Significant, exciting, and meaningful progress on police reform. We you have lowered the amount of use of force significantly and substantially. The amount of officers that have been cit trained continues to go up, and instead of, you know, what we had had before your arrival, which was a whole series of officerinvolved shootings, what weve seen lately is the regular use of time and distance that leads to the peaceful resolution of crises, often with people with mental illness, that have gotten those individuals the treatment they need with nobody, no officer, no civilian injured. And its just incredibly exciting. Its a tremendous testament to your leadership. I cant tell, you know, to your officers, i cant tell you how many times recently that captains in my district have called me and detailed incidents that in the past could have led to someone getting shot and killed, but instead, through time and distance, and working with dph and deescalation, led to successful outcomes. And its just i want to just recognize that work. I want to thank you for that work, and i want to suggest that we keep moving in that direction. Its not only theoretical anymore, its actually working on the ground. I believe that introducing a new weapon that is increasingly more and more problematic and the evidence is bearing that out, is dangerous and will set that tremendous gain that you have made backwards. Number one, were all paying attention to the media and the three deaths just recently last year in San Mateo County that were immediately after someone was tased. We have, you know, reviewed evidence after evidence that shows because theres this myth that tasers are less than lethal, that they often are used more regularly than guns and, therefore, lead to more deaths. We, you know, just from statistics from 1983 to 2017, there are at least 155 People Killed by police where tasers are a primary or contributing cause of the death, and then what we also know, its not only dangerous for the person thats tased, its dangerous for the officers themselves. Because they are ineffective 45 of the time, and when you have to get close to tase someone, so if an officer, instead of creating that time and distance, is getting close to tase someone and its ineffective 45 of the time, its putting that officer in as much danger as its putting the individual being tased. And thats a real, real concern. And then finally, you know, i was just listening to an npr report the other day that said because of the substantial risk to life that tasers cause, because of the deaths that this weapon has caused, Tasers International has reduced the power of the electric shock, and because of that, officers that are still using tasers in los angeles, in new york, and in houston, are reporting that theyve become less and less effective. What that has been and you can imagine, an officer tases an individual whos in crisis or mentally ill, the person its not effective enough to incapacitate them, and in order to respond to that incident, officers, and the data is bearing out, are using their guns and shooting more. Directly in the opposite direction where weve been heading and where we want to continue to go. And so i just, you know, the more and more evidence, the more and more studies, the more and more, you know, even examples of people being so injured, if not killed by this weapon, it being a danger for our officers, i, you know, have always thought this way, but i am more and more convinced as the days go on that this is an absolute mistake, and i believe we should remove this line item from our budget. But i also want to say please continue your amazing work. Its working. Its building more trust in the community. Its were finally getting that interaction that weve been begging for so long between officers and dph, and lets not put that work backwards. Thank you, supervisor, and definitely, i respect your comments. Thank you. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. Supervisor stefani. Supervisor stefani thank you, chair fewer, thank you, chief scott for being here today. I want to focus on overtime and the union square ambassadors, and with regard to the overtime implementation, if we implement these cuts, can you tell us what parts of the city will most likely see reduction in services . If we implement . Supervisor stefani if you implement the recommendation to get rid of the overtime. To cut . Supervisor stefani probably not a very good question. Yeah, so the mid Market Civic Center area, youll see a reduction from what we intend to do across the city, but mid market and civic center area, ill start there, you know, the transit hubs, the car breakins, some of the work that we intend to do there, across the city, the i think we distributed a list of where that where we intend to implement, enhance new foot beat, so across the city, those areas would be impacted, as well. And again, it goes back to and i want to kind of put this in the context of supervisor ronens comments. All this work works together. I mean, time and distance, we spend time on an incident, while thats going on, you still have these other demands that are happening with car breakins and people wanting to see foot beats in their neighborhood, so id like to think its not just in a vacuum of whether or not the foot patrols will be on your block or in your commercial corridor. It all works together, and it really does, because one thing allows us to do the other thing, and when you take one piece of that Building Block away, it does impact other areas of policing. And i agree, i think we are in a very good place because of the good work that the men and women of our department are doing, but it does come at a significant cost. You know, the cit work that was talked about, thats 60 hours of training. And were putting our goal is just for the 40hour training, 210 officers through that training a year, so those officers are not out on the street working foot beat, sector cars. Thats how the funding supports the overall mission, because it allows us to keep doing those things that were doing to be successful, while not cutting back on the services that we need with the demands that we have in front of us. Supervisor stefani okay. And so it is clear to me then if this is limited and we follow this recommendation, that we will lose foot patrols in each of our districts. Is that correct . You will lose some, yes. Right now its a tremendous amount of pressure to keep juggling to keep the foot patrols in place. We redeployed over 100 officers to get to where we are now. That came at a cost. Those officers werent just sitting around. Captains were under pressure to do things asked of them, and that pressure comes up to me in terms of we have to make choices. Do we put them in sector cars . Do we put them in the plain clothed units to deal with car breakins . And were constantly juggling that. This funding will support and allow us to be able to. Supervisor stefani i saw captain from Central Station asking for more around lombard street, so im one of the supervisors that constantly is requesting foot patrols, so i appreciate it, and it is my understanding that this is not new funding, right, its repurposing. Youre absolutely right. Supervisor stefani okay. So those are my questions around overtime. In terms of the union square ambassadors, i would like to understand the implications of whether or not we do not go forward with this program. I heard it when i heard it announced, it sounded very exciting. I know a lot of people, especially in the union square area, especially the Business Improvement district, were very much looking forward to this program, and i would like to understand why if we dont go forward, obviously, we still have policing to do in that area, which would seem to me we would be required for more foot beats, so im trying to understand the value of keeping the program when it might be more expensive to put more foot beats there to fill a Public Safety need that is very great in that union square area. Yes, and thank you for that question. Thats exactly how we have to arrive at a decision point. We identify a need, get demands from the public, look at crime statistics, trends, conditions in the area, and we have to decide how were going to address it, and typically, our only resource is to put officers there. Sometimes foot beat, but we have to address it by putting officers there, which is in an ideal world, thats great, but were looking at a more effective costefficient or economical way to do this, and to have a presence, not necessarily uniformed officer, but to have a presence thats engaged with the public that reports what they see, that then we can coordinate getting officers in place when they are needed, to make a tremendous difference. So to answer your question, our alternative is, yes, we have to post officers to address the issue and then try to keep them there as long as we can until the problem goes away, and thats what we end up doing. Its been described as whackamole. Supervisor stefani right. Sometimes we have to do that, but, you know, we dont want to continue with this whackamole game. We want to try Creative Solutions that are economical that we can do, put in place, and sustain, so we can make a difference in this area. Supervisor stefani and it can even result in higher overtime costs. It could, yes. Supervisor stefani i just want to say a couple things, and i think chair fewer said something at the very beginning of this meeting that we here are taxed with, of course, on the budget and finance committee, of making sure were spending taxpayer dollars wisely, and we have been asking hard questions of each Department Head and really making sure that we are making decisions that are sound and that are basically taking care of the taxpayers in a way that i think they would want us to. Here with the police department, i feel that i am not only obligated to follow that wise edict, but at the same time i feel that the charter, not that i feel the charter speaks to this in terms of section 4. 127, where we are guided by the voters who passed something in 1994 that said at all times we should have 1,971 full duty sworn officers at all times, and thats not something we can pick and choose to follow. That is in the charter, its mandated, i confirmed with the deputy City Attorney we cant pick and choose what we want to follow out of the charter, so when i hear were increasing police force by 155 or whatever, im fine with that, especially in the 1,971 Police Officers that we are required at least at a minimum to provide. So i am guided not only by what i should be doing with taxpayer money, but what are my obligations under the charter. And my feeling is that based on the whackamole game that you are describing, overtime costs, trying to get people in the academy, retirements, that we are not at that 1,971 number. Not consistently. I dont know that were here now. Last time you were here, we werent there, so my feeling is that we have to do everything according to the charter to make sure that we are fulfilling that obligation under the charter. Also, not only that, but it is a core function of local government to make sure that our public is safe, and like supervisor ronen said, there is so much that we have done, that you are done, that has been successful with the foot beats. I was going over this with my staff, since investing in proactive policing strategies, we are finally seeing positive results. Homicides are done, assaults are down, and theft and burglary are down. You have implemented important reforms. Officerinvolved shootings are down, use of force is down, body cameras are being implemented, bias training has been deployed. So much is being done positively at the San Francisco police department, and i thank you for that, and i am not comfortable right now with cutting overtime, because i feel that it will have a detriment to my district. I feel that it will have a detriment to the other districts, and i also feel that the union square Ambassador Program is something that we should go forward with, based on the fact that if we dont, were going to have to put more foot patrols there and be more expensive in the long run. Thats my feeling. I know we have more discussion, but thank you again. And i want to say one more thing, because chair fewer said something last week about this being such a noble profession and mentioned, you know, her husband served for 35 years and the sacrifice, youre running to danger and everyones running away, but i think what we often forget, too, is that its not just the Police Officers, its the family members. Its people like sandy, people like my best friends married to Police Officers that go through so much, and it is a noble profession, and again, i want to thank you for serving and definitely for family members who serve alongside their spouse and their friends, so thank you, chief. Thank you, supervisor stefani. Supervisor fewer okay, supervisor haney. Supervisor haney thank you, chair fewer and thank you, chief scott. Im over here. Wheres that coming from . And i want to also thank you for your leadership. Weve been able to work very closely together and ive told you im very supportive of foot patrols along mid market, union square, and along the tenderloin neighborhood. There is a lot of support for it, and weve seen positive impacts from it. Some of the challenges that were having around drug dealing in particular, i think, are assisted by having more foot patrols. Obviously, we also need a broader strategy, which we talked about, as well, which bring in other departments and really have something thats more coordinated and comprehensive. So i have some questions about the foot patrols and the overtime. So how many net new officers do we expect to have next year . Under the recommendation 29 or 30 . It was 35 in the mayors budget that came forward. Supervisor haney okay, and the number that were hearing thats much bigger than that, thats because i have here 155, is it because youre taking into consideration retirement and other things . Yeah, ms. Welsh, sorry 155 was in last years mayor mark farrells budget. 80 of those were existing funded recruits in the academy that were that became full duty, but we also lost 93 officers through retirements, terminations in that fiscal year, so theres some replacement factor there. And the mayor funded 25 civilizations, so that means as soon as we get a civilian in, the officer doing that job goes out into the field. Seven have been fild and we have the rest in the hopper, and the mayor funded a new hiring plan class of 50, and they are in academy. So it takes a while to have these officers out on the street. Which speaks to the onetime overtime to get this, you know, visibility now. Supervisor haney some of those officers are still just now coming in . So the 35 for next year, but then some, obviously, with all of the timeline and processes, we are always or regularly increasing the numbers that are actually able to be deployed into the field . Ideally, yes, yes, thats the reason we want to keep the Academy Classes going. Supervisor haney and do you know yet how many of the net 35 officers would be deployed as foot patrols . One of the its a fluid thing, because depending when they retired and what department they retired from, we have to fill the vacancies. Depending on who retires and where the va can scancies are c, oftentimes were able to balance the department through the recruits that come out of the academy and if gestation is down, then the recruits will go to that station, if its a training station, and then those officers that are finishing fco, when they go and finish their probation at their next station, they are able to balance the department that way, so depends where the vacancies are. What were trying to do is keep the number of foot beats constant and consistent, and depending on twice a year we have signups, so if officers want to leave the foot beats and work another unit or station, then we have to backfill and fill that vacancy. So its a real fluid number, but the idea is to have the consistency with those foot beats positions always filled. Supervisor haney got it. Because it i mean, theres a pretty significant increase to your budget this year, and i understand that theres a lot of important things that were funding with that. It would seem to me, i would hope, that with a 60plus Million Dollar increase, that we would be able to find a way within that to increase foot beats, not be at a point where we are saying that if we dont get this 2 million, which i understand is very important and that we would actually be decreasing. So with a 60plus Million Dollar increase, were not able to increase foot patrols, which seems to be a very important priority. To your point, when the staffing level does increase, we are able to increase the foot beats. Over the past two years, since we have really focused on this area, we have had some gains in the department, so there is, you know, that relief there, but we increased faster than the gains in the department. Like i said, over 100 officer increase in the foot beats deployment from 2017 to now, but as we grow and get to the 1971 number, that does get the relief to make those positions permanent. And theres more demand than we have officers right now. Supervisor haney yeah, i think the support for the new classes and additional officers and all of that and increasing the budget, im sure for the board, it comes with a hope or expectation that theres going to be additional foot beats, so its concerning to me that we would be saying that if we dont fund this overtime, which i hear is important to you, that we would actually see a cut. Especially in light of the broader increase that were funding. One thing i was also going to ask, you know, in november of last year, you, and the mayor announced an increase in foot patrols and mid market. I looked up the exact number, that there were ten officers, ten new officers that were designated to the mid Market Civic Center area. How does first of all, where was that funded from, and is that baselined in your budget, or are those ten officers the ones that youre funding with this 500,000, or how does that interact . This was just a few months ago, i guess now six or seven months ago, but how does that interact with whats happening in your budget here . So those officers were r redeployed from other areas. When we increased the foot patrols in mid market, we had to take existing resources and put them in that particular station, which is tenderloin, your district. Its just a matter of redeploying for that particular thing. Now, we do and plan to use overtime to enhance