I dont need to be self we appreciating here. We are the media the means by with information flows. Were doing our jobs properly and freely, we allow a Healthy Society to talk to itself. It holds itself together by talking, arguing and getting to know one another so our media allows society to keep from falling apart. A lot of people would argue that social media has taken over that role. But we learned tragiccally that social media talk only among themselves allowing others to be isolated. If we cant question and challenge and involve everyone, i think we run the very serious risk of not becoming more unified but fragmented. Although this may seem counter intuitive i would like to accept this award not only among baher and fahmy who stood up for the freedom of press with courage and dorm nation, but for the 99 of us who did not come up tonight, because that routine and unrecognized work that we all do is all worth celebrating and fighting more. Thank you. [applause] [applause] ladies a
It could do for millions of americans. And far far away. A festival inspired by star wars. Many africanamericans in ferguson missouri, have accused the Police Department of excessive discrimination and force. That was before the killing of Michael Brown. This time, its coming from the Justice Department. Usher has more. Weeks of protest followed the shooting of Michael Brown in ferguson, missouri. Attorney general, eric holder promised a thorough investigation. And now data of the Police Reports over the last two years, and they showed that the police unfairly targeted blacks. They make up 60 of the population, and they accounted for 96 of all arrests. And blacks were twice as likely to be searched as whites and less likely to have drugs and weapons. 84 of the time force was used against blocks. The department of justice looked at statistics, which quoted a disproportionate number of blacks were subject to prostitution, jaywalking charges, and 92 of disturbing the peace charges. The st
I guess maybe this is more a question to the mayors budget office. You may not know but in terms of facilities and wifi we purportedly have it in this building and its horrible and just like the Market Street wifi is horrible and so many of the city provided Wifi Networks are in inadequate and at least we have it and it works sometimes and i guess more of a question for d tbut a broader question. I mean city facilities we should have free Wifi Everywhere but particularly in city facilities. If we cant put it in our own facilities how do we roll it out to the whole city . I dont know if you can comment on that. Sorry to put you on the spot. I think thats why i am here. Thank you for the question. As i think the cao talked about last week dt and coit put together a connectivity plan that is part of the plan adopted by the board this week. The first issue is connectivity of the city buildings and the First Priority is the fire stations. The fire chief and i just spoke about this issue yes
Of paused . We have not been funded to keep up with that plan but we do have commitments from the Mayors Office that for example we have asked to play catch up and asked for 50 million to get to where we need to get. There are standards that we should adhere to that the National Fire Protection Agency calls for. And we have rigs on the streets beyond what the guidelines say should be used as a front line apparatus. We were given 50 million and we were given the information and only 17 million is in the budget for fleet so the 50 million request is unreasonable and we get that but the good news we will work with the Mayors Office to obviously not get it in one year but a phased approach to get us back on track because we did have years we had a lot of rigs coming in but they need to be retired at the same time so we want to get back to a plan where were able to make it reasonable year in and year out. Related to facilities and capital. The department operates 50 facilities and three at
Last time we checked we had 34 of the uniform work force live here in the city with a large percentage of the other living in the greater bay area the nine bay area counties and some live outside the limits but its not as many more than i would like but not as many as you would think and on the recruitment piece i appreciate the question. Last year we asked for a single function person in uniform just to deal with recruitment and there was a position funded and although i think the tide maybe turning and i find the value of having a person. They have a recruitment unit. We have a few people trying to piece things together and were proud of being one of the most diverse departments in the country. And i think when the federal Consent Decree went away there was concern there would be back sliding and our numbers in terms of recruitment and retention has remained robust. We have 52 of the department is minority and women and we have a very Representative Work force. We want to continue th