Mayor's Press Conference 8/30

for yeah there we go all right just trying to give you guys a good picture here um but uh thank you all so much for being here I'm San Francisco mayor London breed and I am joined by the chief of our Police Department Bill Scott and our assistant Sheriff tanzan car from the sheriff's department and the Alam County Sheriff's Department as well as the California Highway Patrol Chief Don goodbrand uh to talk a little bit about not just all the incredible work that all of these various law enforcement agencies have been done doing to help address the challenges that we are experiencing uh with sideshows which not only include cars but dirt bikes are also included as vehicles uh they have been doing a great job in order to help address this issue we are in fact seeing sideshows decline in San Francisco and the number of vehicles that have been confiscated uh have doubled uh yet we know this problem continues to persist especially in San Francisco and Alam counties we know that sidh shows are dangerous uh they are disruptive and they are illegal they are har ful for our neighborhoods and to be very very clear they will not be tolerated and it's not just about cars as I said we've also seen dirt bike which or Vehicles do the same thing now it's one thing to just ride your dirt bike along the city streets stop at the stop signs and follow the laws and the rules of the road it's a whole another thing when you see these dirt bike ride in large numbers on sidewalks barely missing pedest pedestrians as they walk and running red lights to a point where vehicles are trying to avoid hitting people on dirt bikes this is extremely dangerous and it is something that we also plan to address and to be very clear here in San Francisco we are fortunate thanks to the voters for passing Proposition E we now have tools that we are able to use including drones surveillance technology ology license plate readers and other things that will assist us at combating this issue and we will use those tools effectively like we have been it has led to remarkable results in the reduction of car Breakin and a number of other return vehicles uh the department has been doing a great job with technology and in this particular case it will be no different we will use every tool that we have and every law that we have in order to stop and disrupt the sideshows that are happening in our city now we're doing this through legislative action here locally we know that we'd like to go further and we'd like to use federal laws to I mean state laws in order to help make this thing as problematic as possible but we are going to make it very uncomfortable very inconvenient for these sides shows to happen I'm introducing legislation here in San Francisco to do four things to make it illegal to participate in promoting sides shows this will help our officers who are already tracking these efforts online and hopefully deter people from organizing them in the first place so if you are an organizer we are coming for you too we will make it illegal to participate in assembling for a sideshow so if you are one of those vehicles that are trying to obstruct other vehicles for for coming through and you're just blocking it with your car or you're there in any way this means cars that obstruct the streets to set up for side shows will also now face criminal penalties and we will make it illegal to impede law enforcement from doing their jobs to disrupt side roads uh to disrupt SES shows so if you are using those lasers to try and blind our officers if you are trying to do anything to stop a vehicle stand in front of a vehicle all of those things will count as impeding law enforcement's ability to do the work that they're there to do to stop and disrupt these sideshows and you will be held to account we will extend the amount of time the city can hold a vehicle seized in a sideshow right now we have to return a vehicle within 30 days and now with our district attorney support we are charging the law so that the da can keep the cars longer and if there is a conviction the car can be seized permanently so we are coming after everything that we can whether it's your car or your dirt bike or what have you we welcome the opportunity for people to ride the Streets of San Francisco safely but when you start Crossing those lines we will take action and we will be aggressive so here at this time I want our police chief Bill Scott to to talk a little bit about what we've already been doing the partnership that we have so that the public can really understand the challenges that we have with trying to disrupt and address these sides shows as they occur and more importantly how significant this legislation will be if passed by the Board of Supervisors can be implemented as soon as possibly October and November at the absolute latest so with that ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Chief bill Scot thank you excuse me thank you mayor and good morning everybody I'm going to introduce a few more people in addition to those that the mayor just introduced just so you know who's up here and why and I'll go from my right here on my right I have Commander Nicole Jones she's in charge of our traffic company and they are responsible for investigating these sidh shows uh to her right there's Lieutenant Anthony holder he is in charge of our stunt driving Response Unit so he is the leader when these things come when these sidh shows come to our city he and his unit are the ones that break them up and disrupt them and then investigate after the fact to seize vehicles and and file criminal charges when that is applicable and I'll talk more in detail about that in a minute uh to his right is Sergeant Dan Guzman he's one of our investigators and does a great job in tracking these cars down tracking people down who commit these IL legal acts and he is also spearheaded um a campaign where when vehicles are seen at sideshows even as Spectators the registered owner receives a letter advising them that their vehicle is at a sideshow and the reason I want to highlight that is the mayor's legislation will be an enhancement to just writing a letter because now we will actually be able to with the passage of this legislation conduct criminal investigations when these letters go out and possibly take action either arrest or impound cars when they are present at a sideshow on my left I have assistant chief David Lazar who you all know he is in charge of our operations I have Commander khed Rasheed from the California Highway Patrol he is in charge of the San Francisco office I have Sergeant just I mean Sergeant Fenton Cully from the Alam County Sheriff's um Regional Sid show enforcement task force and to his left is Deputy Fenton Cully who also works in the task force and has been a great partner in sharing some of their uh methodologies and techniques with us and we put that to use in terms of getting our technology on the ground so now that you have the landscape of who is up here let me go into some details about our sesh shows what we have been doing and what we plan to do in the future first of all thanks again mayor Brie for your leadership if this legislation passes I think this will be another step to allow us in the city of San Francisco to do what we need to to curb and prevent these sesh shows from coming in our city uh no legislation in and of itself is going to do that alone and that's why we have Partnerships with all of our partners here in then some to make sure that we are all working in collaboration as a team because these side shows aren't local I mean aren't specifically Germaine to San Francisco they're in Al County they're in the South Bay and they go back and forth they're on the bridges they're on our freeways and the bottom line is everywhere where these events occur there's a tremendous danger to the public and to our officers that are responding to break up these sesh shows and arrest the violators so we have to put a stop to this we have to curb this and we have to deter people from doing these type of activities it's not easy work these events are unacceptable and as we work closer with our partners we are going to deploy some new strategies now the mayor mayor breed uh mentioned Proposition E and how our department in the short span of less than five months we now have a drone program we plan to take full advantage of using that technology to enhance our ability to identify cars and people that are involved in these side shows and more importantly to seize car cars and make AR rest and we fully believe that we will be able to do that more effectively because of the voter's passage of Proposition E our communication with our partners that you see here has always been good but we want to go to the next level in that communication as far as the San Francisco Police Department we are short staff and I venture to say that every agency represented here and across the bay area has that same problem that's why it's even more important that we work closer to together and we're more efficient and effective as a collaborative uh to deal with these side shows so in doing that our first priority is figuring out where these sidh shows will occur or are occurring so we have the adequate time to coordinate to collaborate and rally our resources this is where we really need the Public's help if you see an assembly of a large group of dirt bikers or vehicles even if they're not committing the the legal activity that's the precursor and you can call we call it in as suspicious activity so we have a heads up and we can start getting our resources together to deal with that situation please call us online if you come across any of this information online we ask that you think about the safety your own safety the safety of your family members the safety of your Lov on the safety of these officers that have to deal with this day in and day out and call us we need people to report a sideshow is not a single car doing donuts you call in on that too we ask that you call in on that too but I want to make a distinction because there has been confusion on that we get sometimes one or two cars or one car that's doing donuts or doing uh stunts in in the middle of a public Street and people will call it in as a sideshow we will respond to that and we will take action if we catch that that person or that individual but that is not a sideshow and sometimes when those type of events go viral on social media they get reported as a sideshow I just want to be clear on when I say sidh shows are down we're talking about large assemblages of people and cars or motorcycles that are doing dangerous stunts that is a sideshow an illegal activity let me explain to our tactics and at least as as as much as I can explain here so the public is a aware of what we do and how we respond I probably said three or four times now how dangerous these situations are and oft times there's either a single officer or two officers or even five or 10 officers that are responding to these incidents and there are hundreds of people sometimes literally three 400 people in cars it's a very dangerous situation for our officers and we will not ask five officers to go in a group of a 100 people that often turn hostile when we get there and try to resolve that situation without the adequate resources that's just a recipe for disaster it's a recipe for failure and somebody is going to get hurt and in addition to that officers often times get surrounded i' we've seen patrol cars that have been tipped over vandalized officers having projectiles being shot at we do a dangerous job and we realize that we take on that danger when we raise our right hand and swear to the oath of office but we owe it to our officers to not to send them into situations where it's going to be an absolute failure because we don't have adequate resources so our strategy and our tactics number one we're going to take advantage of Technology number two Lieutenant holder and his team that's what they do they assemble enough people so they can resolve the situation peacefully our first and foremost objective is to break up the illegal activity we want to chase them away and flush them out of the city we catch who we can catch we arrest who we arrest but usually when we get there everybody just goes and all directions so we have to make sure that that is done as safely as we can force the situation to be safe A lot of times people are fleeing at high rates of speed they drive on the wrong side of the road they're getting up on sidewalks it is really Reckless and dangerous behavior that is where the backend I'll call it the backend investigations come to play Sergeant Guzman um does an outstanding job when we have the evidence we get a judge to sign a court order and we go and seize those vehicles and year-to date we have seized 67 of such Vehicles either for reckless evading or being directly involved in these side shows and that will continue and we expect that number to be higher because now we have the technology thanks to the mayor and the voters we have the technology to do more in that Arena the other thing is here's what we know from experience the longer we let these groups stay assembled the more damage they usually cause vandalism like we had at the Embarcadero a couple of months shots fired shootings we've had murders at these events sidh shows we've had murders we had shootings we've had assaults so that's why it is imperative that we break these events up as quickly as possible and keep people moving now sometimes to our dismay we'll have 200 people our off officers will come in and flush them out and then one group will Splender into four or five groups and it becomes even more challenging for us because it spreads our resources but that's what collaboration is all about because if they go to another city let's say Alam County we're going to communicate and let them know that they're coming if they go on the Golden Gate Bridge I think we've done a fabulous job working with the highway patrol making sure we're communicating so they're ready for them and then they can do what they need to do and it gives them time to assemble their resources to do this as safely as possible here's the point here what I want the public to know because I've been in so many Community meetings and I see social media and I see on the and you you name your former media that the police department isn't doing anything they're not doing enough it's really important for you to understand how we do what we do and why the why is for your safety and for the safety of our officers to try to break these events up as safely as possible sure we would love to arrest everybody that's committing illegal activity but sometimes that desire to arrest can cause us to make mistakes that get people hurt and the bottom line is before anything else we don't want to see anybody lose their lives or be hurt because of this Reckless and dangerous activity and we definitely don't want to contribute to people being hurt so our tactics are designed for safety the officer safety designed to do what we can with the resources we have to be as effective as we can with the resources we have and that's why we do it that way as we get more officers as our collaborations get better as our technology becomes greater there'll come a day where we'll be able to make a lot more arrest or we'll do specialized operations when that time comes and when we have the resources to do that but in the meantime we're going to go after people involved in these side shows with all the Gusto that we can at make sure that those that we can identify that those cars are seized if there's a criminal conviction with the passage of this leg legislation they will be seized permanently again for those of you that have received letters and we've sent over 300 letters since we've started doing this campaign we've heard from parents who have said they didn't know their cars were being used like that because their kids or whoever they let drive the car um were doing this type of activity and they were totally unaware in the future your car may be seized in the future whoever's driving your car may end up on the wrong side of a prosecution so please be aware of who you turn over your keys to and make it known that you don't want your vehicle involved in this type of activity particularly if you get the letter then you should be advised that your car is being used in that manner now as I close this I want to just say call 911 if you see an illegal Sideshow these things are dangerous as I just described we've had deaths we've had shootings severe vandalism uh in addition to that we' had officers that have lasers uh in their eyes fireworks thrown at officers and members of the public I mean we've had all kind of criminal activity with these side shows they are dangerous that is a 911 call that is an emergency that we need to get to right now if you see an assembly you call the non nonemergency number call 311 um so we can get our resources in place and our our team and our officers and uh the highway patrol or whatever your jurisdiction is they can do what they need to do to try to prevent these things from happening because that's how we break them up before they start doing damage and we keep them moving and then lastly again if you can take pictures take pictures because it's the photos of license plates vehicle descriptions U Oddities and peculiarities of those vehicles that give us the ability to identify specific vehicles that we can go uh when we do our investigation and get the seizure orders for so take pictures if you can uh but do it safely don't put yourself in any Jeopardy when you take pictures and with that uh I would oh one other thing before I forget this and this is an important part point in the city of San Francisco we have license plate readers and before uh long we'll have over 400 and then we hopefully we will expand that these counties uh Alam County and other counties that we work with they also have license plate readers we share information that has been a huge huge help to us this is why it's so important to take the pictures because if we get a vehicle in our system and we can identify a vehicle that has been involved in illegal activity particularly assaultive activity we put that in our system and all of us share that information and if that vehicle is alerted on our alpr cameras because we don't only need license plates we put vehicle descriptions in there as well it makes it a lot easier for us to identify that vehicle so I want to make sure that the public understands why it's so important to bring that information forward so again thank you all for being here I want to thank our partners for being here thank our mayor for the leadership to get in front of this and we will now open it up for questions the use of Technology what I said at the end about our use of both the flock cameras our our drones um the technology has expanded so that's why it's so important for people to share what they can with us pictures photos so we can get those vehicles in the system which makes our use of Technology even more efficient yeah no that is that's a huge challenge when they don't have plates uh some those some of those bikes that we have been able to seize and impound are stolen so that's another challenge for us uh it it's a it's it's a very difficult situation with those dirt bikes and and the motorcycles dirt bikes in particular because they go off road they go on sidewalks they get on the wrong side of the road so we're constantly trying to develop better tactics to deal with that but at the end of all this when we have time to respond and that's why it's so important to call we can better respond a lot of times when we get the call the event of the S show is already happening and you know if our officers see it what the public doesn't know is there have been a number of these sidh shows that we have prevented from happening so it doesn't become story because it doesn't happen but the reason that happen because our officers were alerted by whatever form of information that they were alerted by and Lieutenant holder and her team and his team uh they had time to get there and assemble and we had time to Call CHP say they're coming up on the Bay Bridge or they're going up on the Golden Gate Bridge they have time to assemble so it doesn't happen and you all don't report about it because nothing ever happens we've had some victories that way and I would prefer that rather than to have you here uh like we are now because we've had too many of them but to get back to your question the key is getting information to us as quickly as possible so we can assemble our our our team and try to prevent it disrupt it keep them moving if they assemble and impound those cars that we can impound safely and arrest the people we can arrest safely yes we've we've impounded 67 cars year to date um Reckless evading and some of that is involved in side shows or when they were fleeing from side shows so 67 year to day I don't have the we we have not made a lot of arrests we've made some um we hope to increase the number of arrests and that's where our technology is so important because now we can see things that we weren't able to see before and I I'll go into a little detail on that we get to a sideshow and there's hundreds of cars hundreds of motorcycles we can't just send an officer in the middle of that we get surrounded we've been assaulted and without technology it's even hard to see who's doing what with our drones we can zoom in on clothes on facial features on who's driving the car without putting an officer in danger so that's why we're so excited about having the use of this technology and we got to get caught up you know Alam County we spent some time with them last month to see how they do what they do and they do a great job we now have the ability to do that so we believe it's going to make us more effective to make more arrest um there are a lot of hurdles to get to that point and like I said thanks to the mayor and where we are with Proposition E with our voters passage of that we think we're well on our way to being able to actually identify more people and make more rest yes thank you and it's look I I I'm not at all dismissive of what people are experiencing because it it it's very disruptive it's very disruptive but I want the public to know it's we are doing something but our tactics maybe don't satisfy people because they don't see us rush in and try to Coral people when you don't have enough resources it just makes it too dangerous and too dangerous for everybody because think about this a lot of the injuries that happen with sidh shows are happening when people are trying to get away from us we're aware of that you know we force the situation and a driver gets on a let's say a freeway or oneway Street and then there's a head on collision or some unsuspected pedestrian or Moor gets run over you know that's on our conscience as well so we have to be very careful about how we do this I know it can be frustrating when people see officers waiting on additional resources because most of the time that's what's happening the first car gets there they have to wait on additional resources and then when we have enough resources where we can start flushing people out that's what we do I just need the public to understand why we do it that way hopefully with that understanding they'll be a little bit more patient that we're trying to do it as safely as possible and but we are doing some work particularly on the back end we want to keep people moving break up these side shows as quickly as possible and as soon as we have enough resources to do that we do do that the other thing is when they break up and spinner A lot of times because of how uh Lieutenant holder and his teams are working we prevent them from happening in other parts of the city because when we follow them or we know what the traditional hot spots are we have officers there waiting and then they go to the next spot and then we call our friends at the highway patrol and say they're about to get on the rdge and they're there waiting for them so we want to keep people running actually we want them not to be comfortable that they can go anywhere in this Bay Area and part and have 300 people on on a block or in the street taking over a community and so it's a work in progress but we we're going to get there well that really depends on the crime that's been committed because we've seen a variety of crimes you know reckless driving in and of itself is a crime but if you hurt somebody then and you get convicted of that penalties are going to be higher as well they should be people that commit acts of vandalism we've had some a tremendous amount of property damage associated with these sesh shows so that's another where place where technology is going to help I don't even know what the the cost to the city is on the cleanup of all this stuff because we are committed to getting this stuff cleaned up and helping our business owners and that's one of the thing that the mayor is very very committed to do is get the damage fixed and cleaned up so I don't even know what that cost is But to answer your question it really depends on the crime if it's a violent crime an assault h penalties higher risks of of of State Prison but it really depends on the crime for