Transcripts For SFGTV LIVE Police Commission 20160114 : vima

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Id like to call roll. Please do. Commission president loftus is excused. Commission Vice President is excused. Commissioner marshall is excused. Commissioner dejesus, present. Commissioner mazzucco, present. Commissioner mazzucco, you have a quorum. Also wuls is inaudible representing the department and gregory p. Surr ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the wednesday, january 14th, 20th San Francisco Police Commission. No, you are not having a flashback. Im filling in tonight for commissioner loftus who along with chief greg sur and joyce hicks are flying back from washington, dc where they spent the last 3 days at a group called perf theyve been back there since sunday essentially looking at what other Police Departments have been looking at in terms of what options to Police Departments have in dealing with individuals who have knifes and sharp objects. Its part of what were doing concerning the use of force, they went back there all three together and we will have a report on that last week. Thats why we are not here tonight, we have 4 commissioners, we worked hard, one commissioner is not feeling well but we really wanted to have a meeting to accommodate all of you. Item 1. Item 1, adoption of minutes, action for the meetings of october 7, 14, 21, november 4 and december 2, 2015. Commissioners, you have the minutes in your packet. Are there any questions or additions . I move for adoption. Second. All in favor . We have to have Public Comment. Public comment regarding our minutes. Mr. Petrellis good evening, is this working . My hearing aids are busted and theyre in the shop, both of them. Okay, listen, you are adopting minutes from october. October . I dont know why it is taking the commission this long to approve your minutes from october three meetings in october, one meeting in november and one meeting in december. I have issues with this because i think that youve got to be putting the minutes out sooner on the web. Im just assuming, ill check it when i get home tonight, that the minutes from october are not yet on the web. If theyre not, thats not okay. I dont know how they could be on the web until you have approved them. Youve got to put these things up sooner, youve got to process them sooner. Thank you. Any further Public Comment regarding the adoption of our minutes . Hearing none, Public Comment is closed. We have staff working with commissioners and many issues and they do a great job. Please call line item 2. Did you vote on the first item . Were all good. Item 2, consent calendar, receive and file action. Police Commission Report of disciplinary actions 4th quarter 2015, request of the chief of police to accept a 50 burlington gift card from mr. Jim kennedy, burlingtons regional Loss Prevention manager to be donated to a local charity or a family in need. I move to accept. Any Public Comment regarding the 50 gift card that the chief is going to give away . No, its on all consent items. And the gift card. And the disciplinary actions. He says to a family in need, right . Ill take it. I dont know if we can do that, miss brown. Well, you said. Thank you. Mr. Petrellus, would you like the gift card . Well, we cant do it. I apologize. Any further Public Comment regarding the consent calendar . Mr. Petrellus. Were talking about the 4th quarter firearm things . Im very glad that you have a paper copy of this document here. What troubles me, though, on page 2 it talks about the first case oid00615 and then the other case was ois 15005. Theres no information about the officers. They are not named. There really has to be word coming from this Police Commission that you understand the state law prevents you from naming these cops, but when you are presenting these reports excuse me summaries back to us and you are talking about discharging of arms you are telling us about an investigation about what happened in these two incidents and we dont know the officers names, this is really then rendered pretty worthless. Youve really got to find a way to call on the state to change the state law that would allow Police Forces around the state to disclose the names of bad cops. Thank you. Any further Public Comment on that . Hearing none, Public Comment is closed. Please call the next line item. Before we go. Public comment now, miss brown. Before we move to Public Comment the commission would like to report that there will be 4 Community Input sessions on the use of force policy. There will be 4 forums on january 19th, january 21st, january 26 and january 27th for the community to provide input to both the commission and to the Police Department. These will be each of those nights from 6 00 to 7 00 pm and there are flyers on the table and we will post this to the web site. Given the time constraint this commission has put on itself with reference to looking at the use of force policy, rather than have fullfledged Commission Meetings were going to do what we have done in the past so theres more community access, more meetings. Were going to have meetings through the Police Department, we will have 2 or 3 commissioners present, we will not have a quorum present. As you heard from sergeant killshah, the dates of january 21, the 26 and the 27, those dates have been chosen. Later on tonight i will be asking for commissioner volunteers, the location for the 19th to be determined, the 21st is the baptist church, the 21st is bayview ymca and the 27th is a location to be determined. So were trying to spread this out and get as much exposure as we possibly can in a short period of time. So now we can move into general Public Comment. Item 3, general Public Comment. The public is now welcome to address the Commission Regarding items that do not appear on tonights agenda but that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission. Speakers shall address their remarks to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or department or occ personnel. Under Police Commission rules of order, during Public Comment Neither Police or occ personnel 94 xhirs are required to respond to questions presented by the public but may provide a brief response. Please limit your discussion to 3 minutes. Mike, you are first. Good evening, im not in a very good mood and ill be honest with you. This mr. Wood case has turned into a nuke. We have the board of supervisors tied up in it. Why . The whole system failed. They should have had tasers, okay . I was all over this city with greg sur and george, lets get the taitz taser, well give it to you but you have to carry a defibrillator almost. Now what have we got. I can tell you tasers that just happened today in chicago and new york that makes this look kind. I have friends around. But why . We blew it. We could run to get the body cams, oh, hurry up, hurry up. Body cams dont kill civilians. Why . Why arent we taking a vote tomorrow or whenever to get these tasers . Why . We want to kill another one . Yeah, did you read the comments on that article about the supervisor . I gave it to her. You ought to cut it out. He stabbed his brother, details of the whole case. Its not hidden now. But, no, they obviously unload id like to see that me report, ill bet you that poor body looked really sweet. So we all failed. You failed. You failed. Now we got a dead body and probably a six or 7 rr Million Dollar lawsuit. Have a good evening. Next speaker. My name is angel van stark and ill be representing the harvey milk democrat club. Dear police chief ed sur, the Police Officer association and the San Francisco board of supervisors. We write to you today to demand justice for mario woods and the individuals that have been mrur dered by the department. We stand in justice for mario woods. Release a public apology, payment by the San Francisco Police Department and the city and county of San Francisco for the funeral of mario woods, termination of police chief greg sur, an external investigation into the murder. San francisco has been a wellknown leader in many social justice causes. Sadly, however, our Police Department has lagged behind implementing 21st Century Police techniques. Despite the fact that San Francisco Police Department has adopted Community Policing policies, these policies have no point of accountability or enforcement. Additionally police chief greg sur allow racism, homo phobia, transphobia instead of allowing the board of supervisors to vote in favor of protecting all citizens of San Francisco and not just the most elite. Far too many black and brown folks, people with physical and mental disabilities and members of the Lgbt Community have suffered at the hands of the Police Department. This is not unique to San Francisco, it is a national endemic but we refuse to let it happen here. inaudible abuse of power and bigotry that is causing unjust pain and suffering in our communities. It is clear Current Training and practices being deployed by the San Francisco Police Department are part of the problem and that Better Solutions like antioppression training, deescalation and conflict resolution are necessary. The Harvey Milk Club demands immediate action be taken to ensure justice for victims of police brutality, including mario woods and alex nieto and for the Police Commission to aggressively pursue measures that include transparency and best practices. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker . Somebody can go ahead and go first. My name is rodney williams, im a real estate tired 28 1 2 year member of the San Francisco Police Department, retired as an inspector of police. Last week i was at an seiu meeting with 40 other organizations. Commissioner dr. Joe marshall was our guest speaker and at that event he explained the functions of the commission, which was to set policy for the department and to conduct disciplinary hearings on charges of misconduct, police misconduct. Why am i here today . Im here because the question and answer discussion, the commissioner was asked who he representings and much to the surprise of everyone, practically everyone in the audience, including myself, he said he represented himself. And people were just puzzled by that answer and they asked him again, commissioner, who do you represent . Emphatically he said, i represent myself. As a former director of Police Community relations i address Many Community groups and when the question cameabout the Police Commission i said basically, in the final analysis, they represent you. At that time they were just appointed by the mayor and now its the mayor and the board of supervisors. But i said, basically the mayor appoints these Community Citizens as commissioners and they, in turn, represent you, just like any other agency of the city, he cant personally supervise them and he appoints people to do that. As i said, everyone was surprised and shocked and i was, too. And im here today to find out actually who do the commissioners represent . Thats a question. Dr. Williams, ive known you for many years. Were not allowed to respond to questions but suffice it to say the commission represents the public. Im sorry . The people. The public. I think, and thats a great question and dr. Marshall is not here to respond. But i would imagine that when we are a body, together we are a body but individually if you invited us to speak we do not represent the commission when we are asked to speak to the public because it is not the commission that is sponsoring the speaking engagement, it is as individuals we cant speak for the full commission. So im wondering if thats what he meant. Well, it was my understanding that the question was who do you represent not as, in his case, not as dr. Joe marshall, but who do you represent as a Police Commission. And were asking him not as a personal thing but as a body, a member of a body. Thats what we were concerned about. I would like to have gone back to the next meeting of the seiu and explain that i did appear here and now its been explained to me that the commission does represent the community. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, dr. Williams, good to see you again. Next speaker. Miss brown . May i use sf gov for a short part of this video . Its a different part. Violent death impacts families, friends, relatives and the community. I pray that you would let your angels watch over us and keep us. Help us be the light in a dark place. Help us inaudible . Fall unto you and you will answer us. These are times we needed to rely on each other. We turn to the church when services and programs have been too few or inadequate. Let me say this. The thing that we are here. We speak out and tell our stories. We lost four. My son was murdered in 2005 along with sharelles son. Killed. My grandson. On september 9, 2004, we started the healing circle for the soul support. Go where people understood where people understood what youre going through. We met upstairs and people understood our feelings of loss and frustration. I am here because i have friends who dont understand. All of us know about inaudible , sun is shining, radio is playing, you are feeling good and all of a sudden, bam, out of nowhere that vision, that voice, that look, that laughter, that morning and all of a sudden you are transformed back into that first shot. We spent the whole day. Survivors came from all over to tell their stories and by speaking out, we began to process the trauma and support one another. He just received that diploma. He should have been walking across ta stage, but i did. They were my children and they wont come forward. inaudible i would like to sit down and have a conversation with the one perpetrate err that we had in custody. We soon found our direction, we found our purpose. Thats why were here, so our loved one did not go in vein. Weve got to keep bugging them and letting them know your family member. Thank you, miss brown. Next speaker . Welcome back, mr. Crew. Thank you. I want to respect your time. My name is john crew, im speaking as an individual, im here really responding to the invitation of your president last week where she invited interested members of the community if they had ideas, suggestions for the issues you are facing to come forward. I wasnt sure i could attend. I, too, like inspector williams want to invoke commissioner marshall. I was struck by what he said last week talking about the woods shooting. If this is within policy then policy has to change. There is some simple clarity to that. But the unspoken corollary that you cannot and the public cannot lose track of, if this was not within policy then you must have accountability. To focus only on the first and not the second risks losing the publics trust. We need to be honest and speak about these issues. The accountability is not just a matter of discipline, whether or not the officer should be disciplined or terminated, for statements that leave the public assuming that the investigation into the policy investigation is biased from the start. This department has a lot of work to do and this commission has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust and confidence, not only from this incident, this tragedy, but from what has been going on for the last year at least. And thats a longterm project and i completely agree with dr. Marshall, its much larger than who the chief happens to be at any particular time. But there needs to be some basic truthtelling, basic clarity. You should be doing this policy review. But we know now you are not going to change the basic deadly force standard. Theres four elements, been that for a long time. There needs to be a subjective belief thats reasonable that theres imminent danger of serious Bodily Injury or det. You definitely should consider giving greater deescalation to officers, the crisis training that was promised many years ago. Why it hasnt happened, i dont know. You should do all those things but in the end you have to enforce the policies that you have, you have to signal to the public that you mean it. And when the chief of police, the current chief of police, perhaps with good intentions very shortly after this incident twice within a matter of days, at a press conference at a Community Meeting shows a freeze frame off a video and suggests that the deceased was raising his arm when the shots were fired, and when the poa in the wake of that sends a letter to the board of supervisors criticizing the supervisor saying you cant talk about this, the chief has alrea