effect that, well, a lot of what i did was i just looked for out of the way places to do it. and he named a few places and one of the places he named was hunter's point off of third avenue, off of third street. and, i mean, think about what kind of statement that's making. people live in hunter's point. it's a neighborhood. it's a community. there are kids. there are older people. there are younger people. and the mentality that it's ok to do my vandalism in this other place if it's not a real place where people are. it was just mind boggling to me. and that really represents the challenge of that level of arrogance and disrespect and disregard for fellow residents and human beings in the name of free expression or whatever euphemism you want to use there. that's our challenge here today. so it's been bothering me. i think it will continue to bother me. but i think you all know better than i even about the problem, and rather than being all doom and gloom about this, mohammed gave me the assignment of talking to you about some of the things that are working, or will be working, because all is not -- all is not gloom and doom in the world of graffiti here. as the president mentioned, there have been some changes in the last 10 years and some of them are positive. one legislative change is the last october -- last november, the board of supervisors with support of bevan dufty and the entire order passed an ordinance, and it's something that many city ace cross the country and acrs california have, but san francisco never did have. captured within the umbrella the definition of blight is graffiti, and one specific element that was a big driver of this ordinance came from the graffiti advisory board and it was a request that the time to abate on private property be shorter, and it's a recognition of the fact that everybody knows that the longer you leave graffiti up there the more likely it is to attract yet more graffiti or other undesirable activity like garbage and dumping. it's the broken windows theory. we see it all over the city every day. but also the quicker yo get it off, the less likely it is to recur. in the blight ordinance passed by the board that we should be implementing starting next month, that 30 days is now 15 days. and that same ordinance also combives us the ability, a much stronger ability that we have now to go and abate it ourselves if the private property owners don't. most private property owners do abate the graffiti, and that's a good thing. you know, we don't really want to be penalizing property owners who themselves are victims of graffiti. my private property was vandalized and i certainly felt like a victim. but we do recognize that it's important to clean it up as fast as possible. you know, having a tool like the blight ordinance will be very helpful to us. so thanks to the graffiti advisory board for the idea. thanks to the board of supervisors for making it real. the board has been -- [applause] yeah, i think that's worth some applause. the board and the mayor have been working with some of our state legislators to strengthen what's called the civil compromise process whereby those who are prosecuted for graffiti, maybe make somebody whole in terms of paying the cost of abatement, but they're not necessarily making the broader community whole. and so what this effort is is to have a stronger requirement for community service. so not only do you have to undo what you did in effect, but you have to go and undo graffiti all over town or do some other sort of cleanup, which we think will be a much stronger deterrent and good kind of -- a good linkage in the theory of restorative justice, that the penalty really fits with what you did. if you're going to mar the community, you're going to have to more so clean up the community. we have had a lot better public reporting of graffiti. not just when it's on the building, but when it's on the building, and in progress. the police department has doubled the number of the arrests that they've made in the past year. so that's something that was very positive. some of the departments of the city that are affected that own a lot of public property and are victims of the graffiti, public works, the m.t.a. and the p.u.c., we joined together and formed a dedicated clerk in paul's office that helps funnel all of the graffiti work in one place and helps the prosecution process flow better. paul can probably speak to what he has done at the d.a.'s office to establish the process to make -- to keep these cases from falling through the cracks. and finally, the community corridor partnership where we have focused some of our resources in the commercial quarter across the city. we've been working in some cases with property owners to enter into an agreement whereby we have a contractor go and abate the graffiti immediately, or as immediately as possible so that in these most visible corridors that are part of the economic life blood of our city, that that graffiti doesn't stay there very long. so there are things that are happening that are good. so i don't want anyone to -- i don't want to start off the conference with everybody kind of down about how we're being overrun here, but there are some good things in the works. but we really need your thoughts and your partnership to really help us really breakthrough to the next level. so i want to thank you for coming here. before the next speaker -- because sometimes speech can be a little dry. you're going to be treated to an effort made by a couple of film makers from the academy of art university. i think i met one of them this past weekend, a short little video that i think helps paint the picture of what we're up against. so thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. i'm paul henderson with the san francisco district attorney's office. i'm the chief of administration there. i know ed was just talking to you about some of the stuff that we talked about from this morning. and those of you that don't know just how important this issue is, this was the focus topic this morning on n.p.r. and so the interview this morning was with ed and myself discussing graffiti and its problems with the city. he said it was a little controversial, but i think he was really understating it. when i got back to my office, penal were saying, i didn't realize you were so mad -- people were saying, i didn't realize you were so mad. you were really mad. you were really angry. it really wasn't anger, it was passion. it really was. this is something i feel so strongly about. right before the interview took place, and i encourage you guys to go listen to it later, they told me, now, we're going to have some artists come in. they didn't want to be here with you because they don't want you to see them. but they don't want you to give them too hard of a time with them on the radio. and i was like, well, that's going to be a problem. i mean, we can have the discussion, but i don't know how much i'm going to be able to -- i'm not going to not respond to the things that they were going to say. as ed said, the things they were saying and the things that were most offensive was when they were trying to defend the work that they were doing and saying it really is art and what we do is we try and choose places that don't matter so much, like the areas off of third street. and those of you that don't know, i'm from san francisco and i grew up off of third street and it was exactly in the bay view that i felt like these are the communities that we have to protect as well. everyone has a right not to live in graffiti. and all of you -- i see so many of the faces here from all of the neighborhoods that i talk to. you know, i recognize every single enabled that i go to wants to talk about these issues and we can see even here. just from a show of hands, how many of you have seen graffiti in san francisco this week? just seen it. right. ok. and so you understand, you know, when i'm on the phone and talking to these people on the radio, and you know those of you that i've seen in your different communities, this is a passionate thing that everybody cares about because they all see it. they all know about it and they all want to know what is a solution? what can we do to do better and improve san francisco to address this problem and the blight that graffiti creates? and so i just got to say i just want to acknowledge, not just the people on the panel and all the hard work that we're doing, and i think that's great and wonderful, but i just want to acknowledge all of you for coming out here and spending this time because people have to understand that this fight is a collaborative. it can't be done by the police department alone. it can't be done by the department of public works cleaning up by themselves. it can't be done by the district attorney prosecuting cases alone. all of us have to work together and we need the public, we need the community, and so wh i'm hoping is that from this presentation, from the speakers that you're hearing from and the information that's being provided to you and that you're learning from today, a that all of us take that information and we all become agents of change, right? so we take this information and we go back and we are talking to our families, we are talking to our friends, we are talking to our communities and we are telling them the things that we've learned today about how we can improve graffiti, about how we can do a better a job of holding people that decide to break the law in san francisco accountable. and i just wanted to share all of that with you. i look forward to seeing all of you down in the criminal courts sitting on my juries as we take these cases to trial and as we try and prosecute the people who are damaging our city and reducing the values of our properties and communities here in san francisco. thank you so much. it's been a real pleasure. i'm so excited to see all of you here. thank you. [applause] i got all excited and forgot that i'm introducing the next speaker. and so without further ado, let me introduce to you one of my favorite supervisors, bevan dufty from the board of supervisors. [applause] >> i told paul he has good taste since i'm the only supervisor in the room right now. but rose is going to call david chu and get you in trouble after this session. >> [inaudible] >> i saw him. i was here. i watched him with great respect and affection. >> [inaudible] >> so let me see. if you've got an empty seat next to you, can i have you put your hand up? there's some folks in the back. can i encourage people from the back, you don't have to pay more to it. it would be a great thing to make us feel like people are comfortable. i would also like to take a moment and ask my good friend rebecca dell gado to stand up and get a great round of applause. everybody who is involved here. [applause] >> i think that there are probably video pirates that are going to come after mohammed, because he has been duplicating this so much. i can tell you. he is so excited to have this tool, that he insisted that i take my daughter's barney video watching machine and view this at home. and i really think it is an excellent tool. i see that my friend and colleague admiral from this year with the school district and other colleagues from the school district. i think it's incredibly important that we have a tool. i know the demographics are such that there are a lot of slackers ta are in the vanguard of tagging, but i do think it's important that our young people establish a value of understanding that fundamentally, graffiti is disrespect. it's disrespect for people, it propagates violence, ma -- misogyny, it says that some neighborhoods of our city should be treated differently than others because as a city, we always battle against both the perception and the reality of neighborhoods being treated differently. and to the extent that we have neighborhoods that are not as aggressive in the battle against graffiti or that happen to be subject to more tagging because of their geography or the fact that there are areas that are more isolated from public view, it does separate our city and i think it creates a division that's bad because we value as san franciscans that we're a collective that really embraces diversity. i think that what tagging does is it really undermines some of the values of san francisco because we're blessed to be such a naturally beautiful city and the city has such beautiful people, and to have the environments that children go to school in or seniors ride muni on or people come out and see on their own houses and properties to see this blight affixed to this is really a way of making someone a second class san franciscan. i think that's intolerable. i want to say that i authored legislation at the board of supervisors which required that whenever a city replaces a street sign that has been tagged, that it had to be replaced with a sign that had graffiti sheeting on it. it had been a situation where we were not doing that because of the additional cost and it seemed to me unwise that we would make that investment and take the time and invest in the labor to replace that sign and not to make sure that it was more protected than the sign than existed before it. i chair the san francisco county transportation authority, which administered the half cent sales tax. it does everything from planning and building the central subway to funding parra transit. but we've invested $1.4 million in graffiti coding street signs around san francisco. i think that what you can see the war we were really losing three years ago, we're gaining ground on now. i think that that's an important thing to people. [applause] i do want to say that people have talked about mohammed. and for me, the theme of what i want to leave you with is zero. i really like that. i think that zero is what we can do. we are a city that has demonstrated that we have vision and we have creativity. we have the ability to affect wait sanctuary city and a health access problem and city government and our school system. lots of creative approaches. i think that we are ready now to take it on and to demonstrate to world that we can achieve zero. we can stop graffiti. we can coordinate ourselves as a city working together from city departments, part nerg with property owners -- partnering with property owners, community groups and non-profit organization, people from young to old and demonstrate that we can get a grip on this problem and we can stop it. i think what mohammed has demonstrated from an operational standpoint, and i would be the first to admit i would be you should great duress if he was my boss because he is on it all the time. i even made the mistake on asking for slack on saturday during cleanup and he put me down three flights of stairs. i know what strong leader he is. i want to share with you that he's also a mentor. on that day we were out with henry alvarez who is the new public housing director. he talked about the ways that mohammed has mentored him as the department head and to help him get not just a handle on this, but in terms of managing his work force and making a productive environment within the public housing arena. and i think that's something that we don't have enough in city government. i think that too often we get into what we're trying to accomplish, what we're trying to achieve, where are we going, and not enough time is spent on really mentoring one another. i think that is something when people become department heads, they become commissioners, they take responsibilities in city government. there isn't enough of that. and i really want to salute, not just the mohammed that we know as our battle general, our mr. clean, but as someone who recognizes the importance of investing in the human capital of this city and mentoring. i think fundamentally, we are on the brink of doing things. i think the city is cleaner. i think that from an operational standpoint, we're doing things that have never been done before. our friends from golden gate disposal are here in terms of what we're achieving with recycling and what we can do with come posting. i really think our goal has to be zero. it is unaccept to believe have a city this beautiful where the people matter that much and to have it defiled with tagging. i think it is totally counterintuitive to what we represent. creativity is one thing. tagging is absolutely another. and i think we can be proud. i think we can speak up. i fully believe that each of us should walk out of here today convinced that we can change this. i'm a believe. i'm a believer in what've seen in recent years with the leadership. ed lee is here, our city administrator. mohammed. we have never had stronger leadership in this arena that can do things. i don't think we have ever had more commitment on the part of people in this city who want to see our city government succeed and restore the faith of people. i'm intrigued. is anyone from the court system here? is anybody here from the san francisco superior court? i will tell you that i have visited with the prior presiding judge and appealed to having a graffiti judge. i know that we have a community justice center that paul henderson is very involved with. i'm on the advisory committee. i know some cases will hopefully come there. have you had any graffiti cases to date? >> no. >> ok. but i pledge to you to take my homework out of here. james mcbride is the new residing judge. i pledge to youly go personally visit with him and share with you the things that i listen and hear and make my commitment to redouble that effort. i think fundamentally unless there is real accountability and, and chris who is here from the police department. i think that we've got a tremendous effort that is going to apprehend people, to identify and to keep faith with the public and we do need our courts to be with us in this effort. and you have my pledge. i want to say the community benefit districts i think have been a tremendous boost to us in recent years. they've worked so diligently. as large as union square and small as noah valley to make sure that tagging is just not allowed to remain anywhere, and i just say that our city government is really ready to work with you. i am tremendously inspired by mohammed, but the people at the department of public works and by all of you being here. i want to thank mayor newsom for giving me the opportunity to represent him and i hope we can give him a gift of a zero graffiti city by next year. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you. also joining with us today is my counterpart at the recreational park department, dennis kern. and chuck levy is from "the chronicle." please give them a hand also. please -- [applause] >> ok. it is now time for us to take a few questions. we'll try and answer them. we'll just take a few. remember, you have those post-its in your folder. and if we don't get to your question, please, you know, write down that question and take it and stick it on the board behind. we do have quite a packed y general da and we have about another hour and five minutes to go. and the second half of our presentation is really exciting because it's going to talk about new programs and things that we are doing to include people -- some of those vandals, we are trying to give them an opportunity to change their lifestyle. i will introduce leon, who is also from the graffiti advisory board, but also the executive director of san francisco bureau. and he is the fiscal agent for this. leon. [applause] >> thank you, mem. before we take question -- thank you, mohammed. before we take question and answer, we have about 15 minutes for that. after the forum this morning, one of the people who -- she listened in, but i don't think she called. her name is amanda. she wrote in to kqed. i just wanted to read it. i live in western addition, and used to support the movement. i'm assuming she means the movement of graffiti tagging. she says, but now i feel that taggers are cowards. part of the anonymous experiment -- part of the noums expression culture that hides in the darkness and actually undermines true free speech. my understanding from the police is that these are suburban young adults, not over own city kids. regardless, they don't tag specific hithes. they burden the working place folks who can least afford to repair it or fight it. for those of us who live around graffiti, it just feels like bullying. it is not a victimless crime. you are telling the kids and adults who live there that anyone can do anything to their world. we are subject to a continuing vision of our