Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240713

SFGTV Government Access Programming July 13, 2024

History of the officer. But the chiefs office, theres an 81 agreement with the actual theres a sustained violation and then there was also a difference statistic regarding the imposition of discipline, right. So 81 of the time they agree with you. D. P. A. And you got this right and director henderson what alluded to this. Were working out the system. We often dont get notified of what ultimately happens . So we get the notice to meet and confer but we dont always know kind of what happens at the back end of a case. Were trying to streamline that process that one director henderson was talking about 50 or 60 letters we got recently, thats because we went through manually and made all these requests and received the final results of the case. Ok. That needs to be fixed right away. We are working a lasting solution request. Everybody is great about providing information when we request it but the automated part of it has been missing. So i think we are uptodate now and should be uptodate going forward. But if theres not a technological solution at this point. I think its really important that what were trying to get to is an audio mated where i dont have to ask. It should be automatic when the decision gets made that we get the notification and if we dont answer or if someone doesnt send it or because even if the document thats we get we have to read through it to figure out does this correlate to one our cases and we have to followup. Ill come back. Its just a clarification. I dont understand. If we are meeting and conferring inperson and he is agreeing or disagreeing, how do you not know the outcome by filling it in your file . The meet and confer is a phone call between mow ser and myself. It is at which point im being notified they disagree with us on either the issue of whether the findings should be sustained or the amount of discipline. Then, other processes occur. We dis agreed that is the end of it and i dont necessarily get the letter that closes that loop. Hang on the no, know, were not going to have a free for all. Anything else . So if theres no disagreement with the discipline is there any recourse appeal or anything from the d. P. A. Side or any options you have to challenge the lack of imposition of discipline . No, because the city Charter Authority is that under 10 days were essentially bringing the case to the chief for the chief to make the imposition of discipline decisions. It ends there. Understood, thank you. Commissioner. I have several questions. First let me say that the report is great. Great job to d. P. A. For providing this information. I think the appendix a showing the information on the disciplinary outcome because it gives the public more yes, it is. It gives the public more transparency because the public is confused as to what you do and they feel like given occs history that they dont that people would make complaints and nothing would happen and d. P. A. Has worked hard and can can and the only thing in the 2016 report and not provided in this report and that information is really helpful and important. Its a well taken point. Kudos on that. My other question is you just said that you are uptodate on the notifications and if thats the case why are there still unknowns on the appendix . Because we had to print the report at some point so were uptodate today. Like calender day right now but we werent in time for printing up the report . So, i love the charts and sort of your percentages and math but when i manually count it i get a different number. When i see the appendix a it looks like theres are 79 cases and there are various officers for some cases have various officers and some some dont. I want to try to understand or wrap my head around the fact when i looked at themen79 cases9 of the 79 case it appears the chief agreed with misconduct occurring but 5 59 out of the 79 cases the discipline imposed by the chief was lower or less than what you had recommended. So it seems like a high number and im trying to figure out why and how that sort of happened. And i think that i also so thats one of my questions. Before you answer that i want to make sure that i understand the process. When these decisions in terms of the discipline that is imposed in your chart, is that from the chief himself or is that from the meetings where you talk about where your meeting with his upper management. The ultimate decision about imposing discipline is from the chief himself. Ok. So can you explain why 59 out of the 79 it seems the discipline that was imposed is less than what you recommended . I think thats a question for the chief frankly. In terms of what happens on that side, i do have conversations o i understand certain things but i dont know the ultimate decision on his side. Can i just jump in and add that separate from the conversations, that my chiefofstaff has with moeser, the chief and i have those conversations as well. When you are asking if were having conversations how do we not know. Even when we have the conversations theres no, theres not a district followup so we get a confirmation that that is what happened what away talked about is what happened until we get those. Chief, you want to respond. One second. Chief, i want to respond to that because i have a followup question on those numbers. Before you respond if i can just ask one other question, with respect to the d. P. A. Report because i think the other questions may actually be more properly suited for the chief that i have. On page 17, you indicate the audit unit and i wonder when were going to get this audit. It says 2019 but when will we get it and i know why is it taking so long but there has to be i have a couple of responses and updates on that. So we anticipate publishing an interim report relatively soon. We just got notification that it was gone through the upper chain. The agenda for commission is full for the rest of the year so it would probably be early in january that well be able to issue that report. Can i give more information. That as we recall and weve talked about this, its the Controllers Office that is doing that process and so we could not control the interim report theyve had changes and management and we have been we started meeting with them weekly going over this when are we getting the report and when are we getting the report it was just cleared for us to release last week when you met with them. I thought it was earlier this week but it was recent. Yes. Im just giving you context. When you get the report done in january are we going to see delays like this again . I hope not and what ive asked to be included in that report are specific things to change so the process doesnt take as long as last time and again, the process for this report is being done by the Controllers Office and hasnt been moved into d. P. A. Yet and so weve been working with them as a third party get this out into us as quickly as possible. If i can give one example its being able to access juvenile records so having to go through an 827 process to get you cant do it peace meal . No. So we didnt we werent involved in that because it was the Controllers Office who was attempting to get the juvenile records and to access purposes when people authorized occ to do that and it was revoked making it very difficult for us to get access to those records. Do you want to address the question. Thank you, commissioner. In this report goes back to juna couple of things i just want to enter out that are really important and step positive, i think the working relationship between the two agencies is as good as its been since ive been here. This process of our that this report started and now i think its gotten better so if you look at all the of the disciplinary decisions most of them that where we disagree or lower level discipline and its undisciplinary many of them involved camera and issues and that issue i think has not only are we pretty much on the same page of that with the commissions disciplinary guide coming out and as soon as we get to that process and well rectify a lot of those issues i make the decision on the case presented to me. What i want to point out is our processes are really good now and theres a lot more discussion in terms of when we disagree than there have been before and theres a process that we didnt have in place and in june when director henderson took over and before ms. Hawkins came aboard we didnt have a formalized process. We talked about it and now we write a letter on everyone we disagree on and we explain why and we have a meet and confer and we get to a Common Ground and sometimes we dont. I think what you can expect in the futur future is less of a disagreement and when we do disagree, theres an understanding as to why. Sometimes we agree to disagree but most of the time i think we come to a common place and many of these were in the past that would not have happened. Thank you for that answer and i appreciate that. I really want to understand sort of your thought process for the Fourth Amendment violations. I know you and i have had personal conversations and i have expressed to you the the rights of individuals and i want to try and wrap my head around sort of how you process Fourth Amendment violations because in reviewing these 79 cases out of the 79, half of these cases involve Fourth Amendment search and sees youre issues and 22 of the case theres were instances where you agreed with the fact that misconduct had occurred and the discipline that you imposed was less than what d. P. A. Recommended. And some of the examples that i am going through the 79 cases, are for example, number two which involved a d. U. I. Where the officer fieldsobriety test was given and it was indicated that there are no alcohol was found on sort of one of the breath test and a more evasive test of a blood draw was taken of the individual and the individual was prosecuted and sort of you go that misconduct had occurred and that discipline should be imposed and the discipline was held as rather than imposed on sort of that officer. Another example is example number 15 which is a search issue where you again, the person is arrested and his car is the individuals car is searched. The incident, the report documenting the incident was inaccurate and su one officer failed to supervisor and the decision was no discipline would be in that case and then theres also example 14 on the case snow squalls another one where the Fourth Amendment issue would arise and sort of a stop and or search of a residents. Search of a residents and also to some of the examples that i saw were stopped where the stop data wasnt entered in the system and that is troubling but this data isnt entered and its important because it allows to track the demographics of why people are being stopped and you agree that this misconduct occurred with no sort of discipline is imposed and and number 26 involved five officers where it was an improper traffic stop and it stuck out to me and you know, it stuck out to me because of sort of the jewel nile issue and its example number 34 and we had talked about in our Bias Working Group about minors being given cars when theyre detained or stopped by Police Officers and that wasnt something that the department was interested and how they would figure out how time notment that but examples like number 34 where children, you know, a juvenile is detained and his parent arent notified and the violation of the policy and given our talks about those situations and sort of and so have their parents notified of any interactions they have with officers its really concerning to me and i think that sort of individually, maybe when we see these cases and individually they dont really sort of rise to a certain level but i think that when theyre compiled into a report like this and theres patterns that were seeing or numbers that are sort of coming up, im wondering what sort of your thought process is and two what you can do sort of to approach this on a sort of whole so that you can start looking at patterns that maybe not theyre not obvious when you lock at them individually and in isolation, right. Because 22 of them, i mean, they have to do a search or seizure issubut itsa little bit confusm just trying to get clarity on it. Ill start with the larger issue. Fact patterns. I dont think its fair to the process to real see look at a couple sentences from a summary and make an assessment about a case because when those cases are presented to me theyre presented in their totality and all those things have to be considered. A lot of is these cases you do look at facts of the case. Its unfair to look at a sentence and say, you know, make an assessment of whether i disagree or not agree based on two sentences. The other issue with that is the one thing than i do is i see all the cases. So the consistency of discipline i think is really important. Progressive discipline and i know we talked about this in the commission before. Lets say the stop information. For many, many years that first offense has been an admonishment. If theres aggravating factors that make that rise up to a level more than admonishment it has to be considered. I try as best as i can to be consistent and not be all over the map when im dispensing discipline. And i think that is really important. But to say to look at a couple sentences and make an assessment about a case, i dont at this its fair to the process. Some of these cases i can remember really well because i actually read the case and others i was briefed on and even when im briefed those cases are given in totality with mitigateing and aggravating factors. Some of these cases we dont grow on. Some of these cases are interpretations of case law that we might not agree on but as far as the policy violation itself, i mean thats first and foremost of what we look at what is the policy violation. I say all this and say we i look at the case as a whole and the patterns that may or may not be present i think you will see more consistency now that we have a disciplinary guide because we look at the same factors. Theyre using separate disciplinary guides. In terms of my understanding and directing anderson or ms. Hawkins, the admonishment, the guide with admonishment on it i dont think you are using. When paul came along he considered admonishment but before d. P. A. Cases were started in reremant and the department if its a low level of discipline, and the spirit of progressive discipline may start at a admonishment which is not disciplinary but for cases where the violation was found but it was found that violation could be handled within the admonishment and retraining so that piece has been reconcile with the penalty guide. Some of these theres a lot more to it than what is on this paper. I dont mean to cut you off. I was just going to say under the new 2. 04 that you passed, theres a disciplinary review board that is going to be started to exactly address this holistic issue of looking at trends. So, theres a meeting set up next week for us to convene about what that is going to specifically look like but it will do exactly what were talking about which is bring everybody to the table to look at the findings and to come to a better understanding of what happened over the past quarter, what are the trends, what is happening, where is the disconnect between d. P. A. And the department in terms of how the discipline is being handled and for lack of a better terminology kind of what a case should be worth or should settle for or should be disciplined at. The two suggests i woul suggn the report is one maybe putting dates . Since it does cover that it will be helpful information and providing more information in the sort of case summary or even adding a box to sort of why the discipline was lower than you had recommended. Those are great ideasment well have to talk to the City Attorneys Office in terms of what we can include but i grow witagreewith those suggestions. Vice president taylor. Thank you. First, commissioner stole one of my questions. I think having the complaints by demographic was helpful so putting that back in would be helpful for the commission. And then, second i want to apologize because i have to disagree with her on the number only because i had its important that were accurate about this and what i found in going through this and the vast majority of the complaints here why citizens explaining about failure to investigation. The vast majority. I counted nine having anything to do with Fourth Amendment. Even those you just referenced and 14 and 15 they have nothing to do with Fourth Amendment and theres nothing about unlawful search but its having a incident report inaccurate and failure to exercise a subordinate. What was surprising to me is the scheer number again of police in writing an incident report so they didnt and police were trying to dissuade someone from moving forward in the investigation so they file a report. They didnt want to investigate it. Thats a little horrifying to me. I counted 18 of those and that was over we wil overwhelming mae 79 that i saw. Followed most closely by issues related to bodyworn cameras. Failure to turn on your bodyworn camera was a serious issue. I counted nine having anything to do with unlawful detention searches and sees youres but its concerning to me to have citizens complaining and calling the police which is a terrifying thing for a lot of people to do and then the officer just not wanting to file a report and i dont feel like it. Or you know, so, i was surprised by that number. I didnt think that would be the number one issue and so i do know in terms of trends i dont know what if you have an answer why that was such a High Percentage of the 79 complaints and that was a majority by my account. I realize this is a snapshot in time from june 2017 to december of 2018. I dont know. I dont know if you see any trends about anything and it indicates some trend and that is a chief and i dont know if you have an answer. I can say its on the most part random but one thing that i see over and over again with some of those type of neglective type of constitute is experience. Weve had incidents that have been sustained where officers we felt should have known better. I mean, ignorance to the law is no excuse and we know that. Experience does matter. Particularly with new officers, you know, in a chaotic situation sometimes where they just make a mistake. And that is the case sometimes other times its more egregious and we try to adjust and address those accordingly. On the large scheme of things, what really helps is if we have bodyworn cameras put to help us determine what happened and often times that is another factor with some of the cases where theres an allegation of neglect of duty and theres no camera because you didnt turn it on and captured that part of the incident so what you are seeing again, these go back two years and i think you are seeing less of that and i think weve made our p

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