Police commission hears department defense of arrest race reporting, plans internal ethnicity reporting

Director Giffen told the Police Commission on Sept. 12 that the San Francisco Police Department follows the federal and state Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) standards when sending arrest race data to the California Department of Justice and the FBI, and that Hispanic/Latino is treated as an ethnicity rather than a race under those standards. He said the department will begin entering a separate ethnicity field so the city can report internally on up to 19 ethnicities while continuing to meet the DOJ's five‑race UCR requirement.

The presentation explained that agencies cannot unilaterally change UCR race categories. Director Giffen described the city’s dependency on a vendor update and on completing a single‑entry booking project that would align the police and sheriff booking systems; that system, he said, would allow cleaner reporting to DOJ. He said internal entry of ethnicities would begin immediately and that an internal report by ethnicity could be available in roughly three months; a timeline for when those ethnicity counts will appear in DOJ published data depends on system changes beyond the department’s direct control.

Commissioners pressed for clarity on how officers record race and ethnicity at the time of contact, training to avoid misclassification, and whether earlier publicly published DOJ tables had collapsed or reclassified local categories. Commissioner Chan and others asked for the department’s exact submissions and suggested providing October 2012 data and a comparison month to show whether reporting changes once the new bulletin and input fields are in use. Chief Sir and Director Giffen said the department will provide a departmental breakdown to the Commission and publish internal reports regardless of how the DOJ aggregates the final federal tables.

Public commenters and advocacy groups told the Commission they had found apparent undercounts of Hispanic/Latino arrestees and raised years‑long concerns about racial disparities in arrests. Ray Hart, representing open‑government advocates, and groups including the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and the ACLU urged the department to backdate or correct data where possible and to make new data public so policy decisions can be based on accurate baselines.

The Commission and staff identified the primary technical fixes as (1) creating two drop‑down fields—one for the five UCR races and one for ethnicity—and (2) completing single‑entry booking so entries do not get lost across nine different originating systems. Director Giffen noted juvenile‑booking compatibility and a vendor dependency before DOJ reporting can be streamlined. He said the department will supply the Commission with a more detailed report on race and ethnicity breakdowns and with the technical documentation used to generate DOJ submissions.

The Commission directed the department to provide data updates to the Commission and to post materials for public review; specific scheduling was discussed for an October/November follow up and a November 14 check‑in was proposed during scheduling conversation.