Data_Collection
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Data Collection Committee
District Attorney’s Office 850 Bryant Street, Third Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103
December 17, 2003
Minutes
Present:
Oli Sadler, DTIS
Rodrigo Castillo, DTIS
Lt. Michael Connolly, SFPD, DVRU
Henry Shishmanian, SFPD
Gianrico Pierucci, SFPD, DVRU
Susan Fahey, SF Sheriff’s Department
Renee Rodrigues, SFPD, ID Bureau
Nixon Lazaro, Adult Probation Department
Kerry Dalrymple, Emergency Communications Department
Sharon Woo, District Attorney’s Office
Rosario Navarrette, Department on the Status of Women
Co-Chair Ollie Sadler called the meeting to order at approximately 1:15 p.m.
1. Adoption of December 17, 2003, Agenda
The agenda for the meeting of December 17, 2003 was adopted unanimously.
3. Report on Action Items from the November 19, 2003 Meeting
A. In response to the question of information to victims on violations of a Stay-Away Order (SAO) in domestic violence cases, Sharon Woo, alternate for Linda Klee, provided a copy of what the victims are given. The Stay-Away Order Information Packet is provided to every victim by the deputy district attorney. VWAP is notified that a SAO has been granted and receives a copy. Ms. Woo also indicated that Emergency Protective Order (EPO) instructions are going to change in January. The Judicial Council’s website has all the forms where they can be downloaded.
B. Since the Police Department representatives had not seen the codes provided to the
Data Collection committee last month by the Emergency Communications, they were given a copy at this meeting to review and determine which codes they would like to keep to identify trends, patterns and to develop training priorities.
Lt. Connolly pointed out that Fire Department and Paramedic/medical calls may not be reflected in the statistics given the nature of the calls. Discussion ensued regarding the importance of those calls particularly since both firefighters and paramedics are mandatory health reporters and the need for domestic violence training for both departments.
Kerry Dalrymple asked that DOSW let her know what, of the information being collected, DOSW believes it needs for annual reporting purposes. Rosario and Justine will set a time to go over this information in response to Ms. Dalrymple request.
C. Officer Henry Shishmanian, San Francisco County CLETS Administrator for the Police Department provided a brief history of the CLETS terminals and authority for San Francisco and an accounting of the CLETS terminals in the District Attorney’s Office. He indicated that currently the DA’s office has a total of 9 terminals, with two terminals at Juvenile Hall and two printers. According to Officer Shishmanian, there was at one time 28 terminals in the DA’s office (This includes Juvenile Probation) which were removed by the District Attorney’s approximately six years ago for a variety of reasons with twelve terminals being lost due to moves from locations, broken equipment, etc.
Officer Shishmanian also stated that the SFPD has made a request to the Department of Justice for an additional 200 terminals. However, he indicated that the DA’s office needed to purchase the terminals and required equipment in addition to the installation of the equipment.
He also cautioned that the Department of Justice, who is the legal owner of CLETS, is in the process of updating their CLETS system. This means that the software program will no longer be used and the new system can’t be used in the current terminals. The new CLETS system is supposed to be up in 6 months.
DA’s Office must find the old hardware (which is no longer available for purchase) to replace into the current non-functioning equipment. This then creates a catch 22 for the DA’s Office in having equipment that can be used IF necessary repairs and hardware is replaced, except that hardware is unavailable.
An updated table is necessary for DTIS and Tiburon to re-program their hardware to be compatible with the new CLETS system. The new system requires a Harris/IBM Card Software, and must be capable of 3270 immolation. Officer Shishmanian said he believed it would take 3-4 years TCPIP to upgrade completely. However, March 2005 was a drop dead date for all police departments in California to switch over. As an advisor to this effort, he believed that the deadline would be extended given how many departments will have to meet the deadline. National Criminal Information Center (NCIC) was working on an upgrade to an NCIC 2000 standard by the end of February. This includes one year to program the system’s messaging switch and masks. For San Francisco, after 12 years on the job, he felt that converting masks would not be a big deal. Officer Shishmanian will work with DTIS to ensure the changes are made and will probably get an extension for the Tiburon system switch.
Sharon Woo indicated that she believed Reggie Smith and Linda Klee were the liaisons to the police department on these issues and wanted to go over this information with them. Mr. Smith would probably be able to report on the number of devices the DA’s office needed. Additionally, a meeting with possibly a new DA would have to be scheduled to review the issue of CLETS availability on desktops. Mr. Shishmanian indicated that he would be happy to provide the District Attorney’s Office, a list of terminals once he had a chance to inventory the office.
D. In response to the backlog of Stay-Away Orders (SAO), Rene’ L. B. Rodrigues, Supervisor of the Identification Section for the Police Department reported that there are currently 9,000 SAOs’ in the system. Of those, approximately 4-5,000 don’t have ending dates, which should be inserted by the judge granting the SAO or the court clerk who processes it. This requires the four cadets who work in the Record Room conducting the data entry, to go back to trace what judge issued the SAO and get that judge or their court clerk to insert the end date. This is very problematic for the police department to do given the shortage of staff and the research that goes into getting the ending date. The Record Room staff and/or cadets cannot simply insert the date because it is against the law. Sharon Woo indicated that would be tapering with a court order.
Additionally, there currently is no mechanism in place by the court to inform the Record Room when an SAO is lifted (or deleted) by a judge. Most notification is manually sent to the Adult Probation Department or the DA’s Office (which does not happen routinely). The state now keeps a SAO on file for 5 years, which makes it problematic if the order changes in anyway.
E. Rene’ Rodrigues also reported that no backlog in warrants exists. In fact the Police Department is not responsible for warrants any more. Transition of the Central Warrant Bureau from the Police Department was made to the Sheriff’s Department about 3-4 years ago. Susan Fahey from the Sheriff’s Department concurred that it was an administrative change only, meaning that the Police Department still issues the warrants.
F. Disposition Codes
At the November meeting, a concern regarding incorrect disposition codes reflected on a suspect’s rap sheet was discussed. As a follow-up, the question as to why only one disposition code appeared next to the different charges was raised. It appears that the Court clerk enters the disposition code on the first charge which may be that it was dropped for insufficient evidence, when in fact other charges may show the same disposition but were dropped for different reasons requiring different codes such as prosecution on other charges. Unfortunately no court representative was present to discuss how to change the system. However, Officer Shishmanian commented that it was a correctable issue (technology-wise). Follow-up with some of the suggestions will need to be done in collaboration with Sally Piña, who represents the Superior Court on the Data Committee.
Furthermore, Officer Shishmanian gave a thorough history of the changes to the incident report codes used by the Police Department and outlined some of the issues related to re-mapping of the city’s streets. For example, in 1997 the Police Department reconfigured the old plot maps to reflect the new streets and freeways. These included changes in police boundaries, the new maps show the plot sectors as accessible but not in an on-line fashion. The new maps are also missing the old sectors of city streets, which often make it difficult for responding officers and medical crew to find a location. Officer Shishmanian indicated that he kept copies of the old maps.
G. In response to questions regarding the Police Department’s domestic violence statistics, Lieutenant Connolly of the Domestic Violence Response Unit (DVRU) clarified that “Court time” is when Inspector is in court testifying or appearing on a domestic violence case. He also indicated that “Assigned” means it is an arrest case where a rebooking is being prepared and the suspect is in custody. There are also warrant work-ups which are cases where the investigator must compile enough evidence to request a warrant from a judge, on a suspect only case. Most warrant work-ups are generated when the victim in a case comes in to the DVRU for follow-up (makes a statement of what happened/asks for case to be pursued).
H. As a follow-up to the last Oversight Panel meeting of October 22, 2003, Justine was asked to contact Bridgette Bane, a former prosecutor for the DA’s Office regarding participation on the Data Collection Committee. Justine left a message two months ago on Ms. Bane’s voice mail and has gotten no response to-date.
4. Feedback on Domestic Violence Statistics and Ownership
Many department representatives at the meeting indicated that they had not had the opportunity to review the data collection list provided by Justine. So, they would need a chance to review the list which was copied and redistributed at the meeting. The SFPD reported that they receive an average of 457 incident reports per month.
If there is a violation of a restraining order or an incident, APD contacts the victim. They attempt contact with the victims when a Temporary Restraining Order or an Emergency Protective Order has been violated or after a probation violation.
Susan Fahey has given the Sheriff’s Department’s notes on the JUSTIS end of year reporting to Justine McGonagle.
Courts
Unfortunately, Sally Piña was not present to for the discussion on issues related to the courts such as the Stay-Away Orders (no notification of lifted Stay-Away Order by Court). Some comments were that the Clerks office won’t enter data on court protective orders due to costs for clerical assistance; however, it was also clear that the clerk’s office has the capacity to do it electronically with the ability to share with its law enforcement partners.
Sharon Woo informed the committee that the Damien system requires Assistant District Attorney’s enter data themselves and they didn’t believe that any other department was subjected to do that.
5. Recommendations for the Oversight Panel
Due to time limitations, recommendations to the Oversight Panel were not discussed.
6. Next Meeting
The next meeting of the Data Collection Committee will be Wednesday, January 21, 2003, 12:30p.m. – 2:30p.m. Location is Hall of Justice, District Attorney’s Office, 850 Bryant Street, Third Floor, San Francisco, CA.
