Im shawn sex ton. Im a captain with the alameda sheriffs office, and i had significant roles in urban shield in the last few years. And i just wanted to talk about one component of urban shield. Yell command is an exercise that prepares all of the Emergency Management and manage Operation Center staff for any kind of disaster, whether its man made or natural. And the whole purpose is to create an event that tests our regional capablities. And weve had these tests since 2013, and each year, we test a certain event. This last year, we tested our community or our availability to distribute our commodities in an event of an earthquake, and these are the types of things that yellow command prepares all of our regions and our Emergency Management centers to respond to. Thank you. Supervisor cohen thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good morning. Members of the committee. My names philip white. Im a training and exercise planner with the bay uasi thats based out of dublin california. Like mr. Massey and the speaker before me, ive had specific leadership roles in the urban shield programs. Specifically i have over 30 years of experience in the fire service, but what i want to talk to you today is about how urban shield has modified or changed from its origin, which was primary Law Enforcement, as mentioned, to today, where its multidisciplinary. We have fire, police, we have Public Health, and more importantly, in response to some of the concerns that were raised earlier in the year by the stop urban shield folks, we put together the green and gray area commands, which for the first time we now started bringing into this unique training opportunity, citizens from different teams, as well as creating a fair zast disaster fair for people to come learn about how they can be more prepared, so id just ask you to consider the items before you with the modifications that have been made without further amendment so that we can go ahead and continue to see this exercise occur every year. Its a unique training opportunity. One of the things is that theres some things youll obl get one chance to go ahead and get it right. This isnt like sports where theres next year. You can create a new team or do something different. When you have an emergency, you only have one time to get it right, and our goal here with urban shield is to make sure that they have an opportunity to do these things multiple times so that the one time they have to do this, they come to house or a friends house or a family members house that theyre going to go ahead and save the lives, create greater security and ensure that everyone goes home. Thank you very much. Supervisor cohen thank you. Next speaker. Afraid im going to say a lot of the same things that people in front of me said. My names craig denton. Im with the San Mateo County sheriff ease office and member of Homeland Security division. Im here representing san mateo fire agencies, san mateo ems agencies. On behalf of those entities, i would like to express our support for the urban shield Training Exercise. Planning, training implementation and evaluation are some of the cornerstones of Emergency Response. The urban shield exercise creates this environment and we must develop strategies, work together, coordinate Emergency Responses and evaluate current Emergency Operation plans. Urban shield is an all hazards multiple jurisdictional training that leaves all those participate in an overall state of readiness. Communities and local governments are given the opportunity to activate their Emergency Response units and trarn for the betters. All officials request use the exercise to evaluate the processes and repair the deficiencies they may find in their response and recovery plans. Were all aware of the recent disasters that have affected alarm and small communities across the country, and we are under obligation in strengthening our communities and mitigate against, prepare for, respond to and recover from threatened or actual Natural Disasters, acts of terrorism or other manned made disasters. Its for these reasons that San Mateo County supports urban shield project. Thank you for your time. Supervisor cohen thank you. Sharif, tashwen, nick. Hi. Good morning, everybody. My name is sorry. Sorry. Laura, mengarni, and laura irwin, youre free to cue up in line. Sorry about that. My name is sharif sakut. Im a resident of San Francisco where i was also born and grew up here, and im here to tell you urban shield is incredible racist and islamophobic. It is also using military weapons that have been tested, used and perfected in our homelands homelands and brought over here to use in our communities. In addition to any of this racist programming, just this year, the oath keepers were present at the program. Sheriff ahern himself has supported pahrumps policies, and the alameda retweeted earlier this year White Nationalist richard spencer, and these are the kind of policies that theyre put forward. What we really need is housing, we need Community Based alternatives, when we talk about sanctuary, who are sanctuary for. An emt, when he was speaking, he said he did not agree with the terrorism nexus, but thats the way it was, but thats throwing our community under the bus. Theres a very real fear here. We need these Community Based alternatives. Urban shield is racist. You have the power to pull out completely, and i hope you make that right choice. Dont be an accomplice to this racist islamophobic program. Thank you very much. Supervisor cohen thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is tariq. We believe our city, our countries should be well prepared to respond to emergency and Natural Disasters. Thats exactly why were opposed to urban shield. Approving urban shield youre approving programs that support violence against minority communitied. In germany, they killed 8 people by police, and the u. S. , by cap ird ta ita is hundreds. Paragraph prf urban shield is built on the belief that we are at war with a domestic enemy that must be neutralized. We have seen how this results in Police Treating our communities as the enemy, particularly black people, arabs, muslims, and poor people. Urban shield is supposed to exclude International Teams from countries that with the documented rights violations. This should be extended to u. S. Teams from departments with documents civil and human rights violations. People, we people in the bay area are actually afraid and scared to just walk by police when we are in kaffia, the picture that you saw, we wear it all the time, and i am proud of it. When im walking on the street, and i pass a police, i am terrified. Thank you. Supervisor cohen thank you four your testimony. Next speaker. Good morning. Supervisors, my name is mohamed shek. Im with the stop urban shield coalition. This was at this years urban shield expo. This was a sniper rifle that was raffled off to participants, and not juchlt law enforcemen juchltjust Law Enforcement, but anyone who was present was able to buy a ticket for the raffle. Urban shield started off as this Law Enforcement thing and has evolved. Now, the urban shield fair that you saw a picture of earlier, with the oath keepers, now, the oath keepers are an Extremist Organization identified by the southern poverty law center, extreme antigovernment organization that came as a result of president obama being elected as the first black president. These are the kind of organizations, these are the kinds of politics that the sheriff of Alameda County represents. Recently, the Sheriffs Department got a reward from the federal government, 1 million because of his participation with federal Law Enforcement agencies, particularly around immigration, so participation with ice and encouraging that participation. Now, the San Francisco board of supervisors, in february of this year, voted almost overwhelmingly with the exception of yee who actually wanted the legislation to go further, called on Alameda County to suspend urban shield. What were calling on you today is to make good on those values, on that vote, and to pull out of urban shield, but also to reject the mou as it stands and to amend it so that you all have the power to not participate and to not actually fund these this kind of highly militaryized racist program. To say you cant fund the mou [ inaudible ] supervisor cohen thank you. Thank you. Last group of cards that i have, tessa, david sparrow, dennis n. Barrett. Good morning, supervisors. My name is woods irwin, and im a member of the stop urban shield coalition, and like others here, im also here to urge you to reject and amend the mou with the bay area uasi. So as has been mentioned, the primary architect of urban shield is Alameda County sheriff ahern. As has also been mentioned, the support of racest and xenophobic policing determine straight demonstrated through the recent receipt of 1 million because of collaboration with i. C. E. , the inclusion of the oath keepers in this years expo, and the inclusion of teams from countries with hone human rights abuses. It is imperative that San Francisco continue to show leadership as it did in february , and that when it passed the resolution to urge Alameda County to stop funding urban shield. As the fiscal sponsor is dangerous to continue to participate in a program that the residents here regularly articulated militaryizes Emergency Response, making our neighborhoods more terrified places to live and work in. Its dangerous to capitulate with a program such as this seen by clarifying movements like black lives matter as black identity extremists. Today, you can vote to reject and amend the 340d u as it stands, pull the city and county out of urban shield. Urban shield cannot be reformed. Alameda county released its recommendation in this supervisor cohen thank you. Your time is up. [ inaudible ] supervisor cohen thank you. Next speaker, please. Any way, trying to get that up there. My name is eleanor le vine. Supervisor cohen and eleanor le vine, you need to clip your document. Its upside down. Never like being upside down. Supervisor cohen okay. Okay. I work for code pink for peace, and many of you know our organization has worked hard over the years, beginning with the start of the iraq war to end war and to replace war with peaceful solutions, and we feel the same way about urban shield and uasi funding, that militarization never brings peace, it never brings democracy, it never brings freedom to people, and what id like to address just quickly is the issue of a culture of fear that exists in this country which has led to the increased military spending around the world that our defense department, our militaries have unimaginable amounts of money. And that kind of culture of fear has now trickled down to cities and to counties like uasi funding and urban shield. Do not be fooled by the thought that we are going to be overcome by people trying to get to the United States by ferry boat, by foot, if thats imaginable, by airplane, by whatever means necessary we have for the democracy we have in the United States. Do not be fooled by the calls to faear that we are increasingly seeing in this country. Exercise your right to speak up and to look at alternative ways to maintain a democratic system and to make sure that freedom and democracy are extended to everybody. Do not succumb to a culture of fear, because if you do, you are going to go down a road where theres nothing that a military response that you are rely on and will bring you to the kind of response that you can rely on [ inaudible ] supervisor cohen thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. My name is laura kaswani. Im the president of the arab organizing center. I was also a member of the Alameda County task force on urban shield and a member of the stop urban shield coalition. I dont want to repeat a lot of whats been said. I just want to make clear that the issue at hand here is urban shield, and the other issue directly related to that is Alameda County sheriffs ahern who have proven to be incompetent at addressing the ongoing issues of racism going on here. We have heard about the oath keepers, we have heard about his rayist comments and tweet. On a personal level, as a member of the task force, the person that was recommended by the sheriff to be part of the task force, mike grant who is connected to the oath keepers, participated in the task force with very many months with some of the people here in the audience and myself and others, and after the task force sent me an extremely racist email, and directing that hatred toward myself and the organization that i represent. This is the type of mentality that the Sheriffs Department holds and emboldens and in terms how urban shield allows to play out. You have the chance, when we found out sf was a fiscal sponsor of urban shield, we were pretty excited to know that our city would take a stand and make sure that this racism would not continue. We dont have four years to waste. We need you to do something now. Reject this mou and make a difference. Thank you. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is angela jay. Ive had the privilege of serving on civic boards here in San Francisco. Im on the polices Community Policing work group, and ive been on the Veterans Affairs commission. I stand here as a citizen very concerned. Many times San Francisco likes to see itself as the humanitarian in the group. The Police Departments to say were going to keep forwago fo were going to keep working on the issues that are plaguing our Police Department, but to see it struggling to find humanity in its citizens, to even think about bringing in a militaryized frame of mind is a step backwards. One thing that im very troubled with, i dont want to see this, we dont want to have Emergency Services people thinking militarization is the way to move forward. I remember learning that we wanted to move to be a guardian, moving away from the warrior culture. I remember sitting here in this same chamber watching us vote on tazers, why are we always coming up here concerned about weapons, where are those weapons going . My concern is if we move from a warrior mentality to a sanctity of life caregiver culture, why do we need any weapons . Why do we need to militaryize anybody . Only a warrior needs a weapon. Only a warrior city needs a weapon. A peacemaker sees this human being. They dont see threats. So id ask you to pull out completely of any urban shield situation. Thank you. Supervisor cohen thank you. Next speaker. Hello. My name is nick, and im a resident of San Francisco. Just want to repeat and encourage the board to reject the current mou and to demand as a fiscal sponsor how the funds are used and San Francisco should pull out of urban shield if we plan to be continue to be the humanitarian that we want to continue to be, we should not approve urban shield. There are residents that were here that were living in the east bay, as well, and we should look out for them, as well. Supervisor cohen next speaker. Hello. Good afternoon. My name is humberto desilva. Im here representing a Community BasedOrganization Called 67 suenos. We represent mostly folks that are undocumented themselves as well as mixed heritage families. So one thing that i want to provide testimony to is the various stories that my students have shared with me of experiencing swat raids of experiencing ice raids or things that come directly from the influence of urban shield and so ive heard the stories of my youth that have experiences of flash bang grenades being let off in their homes, the front doors of their homes being tored down, as well. Paragraph so i heard from other folks that theres a shift in the program to move away from this type of militarization and to Emergency Response, while i hear that, i think that the positivity that they are, i guess, suggesting doesnt necessarily makeup for that, so one thing that im also thinking about is how at the end of the day, the funding comes from the department of Homeland Security and has that requirement of nexus for terrorism, and so thats one thing that worries me because if the concern is really Emergency Preparedness and helping folks out in that matter, i would hope that then maybe that type of programming might come from a fema, for example, or center for disease control, right . But if the fundings always going to come from dhs, its always going to have that hook to it, and that desire, and that need to respond to terrorism, so thats one thing that i want us to think about. While we heard that theres a move away from that, i feel that based off where the money comes from, its always going to have that piece connected to it. Thank you. Supervisor cohen next speaker. Hello. My name is masa lars