>> see you. >> this holiday season, shop and dine in union square! and don't miss the world premier of, a why five. the sheriff's department oversight meeting is now in session. on behalf of the sheriff's department oversight board, we would like to thank the staff at sfgovtv for providing technical assistance to broadcast and record this afternoon's meeting. you may view this afternoon's broadcast on cable channel 26. let's please stand and recite the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the

united states of america, and to the republic for which it stand. one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. dan, please call the roll. yes, madam. president. member. mango. president mango is present. vice president. brooker. president. brooker is present. member. carrion will be absent today. member. winn is delayed and will be with us shortly. member. palmer. president palmer is present. president. sue. presen. sue is present. member. webster. present. vector is present. there are five members. present and we have a quorum. thank you. may i have a motion to excuse? member carrion. i make a motion to excuse member. carrion. second. any objections? seeing none is unanimously approved.

that member carrion is excused. dan, please call the first agenda item. calling line. item one. communications. informational item. announcements and information to share with the board members and the public. and responses. oh, i was going to do it. as at the end. this is the standard monthly public meeting held in person by the sheriff's department oversight board. members of the oversight board will be present at this meeting, and members of the public are encouraged to attend and observe. however, only those members of the public who are present in person will have the opportunity to provide public comment, with the exception of individuals with disabilities who require reasonable accommodations. public comment can be submitted in person, via email, or through postal mail. to send public comments by email, please contact zdob at sfgov. org for postal submissions, please address them

to the office of the inspector general, one south van ness avenue, eighth floor, san francisco, california. 94103. individuals wishing to make public comment in person may do so when the respective line item is called, with a time limit of two minutes for each comment. additionally, there will be a general comment period at the conclusion of the meeting for topics not listed on the agenda, but relevant to the jurisdiction of the sheriff's department oversight board, members of the public present in person may approach the podium to speak during the public comment period. when it is available. each speaker will have two minutes to express their comments. a first tone will indicate that there are 30s remaining, and the second tone will signal the end of the two minute period. that concludes the announcements. thank you. do i have any public comment related to this communication? at this time, members of the public wishing to provide comments regarding line item one communications are invited to

approach the podium when it becomes available. seeing none. the next agenda item please dan calling line item two approval of minutes. action item review and approve the approval of the minutes from the board meeting held on october 4th, 2020 for. a motion to approve. do i have a second? i second. any public comments at this time? members of the public wishing to provide public comment regarding line item two approval of minutes, are invited to approach the podium when it becomes availabl. there appears to be no public comment calling the roll on the

approval of minutes. member mango i have mango is i vice president a director is i member palmer? i palmer is i president su i su is i member vector a vector is i. there are five ayes and no no's. the minutes from the october 4th, 2024 meeting are approved. thank you. the next item on the agenda, please call line item three. presentation from eric singh. informational item amrik singh, inspector general of independent prison oversight, will provide an overview overview of the primary functions of her office. share best practices for the role of inspector general. offer insights on essential elements of oversight, and discuss the assessment of performance benchmarks for the board. i'd singh. thank you and welcome and thank you for traveling from

sacramento. all right. thank you. good afternoon, madam president and board members, thank you so much for having me here today to give you this presentation about the california office of the inspector general. i am americk singh, the inspector general. am i supposed to know i'll do it. okay, thanks. all right. so i wanted to quickly start off by tellg you who is the oig. the oig has been around. the california office of the inspector general, has been around for over 30 years, and most people don't know that. we originally started off as a piece of the adult and youth and adult correctional agency, a state agency that no longer exists. but back in 19, the early 90s, the late 90s, there were some legislative hearings that found there was widespread abuse in the correctional

system. and in light of that, the legislature determined that the california oig should be an independent state agency, separate and apart from the correctional system. in 2004 2005, there were some litigation that occurred. there was a federal class action lawsuit that was filed by a number of incarcerated people, alleging widespread abuse that continued throughout the correctional setting. in light of that, the legislature stepped in and in 2004, 2005 expanded the california oig authority and gave us a number of different monitoring and oversight roles within the correctional setting. it should be noted that that lawsuit was filed in 1990, so it took well over ten, almost 14 years before the correctional system had some real widespread change and oversight provided by the california inspector general's office. we did have some glitches. in 2010, there

was the california senate office of oversight and outcomes. that was not pleased with some of the work. the then oig was doing and took away some of our authority. however, they did add some additional authorities giving us medical inspections the opportunity to look at the quality of care within the prison system and then in 2019, following a special review of the grievance process that we oe we found a number of systemic issues within the grievance process, the legislature amended our penal code section once again and restored a number of our responsibilities, including the ability to do audits on our own and do special reviews of any area where we felt it was necessary. of the department of corrections. so basically, the inspector general's role is to review policies, practices and procedures of the california department of corrections and

rehabilitation. so what is our purpose? the purpose of the oig is to make sure the department of corrections is complying with its own policies, and that they are applying their policies consistently throughout the state. the department of corrections, although their their numbers are now down to 33 state prisons at one point was 35 state prisons plus parole agencies, plus having out of state correctional facilities due to the large number of incarcerated people that were housed in different states as well, and the oig responsibility came in to make sure that the policies that were being the policies that were being applied in one part of the state were being consistently applied in the other part of the state. and our role is to ensure that the department of corrections is actually applying the policies that they have in place. we also make recommendations for improvements as a statewide agency, we are able to identify issues and make recommendations to the correctional department

in regards to a policy that they're applying differently throughout the state. early on, we found that with the 35 prisons, every prison was doing their own thing and they were separate, independent, siloed institutions that were not being consistent when they were following their own policies. and procedures. what we do is to review those, discuss those issues and to bring transparency. so transparency to the governor's office, the legislature, to stakeholders and to the public. the services that the california oig provides are 12. they're easily distinguished between monitoring, between doing reviews, doing audits, and then also doing complaint reviews. not only do we review retaliation complaints, we also are the ombudsperson for sexual abuse complaints. and we also have an intake line and an intake system set up so that the

incarcerated population, their family, the public and stakeholders can get ahold of us just really quickly. our complaint and intake line, we were averaging about 250 to 300 complaints a month, and as of this year we have now we are now averaging 900 complaints a month that my staff have to review in 2023. we had over 8200 complaints. we will far surpass that number this year. we attend the incarcerated person advisory committee meetings. we have staff members that go out to the institutions at least twice per year and meet with the incarcerated population, talk to them about their concerns, talk to them about their issues, and we provide a summary of those visits that are available on our website. we also meet with the wardens at each individual prison. after leaving those meetings to discuss with the warden issues that we've seen or

systemic corrections that they can make right away. one of our other roles, monitoring audits, special reviews. we do monitor the employee discipline process. we monitor internal affairs investigations from the beginning, from the time the complaint is received by the hiring authority or i apologize, sent by the hiring authority to the office of internal affairs. we monitor each investigation. we monitor each investigation from the beginning through the discipline process, all the way through the state personnel board hearing. if there is one, we offer our recommendations to the investigators. we offer our recommendations to the attorneys that are representing the department of corrections. we also offer our recommendations to the hiring authorities, the wardens, in regards to the sufficiency of the evidence that they are seeing, whether allegations should or should not be sustained, what the appropriate penalty level should be. we are a part of the process

from the beginning, all the way through the end. we also will make recommendations on whether or not a case should be settled. our audits. we do performance audits of programs within the department of corrections. we also do special reviews of any area in the prison system that we feel is needs a special review, needs some information to be brought to light. one of our most recent special reviews looked at a backlog of grievances. the department of correction had a large number of staff misconduct grievances that they were unable to review, and they converted them all into just routine, less serious matters and sent them back to the prisons for review. we highlighted that area and pointed out to the department where they did not comply with their own regulations and made recommendations that such actions no longer be taken. in light of that, the department of corrections did go back and

review those allegations to ensure that they were addressing appropriately any allegations of staff misconduct. some of the other special reviews we've done is we've we did a series of reports on covid and how the department was handling covid. covid protocols. and there's a number of different areas that that entailed where we were also able to make appropriate recommendations to the department to implement statewide changes for the protection of not only the incarcerated population, but their staff as well. just really quickly, we also have a medical inspection unit. we do medical inspections for the quality and access to care for all of the prisons. the california prisons are a number of them, which are still under the control of the federal court receiver. that does not impact our work. we do an assessment of each prison exactly the same based on metrics and tools, and we assess

the quality of care and the access of care for the incarcerated population. i have a team of doctors and nurses who are qualified to go into the prisons and make those assessments. so what are the components of effective oversight? there are three major. there's many different components, but there are three major components that that help effective oversight independence, transparency through public reporting and access. and cooperation. looking at independence. so the california office of the inspector general is an independent state agency. california penal code section 6001 25 establishes the office of the oig as independent governmental agency. the inspector general. my position is an appointment by the governor. however, it is also subject to senate confirmation and it is a six year term. the state agency, the office of the

inspector general and oversight agency must be free from influence. we must be free from the appearance of impropriety, and we must be able to make independent decisions by independently reviewing policies, procedures and investigations within corrections without having to have the oversight by the agency that we're actually monitoring. another key component is transparency through public reporting for a prison system and jails. they are entirely operating behind walls and oversight provides a window into those settings. having the opportunity and the ability for my staff to go into a correctional setting gives us an opportunity to see what's happening behind those walls and what we do and how we do it. we put into public reports because,

in my opinion, a public report is that window into that incarceration, that carceral setting, our statute actually requires public reporting annually for our discipline, monitoring our grievances, our use of force reviews. and also we are required to publish an annual report summarizing the work we've done for our public reporting. in 2023, we published 17 reports, and in 2024, as of the 29th, we had published 14, but now we're at 15. reports. this year already, this slide puts on their warden, vettings, which is an area i haven't touched on, which doesn't necessarily apply into a jail setting, but for the california prisons, my office is responsible for doing the vetting for each warden that before the person is appointed by the governor, we do vetting reports. they're very detailed reports, but they're very confidential and they're

protected by privilege. so although they're on this slide, they are not considered a public report. so i just wanted to make sure that that is clear. so■ in order for our public reporting to have impact, we put all of our reports on our oig website. so this is a screenshot of our website as you can see, there is a number of areas on there where you can go into publications and publications are where you can find every report that the office of the inspector general has done, even those that we did prior to the electronic system. we have them all scanned and in there. so you can go into the publications, you can find every report we've done for the last several years. this section of our website also provides the public insight into the cases that we monitor. each of the units, whether it's employee discipline, whether it's use of force, whether it's my intake team or my grievance monitoring

team. every month they do a summary of cases that they've looked at, and we publish those summaries in on our public website for the public to see. a third key component for effective oversight is access and cooperation. access to records, access to incarcerated settings. access to prison is a very critical part of oversight. i always say you can't do oversight from your desk. you have to be in into the into the prisons to see what's happening, to be able to report what's happening. the oig hasauthorityd access to all things within the department of corrections. we have access to their reports. we have access to their medical records. we actually have electronic access to their strategic offender management system. so we are able to log

into their system and we are able. we are able to see what is happening within the prison system. cooperation is also a very important part of oversight. having a positive working relationship with corrections is what makes our office so successful. we don't always see eye to eye and we they don't always follow our recommendations, but we have to have that professionalism. we have to have those conversations, and sometimes we have to make those difficult calls, and we have to report those difficult decisions that they made that we do not agree, followed their own policy and procedures. two weeks ago, we published a sentinel case report. it did not go over very well by by the department of corrections. however, they had made a disciplinary determination on a high level executive who engaged in sexual harassment. they they opted to

give him his job back and put him back within the prison system. we absolutely disagreed with that decision. we thought their reasoning was flawed and we felt that that was a case that needed to be highlighted, separate and apart from our normal course of reporting. so the oig goals are to provide value. so any oversight agency that should be a key goal to provide a value not only to the state but also to the department. how we do that is we monitor in real time as possible. we provide transparent oversight. we work with the department to improve their performance, and we try to be proactive in responses to their issues before they result in a crisis. and we also try to obtain the best results in the interest of taxpayer dollars, because obviously we are we are being we're part of the general

fund. and so we want to be responsive and we want to ensure that we are being champions of the ste as well. so measuring success. when i was asked to do this presentation, it made me think about how how do we measure what we do and how do we know we are being successful. so what we have done at the oig is we've set goals. we have a five year strategic plan, and we set our goals to look at every value and service that we provide. so we went into discipline monitoring. we've gone into our intake and what we've done is in all of the different program areas, and we've set goals of what we want to do and can we accomplish those goals and what do we need to accomplish those goals. and as our strategic five year strategic plan period is coming to an end, and i was reviewing the documentation, i'm happy to say that we are meeting our goals. we are monitoring cases. we are hitting

benchmarks. we try to monitor at least 20 to 25% of the cases, and we are close to hitting that benchmark on our discipline cases. we're not so close on the grievance process as that is a fairly new program, and we're still in the process of hiring staff to fully staff the grievance monitoring program. but those are some of the areas that that we can look to see whether we are being successful. we also look at whether or not our recommendations are being implemented on our website. we have an entire tab where we list out every recommendation from every single program area that we have made to the department of corrections, and we can look to see and we report whether or not they've complied with that, whether they've implemented it in part, or whether they've refused to implement our recommendation as well. and then also a part of measuring our success is getting feedback from our stakeholders, not just the legislature and not just the governor's office, but also from

the incarcerated population. so measuring success can also go beyond the numbers we get. thank you letters from the incarcerated population for helping them. we've received letters from an incarcerated person who is having a mental health crisis. he reached out to our office via our hotline. we reached out directly to his prison and to the mental health officer, and advised that mental health. the chief mental health officer of the issues that we were being that was being reported to us, they immediately sent someone to his cell. they made contact with him and they gave him the services he needed. and in turn, he wrote us a letter back saying thanking us for saving his life because he thought taking his own life was going to be his only option. earlier this year, we also had a complaint call come in to us in regards to a group of incarcerated people planning to

attack and kill an officer within their housing unit. the information provided to us allowed us to piece together because we have full access to the department of corrections systems. we went into their system. we did a little bit of investigation, figured out what was being discussed and where where this was happening. we called the prison. we advised them of what we found in the anonymous complaint that we received. within 45 minutes, they had a team go to the identified cells, and they ended up finding a number of makeshift weapons within the cell, consistent with what we had heard through the anonymous call they were able to take into custody the incarcerated persons who were planning this attack on an officer and in essence, potentially saving her life. so oversight isn't always easy. it isn't always welcome, but it can be a valuable tool to bring transparency and accountability.

it can help restore public trust with law enforcement. we don't just point out what's going wrong, we also point out what is working to make sure it is fair and balanced. oversight is tough, but necessary, but with respect and professionalism, there can be success for both the oversight entity and for the law enforcement agency. thank you very much for giving me this opportunity, and i look forward to answering any questions that you may have. thank you. i just wanted to remind members to log into the system so that you can be in the queue, should you request to speak, and you would have received the login number from dan on your paypal. do you see it? well, yes. and. thank

you. so member palmer. yes. thank you so much for coming today. and i was i was i was there and i remember, you know, your office coming about and it was very inspiring for the population to have that type of oversight access. it didn't really translate at that time, at least in my area, that it made a big difference on the ground. you know, inside. but as i'm listening to you today, i know that it took time to grow and develop into what it is today that it is having impact because there's much that is being changed due to your reporting in the hands of legislators that are taking it more serious, of making sure that what goes on inside of prison isn't deconstructive, but

constructive with that said, i have a few questions about what you spoke about. none other bigger than your statutory authority for access, which is powerful. i think the lack of that being public is, is, is sad because i don't think a lot of people know that you have that type of authority and having that type of authority, i think in the right hands, especially organizations that work on behalf of, of people inside of prison could use that type of information and have access to that information. and, and would organizations that support the conditions of, of prisoners have that have that type of access to that information through you? would they have that access of information through your agency? who would have the access organizations who help to protect the well-being of people inside of incarceration? so unfortunately, no organizations

that that are are seeking to help the incarcerated population would not have the same access. our unfettered access authority is within the penal code, and it basically directs the department of corrections to give the oig 24 over seven access to documents,ecords going into physical locations matter of fact, it's a misdemeanor for the department of corrections to not comply w for documents and records and access. if there is a third party group who is trying to gain information, we do try to help and provide information that can be shared publicly, but we also have to be mindful that these records aren't necessarily ours. we have access to them, but we can't always disclose certain information. we do work with third parties that come to us, especially organizations and groups and family members, to work with them, to work with the

prisons public information officer, to try and get them as much information as possible. and one question before i let it go to the next person, could i have you speak more directly into the microphone? so we capture, just like a follow up question on that too, is so you're saying that if a private citizen knows something that's going on inside of prison due to reports from the people incarcerated, if they can, they come to you with those complaints, and after those complaints, would they be able to have access to the information of what you found regarding that incident? yes. in the first part of your question, yes, any person, any person can come to us with information. if they have information to provide in regards to something that is occurring within the prison system, they can submit a complaint. they can submit complaints to us anonymously. we have an 800 number that's established by statute that people be reached through our website, and people can send us a contact

message through our website, or they can mail us a letter, which is also just regular through the regular snail mail. so we are accessible to the public. what we do with the complaints, if they are not anonymous, and if the person provides a telephone number or email address or some other way to be contacted, we will reach out to them. if we need further information and we will try and respond to them and provide as much information that we can. again, we have to keep in mind that some records and information are confidential, but what we'll do in a typical case, we do get those a lot when someone is unable to get ahold of a loved one or they feel like their loved one is in crisis and no one is helping them, we'll try to get as much information as possible, and we will respond to that person and let them know. this is the information that we found. this is the treatment that your loved one is getting. and if you need more detailed information, we'll direct them to the public information officer and make sure they have a good contact

telephone number and email address for that person. and last question real quick, do with in in your professional experience working with cdcr, would you consider your access and your job description and authority? the department of adult corrections and the department of adult parole operations being one and the same, are two different entitie, one and the same. we have the exact same access to division of adult parole operations as we do for department of corrections. we also monitor the cases discipline cases that come through department. dapo, the parole operations, including discipline cases, grievances that come through, use of force incidents that parole agents are involved in. we have the oversight authority over dapo as well. thank you. next, we have

vice president birkner. yes. i want to say thank you again for the presentation and taking the time to come down from sacramento. very thorough presentation. i think anytime i had a question literally next slide it got answered. so i want to thank you for that. but i do want to just hear a little bit more from you. so as, as a body that now has an ig just in your own kind of personal opinion for an ig's office, that's that's just up and coming and looking at the resources that you guys have, the technology. what are some of the things you would share with us to say, these are some of the things that maybe we wish we had when we started, or these are the things you should be looking into. i think for us, we've had a lot of robust conversations and discussions about staffing and the resources that the ig needs to. as you stated, show what's working. and if you could just elaborate a little bit more on that and just your thoughts, your personal

opinion. right. so staffing is critical. you do need staffing. i when i became the inspector general, we had approximately 116 staff members and as of this week, we are nearing the 235 mark. so staffing is critical. but obviously that goes hand in hand with funding. our funding comes from the general general fund. so but i think the critical part for us, when we first started out, i started off with the inspector general's office in 2007. we were still in that build mode. 2004, 2005 is when we really became the model that we're in now. so i was there pretty much from the ground up. and i think what we learned right off the bat is we needed to when we were looking at a case, we needed to make sure we had our our metrics down for the case, the tools that we needed on looking at a case to make sure we were doing the right thing, like, are we? what is our end goal? what do we want to report on? our statute was

helpful because we knew we wanted to report on, like sufficiency of an investigation, adequacy of discipline. and so what we had to do is define those. and it took a few iterations of our tools to actually come up with how we wanted that definition. but that that is also critical from the onset is, you know, you're when you're looking at an investigation, what exactly is sufficiency of an investigation? and you have to keep in mind that they're not going to hit, you know, ten out of ten always. so is that going to be the benchmark is they have to have a ten out of ten to be sufficient or is eight out of ten better? so those are the discussions that you really need to have to start from the onset, so you can have your objective tools in place as you are doing investigations or monitoring discipline and assessing discipline. and that's also helpful as you go down the road. so your tool isn't always changing. so you're unable to compare last year to this year because they're not the same tool. so it's very critical to really start having those discussions and start looking at the cases and make those minor

adjustments before you get, you know, five, ten years into the process, we were fortunate that we figured out our tool within the first few years, and then since then we've been making adjustments and adjustments with how policies change and how monitoring and how that impacts our monitoring. so that's that is one of the things that i recommend that we do pretty quickly right off the bat. and you need to have a good case management tool to do that. and whether you do something that's from off the shelf or you have something built or you just use excel, you have to have a way to document that, to collect those numbers, collect that data, and then be able to report it because that becomes critical. is being able to show show the numbers, especially if you are in the future seeking funding from some entity. you have to be able to show your numbers. you have to be able to show. we've looked at this many cases. this is the information we're getting and this is what we need to be able to make that more robust. so today we can only look at

ten. but if we could add two more staff members, we can bump that up to 40. so those are some of the important things that that we needed back in the day. and we really looked at and that's what we did as we implemented moving forward. thank you for that. i think it's very consistent in terms of themes and things that we've been discussing and talking about here as a body, how does your office kind of work with the more, if at all, the local municipalities or the local igs, since you all are obviously at the state and federal level and just looking at the difference in our ig and our relationship with the sheriff's department versus the relationship with cdcr. so how do you all work with some of the local igs at this level? we don't. okay, because we are completely 100% state and we our sole mission is the department of corrections. if there is an intersection between a local jail, a local

law enforcement agency, we will have communications. i know in the past, as we've monitored some cases, we've had contact through, like the local sheriff's department, but not necessarily with an ig office. not we're absolutely open to that. and i'm a big proponent of we're an inspector general's office and we're, we're we're we're successful. and we have tools in place that are working for us. and we're always happy to share with other igs because there's no need to reinvent the wheel. just take take what we have and make it work for your own agency. is definitely my motto. thank you. next we have member wechter so yes, thank you again for coming down here. it's very, very, very helpful. i know your specialty is oversight of prisons. what general advice would you have for people who

are new to conducting oversight of county jails? what kinds of things would an inspector general want to look at to gauge how well that jail is operating? where are the friction points? might be where the non friction points might be. i think one of the critical areas to look at is well first you need to make sure that the jail system has some sort of departmental policies. and procedures in place on how the jail should be running. so that's the first thing to look at. and then assessing for example, like use of force is a critical area within an incarcerated setting. use of force incidents are critical and classification is critical. that might be more so in a prison setting setting, but to make sure that the incarcerated person is in the right place, use of force i. i keep going back to that. ensure that the jm has clear, defined rules,

policies and procedures in place and that they're actually following those. and if the rules and follow policies and procedures are are not complete or inaccurate, then recommend change, recommend change. look at the cases and make the recommendations for that. so that's that's definitely a key area within i think an incarcerated setting that that should be looked at. in addition to access to care. but that's also difficult because as laypeople, sometimes it's hard to say this person needs to have medical care when you know, when it's like, where's your medical degree? but fortunately for us, we do have doctors and lawyers who can doctors and lawyers, doctors and nurses who can do that type of an assessment. but even just as a as an inspector general without any medical training, i think it's pretty easy to see whether or not, you know, an incarcerated person is being allowed to see a doctor or a dentist or an optometrist as

necessary, especially if they're having some type of a medical need. and those are those are also generally a key area for the protection of the incarcerated population that i think should be a focus. thank you. and i want to get a clear sense of your relationship to the internal affairs investigation, because you said you received complaints, then you reviewed the completed investigation. do you touch that investigation anywhere else in the process or provide input about it before it's concluded and internal affairs reaches a finding? right. so there's two avenues for us to be involved with internal affairs. first of all, when the and when the complaint is generated within the department of corrections. so it's the local warden, the hiring authority or the local parole administrator. if they're seeing something like, hey, there's potentially misconduct happening by this staff member. and they sent their request for

an investigation to the department of corrections. we will review. and if it meets our criteria, such as a use of force incident, we will monitor that case from the onset. so it's assigned to an investigator and there's an oig monitor assigned to that case as well. we meet with the investigator about the investigative plan. we'll talk about interviews that will be conducted. we monitor those interviews. we get a copy of the draft report. we review the draft report and make recommendations. we'll get a copy of the final report, and we'll then take that through the hiring authority discipline process. so we're very much involved with the investigations when it comes through that avenue. when a complaint comes to us directly, we will do our own review. and if it's a complaint that involves staff misconduct, then we will refer that to the department of corrections for review of potential investigation. and then my intake team alerts my monitoring team that that's something that that we should consider monitoring. and then of course, it goes through the same

process. thank you. and if someone from your office visits a prison facility and gets input from people who are incarcerated, they're not specific complaints, nothing about specific incidents, but just general input. how would that be documented? so my staff will will take their notes. they'll bring it back and they prepare a report from their visit. if it's if it's a planned visit, they'll there'll be a report that's put together. if it's just a staff member who's, who's on some type of routine monitoring, for example, walking out to a prison yard to monitor and interview. and on the way back you get contacted by an incarcerated person and they want to tell you something. what we usually do is the staff member will document that. they'll take it back to the office, they'll discuss it as a team. is it a systemic issue that we need to address is what needs to happen with it? depending on the nature of the complaint. and then we'll reach out to the warden and we'll discuss it with the warden and

let them know, hey, we heard this is happening. unless it's a safety and security issue, then my staff member will directly go to the warden and have that conversation right then and there before they ever leave prison grounds. and if it's a planned visit, how detailed would that report be? and would that be public record? it would be pretty detailed. and yes, it is. it is a public record. that's what my intake team does when they meet with the incarcerated person advisory council. and we do that. the report is public. we do a couple, we get about 2 or 3 prisons, and we combine them, and then we try and publish them at least twice a year. we've just actually started that. so this is our first year. yes. we're just completing our first year of doing that. it is a new program that we implemented. i'd love to take the credit, but my staff actually approached me and felt that that would be more beneficial to the incarcerated population is for us to just go out and be proactive. i was very supportive of it, and so i think our first six month review has

been is posted on our website. and then i think we have one more prison visit this year, and then we'll do the second half of the year and get that posted on our website as well. so is it a best practice to document those sorts of visits and the input you receive? you receive? absolutely, absolutely. i, i think you it is imperative that we document every contact that we have in some form because you you just never know it. we're hearing it at one location and you don't know if it's happening at a second location. and if we just don't document it or don't discuss it, then we just we won't be able to identify an issue that might be systemic, and it's just not brought to the attention of the department. and that's part of our role. so documentation is critical discussion with within our units is critical. and then of course sharing that information as as necessary with with the department is also critical. and i know you mentioned vetting wardens. do you have any do any review or able to make any

recommendations regarding background investigations or hiring criteria just for the general cdcr? no, we aren't a part of the general background investigation or hiring for anyone other than for wardens. that is within our statute, and it's limited just to wardens. ages ago, we used to be able to go back and do a review, almost like a performance evaluation of wardens, but they eliminated that from our statute. so at this time we just do. we have 90 days from the date we're requested from the governor's office to do the background, the vetting of the warden, and get a final report to the governor's office. so you don't have any input into the general criteria for the hiring of staff? no, we don't. okay, okay. that's all i have for now. thank you so much. member. mango, i thank you so much for your presentation. let me turn on the mic. thank you so much for your presentation. i just had a question. i know you

mentioned your team staff is like around 200. what is the annual budget? a little over $50 million 5050. oh okay. we were 55 million. but we're part of the budget cuts. but yes we are. we are just so we're doing the same work with just a little over $50 million. got it. okay. and then i know you mentioned this about like, how are you guys measuring success complaints wise? because i remember there was a slide that talked about the average amount of complaints you guys received per month is like around 900. yes. so what we do with those complaints is we prioritize them as priority one two and three, one obviously being the ones that need attention immediately. and my staff have to every day we go through the mail, the emails and the calls and we log those and we have benchmarks set. and so we need to respond

to priority ones within five days. priority two is a little bit longer. and then priority three are the ones that are are not a very serious safety or security threat. just some assistance that an incarcerated person needs. and so we keep those we measure. our success in that area is we're able to address the concerns in a timely fashion and get a response to the person who's reached out to us in a timely fashion. and so those are the numbers that we are kept. and to not have a backlog of complaints. and i'm happy to say we do not have a backlog of complaints at this time. we've i've put a lot of i've redirected a lot of resources into that intake unit so that we can address the complaints that are coming through, because some of them are very serious and we can't we can't have those sit around for a backlog for, you know, 30 days or 45 days, especially if it's someone who's in crisis. so those are some of the ways that that team, we measure our success there is

that we're able to efficiently, quickly respond to these complaints. and then, as i understand it, complaints can run the gamut of something like, oh, i didn't like what we had for lunch today. and then something more serious. what's the i mean, what's the i mean, i'm assuming that misconduct is probably the biggest percentage of the types of complaints that you guys get. yes, it is. staff misconduct is the largest number of complaints that we get. we also get complaints about rules violations or basically an incarcerated person being being written up for something that they feel was not appropriate. that's probably our second largest of complaints that we get. and classification classification and release that i'm in the wrong prison. i'm not at the right level or i should have been released. and they haven't. they haven't addressed that yet. we so those are those

are our three big areas that we get. and then grievances would be filed something separate because it i'm assuming the process just takes longer to address. right. the grievances usually are something that happens internally at the department of corrections. so the incarcerated person can file a grievance within the department of corrections, and then it goes through their process for review. and then assignment for investigation. so i have an entirely separate team who monitors the complaints that come into the what they call a central screening team. so i have a team of, of staff that monitor the screening of the initial grievances. and then i have staff that monitor whether the grievance goes to backon fon or to the office of internal affairs for an investigation. so i have i have all i have eyes on all three of those areas. got it. okay. and then i think just my last question, you mentioned that you have like your own health care workers that will

come in and kind of assess independently of the prisons and like, is that counted as part of your staff or are they hired like ad hoc? no, they're also part of our staff. so our medical inspection unit that that is also a responsibility that's set forth in the penal code for us to assess the quality of care. and so, yes, i have i have doctors and nurses that are on staff and analysts that will contact each prison. and we do like a medical inspection. they'll go and they'll do eyes on at clinics and within the prison system, the care that's being provided will randomly pull their medical documents and do an assessment case review, assessments of how did they handle the situation. and that's where you need the expertise of doctors and nurses to ensure that the patient was getting the right type of care, the and had the access to the right care and the correct follow ups were being done. but no, that is also part of my staff. okay. and okay. last

question. okay. so you said what reports end of the year? i think you guys have like 14 reports, 14 reports annually. or did i miss remember that we have many we do many reports annually. as of right now we are at 14, 15 officially. as of today, we're at 15 published reports. and so the grievances that we monitor by statute that's required to publish a report once a year, use of force incidents that we monitor, we're required to publish a report of what we monitored once a year. the discipline monitoring that statute requires us to publish twice a year. and so we just published our second report of the year for the disciplinary cases that we monitored between january and june of 2024. so we have a number of reports we publish. we also publish an annual report every january, february ish that summarizes all of the reports that we had done in the previous year. and then we also we also report individual cases every month. so

every month, as cases closed, we also report those. and those are all on our website. lots of writing, lots of writing. i have a publications team as well. so very robust team. yes okay. thank you. thank you. next we have member palmer again. i could i could talk to you all day, but i want other people to get a chance and i won't. and just remember ask all my questions. i want to ask all my questions. but bph, you monitor what they do as well. yes, we do good. what are the number of complaints that you receiv thatg go of people who would be considered suitable for parole on reasons other than the title? 15, maybe personal reasons or political reasons. unfortunately, i do not have that number with me today, but i'd be more than happy to get that for you. yeah. if you if

you were, if your team was able to notice a pattern of conduct where people who were sentenced in their sentences being extended unconstitutionally, would you guys be able to bring that up as just a suggestion that they change their behavior, or would you be able to bring that up as a as a recommendation that something be done about it through the courts? so we wouldn't do it through the courts? what we would do, we actually just did an audit on release date calculations that was just published within the last month. so what we did is an assessment of how the department of corrections was reviewing release date calculations. were they keeping incarcerated people in longer than they should be? were they letting people out before they had completed their sentence? or as required by law? so we actually did. we did an

audit and we released our findings. we did find that we made recommendations that they had a lot of procedural errors and areas of improvement that they could make in regards to doing those release date calculations in our sample size, we did find that they were they were able to correct their mistakes within a reasonable amount of time. so if we were to find issues or errors like that, we could do a special review, or we could do an audit, or we could put together our information and make a recommendation to the department for change or for improvement. i would like to know your opinion on on the fact that disciplinary hearings with inside the institutions, like an rv, are a rules violation report, right? whether it's a 115 or a 128 that may be require some type of hearing. i know from what i've heard from inside that they do a video recording of the hearing, which means that they don't have

an audio recording of the hearing. do you get any any complaints that that accused this process? not being sufficient enough to correct a quote unquote, kangaroo court type of allegation, like what's said in there can be changed. so i can tell you, i'm not aware of them recording the 115 hearings. the rules violation hearings, whether it's audio or video recorded. i'm just perhaps they are. i was not aware that they were doing that. however, we do get complaints. a number of complaints from the incarcerated population that there were some due process or violation of their rights during that hearing process. when we do get those types of complaints, what we'll do is we will pull the records, we will review the records, and then we'll write a response to the incarcerated person with what we did. if we are to find that there is a procedural error or some error in that rules violation hearing, we will send

that information to the department, to the prison, to the warden, and advise them of what we found. and i can tell you, we have been pretty successful in having rules violations reissued and reheard or dismissed in their entirety because of the due process violations or some other violation that we found. so is that area ripe for an audit? perhaps. but i can tell you it is on our list. thank you. that was very helpful. thank you. now we have member nguyen. thank you for the presentation and for coming out. it sounds like you got your hands full with all the investigations, but i want to ask, what are the percentage of frivolous complaints you get? the ones that are clearly no merit? the complaints you get that are clearly, clearly no merit to them. maybe, you know, i didn't get an extra lunch or something like that. how do you dispose of those cases? we actually don't characterize

anything as not having merit. we look at every complaint, regardless of what it alleges, and address it. if we get a complaint that i wasn't given the appropriate portion of meal, we will we will review what the appropriate portions are. we'll see if there's anything in the person's file that indicates there's a reason for that. and if there isn't, we will respond to the incarcerated person and advise them on what steps they can take within the department to address that. that concern. so we don't keep any data or anything on frivolous complaints. obviously, we will get some that are virtually impossible. microwave wave lengths. are you know, disrupting my sleep. we obviously know that that most likely is not has merit. but what we'll do is we'll look in that person's mental health record and we'll write a response to them of they should reach out to their mental health clinician to discuss this issue

so that at least they're getting some response. and if we feel that there's something more going on, we will also reach out to the chief of mental health at the prison where the person is incarcerated to advise them of the nature of the complaint that we have. okay. thank you. so you would forward it to the appropriate department for investigation and then it will go up. and if it goes back down to you, then you do further investigation. so what we'll do is we'll ask them to tell us what they're doing and if they if we feel that it's something that's serious and they're not investigating it, we'll take that to the next level. we have that built in within our our, our responsibilities is we and it's built into actually department of corrections policies. so if we don't feel that they are doing something that's appropriate, we can take it up to the next level executives, and we can actually elevate that all the way up to the top if necessary. so it typically it's not often that that happens that they do their best to address complaints when they get them. okay. thank you.

okay. back to member wechter. yeah. just a few follow up questions. the first one is about decertification with post. who who would make those referrals? would it be the head of cdcr or would it be the wardens? and then i want to get a sense of do you have any review of those? can you make any recommendations of those? do you audit the numbers, etc? cdcr is specifically excluded from decertification. thank you. do you look at lawsuits against cdcr as a potential complaints or track them, track the numbers of settlements or judgments as reflecting potential issues? we do not we do not look at individual lawsuits. there are hundreds of lawsuits that get filed against the department of corrections. obviously, they're bigger class action lawsuits. we keep an eye on, such as the, you know, armstrong and plata and

some of those. so they're bigger class action lawsuits that have made it through the court system that that are really driving a lot of the policies and procedures. those are the ones that we focus on. but no, there are so many there are so many lawsuits that we do not we would not have that capacity at all. then i want to ask about training specifically, not training in general, but the type of training that potentially our board members could avail themselves to, or the inspector general staff when he has staff, could could avail themselves of so we do a number of different. we try to go to as many trainings as possible. obviously depending on budget, the association of inspector generals always has some really great trainings. nicole, the national association for civilian oversight of law enforcement, they have a number of good trainings. we'll also, although not necessarily we try. and with our local law

enforcement agencies or things that aren't post type trainings, but investigations, interviewing skills, a lot of those. and then we try and go see avail ourselves to as many of those trainings as possible, especially when we're assessing an investigator. it's good for us to know exactly you know what? what entails a good interview or what entails a good report, how to write a good report. things like those. so those are the types of trainings that that we try and attend. so would those be post trainings for law enforcement that you're referring to? some of them, yes. are there any others that you can recommend? well, i do have a team of attorneys, so they have to do all of their very specific type of training. and then my doctors and nurses actually have their own set of training. so we have a wide variety of training opportunities and responsibilities that we need to involve ourselves in. thank you,

inspector general wiley. thank you. hi, mr. singh. man, i'm really this has been really helpful and interesting listening to another ig explain their agency. so my question is, is of your $50 million budget, what is what takes up the biggest chunk of the budget payroll? well, i know it's payroll, but is it like investigators? is it legal staff? where where does most of the or what takes up the bulk of where the given the structure of your agency of your budget doctors and lawyers. we have we have a about 15 doctors on staff. okay. and we have many lawyers on staff and lawyers from attorney one level up through supervisors. and then my

i have four chief assistant inspector generals and they're all attorneys. so that's probably our biggest expenses okay. for payroll and in terms of the investigators and i know you're covering the whole state of california, how many investigators does your agency have? we don't have investigative authority that our limited investigative authority is over sexual misconduct cases. okay. and so the way the prea statute is written, we are we do have that ability to look into the allegations regarding sexual misconduct. okay. and we actually just had signed into law sb 1069, which gave us investigation authority specifically like spelled out regarding sexual misconduct cases under certain circumstances. so we'll be implementing that as of january 1st. and we are in the process of figuring out what that is going to look like and how what

type of personnel we need to hire to be able to monitor a greater number of sexual misconduct cases and potentially investigate sexual misconduct cases. so then when you of like the 900 complaints that you get, the ig then relies on city cdcr to conduct the investigations through their internal affairs. yes we do okay, okay. and then the last question that i had, i love your publication team. so what is the publication team? so the publication team is four members and a supervisor. and they're all like analyst type positions. and we hire those people who have a specific background in ability to write. most of them are former educators or current or still

current educators in the english and literature field. okay. thank you. so i guess i will do clean up, wrap up. so in terms of i was looking at specifically the number of incarcerated on average, i'm trying to look at what our budget should be and we hover around, i think 700 sometimes close to 800. and we wanted to start off slowly knowing that there were budget cuts. so for $2.5 million and hopefully, you know, having two investigators. so i'm just trying to spread out your personnel and your budget over the number of incarcerated. do you have an average? i don't have that average. i can tell you that. there are over 92,000 incarcerated people in the state of california, and the department of corrections employees. so the employees,

nearly 60,000 people, of which 26,000 plus are law enforcement officers. and in terms of trying to establish uniformity and best practices, have you put that together, assembled it into any kind of manual so that there is uniformity throughout the state and the institutions? no, we have not done any type of document like that for the department of corrections that if i'm understanding your question, we haven't provided them with anything. what we do is we take what it and make recommendations. for example, they have a very robust internal affairs manual that we that we look at and so will review that and make any recommendations that we think are appropriate. but at least we have what they believe are their best practices. so we can we can gauge it, gauge their work based on their own manual of best practices. okay. because, well,

eventually we'll have a presentation sheriff's office on their updated policies. but i was just wondering if there was some kind of other kinds of measures that you already had on your website, but it doesn't sound like you have that available, because every every institution will be slightly different. that is correct. what we do is if there is a best practice that we believe they should be employing within their investigations, we will make that as a recommendation. as part of one of our monitoring reports, for example, we believe that interviews should be audio recorded in whichever type of interview you're doing, whether it's a local inquiry at the prison or whether it's through the office of internal affairs, we recommend that best practices to record record these rv them. they they do not agree with us on that. they believe the department of corrections, i should say not they. the department of corrections does not agree with us. they will

record their internal affairs interviews. however, they won't record any of their local investigations that happen within house at the prisons. okay, i think that's about it for now. one one thing that we do have with our sheriff's office, and i think it's unique with our jurisdiction, is that we do have prisoner legal services. so that's something that's afforded to our incarcerated population. so i think that offers a little bit of avenue to another avenue for complaints or securing needs. while incarcerated. yep. thanks. thank you very much. now i'm going to ask for public comment on this item. at this time, members of the public wishing to provide public provide comments regarding line item three presentation from amrik singh are invited to approach the podium when it becomes available. hello everyone, my name is joanna hernandez. i'm a

parent of an incarcerated loved one. that was an amazing presentation and i hope that our city and county really sees that we need the budget to operate at least half of the level that the state is doing. i do want to say that i would love to try to see if there's a way of getting also input from people who are formerly incarcerated, because a lot of people don't come forward to share their concerns because of retaliation. as someone who has experienced that for bringing concerns when things have happened to my own son incarcerated and the retaliation happening, maybe not that day, but a week later. so i think it's very imperative that we figure out ways when we're out there trying to get voices, that we start serving people when they're in reentry plans for people who are like, back on track now and have received services, what was it that they could give to make their rehabilitation better? so i really commend what your office is doing, and i really hope that

as a community, we can advocate to get at least a portion of $50 million to make something happen here in the city of county of san francisco. do we have any other public comments? no. as to this one item, this presentatio, seeing none, i'd just like to thank miss singh and safe travels. i know traffic gets bad on a friday. going back to sacramento. thank you so much. thanks, miss singh, thank you. all right, so you really do seem like the. really perfect person

for this job. just from a person on the other side that you do seem like the person. perfect person, elected or appointed to this job. thank you. we'll let the governor know. thank you. next item, please. calling line item four. inspector general, report. informational item. inspector general terry wiley will provide an update on the monthly operations of the office of the inspector general. this report will encompass activities activities from the third quarter of 2020 for. his report will also include visits to cj two women's facility, meeting with the jail visiting committee and the jail justice coalition, and the annual conference of naco. all right. thank you. you know, i did enjoy the last presentation because it's always

helpful to hear from another operation and particularly a statewide operation. and but i think that one thing that that speaks loud and clear is, you know, in order to accomplish a lot of what they have going on is they're sufficiently funded in order to do that. so with our october report, really the key activities that we engaged in this month were we did our our normal meeting with the jail visiting team that's sponsored by the sheriff's department. we also do a quarterly meeting with the jail justice committee, our jail justice coalition committee. we also attended the nickel conference. but i think probably the most important thing that we did this month is we visited jail number two. and the well, the female jail of the

county jail. and i think why i think it's important to visit the jail. but i think one of the things that motivated us to focus in on the women's jail was our meeting the previous month with the latino task force, and a lot of the statements that were made at the at that meeting, which highlighted the importance of our going and looking at jail. number two and the female population. but let me start by saying the jail visiting committee that sponsored by the sheriff's department is actually a very insightful meeting because it brings in folks like miss hernandez, who just spoke, is on the jail visiting committee, and we hear from a lot of different sectors. the staff of the jail

that that are part of. executing the visitation of the jail. and, and at that meeting and i also want to highlight and thank deputy chief quantico, you know, all of our our meetings with deputy chief quantico have all been very, very positive. and, and, and i think the spirit of every meeting that i have participated in as the as the ig with deputy chief quantico has been one of really trying to be helpful and really trying to listen to everyone's complaints, if there are any. and then trying to find some resolution to those complaints. now, one of the things that, you know, when we first started, there were a

lot of lockdowns and all of these lockdowns were impacting the visitation of the jails. and our recommendation one was that that was not a sustainable model. and before you knew it, some of the changes that had been made by and led by deputy chief quantico was, was where we are today and where we are today is that even though they're still suffering staff shortages, there are still some lockdowns occurring. they have made a definite attempt to not let it impact the visitation of the jails. so what we're finding is that back in april, if there was a lockdown, visitations were shut down. today, if there's a lockdown, visitations continue and we're still allowing the jail is now allowing those those visitations to still move forward now. but we're not there

yet because the complaints that we're still hearing, and i think some of these complaints were brought out in the visitation. visitation, the jail visitation committee meeting were that there are still families that are having difficulty reserving space. so, you know, you have to go online to reserve a space to visit. and families are still having a lot of difficulty. and so that's where some of the staff shortages and some of the lockdowns are still impacting families. so although it has improved, there still needs to be more improvement and we are going to continue to try and work with the deputy quantico. deputy chief quantico and the sheriff's department in improving that, that the visitation giving the families greater access to visitation. now, the other area is we also

dealt with the jail, the jail, just the jail justice coalition. and that's a that's a group we meet with quarterly. and in that meeting, you know, generally we brought them up to speed since our last meeting, which was back in may. so we kind of brought them up to speed on some of the changes that have occurred. but one of a key member of that committee is the chair of the committee is also in the in the county treasurer's department. and so and i'll talk about it when i talk about the jail visit. but one of the things that we're able to do with that committee is it's a great place to try and find some possible resources through the treasurer's department that might assist with making life easier with the jails, and which

let me just go to the county jail visit to and i'll i'll tie that together. but we visited county jail two and again i cannot emphasize enough the importance of the sheriff's department being openly transparent. so and when i say that is that when we went into the women's jail, we received full access to the inmates. we were. and i also want to thank committee member caron, who was present during that jail visit and also had a lot of interaction with the female inmates. but we had a lot of interaction with the inmates. and i can tell you there's some interesting things that happened. one, the complaints about the deputies were they were too nice. and we were

surprised that that was the complaint that the deputies were too nice and that there were some deputies that were very methodical in the way they treat the inmates. you know, you know what to expect from them every day. it may not be a smile, but there, there, there conduct with the inmates is consistent. and then you have deputies that are very nice and they speak to them in a nice manner. and, and there was a complaint that it throws them off. so we were like, okay, i didn't expect to hear that. they were too nice. but that was one of the complaints. but another complaint was. because the women's the number of women that are incarcerated in san francisco is now down to only 60 women. and as a result, there is

only one pod for the women. and so the problem that that creates, whereas in the past there was typically more women incarcerated than 60. so the jail had two pods for the women and one pod was, i think the pod where people who may have had mental issues, medical issues, and the people that were in general population were was the pod where there was a lot programing going on and, and people were really i think the major thing was there was a lot of programing going on in that pod. well, now since we're down to 60 and everybody is combined, you now have generally per week, maybe three, four women that are detoxing and they're being housed with the general population. and when they're

detoxing it becomes the complaint was it becomes a major problem at nighttime because there are i guess they have a hard time sleeping because of their going through the detox, but it impacts the sleep of a lot of the inmates in general population. so there was a complaint about that, and i would say probably the majori2 complaint was the fact that and i don't know if it's a result of since covid, but there is a real lack of programing going on now. although the inmates have their tablets and they're able to do some programing on the tablets, i think that there was a request by the inmates to have greater access to having a group sessions where they can talk

about their problems and, and there's also a complaint that they now don't they don't have access to five keys. and so there's, you know, some who may be interested in doing a ged program or, or going beyond a ged program or not having access to that kind of programing. so i think that that is an issue that that i think is there needs to be a discussion on how to improve the programing. there's also there was also a complaint about the cleanliness of some. parts of the jail. and i think that because there's a they're being forced to be housed with some of the women that are detoxing. i think there were complaints about the condition that the showers were being left in, and that although the

sheriff's department was providing ■rsomeone to clean things up, there was some real there was some dissatisfaction with the manner in which, like the showers were cleaned up. so these are all areas that that we need to have some further discussions with the sheriff. but now the other thing and why i brought up the jail coalition committee is and the fact that they've got a member of the treasury on the committee is that there was a big complaint by a lot of women was not having the ability to shave. and so although they have a they have clippers and, and an electric shaver, there was a complaint about that. and so we are going to at some point be talking to the jail coalition committee to

see if we cannot find some funding somewhere to provide the women with the, the, the non the shavers that are there extra safe shavers to provide to them and because i, you know, i can tell you that that was you know woman to woman that was a complaint by everybody that they do not have you know some of the oh they complained about deodorant also deodorant and shavers was a was a complaint. we also took a tour of the kitchen and we also looked at the food that the women are receiving and the big complaints about the food was during the week. they all five meals.

breakfast is they're all cold meals, lunch, they're all cold meals. and then they get a hot meal at dinner. but they are receiving hot meals for breakfast on saturday and sunday and hot meals for dinner on saturday and sunday. so one of the complaints was they like they like more hot meals at breakfast. but when we looked at the cleanliness of the jail, very impressed with the cleanliness of the jail kitchen, very impressed with the women that were doing the cooking and preparing of the meals. and they prepare about 13,000 meals a week. so there's a lot of work that they're doing. and the beautiful thing about the women that are working in the kitchen is that the skills that they're developing in the kitchen are

skills that transfer outside. once they finally leave the jail that they can use in terms of helping them, helping them get work. so i would say the biggest, the biggest complaint, just to summarize the biggest complaint was there was a complaint about, you know, cleanliness and hygiene and, you know, they'd like to see some improvement in that area. and i think that everywhere you go, there's going to be a complaint about some of the food and i think part of it is, is not so much the quality of the food, but just the, the repetition of the food. and it's the same food all the time. yeah. but i so i definitely think that there are some areas that we're planning on following up. and also because we've gotten the same complaint from the men, we are

contemplating putting together a committee. to research and see if there aren't some options, some fresh food options, so that when the county's next contract comes up, which i probably we're about ten months out from the next contract being negotiated for the food that we might not be able to provide the county with some fresh food options that they might want to also consider because i do think that adding more fresh food to their diet would make a big difference in the way they feel about the food. we also attended the naco conference between october 13th and the 17th. it was a great conference. there were a lot of

very helpful courses that we attended and but i think the big positive of the naco conference was just getting an opportunity to meet oversight professionals from all over the country, and really talking to them about, you know, what our challenges are, what their challenges are, and some of the things that are going real well with their operations and so it was it was great. it was very, very great conference and met a lot of good people. and we had a really it was it was a good time. so that is our report for october. and as i say, i, i'm very i'm really happy that we went to visit the women's jail because i think that. i am moved by the fact

that, that in doing our assessments of both the men and the women's jail, i'm not hearing about i'm not hearing a lot of complaints about mistreatment and i'm, you know, i've only heard so far about people being treated in a very professional manner. and like i said, on the women's side, the complaint was that they're too nice. so, you know, overall, i think that there can be some improvement. but i also think that if we can get some improved programing and a couple of other little areas, you know, i think it will be a really positively operating jail on the women's side. thank you. now it's time for questions and comments from members. member wechter. yes, thank you very

much. i know we're going to hear a report from dpa later, but in light of what inspector general singh said about monitoring the internal affairs investigations, i want to get a sense about what your relationship is now to the investigations that dpa is doing of sheriff's department complaints. in other words, at what point are you seeing them, touching them? do you have any advising role? do you have any input into the findings. just want to get a clear sense of that. we meet once a week, so we meet with the head of the sheriff's department's internal affairs, and it's normally myself, marshal keene, sheriff's legal and they're internal affairs an one of our main, our main investigator. and we discuss the cases where. so for example, the we may have cases where we're trying to get

information on the case. and so we'll let them know like, hey, in this particular case we're looking for this particular information. and so we really try to tie down what information that our investigators need to complete their investigations. and if there are any questions that we may have about a particular case or even questions they may have about a particular case, but we do that on a weekly basis. and what about the investigation that dpa is conducting independently? what role do you, if any, do you play in that in terms of observing interviews, reviewing any of the investigation before? it's completed, reviewing the reports, approving the reports, input into the findings? that's what i'm trying to get at. yeah. the dpa and the inspector general are two separate agencies. so we're only concerned with our inspector general report cases and reports. okay. so currently you

do not have any input or role in the investigations that dpa does of complaints against sheriff's department personnel. is that correct? wait, can you repeat the complaints from the department of police? no, no. no complaints that go to the department of police accountability per their letter of agreement with the sheriff's department? those investigations, when i'm clarifying, is if you have any role, do you review those investigations? do you have input on them? do you observe anything? do you have any connection whatsoever with those investigations? the cases that are sheriff's departments cases? yes. every one of them. i'm sorry, not the sheriff's department. dpa okay, the dpa investigations, well, the investigators, we are assigned two investigators that are technically dpa investigators, but they are conducting all of the sheriff's department's investigations and those

investigators conduct the sheriff's department investigations only they don't conduct any dpa investigations. only the sheriff's department's investigations, despite the fact that they are technically dpa employees. so i maybe i'm not saying it properly. so what role do you have with the investigations conducted by those two dpa employees regarding sheriff's department cases? what do you mean what we oversee those cases. well, do you in terms of oversee, do you review the investigations? do you review any part of the process? do you observe any of the interviews? do you review the report? do you have any input into the findings that dpa makes me personally, no. we marshal kind, who is sort of assigned to the sheriff's

department, monitors those cases with that are done by the two dpa employees that conduct the investigations for the sheriff's department. and then on a weekly basis, we meet with the sheriff's department, internal affairs, and go through those cases and if there are any issues with those cases, but yeah, so until we get our own investigators, you know, those investigations are being done by dpa employees that are technically handling the sheriff's department's investigations. okay. and those investigations are being reviewed and approved by dpa personnel. is that correct? yes. that's per the agreement. okay, then i know you've talked a lot about the visits to the jail when you meet with incarcerated people in the jail, do you meet

with them in a private room, or do you meet with them in the pod where deputies are present? so and i'll just explain. i'll, i'll describe what happened last hour. well, earlier this week we generally bring all of the women out in the pod exct separately upstairs. and we talk to them as a group. and we just asked generally, how is it going? and you will get a lot of we get a lot of feedback. and then i have we have an investigator there who has taken down all the complaints and everything that's being said. then we will if there are individuals who want to have a more private discussion, we will separate and have a more private discussion with them. so like what happened in this at this last visit, most of the discussions were with the

women out just everybody in the pod explaining, you know, what their issues were. and then we went upstairs because there were a couple of ladies who wanted to speak to us in a more private setting. so we had a more private sit down with them to discuss their issues. thank you. what i'm trying to clarify is if any of these discussions, the discussion with the larger group, the discussion with the smaller group take place in rooms where there are no deputies present, where there's privacy, where people could talk without any potential concern of deputies overhearing what they're saying. right. no, not at all. no. and why is that? well, first of all, we feel that, you know, the there there is no interference whatsoever by any of the deputies. none. and in fact, the deputies step way to the side and we really don't

even see the deputies while we're having our discussions with the inmates. and so far on both the men's side and the women's side, we have not had one discussion where we've gotten the sense that they're not telling us something because they're afraid of retaliation or, or anything like that. we just haven't gotten that sense. when member palmer and i went to county jail at san bruno last year and met with inmates, we met with them in several pods. but we always met in a private room with the door closed, and i think we had 15 or 20 individuals at a time who i think spoke very candidly in a way they might not have spoken had there been a deputy present. and so why not make use of those rooms where people could feel freer to speak? that's something we'll we'll look into. but at at this point, i have not seen

anything that has given me the impression that the inmates are not being, that the inmates feel that they can't be fully transparent with us. and how are the concerns or things said at these meetings? how are they documented our investigator is documenting them, and how does the investigator document them? he writes them down on a piece of paper. okay. is there a written report prepared? no, we can't repair. prepare a report of that. and i, i did take that that that's not a bad idea to do a full report on what's being reported to us. but the manner in which we've been handling things up to this point is that we've been taking down those complaints, and then we report out to this board the complaints that we received. and we're also

addressing those complaints with the sheriff's department. and what we have noticed up to this point is we've seen action from the sheriff's department. we have not seen inaction. we've seen action by the sheriff's department addressing the concerns that have been raised. so in terms of i mean, i understand your point, but i think one of the points you're trying to make is you think that somehow because we're not meeting with them in a private setting, that we're not getting all of the information. and i disagree with that. there's nothing that there's no indications that i have received that. like, we haven't had any follow ups from inmates who are now who call us after the meeting saying, hey, i got to talk to you about something that

i didn't feel comfortable talking to you about in fact, with the men in the open dorm after our visit, they were clapping and applause because they were very, very happy about our being there and discussing their issues. and then and then in that particular meeting, we noticed that there was one inmate who was who was getting very emotional during the discussions. and so i then had one of our investigator, i said, hey, i told our investigator, hey, after we're done, pull him to the side and go talk to him and get to the bottom of why he was being so emotional. and we did that because you can pick up if there's somebody that you know, you may they may signal that there's something that they want to talk about. and we pick

up on that. and, and if we feel that it's necessary to pull an inmate and have a more private discussion, then we'll do that. and just like we visited the women, there were two women that wanted to have a more private discussion. and we had those private discussions. and as inspector general singh mentioned, they document and publish their recommendations and the implementation of those. are you documenting the recommendations you make to the sheriff's department? and you say the sheriff's department is acting on those? is that being documented anywhere? yeah, i can tell you every recommendation right now that of a complaint that we've received from the inmates since i've been the inspector general since january, that we've received from the inmates, brought it up with the sheriff's department, and the sheriff's department has responded. but is it put in writing anywhere? no, but we can't do that. so this is my concern. when and if you leave this position, i think you're going to leave because you have

not said you're going to stay. and if i were you, i'd take the judgeship or perhaps some other office that may come open. how is your successor going to have all the detailed information about what you've done? i don't disagree that we can document and we can we can prepare a report. in fact, we are going to prepare an end of the year report and it will document everything that has gone on over the course of a year. i just want to weigh in because i do think it's important, the spirit of what you're talking about, about like meeting with the incarcerated clients in a more private setting. we can definitely take that into consideration for future. we just started right. this is the first visit. we're also fighting for budget. he doesn't have staff just yet. so this is i think it's an important concern to raise. and we can consider it for future. and i agree with you in that because i'm not arguing with you. i do think that we

should be documenting this, but, you know, we have a staff of one administrative assistant and me that that is funded by the office of the inspector general. and i wasn't going to ask the inspector general of california if she was the one who was actually having to visit the jail herself. and was she the one who was having the right to reports herself? and was she the one who was having to conduct her own investigations? because i know that that's not the case. so, you know, i think that based on the lack of resources that we've received, that the city and county of san francisco have received a in my opinion, a tremendous performance by the

office of the inspector general, given the lack of resources before you begin these visits to the jail, did you talk to anyone else in oversight who does oversight of jails about their practice, or about the best practice? from when you go to a jail and meet with people? no, but i also didn't come into this job without 33 years of experience as a prosecutor. so i also want to just interject because i went to some of the visits and i did review the notes that you wrote up. member wechter and member palmer did not have an opportunity to review those, and that's why i didn't think it was appropriate to make them public. but the complaints about the lack of clean blankets, the skin issues, those were taken care of immediately after inspector general wiley's visit. and chief joo was with us as well. and it

turned out that the washing machines were actually broken, but it was taken care of immediately and to the satisfaction of those incarcerated. as inspector general wisely pointed out, we have not had repeated complaints about the same issues. and so i was actually quite surprised being at three in the two pods. one of them was the psych pod, as well as the general population. all of those incarcerated looked healthy and were actually, surprisingly to me, seemed content. so i remember sandy, one of the staff members, a very petite asian woman and the and she headed the psych ward and the services, and she got an applause in the next pod, the deputy received an applause as we left, and i did notice the particular gentleman who was very emotional and had

an issue and the investigator did take him aside. i don't think it was even in earshot of any deputy. so he was free to speak freely and at the time we also had a deputy who was spanish speaking. so he served as an interpreter to one of the incarcerated who preferred to speak in spanish. so i think we need we need staff. i'm surprised that i'm doing so much report writing, and i think member for actually making things more readable to the public, but also suggesting that the inspector general have a newsletter. so at this point i am satisfied at least there's a newsletter, because rather than repeating things that are in this meeting and documentation is important, but those newsletters are the conduit for public input and increased public input. so i think and i

thank the latino task force because this really started in february when i asked cedric akbar to be here. and the latino task force also came. so this is an initiation of continued public input that we need, that we rely upon to know that we're doing our job. so well. i want to see more documentation. i think it will happen. but in in terms for now, we do have those newsletters. so we do know what has been happening. but for the department of police accountability, we do have those investigators actually making written reports as well. yeah i just want to follow up. i don't disagree with jason's call out about having a paper trail of just documentation with the jail visits. we can definitely have that. and then for future visits, i'm looking specifically the latino task force. we're going to make sure that we have like a more private room, that where we can, you know, have that one on one with the

clients. because i do think it's important that they feel like they can speak freely. so i and i'd like to push i'd like to push harder. we haven't had a report from health and i've been pushing hard on that, especially for women who are incarcerated, who are pregnant, because we do have to talk about nutrition. we do have to talk about access to maternal health. and in the past, the commission on the status of women and department on the status of women had had input from incarcerated women. and so that's another issue that we, i think, need to do more in the future to actually have more collaborative work with other commissions. so in particular, the health commission, as well as the commission on the status of women. so i've looked at the newsletters, they do not contain specific information that you got at the jail, said you made a

visit to the jail, met with people incarcerated there who expressed concerns, but it doesn't include what any of those concerns were. so i don't think everything is in the newsletter. so i think there should be written reports. i think there should be public and transparent, just as inspector general singh said. and, you know, this is a best practice that anyone in oversight could have, you know, told you about last, what i hope is my last question, can you commit to staying in your job as inspector general? that's not on today's agenda. excuse me? that's not on today's agenda. well, i'm. i think it's very relevant to this board and to the public. i think it's on today's agenda. so you're not going to answer. and he doesn't have to. it's an inappropriate question. i, i think it's relevant. i think the press would think it's relevant. and i think the public would think it's relevant. i think that you have multiple. well, you know what? i'm just going to leave it there. that's not on

today's agenda. i think that's an inappropriate question. so i'm going to move on to member palmer. thank you. mike is on okay. i do want■ to also support private interviews. and one of the reasons why i supported private interviews is because if everybody is given a private interview, no one can observe someone asking for one. and when you ask for one, that means you want to say something that they don't want the deputies to hear. so i think there should be a call for private interviews, and there should be a call for if you just want group discussion. so you have option of being in a group discussion, because it's probably, like you said, could we clean up the bathrooms a little bit better? can we have a hot meal? those aren't big, big deals. you can say that. and it's probably been said, but if you have any type of abuse going on, if you have any type of real serious matters going on, i think those people will want a private interview without it being known that they're asking

for a private interview. i also support audio recording that could be reviewed by the board, and i think member wechter brought it up where we should be able to hear the context of the report if we chose to. i believe you did a good job, and i believe you will do a good job as long as you're in the office. and so i'm not really concerned about that at this point. i understand your lack of staffing. so instead of having somebody write down word for word what somebody said, they could easily make a recording and then go back and put that through chatgpt and write a report within minutes instead of handwriting something on the spot where they may not get everything down. so i do support audio recordings that stay in your possession and make sure anything that's not legally needed to come out stays secure. the idea that the complaint, a complaint from some of the residents inside of the jail, was nice. like the office, the deputies were nice, i think. i

think that's good. i have personally seen a change in attitude with the culture of the deputies inside of the jails and so i wouldn't use that as a complaint, but as an acknowledgment that some things have changed for the better. and i'm sure we can still grow and get better. i think there should be even an idea of coed housing for trustees, and if you don't know what a trustee is, it's somebody who's been selected from the population and put some amount of trust in that will take care of things. and where the deputies doesn't have to worry about them trying to escape or pass illegal contraband and things like that. so that's that's what the word trustee comes from and why they are selected. so you can have housing where men and women are housed a little bit better according to their needs. so that housing wouldn't be an issue as you were describing women. so many number of them, and not being able to have a pod that isn't being disturbed by people who are going through a

traumatic situation as detoxing or a mental breakdowns. again, trustees keep the jail clean and a part of the trustees that volunteer to keep the jail clean and running. they do a lot of the manual work, a lot of the tasks that the deputies would not want to do on a daily basis, yet they don't get paid. so in that, in that regard, they're saving the sheriff's office budget. if you don't have to pay these people to do work that you would have to pay a deputy to do at an extraordinary amount of money, then that saves a lot on the budget. but i also think in today's time when we're getting ready to vote on proposition six, to end slavery in california once and for all, unfortunately, we have a history of slavery up to this day, so slavery never ended. if that's the case, that we would still pay these trustees some type of stipend or some type of wage so that they won't be considered a trustee slaves. and as far as religious and special diet food requests, did you ever i didn't

hear a really a reporting a reporting on that. did you check with the residents and also the staff that are responsible for religious and special diets? my concern with that, if you can, the next time, if you didn't this time is speed up the process in which that process is done. sometimes that could take two weeks a month. it could just be thrown under the rug. and sometimes people have gone through their whole entire jail process without getting that special diet or religious diet. so the request process should be done a little bit faster. and the food should be in accordance to the special or religious diet, and not just removing items that qualifies it from the tray that a regular resident ge. you could speak on the yeah, we did and they are provided with special meals because you have some inmates that are diabetic and so they have to have a special diet for

diabetics. we did have some i don't recall there being8w more than 1 or 2 that had a religious diet. most of the, the, the dietary requirement where there were special diets required. it was generally for a medical reason. and the most prominent one was that there were a number that had required a that were diabetic and required a special menu. and there were no complaints about, well, i take that back because early on there were some complaints that the some of the male inmates that were receiving special diets, they were dissatisfied with the special diets that they were receiving. yeah. so there there

wasn't 100% satisfaction with the special diets. okay. so i was i would just suggest that your office looks into communication with the sheriffs to saying that in the intake of the person coming in, you ask them 1,000,001 questions. one of them should be, what's your special diet? is are what your religious diet is, and it should be kept on their file so that if they do ever come back again, which some people do for different reasons, some good and some bad, i do think they do that already, but i'll confirm. well, from my experience they don't. but and the fresh fruits and veggies. i think that was a good suggestion on. i think it was you that made that statement. that is a that is a diet that is actually created for human beings, even though we've come accustomed to eating a lot of actually like you to be on that, on that committee, i appreciate that. and then programs for programing inside the jails, i think, is very important that we resume at

least at normal weight or close to what we had before covid programing inside of jails are vital to the mental health and emotional health and community support health of everybody in there. when you have somebody locked in a confined space and they have no interaction with the outside community, it is detrimental to their mental status. i think that should be a priority. i don't think that's something that you can just cut out of the budget because you feel like it, or it's low priority. i think that is something that should be required by jail rights like jail, you know, resident rights. it should be under a code of rights that they receive that type of treatment. and on a regular basis, and can't just be taken out at at a whim or they don't have enough staff like it should be a danger to the to the operations of the jail, not to have those programing fix and fixing the visiting appointment scheduling. it should be

priority two. it's i've heard that it is going to be worked o. i am a part of the sheriff's justice jail coalition. the san francisco jail justice coalition. so we have brought that up a number of times, and i have heard that it's going to be fixed, but i hope that you keep that on your radar because, oh, yeah, it's imperative that that visiting room be fully functional. i wish it was 24 over seven that people can get their visits and get it at a regular at a regular, at a regularity. and i will say not to interrupt, but i would say that we not only heard the complaint during our jail justice coalition meetings, but welso heard it directly from many of the female inmates. that's good. and so if the if the sheriff's office wants to get on something, you know, make sure that they're fixed so that we don't have multiple complaints back to back. i think those are the vital ones is the food and it's the visiting and the organizations coming in helping them with programing.

thank you. member palmer. next we have member mango. yeah. no, i'm just agreeing with palmers about the visitation and the programs being prioritized. thank you. member nguyen. for all the work you're doing, i hear you. thank you for all work you're doing. inspector general wiley, regarding the fresh food items, the deputies also get food from the same vendor. the inmates do as well. and since you're already looking into that, maybe you could look into the fresh food options for the deputies as well. please, i will thank you. i will because we they when we took the tour of the men's jail, they took us into the deputies. your break room and showed us your meals in. i don't know if that was a

refrigerator or where it was, but it was from the same vendor. and so if it comes from the same vendor, is it the exact same food? it's not the exact same food. well, that has to be stated. i mean, when you say it comes from the same vendor, that gives the impression that you're eating the same slop, i mean, the same food that they're eating, it's not the exact same food, but it should be. it's not good either. there's room for improvement. okay. yeah, there's from what i saw, there's room for improvement. so one thing that i wanted to bring up and this was successful in the bay view and we did not adjourn in memory of the late ted fang, but he started the community garden in the bay view where there's food desert. so that's known as the florence fang community garden. so i'm hoping that at ke three we could start up the gardening process again, because that's an important skill. it also allows those incarcerated to get some outdoor time, but to

be able to grow some fresh fruits and vegetables. and on that, before you speak on that, there is an organization that's very well trusted from cdcr called insight gardening. they can help with that. they can be part of the supervision. and again, those could be the trusty residents of the jail that can come out and get those also skills. there are soft skills that you can take off into, take back into the community with you and get jobs with. so the fang garden was recently recognized by the federal government as something very positive for communities, and i believe that that that entitles it to some kind of federal support. so i'm hoping that that's transferable to our ke three and being able to farm on that land. so what we were planning to do is in the first of the year is putting a committee together and, and, you know, meet every month and figure out who some of the

vendors are and see if we can find some legitimate options so that when the next contract comes up, we have some legitimate vendors that can compete and provide some fresh food options. so i'm not going to create a committee because that requires notice. and everything else. so i, i will let this is the ig. yes. so i will let you get some information from the relevant board members. how's that. yes. any further comments? do we have public comment on this agenda item at this time, members of the public wishing to provide public comments regarding line item four, inspector general report, are invited to approach the podium when it becomes available. hello folks. good to see you guys. how's it going? i was actually going to ask the

same thing about if you get to interview them in private or in public. yeah. so in my experience, i mean, even myself, i've had some form of retaliation. so i know that it's in the back of their mind. right. and i'm not their inmate. and again, we're speaking broadly as an institution, not like at the individual level. right. i mean, just today, you know, and again, part of getting to the truth is building trust, right? and if you meet them for the first time, they don't know if they can trust you, right? they don't understand might they might not necessarily understand what it is you do. right. so sometimes it takes a little bit of time. yeah. but i wouldn't take those interactions at face value completely. right. yeah. so you know and it's funny because we talked today and i let him know i was going to come here. and a few of them, you know, we got into discussions and like i said opened up and

let me know some things right. nothing to, you know, that i'll disclose here. but one of the things that they want to bring up was how the lockdowns are affecting their programing, how the lockdowns are because they're still going on. right. not just that, but on the lockdown, them not having access to the shower is very detrimental to their mental health. physical. you want to and having to spend part of the day on their bed was. oh for sure. complaints that i got and in that small space like that's that's hard right? again, there's a lot of medical issues that come up with these not being able to shower. they say you know, if you don't want, you know, a black toenail don't come to jail. that's what they say, right? because it's so common they get abscesses on their skin. staph infection. it's like a real problem right? on top of that, like we go through learned helplessness a lot in that class. you know, some of the classes that i teach and it just

again, speaks to that. it's just that they're demotivated. you know, it's really hard to make progress. and we can't really get a breakthrough because all these barriers that are over them. so if that's something we could look into at the very least. and as far as on health, to be honest, you know, again, i work one on one. i'm a service provider with these folks end up having high blood sugar or blood sugar issues, blood pressure issues, severely deficient in vitamin d that affects their sleep, that affects their health, sleep apnea for whatever reason, they get in jail and their sleep apnea gets worse. so again, i'd want to really give another perspective, right? they're not i wouldn't say that they're healthy in there, and i wouldn't say anybody should be housed in there. sorry to going to bed on a tangent. i think i had one more hold on. we have to do our meeting. we do. we definitely do. yeah. yeah, i would love that. so which was actually a last since you said that you took the words out of

my mouth. yeah, yeah. you know what? i will follow up with you next week for sure. absolutely. we'll get something on the calendar. definitely. thank you. and committee member palmer, thank you so much too for your advocacy always. and what you said here as well resonated a lot. so thank you all. have a good one. thank you. and before you got back mr. well i'm sorry, wilcher, how do you pronounce your last name? wechter. wechte. sorry. i just wanted to thank you for your questions earlier as well. okay. thank you guys. hello. joanna hernandez, before my three minutes starts, i do want to say as today marks the first day of day of the dead, and i would like to take a moment to a brief silence to honor those who have passed away in custody, those who have lost their lives due to violence and to the fallen officers. may we warmly celebrate and remember their lives as today is the first day of day of the dead.

thank you. when someone is incarcerated and their parent child visits are taken away, children are often the ones ending up paying the consequences. we are. if we are serious about breaking the cycles of incarceration, shouldn't this be a concern for all of us with limited cognitive behavior programs available inside county jail? three how can we help create effective solutions? could the oversight consider please reviewing these types of programs offer possibly even observing the programs that are even offered, the ones offered before 11 a.m. true. true. public safety involves having a complete understanding of what's happening on the ground. just getting a piece of paper saying we have programs happening, and then actually sitting in there, you won't understand it. i also recommend maybe interviewing program staff and organizations who receive city funding to serve people who are incarcerated with the mystery or not having access. we

can understand where our public dollars are being wasted if they don't have the access to do the actual work. also, i recommend that this body read the land acknowledgment. it should be read before this meeting starts every first friday of the month. as a respect to those who were here before us. thank you. hello everyone! i'm a little nervous. this is the first time i've ever done this, but i know if i don't come up here and get this off my chest, no moves will ever be made. let me start by saying my name is tatiana hernandez. i'm the coordinator of the barber pathway program with bay area community resources. i wanted to share that several organization, including bay area community resources, latino task force, and san francisco pretrial, and bay area student barber expo five keys and programing, and the academy barber college have collaborated to start a braiding project, a 15 week course in san francisco county jail, where we go in every monday. the goal of

the mission is freedom. braiders is about transformation, transforming lives. we're dedicated to empowering individuals, one braid at a time through the art of braiding, we foster healing, build confidence, and create meaningful connections. our mission is to provide a safe and supportive space where creativity flourish and lives are transformed. healing people, healing, helping people reclaim their freedom and embrace their inner strength. when having true partnerships and collaborative collaboratives, we can make an impact in public safety. with that being said, we need more programs in the jails and we need to be more honest in your program was the first thing that was mentioned when we got there was the braiding program. i think it needs to be in all county jails. i think it needs more support. the men and women are behind four walls every day, so the time they get to be in

the classroom is all they get. and working in the jails. this is my first time ever being in the jails. that's my mom, joanna hernandez. if you didn't know by the last name, first time working in the jails, i feel like i actually get to see and interact with the women and just seeing that little, that little hour, they get to be out it. it's inspiring. so i feel like we need to push more programs. they just don't need braiding. they need more other programs. right. but programs in all county jails need to be more of a push. yeah. but yeah. thank you. thank you. hi. my name is agnieszka lopez. i live in canada. i'm here to ask you a quick questions. i'm here to visit my cousin. and i know we're not allowed to visit my cousin, but i want to know how

to fix you guys. fix it. this is my first time here to ask you that question. so when she means by that is, she has not been able to schedule a visit because when she logs on, all the visits are taken. and so she's here from canada to do a special visit for her cousin who is incarcerated. but every time she gets a visit, they're all taken. so we could actually handle that through prisoner legal services. they do make special arrangements, particularly for family members who come from very far away. so, inspector general wiley, could i ask you to coordinate with that? take care of that. yeah, but i'm his cousin anyway, so that's the problem. can you guys fix that? are you. how long are you going to be here? i'm here for 13 days. okay. and oscar lopez, you know joanna? yes. she's my aunt. okay, so. okay, just stay till

our meeting is over, and we'll. we'll take care of it. coordinate with prisoner legal services. okay. thank you very much. that's what's up. i like it, i like i like that that our board could like, facilitate things in the moment and not have to, like, write a piece of paper and ask for permission and get red tape removed. like, that's what i think we are. relationships are about and that's and hopefully we can fill up some more seats every first friday so they can come in and ask us for some immediate relief. yeah. and i just wanted to say thank you, especially to these folks that come every meeting because and you sit through our very long meetings justo, you know, have a chance and opportunity to, to talk to us. so i appreciate you guys showing up. and i do want to also add on this subject that we're on. it is very important that we increase the one on one

interaction with the community that goes inside the jail and just sits with somebody, one on one and say, how can i help you get through this process? how can i help you emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and even if there's financial hardships, like if you're a breadwinner who's immediately taken off the streets in order to go through your process, that's a lack of resources that's coming into that house. and so it is a financial burden. and you are stressed out as a parent or as a home, as a provider of this home of parents, that of your own parents. it could be that how do i help keep this going? even though i made a bad decision, or maybe not a bad decision that led me in this situation. so it's imperative that these organizations have access, and that is the priority that the sheriff's office should have. any further comment from my fellow board members? seeing none. dan, may we have the next

agenda item calling line item five department of police accountability presentation informational item. marshal keene, chief attorney for the department of police accountability, will provide an overview of sheriff's office investigations conducted by dpa for the third quarter of 2024. good afternoon, board members. president hsu, vice president brueckner, hope you all had a nice halloween by now. i'm sure all of you are very familiar with our reports. the format has been consistent from quarter to quarter this year, hopefully

making it easier for you to navigate. how to view and analyze our data. just a quick qualification. again, for those who may not have tuned in for our prior presentations, the dpa performs investigations of complaints against sheriff deputies for a very limited class for a number of limited classes of serious offenses that are defined by our letter of agreement. the data that we've compiled today comes from the new case management system that we put online earlier this year, built on a salesforce platform for the office of the inspector general, and that data migration from the previous years occurred sometime mid-year this year. so we had a successful data migration of all the data, which gives us the benefit of reviewing the quarter three statistics from a multi-year perspective. again, following the format that we've used

before. i'll go over some of the short highlights of how the dpa has assisted the office of the inspector general this particular quarter, and going to just some of our ongoing and future projects just to keep this board updated. so the cases open this particular quarter, these are the number of complaints that we receive. we receive them through a number of different ways. referrals from other departments, most commonly from the sheriff's office, internal affairs unit, but we also receive them through other channels as well, through our online portal, we receive in-person complaints and telephonic complaints year over year. as we look at from 2022, 2023 and 2024, we kind of see a consistent increase. it's hard to identify the reasons behind particular trends, but most

certainly i think the attention that the inspector general's office has drawn, as well as the jail visits, the informational pamphlets that we've created and distributed in jails, and all of the work of this board has drawn more attention to the work that we do. and the investigations have certainly gone up in terms of the referrals and new complaints that we received quarter two and quarter three consistent this year. and as we've also seen in prior years, the latter quarters tend to have a greater number of complaints, at least from a three year perspective. similarly, we're closing more cases year over year from 2022 2023 to 2024. 2024 will be a year at least from the first three quarters perspective, where we've closed most cases over the years that we've been doing this. the other thing that we try to keep track

of is are we closing, opening and closing cases at a similar rate? and i think we're achieving that because we have very limited resources and very limited number of investigators. so in order to maintain a certain stasis with our caseload, we have to make sure that we're operating efficiently and closing cases at a rate that we're receiving them. here's a three year comparison of the dpa's caseload. for the different quarters. and like last year, we have 28 pending cases at this particular moment in time, which is almost identical to quarter three of 2023. so again, a fairly stable caseload managed by a senior investigator and a and a regular line investigator. this graph is a representation of the

breakdown of the case findings. this particular quarter, we had a couple of cases with a significant number of allegations that one was withdrawn and a couple were referred after some investigation led us to the led us to the conclusion that we did not have the jurisdiction to investigate that particular case and that kind of took a lot of the statistics in terms of the case findings per allegation. so you'll see a disproportionate number of allegations referred to the other agencies and, and which were also and i believe those withdrawal allegations all came from one case, which was a sexual abuse case that had the complexity of both a pending criminal investigation as well as civil action. and i think all those things taken together led the complainant to withdraw the

complaint. i would also add that that withdrawal was done with the assistance of an attorney representing that particular complainant, and wasn't done unilaterally without legal advice. this graph just represents a more granular breakdown of the types of allegations that we investigated and closed this particular quarter, just on a continuum, to show you the proportion of the different allegations. again, the referrals and the withdrawal takes up a disproportionate part of the quarter three case findings. but besides those, it would be, as we've seen, almost every report, excessive force in the form of misconduct comprises the largest proportion still of the types of complaints that we receive. of course, we do not investigate the less serious allegations. so our data set is

going to be potentially skewed by excessive force allegations because it is one of the more serious ones. and dominates the statistics for the types of cases that we see. complainant demographics. for the new cases, we had 16 new complainants. again, the complainant demographics are voluntary information that is provided by the complainants when they make their complaint. all 16 of them had declined to state their age. they did provide us with other data that allows us to see that more than half of them are male, and exactly 50% of the new complainants are black or african american, 13% are hispanic or latino, and 25% decline to state their demographic. declined to state their race. in terms of the complaint, sources, we received a fairly large proportion that

were by referrals. this particular quarter. we're not exactly sure why, other than we have a new, new internal affairs unit leadership with a new lieutenant that started recently and some new members of the icu team. and they've been much more proactive in referring cases to us. so we've seen a larger percentage of referrals, this particular this particular quarter. marshall, could you remind us of that acronym? internal affairs unit. oh, okay. i thought you said some other acronym. so okay. i'm sorry. okay. and in terms of the complaint locations, this particular quarter, it it's very consistent with the jail population with cx three having the majority of the complaints, 44%, followed by cx two and cx one. so nothing particularly unusual or noteworthy about that

breakdown. this graphic represents for the new complaint allegations. i would preface new complaint allegations are very preliminary because this is just based on the initial reported allegations and elements of that particular complaint, almost inevitably, on almost every case after the case is investigated and the evidence is gathered, there will be additional complaints. for example, we don't have the use of force log or incident reports on some of the use of force allegations yet. and if there's a failure to document the use of force, that would be additional allegations that's not captured here. so same with we don't have an inventory of the body worn camera footage right at the outset. and the failure to turn on body worn camera at the correct time or under the correct circumstances could be additional allegations. but nonetheless, to the extent that it's informative, the largest

proportion, again for the new incoming complaints is largely dominated by unnecessary or excessive force complaints or allegations. so in terms of in terms of the quarter three highlights and the ways that dpa has been assisting the office of the inspector general, this particular quarter, we continue with investigative support, understand the question as to whether inspector wiley has been directly overseeing all of the investigations. we have certainly made all of the investigations available to inspector wiley, and we consult with inspector general wiley on the more serious investigations and investigations that contain elements that we would benefit from teasing out. we don't try to bother him with the day to day operations on every single investigation. but to the extent that inspector general wiley has been here, we have certainly

deferred to him having access to every single investigation and all of the materials we provide administrative support for the office of inspector general from front desk receptionists and phone duties all the way through all of the financial support for budgetary and finance preparations and public records requests, responses. so there's a lot of administrative support that the office of the inspector general would really benefit from having staff to perform. and obviously that's will be one of the budget asks we've sent staff to accompany the inspector general to the jail, visits the meetings and events, and we have had a senior investigator on hand to document those events, those jail visits, and we can certainly put them into a more report form and document that for the inspector general to approve in the form of a report,

to publish to this board and to the public, we're currently extracting all of our key findings from all of our investigations over this year, so that we can present them to the inspector general and have the inspector general decide which key findings to bring to the attention of this board and prioritize for further action, whether in the form of a recommendation or some sort of specific focused monitoring in that particular area. we've implemented a team system for responding to in-custody deaths. now, previously, we have been relying on the very limited staff that have been assigned to the sheriff's investigations. we've brought in that now to include the officer involved shooting team and mix the teams so that we can be sure that rather than just relying on one

person, we have a team that's available around the clock 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. i can say that in the last two death notifications, we received very prompt notification from the sheriff's office. i think we still have some work in terms of automating that notification system, like the police department does with everbridge, but nevertheless, we can say that we were notified of the death within 30 minutes. and particularly in the last two investigations, we had an investigator and myself on scene within the hour. in fact, the last 1 in 2, we were on scene within 40 minutes. so we appreciate the sheriff's office being very proactive and notifying us very quickly. and we'd like to assure this board that we are providing both an attorney and an investigator to respond to the scene as quickly

as humanly possible, and lastly, to also increase the profile of the office of the inspector general, because, as we all know, increasing the profile of a department and amplifying the needs of the community will help hopefully draw attention to the need to fund this department. so we're working in collaboration with a vendor to hopefully develop a commercial that will run during the down periods on sfgovtv. we're still moving forward with getting all of the sheriff's investigations onto a cloud based file system that will offer investigators, particularly when we're able to onboard more investigators, more flexibility to be able to access case files anywhere there is still the project that is currently on hold, but we're hopeful that when the office of the inspector general can scale

up its capacity to do more investigations, that at some point we'll be able to put the office of the inspector general's electronic complaint form onto tablets, and the complaints can be made electronically. the concern right now is that if we were to do that, we would get overloaded and flooded almost immediately and we don't have the investigators to be able to manage that level of investigations. perhaps my opinions can differ on that. but the other thing that, you know, we're contemplating or thinking about is that the tablet offers us access to the inmates in ways that didn't exist a few years ago. i noted that in 2019, the jail justice coalition did a paper survey with a massive number of inmates. that survey was able to inform the jail justice coalition about the

particular needs and priorities for improving the condition. for a lot of our inmates in the jails, and they were able to transition into free phone calls as as well as reduced costs on commissary. so it's been five years since the last jail wide survey that we're aware of, and hopefully in the future, we might be able to utilize the technology that's offered by the survey, by the tablets, to be able to do an electronic survey. one of the major issues that we've seen over the years is just an inconsistent documentation of the use of force. and we've started a discussion with the sheriff's office, with the sheriff himself, about transitioning to an electronic use of force log so that these paper use of force logs are not siloed in paper. that makes it very difficult to track down, as well as gather

information from. we have a draft of the sheriff's office disciplinary guidelines. i know there's a nacole webinar coming up talking about the importance of having the consistency of disciplinary guidelines. we have a draft that we've submitted to sheriff's legal, and we're working on ironing out some of the details. once we have some feedback from the sheriff, we will certainly bring that to this board's attention as we know from the disciplinary matrix, that was created for the sfpd. from the time that the conversation first started to, when it's fully implemented, took about a year. so it's a work in progress. and lastly, we are very close to and almost certain that before the end of this year, the dpa's sfpd data will be on data sf's data dashboards, offering the public

an opportunity to look at the reports dynamically rather than on static reports where the public will be able to filter the dashboards to identify the information that will be of value to whatever interest they may have, and the data. we're also as soon as we're able to launch the data sf or the sfpd data, we will start work on on it for the sfso data. so that is our corridor presentation for the third quarter of this year. happy to answer any questions this board may have. thank you marshal. and this time we do have ample time for questions and comments. so we won't have to carry this over to the next meeting. member wechter, thank you very much for the report. i want to clarify, when you go out to the scene of an in-custody death, what is your relationshi,

your team's relationship to the individuals conducting the administrative and the criminal investigations? yes. so, for example, in the last unfortunate, tragic death at age two, as soon as we responded to the scene, we notified the deputy at the front desk that we're here for the department of police accountability. responding, we are through the letter of agreement, the lead investigative agency for the administrative investigation. however, as you know from your work, the criminal investigation does take precedent. we arrive on scene, we're met with members of the internal affairs unit. they are our liaisons to gathering the evidence for the administrative investigation. and we also meet with the criminal investigations unit. we get a debriefing right on scene in fact, this last time we were there so quickly on scene, i think we got the same debriefing. they received as well as with the medical examiner's investigator on scene. we have a long standing relationship with them, and

we're pleased that we have immediate access to the scene. and are you able to observe their the interviews? they do, yes, we do independent interviews. we're we're afforded the opportunity to view the interviews, but not participate in in the interviews. and then regarding the report, the case findings for q3 2024, is your office still considering exonerated as the conduct occurred? but it did not, but was within policy? yes. the exonerated it's defined within the sheriff's policies and procedures. yes, the conduct did occur for example, in the use of force complaint. the use of force did occur, but it was within policy and lawful. and so during this quarter, you did not reach any findings of unfounded. we did not find any unfounded

this time. yes. and then regarding the number of cases, withdrawals, were all of them ones where the individuals who made the complaint said, i want to withdraw the complaint. yes, i believe it's i believe it's just one case. as i mentioned, it was a sexual abuse case where the where the individual had representation from an attorney and i believe there might be some strategic reasons for the civil case as to why it was withdrawn. okay. eight allegations from one complaint. i also want to say that the next chart, maybe it's because of my age. i find it hard to read this very small type and distinguish one color from another. i think it would be helpful to just get the numbers for those in more readable form, and if someone prints this out black and white, obviously they're not going to see the gradations of color. and then the new complaints allegations q3 the graphics is

very nice, but it doesn't really give me a sense of the numbers or the percentage. maybe it could be supplemented with that information. yes. yeah. since it was a small number, we didn't include the number, but we can certainly include the number. obviously with 16 individuals, 50% would be eight, you know, and we had figured that that was almost self-explanatory enough. but we can certainly add the numbers as well. right? when you just have a graphic like this or percentage, it may not reflect the fact that there's a very small number of cases that it's looking at and give, you know, an incorrect impression. yeah. this is complaint number of complainants, not cases. but the n is 16. and do you do you directly supervise the senior investigator and investigator conducting the investigations. yes. so with like with the dpa investigations, we have both a team collaborative approach as well as a multi-tier review of every single case. so we have an

investigator that performs the investigation. we have a and we're really fortunate also to have probably the most experienced senior investigator on these cases, brant begin, who, you know, has been doing this for, i believe, the past six years now. so he might be the most experienced administrative investigator for discipline for sheriff cases, probably in the city. he does the initial review works through the case and case plan with the investigator. he does the initial edits to the case finding and case summary report, and then it's submitted to me for final approval. and who does the first review and the last review of the completed case report? so i do the last signed review. any case of significance for example, if it's a death in custody case, you know, we would

certainly brief the inspector general about it as well and get his thoughts before we finalize any of the reports. and a your responsibilities at d.p.a. solely to supervise this unit. right now, that's my primary work. but i also obviously do a lot of other administrative support, whatever legal requirements come up, if there's a pr, public records request that comes in or other legal analysis that needs to be done on hand to assist with that as well. and do you function as the attorney assigned to this case to do the legal review? yes. as you know, the rest of the sfpd cases have the benefit of an attorney, a managing attorney, and then a chief. so there's additional levels of beyond that. but we don't have the staffing for that. okay. so you're directly supervising those two employees and serving as the attorney to review those reports. yes. okay. thank you for clarifying that. apparently.

anything further? member wachter no, no. member. mango. marshall, thank you so much. i wanted to ask maybe just more of like a for the board. actually, i you know, i'd love for the report. the report is super helpful. i'd love for us for next year. not for any time soon to have a report that's a little bit like where we can, like, impact, because i feel like like the slides about like misconduct and, you know, the different types of complaints, you know, maybe that could be more of an appendix. and we spend our time talking about, you know, something i don't know, like the highlights that you were mentioning, like the commercial or something. i don't know, just trying to think about, you know, how we can how i'd love to, you know, talk more in detail about certain topics and then what was

my other question? you mentioned the commercial part. i'm just interested. who's paying for that one? it's coming out of the inspector general's budget. it's i think the estimate that we got was $30,000, and that would be a commercial where the inspector general would explain his role in this work. what the office does, what it aspires to do. it would all be produced and then run on sfgovtv for $30,000, which is actually a relatively inexpensive for i'm sorry, i'm sorry, $3,000. three i was like, i know, i was like, wow, 30,000. so sorry. i added that zero $3,000. yeah. which, which was which is really inexpensive. okay, great. and then the other one was just like for future would be i'd love to see like the jail population somewhere. the stat just to help my brain understand the scale. and the

second part was like i remember asking the past meetings about the shutdown, the number of shutdowns that happened. is that something that is in the works? not so much. or like, yeah, we actually have reports that we receive from the sheriff's office. we also check the jail population regularly. it's posted on the sheriff's website. so you can see it. i think they they post their population. i, i could be wrong about this, but i think it's 5 a.m. every morning. okay. and we've been monitoring it's been hovering around 1200 to up to about 12, 80, 100 a month a week. i would say every time we check it. yeah, it's been above 1200 for the last several weeks. this is in a range of a month or a few weeks or that's the daily population that was taken. oh i'm sorry, daily population. sorry i was hearing shutdowns. oh no. no. okay. yeah i was going to say

so. i mean, it's more so just like if we could just put it in your report, the quarterly report, that would be helpful to kind of have. certainly. yeah. and i would welcome an offline conversation so that we can gather all your thoughts, or you can send me an email with whether what other details you would like in there. thank you marshall i appreciate it. so i was going to say you're really good at graphics and just making it understandable to the general public. so i would really appreciate that the board would really appreciate your feedback in terms of doing, you know, culminating these reports into an annual report. yeah, i'm happy to help. and thank you. next, vice president, maybe we get member mango in the in the commercial as well too. yes. no, she didn't like it. no. but she'll do the makeup. no, but thank you again, marshall. i think, you know, for the report.

i'm actually really glad that we're using salesforce. i think for me, with being one of the members, one of the things i always look, try to look into is like, how can we be more proactive versus being so reactive? so, you know, being sure that we have the technology and the resources and things to do what we need to do, but also being able to track where we are as we're doing it. so it's actually very similar. it's not a question, probably more so just a request, marshall, to add to the report for me, especially looking at the ongoing and future projects, just to percentage wise in terms of where we are at. marshall. righ. like we have a timeline because i remember last time we presented or it could have been the time before we had timelines like, hey, we want to try to look at this in q2, q3, i think in order to help us figure out where we might be able to have impact or be able to also help is to sit back and say that, you know, we're looking at the electronic use of force tracking, and we're at 25% completion for that. so what can we do to make sure that it continues to progress and just

be able to see it in terms of numbers? thank you. yep. that's a great suggestion. vice president. and i think it'll help us as we come to a new calendar year, for us to prioritize what we want to look at and look at short term goals, as well as long term goals. yeah. so we're back to member wechter. thank you. i thought of a few more questions on the complaint sources. the 6% for un plaza. does that refer to the library that was not inside the library but outside it was responding. sheriff deputies to an incident. well, does that mean the sheriff's deputies assigned to the library or sheriff's deputies who are on patrol? i believe these were patrol deputies. i don't recall any sheriff deputies coming out from the library to respond. right. it's only one complaint. out of the 16. okay? and. i think it would be useful for us to see the types of allegations

that are coming from each facility or place. okay. yeah. the real challenge is figuring out how to represent it graphically. when we have too many fields, it becomes a little bit challenging, but i'll work with our tech folks to see whether or how we can fit more data fields into the graphics without the danger of it becoming overly complex, where it doesn't make sense to anybody. well, it need be graphic, just the raw numbers. i think, would be helpful to see how many are coming from which jail or san francisco general. and then i know your office for many years has has posted complaints summary reports which are an anonymized summary of the complaint and i saw that inspector general singh's website also reports on that, obviously anonymized. is it

possible to do that? regarding the sheriff's complaints? you you already or would that have to go through meet and confer? they're already posted on the dpa's website under the monthly statistics. it has a list of all the statistics that our sfpd cases, as well as sfo cases. and then in there there's a summary of what the primary allegations are. and if you look at the column of the agency, you'll see some vast majority of them are sfpd, but you'll see sfo cases there as well. you know, as we move forward and building out resources for the office of the inspector general, you know, that would be certainly something that would would be worthwhile investing in. so is that the spreadsheet you're referring to? it's the it's on the dpa website in the monthly reports. and yeah, there's this there's a first a graphical representation of the data followed by a spreadsheet that has what the complaint, the

specific complaint is and which agency it refers to. okay. you have to go down that column to find sfso to distinguish it from sfpd. yes. and right now it's just a resource issue. we don't have a data analyst or any, any, any staff to support building out additional website and reports for the office of the inspector general. and, you know, hopefully that's certainly an ask that we'll be able to take that data off the case management system and create different reports in the future might be helpful to separate out the complaints against the sheriff's office. so you could look at those and not have to go line by line, because it is a separate agency and a separate set of investigations. yes. and we're hoping to do better than that, where everything will be filtered through data sf and these will be dynamic reports. so if you want sfso data, you can just simply filter out the

sfso data and see all of those separated. i was also going to make a clarification though. marshall, when you have the final report coming out of, say, dpa, there is the auditing process. so we don't have the capacity to do auditing on our sheriff's data. so some of the reporting is a little bit fuzzier if you will, because it will not have gone through the auditing process. yes, yes. and as you recall from the auditing presentation, those are very, very strict standards with a rigorous peer review system for those audits to be performed. and we would need a certified auditor like that on staff in the absence of an auditor, the comptroller's office does take auditing recommendations. and, you know, we can submit some proposals after the inspector general has a conversation with this board on some of our more significant findings or key findings as to which one this

board may decide. you would like to ask the comptroller's office to assist on an audit with. thank you. i see that we're running out of time, so i am going to recommend that we table item six and seven. thank you. marshall. and i just want to make an announcement on the future agenda items. next month we will have benrishi and possibly another person from human resources to talk about when we were doing our evaluations come january for the inspector general, president icu, we're going to do public comment online, public comment line number five. at this time, members of the public wishing to provide public comment on line item five. department of police accountability report, are invited to approach the podium when it becomes available. there's no comments for line item five and line item six and

seven have been continued and moved to general public comment. general public comment. at this moment, members of the public are invited to speak to the board for a duration of up to two minutes, regarding matters that were not included in this afternoon's agenda that fall within the jurisdiction of the sheriff's department oversight board. during this public comment period, neither sheriff personnel, the inspector general, nor board members are obligated to answer questions posed by the public, although they may offer a brief response if they choose to do so. if you wish to provide public comment, please approach the podium when it becomes available. please remember that you have a maximum of two minutes to express your comments. there appears to be no public comment. any other items? miss? madam president? no, just to an adjournment and i would like to adjourn in memory of a very important community member. i'd like. i'd like to adjourn in memory of arnold townsend. we've lost a community giant. i did attend his memorial a few days

ago, and he was a commissioner most recently on the redistricting task force, but always somewhat supportive of me personally and other people who wanted to serve the city. i also put him in the same category as sulu in the pacific islander community. so i think i'm ever r another position, i might just say you know, some of these people, their shoes can't be filled. but those were the people who supported me along the way. so i don't know. d.o.j. if you want to say i know he was very influential with all your endeavors. yeah. no, i think you so eloquently put it. i think the contributions of reverend townsend to the city and the stories that he told, the stories he tells stories for days. but yeah, hearts, you know, there with his family, i think his legacy and the work that he's done here in san francisco will continue to live on, you know, through through bodies like ours. and prayers just go out to his family. yes.

thank you. all right. calling line item ten. adjournment action item. all those in favor? aye, aye. any nays? meeting adjourned at 4:58 p.m. thank you. i miss. >> the bicycle coalition was giving away 33 bicycles so i applied. i was happy to receive one of

them. >> the community bike build program is the san francisco coalition's way of spreading the joy of biking and freedom of biking to residents who may not have access to affordable transportation. the city has an ordinance that we worked with them on back in 2014 that requires city agency goes to give organizations like the san francisco bicycle organization a chance to take bicycles abandoned and put them to good use or find new homes for them. the partnerships with organizations generally with organizations that are working with low income individuals or

families or people who are transportation dependent. we ask them to identify individuals who would greatly benefit from a bicycle. we make a list of people and their heights to match them to a bicycle that would suit their lifestyle and age and height. >> bicycle i received has impacted my life so greatly. it is not only a form of recreation. it is also a means of getting connected with the community through bike rides and it is also just a feeling of freedom. i really appreciate it. i am very thankful. >> we teach a class. they have to attend a one hour class. things like how to change lanes, how to make a left turn, right turn, how to ride around cars.

after that class, then we would give everyone a test chance -- chance to test ride. >> we are giving them as a way to get around the city. >> just the joy of like seeing people test drive the bicycles in the small area, there is no real word. i guess enjoyable is a word i could use. that doesn't describe the kind of warm feelings you feel in your heart giving someone that sense of freedom and maybe they haven't ridden a bike in years. these folks are older than the normal crowd of people we give bicycles away to. take my picture on my bike. that was a great experience. there were smiles all around. the recipients, myself, supervisor, everyone was happy to be a part of this joyous

occasion. at the end we normally do a group ride to see people ride off with these huge smiles on their faces is a great experience. >> if someone is interested in volunteering, we have a special section on the website sf bike.org/volunteer you can sign up for both events. we have given away 855 bicycles, 376 last year. we are growing each and every year. i hope to top that 376 this year. we frequently do events in bayview. the spaces are for people to come and work on their own bikes or learn skills and give them access to something that they may not have had access to. >> for me this is a fun way to

get outside and be active. most of the time the kids will be in the house. this is a fun way to do something. >> you get fresh air and you don't just stay in the house all day. it is a good way to exercise. >> the bicycle coalition has a bicycle program for every community in san francisco. it is connecting the young, older community. it is a wonderful outlet for the community to come together to have some good clean fun. it has opened to many doors to the young people that will usually might not have a bicycle. i have seen them and they are thankful and i am thankful for this program.