel as well, depending on the nature of the call and again, the public safety messages here is these are very serious incidents. and if we are able to investigate and find out the source of them, it is a serious crime and you will be held accountable. so we
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are discouraging these types of calls because we've gotten a number of them recently. last thing i know, vice president carter stone, you asked for ongoing reports for our drug market at this week. there were 44 arrests, actually, i don't have the breakdown of the number of sales versus use, so i would have to follow up with that. but we also this week recovered 21, 20, 100g of illegal narcotics. but i apologize for not having the breakdown. i will have that next week. and that concludes my report. chief, thanks for. oh, please. one other thing i forgot to mention. sorry. vice president carter stone, significant incident over the weekend. officer involved shooting at the chinese consulate on geary street. we will be having a town hall for as of now. we will make this a formal announcement, but we're planning to schedule it for next
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thursday. but we will make a formal announcement on that. if that changes. but we will have a town hall on this incident. i have nothing further to report at this time. we did put out a statement to the public on that and just the incident. a suspect drove a car into the consulate at that call, got called in as his emergency call with a person armed with a gun, actually. and officers respond and ois occurred. so we will we will make known what we can in the town hall of what's appropriate to release. but there will be a town hall on this incident. great. thanks, chief. thanks for the report. do you have any you said that we've had a recent uptick in swatting calls. do you have any additional information you can share on that in terms of the number of these calls we've been getting not at hand, but i can definitely i can put
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something together. these they're happening in the city, but they're also happening regionally and nationally. and we've had a couple of incidents. i know this doesn't specifically answer your question where for instance, there was a trend of swatting calls at schools. there were bomb threats across the country on the same day at around the same time causes it wreaks havoc. you know, and working with some of our partners across the country, every time this has happened, we've been able to determine fairly quickly that it was a swatting call. but it's still we have to respond. we have to take these things seriously until we really believe that it's a swatting call. so i'll see if i can do some research about how many. but there has been an uptick. great. thank you. thank you. last week, the president of the police officers association came here and spoke at public comment regarding the unauthored ized release of an officer's name who's facing disciplinary
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charges. i did. i just did. want to ask, is the police department investigating the data breach? yes. yes we are. yes. and when did that investigation start it? well, we started looking into it when we found out about the breach. but as far as a formal internal investigation, and that was last week. all right. and so you started investing, getting it when the newspaper article hit or. yes, we started inquiring to figure out kind of what happened. yes gotcha. and just last question on this. the document agent that was mistakenly released unredacted, and there were other were there was other information redacted in that document besides just the specific officer. have individuals who may be affected by the breach. but whose names have not appeared in a newspaper
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article, been notified that that their personal confidential information may have been obtained. no, no, no, not at this time. all right. and do we is there any plan to do that at some point or is that not is that generally not? well, we will see. one of the things we're looking at is really kind of what the reach of this is. and what possibly is at stake in terms of any other information that might might be contingent to this. and one of the things i know, for example, has been given about a credit breach. i mean, i think this is somewhat different that there aren't those type of issues at play, but we do want to know what the reach of this is. so people and then we'll make a decision. okay, great. thanks. that's everything for me. commissioner walker, thank you for the update
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that there was also a, i think a an action. around street vending and actual sites actions around that is that our department or is that the mission a dpw folks i'm not clear who who takes care of that but if you could report on that yes and i can answer at least the question the enforcement component of street vending is the responsibility of public works. it's administrative public works. can enforce on that. we do support those efforts because as there have been several occasions, a number of occasions where the public works, workers have been assaulted by some of the vendors when they try to enforce. so they have asked us to support
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that effort. so as much as possible, we can prevent that from happening. and so we do and will do that and continue to do that. thank you. that's i've heard that, too, from folks. it's really important. i've heard from a lot of the businesses in the mission who really appreciate whatever you can do to we all can do as a city to help control that because it's creating issues and to that point, just to follow up on some of the public comment we had about about the sidewalk blocking violations and the policy and what we're doing around and that issue to clear sidewalks. maybe if you're not prepared to do it. now, i know we didn't ask before it might be something that we get a presentation on also with the other departments that are partners with us. i think it would be good to just get an update about that. thank you. we
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can do that. thank you. okay, perfect. thank you. commissioner yee, thank you very much. there vice president carter on. chief, i just wanted to thank the homicide division for solving another, i guess i guess killing out there in the richmond district where they apprehend the suspect that i, i guess, beat the shop owner. so i just want to acknowledge the department and the investigative team for doing their due diligence and outstanding work. also so on regarding the shooting at the chinese consulate, i think it's probably the first that you have now that there's an officer involved shooting in a foreign embassy. so is the procedure going to be the same? we have two ois, you know, investigation or will the state department come in and do their investigation before for
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san francisco police department? our our procedure for this is the same. but we did and we'll continue to consult with the state department as well as the council general from china. and embassy is technically foreign soil. so we had to make sure that we had those conversations and got the cooperation of our consular office, which they did . they've been very gracious and the state department was on board from the very beginning in terms of consultation. and they actually had representatives that responded. but as far as the process, we have been granted, the. authority to investigate it, like we normally investigate this, to follow up on their on the response team, how many officers were at the scene at the time of the shooting? you know, three they didn't all get there at the same time at three. okay. uh see, my
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last question would be in regards to the sfpd responding to homelessness and i guess the people that are 51, 50, possibly , how many officers or how many , i guess you would say response that our officers are responding to, meaning that in a day's time you might have ten reports? is that ten officers or or 30 officers. it varies depending on the day of the week. i mean, as far as the officers that are assigned to the healthy streets operation center, it is i think we're down to 6 or 8 officers. it may be down to six, but i believe it's eight. and a sergeant and a lieutenant and
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they respond in conjunction with the homeless and support of housing. uh or their hot team, particularly when an encampment is going to be resolved or resolution. so everybody has a role. and again, some of what we are there for is a standby to make sure that they're everything is peaceful and we have our service providers there, our navigators, if you will, there. but that varies. some stations do have teams that are in place to address that issue. the homeless outreach officers, not every station has those teams, but some stations do. but just to kind of depends on who's working and what the what the issue of the day is. but the team is a dedicated group of officers. thank you very much, chief commissioner benedicto. thank you, chief. i
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just one question i had, and this is i know this has been a late breaking and developing story today. and so i think i'll also ask for it to be agendized. but i wonder if you had any reaction to there was a story in the chronicle today about sfmta's parking tickets and the fact that that's not currently coordinated with with sfpd's information on stolen vehicles and that, you know, it's possible that there was greater coordination that that you could see that being a way to identify people, people stolen vehicles when they're ticketed. so i just wanted to know first if you had any initial reactions to that that you want. do you want to share if you had a chance to see that? yeah, no, i have not seen the story, but i am aware of that situation. so there are a couple of things. there was an executive order that was issued today by our mayor. i saw that too, directing that mta and sfpd work together to resolve the information and the bureaucracies that prevent mta
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from obtaining the information they need to obtain so that was just today. so we will work through that and figure out a solution. yeah, sometime around noon i saw the story and then when i checked later that afternoon, i saw there was an executive order issued. so it's been a story with multiple developments today. i think i'll ask that we agendize is how that work is going. maybe for some time later this year or early next year because i think it seems like a bit of an easy win to get that coordination. it sounds like from the research that the reporters did in the article, some jurisdictions like san diego have a system with more robust information sharing. so i think it'd be it'd be great if we could do that coordination and provide that resource to the public. so i'll, you know, recognizing that the executive order is about two hours old, i won't expect anything now, but i think it's worth further review by this commission. happy to do it. happy to do it. thank you. that's all. thanks great. sergeant, could you take us to public comment for any member of
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the public would like to make public comment regarding line item for the chief's report, please approach the podium. good evening again. i'm here for again about my son. again, his case is unsolved. i was just talking about how how $0 have been paid out for nearly a decade for unsolved homicides. there has not been this article came out in the papers and still waiting for someone to be hired to solve these unsolved cases. as you have all the names of the perpetrators who murdered my son , you have. hannibal, thomas, paris moffat, andrew badu, jason thompson, thomas anthony hunter, marcus carter. one of them is
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deceased. and so you have all the perpetrators who were there that murdered my son. this is at the homicide on the fifth floor. and your records where i saw the names and was allowed, not allowed, but i wrote them down here. this is what they left me with. a lifeless body of my son . no mother wants to go through this at all. i come here every wednesday day pleading for justice for my child and no mother wants to stand over a casket or even though it sounds redundant for me, but it's not to you guys. it might sound that way, but to me it isn't. not just standing for my son, but i stand for all unsolved homicides of all the young men that have been murdered in the fillmore, in the in the bayview district.
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so i know you hear me all the time. some of you may be busy on your phones and doing what you're going to do over there on your phones. and you're tired of listening to me, but i'm talking to you these cases need to be solved. it needs to happen. and again, for any member that has any information regarding the murder of aubrey abacus, you can call the anonymous 24/7 tip line . at (415)!a575-4444. my name is yolanda williams. i'm standing in front of you today as the vice president of the san francisco branch of the naacp. dr. brown could not be here, but he requested chief and commissioners that i bring this to your attention. he believes that he has received some credible information that the
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black churches are about to be targeted for crimes to occur on sundays when we're having our morning worship service is. i am asking, chief for you to set aside a time to meet with dr. brown and some of the executive members of the naacp because as we do believe that this is very plausible and i think that it would be time for us to start thinking on sundays to have officers from the district stations at least visit during the course of their tour of duty during the daytime. um, each of these churches make themselves known that they're on duty so that the churches can feel that they're more protected and we don't need to be part of the statistics and we are faithful people. we believe in god and we support our police department. but at the same time, we really think at this point in time, we need to look at this and consider our this serious and do
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what all we can to protect those who are trying to be faithful, good stewards on sunday mornings in the churches. so i ask that you will meet with us so that we can give some concern, turns and thoughts about what we can do to protect our parishioners. thank you. that is the end of public comment. line item five director's report discussion report on recent activities and announcements. commission discussion will be limited to determining whether the calendar, any of the issues raised for a future commission meeting. executive director hawkins. thank you. good evening. commissioners chief scott, members of the community. i will start with our statistics . at this time this year we have opened 617 cases, which is a slight increase from this point last year where we had opened 514. we have closed 574 cases, which is also slightly more than
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565 at this time last year. we currently have 296 pending cases of those pending cases, 22 are past the 270 day mark. but of those 2219 are told for various other legal reasons. we have seven cases pending with the commission and 85 pending with the chief at this point this year we have mediated 31 cases and i'll talk a little bit more about mediation in a moment. and that's double the amount we had mediated at this point last year . i'm going to say we are doing all of this, which is more in every metric for this year compared to last year with less resources and less staff. so we are feeling the kind of budget implications as our sfpd and i know a lot of other city departments turning towards mediation on tuesday, october third, we hosted our first community connect event, which focused on our mediation department. we had it in-person at the google community space.
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it was attended by members of the community as well as volunteer mediators and staff. we had about 25 attendees and had presentation sessions covering a day in the life of our investigators. a 101 and a panel. all of our mediators spoke about their experience with our program and with mediation in general, and our director of mediation, ali schultz, also presented an gave context about our program. we are looking forward to having another community event later this year, trying to get some in-person momentum and increased outreach. now that we have a new outreach director on board, we have some photos on our social media pages. so we're also using community feedback to plan our future events. the only other update i have at this point is that dpo, this is where when i write my own notes, things look bad for the agency i work for and f.t.f.o with sfpd have coordinated to provide all dpr
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investigators and attorneys with training using the firearms training system simulator. this training involves using a video simulation of a scenario that makes the person doing the training either choose levels of force or not use force as if they were an officer responding to calls for service. we always appreciate f.t.f.o and the training division, including dpr on trainings that officers receive. it's a really important part of not only our investigations but also policy recommendations and training recommendations that we make. so we enjoy that opportunity and we'll have all of our staff trained up on that over the next few months. and the other member of the dpr team who's here tonight is policy director janelle caywood. you can always find us on the website or call us at (415)!a241-7711. with any issues that you might have for us to address. thank you. all
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right. seeing no names in the queue, sergeant, could you take us to public comment for any members of the public that would like to make public comment regarding line item five, the directors report. please approach the podium training for food pursuit two because you need to train the guys if you need to run. i was a track runner when i was younger. 800m. i was very good. so because if you have to run, you have to run. so you want to make sure to be in good health, too, right? so. and that is the end of public comment at line item six commission reports, discussion and possible action commissioner reports will be limited to a brief description of activities and announcements. commission discussion will be limited to determining whether to calendar any of the issues raised for future commission meeting. commission presidents report commissioners reports and commission announcements and scheduling of items identified
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for consideration at a future commission meeting. earlier this afternoon. commissioner benedicto and i attended a closed door town hall meeting with about 25 officers to solicit feedback on the department's vehicle chase policy. we i guess a few months ago some commissioners, i think commissioner benedicto being one of them, called for the commission to take a hard look at the policy in light of some pursuits that resulted in injury and death to innocent bystanders as the town hall was incredibly productive of we got a lot of really great feedback and a lot of really great ideas, frankly, both in terms of amendments to the policy. technological changes are improving agents, tactics that could be used to
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forestall the need for a chase in the first instance. so just want to thank all of the officers who came out and devoted a couple hours of their time, um, to that process to be clear, the commission, i don't believe, has officially decided to amend the policy, but this was just a first step to solicit feedback. and like i said, it was really helpful. um, the other, the other thing i'll just address is as i mentioned in, in , in my questions to the chief in his report last week, the president of the police officers association appeared before the commission to follow up on a letter that she wrote. the commission that essentially accused me of improper, really leaking confidence, official information to the press. and all i would say about that is just wanted to update the public
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that i did provide a response. i wrote a public letter and president elias also wrote a public letter. and the po also responded with another letter. all those letters are on the commission's website under the 30 day correspondence and i would just invite members of the public who are interested to read them. i think they speak for themselves and i'll just leave it at that. commissioner yee, thank you very much. vice president carter. uh, i guess i'll start off with last friday in in the asian community. we had a celebration for or i guess a promotion of the asian command staff chief was there. i guess the community was in celebration mode for the new promotion and got, got to meet the new central station captain. his name is john. john han kim. so he was
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welcomed with open arms in our communities and also we want to thank the chief for the promotion. also was on tend to the italian heritage festival parade. it was a long march, but i got my walks in. great to see the community out in a festival mode in and i would say the fleet week was a was a very safe successful event. and i want to thank the san francisco police department, including the chief . it looked like a beautiful day out there. san francisco. so that is my report. thank you, commissioner walker. thank you. um i spent the this week has
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been somewhat slow for me, but i did do a follow up meeting with some of the folks who have been discussing the patrol specials ongoing discussion about the program and getting a better idea of how to address some of the issues of concern that have come up over the past around it. and there's a good group who have a lot of experience with the program going forward to really tighten up. some recommend added changes to the program for a new sort of a new tool for the chief and the department to use. one of the steps that we would like to initiate is getting the attorneys together to tell us how to legislate the changes or to do the to take the legal steps necessary to partner with an outside, maybe group like the
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business improvement districts, especially for the pilot program to see you know, to get some kinks out and make recommendations back, get data to us. so that'll be one of the next steps that i hope to do with our attorney and the attorney for the community benefit district alliance. just to recommend how we talk about those changes. and i want to thank the chief to it's been really an enlightening discussion to happen. and i actually think that we need a lot of tools right now to help our city in a in a shortfall to do the things we all want the department to do and keep the streets safe. so i think moving towards that is really important. on the issue of the investigation into leaked information and the conversation
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, one of the things that came up for me is i've never been on a commission where individual commission owners can communicate on letterhead. so it was one of the issues that concerned me because we hadn't voted on the communication. and apparently the history of it is that individual commissioners can use our letterhead for city for police commission business and make it clear that it's not necessarily from the entire commission, but from the individual. i just want to say that. there's a lot of tension around the police commission at this point in the public eye and i want us to be really mindful of how we represent this is a judicious body. we don't prosecute, we don't defend. we actually are asked to look at it and especially as the press calls us for comments, if these
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are confidential things that happen, it's best to find out ahead of time what's going on before we comment, because it challenges us in the job that we're doing to remain fair. and i'd like to have us talk about that on the an agenda both sort of the rules and regulations about speaking for the commission as well as sort of how we need to deal with press when they're asking about individual cases. commissioner benedicto, thank you. acting president carter obersten, as you said, we attended a closed door listening session with officers today about our pursuit policy. it was something that the vice president and i've been asking about for a while, and it was as the vice president said, really in credibly valuable to hear the candor and the input
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from officers and i know it's something that i've talked to the vice president about. i've talked to commissioner walker about it, that i think we're all wiser at each time we speak to line officers who are the end users of our policies, who are the ones who are subject to our jurisdiction for discipline and it was it was, i think, immensely valuable. so i'm very glad for that. additionally following up on something that commissioner walker announced last week, we had the flier for the sfpd pink brunch, which our commission staff will post on the website if it's not up already. this is a fundraiser hosted by sfpd in honor of breast cancer awareness month. we don't get those cool pink patches like the officers, but i did wear a pink tie in honor of breast cancer awareness month. and so thank you to commissioner walker for sharing that. i also did want to thank commissioner walker for her leadership on the patrol special issue. it's a fraught and long conversation. there's a lot of complexities involved. there's a long
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controllers report and there's a lot of hoops to jump through and i thank you for your leadership moving that forward on its long road. thank you. uh, commissioner yanez. thank you. vice president carter. overstone chief and public at large. i want to make sure to wish everyone a happy belated indigen peoples day. there was a celebration this monday, and i know that you know we are on ohlone land. it is good to acknowledge the fact that we recognize the contributions that our indigenous communities have always made to our to our city. um, i did receive an update from , um, the chief regarding a request previously for from the hill bomb investigation. follow up regarding the actual expenditures on overtime. and i just wanted to make sure that
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everyone had that information and is my understanding that during the hill bomb event, there were actually 1293 hours of overtime reported at a cost of an average of $117 per hour, which resulted. in $151,281 of overtime accrued for that activity. city and i had requested additional information. chief, i'm not sure if that is available as far as the regular staffing hours accrued during that operation. not sure whether that's a part of the investigation into the an analysis of how the event kind of, you know, escalated and culminated in the incident that we all are aware of. and if you don't have the numbers, would you happen to have a timeline for when we can expect to see an
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update on either the cost of the operation or the analysis of some of those challenges that were experienced and i'm not sure if you want to respond to that. i'm not there, obviously, so i can't see physically whether there is a response. but but maybe you if you have some comments on that, can respond after i complete my report. but i will promise to make a brief. in addition to that, i have there was a speaker during public comment last week that brought up an issue around the policing around just skateboarders in general and i've had various community members actually reach out to me and raise this issue. so i would like to, when there is the report back about the hill bomb at dolores park incident to also have a report about what our strategy is with regard to and law enforcement and skateboarding that is not taking
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place at parks. i know that that can be a contentious or has been a contentious, um, city situation for those people that , you know, use skateboards as their primary mode of transportation. and so i really feel that it merits some of our attention. and i'd like to agendize that for the day that we have the update on the hill bomb. um, there there also, i forwarded the draft for the juvenile. 7.01 to commissioner benedict, who actually is the lead on that dgo and since there has been a prolonged process, there apparently are some unresolved questions that i believe the commission would be to be very, uh, that we would need to, to chime in on in order to resolve and overcome, um, or remove or work through whatever
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obstacles are perceived in order for us to get that go, um, presented to us for authorization at and to be able to also inform how that will capture our efforts as we work towards establishing a pre-booking program. they do not go hand in hand, but given that 701 actually oversees all interactions and interface with juveniles and minors, i think that it behooves us to have that conversation motion along the same time so that we could resolve any obstacles that we may encounter in. the future as we are prepare to launch our pre-booking effort. um i'd also ask that we agendize the language access dgo as a result of some conversations that i've had with various members of our community with regards to
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obtaining language access and the interface between our department and immigrant community communities, especially considering a lot of the rhetoric going on around the nation. and that impacts our immigrant communities here in san francisco. so i would like to agendize that. um, and my last comment update it is with regards to, uh, you know, the, the data leak and some of the ensuing, uh, conversations and letters that we've received from various is, um, constituents and stakeholders. and one particular for statement that was very, very of concern to me and i know that many other community, some of our other commissioners have a similar sentiment. uh, the letter to our commission stated
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and i'm quoting here, how the commission handles this issue will directly affect the little trust our our members have in the commission and the president made that statement also, i believe in person when she had her public comment on monday. um, and obviously our commissioners are, you know, we are all and i'm going to speak for myself, um, we, we need to get to the root of where that data leak came from. and i'm glad that there is an investigation taking place. we take our jobs seriously. we and we whether our speaking independent of the commission or responding to questions as commissioners, i think we all have the right to express our personal opinions on subjects, obviously respecting every form of confidentiality that is permitted. um, but i also know
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that the which is not a union, it's an association has made it really challenging for us to do our work, especially when they, at least the president has taken such a combative and oppositional approach to working with us. you know, some of the comments that were made last week and some of the back and forth could have happened in a formal setting upon request for a meeting. but that approach was not taken. i want to read a letter that was sent to us by a cola mission to end bias stops, which has repeatedly continually uyghur me for the last few months, been sending letters, emails and attending our meetings to be able to request that we have an update and that we advance 907 and i'm going to quote from this coalition letter which says the past association of san francisco warned it
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warned in its january letter to the commission regarding the poa's history of obstruction during the meet and confer process. the poa is exploiting negotiations to delay implementation of 907. this is no mere conjecture in an october 1st 2023 post to the website union president tracy mcgrady made the posture of negotiating 907. shockingly clear. it's going to be a downright fight with us as we will not roll over on any policy that jeopardizes our ability to get dangerous criminals off our streets, especially considering the level of gun violence we've experienced over the last three years. the letter goes on to say, the poa a's actions should be seen for what they are a blatant attempt to thwart the will of the commission and leverage the meeting confer process as they, quote unquote
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shadow commission under threat of litigation. the po will pursue litigation to get what it wants. even if you decide to let them drag out the process and delay implementing action by several years, it continues to behave as a bully, as evidenced by president mccray's attempts to belittle and intimidate sitting commissioner. as i read that letter, because i believe that this coalition and stakeholders throughout the city have encouraged, compelled and pleaded with us to implement the 907. um, but we have been constrained in that process and i would i would echo the sentiment, um, that the letter is conveying the letter explicitly requests that we declare an impasse. um, i am
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encouraging the community and this commission to, to, to work to resolve whatever conflicts, um, or whatever perceive differences of opinion are come across our paths in a professional manner. and if and whenever possible, in a confidential space. this commission hearing is a space to be able to come and raise issues . but think confronting commissioners in the manner that the president did with baseless accusations and baseless allegations, um, that have been described in writing by the standard article, is not the most productive use of our time. thank you, sergeant. could you please take us to public comment ? any member of the public that would like to make public
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comment regarding line item six commission reports, please approach the podium. first of all. now i'm standing in front of you as yolanda williams, president of the officers for justice. the officers for justice fought for change in this department, and we worked tirelessly with the doj to ensure disparity in treatment of officers. was addressed. biased traffic stops, reform and transparency. it is imperative that we address the issues of the fraudulent data entries that were made by the officers or an officer as it is simply unacceptable. additional it's equally unacceptable for any officer, whether they are president of an association or representing themselves to come into the police commission and challenge a commissioner, undermining the authority and the integrity of this system. this information, accuracy is crucial in the president, as i see it, bullied and challenged the city official. it's
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unacceptable. and i see it as a violation of due to .01. and i think she should be brought up on charges for it. in addition, we need to be addressing the issue. it's crucial that we implement these reforms and prioritize transparent. nc. i see it as whether it was a leak or not. it happened and we need to address that problem. um, why did a sergeant, a lieutenant or some other supervisor find it troubling that the information came out consistently with just one specific race by particular officers? this is fictitious information, and it's equally important that the public know about it. transparency is essential in maintaining accountability and public trust. and this information must be reliable. furthermore there needs to be better oversight. so that fraudulent data is not put into our systems overall. while
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it's vital that we prioritize these, our data entries and strengthen the oversight to prevent fraud of this kind and to maintain the integrity of the police department. thank you. yes, i want to bring up about the digital homicide posters that's supposed to have been that field pod. the chief, scott, we're all worked on the digital homicide posters. i just recently been going to the ten police stations that you put the digital homicide posters and the televisions aren't on. so how is the cases are going to be solved ? why would you spend all this money to put these televisions at all? these to ten district stations? and then i walk in and there as a mother with her son's picture up there and the television. the thing is not on . so and all they can tell me is their their technician and all
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of this. so i've been walking ashley richmond district station where kaiser where i go pick up my medication and that television is on and i've been in that station like several times asking about it. so what do we do? why spend all that money to put these things at all of the stations and they're not on. there's a few that's on, but i look stupid asking them, where's your where's the captain here? i'm asking that. and no one's responding. so i said, i'm going to bring it to the police commission and bring it up here that these digital screens be put on cut back on or have your technician go in there and fix them again. why would we have them? and no one's doing any. why? no why would we have these these things and implemented the digital homicide televisions and they're not on at mostly probably none of the stations,
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but i know it's on in the fillmore because i'm always there. but i go other places and they're not on. please get them back on call those district stations and get them back on. thank you. that is the end of public comment line item seven discussion and possible action to approve revised department general order 5.25ft pursuits for the department to use in meeting and conferring with the affected bargaining units as required by law. discussion and possible action. good evening. i'm captain sean perdomo from the san francisco police academy , and i brought with me lieutenant meehan and sergeant bugarin from my force field tactics and force options unit here to talk about 5.25ft pursuits. lieutenant meehan, would you like to say a few words? yeah. thank you. good evening, everyone. chief scott
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asked members of our unit that field tactics force options unit to assist in the development of a foot pursuit policy for our department. we worked in conjunction with members of the and with chief scott to develop this proposed policy, and we approached it from the aspect of providing guidelines and direction to consider what officers to consider when engaging in a foot pursuit as opposed to having a number of restrictions in a policy that would prevent officers from continuing to do good police work and apprehending suspects. the policy our officers have been are trained to the standards that are in this policy as it is in it is in line with the california police officer standards and training guidelines when it comes to foot pursuit procedures and principles. and much of the language that is in the policy is taken directly from learning domain 21, which is which is a
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patrol tactics and methodologies that the officers are taught in the academy. yeah that's it, sergeant or captain. okay with that in mind, i'll take you through the policy itself. so the policy is mainly geared as an officer safety policy and it takes into consideration something that i wish i would have had when i was younger officer myself. so if we skipped a page three, i think these are the things that the wish list that i would have had from maybe a field training officer, maybe a more experienced officer, and those are the responsibilities of the officer initiating the foot pursuit. so something that you learn as you become a more senior officer is weighing the costs and benefits of chasing after somebody. and these things are all delineated here in page three, and it continues on to page four. and i'd the primary purpose of the policy is just to provide guidance to the officer engaging in a foot pursuit. the balance is public safety as well as the safety of the officer.
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does the commission have any particular questions regarding the policy itself? sure yeah. sergeant, did you want to say a few words before i go? sure okay. and we have sergeant guerin here from the office who would like to say a few words. sure. just layering on to what? the captain perdomo looked at me and said the very purposeful, objective of this course is officer safety. and with all the changes we have been conducting with the san francisco police department the past five years, this is the next layer to that. it's continuing to build on the principles that we're doing and hopefully going to continue the great work that the police officers in the field are already doing. thank you. thanks and if i could just give you some background on this from dpa's perspective and chief hawkins, you were around at the beginning of this, so if i misstate something, please feel free to jump in. but in 2018 and 2019, we had disciplinary cases that raised concerns about foot
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pursuits. the police department was concerned and was concerned as well. and we have monthly meetings with the training division and the field tactics force options unit to make sure that they address any kind of disciplinary trends that dpr is seeing in our complaints. and at that time we talked about developing a foot pursuit policy for the officer in charge and dpr agreed that instead of developing a policy right away, that the officers would have a period of time to train to the policy so that when there was a policy enacted, they'd already it wouldn't be a surprise. they were already implementing the tactics that were described. so for several years the unit has done an incredible job. they made a training video on foot pursuits. and so mid 20, 22, i approached them and lieutenant nevin to ask about the timing of a foot pursuit policy. and he told me a year a little bit too late. chief scott's already commissioned this unit to write a policy, i think in february of
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2022, chief scott had asked for a draft. they provided that to dpr and we provided some recommendations on that draft it and it was a really great collaboration on and the officers who wrote this draft, lieutenant meehan, who's the officer in charge of unit now, he was in charge of the swat team for many years. sergeant bulgarin just won a post award as the outstanding instructor in the entire state. so these are the best and the brightest of sfpd who are writing this policy . foot pursuit policies are best practices. the main goal is to protect officer safety. if the threat is real, not speculative. if you turn to the california commission on peace officer standards and trainings learning domain 21, the introduction states foot pursuits are one of the most dangerous and unpredictable situations for officers. all foot pursuits must be considered high risk. they then go down to delineate it a number of problems that foot
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pursuits cause for officers and how to address them. this is what the sfpd pd team put into the policy. we also looked to the international association of chief of police as they had guidelines for departments developing foot pursuit policies that they last updated in 2019. so we all reviewed that and made sure that the issues were addressed in this policy. we've had extensive meetings on this topic with the unit. we learned that when officers are given a list of what they cannot do, they tend to freeze in these rapidly evolving encounters. so we agreed that it would be best for officers just to give them guidance on what they can do and should do and give them tactical instructions on how to conclude foot pursuits as safely as possible for everyone involved. and so this foot pursuit policy, i think is the most permissive one in the country. it gives officers ultimate discretion. it doesn't ban foot pursuit policies under any circumstance
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. it's the only criteria is that they they be reasonable, which officers are required to act reasonably when they use force in every aspect of policing. so this is no different foot pursuit policies also protect the communities. officers who are involved in chases get tired. they develop tunnel vision. if they have to discharge a firearm, it grows inaccurate. they can be highly charged emotionally as well. so it's important to have there's a lot of research that our interns presented back in september of 2022, that foot pursuits, foot pursuits that are unbridled and not guided by good tactics lead to an increased use of force. and two officer involved shootings. so we addressed those issues in this policy to make sure that whenever feasible, officers who are pursuing on foot are not the same officers that are involved in the arrest team. so we took that research into consideration to develop a smart policy. a there's nothing
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controversial or anti policing about adopting a foot pursuit policy around 2013, foot pursuit policies began emerging as best practices around the country. even the chief of police, even the chiefs of police suggested that i wanted to provide to this commission. dpa's binder of best practices research. it has 37 foot pursuits, policies from around the country. it will show that ours is the best, but it's also the most permissive for officers. there's a lot of these policies prohibit foot pursuits for misdemeanors or infractions. we do none of that. we really focus on tactics. so there's 37 policies in here and 350 pages. this is not complete by any stretch. it was just the ones i could download in a day in 2022. and i will note that dallas police department has had a foot pursuit policy since 2012. so
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we're ten years behind dallas austin pd, baltimore. chicago dallas. detroit fresno. houston. las vegas. los angeles. sheriff's. so foot pursuit policies are definitely sweeping the nation. we need to adopt one to our officers deserve it. and in developing this process, we also looked at real data from sfpd to see that officers were going out on injuries from foot pursuits, and we don't want that to happen. so we also like to thank these guys. there have been incredible. they've we've spent hours talking about this with them. they exemplify 21st century policing principles. they are collaborative. they field our phone calls all the time. and they are just wonderful people and wonderful police officers. and we're very proud of the work that we've done together. but this policy came from them and they should be appreciated for it. so thank you. great. thank you, everyone,
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for that. i'm sorry, captain, do you have anything else to add? no, no, thank you. okay. no, thank you. everyone for. for their respective presentations. i did want to, you know, recognize chief for taking the initiative and asking the department to draft this policy . this was not commissioned, initiated, as ms. caywood pointed out. and i appreciate the chief's proactive ness on this issue, and i appreciate the hard work that that this whole team up here did together. i think we all heard that this is evidence based and we've had the benefit of observing how other jurisdictions respective policies have have panned out and been able to adopt the best parts of those. i also just wanted to recognize the interns from last. was it last year who who also made a number of proposals for a foot pursuit
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policy? so just just wanted to give a shout out to them wherever they are all across the country now. and for to thompson for supervising that program. and that is all for me. commissioner benedicto, thank you so much, mr. vice president . thank you for that presentation. just a couple of questions that i'll pass around. i mean, first, i'll echo what the vice president said and thank the chief for commissioning and driving this policy and asking for that, seeing the final product. now chief, are you are you comfortable and any reaction as to how the policy turned out? yeah, my i know we worked hard on this policy. my only issue and this is really for later but i'm glad you asked the question is it's more of a 3.01 question really. i believe for tactic issues. i would much rather see another format to get these policies done rather than a dgo
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. and there are several reasons for that. sometimes tactics need to be changed and pretty quickly . and the other thing is, you know, tactics are really about guidelines. they're not they're prescriptive. but but in in the policing world, there are so many variables that can happen. tactics are really about guidelines. so i do think there's probably a more efficient venue to do these types of policies. we don't have a whole lot of tactical policies in our dgo and i don't think it's a best practice to have tactical policies in dgos. i think there are other ways to do it in many departments do it in other ways, like training notices, training bulletins, tactical bulletins. i mean, there are a variety of ways to get it, get to it, but really that's really why we put f.t.f.o on the map to give that type of guidance. and i really would like to see more of as we work through 3.01, a venue to actually have a carve out for tactics that aren't egos. got
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it. that makes sense. and i know there's been a lot of discussion with this commission on ways in which 3.01 our policy making dgo can be streamlined. but as to the substance of this that you led, you're happy with the work? yeah, i mean, this is what's what we have to work with right now. but this is something that i voiced in the past, and i just want to say that for the record. okay, great. um, one thing that i really appreciated hearing from director caywood is that what we have here is already consistent with what we have from post training. so sergeant bergeron, can you confirm that this is really consistent with what we already have for the post training? yes yes, commissioner, this is consistent with the eld. again, same principle base that we're continuing to build on. perfect. that was a trap. i also just wanted to recognize your state wide recognition from post. so you're hearing that from an award winning post instructor as well. yes we will have to recognize that at the commission
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level. i know that some commissioners i know commissioner yee sometimes raised the concern about the burden of training to these egos. and so i was really relieved to hear that the principles of this have already been in our training for years, so this won't be this won't shouldn't be disruptive. so that was that was good to hear as well. and then confirming what you said, director caywood, that this is consistent or even you think the best policy when looking at other jurisdictions in dpa's opinion, i do. and i invite the commission to peruse this binder full of foot pursuit policies that do contain tactics. sometimes the dividing line between tactics and policy is a blurry one. but i invite the commissioner. i'll leave it right here. how can that possibly be electronically provided to the commission? yeah, of course. of course. so you can peruse it and take a look and see what you think yourself. absolutely. i mean, i think. yeah. yeah different preferences. i'll leave this for you, commissioner walker, and then we'll. that was a relief to hear as well, to see that, you
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know, there are times as in 5.01 where san francisco has been the first jurisdiction that has ended up moving. and there are times like this where we're not, but we have the luxury of seeing what other jurisdictions and what the standards are. and i think that that has really led to this being a strong policy as well. i appreciate the clarification of the broader background. i think a lot of what this policy does is allowing for officer discretion. it's short. it's probably on the shorter shows we've gotten before us in a while, which is always is always great and that it's that it's seeing things that are already enshrined in training. i did want to note, i think it's worth saying that there has been a lot of misinformation about this proposed general order and hearing from from captain perdomo, from lieutenant meehan, from sergeant bergeron, from the chief and from director caywood about how this had come about, about the collaborative process, i think really should put to rest any of that misinformation that this is really a proactive
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policy consistent with training that we already have short, straightforward, allowing for officer discretion and should be . and we're excited to have that before the commission. if i could be heard one more time, i understand there's a lot of disinformation about this policy out there, and there were a number of letters submitted to the commission. i would really just encourage the public to engage with the public comment process. 99% of the egos are largely written by sfpd with input from dpr and if you input a public comment about what you like about the policy, what you don't like, if you want to see something changed, you'll get an individualized response from the smes on why they agree with you or don't agree with you that i'll review as well and that could dispel some of the disinfo nation. and we only got eight public comments and we all sat down together and answered them. we think they were mostly police officers, but it would have been helpful if some of the people that are writing into the
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commission now had written in earlier and gained a better understanding of the process. guess what was happening and what was not happening. so we really encourage the public to pay attention to the sfpd social media when egos are posted for public comment and engage. and you will get an individualized response. thank you, director caywood. and i also want to echo what the vice president said in commending the dpr interns. i doubt that any of that. the 2022 interns are still watching now. but if it would be great if dpr could send them an email with this update because it really is , they should be talking about that for when they help to shape policy for this department for years to come, concluded their presentation in the binder along with the citation to all of the research supporting foot pursuit policies in case the commission is interested. that's it was a tremendously well researched presentation that they prepared as well with that i would make a motion to approve the general order 5.25 for use in meet and confer, subject to our labor
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negotiations. resolution 23 dash 30. could i actually one clarifying question, given that we've already been training to this, will the department be requesting any delay or it's going to mean for. okay, gotcha. sorry, i jumped the gun. okay commissioner burn, thank you. vice president carter over stone . i'm just i'm just curious, i guess from a practical point of view, when we do discipline cases, is there a violation of a particular go and in this particular one, other than the documentation and the supervisors required payments, how does an individual officer actually violate this? i just curious. so the one thing that i noticed reading this is there's a lot of shoulds which i think is great because our officers need guidance rather than strict policy and procedures that need to be strictly adhered to because as we all know, these
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incidents evolve very rapidly and the officer needs to have a lot of discretion. so going through the dga itself, you'll see that the word shall is used on page two to and it's also used on page four, right? i particularly noticed page four and page four made sense to me, but like under, say, page two, safety concerns. i mean, it's the should and it's a list of things that the officer should consider and whether to initiate a foot chase. and at least from a practical point of view, at least i was trying to think like there isn't a way that an officer could violate that. if i you know, if, as you said, it's more of a guidance than a sort of requirement, correct? yeah. so for the safety concerns, these are mainly things that would affect the officer and they're not necessarily things that would affect the public. so these are safety concerns that the officer should take into account when they're deciding to initiate a foot pursuit. so, for
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example, like i said at the very beginning of this whole thing, there's a lot of things that you don't realize until you've been a police officer for several years and may be engaging in sorts of police conduct like foot pursuits for example. and one of the things that we want to solidify in the policy that should be made clear to the officer are the dangers and those are, for example, if you're acting by yourself and you get into a foot chase at 3:00 in the morning, that's something you should take into consideration. it's not very safe for you. you should balance that out. also the potential for violence, those are all things that need to be drawn out so that the officer can make a proper risk assessment when they decide to initiate the pursuit for their own safety concerns. so in terms of a policy and how that would be violated and result in a disciplinary case, i guess the harm would be to the officer themselves. is it more like warnings for the officer? so you agree with me there is other than the supervisor and the documentation requirement, there really isn't a way that an officer can be disciplined for on this. dgo well, no, that's
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not necessarily true, because on page two at the top and doesn't really need to be put into a policy, but it says the officer shall act reasonably. but but that's that's all over the place in other dgos and it could be but a potentially could could lead to discipline if it's violated. if an officer acts unreasonably disciplined under other dgos for failing to act reasonably well, yes, but it's not codified in such a way as it is here, where it's explicit. i understand. i'm sorry. i'm a lawyer. thank you. it's okay. no worries. all right. any other questions? no, thank you. commissioner walker. thank you. thank you for this. and i. i tend to agree that with the chief on this, about general orders being separate from manual of how to achieve that or suggestions or training. and i don't know. i mean, i think it's just sort of generic and i don't know that there's any solution for this at this point. i want
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to applaud everybody for working together on this. i think that ultimately our goal here is to have things that we can train our officers with, but also look at when we have cases before us. so to the point that that commissioner byrne was making, it's. it sort of underlines the importance of having a general order here and then maybe a separate manual that includes all the training and tactics because it's easier and more efficient and flexible. i, i obviously that's more sort of pie in the sky kind of thing, but i appreciate that the brevity of this one. and i also it's really clear that the folks who are weighing in on this just have a general response to all general orders that we're doing at this point. so don't let it
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hinder our our efforts. but you know, the public is weighing in and paying attention, at least even if it's not to the details . so thank you. i do want to ask a question about the especially the general orders that are already in that binder for the 37. is that what you said? yeah is there any data back on the how it affects the injuries and the success of these pursuits or is it too early? i'm not sure. okay. it would be good to have a follow up on that. i think it's probably too soon because all of these dgos are in recent years. okay. i would just like to follow up on whether this the content should be in a dgo. we've been discussing this for two years and i've never heard anyone say that this should be anything but a dgo and we've had multiple discussions with the command staff. so at least i haven't heard that. so we could have done it in a bulletin, but would have been helpful to hear about that at an earlier point
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of time. no other. a few departments do it in bulletins, but most do it in general orders. so we did the best we could with the i'm not it's not a it's kind of a generic criticism because i think all our egos are pretty full of things that could be separated out. it's just my opinion. but. okay, great. thanks. thank you. commissioner yee thank you very much, sir. vice president carter over for this foot pursuit policy. i you know, i just come away with this. it makes a lot of sense. you know, i talked to a few officers before and they they brought up these similar scenarios. you know, what happened. you split up. you go to a to a second floor, both side on each side. what happens ? suspects in the middle. which way do you shoot? there are some policies probably that need to be looked at and, um, you know, there's probably incidents that did happen where this policy would have helped to in pursuit of, you know, your loan officer
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chasing one suspect and then, you know, right behind the door, you don't know what's what's going to happen. so i thank the committee for or the group working group for bringing it forward. and thank you, chief. um my, you know, thought is, is regard regarding the communications on a live maybe on a live radio where you clear channel and you start talking you know your body worn cameras probably is activated right then and there when it's happening on the pursuit. i just wondering if you can do it live, sending it back to the command center. so then if you have going back to the command center and probably having a maybe a supervisor, captain on, you know, on there and saying you're on a live pursuit and it says and then the command center can see the visual and we can't see the
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visual that way because it's bouncing up and down, wondering if that device can do what you call active bait or where this focus in. and then you have a real time feed that can handle and say, stop the pursuit officer or stop the pursuit and wait for backup. you know, this is some of these thoughts that's coming up. so i just wondering what's your response would be, captain, that would be excellent. if axon could develop a product like that, i'm pretty sure we'd buy it. but but unfortunately, i don't think they have such a product just yet. but we can do. and what's been suggested by axon is that we review the body worn camera footage after the incident and then with the f.t.f.o office has been doing really well, is debriefing the incident. so after the incident happens, we can take all of the involved parties. we can then dissect what happened and we can go through the list of factors that have been codified here for the officer safety, bullet points and then to your point about the supervisor responsibility, which i think is what you're trying to
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get at, can we have somebody that's on scene making decisions as this is happening? the best that we can do right now is have the officer or the supervisor respond after the fact. and that's on page four of four. and these are things like this policy. i like it a lot because it's very common sense stuff that should be occurring anyway, but it's now written down. and what happens here in subsection e is if your officers injured, you should show up to the scene. now it's made explicit here. if the suspect enters a residence building or a structure or even a defined terrain objective, and that's consistent with some of our other dgos where we start. if expanding the time and distance and the de-escalation criteria, this speaks to that. so we have that in there. if there's a reportable use of force that's already covered under 501, it's kind of duplicative that we have it here. but the sergeant or the sergeant is supposed to respond to that. and of course, if the person's armed with a weapon, it's already in our policy is that you have an incident like that. the sergeant is going to respond. so i wish we had the technology, but we don't have it just yet. i think we do. it's
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called facetime. i'm on apple. oh, man. no, no, no. it's serious. and hold, hold on. here it's just that our department or the police department doesn't have it. what's to say that. that we can't get it? and you know, ask ask the company to work on the technology. oh, that sounds like an excellent idea. i mean, we do have you know, we have smartphones and that's definitely something we'll explore for the future and we'll talk about that when we get back to the office. okay thank you. all right. chief of staff hawkins. thank you. i wanted to respond to three points regarding discipline. so having been reviewing many of the cases and kind of at the beginning when we realized or when i realized there was a need for a foot pursuit policy, i actually think this is a really nice balance of being able to discipline, but not overusing the word shall. so we in a lot of conversations we have about policy, get criticized on the
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side for too many shells and not enough understanding of flexibility in implementation and there were a couple of cases in involving an officer involved shooting where this sort of policy would have been very helpful in assessing the case. and i think in potential for a different outcome. also captain perdomo is a lawyer, which i found out when i was a da and he was being cross-examined in a prelim that we did together. so i'm sure he was also mindful of word choice as he was being a proponent of this particular dgo . so from a dpa perspective of i would be happy to have this policy when we were examining a case or a foot pursuit was at issue in determining whether or not it was within policy and the reasonableness standard is one that we have worked with in other context. s in terms of dgo versus manual, it is an ongoing conversation that we're having. and 3.01 i think is a clunky process in some ways, but also
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is a very thoughtful process and we are having discussions at multiple levels of that process . yes, i think there are different policy vehicles that we can use. i think this was always conceptualized as a dgo for a couple of reasons. one, the other vehicles that we have department notices, department bulletins, the hope is that eventually they are dgos, because that is kind of the i don't want to call it the highest because it's not necessarily hierarchical, but that is what the most definitive guidelines are. and when we're looking at discipline, of course, we look at training and we look at all of those manuals as well. but the dgo is the policy itself. and so our position is that this should have been a dgo and was started in development as a dgo and happy to have those conversations further always. but that was how it was always conceptualized and we're feels it is appropriate. lee and i think that's all of my three
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points. chief scott yeah, so i'll just not to belabor the point. so i just want to clarify a few things because i was here from the beginning of this conversation, at least from the department standpoint. and i don't think that anybody was involved in this at that point. when we first started this process from the department standpoint, we actually envisioned a series of tactical bulletins, if you will, that would be his own carve out, not just a bulletins or b bulletins or c bulletins at and this was, i believe, in 2018. and the issue with that was that we didn't feel that the bulletin necessarily the way they were structured at the time would be the best venue. some departments have tactical guidelines that are not dgos, that are not in the department's, whatever their manuals are, but they are tactical guidelines. a series of them, and they rescind them. when they become outdated. they update them when tactics change.
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for instance, there are a number of tactics that we teach that aren't necessarily in a building. searches active attacker tactics, things like that, that we need to codify. but they don't necessarily belong in the dco because they change and sometimes they change based on an officer get killed or whatever. so that was the original idea. the issue was we didn't feel like the current structure and even after 3.01 got rewritten, really had a place for us to park those types of documents. we still need to codify building searches and things like that. we have lesson plans, we have training modules, but i think we can do better because that is out there. there are departments that do that. so there was a conversation about this by the time you all got on board. yeah we agreed that the dco was probably the best place to put this, given what we had to work with. with all that said, there was a lot of good work by everybody in this room
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and some of the people who are no longer in the fte unit. they retired and dpa to come to a sensible policy. so i just want to clarify how this thing evolved because yes, it did start with let's not put this in the video. let's start a series of tactical bulletins or notices or whatever. we didn't have notices at the time that would fit, but that's how the conversation started. by the time it got to your your seat, it was dgo. so that's probably all you heard. but it went through concurrence with the approval of you and the command staff. in the last two years, we haven't heard anything about you. just hear me clearly. i'm not saying anything about that. the policy is not good guidance . what i'm saying is the vision is i hope we have a venue to deal with tactical issues in another way. and i think this is one that belongs in that other way rather than a dgo, because there are a lot of tactics that we rely upon that we need to codify and put it in a better format. it's that simple. you
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know, building searches, like i mentioned, some of the things that we do on a day in and day out, you won't find that in a dgo you'll find it in probably a powerpoint or training module somewhere, but you won't find it in dgo. and i don't think that should be in a dgo honestly. so it's not just this, it's a bigger issue than this is all i'm saying. but the guidance i agree is very good. and yes, i did agree to it because it's good guidance. as the captain mentioned. all right. seeing no other names in the queue, i will second the motion made by commissioner benedicto for members of the public that would like to make public comment regarding line item seven, please approach the podium. there is no public comment on the motion. commissioner walker, how do you vote? yes, mr. walker is yes. commissioner benedicto yes. mr. benedicto is yes. commissioner yanez. yes. mr. yanez is yes. commissioner burn. yes. commissioner burn is yes.
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commissioner yee yes. commissioner yee is yes. and vice president carter overstone yes. vice president carter overstone is yes. you have six yeses. line item eight public comment on all matters pertaining to item ten below closed session, including public comment on item nine vote whether to hold item ten in closed session. if you'd like to make public comment regarding closed session, please approach the podium and there is no public comment. line item nine vote on whether to hold item ten inches closed session. san francisco administrative code section 67.10 action. i move to go into closed session. second on the motion, commissioner walker, how do you vote? yes, mr. walker is yes. commissioner benedicto. yes. mr. benedicto is yes. commissioner yanez. yes. mr. yanez is. yes. commissioner burn. yes. commissioner burns. yes. commissioner yee. yes. commissioner yee is yes. vice president carter overstone yes.
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vice president carter wilson is. yes. you have six yeses. we will go into closed session vote to elect whether to disclose any or all discussion on item ten held in closed session. san francisco administrative code section 67.12. a action. a motion to not disclose closed session with the exception of factual updates from our labor negotiator, which will be disclosed in the minutes . second, for any member of the public would like to make public comment regarding line item 11, please approach the podium. seeing none. commissioner walker , how do you vote on the motion? yes. commissioner walker is yes. commissioner benedicto. yes. commissioner benedicto is yes. commissioner yanez. yes mr. yanez is yes. commissioner byrne. yes commissioner byrne is yes. commissioner yee yes. commissioner yee is yes. vice president carter oberstar. yes. vice president carter overstone is yes. you have six yeses line item 12 adjournment.
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going 90 charlie. go ahead. we moved to san francisco in 1982. we came from the philippines. i
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have three kids nathan, jessica and iva. i was really young. when i had neat, i turned 19. and then two weeks later, he was born. so when he was fine, i used to watch cops all the time. all the time and so he would watch with me. he had his little handcuffs and his little toy walkie talkie. and then whenever the theme song came on, he would walk around and he just thought he was the baddest little thing. i think he was in kindergarten at sheridan because he and i attended the same elementary school there was an officer bill. he would just be like mom officer bill was there then one day, he said, mom, i touched his gun. and he was just so happy about it. everything happened at five minutes. i would say everything. happened at 4 to 5 years old. it's like one of those goals to where you just you can't you can't just let go.
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high school. i think you know everybody kind of strays. he was just riding the wave. and i mean, he graduated. thank god. one day i think he was about 20 or 21. he told me, he said mom. i want to be a cop or a firefighter, i said. no you're going to be a firefighter. but that's really not what he wanted to do. his words were i want to make a difference. and that was a really proud moment for me when he said that my dad was a cop in the philippines for 20 years. i think a lot of that played a role into his becoming a cop. my dad was really happy about it. my mom. she was kind of worried, but i just figured i can't stop him. he can make his own decisions. stu. i just want to say what's up? how you doing?
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good. good. no i'm trying to look good for us to looking good for us to so when he was in the police academy, mind you this kid was not a very studious kid. but i've never seen him want something so bad when he was home. he'd be in his room studying the codes. he really fought for it. hi. what's your name? i'm nate. nate is great with kids, and he would give them hugs or give them stickers. i think that that's a positive influence on the kids, and then the people around you see it. once he makes that connection with people and they trust him that foundation that respect people look at you and see your actions more than your words and so that i think will reach people more than anything. you could say you later, brother.
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thank you. all right, see you. it's a really hard job. i know you. you see a lot of the negative for me. i would not put myself through that if i didn't care. you know, you have to be the right kind of person. you have to have the right heart to want to do that. when people ask me if you know what my son does , um, i just tell him he's a cop , and i just feel like i'm beaming with pride. i always told him when he was young that he would do something great. and so to see it. it's i have a moment. i'm very proud of him.
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>> they tend to come up here and drive right up to the vehicle and in and out of their car and into the victim's vehicle, i would say from 10-15 seconds is all it takes to break into a car and they're gone. yeah, we get a lot of break-ins in the area. we try to -- >> i just want to say goodbye. thank you. >> sometimes that's all it takes. >> i never leave anything in my car. >> we let them know there's been a lot of vehicle break-ins in this area specifically, they target this area, rental cars or vehicles with visible items. >> this is just warning about vehicle break-ins.
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take a look at it. >> if we can get them to take it with them, take it out of the cars, it helps.
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>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> francisco fire commission regular meeting this morning at 9:00 am., wednesday, october 11, 2023.) >> meeting it held in in-person and at the location or by calling. >> phone number: +1 (415) 655-0001 meeting id: 2664 523 5482 to raise your hand, press *3. >> >> webinar password: off background sounds (television, phones, radios)wait for the item you would like to address to be called. when prompted, press *3 to be added prompted, press *3 to be added to the queue. the system will notify you when you are in line. callers will hear silence when waiting for your turn to speak. operator will unmute.