COMMUNITY POLICING IN SAN FRANCISCO (02/23/11)
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San Franciscans have had a sound Community Policing for years but there is an entity that does NOT want sound Community Policing to be in place for the betterment of the constituents of San Francisco who are paying too much money to our Law Enforcement and not getting much at for their investment. We have a Mayor, SF Board of Supervisors, and a SF Police Commission that is lethargic.
Two years ago over $400,000 was spent to address Community Policing and a model was put in place to try out this model starting in the Excelior Precinct - the model was started with now Commander then Captain Lazar in charge - no one knows what happened to that model. Dubious entities have been challenging the community at large to find a definition of Community Policing. How about this one: "Community policing consists of a cordial relationship between the community and the police to work in harmony to address those issues that adversely impact the community at large and bring about harmonious resolutions. A Community Policing Plan should be established to carry out this concrete plan and can be amended from time to time by mutual consensus as progress is made and new issues arise". We already have a Community Peace Plan that Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, former Police Chief Heather Fong, former Mayor Gavin Newsom, the chain-of ˆcommand under Heather Fong and previous Mayors including Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. are fully aware of. The paradox it that this plan came from the community and San Francisco Police Department, the District Attorney's Office, the Mayor Office, other dubious governmental entities do not appreciate when the citizens put a plan together. As usual the fools think that when something comes from Law Enforcement than that must be the best for the community. The history of the Police is dubious in nature. In started when bands of ruthless men when hunting to track down slaves that had run away and bring them back to the Slave Masters; this of course is NOT known to many who have no idea of etymology and more the etymology of the word "police" and how it particularly involved in these the United States of America. Some years ago when Sophie Maxwell was the Supervisor of District 10 the number of young men killed in District 10 was in the hundreds. Sophie Maxwell was on what is now called the Safety Committee and as much as we wanted some resolution to the shootings and killings - nothing much happened. While most San Francisco were nonchalant about what was going on around them, some astute San Franciscans with concrete experience put together a Community Peace Plan. When Willie L. Brown Jr. was the Mayor this plan was reviewed by his staff and approved, latter by Mayor Gavin Newsom and his staff and approved. As I said Chief Heather Fong and the Chain of Command has full knowledge of this Community Peace Plan. When over $400,000 was set aside to address the discrepancies in the San Francisco Police Department some years ago. The many adverse impacts from the many Safety issues that were not resolved by the San Francisco Police Department. The constant infighting with the SFPD and the not so good relationships between the SF Police Commission and the SFPD. The inept San Francisco Police Commission chose to spend over $400,000 to address Community Policing resulting in a 4,000 page document that is gathering dust on the shelves. This is not the first time that some entity has produce some document in good faith and that it has been sitting and gathering dust on the shelf. I happened to know the Chain of Command at that time; even as I know the Chain of Command today and nothing much has changed. The present SF Police Commission now has more lawyers then before and the tone of the present SF Police Commission is taking for the worse. The Safety Committee continues to pander to topics that are mundane and there has been no real change on the streets of San Francisco. So let us begin the begin: The Community Peace Plan proposed by the African American Police Relation Board and the African American, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander Coalition announced four main subjects to begin with:
* Community Policy I do not want to reveal the entire Community Policing Plan but I will reveal sufficient to silence those entities that are working behind the scenes NOT to do anything much and maintain the status quo. The Plan's for example took the pertinent steps to stop Violence and Murder and proposed the following: 1. Establish Community Policing Unit within the San Francisco Police Department. It was proposed that the unit will train, certify all police officers in the science technique of community policing. Develop community driven district policing plans, policies, and procedures. 2. Enact Immediate Violence Intervention Strategies. Increase the number of community policing trained officers; assign them to beat patrols in high impact areas. Develop and fund a comprehensive street worker program and assign street workers to high impact areas. Develop and fun comprehensive re-entry case management counselors for juvenile and adult ex-offenders. Develop a comprehensive block parents program within public housing. Develop comprehensive public employees mentor program for high risk youth/adults by providing public employees release time. Increase the number of critical incident response teams to assist individuals/families impacted by violence and murders. 3. Begin Community driven District Based Planning Process. Involve all stakeholders; consumers, policy makers, public, private, non-profit, faith based providers of services within and between districts in a community driven planning process to: Create, coordinate, integrate district strategies, that makes everyone accountable for the effective use of programs, staff and funds by public, private and community based service providers to address crisis of murder, violence, and its underlying socio-economic causes for at risk youth and adults. The district based planning process will help guide the development of program and funding strategies in the City and County of San Francisco's Annual Budget. 4. Develop a Community Peace Budget component in the current SF City and County of San Francisco's Budget Planning Process. Hold a series of community driven budget planning workshops as part of the current City and County of San Francisco's annual budget planning process. Involve residents, particularly from high impact districts, service group clusters from the public departments and private, non-profit agencies providing related services; for example ˆ public safety, health and human services, economic development, employment to: Develop a coordinated, integrated cluster group of violence prevention strategy that defines the use of programs and funds to address the issues of violence and murder and its underlying causes. Integrate the individual cluster group strategies into a City-wide Community Peace Strategy. Cluster groups should commit to funding the priorities jointly through the overall budgets available to all members of the cluster, and were relevant between the cluster groups. The funds to be used by the most effective system or systems of service, public departments, private, non-profit agencies or a blending of these; the San Francisco Mayor and San Francisco Board of Supervisors integrate the Community Peace budget into the annual San Francisco City and County of San Francisco's city budget. For those FOOLS and there are many at SF City Hall, the Mayor of San Francisco and his office, the SF District Attorney's Office, the SF Police Commission, some other dubious entities that I know of that favor GENTRIFICATION and RACISM of the worst kind - today, in the year 2011; here is a web site and another definition of Community Policing: www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?item=36 I have qualified experience having worked in the Federal System and with a Law Enforcement Agency that is widely recognized and was formed in the 1800s. I took the necessary courses to understand the mentality of Law Enforcement and that includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other high level so called Intelligence Agencies that operated on the local, national, and internals levels. But, let us stick to the situation at hand in San Francisco. Way back in the year 2002 some of us organized the Bayview Hunters Point - Conference on Crime Prevention. This conference was held at the Bayview Opera House with over 23 City Department Heads participating and the leading advocates of Crime Prevention in San Francisco in attendance. The following were part of the Planning Committee: Andrew Bozeman, Ishmael Burch, Cary Calandra, Keith Choy, Francisco Da Costa, Janice Embrey, Lonnie Holmes, Herm Lewis, Barbara Lynn, Demetria Page, Amy Peltier, Dorothy Peterson, Robert Plath, Terrell Rogers, Rannon Ross, Jay Smith, Reuben Smith, Samariya Smith, Jim Wiliams, Demetrius Willams, and Wills Winnfield. The conference was well attended and those that supported the conference many. We learned a lot from that conference and many of us dedicated ourselves to attending meetings regularly for years under the auspicious of Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice Council. We learned much but again and again - there was an attempt to avoid having a meaningful dialog with the community. Subsequently we had the episode at Thurgood Marshall High School where the Principal called the SF Police Department and the SFPD sent the Riot Squad and beat up many innocent students. One student still wears a steel plate that is embedded in his skull. Nothing much came from the many hearings, some in the community and most at the SF Police Commission which at that time was a sham. Subsequently as the years went by hundreds of men died from shootings and stabbings; had this City and County of San Francisco had a conscience something would have been done. The Mayors looked the other way, the SF Police Department looked the other way, the SF Board of Supervisors in the years following 2002 to 2010 did nothing much. The sham SF Police Commission is a joke, the created a 4000 pages document - paid $400,000 and today it lays on the shelf. This nonsense that this City and County of San Francisco cannot come out with a definition of "Community Policing" is a joke. The one I stated above in this article I formulated as I was writing. I write my article without any drafting, free flow, and if I can do it - I am sure there are thousands of lawyers, other astute San Franciscans that can do it. The purpose of this article is to prove that long before some dubious entities tried to address Community Policing - some of us addressed it. We held Town Hall meetings, we held conference, we testified before the drab SF Police Commission but to no avail. This City and County of San Francisco is RACIST and the Mayors and the SF Board of Supervisors inept, uneducated on issues, and shallow. All of them and I can prove it at any meeting if I am given ten minutes to explain my point. San Francisco Police Department
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