Transcripts For SFGTV BOS 20240703

Welcome to the october 12th, 2023, regular meeting of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services committee. I am catherine stefani, chair of the committee and to my right is vice chair engardio and to my left is supervisor lee dorsey. The clerk is mr. John carroll. And id also like to thank Kalina Mendoza at sf. Gov tv for staffing this meeting. Mr. Clerk, do you have any announcements . Yes thank you, madam chair. The board of supervisors and its committees are convening hybrid meetings that allow inperson attendance and Public Comment while still providing Remote Access and Public Comment via telephone. The board recognizes that equitable Public Access is essential and we will be taking Public Comment as follows. First, Public Comment will be taken on each item on todays agenda. Those attending in person will be allowed to speak first, and then we will hear from those who are waiting on the telephone line. The Public Comment callin number for todays meeting is 415 a6550001. When prompted, enter the meeting id for todays meeting. The meeting id. Is 26635936535. After youve entered the meeting, id press the pound symbol twice. Youll be connected to the meeting. Youll hear the meeting discussions, but your telephone line will be muted and in listening mode. When your item of interest comes up in public. Comment is called those joining us in person should line up to speak along the curtain wall that ill point out each time. And those on the telephone should dial star three to be added to the speaker line. If youre on your telephone, please remember to turn down the volume on your television and your computer, your listening devices , your radio, wherever you may be using to access todays proceedings. Alternatively you may submit Public Comment in writing. You may send your written Public Comment via email to myself. The Public Safety Neighborhood Services committee clerk. My email address is j o n c. A r. R. O. L. L at sf gevorg. Or you may send your written comments via us post to our office in city hall. That is one doctor Carlton B Goodlett place, San Francisco, california 94102. The Clerks Office is room 244 and if you submit Public Comments in writing, i will forward your comment to the supervisors and it will be included as part of the official file on which you are commenting. There are no action items on todays agenda. Madam chair, that concludes my announcements. Thank you, mr. Clerk. Will you please call the first item . Agenda . Item number one is a hearing on the findings and recommendation made in the Human Trafficking in San Francisco 2021 report. Thank you and colleagues, i was very much looking forward to having this hearing today, but unfortunately the staff have at at the department on status of women have asked us to continue this. They have had a covid outbreak. So we are not able to have the hearing today. As such, i do intend to continue this item to the call of the chair. If you dont have any questions, we can go straight to Public Comment on the continuance. Very good. We will take Public Comment now on agenda item number one, do we have anyone joining us here in the chamber who has Public Comment on agenda one, seeing none. Lets turn our attention to those who are connected remotely. If you wish to speak on agenda item number one, please dial star three. And madam chair, i see that we have no callers in the queue. Thank you. Public comment is now closed. Id like to make a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair on a motion offered by chair stephanie that this hearing be continued to the call of the chair. Vice chair engardio engardio. I member Dorsey Dorsey i chair stephanie. Stephanie i. Madam chair, there is no opposition. Thank you so much. And will you please call the next item for just a moment . This agenda item number two is a hearing to receive information on how San Francisco Law Enforcement data dashboards can provide more robust, user friendly and anonymized online information on crime and Law Enforcement response through the various stages those being incident arrest intake by the District Attorneys office, initiation of prosecution, sentencing and disposition. Thank you. This item is sponsored by vice chair engardio and i will turn it over to him. Thank you, chair. Stephanie and id like to thank the Department Representatives who arranged their busy schedule for us to be here every thing we want to fix in San Francisco starts with safe streets, but we cant fight crime with a spaghetti bowl of data. Solutions depend on good data, transparent and accessible crime data. Residents can trust. Thats why i called this hearing to see how we can share crime data compared to other cities today, we will consider how our District Attorney and Police Department can better inform the public at a future hearing. We will look at the courts and the Sheriffs Department at the history of data access in our city is dismal. I moved to San Francisco in 1998 to take a job as a journalist. At the first dotcom boom was happening. The first wave of tech had come to San Francisco from silicon valley, and my very first assignment 25 years ago was to write about a conundrum. How could San Francisco, the tech capital of the world, have such lousy technology in City Government . Very little was online. Everything was still on paper. If you wanted information about something happening in the court, you had to page through giant ledgers in the Clerks Office. In 1998, the area around south park and soma was the center of the tech universe. It was called the multimedia gulch, and when my report about the difficulty of accessing city hall data was published, the headline was multimedia zilch. Today, a similar article could be written. The headline wouldnt say zilch because theres been progress, but the headline might say much frustration with ongoing limitations about the time i arrived in San Francisco city hall decided to create an integrated database called the justice tracking information system, known as justice. It was for data sharing between Public Safety agencies back then, every agency had a different Computer System that couldnt talk to each other, and justice was going to manage the data sharing needs of the police. Sheriff District Attorney, public defender, Probation Department and the courts. But 25 years and tens of millions of dollars later, the system is still not complete. This matters because a lack of data communication can have serious consequences. The delayed Justice System made headlines in 2003 after a woman was murdered by her exboyfriend, Domestic Violence activists said the murder might have been prevented with better data sharing. How the exboyfriend had served jail time for attacking the woman in the past just after getting out of jail, he assaulted her again twice. S but the jail history was not on record when the woman tried to get him arrested again. When he came back a third time, the woman was killed. More recently, former sheriff Vicki Hennessey noted a Police Operation in 2019 that arrested 63 suspected drug dealers over six days. Yet 80 of the dealers were free within a week. Some were already on probation, arrested and released multiple times without a fully operational justice database. Sheriff hennessey said it was difficult to know when defendants were rearrested. And while waiting for a court appearance, she had to rely on time consuming manual methods prone to error. So there are two types of data streams that need to flow well, data that Government Agency is share with each other and data that is shared with the public. Judge justice is an example of data shared within the government and it deserves its own hearing. Todays hearing focuses focus is on public facing data, again focusing on the District Attorneys office and the Police Department. But public facing data is important because journalists, researchers, Public Safety advocates, social justice advocates, crime victims and concerned residents all have the right to know what is going on with our criminal Justice System. As a former journalist, i know that Good Journalism is very effective at shining a light on the strengths and weaknesses of government. But the brightness of a journalists flashlight, it depends on access to data. There are laws that require the disclosure of existing documents to journalists, but those laws do not require departments to regularly disclose and update data. Analyzing important metrics that tell the public how city hall is doing. Its also important that we let ordinary residents have access to this data so they dont need a journalist to do it for them. Ordinary residents should be able to go online and with a few user friendly clicks, find out for themselves how well the government is functioning. When it comes to an important issue like crime, it is vital that we make as much of the data public as possible. Is crime up or down . Which crimes are police making arrests . What does the Police Report say . Is the District Attorney charging crimes . What is the end result of all those cases is a story in the media is only as accurate as the data the journalist has access to. Voters read news stories. Elected officials listen to Voter Sentiment when deciding policies. But Voter Sentiment is only as accurate as what people think they know transparent and accessible data is the only way for the public to truly know a situation and a truly informed public can ask. Elected officials to enact the most effective policies. I requested that the budget and legislative analyst at city hall review the District Attorneys public facing data dashboard and compare it to dashboards operated by other da offices in california and throughout the country. I wanted to see which jurisdictions have the most robust Information Available to the public in a user friendly format, because if it was possible elsewhere, we should be able to do it here. We will hear from the budget and legislative Analyst Office today. They will tell us the results of their report. Public data dashboards began under former District Attorney george gascon. They were a good start but stagnated during the tenure of District Attorney chesa boudin. My hope is that District Attorney Brooke Jenkins can take it to the next level for restoration with the das data dashboard peaked in 2021, it counted the number of charges filed, but it never reported the final result of the charges. Were they dropped, reduced, taken to trial for a win or a loss to years ago. Local journalist annie gauss of the San Francisco standard asked for the disposition memos that reveal the final outcomes of criminal cases. Da boudins office denied the request, saying they were no relevant Public Records to her query, and if they did exist, those documents were privileged. Goss vented her frustration on social media. She said, quote, i cant emphasize enough what a load of expletive this response is. At a certain point, you got to wonder why theyre so adamant about keeping this info from the public, she said. Boudins office was, quote, ignoring the fact that they have a duty to disclose what is disclosable, which includes procedural and case details that are otherwise in the Public Record. So we have a different District Attorney today, and i hope the office of Brooke Jenkins will put more crime data in the open, at least as much as her counterpart in chicagos cook county. The public datasets in chicago contain an anonymized information about every felony case processed by the prosecutor going back 14 years. They are divided into four stages of interaction intake, initiation, sentencing and disposition. Any journalist, researcher, crime victim or member of the community in chicago can easily analyze what the prosecutor is doing. The online experience is super easy. You dont need any technical expertise. San francisco deserves this kind of data dashboard for every agency involved in criminal justice from the Police Department to the courts, Justice Reform is necessary for it to happen. Residents must feel safe. Residents must feel confident that Public Officials are doing their job to keep everyone safe. And that requires transparent and accessible crime data. Residents can trust. So this is the lineup for todays hearing. The first presentation will be from the president of the Northern California chapter of the society of professional journalists, Joe Fitzgerald. Rodriguez is a longtime local journalist who will speak on behalf of his chapter members. We will hear from the journalists first to get a sense of what type of data they need, whats lacking, and how we can provide better access. And while while todays hearing focuses on the District Attorney and Police Department, we can also hear what the journalists need from the courts to help inform our follow up hearing about the courts. Next, well hear from fred broussard, director of policy analysis at city halls budget and legislative analysts office. He wrote the report that reviewed our District Attorneys data dashboard and compared it to others in the state and around the country. With that overview, we will then hear from edward mccaffrey, chief of policy for the District Attorneys office, and nora gregory, the data director. Theyll explain the current capabilities of their data dashboard and the work theyre doing to expand it. Finally, well hear from catherine maguire, the director of the Police Departments Strategic Management bureau. She will explain how their public facing data dashboard works. Myself and the supervisor on this committee will be able to ask questions after each presentation, and then Public Comment will happen after all the presentations are completed. And so mr. Fitzgerald , you have the floor. Thank you. Good morning, supervisors. A little strange to be on this side of this room, of this chamber, usually right over there. But i did get permission today from my employers who so graciously said that matters of journalistic import matters of free speech and access and open government are of chief importance to journalists and that i should be able to advocate on that, for which im happy to do today. So the society of professional journalists, we represent journalists up and down Northern California, our board and our freedom of Information Committee, which is a committee within our chapter, has investigative journalists, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and broadcast journalists, all sorts of folks, but many of whom report here in San Francisco and use that data that supervisor engardio mentioned. Geez, nearly every day. But as part of this, not only do i ask our own Board Members and our freedom of Information Committee who are specialists in open records, but i also canvas newsrooms in San Francisco, so i ask them what is the data that you would like to see . What are the roadblocks that you come across . You may not be surprised to hear this, considering the report, but but one of the chief central things i heard back from was Demographic Data and how that ties into the cases that we see in the das dashboard. I mean, think about the top stories in the news today that weve all reported on homelessness is crime in our communities. Fentanyl crisis. These are all things that have intersections with ethnic data, with Demographic Data. Think about the stories about the hondurans and honduras role in our fentanyl crisis. Wherever you stand on that, you would want journalists to be able to verify the veracity of many of these claims to be able to look at the data and figure out, is this true to is this all true . How much of this is impacting our community . What are the policy decisions we need to make . But in order to inform the public to do those things, we do need that data. The report was very revealing, especially in terms of what information we dont have that other jurisdictions, other jurisdictions do have. It was very revealing in terms of that lack of Demographic Data, which is mirrored in what i heard back from all of our journalists. But i thought id also broaden this a little bit. And supervisor engardio was so kind as to say that it was all right if we kind of went off on this little tangent here and bring you into the life of a journalist who has to report on crime a little bit every day right. Was talking to a journalist earlier, he says, well, if youre a criminal justice reporter, you may start your day looking at the booking logs at the Sheriffs Office. Youre trying to see who is in there, who got arrested and for what. Well then youve got to figure that out. Who, who, who was arrested for what and why . What was the circumstances around this . You have to go to the pio or the sf Police Department and ask them to see if they could corroborate this and then get you some data from the incident report. Read it to you verbally because theyre not going to give you the paper. Police report not even redacted , not even with the information that legally needs to be redacted. Redacted. Theyre just going to read it to you. They may do that. They may not. Maybe its a busy day at the Police Department and theyre not going to tell you anything about those people who are arrested who youre tracking. There happens. Busy days happen. Totally get it. Well, if you do happen to be so lucky to get that data, then if you want to continue following the lifetime of that arrest, then you have to go to the das office and they may or may not give you the information you want to know about that arrest. You are, again, at the whim of the pio. You may have some broad data that is on the dashboard. And but you as a journalist have been dogging this pio for a long time. You then send in records requests. Youre trying to figure out whats happening with this person who assaulted this woman on market street. What happened . We dont know. And we have to rely either on the pios grace or or on Public Records requests that may take weeks that may take a legal battle. Is this any way to report on the crime that is happening on our streets to the citizens that we all care about . This should not be a fight. We should all be on the same side here. So you get that data . Maybe. So lets perfect world. Youve gotten the Police Report stuff read to you the pio of the das office gets you some information. Okay. Now you want to see what happens in court. Now i know this is not necessarily your alls jurisdiction. Not much you can do about the courts, but you can advocate, you can ask. So im going to explain this. You go down to the court in person. You have to ask for the records by filling out a form. Theyre not online. Theyre not in a web portal. You have to fill out a paper form and then you get an appointment where you can then look at the criminal records or you can get them mailed to you. Snail mail, because thats very helpful. Now, i love those clerks down there. Let me not say anything ill of those folks at 850. Bryant theyre doing gods work. They are awesome. But the system that is in place that they have to work in is difficult. Its difficult for them. Its difficult for us. We have to follow through going to the court time after time to figure out when the next court date for that person is. Thats not even true in Alameda County. I go to Alameda County. Look google right now, youre all at your laptops at Alameda County criminal records. And you know what . Theyll pop up in a web portal there is a whole calendar. You can see cases. Its really very easy. Gosh, very envious for people who are fully just looking at Alameda County crimes in San Francisco, its not quite so easy. So this is the lifetime of following ing a criminal justice story from stem to stern for a reporter, this is a tussle. This is a fight. This is not this is not easy, but it should be easy. It should be easy. As supervisor engardio said, not just for journalists, but for citizens in a perfect world, they wouldnt need us to tell them any of this. They could just go look it up and then we could be off reporting stuff thats harder again to find out much of that data would be helped. We have a whole list , a laundry list of requests from journalists we heard from and i will submit it to you in writing to make it a little easier to track. But the basic gist of it is being able to follow the lifetime aim of an arrest. Having unique tracking numbers possibly to help track that person across different agencies and having the ability to download the full amount of data from the das website. They present all the data there, but you cant get it raw if theres an error, you cant go investigate why that error happened. You have to go ask the pio again, which is a roadblock to that data. So theres many ways this can be reformed. I look forward to this conversation and look forward to giving you more of this in detail in writing in the near future. And i am really thankful and grateful for this discussion. Thank you all so much. Im here for any questions you have. Thank you, mr. Fitzgerald. I have one question on the Police Reports. Are those not Public Record . Is there like what is there like in the old days, you know, they were pretty easy to obtain. Like, is it just a resistance to hand them over or is there been a new policy . Im you know, im not a criminal justice reporter. So dont take this all as sacrosanct. And im sure there are people here who have more precise information about the legal aspect of it than me. But to my understanding from my discussions with reporters who do report criminal justice consistently, while they can give the Police Report with some redactions, most often they opt to verbally recite the portions that they are legally able to release. One idea from a journalist that i solicited said, well, what if there was a portal every day with the arrests and the relevant portions that are able to be made public and made public on that portal . And you just could check it every day like you check the booking logs for the Sheriffs Department. And there are parts that cannot be released from that Police Report, im sure. Supervisor dorsey would know better than i considering his work and parts that can. But if there are parts that can, why not simply release that on the portal every day . I mean, right now we get press releases on major arrests of interests. Why . Why not simply we have those collated on a web page so we could check them when we need to. Why depend on the press release . Why be on that mailing list . Why i have to be on that mailing list in order in order to get that information . Are there is there any fear or worry among journalists that when you file a story based on the data, that youre able to find that, oh, i hope i got it right or will this story potentially Say Something that with a deeper data dive, might Say Something differently otherwise . Or how does a journalist deal with that uncertainty . Well, thats why the paper record is so much so much more valued when someone says something to us, do they say it erroneously . Do they make a mistake . You have to rely on that trust. With that source. And if its a government source , that trust might be higher. But you also have to verify. So having the paper document even redacted is a much better way to verify it. I have to say i have in my time as a journalist, gotten sfpd Police Reports redacted for incidents. It has happened so it clearly it can happen. But in other cases in recent years, in my professional life, i have been rebuffed at its and so have other journalists. So, you know, it is it happens when it happens and it doesnt when it doesnt, great. Do my colleagues have any questions right. All right. Thank you, mr. Fitzgerald, for being here to represent the society of professional journalists. Next, id like to welcome Fred Brousseau from the budget and legislat Analyst Office to speak about the comparative analysis of prosecutors dashboards. Good morning. Good morning. Chairs. Stephanie supervisors engardio and dorsey. Excuse me. Im Fred Brousseau from the budget and legislative analysts office. Im here this morning with kerri tam, a Senior Analyst from our office. And we are going to provide a summary of our report prepared for supervisor engardio comparative practices prosecuting attorneys data dashboard in San Francisco and other jurisdictions. Just quickly on what a data dashboard is in a public agency, its a web site that provide key agency data on line in an easy to understand visual format and whats most important about it is it provides us filters. So the user can easily take the data thats presented. But slice it and see it through different perspectives, such as looking at a single year versus multiple years, or only certain types of cases or incidents or or only incidents in a certain neighborhood. So the, the dashboards, when theyre online, increase the transparency of the agency thats presenting them and another great technical feature is they can be easily updated with a robust database using a Case Management system from the agency. There are dashboards on das websites throughout the us and the interest in doing this pretty much goes back to 2010, at least when a number of National Organizations and initiatives started promoting the idea measures for justice, a nonprofit advocacy group, was as a primary sponsor of this idea and assisted many das offices throughout the country in setting up dashboards as prosecutors themselves created an Advisory Group called the National Prosecutor dashboard Advisory Group, the macarthur foundation, through its safety and justice initiative, provided funding to a number of jurisdictions to create and maintain their dashboards. The San Francisco das office received a macarthur grant and was involved with a number of national and local initiatives, such as the Data Driven Justice Initiative on the National Level and local, the recidivism workgroup and multiagency justice reinvestment initiative, all of whom are interested in incorporating more data into operating criminal justice agencies and analyzing outcomes comes and issues such as is the racial and ethnic distribution in of how the system works and whos involved in the system as well as case sufficiency, caseload, efficiency. So San Francisco has a dashboard. Here is a screenshot from one of their pages is this one is showing a actions taken by the da on cases that are presented to them. You can see there, you can see multiple years here on what actions the das office took and filters are presented over on the right so you could filter this down further for cases filed, for example, to look at just a particular year. You can also filter by case types, whether its a misdemeanor or felony, for example. And then the most serious charges associated with it. So you could look at all burglary cases or all narcotics cases and see this data presented this way. This is a very informative and it is its been in place since 2019, and the das office, and its unusual, i will add, we looked at doordash websites in other bay area counties and the large counties of Southern California and did not find anything like this. Presenting the dashboard. So that is good that we have this in San Francisco. However we also compared San Franciscos two dashboards in other jurisdictions throughout the country and found that there are many that have more robust databases that theyre presenting and more filters so that the data points can be sliced and diced in other ways to gain more insight into the Information Available. These jurisdictions are the ones we particularly focused on based on information from the National Prosecutor. Dashboard Advisory Group measures for justice and other literature on the topic. As you can see, most of them are elsewhere, although there was one other in california, yolo county in Northern California has an excellent dashboard that well talk about in a minute. But so do these other jurisdictions. All of them follow a similar structure or have a similar structure where the key steps in the prosecution process is presented. And you can see that in these four columns with the headers shown here represent each of the key steps from arrest being presented to the das office. The actions taken by the da case dispositions, whether there was a conviction or an acquittal, and then case sentencing that result in a jail sentence, probation, etcetera. And then in each column, you can see the filter bars that can be used in some, if not all of the jurisdictions we reviewed. So you can get more refined information and perspectives on the data presented. We have a lot of detail in the report and i wont go through it all now, but we took each of these four steps and looked at what each of these jurisdictions presents. And here you see just a summary for the six jurisdictions in the one column of how many of them present filters that can be used for this particular data point. So for arrest referred, can you get it by offense type . Yes. In most of the jurisdictions and yes in San Francisco. But you will see some gaps here where it is available in some of the other jurisdictions and not in San Francisco. And the pattern here is prosecuted individual demographic information is missing from San Francisco. So you cant slice it by the race or ethnicity of the of the individuals being prosecuted or other information such as their age, their gender, their geographic location. What district of the city they live in. And related information. And again, you find that in some most, but not necessarily all of the other jurisdictions we reviewed, everyone is a little different. This this screenshot shows a page from the yolo county dashboard. This, we think is a particularly exemplary dashboard. And though all of them offer robust data and lots of ways of looking at the information, but what we liked particularly about yolo, its a tableau platform and you can take any step in the process. This one here is for one month and showing the decisions made by the das office after they reviewed the case. And you can click through to any of the data points shown below. So i highlighted cases, misdemeanor cases prosecuted, so there were 330 for this particular month. You click on that and you can get the offenses as you can get the particular charges for the case, you can then click on that and get more information. What was the gender of defendants for those particular types of cases where did they occur . Was there a firearm involved . And other information to get it very refined . This you cant get this level of detail on the San Francisco dashboard. You can just get kind of the mega picture of how many cases at this step. This is just kind of summarizing then what you could get in yolo versus San Francisco. San francisco, you could get all narcotics cases that were charged and whether they were felonies or misdemeanors. But in yolo and some of the other jurisdictions we reviewed and you can get, for example, was it a distribution and manufacturing case . And then for those was what were the what was the gender and race or ethnicity of the defendants . What Law Enforcement agency was involved in the arrest . Was there a firearm involved . And you could get the conviction outcomes for those type of cases as well. So you can get down to a very specific level of detail. Another thing i want to point out that we found in the other jurisdictions that was much stronger than what we found in San Francisco, San Francisco does have some Performance Measures on their dashboard, such as the number of cases closed and the time from arrest to close of the case. And these are important measures. And i think its great that theyre there. But you can see examples from some of the other jurisdictions which had much more performance information, not only on the cases such as the manhattan das office, which shows at the time of disposition how cases were changed. So if they came in as a felony and then they were reduced to a misdemeanor, either by the end that information is available. Thats something you cant get in San Francisco and you can see it over time. To see is that going up or down and what does that tell us about the nature of the prosecutions . Milwaukee really stands out. Milwaukee county, for having all kinds of information about case process going and Case Processing efficiency and how long its taking, but also for how many cases does each process computer handle in a year . Number of motions for continuance that are filed by the attorneys, which can prolong the cases, staff turnover. So some really great measures. If you want to go in and just look at Office Performance as well as details on caseload for San Francisco, just to get to the cost part, the current costs for what was in place in june of 2023 and the office then had about 0. 75 of a full time equivalent two positions putting part of their time into updating and maintaining the existing dashboard. We asked the office to provide estimates of what it would cost to enhance it, to include some of the features we found in the six other jurisdictions, in particular, their estimate is about 134,400. That would be for one half time position and some temporary one time support for the Tech Technology department for some enhanced counts to the system that would be about 18,000. And after that goes away ongoing costs would be a little over 240,000 a year for the existing and new staff. We do recommend that the if the board wants to pursue this further, they get more input from the das office and other criminal Justice System stakeholders about what could be included, what should be included, and we hope mirroring some of the information you can get from the best practices jurisdiction that weve identified and profiled in our report, and that the office look into outside funding. There have been grants available for this in the past and there might be now. So it might be possible to do this without a general fund cost out. Thats the summary of our report. Carrie tam and i are here to respond to any questions or comments now or after you hear from the others. Well, thank you for doing this Research Report is excellent report. Really insightful. I mean, the good news is compared to other california cities, were doing okay. But of course , if you look at the six other jurisdictions, theres details in our dashboard da dashboard that that dont offer a certain filter. So just to recap from, i think seems like we dont post the number of cases still going from previous years or the number of continuances and who requested them. We dont publish the location of the arrests or the severity of the offense, whether or whether a firearm was involved. We dont show the victim or defendants demographics when an overwhelming majority of those other six jurisdictions do. And we dont show data on diversion to alternative programs. So im wondering, did you uncover any policy reason why San Francisco does not make this this type of Information Available while other cities do not necessarily a policy reason . I think from the staff and they can probably explain it better. But i think that there was a certain level of funding to get it up and running and then its remained static over the last several years. So the dashboard really hasnt changed during that time. It got up to a certain level and then remained constant. And i dont think anyones opposed to it for a policy reason from at least anyone we talked to. But but the funding and the resources have not been provided to enhance the system. And i imagine youve done lots of reports in your tenure. Was there anything about this report that stood out to you that was extraordinary or something that you liked most, that you discovered or something that just as a personal highlight that that we might want to examine . Yes, it did. And as a data nerd type of person, you know, i love seeing all the details in many of these other jurisdictions and the way you could just drill down and get to such a refined level of information. But the other thing that i found that surprised me, frankly, is the performance measure information. And i will again point to milwaukee. And we interviewed the Milwaukee County District Attorney. And, you know, he was really kind of an open book. Its everything is there sometimes its not a pretty picture. Sometimes you see problems in the data. And his belief is that that is information that the public should have. So not only do they have a lot of detail on the cases, but they have a lot of detail on how the office is functioning and if theres a change. Maybe they were more efficient last year than this office. Thats the kind of information as an analyst of Government Operations that i think is extremely valuable. And you dont find it in most places. What i found interesting was that among the best cities had the most robust data. Philadelphia chicago, those are considered very progressive cities with very progressive das. So it just struck me as San Francisco. Were also very progressive city. So its not theres no ideology. It seems, that determines whether you produce more data or not. Its just a matter its just a matter of will or is it a matter of resource . I think that in all of the other jurisdictions there has been someone who has spearheaded the movement and made sure there were resources available. And i think it takes that for the last several years in San Francisco, the dashboard has remained sort of held constant. So probably would take someone pushing for it. And thats certainly seems to have been the case in the other jurists fictions got it. Any questions from my colleagues . Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. This was a great presentation and i really appreciate your work on it. I had a question about in in your research, was there any sense of the amount of funding that it takes yolo county for example, or as a percentage of its budget . Is there are there any takeaways that you explored or that would be worth exploring further . Yeah. Supervisor dorsey we did look into the costs incurred by the other jurisdictions and we thought at least in some cases they must have spent a lot of money because the dashboards were so much more robust. We did not find that to be the case in almost every jurisdiction there were 1 or 2 staff people operating the dashboard and they may have had some infusion of funds at the beginning, such as Grant Funding to set up the dashboard. But overall, there there wasnt that much different even from a cook county, a very large jurisdiction or manhattan. And they dont have a higher level of staffing in any significant way than what we have here and what we have available. So that was an interesting and kind of a surprising finding. Yeah. Thanks for. All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate you being here this morning. Walk us through your great research. So thank you so much. Id like to now invite Eddie Mccaffrey or edward mccaffrey, the chief of policy for the San Francisco District Attorneys office, to present on our cities, prosecute dashboard. Good morning, members. Chair stephanie, supervisor engardio supervisor dorsey, thanks so much for having us here today. Appreciate it. You know, first supervisor engardio for really looking into this issue. I think its something that District Attorney jenkins is very focused on within her Office Around transparency and elevating kind of the data that we have in our office. But also want to take a minute to just express appreciation to the Budget Legislative Analyst Office for the great work. We agree with. I think what is a lot of whats been said here today and were going to kind of walk you through a little bit of a roadmap of what the dashboards that we have available. And so my colleague nora gregory, who is our director over Data Research and analytics, were going to be kind of tag teaming the presentation on. And so shes going to go over the next slide, which is going to talk a little bit about the timeline on how we got to this. Oh yeah. So hello, good morning. The dashboards that we published today are really a product of over a decades long commitment by our office across multiple elected das to use data to drive Decision Making to better understand the impacts of the criminal Justice System and to provide Greater Transparency to our offices work. And this really got started in 2011 with District Attorney, attorney george gascon, who launched something called da stat, which was a performance Management System modeled after compstat, which many Law Enforcement agencies use. And the goal of that was to focus on using data to make operational decisions in the office. And it was really for da stat that the office began putting together internal reporting tools, very early versions of some of the dashboards that we published today to track various metrics and you know, in the intervening decade, the office has been a part of many local and National Initiatives aimed at getting criminal justice agencies to adopt out more data driven approaches. A notable example of this is the San Francisco sentencing commission, which was a multiagency working group started by the fda in 2012 to study and make recommendations about sentencing in the city and county. And one piece of this work was to better understand recidivism. And the Commission Set out to come up with some agreed upon definitions and metrics, figure out a way to share and link data together between agencies and create a public dashboard to track what was happening with recidivism and to develop this dashboard to develop the dashboard. The office got help from both researchers at nyu and uc berkeley, and additionally, we received as many other offices have a grant from the macarthur foundation, which helped us bring on a data fellow to develop this dashboard. And then it was in 2019 that our office became the first Prosecutors Office in the state and the second in the nation to publish a set of public facing dashboards. And this first set of dashboards included a dashboard on cases present cases filed, trial outcomes, and also on recidivism. And then in 2022, we also launched two additional dashboards, one on case resolutions or dispositions and then one on the work of our Victim Services division. And so ill just so you know, before we jump into some of the dashboards that we are going to present, i just want to kind of outline some key bullet points from us as an office. You know, some mission and vision perspective. And i think i just mentioned earlier about the focus of transparency, but using the data within our office to make informed decisions both from a policy standpoint and both and also from a strategy standpoint. As my colleague nora said, we were the first Prosecutors Office in california and the second in the country to publish our dashboards. Its been, i think, a lot of work over the last five years and work that were excited about continuing on. We currently have seven dashboards that are live and active. We update them on a weekly, five of them on a weekly basis. And you know, one thing we wanted to make sure we highlighted in this conversation was, you know, we can were going to walk through some of the filtering. Were going to walk through some of the kind of overall intent of our dashboards. But, you know, as far as the raw data, we also are key partners with data sf to take a lot of that raw data and make it available on data. Sf which i know a lot of other departments do because i think we kind of want to make sure we focus and highlight that we want to partner and we want to encourage the public to dig into our data however they see fit and we are serving as that partner in that conversation and in that work. And before we get into the dashboards themselves, id like to briefly explain where our data come from and how we put together the data sets that ultimately feed into the dashboards and also what we publish on data. Sf and particularly i want to highlight the vital role that data from our criminal Justice Agency partners has in the creation of our data sets. Our office has a new Case Management system that we just got last year thats called a prosecutor, where it replaced a legacy system that was called damien and up until a few years ago, damien was really our sole source of data for any type of analysis or dashboards that we published. However, damien did not include some information that we would want to have. For example, well, there was no field in the system to track where the geographic location was of the cases incident. And additionally, sometimes that there was information that was supposed to be in the system that was not there either through systems error or information failing to populate from cms or just, you know, human data entry error for example, sometimes we had information missing on case resolutions and it was in 2021 that we finally got access to direct access to the court and sfpds database as cms and crime data warehouse. And we began to bring in Additional Data elements like the ones i just mentioned, in addition to others. And we integrated those with our own data. Historically, weve not had great data for on demographic information of defendants. So in 2020 we also began receiving data directly from the sheriff, which included selfreported information on the race, ethnicity and gender of people booked into custody. And as it stands today, we have a systematic way to cull data from each of these sources clean it, link it together to ultimately produce the data that our office has. You know, and as eddie mentioned, we publish seven dashboards on our website. For todays sake, im just going to walk through three of them to kind of explain what we publish and how the dashboards work. This dashboard, which is actions on all arrests presented, shows the number of criminal cases presented by Law Enforcement agencies to our office each year with the breakdown of decisions, our office has made and to the point that i was trying to make on the last slide. The data here comes from not only our own Case Management system, but were also bringing in information from the superior courts database to make this dashboard. And, you know, the bars again, represent the number of cases brought to us each year. There are several different actions. Our office can take when presented with a criminal case, we can file charges which is represented by the yellow blocks, meaning that we decide theres enough evidence to prosecute a case. We can discharge a case which is represented by the gray bars, meaning there is not enough evidence to file charges. We can also take other actions, such as initiating a motion to revoke probation or we can refer a case back to the Law Enforcement agency for further information on et cetera. The line, the black line running across the dashboard represents our filing rate over time, and that is the cases filed. Out of all cases presented to us in a given year. And the gray line represents the rate where we took any action on a case. That means we did anything other than discharging it. And the dashboard is dynamic. We have filters as as the bla presentation was pointing out on the right hand side that allow you to focus on certain data points you can filter on the year an arrest was made. The case type that was when it was presented to us, whether it was a felony or misdemeanor or the most serious offense on the type presented to us, and whether or not the case was reviewed by our Domestic Violence unit. And the next slide is the exact same dashboard, but just showing you an example of how it is dynamic and you can use the filters here. We filed on looking at all felony burglary cases presented to us so far this year. And as you can see, there were 517 cases that have been presented to us as of september 28th, 79 of which we filed charges on, and 87 of which weve taken any action on the next dashboard that we were going to show is a case resolutions. And this is data on all cases prosecuted by our office that have reached a conclusion or a case disposition. The different types of resolution lines are listed on the legend at the top conviction, dismissal, successful diversion. Et cetera. These are based on a numerical code that the Court Assigns at the end of a case, our team takes these codes and categorizes them into different these different outcomes. Its our goal to make our dashboards as accessible as possible and visualize the data in different ways. You know, here, for example, we are presenting at the top the distribution of cases closed per year by disposition outcome. And the graph at the bottom is showing the rate of disposition outcomes among all cases resolve for, for example, the yellow line here is our conviction rate. The orange line is our dismissal rate. Et cetera. And the next slide is again, this is the same dashboard, but just showing the use of the dynamic filters here. Were looking at all felony burglary cases that were resolved in 2022. I believe that was around 500 cases that we resolved last year. And you know, our graph at the bottom shows you that our conviction rate was 60 around 63. Our dismissal rate was around 21. And around 17 of people had their case dismissed because they successfully completed a diversion or collaborative courts program. And of course, prosecuting criminal cases isnt just the only focus of our office. Our Victim Services division also supports and provides resources to survivors of crime, and those are not only criminal incidents that were prosecuting, but also incidents that we that we might not be prosecuting. And this dashboard presents the number of unique victims served by our Victim Services division each year. It does include the demographic information about the victims we serve. We collect this information differently than the information we collect on defendants and as you can see in terms of filters here on the right hand side, we can look at the data based on the race and ethnicity of the victim, the age of the victim, the language, the victim speaks. If english is not their first language and the crime that the victim was affected by. And so i think the slides we went through at a high level, of course, you know, try to give a little bit of a snapshot, but also try to walk the reviewer through the process as well. And i think i appreciate the comments earlier from the bla, which would, you know, talking about just what it requires to maintain and staff the existing dashboards. And so since 2018, in our ongoing maintenance of the dashboards has been provided by a few Staff Members who have dedicated part of their time to the effort, in addition to doing a number of other duties, the allocation of staff time has varied from year to year with annual costs ranging from about 117,000 to 167,000 for an average of approximately 0. 91 full time staff. And so that kind of period over 2018 to 2022, which is in this exhibit here, kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of how the department has sought to fund that that work over the last number of years. And again, its mostly been supported through general fund dollars. While we have obviously looked to alternative sources as well. And then i just one last slide, and this one is as of june 2023, to maintain and update the dashboards was approximately about 124,000 for approximately 0. 75 full time positions. And so to conclude, i want to again express our appreciation to the bla and of course to supervisor engardio and to the Committee Members to hear for this item today. You know, as i just mentioned, our office is actively seeking funding opportunities from a variety of ways, not just from the city budget, but through grants and from private partnerships as well. Thats something that its not just related to data dashboards, but related to our Victim Services work as well as a number of other other units. And so were trying to be as creative as possible because from District Attorney jenkins perspective, like i said at the outset, transparency is absolutely a priority. Making data informed decisions. And so from her, her perspective, she does want to see what we presented on today, what currently exists on our website expanded and so what that expansion could look like would include, you know, publishing broader data sets such as on collaborative courts, an and diversion programs, talking about geographical information to talk about incidents and where theyre happening throughout the city. Weve kind of done a little bit of homework on that internally to kind of understand what what would go into that kind of work specifically the geographical data and the kind of commitment from a staffing standpoint, Knowledge Base standpoint, and also from a system standpoint as well to kind of start the ball rolling on, hopefully eventually going in that direction to providing that information more publicly available. But we also have kind of motivation to include performance measurements. We understand we highlighted the Victim Services team, but i think there is a desire citywide to understand how departments are doing their work and at what rate theyre doing the work. And we come up through the budget process on an annual basis talking about staffing to certain units desires and needs for additional resources. But i think from District Attorney jenkins standpoint and from the office as a whole performance metrics is something where we also want to take these metrics, take these dashboards in the future. And so in addition to, you know, additional filtering options, which was highlighted through other da offices throughout the country, you know , the reality is at this moment, we just do not have the Staffing Levels to make those improvements to take those expansions to the next level. As mentioned, the existing staff is really maintaining and ensuring that the data that we house in our office. But the ones that we partner with, other departments, theyre theyre, theyre available that you dont run into data error messages as a user. Thats something that ive been on on the side of. Its extremely frustrating. And so our team does a fantastic job, not just nora and her team, but also from our it perspective to ensure that theres no time for service, that theyre not down for 24 hours, but that theyre continually updated on a regular basis. And so as was mentioned, as far as what that Additional Support would look like, we do estimate that an additional 18 to 24 principal administrative analysts out of an annual cost of around 116,000 would be necessary, as well as a temporary Systems Engineer at a one time cost of 18,000. This is in a ballpark of around 134,000 for 118 to be exact. Total on an annual basis. In addition to the commitment that were currently providing from a staffing standpoint and so from there, ill pause and open it up for any questions wed happy to take from from Committee Members. But again, just wanted to say thank you to the bla and also to the supervisor. Thank you. Thats great. Its great to hear that your office is wanting to add these enhancements, even if funding is a constraint. I just had a couple of questions. Um, funding aside, id you had mentioned that in the enhancements that you would be willing to do location. Is there any policy reason to not show the severity of the offense or any policy reason to not show the, the victim or defend demographics . Yeah. Um, no, theres no policy. And as we did show on the last board, we do share the victim demographics that are handled by our Victim Services division. But just. Just that division. Yes, exactly. So not all victims. The my understanding this predates my time, but when the dashboards were first published, the reason demographic information was not included was because the quality of the information we had was bad. The Police Department may be able to speak to this as well, but my understanding is the way that the information was being collected by the sheriff and how that fed into the court system. We sometimes lost some of the information on. For example, i believe, of the way that the sheriff coded and latinos was with race white and his spanic as the ethnicity. But what transferred over to cms, which then populated our system with the defendant information would just be white. So there was just a lack of information. And in any time im trying to make information public, theres a balance between transparency and accuracy and not providing just bad junk data. So i believe that was why the original decision was made. As i mentioned, we now have of information directly from the sheriff. So we have a better level of detail on demographic fix that only began in 2021 though. So you know, our current dashboards looking at over a span of over a decade, we just need to make a decision about the best way to present that information over time, if that makes sense. Got it. So if theres no policy reason, its just a matter of the resource and getting good data. It sounds like we have the data now talking about resource, because when we heard from the journalists, they said the Demographic Data was really the number one thing they need. Is there a way to do this a la carte in a sense . Like, do you need to do it all or is if we can cherry pick the thing thats most needed and we put whatever limited resource we have to at least do one little enhancement . Or do you need to do it all together . Yeah sure. So i think its a great question. Its one of our items that were looking into at the moment because our division one similarly kind of stretched thin at the moment is kind of battling with a similar challenge, which its not just data kind of analysis standpoint, its also building the systems in order to make sense of the data to populate it. And so its something that were looking into. But as far as kind of what is the timeline or what is the expectation, unfortunately, i dont have an answer for you at the moment, supervisor, but im happy to follow up with you. Great. And you had mentioned that that private sources of funding might be available. Are there is there anything youve pursued for these enhancements or anything you would like to pursue or are you looking at . Well, i think when we talk about private, its, you know, i theres a general interest, i think from San Francisco. You outlined it in your remarks earlier about being the tech capital, being an expectation. We are always looking and we have meetings with entities both in San Francisco and throughout the bay area because weve found that there are businesses that do find value in this in this in this region, in this area of industry. And i think what we want to do is figure out what that right partnership looks like. But of course, were not going to sit on our heels. Were going to try to be as proactive as possible. Unfortunately, theres nothing active or live at the moment. But again, were open. And my next question is just bear with me, because this is my way of thinking of a creative solution to the constraints we have. So like the bottom line is if we want a full picture of whats going on, a journalist, a researcher, theyre going to have to look at multiple data sets. Theyre going to have to look at a Police Incident report, arrest data, cases presented, a District Attorney jail booking information, the Sheriffs Department, court records. So theyve got to go to all these different departments. So it takes a lot of skill and resource. And imagine if a professional journalist is frustrated, like what a crime victim feels like. Right . So and so i understand the da is not responsible for data held by the courts, just as police is not responsible for the data held by the da. But im wondering, so first, if i had a magic wand and a limited pot of money, we could create a whole new entity that integrates, pulls in all the different data, integrates it and makes this beautiful dashboard where its one stop shop for everything, right . But in the meantime, right, we dont have that magic wand or pot of money. Im wondering if theres a creative workaround. So the idea is for example, a case the da charges right. Could the das website just simply link out to the relevant Public Document at the courts . Right. And then the Police Department could do something similar . Ill ask them if an arrest is led to a charge page. There could be a little notation with a link out to the relevant Public Document at the das office. So in a way, were were creating a were just were just linking out to Public Documents that you dont own. Right but youre just doing that service. So were kind of were making it easier for someone to follow a case from arrest, to charge to Court Hearing or trial. Basically, were creating a trail of links that people can follow. They dont have to hunt for everything in every different website. Would that be something even feasible or possible . Ill let nora get into the specifics, but if you do have that magic wand supervisor, id love to borrow it and address some other issues as well. I do think, you know, and unfortunately does come back to not just a resource issue, but, you know, from a standpoint of time and capacity. I think that there is a theres an interest in and a willingness. I think what it comes down to is the need to build that kind of process and to ensure that the documentation that is being shared. I think as was mentioned earlier, needs to be redacted to ensure that certain private information that is required by by code to kept private isnt made available and that we dont run into any of those risks. And so its something that were constantly talking about internally. You know, we are always happy and willing to work with the public and reporters, of course, as they submit, whether its Public Records requests or just general inquiries, i think District Attorney jenkins is happy to have those conversations with our press. But also from a staff standpoint, i can tell you that on a on a regular basis, were interacting with members of the press, not just from a local standpoint, but from a National Standpoint and some cases an interNational Standpoint to share that necessary documentation, but do it in a safe and private way to ensure that theres no risk involved. And then i dont know if nora, you had anything to share, but i think its a really interesting idea. I would need to think of more detail about how it would work. I mean, to your point, its not completely user friendly, but the police do publish all of the incident numbers that are, you know, all the incident reports and you can link those incident report numbers to our public data sets and see if a case was actually presented to us. And then what the whether we decided to file charges on that case and then, you know, once that case reaches resolution, what the ultimate outcome was. But i agree with you, its not particularly user friendly. You need some data skills in order to work with that. Right . Thats why i thought like i mean, this is just an idea. So but like were just linking to already Public Documents, right . So its just youre just giving someone a little bit extra service like you can if you see a data point on your website it but its connected to something thats happened in the courts. Just link out to it so that people dont have to go to the Court Website and find it there. Thats just the idea. But we can talk more offline about that. And then in the very, very last question, is any progress or whats the latest with justice . I mean, you dont have to do too much detail. Thats a whole separate hearing. But weve talked about it a lot and its a baseline of what you get from these other departments. But are things going well with justice implementation . Are there still ways to go . I think theres it seems like and ill let nora speak to this more detail, i think that theres a ways to go, but theres a high motivation and willingness to kind of come to the table and figure out what those solutions are much more. So i think in the last couple of years it seems like ive witnessed just from a tangential standpoint that there from the partners that are at the table, that theres a high willingness to kind of troubleshoot those concerns and those issues and try to get some of those problems fixed as soon as possible. I dont have the specificity of exactly what those challenges and those issues are, but i have seen kind of a much a stark difference from the first number of months. District attorney jenkins took office to the last like six or so. Yes. I only participate in one of the working groups for the justice committee, but but there was a brief pause over the past few months, and weve recently relaunched and are kind of have been restructuring the rules with which we operate. Right. Which should hopefully help expedite some of our Decision Making with the group. So i would agree with eddie. Great. Well, thank you so much for being here today to answer these questions. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Oh, im sorry. Any other questions from our colleagues . Thanks. Thanks so much for great presentation. You know, i did work for a couple of years on the in a Public Information role in the Police Department. But for that, i was in the city Attorneys Office for 14 years. And i dont think i fully appreciated how good we had it on the civil side that you could get get, you know, the a brief that was filed yesterday, you know, in a pdf, its the same superior court. Its just the civil side is completely different than the criminal side. And i dont know if you have thoughts on why that may be and maybe this is for the other hearing thats to come. But just in general terms, is there any sort of any any thoughts you have on why the criminal side is different than the civil courts . You know, supervisor, i dont have a specific explanation for that. I will say separately, theres a couple of grants that we house internally. This is specifically speaking to the criminal component and talking about the partnership between multi agencies with regarding to Law Enforcement and i think theres always is a challenge sometimes when it comes to bringing all the partners to the table at the same level of interest and willingness to participate and i think from a standpoint with the courts, they are very much their own unique space and they dictate the terms on how and when they participate in a lot of examples. And so i look forward to that additional hearing that you all are potentially hosting with the courts and the Sheriffs Office and others and happy to be a resource if and when possible for that. Okay. Can i ask if there are obstacles that you run into with any of the state prohibitions on disclosure of criminal offender record information or query data . I know that when i was at the Police Department, that was often a major concern about over disclosing record information about that. I would identify criminal offenders as and my i felt like i never got a great answer on this. And it was a source of frustration to myself. And i know to journalists that there was just a window of about 90 days contiguous with an arrest, and then that faded into something that we could no longer reference or talk about when were talking about cases, i assume those endure, you know, forever. Theyre Public Records or are they not . Are you in your data in other words, let me frame it this way. If i wanted to see how many times an individual and i had the name was prosecute for an offense, would that be something that i could do through a dashboard or would i have to go to the courts or could i not not do it at all . Um, so, so to your point, state law prohibits us from publishing summary criminal history information. So we deidentify the case level. We do publish case level data, but we, we take away the personally identifying information, the sf number or the name, the date. We do publish some information in, in aggregate about whether or not we see people come through the system again, we have a dashboard called the subsequent contact analysis dashboard, which is looking at those who have been convicted and served time in county jail or who have been on probation, and whether or not we see them again, either through an arrest, arraignment or a subsequent conviction. But thats Information Published in aggregate. If that answers your question. Okay. So it doesnt include the theres no transparency on how many times an individual has been prosecuted. Uh, not one individual. No okay. Okay. Thanks thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yes all right. Lastly, were going to hear from catherine mcguire, director of the Police Department Strategic Management bureau. Thank you for being here. Good morning. Supervisors thank you for having me. As you said, catherine mcguire. Im the executive director of the Strategic Management bureau of the Police Department. And ill be talking to you a day today about our. Well, i wanted to give you a little bit of an overview and background on our system or our types of data that we collect and how much progress weve made in the last 6 or 7 years. And then tell you kind of whats on the horizon as well, or underway and on the horizon, and then dig in a little bit more into the detail of responses to information requests and incident reports. Next slide. So so, so this is sort of the overview of the last ten, 12 years and weve had Incident Data consistently going back many decades, staffing and Personnel Data similarly and officer risk data about 15 years or so that that that those are pretty big and really the first two being very big data sets that that weve had have maintained for a very long time. The the newer data sets are our use of force data which is now systematically collected and with demographic information and the like. We have Body Worn Camera footage which entails some high level, some metadata about the Body Worn Camera footage that then we dont really do any analysis on it, but its there and then we have stops data, an and which has gone through several iterations in the last eight years and i can talk more about that but ultimately we also have introduced electronic evidence tracking in the last few years and we will be the big thing on the horizon is case data. So this is our Case Management system, which is part of our records Management System that we are in the process of implementing. Ill just make note of two major improvements that weve made recently on use of force and stops data for use of force. We have shifted to an electronic form that is entered directly in the field, not in the field, but by supervisors in the field, and that instead of a paper form that gets sent and then entered. So it reduces the possibility or the potential for data entry errors and then in the stops data is has also been improved just this year in the last few months, weve shifted from the state stops Data Collection system to an internal off the shelf vendor there that is providing multiple modules in their system that will will allow us to do a number of things and i wont go into that today. But happy to talk more about that at some point. Next slide, please. So drilling down to or actually zooming out more more like wanted to kind of give you just an overview for the public in particular about the various buckets of data in the criminal Justice System. Im not here to speak on behalf of the entire criminal Justice System, but i thought it was helpful context for those folks watching who arent aware that all of these different data data pieces in the criminal justice puzzle are handled by different agencies and some of whom are are not even city agencies. So as you can see, dem really handles the call type and why why police might respond. And then and this is just the police side, the criminal justice side handles also fire and ems dispatch. So response, detention and arrest, thats the sfpd and we track ive already talked about all of our data types. So ill skip over that. And then, of course, the Sheriffs Department handles booking information. The District Attorney handling charging information. And the courts really handling outcomes of those charges. Next slide, please. So the current currently sfpd is in the configuration stage of implementing center. We ran an procurement process and select Central Square for our implementation. Again, an off the shelf system. This is a big transformation for sfpd, who has built out a lot of their systems or weve built a lot of the systems that we had in house for about ten years and realized, well, we really are better at fighting crime, not being a Software Development company. And so we made that shift. And so Central Square includes a Case Management system as well that is something that right now we have case tracking. So we know what cases are assigned and to whom. But thats about the extent of it. The Case Management system would be something that our our investigators can use as a tool to help them look at where the evidence is, what results, what the crime lab is finding, what there theres just a lot of opportunity there. And a lot of opportunity for analytical. Outcomes or ability to analyze those data as as they come online. And we have no idea what well be able to do in the future. But it will be a shift for the Police Department. Seismic of seismic proportions, transparency. Were really we are as as other agencies have indicated, for themselves, relying, pushing data to data. Weve got all of our data sets on one data save our use of force data, which is in process right now. We are also so we also do a lot of reporting and visualizations of our data. Weve got the crime dashboard, as you know, chair engardio and then the stops data dashboard is coming soon. We have a partnership with the Comptrollers Office to develop that dashboard. And i believe were really close to being finished with that work. So that will be coming soon. The stop data dashboard and the crime data dashboard seek to be part of a solution for my Analytical Team to no longer have to publish our quarterly activity and data report. And the idea there being that all of the data will be found on a dashboard that can be easily sliced and diced for the public and in ways that we cant even get to in our 300 or 200 page quarterly report. So that is forthcoming as well. Next slide. So going back to sort of how the public gains access to these data, other than dashboards, we do feel a lot of requests for actual data sets. So weve issued our entire use of force data set several times over the sfpd legal receives those Data Requests and our Business Analysis team, i have jason cunningham, whos the lead of that team here to answer any questions about that. And i also have will sampson, mosher, whos our cio, to answer any questions about our systems that are in the process of being implemented. So we are mandated or the Business Analysis team has to remove personally identifiable information per state law and location for sexual assaults and other crime categories and any incidents involving juveniles to protect their anonymity. The goal of our program, of our Transparency Program really is the most frequently requested data sets being posted on dsf and those are the ones that are already there are again, but for our use of force data set for people to use on their own and analyze whatever they like and it does all data sets do include demographics except our our arrest data. Right now. So and that is a function of a legacy system that were in the process of replacing. And then finally shifting to an online transparent data set really allows us to free up those analysts time for other necessary work, such as management analyzes, evaluations of operational or administrative changes, and ensuring data integrity consists and accuracy. Finally, for incident reports. Thanks very much. We see. So incident reports. Generally when we get a request, theyll go through the process very high level here and theyre processed by our crime information Services Division and the administration bureau, the and they essentially they will send out to the unit or the sort of folks that authored the incident report to redact out the incident report as appropriate with the guidance that we have set forth in our department. General order 3. 16 and excuse me, the their know, theres some detail there on that slide about what they can and do redact. And its really in order to protect victims or witnesses and the piece that is lesser known is probably to the public and maybe yourselves as well. Is that sfpd may further redact information that may risk or expose investigative techniques or the completion of an investigation. And so if an incident is under investigation and theres content in the report that might expose the investigation or interfere with the investigation , the department may decide that its not in the Public Interest to release it. Um. So as you can see, there is in 3. 16, ill go back up to that third bullet and the sub bullet, the quote there that i believe ties directly to state law about unless release would endanger citizens, Law Enforcement personnel or Law Enforcement investigation or constitute an unnecessary invasion of privacy, we must release it unless it fits. One of those things we do release those things. And that concludes my presentation today. And happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you so right off the bat, ill ask the same question i asked the District Attorneys office about linking to other agency records. So knowing that youre not responsible for your records, the da holds us. Could you hyperlink to the das website . Meaning if you have an arrest that led to a charge, then why not just link out . So people can read a Public Document about that charge so that way right. Its just helping people, you know, guide them to the to the next phase. I love that idea. I think that there are several ways to get at that. I think will and i were just we were just discussing a potential simple solution, which might just be to provide instructions on on our crime dashboard board or wherever theyre looking that says use this number, go here and search and that might be the simplest solution, a more elegant solution, which i think probably would be about a billion dollar project and ten years would be a system that is has the incident report. And then theres a hyperlink from the incident number on the sfpd incident report, the incident number that then searches all the systems in the sheriff, the da, the court that then would produce all the relevant records. But again, thats thats like that is a pipe dream in the future. And i think ultimately that thats something where the nitty gritty of that would include include every agency having to have redacted their their records quickly and this is presuming a several months later maybe thats more possible. Every agency having redacted their their records and put them online. So thats and that sounds rather simple but if youre talking about the volume that were all dealing with, i think thats where it gets a little bit more difficult. But your simple solution sounds good at least something. So its just were serving the public, were giving them a roadmap or thats a great idea if we can even do that simple version, that would be that would be fantastic to pull that off. Yeah. So along those lines, on the data page, so im not able to like pull it up and maybe ill talk it through. Theres a table preview and theres a on the grid halfway down theres a column labeled resolution. And then my question is where it says, cite or arrest. Is there a way to add a link to the charging document . Would that be possible. I think that would be again, thats something that maybe its the best like narrative of instruction as possible. And i dont know if the das office would have the charging document on line. We can certainly have a little sidebar conversation and see what we can figure out. Thatd be great. Im just trying to be creative, find ways we can do simple, simple fixes. And for simple fixes. I dont know if this needs to be a fix, but something that stands out to me. And ive heard others are confused when they go to your crime dashboard. So. So if you go to the main crime dashboard, it tells you all the burglaries and whatever, and theres even homicides listed there. But then like when you scroll down, theres this note in red type. It says note monthly homicide numbers are located here. So its like, right. Youre seeing the numbers above. And then you have this big red note saying, click here and then this pdf comes up and now youre wondering like, which is the right document . Or are they different . And i got to look at them both. So is there a reason why that red note is there . Yes, its a very good reason. So part of the reason is that and im going to have will jump in here in a second when i get this wrong. Part of the reason is that that report that you see that you clicked on is by incident. So now you might have multiple homicide victims in an incident and that would be reflected in that red note report. That pdf report is the number of victims. And so for ucr purposes, and thats how we are guided to report our crime to the state and federal governments is that we count victims. Of course we do. Its homicide. And so the incident count isnt always reflective of the number of homicides that we might have. Thats confusing for. Yes we i mean, you know, another solution is eliminating that homicide in the and then just keeping the link to homicide number counts. But we leave it. Weve left it for now. Right. So maybe on a sidebar we should talk about or maybe talk with some users like like victims or Community Advocates or journalists to like whats the confusion level . Is there language that could be said that to avert the confusion or. Yeah. So okay. And then you i yeah, i wanted to ask about Police Reports because this was an another number one topic we heard from the journalist that, you know, you know, in many cities its pretty routine to get a Police Report. So im trying to get a sense why what im hearing from journalists is that it seems to be kind of on the whim of what was happening that day and who theyre interacting with. And its ill have time to tell you whats in it or im not going to get back to you or ill put it in the mail. Like, is there a i just want to get a sense like, whats the baseline procedure for getting a Police Report . Yeah. So as i described before, i suspect this is a bureaucratic and an sfpd unique issue. I know. And i hate to say this because i know we say it all the time. It all comes back to staffing. So the issue so as i described before, the request comes in, it goes to our criminal information or crime information Services Division. Thats our records room. They then refer it out to the field, to whomever wrote the report or the unit that wrote the report. And they have to do the redaction. That makes sense because you have a person whos the closest to the case who knows it well enough to know whether or not it fits those criteria. We talked about. Right . So but the problem can be is that person is on leave. Are they busy with responding to calls for service . Are they theres any number of factors that might go into that. So theres room for improvement there for sure. On the bureaucracy side, i think giving our our our rsd crime information Services Division a bit more, well, more staffing would be great there. And then better guidance on what and what can be or should needs to be redacted. And maybe its i think there was a there was a comment that i think the reporter made about that made me think, well, we might be able to do a somewhat automated solution where they wouldnt get the full Police Report, but they could get more information without us having releasing anything that would be of that would sort of endanger to either victims or witnesses or the or or Law Enforcement. Right. Because yeah, because i saw your list of criteria. It seems pretty standard. So like an educated person or trained person could probably look at most Police Reports and check the list and so maybe its automated, maybe its ai, and then someone just reviews it. But it seems like that could be a you know, a Better Process and that we can push out those those Police Reports faster. Sure. I mean, ideally, it would be amazing if you had on a website where its a map of the city where an incident happened, you could the public could just click. And that redacted Police Report would just show up so everyone can see at least get more information based on what you were saying. Yeah. So for sure, i think i will say theres another other element of this, which is we were talking just yesterday about Police Reports and Police Reports. You know, they get written, but they have to be approved by a sergeant to and in some data sets even higher levels. So the availability of that sergeant and a whole shift of incident reports have to be reviewed. So its not so sometimes theres a little lag there. And so that those incident reports dont go into the system as an official incident report until its been approved. So we do want to make sure that that so the example that that the member of the press was citing about the looked at the arrests from the night before, and you go and you look for the incident report that incident report might not be available yet to crime information Services Division. So especially if its a pretty like if they were arrested at 11 at night and its 6 a. M, you know, there could be an issue there. Got it. Last question. And i actually heard this from a couple of journalists who when they just texted me about, hey, ask this question. So basically, the so the chief gives a report at the commission, the Police Commission meetings, so that you could find that or its noted on the Police Commission agenda, but its not anywhere else on the crime dashboard or is there a way to at least link out or show the video . I mean, i think its more he just gives an oral report right. So is there a way to like link to a video of that or have like a transcript of it or something . So people can hear what he says . Um, i mean, we can look into that for sure. I think that a lot of that, a lot of those incidents are reflected in the compstat reports that are online. So. That is also one source of that information. Then i thought you were going to ask me some questions that everyone was going to go to sleep, too. If i gave the answer. So that was better. Oh great. Any questions from my colleagues . Thanks so much. I wanted to just ask my understanding about Police Reports and information is that theres if i recall correctly, theres a 90 day sunset. In other words, theres a period of time for criminal record information when it is disclosable and then that disclose ability vanishes. Thats thats the guidance that i recall getting probably know better than i do. So in this case, Attorneys Office and i may ask Joe Fitzgerald rodriguez to answer this also. But before you before you go, is there are we done with the transfer from the uniform crime reports to nibrs, the National Incident based reporting system . Unfortunately no. So some of many of the issues that we were , you know, well, a good smattering of the issues that you all have surfaced will will actually help be resolved by our neighbors implementation. So now the records Management System that i was referring to is the system that gets us to nibrs compliance that system we in the configuration stage, which then which just means were setting up the system to then be tested. And so that the testing phase begins next year, july next in 2024, and then we move. And thats about a year long process. And then because making sure it really works and then we would go to, um, we go live and, and have an initial phase of training and all of that, that, sorry, im getting that backwards. We would have training and then go live and thats about another nine months. Okay oh, and certification by the state, of course. So thats when we get to and that takes six months as well. Great thanks so much. Could i would it be okay if i have for the society professional journalists, i have some interest in just exploring your some of the challenges that youre running into. Um you know, i assume some of this what were talking about here is making sure that members of the Fourth Estate have access to data trends and crime data and those kinds of things. But i also know that a large portion of what you do is case specific and individual specific. And i was curious if you or your members run into the same sort of quarry issues, meaning criminal offender record information that that doesnt really give and actually denies visibility to somebody who might be getting prosecuted multiple times or getting arrested multiple times. Is this something that youre encountering in in San Francisco or, you know, i mean, you know, we so heard a lot from our members, but also in my own experience, you know, certainly , you know, we i was reporting on a story with han lee from the standard, who you may all know. Were looking at attacks against the asianamerican community and trying to follow up on the cases and see, well, where are the cases now . Whats happening now , now . But trying to get a holistic view of the people who are involved in those cases. Very difficult at and being in and out of the court in order to just look at the simple records that are available online, other places makes it more difficult. And that lag time in getting those records also difficult, right . So theres a lot of elements to this. Thank you for asking that. But one thing i also wanted to add i neglected to say before is were very cognizant of the right to be forgotten and the right of, you know, people who are accused to be able to wipe their records. And so we understand also that people need have those rights and we definitely want to be cognizant of that balance. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thanks. I have just a quick question for catherine maguire. First of all. Thank you, vice chair engardio for this incredible hearing. Its so important and theres so many Unanswered Questions and so much more to do on this. I just with regard to justice, which is something that i have been looking at for quite some time now and talking to the city administrator about and getting updates, i just like to understand what is your understanding of the policy objectives of justice and everything that joe justice is supposed to be doing. So my understanding is its i mean, so i think the Justice Program is in the midst of an evolution. So justice when it was introduced, however many decades ago when i started with the Controllers Office 18 years ago, i the Justice Program had been in place for almost ten years. So and i was like, why . Why is it taking so long . So back then, right . So my and my understanding though was just to link data data so that they could share information across systems that and thats done an and also took a long time and now and when it was a Justice Project that was the goal as far as i understood now all of these independent sorry im i wont ill try not to digress too much because i have strong feelings about this program. The program itself now is now a program and it needs to become not only maintain those connections between agencies, but i think the goal is might need to be bigger. And i think that the Program Needs guidance on what that looks like. I would agree with that. And in terms of the questions that have been asked today, are those questions and objectives that are discussed at in justice meetings, i know that theres you know, the meetings are online and the minutes are online. Just its hard to really get a sense of whether or not you all and the agencies participating in those meetings are grappling with the types of things we are and what our journalists and what our constituents are able to you know, what they have access to. And im just wondering if in those meetings you are grappling with those same types of questions, as i would say, yes, i would say that what so i attend to 2 or 3 of the Group Meetings on a regular basis to try to make as many as i can the and we have to chairs of those working groups here. So the i think what we grapple with most often and what has has where we are now is that direction is a little bit more substantive understanding of where are we headed. The i know that were doing work that is sort of or the work groups are looking at and collaborating with the city administrator on on the things that are spelled out in the bylaws and the and the justice founding documents. And so kind of going through that. But to what end . And so that thats where the guidance is, is needed. I think great. Thank you so much. Yeah and thank you chair stephanie for bringing up justice again. And for viewers who might have missed my opening remarks, justice is the internal data sharing system between Public Safety agency as this hearing was about the public facing data that we share with the public and with journalists. But the justice data sharing is vital and it warrants its own hearing. And so i think the last time the board of supervisors had a hearing on justice was in 2017. So its been six years. Justice was started in 1997 and tens of millions of dollars later, were still working on it. So i look forward to maybe we can do another hearing just on justice. I think at this point we can now go to Public Comment. So thank you, madam chair. Mr. Vice chair, we will now take Public Comment on agenda item number two. Do we have anyone joining us here in the Board Chamber who has Public Comments on this discussion . Please come forward to the lectern. Seeing none. I understand that we have one caller connected remotely. Could we please have comments from that caller. And caller, if you are connected and youve heard that your line has been unmuted, that means it is your opportunity to provide your comments. We may have one unattended line connected to our meeting. Everyone, please be patient for a moment while we figure out whats happening with that caller. Of tv. Are we still connected to that caller. Lets, uh, unmute that caller once again so that they can hear that their line has been unmuted. And then ill begin their time when i hear their voice. Yes. Okay well, it appears that this line is on, attended and otherwise. Madam chair, i dont see that we have any further callers in the queue. Thank you, mr. Clark. Public comment is now closed. Closing remarks. Sure. Id like to thank all the speakers and my fellow Committee Members for this important discussion today. Its clear we need to understand and learn more. We talked about justice and that it warrants its own hearing, but for the purposes of this hearing, i think it be beneficial for people to hear from the Sheriffs Department and the courts at a continuation of this public hearing on the topic. So at this time, id like to make a motion to amend the hearing request to strike from the long title, the words and the Mayors Office of innovation and instead after the comma, add the superior court of california county of San Francisco and the Sheriffs Department. So moved, can we have a vote on that . Thank you. Just catching up with my notes. So im hearing that this is a motion to amend the hearing title to remove the Mayors Office of innovation as a reporting agency and to add the superior court in the Sheriffs Departments. Thats right. On that motion offered by vice chair engardio vice chair engardio. Hi engardio a member. Dorsey dorsey i chair stephanie i. Stephanie i madam chair, there is no opposition. Thank you, mr. Clerk. And what would you like to do . And now id like to make a motion to continue this item as amended to the call of the chair. We have a roll call vote on the motion to continue as amended to the call of the chair. Vice chair engardio. I engardio i member Dorsey Dorsey i chair stephanie i. Stephanie i. Madam chair, there is no opposition. Once again, thank you, mr. Clerk. Do we have any other items before us today . There is no further business. Thank you. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Greets greetings and saludos. We recognize the efforts we have made in our community. We brought creativity and passion to every corner of our great city. From los angeles mission, to our comida. Let us celebrate the unity and perseverance and shared dreams. Its not just a celebration but a reaffirmation with a shared vision to embrace all. This is to ensure and embrace our community. And let us not only think of our past but our future. As a city, side by side learning from one another. Lets ensure that our legacy is one of empowerment, education for years to come. In celebration of latino heritage month, lets stand up for justice and equality for all. Lets create a Brighter Future for generations to come. Viva San Francisco and viva la communidad nicaraguans for your incredible performance. Muchas gracias. Please, everyone, find your seats. Please help us welcome mary travers allen, who will provide this evenings land acknowledgment. Good evening. Good evening and blessings to all my relatives. Myam