For us, we know from having done this work with lowercase lows that when we have the opportunity to speak to generally the woman but the victim in the case and build that relationship through an advocate, an investigator or an attorney we see much higher interest in prosecution, and a much High Conviction rate as a result of that. Commissioner shorter. It in clarify for those watching from home who jean is . Not everyone knows. So you can be on tv too. Good evening my name is jean roland,managing attorney for stalking, Domestic Violence and physical elderly abuse. I do have a question for you both. Just to clarify, while you are working under staffed in terms of your ability to provide all services, as we would like to victims, just to clarify, it seems the weight in which victims become engaged with the advocacy organizations of those programs providing Services Including shelter and beyond, that first link really comes through the District Attorneys Office. Unless the victims themselves call those agencies. But certainly you are all helping to assist if persons want that type of support. I think that i would have to attribute that to a joint effort by the scu unit as well as the District Attorneys Office. The first point of real contact that dv victims have are the inspectors and svu. Once inspectors make the initial contact that is where the trust begins. Once that trust is established it is turned over to our office where our attorneys try to maintain that trust. Honestly, with a number of attorneys that we have it is very difficult to maintain that. As we know it is not just the perpetrators who continue to have power and control over the victims but there are families and relatives out there for the defendants who also apply a lot of pressure on the victims. I think that one of the most crucial points in prosecuting dv cases is when the victim begins to turn away from us, the prosecution. I honestly believe t we need more resources because at that point in time it is not a matter of us letting these cases go. I think we have defined other means to be able to pursue these cases even when victims dont always cooperate or even when they dont come in to testify i have to believe that it is not always because they are not telling the truth. I think a lot of it has to do with recanting, minimizing, and quite honestly they are very dependent on their abusers. There are a lot of different situations. It is incumbent upon us to find out what those reasons are before we let these cases go. So we need more resources in order to be able to find other types of evidence that might be out there in order for us to continue to prosecute these types of crimes. Thank you. One other thing on victim advocates, may not be obvious to everyone what they do. They said done with the victim and discuss with him or her what will happen. They will help them get Mental Health counseling, counseling for the children, help with relocation is required, a whole area of services that we offer through our Victim Services unit. They dont require that its case be charged. Even if an individual the size it is not safe to move forward we can still offer services that units especially in Domestic Violence at a very high rate. The victims unit that you described, is that house and District Attorneys Office . Yes. Highest caseload comes from the Domestic Violence cases. Commissioner loftus . I have to say jean roland trained me. What jean said always was even if you have a high caseload you put your victims name on the chart in front of your desk and you call them every week and you find out how they are and you find that what is going on in their lives. It is not like it is essential to hold batters accountable and keeping people safe. Gene is not someone who makes excuses and demand that kind of performance. Those three das are there to do the arraignment in the morning, 912 they are raining all the cases, doing bail hearings. They arrange a new case; it was my experience even better days when we had better Staffing Levels by the time you get back to your desk as a prosecutor you havent even had a sandwich you pick up and call the victim she has heard from someone in the Public Defenders Office telling her what may or may not be true about the system and we are committed in the way that we are to prosecute these cases i really command and president chu to talk about the Staffing Levels and volume matters if we want a system that works for victims. It takes times. Thank you jean for everything that you taught me, and im glad that we are talking about these issues so we can find a way to solve them. What percentage of Domestic Violence victims eventually recant or do not want prosecution . It really is difficult to put a percentage on it. I would say it is a high percent. Even the trials that we take out, i know that at least half of them that we have done this year is without a victim. We are relying on other means to prove those cases. Those are just the ones that go to trial. The want to do make it that far as we dont have any evidence or the victim is recanting, it is much higher. On the evidentiary side, we had a domestic finance cases, the first piece of evidence was a 911 tape when the victim complained and that is no longer admissible. Explain to the public a little bit about what is happening in light of the Supreme Court decision on the confrontation clause and how it affects your ability to bring cases forward. The best case that can explain it is when i was prosecuting Domestic Violence cases it was back in 2003, before the Supreme Court ruling on crawford. It impacted a lot of different crimes. Talking about Domestic Violence. In 2003, when i was prosecuting Domestic Violence i was able to walk into a courtroom even though the victim did not come in to testify and would not testify. I was able to take the recording and it was a tape cassette at the time from the Police Department. The inspector would interview the victim onset and i would take that take, put it into a tape player, push a button, and the jury was able to listen to the victims statement on a recording even if the victim did not comment. When the Supreme Court crawford case cannot in 2004, we were not able to do that anymore. The Supreme Court decided that the defendant has the right to confront his accusers, and in this case we are no longer able to play the recording of the victim statements unless the victim is present in court and testify and be subject to crossexamination. After that ruling there has been a lot of subsequent rulings trying to define what testimonial evidence is. The 911 cds were huge one. I believe the 911 statements actually come in currently because they are also considered spend any statements. Any statements made under the excitement of stress of the situation which as you can imagine many 911 calls would sound very urgent or if they are in hushed tones it would also come in because it would indicate that the victim is talking in whispering tones because they are in fear. Those statements are allowed into evidence most of the time. So, with that, what we end up taking to court or trial, some statements, a few fragments of the whole picture really. Fragments of what the officer at the scene captures from the victims and fragments and statements from the 911 cd. Sometimes that is all that we have in order to prosecute these cases without a victim. Thank you for pointing that and thank you jean for the great work that you do a Domestic Violence prosecutor. You are true hero. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Commissioner turman . Commissioner turman i also want to clarify that in that situation, the example you gave, even the officers testimony cannot comment other than either because the actual interview process is not an excited statement. Its not even a Business Record that also gets passed. That also invokes the confrontation clause, that is that correct . Correct. It depends on how the officer captures the incident in his memory and in his report. If the victim say is in tears, crying, shaking, visibly affected, and the officer is on scene right away and sees her physical appearance, we can argue in court that many of the statements made by the victim at that point in time is considered spending statement. It depends on the judge. And how the officer captures it on his report. Thank you. Further comments or questions . Commissioner i have a question regarding our different conversations that we have had the opportunity to pursue with advocacy organizations. We have heard a lot about the challenges that many communities in San Francisco face do to language barriers. Im curious about the impact that is having on the cases. I can tell you the prosecution side of it. I think it is much harder to prosecute cases when there is a language barrier because we are going through multiple levels. The issues that i have seen is that statements from the victim are not accurately translated; or, the best way for me to explain it is that when you speak a different language the translation of one word can mean different things. And it can mean slightly different things. So one interpreter may translate the word one way. Say, push. Another interpreter may interpret the same word saying it was a hit. We now have two inconsistent statements. One of the things i see in trial all the time, rightfully so, the defense is doing their job. They are pointing out inconsistencies. We can argue that they are not inconsistencies because of language barriers but it depends on how the jury will see that. When we are presenting cases to the jury they have in their mind that the victim was inconsistent. First she said it was a hit, no she says it is a push. A third interpreter is saying it was a slap now that shes testifying on the stand. Which is it . Beyond a reasonable doubt, is complicated. The other issue is when the victims dont come in to testify. Its even more of a barrier for us to get past all of the language issues to be able to bring any of the others out in trial. It is very difficult. Thank you so much jean. I am sure that the people who are cramming for evidence finals would be well advised to watch the segment. Thank you christina. Next we have an update of the justice system, justis. From linda young. Pieces of evidence floating or a longtime. I imagine everyone is trying to get the bad guy. There are pieces floating around, not everything came together. Thankfully to the dogged persistence of especially when linda young, being able to pull the pieces together we are pretty much there. There will be more tweaks coming along. Good evening commissioners. Thank you for inviting the city Administrators Office. My name is linda young, deputy city administrator. I will discuss quickly the justis project. The transfer of function to the city of ministers Administrators Office which occurred in march, 2011. Our mission is to support the criminal Justice Department and need to share information in compliance. The justis project is to provide sharing data get abilities, provide individual Case Management system to address departmental Business Needs for the Police Department, the Sheriff Department, District Attorneys Office, public defender, adult probation and to connect the court system. The city administrator is the executive sponsor and will provide oversight and operational decision making. The council provides budget decisionmaking. The Technical Steering Committee meets on technical issues and we do that weekly. Some of the Development Since the transfer of functions. At the time of the transfer from a staffing perspective the program only had four feel positions out of eight budget it. Since that time we promoted to of our own staff and added two for a total of seven. Increased from four servers to 28 serves. We implemented bm ware, built two portals. The Sheriff Department was able to update their new release of jail management system. We work with the District Attorneys Office to implement the new subpoena model using Police Resources and mgis data. For the Public Defenders Office would connected the system to the hub. We had a new application for the Council Direction for the sf Police Department, the Sheriff Department, courts and da. We created a portal with the Police Department so they can access information such as quality of life information. We help them with the 2011 Justice Department report so we were appropriately assigning bcs codes; we migrated their blades; and supported the Police Department request for funding for phase i. We created a separate portal, a portal for non criminal Justice Department so that we can present aggregate data in compliance, this is non data, that is aggregated that the public should be able to see, in cooperation with the department and dr. I will show you four sample reports. The last things we implement it the first phase of interdepartmental notifications with criminal justice business processes so that when probations are booked, both the Sheriff Department and Adult Probation Department is notified immediately. For the justice reporting portal, i want to show you sample reports. As you can see from little icons, if red, locked one, only Justice Department can see these reports. For public reports such as Domestic Violence it would be open to the public. Just to clarify again, for folks who are watching, justis is an acronym for the justice tracking information system. Thank you commissioner. Thank you. If i can show you the Domestic Violence dashboard, these are four reporter markup, dv cases, arrested and bailed; dv cases arrested and bailed by zip code; dv cases sentenced vs. Dismissed; and dv cases convicted whether felony or misdemeanor. For the first report, if you look at the chart, this report will show by fiscal year the number of cases. When you zoom in on the year you can see by month but the number of dv cases are, and my by days if you further zoom in. This is nonproduction sample data. This is mocking up for presentation purposes. If you look at this, this is for the period jan. 1, 2012, through dec. 4, 2012. By zip code you can see where the high incidence are. You can see 94103, 224 cases, and so on. This portal will also allow you to change the dates that you are looking at. If you are interested in fiscal year versus calendar year, if youre interested in a particular month you can change the date and see the same data. For dv cases sentenced and dismissed what we wanted to show is this one is by fiscal year, what are the number of actual cases dismissed versus sentence and then we wanted to show the percentage count. In the last report, the convicted dv cases, what numbers were felonies versus misdemeanors . What are the critical reports they want to see . As a departments are hooking up and sharing their information with us we will then populate the fields. So we will assign mous with the various departments to be clear about what data is being shared, and what data is being shared publicly for the next. The next step, we want to connect the district attorneys system bidirectionally, and the modules for discovery, an investigation and operate a Case Management system to a webbased version. We also want to connect the adult probation Case Management. And connect the course Case Management system; we note that they recently had budgetary challenges. We will be working with them next fiscal year to do that an expanding the interdepartmental notifications. Phase 2, we want to help the juvenile probation Case Management system hook up as well as the department of Emergency Management calls for service. So quickly to acknowledge that none of this would be done without the work of the justis and the justis council. They worked around the clock when the servers were down. The justis Governance Council participants they attend every one of our Council Meetings and provide valuable guidance and recommendations from the Police Department i will acknowledge susan andrew and rodrigo castillo. At this time if you have any questions . Thank you very much, this is an important part of the puzzle with the justis ringing together information of the lawenforcement, District Attorneys Office and the support network understand and have an idea what the statistics are. This is incredible. Thank you so much for your efforts. Thank you. Commissioner turman the fiscal year data on the mockup goes back to 2010. Does your data go back further than that . It goes back further than that. There is data going further back. Within your portal . The data does exist; we just did not show it in this report. Commissioner turman asked the question but i want to be clear that the data goes back further than what is indicated on the report. I also want to command and thank the team that is putting this together, the Governance Council, but certainly this is something to be very clear that has been in the making for over a decade. This really started with the task force, which is now in Oversight Panel as we have mentioned previously. There is a teamwork and resources to make sure we have coordinated data that is appropriate for each department so that we can again have not only a birdseye view but it a ground view. We have come a long way. I waited a long time. As a member of this commission but also many of the folks introduced earlier who have been working on something similar to occur for a long time. We have been somewhat puzzled by the fact as we often hear in these chambers and other matters, by the fact that certainly San Francisco sits in the seat of such Technological Developments that are really evolving and reshaping the world on so many fronts, biotech, biomedical, engineering feats. Will could not understand why we could not board and eight with the technology available, stateoftheart information system. For our citizens. Thank you very much. I am very excited. It seems as though we are exponentially improving. I dont expect that we will wait another 10 years for similar reports. I am expecting that certainly within the next year we will be 10 steps further ahead. A few years ago it wouldve taken longer