MARIJUANA OFFENSES
OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE
MINUTES
December 18, 2007, 10:00 am - 11:30 am
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Place, Rm. 278
1. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL
The first meeting of the Community Oversight Committee was called to order at 10:15 a.m. Camilla Field, Committee Co-Chair
Present:
Camilla Norman Field, Committee Co-Chair
Michael Goldstein, Committee Co-Chair
Aleem Raja
Richard Rendon
Absent:
Patt Denning
Mira Ingram
Catherine Smith
2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
November 1 minutes were unavailable.
Motion to approve minutes from November 29 meetings made by Ms. Field and second by Mr. Goldstein.
Ayes: Ms. Field, Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Raja, and Mr. Rendon.
Nays: None.
Absent: Ms. Denning, Ms. Ingram, and Ms. Smith.
Committee still to approve minutes from the November 1 meeting.
Ms. Field will ensure the approved minutes are posted to the Website.
3. COMMITTEE UPDATES
SFPD/Commission: no update.
Office of the DA: see #4 (below).
Office of the Public Defender: If Mr. Rendon supplied the list of arrests related to marijuana, it may be possible to get the incident reports from the police department. However, Mr. Rendon may not be able to get the actual incident numbers of the arrests because it may violate confidentiality. Mr. Rendon will check on this. Mr. Raja will provide the committee with all the health and safety code violations relating to marijuana.
Community: no update.
Board of Supervisors: no update.
4. PRESENTATION BY DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY SHARON WOO
Deputy District Attorney Sharon Woo was unable to attend the meeting - to be rescheduled.
5. REVIEW AND APPROVE INCIDENT REPORT FORM
Mr. Goldstein will talk to Ms. Smith and Ms. Ingram to see if they made any progress about gathering data from the police department. It was suggested that the form should be distributed to the community through: MCD, intake desk at the Office of the Public Defender, Office of Citizens' Complaints, public housing, as well as other locales TBD.
Ms. Norman Field talked to Daniel Macallair at CJCJ. In 1994-1995, there was a hearing about poor data collection, but since then nothing has changed, there is no centralized data system. They are notorious for not responding to arrests, so we may end up simply identifying obstacles to doing work. Maybe law enforcement statistics should be housed elsewhere, such as the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.
6. PUBLIC COMMENT
It was suggested that we have a meeting with Supervisor Ammiano to talk to people to get the data. It was suggested that maybe we could ask the sheriff for the arrest data.
A citizen explained that he was arrested for MJ and the officers lied and falsified. He knows that police rip up cards and that there are rouge police officers. They cuff you until you bleed and the jail conditions are terrible.
Possible community allies: Ella Baker Cop Watch, the Office of Citizens' Complaings, ACLU police monitoring.
We need to find out what info has been disseminated to police officers. What does lowest priority mean? How are city funds being spent on DEA cross deputizing?
7. ADJOURNMENT
Ms. Norman Field moved we adjourned, Mr. Goldstein seconded, and all were in favor. The meeting was adjourned at 11:27 AM.
