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Committee adopts amendments to require police and sheriff data collection and forwards ordinance to full Board
Summary
Supervisor Belia Cohen’s ordinance to expand data collection by the Police and Sheriff’s departments — including race, age, and gender-related reporting for detentions, searches and traffic stops — was amended and the Rules Committee forwarded it to the full Board with a positive recommendation.
Supervisor Belia Cohen introduced an ordinance to expand law-enforcement data collection to better measure and prevent biased policing. The ordinance requires both the San Francisco Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department to collect and report data on stops and detentions — including officer badge numbers, the result of the contact (arrest, citation, warning, incident report), uses of force and demographic information such as race and age. For gender identity, the ordinance was revised to require reporting of complaints in which an individual self-identifies as transgender rather than directing officers to ask for gender identity during field interviews, a change made after consultation with transgender advocates and law-enforcement staff.
Supervisor Cohen framed the ordinance as a transparency and accountability tool to curb pretextual stops and biased policing and to create benchmark data for analysis. "We're looking to prevent pretextual stops based on race and gender-related characteristics," she said, urging quarterly public reporting to the Board, the mayor, the Human Rights Commission and the Police Commission.
Lieutenant Carl Fabry of the SFPD described the department’s existing data systems and identified technical gaps—particularly for detentions that do not produce a written report—and said department staff are working on processes to capture the additional fields required by the ordinance.
Youth Commission representatives and Sheriff’s Office counsel indicated support and offered technical suggestions (including tracking age in reports). After accepting amendments on language and reporting scope, the committee voted to forward the ordinance to the full Board with a positive recommendation.
Next steps: the ordinance will go to the full Board of Supervisors for consideration; staff indicated work remains to define data collection procedures and to estimate implementation resources.
