the meeting will come to order. welcome to the thursday, december 9, 2021 meeting of the public safety and neighborhood services committee. i'm supervisor gordon mar, the chair over the committee and i'm joined by members stefani and haney. clerk, any announcements? >> clerk: yes. the minutes will reflect that committee members participated remotely to the same extent as physically present. the board recognizes that access to city services is essential

and invite public participation in the following ways. public comment will be available on each item on the agenda, either channel 26, 78, 99, depending on provider and sfgovtv.org is screening the public comment number across the screen. you can call 1-415-655-0001. again, 1-415-655-0001. the meeting i.d. is 2486 673 7933 # #. when connected, you will hear the meeting discussions which will be muted and in listening mode only. when your item comes up, press 3 to be added to the speaker line. speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways. you can e-mail them to myself, the public safety neighborhood

services clerk alisa somera. if you submit public comment via e-mail it will be forwarded to the supervisors and part of the file. you can submit written comments to our office at city hall. finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the board of supervisors' agenda, january, 4, 2022, unless otherwise stated. mr. chair. >> chair mar: thank you, madame clerk. can you call item number 1. >> clerk: yes. item 1, hearing to address concerns on public safety strategies in commercial corridors and their effectiveness on reducing crime, including but not limited to police department, foot and bicycle patrols, the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs community ambassador

program and other strategies. this hearing is requesting the police department, the office of the civic engagement, office of small business and office of office of economic and workforce development to report. for members of the public who wish to provide public comment, call the public comment number now, 1-415-655-0001. enter the meeting i.d. of 2486 673 7933 # #. once connected, you will press star 3 to enter the queue to speak and a system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand. please wait for us to call public comment on the item and when the system indicates you've been unmuted, you may begin your comments. mr. chair? >> chair mar: thank you, madame clerk. colleagues, recently there has been focus on retail theft impacting stores like target and high-end retailers. these are real issues, although

i believe they've been sensationalized by the media. i want to thank the mayor for announcing the anti-retail theft initiative. this is a positive step to addressing these serious problems, but i think what is missing from the discussion and action on the issues is the voice of our neighborhood small businesses who have also been impacted by an increase in property crime and are far less able to recover and respond than the corporate chain stores and union square luxury retailers. i called for this hearing sort of in response to supporting dozens of small neighborhood businesses in my district who have been burglarized, vandalized and impacted by property crime during the pandemic and they really struggled to recover from these

incidents and so i call for this hearing really to look at what our city departments are doing to address and really prevent property crime impacting our commercial corridors and our neighborhood businesses. which are the heart and soul of our neighborhoods and our city. i do want to mention that there have been some positive steps that we've taken as a city recently to address these issues impacting our small neighborhood businesses. one good example is the creation of the store front vandalism relief grant program through oewd and i want to thank mayor breed and oewd for working with me on that and so that was launched this fall. that provides small grants of up to $2,000 to small businesses that have been victims of vandalism and burglaries.

that's an important small token of relief for these small businesses, but in working on this store front vandalism relief program, it was clear we need to be doing more to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place. that's what the hearing is about, really looking at trying to take stock of what our city is doing, particularly the police department, oewd, our office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs and the district attorney office to prevent crime impacting our small businesses and really starting to conversation of what new strategies and programs and policies we can look at to really address these issues. so, i want to thank you for this opportunity for this hearing. supervisor stefani, i don't know if you had any remarks you wanted to make before the presentations? >> member stefani: yes, chair mar, i wanted to thank you so

much for calling this important hearing. obviously, we're all aware of how seriously our commercial corridors have been impacted by burglary. we've seen it. but i have to say, that is not the only thing that has been happening. these kind of thefts and the burglary in my merchant corridors have been happening on a consistent basis. we hear about it all the time from our constituents and merchants. this is real problem. it's not just happening on the news. it happens to stores that never get the press that we've seen recently. i want to highlight something that is of deep concern to me and something to call a hearing on as well. prior to the pandemic we all know we received an independent study on police staffing that indicated that san francisco needed hire more than 330 new officers to meet the demand. the study found that staffing is severely inadequate to handle

the incoming workload. the study found that during the day our sworn force -- and this is important because we need our officers out there to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place -- and it's why, you know, we just passed legislation on tuesday for sheriffs to do what police officers have been doing with the 10b, 10a program. so the study found during the day, our sworn force, almost all of their on-duty hours reacting to calls or reported incidents and they have almost no time to engage in proactive work necessary to achieve crime reduction. there is no doubt in my mind this situation has only gotten worse. we hear it from chief scott. since march of 2020, the police are reported their staffing is down even further. we need to hire 500 officers to meet the current demand for service. i want to keep that in mind as we're discussing what we're

going to do to secure our commercial corridors, so we're not on the news all the time. and we have a thriving economy protected by a police force that is not engaged only in reactive work, but proactive work well. i want to thank you again, chair mar, for this hearing. it's very important. thank you. >> chair mar: thank you, supervisor stefani for your remarks and all of your work on these important public safety issues. for this hearing, we're going to have presentations in four departments. the sfpd, oewd, the district attorney office and really hearing an update from the departments on what current strategies and programs they have in place to particularly prevent crime that impact our commercial corridors and our neighborhood small businesses.

and before we get into the department presentation, so i did want to allow some small business -- small neighborhood business leaders to briefly share their perspectives, so we have sort of a clear grounding and centering this hearing around their needs and experiences. so first i want to introduce michael chiu, who is the owner of footprint shoe store, a wonderful shoe and athletic retailer in the parkside district on 27th avenue. michael is a native san franciscan in sunset district and he took over the footprint shoe store early last year from the longstanding prior owner. and he's going to operate a small business leader in the sunset district and michael also, unfortunately, has been

the victim -- footprint shoe store has been the victim of burglaries and incidents. i just wanted to note that michael, when i was talking to michael after one really terrible double burglary that happened to him, his footprint shoe store earlier in the year, he was the one that specifically suggested the store front vandalism relief grant program, which, again, yeah, we followed up on and created and launched this fall. that's benefitting a lot of small businesses that have had similar unfortunate incidents. so, michael? >> hey, thanks, everyone for having me. chair mar, thank you for having me here and giving small businesses a voice. it's much appreciated that we're heard and that you guys are

listening. so it's very good on our side to give us all a voice. but, unfortunately, the past few years hasn't been easy for small businesses, especially with the pandemic. i feel like small businesses are really important, especially in each community. and my business in particular has been hit a few times and we've been able to slowly recover, but it just -- on the small business side when i talk to other business owners, it seems like we're losing hope in the system in general, because the system is not helping us or doing anything. when larger companies are hit, there is action taken immediately. which is good. it's important as a san francisco resident once we saw the police presence in union square, it was important to reassure the people of san francisco that safety is important, but when small businesses are impacted, action seems to be a little bit slower,

so i appreciate you guys to give -- you know, to give us a voice here today. as far as prevention, i think it's a larger problem than just a police officer having more police officers. i agree we need more police officers, but it's the cycle after that, after we catch the perpetrator what happens is the consequence enough? because it seems like on the street level, when somebody goes into any store and burglarizes or robs somebody or attacks somebody, the consequence isn't that bad, so to them, it's worth it. they'll do it. if they get caught, they come out after -- i don't know how long -- but they'll do it again because the consequence isn't -- it's not bad enough for them to not. this is cause-and-effect and i think it's a larger problem and i'm not sure what the solution

is, but i feel this is what we're hearing from a business owner-level as far as private citizens, you know, san francisco, people are saying, like, we don't feel safe. we feel like something -- nothing is being done on the prosecution level or when somebody does get prosecuted, what happens? i think there is no examples of it publicly, so i think we definitely need to help restore the confidence of the people. >> chair mar: okay. thank you so much, michael, for sharing your experiences and your perspectives. and really appreciate that. and now i want to introduce mario, the president of the council of district merchants association, with i is the -- which is the network of all of the commercial corridor merchant associations and mario has been a strong advocate and voice for

small businesses and small business communities in our city. so thank you for joining us, mario, and sharing your perspectives on these issues. >> thank you, supervisor. thank you, supervisors and everyone for holding this meeting. it's very important because as michael had alluded to do there is lot of perception as to whether crime is not tended to and we can get as many bits of data and data points and reports and statistics, but if the community doesn't feel safe, it doesn't want to get out in the streets and it doesn't want to shop. another discussion we had at the council, the perspective was that if customers are coming in and the economy is vibrant, you can almost absorb some of the costs that are related to some of the crime we've been having if the data is correct and it's not gotten worse. the dilemma is, when the media

is out there and talks about all this crime, people don't want to go out, they don't want to shop, they don't want to be robbed. they don't want to be caught in the fray of these small bands of people coming into the stores. so what do they do? they stay at home and shop online. i think it's bigger damage to small businesses than the crime itself and that's where it has to be a group effort. i'm not saying other people have to do their job better, but being the president of the council, i realized we need to emphasize the education. i need to teach my members on how to advocate for themselves and in doing so, i feel they'll be empowered and feel less frustrated like michael feels. michael is probably on the higher end of the spectrum of knowing what is going on. especially the ones that are

immigrants, english is second language, don't always know how to function within our system. so, you know, as the council president, we're here to participate and be part of the solution. i believe part of the solution is increased police presence, increased education of the victims themselves on how to advocate for themselves and knowing what to expect and knowing what their rights are, but also the media and the community to, one, come on out. the streets are safe. don't let the media frenzy overtake your emotions and throw you back into your covid hole and go back to being isolated. we're all social creatures. we're part of a community and that's what makes san francisco so charming. i believe the biggest charm of san francisco aside from landmarks are the individual mom-and-pop stores that have the least amount of resources and the smallest ability to hire a 10a or 10b police officer or

sheriff to protect their business. wouldn't it be wonderful if we had resources where a band of neighborhoods or businesses on blocks were able to hire a 10a or 10b officer? and that's the empowerment part. i could go on and on. thank you for having this. looking forward to being a partner in the solution. and always looking forward to getting things done and seeing results. >> chair mar: yep. thank you so much, mario, for sharing your perspectives and also just for all of your leadership for small businesses in our city. next i want to introduce sharkey, who is the president of the small business commission and also has been a very strong advocate and leading voice in the needs of the small businesses especially during the pandemic. so, sharkey, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. let's see if i can turn on the camera now.

thank you, chair mar. thank you for calling this meeting. i appreciate it. and thank you, supervisor stefani, for joining as well. first, i want to emphasize today i'm not speaking on behalf of the small business commission. the commission is met with deputy chief lazar and i expect we'll be making recommendations soon. we haven't made formal recommendations yet. first i'm a small business owner who -- and now runs -- and i personally had to deal with theft issues, including a stolen van right now as we speak. but second, i'm also speaking as president of the american car rental association. the american car rental association is a trade organization for the car rental

industry. we represent numerous businesses. unfortunately, what i can report from our members of san francisco experiences the highest percentage of smash-and-grab break-ins anywhere in america. in addition to smash-and-grabs, we also have to contend with stolen vehicles as i am right now. these vehicles are stolen often via identity theft which makes it difficult to prevent. and these stolen vehicles are, in turn, used as getaway vehicles to commit more crimes, including some of these retail theft and car break-ins that we're talking about today. our industry has invested substantial time and money. we have signs at the counter, signs on the contracts. recently i worked closely with mayor breed, chief scott, to help break up the fencing rings we believe are driving a lot of

these theft issues, both retail and car break-ins. many businesses committed significant amounts of money to help seed this program. one thing i want to emphasize, the business community that i work with as president mario just reaffirmed is committed to being a helpful partner and standing together with all of you and all of our city to make progress on this issue. i appreciate chair mar's remarks looking for policy ideas. first and foremost, i want to echo what supervisor stefani said about our police department being understaffed. there does seem to be empirical evidence that we don't have the staff that we need and that understaffing is preventing effective investigations. outside of increasing staffing, there are a number of different evidence-based policies that can be employed that don't

necessarily involve policing. some of these deliver results over the long-term and won't materially move the needle in the short-term on these issues, but nonetheless, it's important that we move forward on the long-term issues because we also need to build a platform for future success and sustainable improvement on crime and theft issues. so the seven items, i'll just run through them quickly and wrap up. improve the physical environment. more green space in neighborhoods. improving the quality of neighborhood buildings and housing, public says with lighting. strengthening social norms and peer relationship. many nonprofit programs such as secure violence help create social norms that have a material and measurable effect over the long run in reducing

crime. third, engaging and supporting youth. i think that the city benefits when young people have a place to go, when they have things to do. and increasing the hours on community centers helps create some of the social bonds. fourth, would be, of course, reducing substance abuse, an issue we've all been working on. obviously, we need to mitigate financial stresses and wealth inequality. we need to reduce the harmful effects of -- process which we're all aligned on and we need to reduce the prevalence of guns because that is what is facilitating a lot of -- i'm sorry -- a lot of these issues. so, i just want to say in closing that i think the

business community is think being these issues holistically and we want to contribute to this constructively and we're very excited to be a partner on anything that we can move forward with. and i don't think that all of the solutions fall into one box, but we do need to make material progress and i look forward to working with you and your office on policies that can have a material impact. thank you. >> chair mar: thank you so much, sharkey, for all your leadership and the sharing of the perspectives on what we could do, new strategies and policies we could look at. really appreciate the strategies that you touched on that are beyond just increasing our policing and accountability for the perpetrators of these crimes, but looking at how we can improve the physical and social environment that would address these issues in the long-term. so, thank you. but finally, i just want to

introduce our last small business leader presenter, that is albert chow, he's the president of the people of parkside sunset and also the owner of great wall hardware, an institution for decades on taraval and 28th avenue. thank you for joining us, albert. your audio is muted. >> great, thank you. thanks for having me on, supervisor mar. i just want to say that it's been a tough time for all of us with the small business community, with these, you know, these crime waves that are coming in. i have had, you know, tried to reach out to the d.a.'s office as well as the chief of police and it just seems like my

frustration is that, it seems like they keep pointing fingers at each other. i've also been a victim. i've heard from michael shoe of footprint shoes. i heard the heartbreaking stories of the frustrations of having, you know, crimes committed against your businesses when you put your blood, sweat and tears, only to feel like you can just throw your hands up because you don't feel like there is any effective recourse or justice to being violated in that way. i think that some of the things that i thought of doing was to maybe have -- having a summit between the d.a.'s office, the police chief and also the courts, because they also -- as i've seen on the news -- they release some of the criminals on their own recognizance outside the purview or the influence of the d.a.'s office. the other they think i thought

the place -- the other thing i thought the police could do is reactivate their retired officers, activate park rangers and parking control. parking is maybe less of a priority and maybe having uniformed officers, you know, on the streets, having a presence, doing the patrols and at least being able to help merchants or tourists, just private citizens, report incidents and actually have people get back to them and let them know what is going on. when i was victimized, i had to do a lot of work on my own just to get feedback from the justice department as to a burglary to one of my job sites where all my tools were stolen to the tune of $6,000, $7,000. and, you know, it's more that i have to communicate and initiate all the communications with the justice department versus the

other way around, where they can help victims out. so that's -- that's kind of my experience so far on the ground. but, yeah, i do think that maybe we need to maximize our resources at this point in this very difficult time. >> chair mar: thank you, albert. thank you so much just for being here and sharing your really thoughtful perspectives on these issues. and, yes, thanks, and thanks for your leadership. why don't we go to the presentations from the departments and just, again, want to thank michael and mario and sharkey and albert for just helping to ground this hearing and the discussion about these issues and the experiences, the needs and the ideas and recommendations of our small neighborhood businesses. but the first department we'll hear from is the police department, sfpd.

i think we have lily and deanna and also commander daryl fong to present from sfpd. >> thank you, supervisor. i'll go ahead and put the presentation on. give me one sec. >> okay. good morning, chair mar, supervisor stefani and supervisor haney. thank you for providing the sfpd an opportunity to present to the public safety and neighborhood services committee today. i am daryl fong, the commander here in the operations bureau and i'll be presenting on crime data and strategy that relates to public safety within our city's commercial corridors.

the office of office of economic and workforce development and planning department's identification of 25 commercial corridors within the city, crime data was captured focusing on four crime categories which presented the greatest impact to our commercial businesses. one was vandalism, two burglary. the third category was robberies and the fourth was theft. each crime category listed within the commercial corridors were from the highest to lowest of incidents with the focus on the top 10 most impacted corridors within each respective district. next slide, please. now, a year-over-year comparison was conducted for trend analysis for the years 2019, 2020 and year-to-date 2021.

for vandalism, the central market corridor as indicated by the graph, market castro, showed a consistent trend in the highest number of incidents with the lower polk in district 6 showing a rise in incidents year to date for 2021. the central market, chinatown and market castro commercial corridors were impacted. the numbers were about 50 or more vandalism incidents in 2019 and '20. and for the first three corridors, until november of this year, all three have experienced a consistent trend in that regard within that corridor. next slide, please. now for burglaries, the top four impacted corridors have been

central market, market castro, the union street corridor as well as the chinatown corridor. chinatown harbor has seen a significant reduction year-to-date in 2020, with 50% reduction of 70 incidents to 35 incidents year to date. for all three years, the central market corridor in addition has experienced over 50-plus burglary incidents within that corridor and that trend is the case year-to-date in 2021. now, for robberies, the impacted corridors has varied year to year, although the market corridor has led with the highest number of incidents over the past three years, there has

been a decrease in incidents as indicated by the graph there, 2010 and 2019, down to 137. in 2020, which i would also attribute it to the pandemic, 80 incidents year-to-date. so that trend continues to drop even as we come out of the pandemic. okay. this slide here is a summary or snapshot of our clearance of these particular cases city-wide. what you'll see there is in our vandalism cases, you'll see a slight decrease in cases cleared year-over-year. 2019 with 113 incidents.

2020, there were 89 arrests made. in 2021, we're at 81 with remaining quarter of the year. so we're projecting that there will be an increase in cases cleared for vandalizing this year. burglary shows a similar trend. 2019, 53. 2020, 60 cases within the commercial corridors. and 47 currently year-to-date. for robberies, we have cases cleared of 103 in 2019. 69, which was a drop in cases which also correlates with the number of incidents in 2020. again, i attribute that to pandemic, you know, just less people being out and about as well. in 2020, we have 56 cases that have been cleared year-to-date. next slide, please.

>> chair mar: commander, can i ask a question about the last slide? >> absolutely. >> chair mar: so, thank you for sharing this -- yeah, this data and this chart. do you know what the percentage -- the percentage of cases cleared is? >> yes, chair mar. in vandalism cases, there is about a 21% clearance rate. there is for burglaries, 13% clearance rate. and for robberies it's 33% clearance rate. >> chair mar: and do you know how those percentages have changed over the last three years? >> i only have year-to-date percentages in terms of the clearance data, supervisor.

i don't have the year-over-year in terms of the percentage changes, but again, based upon the whole numbers -- particularly in the cases of, for example, robberies, i think the pandemic certainly had an impact with those numbers, just the whole numbers of incidents themselves, but burglary, i think as a department, our clearance rate continues to go up. i think that's testament to some of the strategies that have been plagued by the department, particularly our investigative bureau under robbery detail, which is really focusing on these repeat offenders or individuals who have continued to, you know, re-offend or be involved in this type of activity. and there have been numerous arrests involving these organized groups that have been, you know, held responsible in these particular incidents. >> chair mar: thank you.

thank you, commander. >> yes. okay. next slide, please. thank you. so this slide here is just a snapshot, if you will, or summary of overall staff city-wide. it's broken down by respective districts. the categories are covered are shoplifting, grand theft, petty theft within each of the 10 police districts. it is not broken down by specific commercial corridors, however, by district, southern mission, northern and taraval as indicated by the graph here has the highest number of petty theft incidents, which i know often impact our small businesses within our commercial corridors. the numbers here as indicated, 243 for the southern, northern

167 incidents, in the mission 239 incidents and in taraval 137. next slide, please. i know supervisor stefani spoke about current district or current department staffing. and this slide is an illustration of our current staffing levels at all of our district stations. and this is comparative to the independent consultant matrix study which provided recommendations back in 2020 on minimum staffing levels for each station to fulfill all controlled functions. as indicated by the graph, the difference, you see substantial difference in terms of numbers. and i would say that speaks directly to the ability to deploy additional officers

within our commercial corridors to our small businesses, staffing, specialized units and other programs that we have at our district stations. the largest difference being there within the tenderloin district. next slide, please. now, with our current staffing levels, what public safety strategies have been employed by the sfpd to reduce reported crime? well, currently we continue to deploy our foot beat and bicycle employment in the commercial corridors. this is evident on the mid market corridor, chinatown and lately with the union square appointment which was mentioned earlier, along with outlying districts in the mission, castro, and the taraval and richmond districts, on irving street, west portal, taraval, as

well as on the corridors. bayview district, we have foot beat officers deployed in that area, again, with the understanding for the department that foot plays a pivotal role in terms of engaging with our small business communities, our merchants and collaborating and problem-solving and addressing issues together. we also assign our sector car officers when they're not responding to 911 calls or emergency calls for service, to conduct passing calls within the respective commercial corridors. we also employ a fixed post strategy, you know, throughout various districts. it's a block to block strategy that we've also employed partially within the tenderloin district as well for

accountability over certain areas. we have abatement operations that we recently have really increased, particularly in light of the robberies and smash-and-grab and burglary incidents. we have our plain clothes officers that are deployed, conducting auto and burglary abatement operations. there have been arrests. we also utilized our specialized units for support. again, our union square safe shopper command is the latest indicator of that deployment where we have the honda motorcycles, our traffic division, motorcycle officers as well as our mounted unit out there, again to provide greater visibility and presence for

deterrence. i've heard a lot from small business owners, the presence is critical. the visibility is critical. and really it's about not only education, but prevention of these incidents from occurring. we've also instituted a number of various operation orders or programs. i'll highlight of a few of them. our tourism deployment plan which has been critical in providing additional staffing through overtime or backfill within the mid market corridor, chinatown, fishermen's wharf, the haight street corridors, japantown to name a few. the safe shoppers program, which is within the union square area now, providing a high number of visibility and presence for deterrence in that particular neighborhood. of course, we have the mid

market vibrancy and safety plan which was implemented months ago and continues currently under captain canning. really involving a high visibility deployment strategy to address the quality of life issues and crime issues within that corridor as well. and then i've heard -- i think one of our small business owners earlier mentioned about, i think it was albert, about bringing back our retirees. you know, i want to thank the office of economic and workforce development for funding and partnership of our sfpd community ambassador program. we are now at 23 ambassadors capacity. we look to continue to hire seven or more. the program has been extremely well received and successful, particularly, where they've been

deployed with merchants in the small business corridors. next slide, please. now, the san francisco police department also recognizes that to be effective in our public safety strategies, we also need to engage and collaborate with our community stakeholders. therefore, we work with communities, our merchants groups, our community-based organizations, faith-based groups, education centers, to identify ways of addressing issues. we utilize these partners to evolve input and educating our community and this consists of our community and merchant associations through our police advisory boards which are comprised at each of our district station level and include neighborhood representatives from all communities.

working with our community benefits districts, we also utilize social media strategy in terms of educating the community through our station news letters, through the captain's as well as our social media twitter feeds, through the captain's monthly meetings where they have discussions on issues that are impacting our commercial corridors. the chief small business advisory forums, which has been critical. and i'll speak a little bit about the summit that we had that was led by the chief and deputy chief lazar with our small business associations where we discussed issues that are impacting each commercial corridor or small businesses and how we can work together to address those issues. we also partner, of course, with our nonprofit sf safe on

community campaigns. we also conducted community and merchant and commercial and safety walks focusing on two areas which are extremely important, education and prevention while encouraging our community to report and publicize our department's multi-language tip-line so that all of our communities' needs are met. next slide, please. okay. while we understand we have our strategies, we also ask the public for their assistance, of course, in reporting incidents to bring to our attention. the process, of course, with any immediate safety risk to call 911. we also have the platform where community can report through our online reporting system. san francisco police.org website or in person at any of our 10

district stations as well. one of the ways we continue to try to better serve our community is to ensure that we have language access capacity, particularly each of our department officers in patrol have on their department cell phones, a language access vendor, which provides, you know, language interpretation to over almost 200 languages. in addition to that, we have officers that are certified bilingual as well as civilian members that represent over 30 languages, including the core languages of mandarin, russian. this is a little graph that indicates what that currently looks like. we continue to expand our language access capacity to better serve our mono lingual

communities. we continue to work on certifying our members outside of the five core languages as we're currently proctoring our own exams now to increase that capacity. again, we also utilize the language access vendor to fulfill our needs as well. that concludes my presentation. i'll be happy to take any questions, chair mar. >> chair mar: thank you so much, commander fong, for that really comprehensive review to the data, the crime stats and data and the department's current strategies to address crime impacting our small businesses and commercial corridors. supervisor stefani? >> member stefani: thank you, chair mar, and thank you commander. i just have a quick question about your public safety strategies and, you know, the charts that you presented on

page 11 with the officers is very concerning, but we know these strategies are so important to protecting our merchant corridors. and especially foot beat is something we talk about all the time. i'm wondering what the impact of the board of supervisors cutting overtime in the classes over the years, how has that impaired your abilities to implement these strategies which we know are important? >> there has been impact with attrition. we've had natural -- some of our members retiring. because of the covid vaccine mandate, we've also lost additional officers as a result of that. so we do need, you know, the officers to continue to, you know, meet the goals that we have as a department in terms of our programs and our staffing.

that being said, we continue to utilize the tools we have available, both in terms of backfill through the tenderloin vibrancy plan, tourism deployment plan, but that entails backfilling with overtime and the same officers working long hours. and we're able to continue to address these issues with the current staffing we have available, but we are hopeful and optimistic that we will get additional staffing so that we are able to put, you know, higher visibility, greater presence within these corridors to prevent these issues that we see occurring in our community. >> member stefani: thank you. >> chair mar: thank you, supervisor stefani. i had a few questions, commander fong.

i was wondering if you could just explain a little bit why the clearance rates are so low for these types of crime that impact our small businesses. i think you said for vandalism it's about 21% and burglaries, it's 13%. >> so there is a number of, i would say, a number of factors that are involved, supervisor. some of which -- some of these crimes are coat crimes and what i mean is they're reported after the fact. oftentimes impacted, whether it's business owner or community members, they report it and oftentimes we're dependent on evidence to identify the individual or perpetrator related to that. that's why again, we encourage -- obviously we need the community support in terms of reporting these incidents, in terms of providing any evidence

such as any video or any information that may be linked to identification of these perpetrators. but we do have a number of these incidents that go unreported as well. and our investigative unit, they try to tie these incidents -- most of these incidents are tied to the same perpetrators. oftentimes. so sometimes if you see an arrest in one -- a clearance of one particular case, that individual or individuals may be responsible for multiple incidents as well. so it may not always reflect, in terms of the percentages -- and there are challenges in terms of some of these incidents where there is no immediate follow-up that the investigative unit could follow up on. >> chair mar: thank you.

>> good morning, this is the director of policy affairs. i wanted to add. i want to clarify it is year to year. so 2019 compared to 2020. and it is corridors that -- it's based on the corridors, not necessarily city-wide. i do want to just make sure that is understood by the public. thank you. >> chair mar: thank you for that. yeah, you know, i think we certainly have heard from michael shoe and his remarks and i've heard it from many of the small business leaders that there is a feeling there needs to be more accountability by these perpetrators for these actions, particularly burglaries and vandalism as a way to prevent. and that's an important part of the prevention. but i guess, it seems like it's hard for that accountability to happen when the clearance rates

are so low for these types of crimes. and so, yeah, i'm just curious, do you know if the clearance rates have been this low historically? was there a time that the, you know, we had -- you know, we were able to identify and charge, particularly on burglaries and vandalism at a higher percentage? >> we would have to look back, supervisor, as indicated earlier, i only have the year-to-date percentages as indicated by the director. we only have it for the commercial corridors. so we could take a look back at that. i think really our focus as indicated by even the small business owners is on the prevention piece, particularly. really, i think we want to prevent these incidents from recurring -- occurring in the

first place, is really what our goal is. that starts with deployment, strategy, visibility, staffing, collaborating with our business owners, educating them. i heard -- i'm not sure if it was mauer, protecting our small business owners. we've shared a lot of the safety tips we think are critically important, which is video, lighting and alarm system particularly. i know in district 4, i know working with captain in the taraval district, we often emphasize to our small business owners, the importance of not only having contact information, but trends that are occurring. also engaging with the foot beat officers and ensuring that they have these protections that can

be put in place that potentially prevent them from being victimized in cases as well. >> i would say, chair, just to add, there is a relatively low rate across the years. and so -- but, again, as indicated, we're happy to provide you the city-wide information and other information as a follow-up. i will say, though, if i may, that the police department is just one piece of this puzzle when it comes to dealing with this issue, when it comes to crimes around the corridors. we do have to look at a city-wide sort of strategy that impacts multiple roles in the criminal justice system when we talk about really looking at how do we make changes or how we could really curtail some of the issues that are going on. >> chair mar: thank you. and i just had a question around the community policing and foot patrol work. commander fong, you said that's

an incredibly important part of, you know, the work, prevention work. and we hear that a lot from our merchants and wanting to see more foot patrols. and it's not -- to them it's not so much about police presence in the commercial corridors, but about the relationship-building and that sort of communication, channel communication. and i know for the taraval district, it's my understanding there is only two commercial corridors that have regular foot patrols and that is irving -- a portion of irving and then a portion of ocean avenue. and so that's -- those are really appreciated by those merchants and the residents around there, but i had a question how foot patrol priorities are decided on? because we've heard from merchants on taraval and

noriega, that are there are foot patrols, but they're not there anymore and there is desire to bring them back. >> i spoke to the captain before this presentation today just for clarity. there is regular foot patrol that occurs on irving, ocean -- or irving ocean, as well as taraval and west portal. there are regular foot patrols assigned in that area. that being said, as indicated by our staffing levels, you know, oftentimes the priority obviously is to staff our patrol cars to answer the 911 calls that are critically important when members of the community call, so absent those cars being filled by officers, those foot patrols are filled on a daily basis, however, if there is a shortfall, the stations do fill

those cars to respond to those priority 911 calls as well. >> chair mar: thanks. and so i appreciate knowing that there is also foot patrols on taraval and west portal. that's good to hear. wasn't aware of that. one follow-up question how are neighborhood groups and stakeholders engaged in establishing the foot patrol and other community policing priorities of the district stations? is there opportunity to request -- like for the merchant associations to request a foot patrol? >> yeah, so, specifically like district 4, i know captain has regular communications ongoing, monthly meeting with the outer sunset merchant association, and various groups. that's where feedback is provided as to issues that may need be to addressed.

again, the captain at his or her discretion will deploy foot beats within particular areas based on need as well as issues that may arise, but they continue to communicate with all our community stakeholders. and that's through, you know, the community advisory boards which is representative of various neighborhoods throughout the district for each of our 10 district stations. he also has regular monthly community meetings with the district stakeholders as well. and, again, you know, these monthly regular meetings with the various association neighborhood or business associations as well. so there is absolutely an opportunity for the community to provide feedback in terms of where those resources may be deployed. >> chair mar: thank you. again, well, i wanted to take this opportunity to really acknowledge the work that the

department has done in recent years to create -- to prioritize community policing, through the creation of the community strategic plan, commander lazar and you guys as well as. so thank you so much. and this is incredibly important part of prevention conversation, so thank you. supervisor stefani? >> member stefani: thank you, chair mar. i just wanted to go back to the case clearance discussion. because to me it doesn't tell the full picture. i'm looking forward to exploring this more. when you look at 2019, 2020, 2021, there is no explanation as to how many officers we're down and it doesn't really look at the full picture of what is happening here. especially, we're telling our officers, you're not clearing cases, or we're hearing that all the time, but we're going to cut your overtime and academy classes and we're going to expect to you do more and still

clear your cases. how many officers are we down in terms of all three years? and you can't just look at this without looking at everything else, because this priority a calls, there is priority b calls, priority c calls and when you have shootings that have skyrocketed through the roof in 2020 and 2021, the officers that we have, the officers that we can deploy to high-priority calls on shootings, they then can't deal with the burglary. they can't deal with the vandalism. they can't deal with the robbery. and they even said that, you know, this is cases that are reported after the fact. so i just want to make sure that when we're looking at this -- because it's easy for people to look and say, they're not clearing cases -- but you have to look at the big picture. shootings are going up, human trafficking is going up.

you can't just look at this in a vacuum and not look at the whole picture here. we have a study of the calls that come in, the calls that are prioritized, what the demand should be and what we need. we know from that independent study we need 330 more police officers and now it's even more than that based on attrition and the pandemic and the vaccine and everything. so, i don't want people to use this as an excuse and point to the police they're not clearing cases. you absolutely have to look at the big picture here. i'm assuming that commander fong would agree with me and diana would agree with me, but i am looking forward to diving into that in more detail as we look at our staffing shortages. chair mar is right. the fact that we're down police officers is having serious impact and effect in the merchant corridors and it's because of a lot of reasons. thank you. that's all i have. >> chair mar: thank you so much,

supervisor stefani. i'm looking forward to that hearing that you called on police staffing, because i think that is an important part of this as well as all the public safety issues we're grappling with in the city. so thank you. >> chair mar? i was just going to add and thank the supervisor and, of course, your leadership for actually highlighting such an important issue that is going on with the police department. i did want to add that just underscore what commander fong had mentioned in the introduction, the unvaccinated count, just in terms of how many officers are impacted by the unvaccination rates, along side with the way that we're having a lot more public events is also impacting. and our retirements, our attrition, i want to all those impact our public safety response. so it is something we need to plan as a city for the next five years, the downturn that is coming in staffing. we absolutely need to look at this from a five-year mark so we

don't suffer significantly in the city. >> chair mar: absolutely. thanks for that. and thanks again to you and commander fong for the presentation and engaging in the discussion. i think we're going to move on to the office of economic and workforce development presentation and we have chris here representing oewd. oewd plays an incredibly important role supporting our commercial corridors and small neighborhood businesses and even more so during the pandemic. so, thank you, chris, for being here and sharing a brief overview to the programs and strategies that you have, particularly focused on crime prevention. >> great, thank you, chair mar, and supervisors. please let me know when the screen is sharing. are we there yet? >> yep. we can see it. >> okay, fantastic, thank you. hello, supervisors. my name is chris, for those of

you who do not know me, the i'm the program director presenting on behalf of the office of economic and workforce development, specifically including the invest in neighborhoods division. the invest in neighborhoods division is a division within oewd that oversees the funding for programs that support small businesses and promote economic development. our programs best align with public safety efforts as secondary interventions that focus on supporting the economic vitality of our neighborhood commercial corridors. today i will provide some examples of projects within three of our programs that can positively impact public safety. small business capital grants, the vandalism relief grant. neighborhood economic development grant to neighborhood partners as well as our community benefit districts.

we also work on small business technical assistant programs and construction mitigation. so i'm going to start with the small business grant, specifically the vandalism relief grant. this grant is meant to pay for damages to a store front as a result of vandalism. it excludes the loss of stolen goods and excludes shared spaces vandalism. funds are not meant to cover the full expenses. they are a relief. insurance claims are not factored into this. store front public -- the criteria is it has to be a store front public facing open to the public for walk-in services. the incident must be on or after july 1st, 2020. this is within the fiscal year the funds were allocated. and the grants are originally of $1000 and $2,000 and financial relief for the restoration by

deliberate actions that result. some examples of this include broken windows, broken doors, broken locks, etching on windows, graffiti and other. so, this was originally a $1 million allocation. we have received 446 applications as of december 6th. 285 of those om indications -- applications have been awarded. 76 are under review. the average award is $1291. our top 10 neighborhoods for application are the mission, chinatown, the castro upper market, tenderloin, sunset, parkside, the financial district and south beach, west of twin peaks, the marina, nob hill and south of market. of the 281 awards issued so far, there is a lot of correlation between the neighborhoods of

application with these 10 neighborhoods also being in the top 10 applicants a-- or awards received. so the total reported damages so far have been in excess of $1.3 million. the average reported damage in the application is over $3,000 and as previously mentioned, we have received 446 applications. of those applications, 323 indicate that they are applying due to a broken window. 96 indicate they're referring to graffiti vandalism and then 139 reference other types of vandalism. in terms of demographic data of the applicants received, 50% of the grant awards distributed thus far have been to the aapi community. this program has been operating for three months since september. at this point, we're not

changing any criteria, but we may re-evaluate in the future based on funding availability. right now it's first come-first serve until the fund runs out. more information can be found at oewd website. and the documentation needed is a complete -- the completed documentation is a signed w9 and gather proof of damage for the application. i'll now be speaking about our neighborhood economic development grant projects. this is examples of our neighborhood economic development grants. it is not an exhaustive list. so we have our commercial corridor cameras and safety audits. this is in partnership with san francisco safe.

they're in process in the excelsior neighborhood. others may come online as audits and determinations are determined by the partner. of course, we have our ambassador program, castro cares, for instance, which operates in the castro upper market neighborhood, our downtown ambassador such as and the retired sfpd officers. we have economic vitality and safety grants. examples is the tenderloin pride through design. safe passage, play streets and a public space initiative which has artists paint murals on temporary spaces such as boarded-up windows or vacant buildings and public space station activation. finally, we'll go on to the third area which is the community benefit district. for those of you unfamiliar with

the cbd program, these are a type of special assessment district which all property owners pay an additional assessment to provide supplemental services to the baseline provided by the city and county of san francisco. the management agreement between each district and the city of san francisco. management plans dictate what special assessment dollars can and cannot be spent on. and nonassessment funding may allow cbd to provide safety services. we have 15 property-based community benefit districts in the city and county of san francisco. as you can see the majority are along the market street corridor, the downtown area. we have some in outer neighborhood corridors such as the castro for market, noe valley, ocean avenue and japantown. so some of the services that

cbds provide via special assessment dollars are community ambassadors, public space station activation, cbd dispatch, advocacy, surveillance cameras. and they also in some instances hire 10b officers or additional security when 10b is not available to patrol the area during the day or at night. of the 15 community benefit districts, approximately 10 of them articulate that they do have safety services in their management district plan. right now i'm available for any questions from the committee. >> chair mar: thank you so much for that presentation. and just for all of the important programs and services that oewd provides to support our small businesses. i don't see any questions from my colleagues. i had just a specific question

about the commercial corridor camera and safety audit. and i think, you know, expanding the security cameras in our commercial corridors, you know, is one low-hanging fruit intervention that could be done, you know, to help prevent crime. i was just curious what the budget is for that program? and how the commercial corridors are selected? and i ask that because i had some conversation with chief scott and also with s.f. safe about the taraval corridor, looking at the taraval corridor for that because there was a rash of burglaries and vandalism on taraval, but it hasn't happened yet? >> yeah, supervisor, i'm happy to take a look at what the budget is and find out that criteria and send you an e-mail

following the presentation. >> chair mar: thank you. for the ambassador, the ambassadors that oewd sponsors, is that through the cbds or is that a community program? >> it depends on the situation, supervisor. for example, castro cares is a grant that the grantee is the castro cbd. in other cases, such as the downtown ambassadors as they're covering multiple areas across different cbd boundaries, they're not actually run by the cbd. the new ambassadors, the welcome ambassadors, i believe that's what you're referring to, they're actually run through the tourism improvement management corporation as the grantee and they extend across all cbd. now they do have coordination

with the cbd, but they're not run by each individual property-based district. >> chair mar: i know there has been a lot of focus on the central city and the tourism recovery strategy for some of -- for a lot of these interventions. for the castro corridor ambassador grant, i was just curious how that came about. i'm just asking because i think there is interest other neighborhood-based commercial corridors to see strategies implemented like this as well. >> i would have to go back to the history books to find out the specific funding sources, but if i recall correctly, it started off as either an add-back or enhancement that became annualized. >> chair mar: okay. i would be interested in knowing about more of that and seeing how we could support other neighborhood commercial

corridors for that. >> sure. what i'll do is a deep dive into the history of that program and send you an e-mail on that one. >> chair mar: thank you so much, chris, for the presentation and discussion and all your good work. we're going to move on to the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs. we have director pond here to present about the good work that you've been doing to address public safety concerns in the commercial corridors and immigrant communities. >> thanks. good morning, chair mar, and committee members. executive director office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs. thank you for including us in today's conversation. i do have a brief overview and slides of our public safety and language programs in commercial

corridors and neighborhoods. and thanks to deputy somera and her staff for helping me with the slides. we're off and running. next slide. so this is the division, it's the same since we were a startup office in 2008. it runs through everything. it's a thread that runs through all our programs, all san franciscans, regardless of their status or language. to serve a safe, inclusive, equitable place to live, work and visit, so they can contribute back. we're a multifunctional office with five program areas. i'll run through these quickly. community safety and engagement. community outreach and education. for instance, on the census, redistricting, public policy. immigrant assistance and immigration policy. language rights and access.

city-wide l.a.o. language access and implementation and community grants. so through all the programs, we do apply a community focused approach to all of the work and that starts with listening to and learning from the people that we serve. next slide. so the community ambassador program, i know there are several programs, at least five, but this program started by our office was established in 2010 and that was in response to escalating racial tensions and safety concerns in the southeast sector and now we're serving four areas with plans to expand in this fiscal year. the program is a community safety and neighborhood engagement job-training program. we train and employ city residents from low-income

communities. the ambassadors provide physical and safety presence while engaging and helping community members in the general public. osee ya. >> a long major merchant and transit corridors, to engaging and forming and assisting community members, schools, small businesses and individuals who are in need of social services. so we work with both the community and the people that affect the community and need services. our ambassadors go through extensive professional and community training, including de-escalation, violence prevention, first aid, cpr,

administering narcan, mapping neighborhoods and identifying hot spots. they document every single interaction with merchants and members of the public and this is important to informing policies and program changes. next slide. so, thanks to funding authorized by the board of supervisors, we're now in the process of expanding teams from four to seven districts. there are several, as i said, several ambassadors programs, mostly in the downtown mid market area and tourist and visitor destinations. so as they start to ramp up, the community ambassador program will continue to focus on our core work in the above areas while collaborating with other programs and city agency. next slide. so, our real focus is going to remain on communities and neighborhoods along merchant transit corridors with high

street activity and high social service, language and other needs. as i said, we interact with community members, cbos and service providers as well as with small mom-and-pop stores and businesses in neighborhoods that are often isolated or underserved. and we provide safety tips. we provide general assistance. since november, we have noticed -- we have received a noticeable increase in requests for safety escorts. mostly for school kids, seniors, and workers, both in the areas where there are large offices and businesses as well as small businesses. and especially in the mission, the bayview, chinatown, tenderloin and mid market areas. so this chart, relative to

merchant businesses, there are check-ins. and this shows the documented interaction we've had with merchants in our current area since july of 2020. as you can see, that since businesses have started to reopen, we've increased the number of visits to them. and since july 2020, we have made 11,183 visit to small businesses. next slide. this shows the direct cause we have received from merchants. total since july 2020 is 417 with an uptick this year from may to september as businesses reopened. so the ambassador teams often provide merchants with their mobile numbers, because they receive complaints that they

haven't been able to contact law enforcement, or they have language barriers, or they lack digital tools or band width tech access. this is for the parts of the city that don't have access to digital and advanced technologies. we are compliance office for the language access ordinance. we train departments on the law and provide tools to help them better serve the half of the city population that communicate primarily in languages other than english. we also investigate complaints and l.a.o. violations. during covid, many small and immigrant-owned businesses reported that they did not receive timely translated information. so opportunities that they might have missed out on because it took longer for departments to translate the information. departments are responsible for

provisioning their own language needs, but many lean on us for assistance during emergencies or at the last minute. so we have a very small unit of full-time language specialists who assist with interpretation and translation, primarily for public safety situations and also through partnership with the clerk of the board, we do service board meetings. but language access should be a regular part of business, everything we do, not just an afterthought. next slide. so over the last 10 years, we've got law enforcement options for preventing crime theft and violence prevention. it really starts to individuals providing a pathway to their success, addressing their social needs and economic -- ensuring economic equity. lots of training, learning how to live violence-free lives.

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we have to walk the walk and steve our small businesses, residents and other people of san francisco say andit starts with listening, acting and being there for our businesses and our people . thankyou very much. that ends my comments . i'm happy to answer any questions you might have >> president: thank you director for this presentation and all your important work at oceia. i've got a few questions thanks for highlighting the community ambassador program which has been a tremendously important program under oceia . in moving anon-law-enforcement

strategy for crime prevention in priority neighborhoods . thanks for highlighting the expansion of the community ambassador program that is happeningthrough the board of supervisors had back funding . including in my district in district 4. wanted to see if you could provide an update on my district and any other new districts that have been expanded to, i would love to help support you to get that, how that action happened as soon as possible. >> iq chair. we are anxious to get going on that to so i just need approval from ourcity administrator's office to start the hiring . we have been recruiting so there's a pipeline. we were already short on our own ambassadors because they get picked up by other organizations that pay a little more but we've got that nailed

down . we're going to start our district 5 outreach in next week and that's with a smaller team untilwe can ramp up and we will go to for after that . we are replacing the team that was cut previously from visitation valley so we got a lot of areas we have to cover and a lot of new demand but you'll start seeing folks first on the ground in the next week and then definitely by january we will be fully operational. >> president: that's great to hear. thank you for all your workand the team on that . then i hada question around language . language access, the important language access the office does beyond just monitoring and enforcement of our ordinance . we've been working on the annual compliance report for the language access ordinances. it's more of the direct

provision of language access with your small team of interpreters and then i also understand you have been planning what sort of a pilot program with community-based organizations and building their capacity to help serve as a resource for the language access needs in our city so i have aquestion . is any of that either direct the direct language access team for the i'm not sure how far along the implementation is of building our community-based language access resource , how much of that is focused on public safety and particularly with merchants. i guess that's my question because in my district of the dozens of neighborhood businesses that have been victimsof burglary and vandalism , almost all of them are asian owned and many of them are limited english

speaking. my wife had to help do some interpretation with officers on the scene of one of the incidents . >> good questions . there is a process and currently we only have three full-time interpreters in each of the core threshold languages that would be chinese and they speak both mandarin, cantonese and other dialects as well as spanish and filipino. those are the requiredlanguages . then we have a network. we actually provide grants to community-based organizations likethe language access network to fill some of the gaps so for instance during the san francisco redistricting task

force meetings which my office is providing support to , we don't have arabic interpreters so we lean on ourcommunity service providers and they are paid for this service and compensated . that leads to the pilot program. i know we talked prior to the pandemic, we did have a proposal with city college to give accreditation to participants who went through a training program that they could become trained community interpreters. we just finished a class and of course there were cuts in the city college budget and we have to read that revamp that program but roll it out in this fiscal year. we are looking right now at him of the compensation rates and making sure that community interpreters get paid a fair and equitable compensation for their work. we started with training so we just completed a training for

bothcity , bilingual employees as well as community members who are speakers of certain languages that we have gaps for. they are native speakers of those languages and this is a professional national training by an accredited organization thatpays for the entire training and we set up all of the classes . this was virtual and they only can take 20 at a time so we have to do several but we are hoping that the half of the class that was made up of community members will be successful because they have to pass the test and then they are accredited and they receive a certificate and they can become officially certified community interpreters. we also accessed some of our law enforcement andemergency

departments , making sure their advising employees for a certified fee. we are working with sfpd. they have a liaison for language access and she's about looking around testing, increasing the tests for languages and looking at what levels of fluency these employees have because right now the test is only for bilingual differential and it doesn't really test for the levels of fluency versus your health worker you might have to have medical terminology training. if you're working in the courts or with the police department you've got to have court level fluency. so we are working with both oca on the citywide language access services contract. to provide options if they don't have city personnel who

are ready to do this . the only thing not growing is we have 3 and a half interpreters. we have to for chinese cousin can't do both mandarin and cantonese at the same time. you have to have two people. we are currently providing services for board meetings and the san francisco redistricting task force but there's a lot of demand for direct services. we also help committee-based groups . we've helped with some of the signage city college during the pandemic. a lot of property owners didn't know where the dropbox was for where to make their payments. so we persisted and advised departments on that so there's plenty going on and we will definitely inform you of when the pilot, revamp pilot kicks off. we'relooking for a different

academic partner to do the certification . >> thank you so much director for all those updates about the important work the office is doing around expanding language access capacity in our city and i think that all sounds great. i really am particularly interested given the theme of this hearing to see how we can make sure that we keep a focus on our public safety and our law enforcement strategies and creating resources. particularly i'm interested on a community level, community organizations that can help to clarify our lawenforcement agencies to expand their language access capabilities . thank you againdirector pond. for your brilliant work . we're going to move now to the final department presentation

and that's from the district attorney's office and if we have marshall hear from the das office along with cecily brewster who is the assistant district attorney with the communitylazy liaisonprogram . welcome marshall . >> good morning supervisors. as a san francisco resident who regularly visits our great coroners thank you for the work you do on this public safety and neighborhood services committee and thank you for the invitation tothis important conversation . thank you to our businesses especially small businesses who endured this difficult time and we will provide important services to our community. thank you tobusiness leaders for sharing collective voice of

our small businesses . we will engage with you to collaborate on the outcome and for finding effective lasting solutions. our last slide will provide you with a specific point of contact. my name is marshall kind, chief districtattorney for the san francisco district attorney's office . assistant district attorney stephanie brewster who heads up our liaison program joins us this morning to provide information aboutservices and support for our businesses . director of data research analytics doctor michaela rabinowitzis also present should any questions arise . i'm going to start by saying and francisco district attorney'soffice is committed to supporting small and large businesses and retailers and public safety . i'll use the first few minutes to share a high-level overview of our strategies and collaborations are addressing this pressing type ofmental activity. with your permission i'll share my screen .

we are seeing organized retail crimes across the bay area nationwide increase. our officers take these threats seriously and have prioritized the prosecutions. the san francisco district attorney's office placed two distinct roles in these crimes. our traditional role is through prosecutions. we review the cases for charges to determine whether the evidence supports criminal charges beyond reasonable doub and determine appropriate charges and prosecute the cases seeking fair and just outcomes for all involved . we have also expanded our role in this particular area by leveraging our resources and relationships to support many confidential investigative

operations to build criminal cases necessary to hopefully dismantle larger retail theft networks . in 2018 the san francisco district attorney's office worked with the governor's office to secure funding for california's first organized retail theft tax force. leading this effort we augmented staff to these investigative operations. we currently have a dozen active operations alone and in partnership with other law enforcement agencies and retail partners. to breakup the networks that make these crimes possible we must focus upstream determining what are the pathwaysfor full and merchandise, determine how the merchandise is transferred and sold and holding accountable who isorganizing

these mass retail theft operations . we are working to dismantle networks that make thesecrimes profitable and ensure these crimes from happening and disrupt the markets for these crimes . one of our multijurisdictional efforts led to the recovery of $8 million in stolen goods . we are clarifying all facets of our staff crime analysts , district attorneys and the investigators to this effort. the larger theoperation the more likely the case may be prosecuted by a jurisdiction different than san francisco because many of these operations span multiple jurisdictions will be prosecuted with other jurisdictions or by state or federal agencies . our office recently joined the alliance after a recent incident before thanksgiving with other a area county district attorney's offices including alameda, contra costa, san joaquin, santa clara and the attorney general's office . we are committed to sharing information and investigative tools and resources and coordinating prosecutions to respond to incidents and combat

these crimes bay area wide. >> sorry to interrupt. i think i just wanted to clarify the focus of this hearing is more on crime impacting our neighborhood small businesses in our commercial corridors. there's been a lot of focused on organized retail theft and we appreciate all the work the district attorney's officehas done on those issues along with sfpd and others but i wanted to highlight that . i appreciate evengetting this update on the work , on organized retail theft but maybe it you could keep it brief on this update and we are focused more on the impact on our small neighborhood businesses and our commercial corridors this afternoon. >> i appreciate that, thank yo . i will move on to the fifth and last slide which shows our

statistics at least for the 2021 commercial prosecutions which course is not just related to large retail theft operations but includes the burglaries that are committed on much smaller scales affecting many of our smaller businesses. we have 638 pieces presented to san francisco district attorney's office in 2022. the san francisco district attorney's office filed criminal charges in 70percent of the cases for a total of 436 cases through november of this year . almost all have been felony prosecution . additional 19 percent shows additional action taken by our office . these efforts include filing motions to revoke probation, post relief community supervision or provide parole. these efforts require our staff to also present earrings to hold offenders accountable

through other processes that allow us to introduce a lower level of proof when the evidence doesn't necessarily meet beyond reasonable doubt standard but can be proven by a lower legal standard on the preponderance ofevidence. many of these cases we have also returned to and collaborated with law enforcement foradditional investigation . this represents almost 90 percent action rate on commercial burglaries . one of the highest charging rates of all criminals . we hope that these statistics and these statistics only represent a share of the statistics related to theft and burglaries because the charges can be filed under a variety of different charges including theft, robbery and vandalism. but these statistics are representative that we are

charging a high proportion of case presented to our office. it shows our commitment to holding peopleaccountable for these crimes . we are filing and prosecuting crimes every day to see the commercial theft and burglary working their way through the system and we certainly agree with the comments that there is a detachment between reality and perception that is damaging our businesses. there's also misconception that we are not workingwith our law enforcement partners when in fact we are collaborating on a daily basis and meeting fairly regularly . this misconception is encouraging individuals to come to san francisco to commit crimes so we are certainly interested in dispelling these misconceptions perpetuated in the media that there are no consequences in san francisco and i want to say to all of you the message is that if you come to san francisco to commit an offense of crimes and harm our

small businesses you will be held accountable . with that i can turn it over to assistant district stephanie brewster to talk with you about the additional support and services we can provide to the communities we serve and then answer any questions you and the other supervisors mayhave . >> president: thank you . >> thank youmarshall, i appreciate it . good afternoon or it's still the morning . supervisor stefani, supervisor haney and everybody that is here. my name is stephanie brewster, an assistant district attorney in san francisco and i've had a community liaison program. our committee liaison program consists of attorneys and staff members from our office who are assigned to the 11th supervisor district in san francisco. our team interfaces with the

san francisco police department, district supervisors, committee leaders and constituents on a daily basis to address specific concerns on education and to interface directly with the communities that we serve every day. among other things we attend committee advisory board meetings. police community meetings at all district stations. we also attend merchants meetings and conduct merchant walks in neighborhoods to get to know those that were serving all around the city. we work very proactively with the san francisco police department and san francisco state to educate both merchants and individuals and merchants specifically to deter crime

both big and small.we have conducted recent training on both big and small. there's a merchants association along with sfpd with the support of deputy chief lazar and training merchants on what to do when crime occurs, how to understand different types of crime. what to say for instance when a call for assistance ensures evidence is preserved so that the case isn't strong then it can possibly be when it reaches our office for charging decisions and prosecution . we have a incoming training with safeway and i put together a pretty neat program that i be happy to share with any ofthe merchants here on this call .

mister marshall if you could advance the slide. we have my contact information if it will come in here. marshall, are you able to share it? i'd be happy to put it in the chat. here we go. so there's a link on our website. and among other things, we can address specific piecesthat come up within districts . first if a crime has occurred at your business and you're wondering what's happening with thatreach out to me. i can take a look. i can figure out where it is and provide information to you about court dates . my job is really to ensure specifically what's going on at the holiday shopping season and start working really hardright

now with all the versions . with ms. collins or anyone else to find ways to deter theft and what to do when it happens. so please do reach out to me you can reach out to me about otherthings as well andif i can't help you i can put you in touch with the person who can . thank you so much for your time . >> thank you sicily and also marshall for the presentation and definitely i want to say we really appreciate the community liaison team we've been working with in district for and they've been a great new resource and partner in our public safety workin the district so banks . supervisor stefani. >> thank you chair mar and thank you ada kind for your presentation. i appreciate having your contact information especially so thank you for that and thank

you for yourpresentations . i have a question on the slide about the 2020, 2021 commercial burglaryprosecution . in that slide it says 436 total cases through november2021 . almost all felony prosecutions and just i'm wondering do you mean that when you say felony prosecutions that those cases cut out for felonies because charging is one thing obviously but how you resolve the case is another when you say felony prosecution you mean it started as a felony and maybe it ended up as a misdemeanor what does felony prosecution meeting because i would believe having been a prosecutor out of those 436 cases not all of them are actually settled as felonies . so felony prosecution does that mean it can be cut out as a misdemeanor? >> supervisor, obviously we say

felony prosecutions they were initiated as felonies and made the decision to charge them as felonies. some obviously will lead to misdemeanors and negotiated divisions . some will be what we call 17 b as you are aware after hearing some of the evidence and some of them if we lose the evidence for have not properly assessed the evidence , we would not be able to rule on them. this statistic represents how many we charged as felonies indicating that we have prioritized the offenses whereas on many occasions they could be charged as misdemeanors as well. >> and some of them are settled through divergent and then dismissed is that correct or dismissed outright?>> there is a whole variety of statutorily eligible programs as you're aware as well and there's going to be aproportion

of the states that's going through collaborative courts and divergent . >> thank you for that answer and i do want to just have two more questions because my remarks i started out discussing the police staffing issue as a shortage there and chair mar invited michael a small business owner to speak and he pointed out in his remarks it's not just about re-staffing, it'salso about consequences to those who commit the crimes and i can't agree with him more . that's absolutely correct and we have seen several high profile incidents where individuals are released on pretrial diversion or monitoring but immediately go on to reoffend . most recently the incident that everyone's talking about and i am wondering if you can talk about how the district attorney's office considers prior arrests or charging history when making charging decisions because as this goes

directly to what's happening in our merchant corridors because we know a lot of these people are reoffending over and over again and a lot of the people the police are bringing to the das office are people reoffending over and over again so if you could discuss about how you address prior arrest and charginghistory when look at looking at these cases, that would be helpful . >> that's an excellentpoint supervisor stefani . we take into consideration all the factors that we are aware of about what the prior offenses are.we're into medication with the police department about who are the repeat offenders as everyone in the justice system is aware small percentage contribute to a large amount of crime and in any particular jurisdiction so we have tried our best to focus in and especially assign a lot of offenders that have a long recidivism history in order to provide the best prosecution that wecan . in terms of whether or not a

suspect is released pretrial, we are in a position of making a recommendation on that as you're aware. that finaldecision is made by a court after our presentation . in one instance in a highly publicized burglary operation related to the downtown high-end retailers, there were nine suspects that were arrested from that incident. great job from the police department beingable to apprehend those individuals . we filed charges in all of them. we identified who we thought were the most significant and dangerous offenderswhich were three of them . some of them brought firearms to thisparticular incident and file motions to detainees individuals . where we expressed in most no uncertain terms we felt

something less than detaining these individuals on no bail was sufficient to ensure public safety and yes, all three of them were still released by the court. we only play a role in making that determination, in seeking detention if we are obviously unable to convincethe court that these three most serious offenders should remain in custody , we would not have a chance on the six others that were far less significant in their actions. >> that actually plays right into the next question i had about how the district attorney's office determines when to actually request detention and how do repeat offenses factor into that determination. i'm very well aware it's ultimately the judges decision but i'm also aware that the das office does have the ability to vociferously argue for intention in cases where they believe detention is warranted so i think it would be, it

would help to understand what goes into that decision. what is the ada's argument for detention? my understanding was that no detention request was made in the target case sowhether or not that's my understanding, that's what i've heard . what determines whether or not the da is going to argue and make a case to the judge that the person should be detained so they can continue to inflect burglaries on ourmerchants ? >> we have a general decision-making framework as part of a published policy that is public facing and available for everybody to take a look at our decisions obviously is constrained byrecent decisions in the court , people versus humphrey and the california supreme court decision in how we evaluate what kind of cases

that will besuccessful when seeking detentions for. generally speaking public safety is a primary consideration . offenders, particularly ones that pose a danger of our prioritize what we look through the lens of exhausting all reasonable conditions that can be applied to potentially safely release somebody on supervised release of course on many occasions where we have individuals that are repeat offenders we struggle to keep those individuals in custody many of the cases we are informed by the police department information to which we supplied to the court to try to seek detention but it is an evolving process with changes in the law as you are aware. there have been high-profile releases. i saw a news report in santa clara where they were struggling with the court releasing 2suspects that were charged with murder .

so i think this is a statewide issue in terms of making informed decisions about who we seek detention for within the framework of our policies and the law. >> thank you. i have nothing further. >> chair: thanks again chief assistant kind and district attorney rector for the presentation and your good work. why don't we go topublic comment ? it's been a long and informative hearing but i just want to see if we have any members of the public that would like to speak around these issues. man clerk? >> clerk: we have gloria penn outwith us today and she's checking to see if there are colors in the queue . for those whowish to see call 415-655-0001 . enter the meeting id of 2486 673 7933.

then pound and pound again. when connected press star 3 to speak in a system prompt will indicate youhave raised your hand . wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted andyou may begin . dowe have colors in the queue ? >> we have no colors in the queue. >> clerk: mister chair. >> chair: thank you, public comment is now closed. i actually wanted to see if holly ifyou have any closing remarks before i wrap up the hearing . i want to thank all the presenters for the hearing in our small business leaders michael hsu, mario modicon, sharkey laguana and the members of the department's sfpd,oceia and district attorney's office

.this is a comprehensive look at the impact of crime on our commercial corridors and on our neighborhood small businesses and what the city's current efforts to prevent this type of crime that is, that has been so devastating not just to the businesses but our neighborhoods and our communities so i really appreciate all of the important work that's already happening across the departments but i think the hearing highlighted that we need to do a lot more to support oursmall businesses , to recover from the difficulties of the pandemic and thrive into the future so i am very committed to following up on this hearing with the key small business stakeholders and also the departments on exploring new policies and programs that will help prevent crime impacting our neighborhood small businesses and this will be one of my top priorities in the upcoming budget process and i also

wanted to mention in particular i am currently working on a proposal to strengthen sfpd's priorities for creating at the district station level each neighborhood in our city is unique and with diverse stakeholders and so they have a deep understanding of their community so it's important that the sfpd's policing plans are tailored to the needs of each neighborhood and created through a real partnership with community stakeholders, their merchant associations at the neighborhood and district station level . i'm looking forward to having further discussion about this proposal colleagues but let me bring it forward in the new year and i didn't want to again thank everyone for this very fall, comprehensive and rich

discussion ilook forward to following up with all of you and i would move that we filed this hearing . man clerk, can you please call therole . >> clerk: on the motion to file number one,vice chair stefani . [roll call vote] there are 2 aye's. >> chair: thankyou madam clerk . why do we go to number two. >> clerk: agenda item 2 is a hearing to discuss the status of the number of cannabis equity licenses ranted and number of equity applicants currently awaiting approval to examine the number of applicants who presently own and operate a cannabis dispensary, what areas and how their numbers appear with non-equity applicants and the possibility of proposing a moratorium oncedispensaries are

adequately represented in comparison to nonequity operated dispensaries . where requesting office of cannabisand economic workforce development to report . members of the public wishing to provide public comment to call the public comment number now, 415-655-0001 and enter the meeting id of 2486 673 7933 . press pound and pound again to connect to the meeting. once connected press star three to enter the queue and a system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand . wait for comment onthis item and when the system indicates you have been unmuted you may begin your comment . to correct i did read off the wrong meeting id. it is 2486 673 7933. thank you mister chair. >> chair: i want to welcome supervisor safai, of this hearing thank you for all your leadership on equity issues and the floor is yours.>> by

before i get started i want to say thank you for having the hearing.i wish i could have joined but iappreciate continuing the conversation about retail theft andour commercial corridors around the city . i think it's one of the most importantissues facing our city so thank you for amplifying that with me . today's hearing thank you colleagues and thank you chair for scheduling this . my district is home to a cluster of cannabis dispensaries with the newest approved applicant being a woman owned woman of color equity applicants that will be coming in in the coming year. but during my timeon the board of supervisors , as you stated chair i have supported equity in the cannabis industry and i've always focused equity applicants and homegrown san franciscan run businesses should have the first opportunity to xl in our marketplace.

those small neighborhoods not outside international investors but san francisco-based small businesses both equity and small businesses here in san francisco. so today's hearing is an opportunity to take a deeper look at our equity program and the cannabis industry and market here in san francisco and we will be joined today by the actingdirector tom pierce of the office of cannabis . who will provide a short update on the status of the equity program and status of the cannabis market here in san francisco. he will also be supported by the office of economic and workforce development as needed if there's workforce questions and so following mister pierce presentation we will open it up to the floor for questions and comments. so if it's okay with you we willhand it over to acting director john pierce to do his presentation . >> chair: great.

>> good afternoonsupervisors, thank you for your time and your interest in our cannabis market . i'mjoined by ray law who is also available for questions . we prepared a presentation to turn today'sconversation and i will go ahead and pull that up and we can get started . great. so for this context, but don't use cannabis consumption was legalized in california thanks to prop 64 which passed number 2016. our office of cannabis was established in 2017 and as supervisor safai indicated our program is anchored in a social equity program designed to ensure the benefits that extend to people and communities negatively impacted by the war on drugs. are verified equity applicants are eligible for processing of permits, fee waivers, technical assistance andaccess to

millions in annual grant distributions . it's important to emphasize that states every permit issue by the office of cannabis has been issued to a verified equity applicants . in terms of the states of the current industry, we have issued 15 permitted permits to equity owned store retail businesses and in addition there are currently 35 authorized and active medicinal cannabis dispensaries also known as mcd's . these dispensaries existed before the adult use legalization and they continue to operate in the cityso in total currently there are 50 active cannabis storefront retail businesses in the city . that's the current state of affairs . in terms of applications for new retail storesthat are currently 94 applications that have a viable path to completion . that number requires a little bit of explanationat first

all 94 of those applications are from verifiedequity applicants .they are equity businesses . second that number includes all applications that have a retail component even if that component is not necessarily the primary component so if you think about businesses, maybe the primary purpose of the business is to manufacture products that they have a small retail are included in that number and the third thing to note is that we included every application that has a past use success even if it's viable. it may not be likely to take it all the way through. our office was only recently granted the ability to remove active applications from our deadlineand we anticipate they will do that in calendar year 2020 . so that is the current pipeline of applicants. when we consider the potential implication of the moratorium , we would frame it in the context of our equity process helps our community participate

in healthy cannabis markets and we did a preliminary review of the tax data and found three main findings. the first is the market of cannabis in san francisco has been growing since 2011 and the second is there were significant disruptions from covid into that market and the third is the median cannabis vendor so the vendor that makes not the highest or lowest but sort of theaverage is has participated in the growth of that market and i will talk about each of those points . the first is that this graph shows state sales tax data is information from state and it shows how the tax collection has increased over time. you can see that when the data starts with half $1 million committed to the city and by 2019 that increased to about 2 and a half million dollars from

2011 to 2019 we saw sustained growth in the market and that just indicates that our permittees havebeen selling more product to more people . and i also note this is an annual graph so it has some seasonalvariability . as far as our firstfinding steady growth in the market . pending our preliminary review what it showed us was that there was some uncertainty inserted into the market next to covid-19. it's sort of each data point on this graph is a quarter and it's an average of the growth of the past quarters over the past year. it shows a similar picture, steady upward growth from2011 . >> i don't know what that was. >> let me know if there's any questions.

what is of note in this graph is that in 21 and 2020 so when lockdown hit you could see that the growth we were seeing fell and was disrupted and since that point receipts have been volatile. there's been some quarters that didn't grow and some quarters unless good growth. we would need a little bit more information to figure out what the future of the market holds in the aftermath of covid-19. the final point was available data indicates that median vendor participating in the growth of the market so in 2019 the median realtor reported revenues were half $1 million per quarter. that fell dramatically by about half during lockdown but recovered in the most recent quarter data around $800,000 a quarter. so that indicates to us that

the median vendor is participating in the growth of the market as a whole and we're not in a situation which the most lucrative and large businesses are capturing a disproportionate share of the market . so in the context of the moratorium,we don't feel we have enough good data to make a determination about market saturation .our view of the evidence indicates while the market has grown over time and expense volatility that themost people who are participating in the market are capturing the growth of the market . beyond that, sort of quantitative analysis there's a couple things to keep in mind when considering the impacts of the moratorium. the first is that moratorium applications wouldinvariably lead to fewer equity businesses in san francisco . therewould be fewer applications submitted . second is that fewer equity businesses would lead to fewer

placements and then we have i believe josh is here to answer questions about that program thatwould lead to fewer workforce opportunities . and because of the potentially significant impacts of that we would recommend more study of the topics before pursuing a moratorium and fortunately we have a suggestion for a venue for that which is that as you are aware supervisors the board recently approved the suspension of that cannabis tax in addition with a study of the market and our recommendation is that the future consideration of moratoriums be conducted inside that study whichwould include analysis from the controller's office and data from the treasurer and tax collector so that is our presentation and we are available for questions . >> thank you john. you covered anumber of different points that we wanted to talk about .

there's a number of different things. one is me given this moratorium for tax but it looks like in terms of the average quarterly sales, annual sales tax for cannabis related businesses, that's continued to grow dramatically. i know that the industry talks a lot about still about 80+ percent of sales are not on the formal market for our dunmore off market in illegal sales. but i wonder what level of volume that is and how it impacts the industry. i know they talk aboutpaying federal taxes and that being a burdensomeprocess . i want you to talk about that . i know it's hard for you to take a strong position but it looks to me basedon your data with annual sales continuing ,

quarterly sales continuing that i think this lastyear's , this one last year moratorium should give them some space to have a conversation and i think we have the ability to set that at the right level . i want you tocomment on that first . >> i think you hit the most important point which is it's expensive to operate a licensed cannabis store in the city and our partners in the cannabis permitted are a huge help an ally to combating the unregulated market so it's something we take seriously and it's something to note that the success of the businesses is important to moving cannabis into a licensed and regulated state the second thing i would say is that it's true that the market has been growing. that's only half of the equation for profitability . it's possible costs have gone

up as revenues have gone up and that'ssomething i would be interested in exploring more in the future of a certain study . those are my twomain points but i'm happy to directed .>> chair: i think we're not going to be supportive of another future difference on their tax. it's just a matter of what the appropriate tax level will be going forward and i know supervisor mandelman's office has committed to getting folks together and i'msure you will be part of that conversation but we can continue to talk about that at a later date . the other thing that's interestingand i think it goes back to your previous slide which is interesting to me . you said currently you have 94 applications for retail businesses. currently there is only 50 retailstorefronts in the city right now ? 30 5m cds? sothere's only 50 .

the way i wrote the legislation was you have to accept continue to prioritize equity applicants until there's parity in the market. so it sounds like the next 20 is 94. the next 20 with nb prioritized so whoever those first 20 are at that point it's just all applications. >> it depends on a lot of factors. as i said i don't know if all 94 of those applications would make it through the sequencing is everything if it were to go correctly is all those equity applications would continue to be prioritized we would be able to accept and deny the applications once parity is reached so there's no scenario in which a non-equity applicants would be prioritized and every application that is currently in the queue wouldbe

processed first. >> because you're not able to accept a nonequity applicant right now . >> we have a tear. sorry, go on. >> that is correct. we will allow toaccept applications from the general public and to the city . >> i guess we didn't think about what does that mean in terms of so once you reach parity you can begin to accept nonequity applicants. they get put into themix and it's whoever reachescompletion , thenthat's when you guys have to sit and have that conversation . but anyway we're not there yet . what's the pathway to go through the application to determine who youcan start removing ?

that are inactive? you said you're going to begin that next year. you must have some idea of how many of those 94 are not viable applications. >> the way the legislation is structured is we are allowed to request information and as the version if the person does not respond, they become eligible and that's another tool we would use and in any scenario other than that it's not a real project that anyone can complete. >> when do you intend to start doing that? you're not doing it now? >> i believe last month we have the ability to start doing that and we plan to start doing it in january 2022. >> chair: so you have a good idea because you're reaching out to all applicants that seem to be inactive. how many of these 94 are going through theprocess ? you must have some idea how many of them are moving and responding and working with yo now . >> generally speaking this is a long and difficult and complicated process and anyone

who is serious about it that would be the general take but there are a few cases. we haven't quantified that and we can do a more thorough examination ifyou'd like an exact number but we don't won't know for sure until we start reaching out . >> so you'll get back to us on that. if you can come back to us and let our office know how many of those are really moving forward and then it will be the next 20 and then you will have received parity and you will have received parity in terms of 35 equity and 35nonequity. how do you account for , so i know by now we have an active application that's a non- equity applicants but because they were, that was the one kind of there was some tiny i think it was about seven or eight if they had been shut

down by the feds at some point they have the ability to continue to move forward. so this applicant was one of those. they put in their application and it sounds like they're goingthrough the community process now. they already have secure their location. and that's not included in these 94 ? >> the way it's structured, i'lltake a crack at that . >> that is correct. that is not included inthis 94 application . i'm sorry. say that again. >> howmany of those types you have currently right now that are not part of the 94 equity ? >> i believe we have to applications in our pipeline that's coming through from our so-called ps3 applications. those are enforced by the federal applicant before and they have applied based on their efficacy. >> are there any other tears besidesequity , nonequity and shut down bythe feds ?

are there any other categories goingthrough the process now ? >> yes we do. here one is always the application, tier 2 is equity to data. those people arethe ones that are not qualified for the equity program but willing to provide support to equity applicants and in turn they will get there tier 2 applications . tier 3 operators that are enforced by the federal government we talk about tier 4 applications from our legacy business including mcd and temporary permit holders who are permanent for the amnesty program that the city initiated in 2017. >> but you haven't given us the wholepicture. how many are we talking about ? >> for the m cds those numbers

aremeasured by acting director pierce . >> chair: those under 35 so they're transitioning but they're alreadyoperated . the transition, they're changing the permits. we talked about previously. that'sgoing to be over the next two yearsare legislationdealt with some of the ones that could be bad actors and noticing . we've got those 35 those are the legacy . then you have how many ? you have to currently shut down by the feds. those are tier 3. how many people are using this process that are not in the 94 that are here 2 that are basically equity incubators? the one i mentioned in my district i think it would be tier 1 and tier 3 because their application talks about having equity incubators space along with the business that was shut down by the feds.

>> i'll take a crack at this. the numbers we presented at this presentation are representative of all the dispensaries that are going to open. that 94 includes essentially everything. there are one or two people who are the federally enforced and there's a handful of equity incubators there's no significant numberof dispensaries that we didn't talk about in our presentation today . it's because of the nature of the different tiers, it becomes very complicated if you want to drill into every hanger on. >> i get it but it's just the bullet below that that says all these applications are from equityapplicants . is not a correct statement then. some of them are not . is that right? >> i think it's more here to say that there's a 94 that are total equityand there's maybe five or six nonequity . >> so there's anadditional five or six, got it . just wanted to be clearon that

. then you guys will have a more clear timeline. okay. then my next question is in terms of this conversation about and you kind ofended your presentation with this about market saturation . i know it's hard for you. you guys are in the business of helping to usher through applications but i think we ought to have a conversation about is there a number that we reach in the city or maybe not. maybe it's just about letting the market take care of itself but it seems a little bit contradictory and i just want to put that out there.if we're really trying to help equity homegrown businesses thrive and survive, then we get to a point where the market is saturated, we're also going to be undermining some of those businesses because we will have potentially created ... at

least for the retail storefront. [please and by]

... and i think a lot of businesses open and shut. but there are other places that have been a bit more controlled. so have you all looked at other markets and what they do in other cities? >> i'll start by saying that our peer jurisdictions, most of them, do not have programs that set up like ours, especially with the component. so it's hard to compare them. i think that you're correct that it's sort of all over the place depending on where you go and how farther in the process. the third thing i would say is that we're relatively a new program, only a couple of years into it. i think we could do as part of a study, a deeper analysis and maybe the controller's office would be interested in that as well. >> member safai: i think that would be helpful. i think it would be helpful as

part of the conversation as we go forward, with the taxing and with the conversation about what the right level of taxing is and what the right level of support for the industry. we've had a lot of smaller businesses. it could be about competition, but some of the existing business is saying the more businesses they get certified and qualify, the more you're kind of undermining the viability to sustain ourselves. and, of course, competition breeds -- it will weed out the stronger versus the non-strong businesses, but i feel like it's important to have that conversation. it will be good to ask you guys to look at what the other markets are doing and come back and inform us so we have a better idea of what things are done. i know in boston, for example,

massachusetts, they went through this whole very accelerated phase where you had to be certified for equity and then once you were certified for equity, it's almost like -- it's even more -- we did the, okay, anyone can come in, you have to go through the certification process, you're going to reach parity in the market. there, they had a small window and those folks with equity can go all over the state to kind of partner and get in front, so you have a small group of people that are kind of dominating the market in terms of equity all over the place. and it's the same very small group of people that got certified as equity. i'm not advocating for that. i think definitely the way we've set it up is a good process. the other thing that we didn't talk about is delivery. and i know that when we talked

before there was this conversation about, you know, one person in the industry, the model, they wanted to have unlimited product, driving around, being able to deliver on demand. we did not authorize that. we said you have to have a -- what's it called? what's the word? you have to have a -- set list of what you're carrying from the beginning of the day from the warehouse. the warehouse has to be based in san francisco. and then that's it. you can't just go around with unlimited product. let's talk about delivery for a moment, because we're hearing again from some of the businesses that are there are people licensed to do delivery that are not necessarily licensed in san francisco, that are coming into our market and delivering in the city and they're not using and having partnerships with local vendors and local warehouses and it's undermining our market?

can you respond to that? >> yes, so that's correct. if you're delivering in san francisco, you're required to pick up from one of our licensed permities. you're also correct that there is not the ability to drive around the city with large source of cannabis and then sell it to anybody you want. it has to be a specific order. there is concern about future delivery in the city. this is a conversation that has been circulating to for a few years. it's a similar problem faced in the city by other types of goods, like tax, if somebody wants to deliver it here and get around the local regulations. it is an ongoing problem and something the commission intends to talk about in 2022 and it's

something we're aware of and thinking about. >> member safai: okay. those are the -- well, one of my last questions is how the impact of equity businesses on hiring and are non-equity applicants required to use the first-source hiring as well? can you talk about that? >> so, the only current source of non-equity -- retail, would be medical cannabis dispensaries and because of the legislation you authored, they are required to meet the same labor requirements as our equity applicants at this point. so, yes, they are required to do that. >> member safai: thank you for your help on that. okay.

let me see if i have one last question here. maybe i have a question for the office of workforce development. is the director on the phone? >> yes, i am, supervisor, good afternoon. >> member safai: did you have any comments or things that you wanted to add to the conversation as it pertains to workforce since we ended on that piece of the conversation? >> absolutely, supervisor, and thank you for calling the hearing and for you and the committee for your work. director of workforce development at the office of economic and workforce development. grateful to the hard-working team at the office of cannabis, because i wanted to share response to your question and generally speaking for the conversation, this has really been a unique opportunity for our work in workforce development to be at the table helping to develop an industry

in which workforce development and, specifically, equity, is part of the blueprint from day one. and as the industry has grown. and the partnership that we have with the office of cannabis and the support for what we do to really ensure that there are equitable opportunities as the industry grows, certainly we've talked about ownership, but on the workforce side, with policies that weren't able to utilize to create workforce and career opportunities, the first-source hiring program, the labor piece and collective bargaining agreement, your ordinance for cannabis apprenticeship as this model begins to develop. i've never seen this kind of opportunity to really develop an industry in this way from the groundup. and the employers have been incredibly participatory. i must say that comes from someone with a point of view that everyone can do better. we're hard pressed to see this

type of engagement from any industry. i don't want to dare say necessarily regulate, but seek to create accountability for public subsidy or licensure. that's what it's about talk about the level of engagement from employers and the folks in the community, partners have been able to get hired and get on board several dozens of the labor peace agreements. and now we're seeing collective bargaining agreements, which, coincidently, one of the first to sign a collective bargaining with organized labor now has the most locations. so that really speaks to what i think is so unique, which is the community and labor-backed economic strategy for this industry that for our intents and purposes checks all the boxes in terms of what we're looking for to grow. so without speaking for the

department that would be our executive director with respect to her thoughts on the matter, i think we see lots of promise. it's very unique and powerful opportunity for change when it comes to employment. >> member safai: great. thank you, director. and thank you acting director pierce and ray for your contributions here today to this conversation. i think this is a really well put-together presentation. i think it gives us a road map on a number of things we need to confront. talking about what level of tax there needs to be for this industry. we need to engage on the delivery conversation. we need to also engage on, you know, looking at what other markets do as the market becomes saturated. i'm absolutely convinced that we need to meet the parity in terms of equity and non-equity. i'm glad we've been able to

tighten up working with director arsay and their team. first-source hiring. and your team, acting director pierce, and hiring and parity across the board, and also looking at some of the existing operators and as they want to transition to permanency, have they been good actors? have they been doing people fulfilling their community agreements? and if they haven't, then holding them accountable, because that's also very important. chair, do you have any questions for the folks here today? or supervisor stefani? >> chair mar: i don't have any questions. i also just wanted to take the opportunity to thank john and ray for the office of cannabis and director arsay for all of your work and thank you, member safai, for getting into the details on how we can best

manage this important new industry. >> member safai: do you have any questions or comments? great, thank you. chair, do you want to open it up for public comment? >> chair mar: madame clerk, why don't we do public comment? >> yes, mr. chair. for those who wish to speak on the item, please call 1-415-655-0001. enter the meeting i.d., 2486 673 7933 # #. when connected, please press star 3 to enter the queue to speak and a system prompt will indicate you've raised your hand. wait until the system indicates you've been unmuted and than is your cue to begin the comments. do we have any callers in the queue. it does appear we have two callers. if you could put the first caller through?

yes, this is don, i have to talk about the weed situation or can i talk about anything? >> this is regarding the cannabis hearing. >> well, i honestly believe that this state is about to have the highest unemployment and dropout level its ever had and it will have more jobs than you can shake a stick at just because of the weed. pot is considered one of the most dangerous drugs in the world. florida did this a long time ago and learned their lesson well. and decided to make it a schedule 1 drug equal to heroin. legalizing weed in california is about the dumbest thing this state could possibly ever do. and it's about to learn the same lesson that florida learned.

maybe you should call representatives from florida and ask them why did they do that? that's all i have to say. >> thank you for your comments. can we have the next caller, please? >> hello. thank you. hello, supervisors, office of cannabis staff, i wanted to make a quick comment. i wanted to underscore the difficulty i've had. my name is alex. i'm an equity advocate with an application pending for a retail location. i did want to just put a little emphasize and underscore the difficulty i've had as an equity applicant in my efforts to open a retail location in the city. this is the city i love, born and raised in and it took me over a year to find a location that was properly zoned with the landlord willing to accept this

kind of business in densely populated san francisco and one of want most expensive real estate markets in the country, as well as the costs associated with opening, it's a tall order. but, you know, it's what i felt to do and i accept that. but for clarification purposes to make sure we're all understanding how difficult the process is, i wanted to voice my opinion. i do need to be patient with the scenario. a moratorium at this point is not the answer. and even with all the progress that we've made, the barriers to entry, including the large amounts of capital required are all just a lot to deal with. so, i'm against talks and moratorium at this point, i just wanted to express that. thank you, all, for your time. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. do we have any callers left in the queue? >> we have no more callers in the queue.

>> thank you. mr. chair? >> chair mar: public comment is now closed. i want to thank the callers in public comment, especially alex for sharing your experience as an equity applicant trying to navigate the challenging landscape. supervisor safai, do you have closing remarks? >> member safai: no, i think just a few. i basically made them to director -- acting director pierce and director arsay and you colleagues. we have a few things we need to continue to look at. i think we've created what i'd like to say are some real strong regulations. we put in there businesses have to be held for seven years before they sell. for equity applicants, you have to own 40% of the business. we wanted to ensure that when i wrote the legislation that there would be parity in the market and we wanted to prioritize

equity so that there would be parity in the market. we're concerned about delivery. we want to make sure that's done in the right way. it's not done to undermine everything we've done and it's the same thing with the conversation about the appropriate tax level along with the appropriate numbers in the market. i'm not advocating in any way for a moratorium. i think the market will take care of itself right now, but we do need to have that conversation going forward and we do need to look at how delivery is done and done appropriately. so i appreciate the opportunity to get this on the schedule today, chair mar, and i don't know necessarily -- maybe what would be good, to be honest with you, chair, if we could continue this item to the call of the chair and we can bring these items back in the upcoming year and allow them to report on what other markets look like, give us

an update on the delivery conversation and have a further conversation about the appropriate tax level as those conversations progress. if that's okay with you? >> chair mar: sure. yeah, i'd be happy to do that. so, i would move that we continue this item to the call of the chair. madame clerk? >> clerk: on the motion to continue item number 2 to the call of the chair, vice chair stefani? >> member stefani: aye. >> member haney: aye. >> chair mar: aye. there are three ayes. >> chair mar: thank you. thanks, supervisor safai. for this informative hearing. madame clerk, can you call item number 3, please? >> agenda item 3 is ordinance amending the administrative code to require the police department and the district attorney to submit quarterly reports to the board of supervisors, the mayor

and various city departments regarding the number of cases of domestic violence. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this ordinance should call the public comment number, 1-415-655-0001. enter the meeting i.d., 2486 673 7933 # #. to connect to the meeting, once connected, press star 3 to enter the queue to speak. please wait for us to call public comment on the item and when the system indicates you've been unmuted, that will be your cue to begin your comments. >> chair mar: thank you. colleagues, as you know, this is an important piece of legislation that supervisor stefani sponsored and the board adopted it recently at the full board. at the full board, supervisor ronen duplicated the file and requested that the duplicated file be sent back to committee

with the attention of proposing some amendments -- intention of proposing some amendments. that's what we have today, we have supervisor ronen's office here to speak to the amendments. but before we do that, i just wanted to allow supervisor stefani the opportunity to make remarks, because this really was -- you were the original sponsor of this. >> member stefani: right. thank you so much, chair mar. yes, this legislation is extremely important to me as i've explained in hearings and at the full board and this passed a month ago today on november 9th. you know, i introduced this legislation because i feared that domestic violence cases weren't being proos cuted. i -- prosecuted. i also feared that some cases were being resolved in a way that did not protect the victims. the intention of the legislation is to provide framework on which to report. the police department and the district attorney to report on the state of domestic violence. as you know, i've been a former prosecutor, i understand the criminal justice system, i

understand the penal code, i understand the frameworks upon which data can be understood. i want to thank supervisor ronen and her legislative aide for working with my legislative aide on this. we received the amendments last night. today, supervisor ronen and i had a conversation. we're working together. i have not yet been satisfied with where we're at in the amendments, changing definitions that i believe would undermine the framework. we have had conversations are supervisor ronen understood my point of view, but i have not had a chance to absorb and understand those amendments and i want to make sure, because this legislation is way too important to me, that i understand them. also the police department has not had a chance to review these and i want to make sure, because i've been working closely with

them on how we best report out. and i -- because of that, i want to make sure, like i said that, the amendments do what both supervisor ronen and i want it to do to the legislation, which is to strengthen it and to make it understandable in a way that allows the data to be provided in a way that provides what is happening in domestic violence in san francisco. i'm not confident we have coming to understanding on the amendments. i know and am confident that supervisor ronen and i will, based on the conversation this morning, i know we will get there. but i'm going to ask my colleagues to continue this to the next meeting so that we can get comfortable on these amendments and so that the police department has a chance to look at them as well. so -- >> if i could just respond to that briefly. it's my understanding,

supervisor stefani, that supervisor ronen will continue to work on these. these are substantive amendments, but she would like the committee to adopt these today. there will have to be continued regardless, but she is requesting that she be adopted today, so just to let everybody know. with that, i'd like to talk about some of our amendments. >> i just want to say that -- i just want to say that i have not even had a chance to absorb them or look at them today. so i don't -- i will not be voting on anything that i am not comfortable with, so i would ask my colleagues to do the same. you haven't seen them and i haven't had a chance to even explain to you what i think and i introduced this legislation way back in may. we had the hearing back in october and passed last month. and i would really respectfully request that we continue and i make that motion. >> chair mar: thank you, supervisor stefani. >> do you want to present the

proposed amendments? >> yes, thank you so much, chair mar. >> so, committee members, we would just like to as supervisor stefani explained, we want to strengthen this ordinance. we believe in the spirit of this ordinance, but we would like to essentially expand it to involve all forms of domestic violence. as the ordinance is currently written, the reporting requirement only includes cases where physical touching occurred. it defines domestic violence as the crime defined in penal code section 273.5, which involves corpial injury to spouse and refers to domestic battery cases. however, we all know that sadly domestic violence and the cycle of violence can take many forms, some of which do not result in physical touching or injury. prior to this i've been a public

defender for five years, so i'm very familiar with this as well. in terms of the entire scope of domestic violence, it could include cases where there are threats of violence, violating a domestic restraining order, stalking, harassment, or even assaulting someone. [indiscernible] [indiscernible] >> chair mar: we lost you on audio. can't hear you. nope, can't hear you. there it goes. we can hear you now. >> great, sorry.

we can't hear you. >> so essential limiting domestic violence in this case depends -- [indiscernible] -- >> chair mar: you keep dropping out. your audio keeps dropping out. >> okay. let me see if -- it says everything is on, so i'm not sure. >> we can hear you now. >> okay. now we can't hear you. nope, can't hear you. >> if i could just have one second?

can you hear me now? >> yes. >> i'm so sorry. i don't have an actual microphone on my computer so i have to use this headset. i think the last place i left off was just explaining we have to provide data to protect survivors from suffering all forms of domestic violence, not just cases where physical touching or injury occurred. so the first amendment we proposed will expand the definition of what constitutes domestic violence by outlining what is considered abuse, domestic violence and domestic violence cases. so it expands beyond penal code sections 273.5 and 243e1 to include those forms of violence that fall outside of the these two code sections. in no way are we eliminating these code sections, we're just expanding on top of it. it will also include cases that are referred to the police

department special victims unit and cases that the district attorney refers to their domestic violence unit. so these first amendments first can be found on page 1, lines 18 through 24. we're first defining abuse. abuse means intentionally or recklessly causing or attempting to cause bodily injury or placing another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent serious bodily injury to himself or herself or others. we then go to define domestic violence, which means abuse committed against an adult or a minor who is a spouse, former spouse, habitant, former habitant or person with whom the suspect has had a child or had a dating or engagement relationship. this one, with the amendments we circulated earlier, we changed this just a little bit based off supervisor stefani and

supervisor ronen's conversation, but it reads as follows. page 2, lines 1-7 -- domestic violence cases are incidents presented or cases charged consistent with the definition of domestic violence set forth herein, including but not limited to cases charged under penal code section 273.5 and 243e1. so, this morning, i did have an opportunity to speak with supervisor ronen. she explained to me what some of supervisor stefani's concerns were and in an effort to accommodate supervisor stefani and take her recommendations into account -- and i did send these recommendations to supervisor stefani's office as supervisor stefani indicated -- i have been working closely with her legislative aide dominica, so the following amendments are reflected as such and i will

circulate this to all committee members as well. but on page 2, line 23, it would be read the number of domestic violence cases that the police department must report that fall under the definitions provided by penal code sections 273.5 and 243e1 as well as cases referred to special victims unit then presented to the district attorney for investigation and/or prosecution in the prior quarter and of those cases, the number in which the child or children were present and/or a firearm or firearms were present. so, essentially, what this would do is require the police department to report on the cases that supervisor stefani has in her original legislation, but it would also expand those cases that are referred to the special victims unit as well.

for police officers as well, when they arrive on the scene, they're able to evaluate the relationship between the individuals, even if a physical touching has not occurred. for instance, like i stated earlier, a violation of a domestic restraining order is still a domestic violence case. but the original legislation doesn't take that into account, so we're expanding the reporting requirements in that -- in that respect. further, on page 2, lines 3-5, we have changed it so that it states the number of domestic violence cases that the district attorney charged in the prior quarter, including cases defined under penal code section 273.5 and 243e1 as well as cases referred to the district attorney's domestic violence unit. so similarly, what we changed above in terms of the police department's reporting requirements, we're doing the

same below. so we will circulate these amendments to you as well. finally, the second amendment we proposed will require the district attorney to provide data on how the offices victims services unit is serving survivors of domestic violence, specifically the amendment asks the d.a. to report on how many victims the unit contacted or attempted to contact to provide victim services. this amendment can be found on page 3, lines 9-13. and states the number of crime victims to whom in the prior quarter the district attorney has provided or made documented efforts to provide victim services, including but not limited to assistance applying for protective orders, guidance in navigating the criminal justice system, referrals to local resources and services and support at court hearings.

finally, committee members, supervisor ronen added a section allowing the district attorney the opportunity to provide additional information for disposition and victim services where the raw data may not provide adequate information. this amendment can be found at page 4, lines 1-4. and it states, in any report required under subsection a or b above, the district attorney may in its discretion and to the extent consistent with applicable law provide information regarding the domestic violence cases and victim services reported. any such supplemental information shall not include personal identifying information. so we're asking for this specific data because, this data will provide information that will be useful during the budget process and in terms of making policy decisions on how to divide funds and services between the community and victim

services unit of the d.a.'s office. for example, penal code section 273.5 will cause deportation proceedings to commence against individuals, even if they have lawful immigration status. the penal code, i believe it's specifically section 1016.3 requires both parties, the public defenders office as well as the district attorney to consider immigration consequences in every single case. therefore, both public defenders and district attorneys often negotiate a plea agreement that holds an individual responsible for domestic violence, but it won't lead to deportation and immediate banishment from their family and community. we need to make sure that the survivors in our city are properly represented and provided with the services they need. given that these amendments are

substantive, they will have to be continued to the next meeting, but it's my understanding that supervisor ronen is asking to adopt these amendments today and especially in light of the first deadline for reporting requirements that is coming up at the end of this month, i believe, december 31st if i'm not mistaken. supervisor ronen is happy to continue working on the language in between now and then and can discuss any further amendments, but she is asking this morning that the committee members adopt the amendments and continue the amended duplicated file to the next meeting of the public safety and neighborhood services committee. thank you. >> chair mar: thank you for the overview of the proposed amendments and thanks to you and supervisor ronen for your work on trying to strengthen this really important legislation. supervisor stefani? >> member stefani: yes, thank you, chair mar, and thank you for the explanation to those

very complex amendments. and i just want to add that, you know, this is a very important piece of legislation. supervisor ronen and i are working together on it. i think it's audacious to ask people to accept amendments that are this complex and this substantive without -- without having the police department even look at them, which is going to require them to report differently than they have been, require them to report differently than what is in prior legislation authorized by supervisor mar. i would like to ask diana, from the police department, whether or not she's seen these amendments and has any concerns or she would like some time to consider them and get back to the original author of the legislation? so, diana? >> thank you, supervisor stefani. chair mar, if that's okay with you, i'm happy to respond. thank you. good afternoon, again, i'm the director of policy and public

affairs or the san francisco police department. i, too, want to thank supervisor ronen for elevating this issue of domestic violence. i think it's really important. it's critical. we need not to forget the issues of domestic. for the san francisco police department it's incredibly important to help victims, especially of domestic violence. however, what i will say, we worked with supervisor stefani to go back and forth about what we're capable of doing given limitations to staffing. this is the first time we hear of this, nikita, so it would be really beneficial for us, given that we're going to be the department that actually institutes and reports on a quarterly basis, that we review and we agree and we dialogue with supervisor ronen's office and supervisor stefani to be able to decide on any substantive amendments. it's difficult for us to expand

the definition given that we would need to report. we're looking at earlier in this hearing on another item, we have such limited amount of capacity given union square, homicide in the mission district, homicides in bayview western addition, looking at increase around robbery, looking at increase with the issues going on with policing and limited amount of staffing. we want do what is best for the city, but we cannot agree on additional capacity for the department if we don't have the staff. i think for us it's critical if we're going to discuss an amendment, with etalk about -- we talk about that ahead of time. we spent three and a half months discussing back and forth with supervisor stefani's office. we're hoping the same courtesy. we worked in the past with supervisor ronen around other amendments and we've gone back and forth to come up with a good

compromise but also an important piece of legislation on other public safety topics that benefit the city. as of today, it's really sort of unfair for our department to step in and just hear the amendments today. because i have not received anything at all. neither has the chief. neither has s.v.u. or any of the staff. i apologize to throw that out there. we want to be supportive and make sure we're clear, but i hope you understand, we do need to be able to talk openly about what we're capable and not capable of doing. i would encourage us to read what is already out there when it comes to the quarterly requirements. we have a quarterly report already that is instituted that talks about certain specific fields around victims. i do think that, you know, supervisor stefani's legislation will actually make our reporting requirements more robust and it will be more specific with domestic violence, but we need to be all on the same page, right? so i want to encourage just for the committee to really rethink

about involving our department when it comes to some of these amendments. >> thank you, diana. i just want to say, too, i agree with supervisor ronen on needing more information and thank you for being thoughtful about this. and i think what we're getting at here is to have a proper framework upon which to pull out the data. and for me starting that framework within 273.5 and the 243e1 which is the fame work on which the san francisco police department is operating and the cases they give over to the district attorney's office, it is then within the purview of the d.a. to provide as much information as he wants. if he provides the information on those that are sent over, but if he can also provide information about other cases that come to him that he believes fall under the family code definition of domestic violence. so this is something, supervisor ronen and i have agreed to work

out. but to adopt amendments that nobody has really looked at, i think it's really irresponsible and i am not going to do it. and i would like the courtesy to just continue this item to the next meeting and continue to work with supervisor ronen's office in the process. and i'd like to make that motion, again. >> mr. chair, before any motions are made, i would like to make a clarification about the procedures. because this is a duplicated ordinance and has not been amended from the original version, the original version will go into effect on december 25. at this time, the duplicated ordinance will no longer be valid because it will be codifieding language. if we want to continue this, i would say that some minor amendment be continued, because you will not be able to continue

it if there is no -- >> thank you for that clarification. the next meeting of this committee is not until january 13th. >> understood. >> is there any part of these amendments that you would be willing to adopt today, supervisor stefani? maybe the amendments regarding what defines abuse? >> member stefani: let's see. i would have to have a minute. because i don't want to change the definition in a way that is going to make it very confusing for the police department to report out. based on, of course, what you heard diana say. so whatever we change, it's going to have to be something that doesn't affect the framework of the reporting and the structure that i have worked out and have worked on for quite some time. so, i don't know, chair mar, if you want to do a five-minute

recess so i can figure that out? i think to figure that out on the fly is -- >> chair mar: okay yeah. i hear you. we can certainly take a brief recess. i just want to see deputy city attorney pearson, were you going to weigh in? >> thank you, chair mar. as you are reviewing the amendments to see which if any you're prepared to make today, i wanted to make clear that our office prepared and approved as to form a set of amendments that i believe were circulated to the committee yesterday. there were additional records that were -- amendments that were read into the record today that we have not approved as to form yet. so the ones that i think you should be looking at are those that were circulated yesterday. thank you. >> chair mar, in the ones that were circulated yesterday, i only have the ones that i just got. very last minute regarding allowing the d.a. to submit

supplemental information. that would be okay. dominica, can you give me the old amendments? so under the old amendments, from yesterday, page 4, 1 -- lines 1 through 4, it says any report required, the district attorney may in discretion provide supplemental information regarding the domestic violence cases and victim services reported. any such supplemental information shall not include personal identifying information. i would be fine to accept that amendment. >> chair mar: okay. that's good. >> so, committee members, i would ask you to adopt that specific amendment for now and

if we could continue the -- the amended duplicated file to the next meet ongoing of the public safety -- meeting of the public safety and neighborhood services committee, that would be our request this morning. >> chair mar: sounds good. does that sound good to you, supervisor stefani? >> member stefani: yes, that's fine. >> chair mar: do you want to make that motion and then we can go to public comment. >> sure, i move that the duplicated file be amended to include on page 4, lines 1 through 4, the lines that i just read. i don't think i need to read them again. >> chair mar: all right. thank you. can we go to public comment? are there any callers on the line? >> yes, mr. chair. we're checking to see if there are callers in the queue. for those who wish to speak on

this item, please call 1-415-655-0001. enter the meeting i.d., 2486 673 7933 # #. when connected, press star 3 to enter the queue to speak. system prompt will indicate you've raised your hand. we do not have any callers in the queue, mr. chair. >> chair mar: great. public comment is closed. i would just move that we continue this item to the next meeting at the public safety and neighborhood services committee. which i believe is january 13th. >> and i'm sorry, just a quick question, would that specific amendment be adopted so we can still be working on it? >> chair mar: oh. >> we have to adopt that, right? >> chair mar: yeah. why don't we do that? >> on the first motion to accept

the amendment to item number 3 on page 4, lines 1 through 5, which is subsection f, vice chair stefani? >> member stefani: aye. >> member haney: aye. >> chair mar: aye. >> would you like me to call the roll on the continuation of the ordinance as amended? >> chair mar: yes, please. >> >> member stefani: aye. >> member haney: aye. >> chair mar: aye. >> clerk: there are three ayes. >> chair mar: okay. so we will come back to that on january 13th. thanks, everyone. >> thank you so much. madame clerk, is there any further business? >> that concludes our business for today. >> chair mar: all right, we are adjourned. thanks.

hi everyone. i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i know that many of you have been anxious to hear what's happening with this new omicron variant. the coronavirus and we're here today to talk about and announce that here in the city and county of san francisco

under the university of california san francisco and our partnership with the department of public health using the latest of technology, we have discovered our first case not only here in san francisco but the entire country and i wanted to at this time introduce dr. grant colfax to talk about the specifics and what that means in terms of what we need to do as a city. dr. colfax. >> thank you, mayor breed. good morning everybody and thank you, mayor breed, for your ongoing leadership during this pandemic. and i want to thank our partners at u.c.s.f. and especially dr. charles chiu and his team and i'd also like to thank our testing partner dr. scott topper. both are here today. and, of course my partner

dr. mary ellen carol. all of us have been working in the last 24 hours with our state and federal partners at cdc and the state department of health to determine whether this indeed is the first case of omicron that has been detected and that has indeed been the result of our work overnight. i want to acknowledge our health officer dr. susan philip. but i also want to emphasize this is not a surprise. for those of you who knew, we thought omicron was already here. we just hadn't detected it yet. so this is cause for concern, but it's also certainly not a cause for panic. we are prepared in the city for this with regard to the case

itself. the person recently traveled to south africa and they did the right thing and got tested and reported their travel history. they had mild symptoms and thankfully recovered. contacts have been notified by the health department. and, again, here's what we know now. san francisco is relatively well positioned to respond to variants. our vaccine rate is high. more boosters are going into arms every day. 5-11-year-olds are getting vaccinated at rapid uptake. our masking and vaccine requirements are among the most stringent in the country. these efforts have been very effective in helping us slow the spread of the virus. and there's still a lot we do not know about omicron.

we don't know how infectious itself although there's a strong likelihood that it is more infectious than delta. we don't know how sick it makes people. and we're studying that throughout the world. we don't know how the vaccines will protect against transmission due to omicron. but most experts that i have spoken to believe the vaccine is still protective against the omicron variant. to best protect against this variant, get vaccinated for goodness sakes if you have not been vaccinated. get your booster if you're eligible. continue to wear those masks

inside where required. continue to take the steps that we know that has been successful in san francisco to prevent major loss of life and to slow the spread of this virus. we know how to do this, san francisco. at this time, we do not anticipate changing any of our health orders or changing restrictions or imposing new restrictions in san francisco. we will share information as we have it and get vaccinated, get your booster, wear the mask and for goodness sakes it's been a long almost 24 months now. please have a great holiday season with your family. and now i'd like to turn it

over to dr. chiu whose team worked so hard overnight to make sure we get this information as quickly as possible. thank you. >> good afternoon. so my laboratory at university california san francisco has been working very closely over the past year with the san francisco department of public health, the california department of public health and color genomics on genome basics of the virus. by that, we identify covid positive cases in the city and county, we make an attempt to sequence all cases that we are able to identify. this particular sample, i heard about it yesterday at about 3:00 p.m. and we were able to receive the sample in the laboratory by 8:00 p.m. we ran a very fast molecular test which looks for psychgene

drop-out. we were able to get the results of that test within two hours showing that potentially this sample was an omicron variant sample l. to concur this finding, we needed the viral genome of this virus and we used a pocket size sequencer made by oxford technologies. this is a sequencing technology in which we can go from detecting the virus to being able to detect the entire genome within a few hours. we were able to confirm the detection of omicron within five hours and we had most of the genome within eight hours. so 4:00 a.m. last night we were

able to detect the omicron variant. thank you. >> thank you. i think the goal of the public is to get vaccinated. the challenges with the covid-19 virus and what this means is we want to make sure that people get vaccinated. so at this time, if anyone has any questions, please let me know. are there any questions?

yes. i'll let dr. colfax answer that question. >> i'm sorry. i heard about sequencing, but i didn't quite hear the details of the question. i'll try to answer what i take the character of the question to be which is we are continuing to work with color, with dr. chiu's lab, with the state to sequence samples. we work with a number of partners in doing that. so generally, we're sampling more in san francisco and it depends on the site. so with our partnership at u.c.s.f. and the latino

taskforce, all those samples are being sequenced and then i'll turn to have them answer what percent of their samples are being. i think the key with the sequencing right now with the sample, the turn around time is considerable. so that's why we really wanted to run this sample locally as quickly as possible. as you know, across the nation and across the state locally, we're continuing to ensure that we sequence specimens as quickly as possible. again, i think the point is omicron is here. i don't want to be focused on when's the next case coming. we should all be reactive as we were yesterday. we need to get those vaccines and boosters get tested if you know that you've been exposed and continue to wear those masks. and i don't know if you have more to add. dr. topper. >> yeah.

so color health provides much of the infrastructure to execute their programs to defend against covid. to make unique samples available for sequencing. almost 100% of the samples, of the positive samples that are identified in san francisco and in california are being routed for sequencing. my name's scott topper. i'm the vice president of clinical operations at color.

i'm going to let dr. philip answer that question. >> i believe you were talking about walking through contact tracing. first of all. thank you to our lab partners. also, thank you to the individual themselves. they recognized that they had symptoms and they did what we should all be doing which is to get tested with symptoms. and then they reached out to sfpdh, with our team. we were able to speak with them. so with all investigations and contracting, we're talking to the individual, understanding what their risk factors might have been, in this case travel and i'm speaking with them to make sure they're staying home and once they know they have a positive test and then speaking to them about close contact. so that is the usual path that we follow, that is what we're doing in this case and we're in the process of doing that with this individual now.

the question was what kind of close contacts? yeah. for privacy reasons, we are giving out limited information about the specifics of the individual, but we are in the process of finding out the people that may have been in close contact with them and reaching out to those individuals specifically. the general definition is of a close contact is someone who has been within 6' for 15 minutes or more. that's the definition that has not yet changed. as we are learning more. we will understand that that definition has to change if this virus was more transmissible and that is generally what we ask people about. we most often will ask what other people are residing in the home. it's generally the length of time and being with someone. that is all in process now.

the question is now people have been traveling outside southern africa. the travel policy is governed at the national level and so we know there is a restriction, noncitizens traveling. we understand from our cdc colleagues that additional steps and requirements will be coming into place. and people are required to have a test within 72 hours. and we likely will be hearing more in the coming days with omicron of additional steps people will be asked to take pre and post travel. >> the question was about age.

we're not giving specific information. this was a previously healthy individual. their symptoms were mandy bujold and they did not have to be hospitalized. yes. this person was aware of the news of omicron and that's why they appropriately reached out after they returned from travel and then had their positive test result through the color laboratory. they got their result and reached out to public health. so i really appreciate the person's awareness and collaboration on this case. >> yeah. there's another question here.

yeah. i think that's probably an answer for dr. chiu. so the question is what lessons could sequencing provide for you. sequencing is very useful, has been shown to be very useful as a way to understand how understand the emergence of new variants in the community. it can also help with contact tracing, with being able to investigate outbreaks because the genome sequence is very often is specific for giving an individual so we can use the genomic sequence for how the transmission chains from person to person in the course of an outbreak. and from this example, it's useful in identifying specific variants such as the omicron

variant. to be able to identify the new variants in the community. i'm sorry. i missed that question. >> reporter: [inaudible] >> based on the question you're asking, is this the first sequence -- is this the first sample l that we've sequenced outside of the country? this is the first example of where we saw the s-gene sample. i've been told we have time for one more question. thank you and just to emphasize, you know, this is not where we were 20 months ago. we are in a much better place.

i don't want us to focus on counting omicron cases as much as the fact it is here, it's likely to increase over assume. we've got to get those boosters and vaccines. continue to wear the masks. thank you.

>> in 201,755.7 million passengers traveled through san francisco international airport. we have on average 150,000 people traveling through the airport every day. flying can be stressful so we have introduced therapy dogs to make flying more enjoyable.

the wag brigade is a partnership between the airport and the san francisco therapy animal assistant program to bring therapy animals into the airport, into the terminals to make passenger travel more enjoyable. i amgen fer casarian and i work here at san francisco international airport. the idea for therapy dogs got started the day after 9/11. an employee brought his therapy dog to work after 9/11 and he was able to see how his dog was able to relieve passenger's jitter. when we first launched the program back in 2013, our main goal was to destress our passengers however what we quickly found is that our animals were helping us find a way to connect with our pang. passengers. we find there are a lot of

people traveling through the airport who are missing their pets and who are on their road a lot and can't have pets and we have come in contact with a lot of people recently who have lost pet. >> i love the wag brigade. >> one of my favorite parts is walking into the terminals and seeing everybody look up from their device, today everybody is interacting on their cell phone or laptop and we can walk into the terminal with a dog or a pig and people start to interact with each other again and it's on a different level. more of an emotional level. >> i just got off an 11.5 hour flight and nice to have this distraction in the middle of it. >> we look for wag brigade

handlers who are comfortable in stressful situations. >> i like coming to airport it's a lot of fun and the people you talk to are generally people who are missing their dogs. >> they are required to compete a certification process. and they are also required to complete a k9 good citizen test and we look for animals who have experienced working with other organizations such as hospitals and pediatric units and we want to be sure that the animals we are bringing into the airport are good with children and also good with some of our senior travelers. i think toby really likes meeting kids. that is his favorite thing. he likes to have them pet him and come up to him and he really loves the kids. >> our wag brigade animals can

be spotted wearing custom vets and they have custom patches. >> there is never a day that repeats itself and there is never and encounter that repeats itself. we get to do maximum good in a small stretch of time and i have met amazing people who have been thrilled to have the interaction. >> the dogs are here seven days a week, we have 20 dogs and they each come for a two hour shift. >> there is a lot of stress when people have traveling so to from these animals around to ease the stress and help people relax a little bit. i think it's great. >> one of our dogs has special need and that is tristine.

he wears a wheel around. >> he has special shoes and a harness and we get it together in the parking lot and then we get on the air train. he loves it. little kids love him because he is a little lower to the ground so easy to reach and he has this big furry head they get to pet and he loves that. >> he doesn't seem to mind at all. probably one of the happiest dogs in the world. >> many people are nervous when they travel but seeing the dogs is just a wonderful relief. >> what i absolutely love most about it is the look on people's faces, so whenever they are stressed and flying is stressful these days you get these wonderful smile. >> i am the mom of lilo the pig and she is san francisco's first

therapy pig. >> lilo joined the wag brigade as our first pig. >> wag brigade invited us to join the program here and we have done it about a year-and-a-half ago. our visits last 1.5 to 2 hours and it does take a little bit longer to get out of the terminal because we still get a lot of attention and a lot of people that want to interact with lilo. >> i feel honored to be part of the wag brigade. it's very special to meet so many people and make so many feel happy and people that work here. it's been a great experience for me and a great experience for to

toby. >> it's been an extremely successful program, so the next time you are here, stop by and say hi.

>> ♪♪. ♪♪ we are definitely pioneers in airport concession world a world of nationally if not entirely or internationally >> everybody is cop us right now. >> the people that were in charge of the retail this is where that began. >> i didn't think we would have a location at the airport. >> we've set the bar higher with the customer commerce. >> telling me about the operator and how you go about finding them and they get from being in the city to being in the airport. >> so first, we actually find a table and once we know what we want a sit-down we go to the

neighborhoods in san francisco and other people seminary of the retail let us know about the rain water and are excited to have the local operators in the airport. >> we have to go going through the conceive selective process and they award a lease to the restaurant. >> they are planning on extending. >> we that you could out the china and the length evens and the travel serve and fourth your minds and it's all good. >> how long for a vendor to move through the process. >> i would say it could take 80 up to a year from the time we go out to bid until they actually open a restaurant. >> i don't know what we signed up for but the airport is happy to have us here.

and, you know, even taking out the track simple things there's a learning curve >> with once we're here they are helpful. >> it's an award-winning program. >> we're prude of your awards we have won 11 awards the latest for the best overall food address beverage program and . >> like the oscars (laughter). >> the professional world. >> tell me about the future food. >> all the sb national leases are xooirz and we're hoping to bring newer concepts out in san francisco and what your passengers want. >> well, i look forward to the future (laughter) air are we look fo [♪♪♪]

>> i just don't know that you can find a neighborhood in the city where you can hear music stands and take a ride on the low rider down the street. it is an experience that you can't have anywhere else in san francisco. [♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] >> district nine is a in the southeast portion of the city. we have four neighborhoods that i represent. st. mary's park has a completely unique architecture. very distinct feel, and it is a very close to holly park which is another beautiful park in san francisco. the bernal heights district is unique in that we have the hell which has one of the best views

in all of san francisco. there is a swinging hanging from a tree at the top. it is as if you are swinging over the entire city. there are two unique aspects. it is considered the fourth chinatown in san francisco. sixty% of the residents are of chinese ancestry. the second unique, and fun aspect about this area is it is the garden district. there is a lot of urban agriculture and it was where the city grew the majority of the flowers. not only for san francisco but for the region. and of course, it is the location in mclaren park which is the city's second biggest park after golden gate. many people don't know the neighborhood in the first place if they haven't been there. we call it the best neighborhood nobody has ever heard our. every neighborhood in district nine has a very special aspect. where we are right now is the mission district. the mission district is a very special part of our city. you smell the tacos at the

[speaking spanish] and they have the best latin pastries. they have these shortbread cookies with caramel in the middle. and then you walk further down and you have sunrise café. it is a place that you come for the incredible food, but also to learn about what is happening in the neighborhood and how you can help and support your community. >> twenty-fourth street is the birthplace of the movement. we have over 620 murals. it is the largest outdoor public gallery in the country and possibly the world. >> you can find so much political engagement park next to so much incredible art. it's another reason why we think this is a cultural district that we must preserve. [♪♪♪] >> it was formed in 2014. we had been an organization that had been around for over 20

years. we worked a lot in the neighborhood around life issues. most recently, in 2012, there were issues around gentrification in the neighborhood. so the idea of forming the cultural district was to help preserve the history and the culture that is in this neighborhood for the future of families and generations. >> in the past decade, 8,000 latino residents in the mission district have been displaced from their community. we all know that the rising cost of living in san francisco has led to many people being displaced. lower and middle income all over the city. because it there is richness in this neighborhood that i also mentioned the fact it is flat and so accessible by trip public transportation, has, has made it very popular. >> it's a struggle for us right now, you know, when you get a lot of development coming to an area, a lot of new people coming to the area with different sets of values and different culture.

there is a lot of struggle between the existing community and the newness coming in. there are some things that we do to try to slow it down so it doesn't completely erase the communities. we try to have developments that is more in tune with the community and more equitable development in the area. >> you need to meet with and gain the support and find out the needs of the neighborhoods. the people on the businesses that came before you. you need to dialogue and show respect. and then figure out how to bring in the new, without displacing the old. [♪♪♪] >> i hope we can reset a lot of the mission that we have lost in the last 20 years. so we will be bringing in a lot of folks into the neighborhoods pick when we do that, there is a demand or, you know, certain types of services that pertain more to the local community and working-class. >> back in the day, we looked at

mission street, and now it does not look and feel anything like mission street. this is the last stand of the latino concentrated arts, culture and cuisine and people. we created a cultural district to do our best to conserve that feeling. that is what makes our city so cosmopolitan and diverse and makes us the envy of the world. we have these unique neighborhoods with so much cultural presence and learnings, that we want to preserve. [♪♪♪]

>> by the time the last show came, i was like whoa, whoa,

whoa. i came in kicking and screaming and left out dancing. [♪♪♪] >> hello, friends. i'm the deputy superintendent of instruction at san francisco unified school district, but you can call me miss vickie. what you see over the next hour has been created and planned by our san francisco teachers for our students. >> our premise came about for san francisco families that didn't have access to technology, and that's primarily children preschool to second grade. >> when we started doing this distance learning, everything was geared for third grade and

up, and we work with the little once, and it's like how were they still processing the information? how were they supposed to keep learning? >> i thought about reaching the student who didn't have internet, who didn't have computers, and i wanted them to be able to see me on the t.v. and at least get some connection with my kids that way. >> thank you, friends. see you next time. >> hi, friend. >> today's tuesday, april 28, 2020. it's me, teacher sharon, and i'm back again. >> i got an e-mail saying that i had an opportunity to be on a show. i'm, like, what? >> i actually got an e-mail from the early education department, saying they were

saying of doing a t.v. show, and i was selected to be one of the people on it, if i was interested. i was scared, nervous. i don't like public speaking and all the above. but it worked out. >> talk into a camera, waiting for a response, pretending that oh, yeah, i hear you, it's so very weird. i'm used to having a classroom with 17 students sitting in front of me, where they're all moving around and having to have them, like, oh, sit down, oh, can you hear them? let's listen. >> hi guys. >> i kind of have stage flight when i'm on t.v. because i'm normally quiet?

>> she's never quiet. >> no, i'm not quiet. >> my sister was, like, i saw you on t.v. my teacher was, i saw you on youtube. it was exciting, how the community started watching. >> it was a lot of fun. it also pushed me outside of my comfort zone, having to make my own visuals and lesson plans so quickly that ended up being a lot of fun. >> i want to end today with a thank you. thank you for spending time with us. it was a great pleasure, and see you all in the fall. >> i'm so happy to see you today. today is the last day of the school year, yea! >> it really helped me in my teaching. i'm excited to go back teaching my kids, yeah. >> we received a lot of amazing

feedback from kiddos, who have seen their own personal teacher on television. >> when we would watch as a family, my younger son, kai, especially during the filipino episodes, like, wow, like, i'm proud to be a filipino. >> being able to connect with someone they know on television has been really, really powerful for them. and as a mom, i can tell you that's so important. the social confidence development of our early learners. [♪♪♪]

morning, everyone. welcome to the december 7th meeting of the san francisco county transportation authority board. i am rafael mandelman. i chair the board. i want to excuse commissioner melgar who had a death in the family and i'm going to excuse vice chair peskin from the early portion of this meeting as he is delayed but will be joining us. madame clerk, could you call the roll? >> commissioner chan: present. >> commissioner haney: present.