Transcripts For SFGTV 20140819

The driver ended up retreating and crashed a short time later and was taken into custody that was found to be in policy it did satisfy our conditions with respect to vehicles. With regards to officer involved discharge 0314 this was a case that was on the 1600block of bacon street of february 17th of this year at approximately 3 30 in the morning they received a call somebody was trying to kick down a door of a residence there and upon privately the officers found a male that was prone in front of the residence. As they made their approach 2 dogs charged at them and the officers retreated. He fired at both dogs who ran off. The gentleman was eventually detained for being intoxicated in public. It turned out to be someone he knew he didnt expect the guy to be coming over. Thats what happened. Those were found to be in policy. March 29th, 2014, officer involved discharge occurred in the 400block of broadway this incident an officer was investigating a stolen vehicle a license plate reader and the officer went to investigate and found the vehicle to be occupied and the officer drew a department issued weapon made contact with the officer resulting in a discharge. The suspect fled and was not struck. It was an accidental discharge, no one was injured and the driver was arrested after investigation this was found to be not in policy and the last one that we reviewed at the review board was 0514 this is again involving a dog april 24th, 2014, officers went to investigate a Domestic Violence call upon arrival they saw a suspect both officers fired at the dog and that was found to be in policy. The next is tentative ly scheduled and ill give you a recap of where we are in open investigations. When i last talked to you was may 7th and there were 20 open cases currently 19 open cases but weve made significant progress as you will hear. We did complete as i talked about 1108 and you did receive that summary report shortly after the fdrv since that time and with a lot of work by the commissioners i appreciate what you did. We got 9 charging decision letters from the das office after that meeting. The last presentation and homicide has received those 9 charging decision letters and ill say on the da side theres some other agencies so they cleared a lot of those cases out of there. We had 9 that we received homicide as finalizing their reports and the process of getting those to internal affairs to finish our work and well be presented at the next fdrv or the one after which will be well moving forward and theres 9 investigations currently with the da in review and they are either in the process of writing their reports or drafting their final letters and we have 1 case that is still open and homicide is going to be waiting for the me report in that case. The medical exam ers report and to recap we have one open case at this point from 2011 we do have the letter from the da and thats moving forward. And then all the cases for 2012 we did receive charging decision letters since the last fdrv so those are moving forward with the final administrative report and we actually have 2 letters for 2013 cases and all the remaining cases 13. 3 and 135 and 134 was closed that was an accidental discharge where an officer was injured and then the 4 cases of 2014 remain open so those all of those latter 9 except for the most recent case are with the da for review and to prepare their charging decisions so there has been some progress. Thank you sergeant i want to say from the last presentation we had back in may there was concern among the commission that it was taking time for the final closure with these matters and the final straw of these multifacetted investigations were waiting on those charging decisions they are doing their analysis and waiting for the results from the medical exam ers office and we had 3 phone conversations regarding this and within a week and a half i think they closed out 9 cases shortly there after so the good news is i want to thank you for getting us some closure so i think it was very productive the comments made at the last meeting and. I think you did a great job weve been down this road i think 8 times now or something so i just wanted to say you have done an extraordinary job of keeping the pieces moving so nothing slows down and these are complicated cases and the das office has a number of things to deal with but i want to thank the das office. Justice delayed is justice denied so congratulations on all of your hard work because it was really essential figuring out what pieces of the whole system needed some encouragement so thank you. Thank you for your help. I just want to clarify something on march 29th, 2014. The vehicle contacted the officer resulting in accidental discharge. Yes. I think i need to hear it from you. What does that mean exactly . Understanding this is administrative case and were in an open foru m. The vehicle pulled away and the vehicle contacted the officer and the officer one of the big issues was the officers placement of the finger on the trigger. When the contact was made theres a normal reaction the officer was struck by the vehicle but the normal reaction is going to be to flinch or contract and if placement is incorrect that contraction happens. She did not intend to shoot the gun. She squeezed her hand and the gun went off. She clenched with her finger on the trigger. Okay. Anything further for the sergeant . Thank you very much and again thank you to your unit for all their hard work and putting this together greatly appreciated. Call line item 3 b. Review of recent activities presentation of of the occ statistical reports and mediation of complaints. Presentation of statistical reports july 2014 and mediation of complaints in july of 2014 and presentation of occs Second Quarter 2014 comprehensive report. Good evening how are you . Good evening im fine thank you. Members of the commission and members of the audience this evening i have 3 reports i will try to keep them brief and i will not discuss recent activities other than i announced this at the Police Commission Community Meeting last week and that is the occ has online complaining now its on our website wwwssgov forward slash sec and this has been a long time coming. There were funding issues we contracted with an outside vendor who was able to produce the program and it worked at the outside vendors site but it wasnt integrating into our website properly so our Information Technology chris worked on it and it went live last week. So lets start with june and the june 2014 statistical reports we do have a summary of complaints and the cover letter in your packet, so in brief ill move to the mediation of complaints in june. Five occ cases were mediated in june thats one more than was mediated in june 2013 between january 1st and june 30th the occ mediated 30 complaints compared to 24 during that 6month period the year before. In june a adjudicated 3 cases that the occ sustained one was neglected duty for failure to collect traffic stop data the officer was admonished and retrained and another one was failure to complete a citation. The officer was admonished and retrained and another one was unnecessary force where the complaint ant spit in the officers face and the officer then used the closed fist strike to strike the com plainant on the left side of her face near her eye and the officer received a reprimand. That is the june report and the july report mediation of complaints. The occ mediated 3 cases in july. One less than were mediated in july 2013 but as of july 31 st, 33 occ complaints were mediated compared to 28 between january 1st, 2013, and july 21st st 2013. There are, i believe, 10 or 11 complaints that the that chief a adjudicated in july and i will just quickly summarize them. Neglected duty sergeant failed to collect traffic stop data and the sergeant was admonished and retrained. The use of profanity and a sexual slur the officer was admonished and retrained. A neglected duty under the Department Language Access Department general order 5. 20 the officer was admonished and retrained. Another neglect was failure to enter the complaint into primary language cantonese and the officer failed to record the interview of limited english spanish speaker the officer was admonished and retrained and un warranted action and neglect of duty with plain clothed officers driving an unmarked vehicle initiating a traffic stop. When the conduct of the complain ant was not an aggravated the officer was admonished and retrained and another failure to collect traffic stop data the officer was admonished and retrained. A third failure to collect traffic stop data the officer was admonished and retrained. And another neglected duty in violation of duty the officer failed to take the complaint ants bicycle in for safe keeping and the officer was admonished and retrained and un warranted action where an officer in violation of the order 10. 08 an officer used her computer to access facebook unrelated to her work and the officer received a written reprimand and a final un warranted action involving an officer reaching into the complaint ants car and moving the complaint ants backpack during the traffic stop the officer was admonished and retrained. In that stance the backpack was turned around the officer did not go into the backpack. That concludes the june and july statistical reports. Unless there are questions i can move to the Second Quarter report. Questions . Excuse me june 2014 report unnecessary force incident. Would provoke a reaction im concerned sounds to me like a punch. Yes. Okay. Was the was the woman injured with this punch at all . Not severely to my knowledge. Was hospitalization required at all . I can discuss the details with you offline but i dont have that information with me. Im happy to she was treated. She did not suffer injuries and the punch was thrown because she was about to spit again so the officer did not have time although other officers arrived and had to deploy pepper spray because she was so combative she spit again they grabbed her and the reason i agree with director hicks that the force was inappropriate was that if his solution to stop the attack was to throw the punch, then she shouldnt have been able to keep spinning and she was able to keep spinning. That was my concern as well. Thank you. I know that theres a written reprimand but i hope theres also some discussion and retraining involved as well. There was retraining involved. One quick question. Chief it was mentioned here of a traffic stop by an unmarked car so with all my years i didnt realized so Unmarked Police car is not allowed to make a traffic stop . Right. For fear that they might mistake you for someone other than a Police Officer and you might actually cause a more serious situation than get them to comply and give a ticket. I just had one question i think we talked about this but the failure to collect the traffic data is the 585 . The 585. The racial demographics the folks were talking about their first offense . If theres a third offense they would get time off. Okay thank you. Thank you. Your welcome. If i might add with regard to the complaint ant who was spitting after the officer the officer moved away. Other officers, though, struggled with her and eventually were able to put a spit mask on her. Moving to the Second Quarter report for 2014, again, i will keep it brief because the statistics have been provided to you in the april, may and june monthly reports. Including the one i just gave to you but during the Second Quarter, the occ received an adjusted total of 155 complaints of Police Misconduct or failure to take action we closed 340. The occ sustained allegations of misconduct during the Second Quarter in 16 complaints and for the Second Quarter thats thats a 10 percent sustain rate but for the total 6month period the occ sustained 24 cases for a sustain rate of 7 percent. We mediated 13 cases during the Second Quarter thats an 8 percent mediation rate for the 6month total and thats an 11 percent mediation of cases. And moving to organizational and budget matters during the Second Quarter continued to work with the department of Human Resources to create a list of eligible investigators for hiring. During that Second Quarter the Job Announcement was posted and a written, the written portion of the exam was given now were in the third quarter, and the h. R. Will be conducting the oral portion of the examination and then provide me with a list for me to hire complaint investigate ors and once that is complete, then the recruitment for the 8126 senior investigator position can begin. Moving to technology ive already highlighted our online complaint filing tool. Regarding the budget, budget matters, they were considered during the Second Quarter thats when the mayor released his proposed budget to the board of supervisors for final adoption by the board regarding the occs budget the mayor took no budget cuts from the occ and also helps to enhance the occs budget by reducing the attrition adjustment by 84,000 and it will still preclude me from hiring a couple of positions i will have to leave vacant and the mayor also provided us with funding for 2 cars one of which the board of supervisors took away but we do have a car that is functional, so with our functional car and the new car we will be whole. Moving to investigation of cases, the First Quarter was when we saw a surge in complaints a 25 percent surge in complaints. Anything leveled out the Second Quarter will be impacted from the First Quarter so the average caseload for investigators during the Second Quarter was 23 cases per investigator and as i pointed out in previous reports, when the controller audited in january prior to my time the controller found that that 16 cases per investigator so were still exceeding our best practices level. The fact that they doubled the number of cases that they were sustaining and those take time. Moving to sustained cases, weve already discussed sustained and adjudicated cases so i will not go over those further. Complaints of note the occ at the close of the Second Quarter had four open investigations of officer involved shootings but in in the last 6 weeks 2 of those cases have been closed and no finding of misconduct. Also, the case involving the death of a bicyclist in a vehicle collision was open as of the close of the Second Quarter but in in in the last 6 weeks the occ concludes its investigation in that matter as well and finally with the San Francisco Police Department investigation of a missing person at San Francisco General Hospital that was a complaint that was filed with the occ that case has been closed within the past 6 weeks with no finding of misconduct. The other major cases that i included in the report still remain open. In the report i list there are numerous outreach activities and i refer you to the report to see how robust our outreach activities has been. And in policy analysis, the occ continues to work on a Language Access matters with the Police Department and thats department general order 5. 20 and the occ meets monthly with Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault providers and a training video that was worked on was released an officer training video entitled investigative techniques for overcoming language barriers. And that training video is posted on youtube. The occ also during the Second Quarter worked on the finalizing department general order children of arrested parents and then finally the occ recommended that the department adopt written procedures and provide officer provide training on officer initiated driver incapacity proceedings where officers can notify the d. M. V. For a reexamination of an individuals license and that can result in an individual losing his or her license and having to go through a pretty onerous reexamination process to show that they are not mentally or physically incapacitated