Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Police Accountability topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
DPA says SB1421 workloads and public reporting have surged; committee seeks staffing and process updates
Summary
The Department of Police Accountability told supervisors it has modernized case management and public reporting but faces a large SB1421 public‑records workload; DPA reported 5,000 potentially disclosable cases identified and urged more staff and automated processes to meet requests.
The Department of Police Accountability (DPA) described a year‑end status report to the committee, detailing new public reporting, a migration to a Salesforce‑based case management system, and an expanded outreach and auditing role. Director Henderson and DPA staff said transparency and reporting have improved but that compliance with SB1421 — which made many previously confidential records public — has produced a heavy manual review and redaction workload.
DPA staff attorney Diana Rosenstein said the agency has retained records back to its 1982 inception and identified more than 5,000 cases potentially disclosable under SB1421; roughly 2,000 of those have been reviewed and 18 files (mostly officer‑involved shootings) have been disclosed so far after redaction. She explained that many legacy files are handwritten, undigitized, or lengthy (some officer‑involved‑shooting files exceed 15,000 pages), so the office must manually review, scan and redact records. Rosenstein said current staff are reviewing about eight files per workday per attorney and that additional staff and a new web portal were funded.
DPA Chief of Staff Sarah Hawkins and other presenters walked the committee through the DPA investigation pipeline: intake, mediation screening, team‑based investigations (investigator, senior investigator, staff attorney), recommended findings, and disposition steps (chief review, meet‑and‑confer, chief’s hearing, police commission). Hawkins said DPA has been revamping quarterly reports to improve accessibility and published metrics on case intake, closures, timeliness, and sustained findings.
Supervisors pressed the agency on turnaround time and the ‘‘unknown’’ status entries in the annual report appendix when DPA had not yet received closing letters from SFPD; DPA said it has improved the ‘‘loop’’ and is working on a technology memorandum with SFPD to automate status-sharing. DPA also described referrals from the Sheriff’s Department (an original SD spreadsheet of 20 items expanded to 37 DPA cases by complainant count) and said meeting charter staffing ratios would require roughly 15–20 investigators to handle the expected volume.
Supervisor Walton moved to continue the DPA item to the call of the chair for further follow‑up; the committee took the motion without objection.
