Joe Toste:
Today on TechTables, we have Rishma Khimji, who is the CIO at the City & County of the San Francisco Police Department. 12th largest in the country, don't know if that grew or not. Previously, she served as the CIO at the City of Reno as the Director of Technology. And before that, as the Interim Director of the Albuquerque Police Department Technical Services Unit. That sounds like a really cool job. Simply she's a gal who enjoys rolling up her sleeves and working with IT teams and leaders to transform how technology serves citizens. Today's episode is going to be using data to tell the most powerful stories again with Rishma Khimji. Rishma, welcome to TechTables.
Rishma Khimji:
Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here and chatting with you today.
Joe Toste:
Before we jump in today's episode, this podcast would not be possible without the support of Nagarro Public Sector. Nagarro Public Sector excels at helping senior technology leaders in digital disruption from cloud to AI to big data, and digital product engineering and system integration work across platforms. To learn more about Nagarro, check out nagarro.com. Okay. So Rishma, it's an exciting time to be on the forefront of innovative police technologies like facial recognition software, biometrics, AI, body cams, and also digitizing delivery services, cloud computing, and just the overall tech modernization. Before we jump into the challenges of deploying this type of tech, what are the benefits for both the police and the citizens?
Rishma Khimji:
Yeah. So that's a really good question. Because a lot of times we have to one, invest in technologies that provide a benefit to our communities, and two, we have to make sure that we're using technologies that benefit the communities with oversight. We have to make sure we have that collaborative effort going on with our communities because technology and the use of technology can be so unknown and unpredictable at times. And so at the San Francisco Police Department, I'm really lucky to be a part of an administration that is looking at reform and one of the leaders of police reforming throughout the country. I'm sure many of our listeners and viewers have seen Chief Bill Scott on CNN and other national news syndicates talking about what reform means for our citizens of San Francisco. What we feel is the benefit is that one, it allows us to have transparency within the department and the work that we're doing.
Rishma Khimji:
So that's a huge benefit because it allows the community to engage with us. And if we can engage with our communities from all different demographic, it gives us that sense and partnership with our communities. And so we really have to look at technologies that allow us to broaden the availability and accessibility of having communications and relationships with our officers, all the rank and file, and as well with our command staff. We have to be able to have those conversations and be able to engage with them. Now if you look at, and there's been plenty of conversations, especially on TechTables about the digital divide and how we increase the availability of information and communications between those sectors of our communities that don't have access to laptops and computers and maybe even the internet. And so how do we do that? How do we ensure that we're able to be transparent because those are the people that want and need policing the most, right?
Rishma Khimji:
They're the ones that need to feel the safest the most. And so we are really looking at how do we promote that availability to those communities. And a lot of that is going to be through communications and technology at the lowest level. Can we have a system in place that allows us to engage in those voice conversations with people? So we have to have the right phone systems in place that can just work with those communities that only have those kinds of phones. But then how do we disseminate information on a mobile platform as well? So there's a lot of benefit to ensuring that policing can engage in those communications spectrums that allow us to have those conversations with the people that need it and want it the most. So I think the biggest benefit right now is to ensure that one, we are transparent with what we're doing, how we're doing it, where we're doing it, and why we're doing it. And secondarily, also ensuring that we can be held accountable by those communities that we're servicing.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. When you say transparency, one of the first thing that came to mind was that's nothing necessarily to do with technology as much as it's actually a human communication first and then the technology piece comes around. And actually I think explaining to the citizens the why behind we're not just deploying a bunch of random technology, but there's an intentional piece to the actual service of the city and of the county. So I really like that. But there are also challenges too, specifically we were talking about offline ordinance 19B, which is about the banning of the use of public funds for facial recognition technology in San Francisco, along with how SF can manage arrest data in, I think it was, you had said it was a sanctuary city. So for example, SF cannot share critical data with Homeland Security. Very interesting. Tell us how the SF Police Department works around to protect officers and citizens with these limitation.
Rishma Khimji:
How I would categorize it is that it's really not a limitation because look, we're all humans, right? We all want to ensure that there is safety, not just for the officers, but as community members, there needs to be safety for their families and their friends, which are part of the communities that we service. So in the end, we're all saying what makes the best sense for all of us to feel safe and have that relationship with police to ensure community safety. So when we think about surveillance technology and we think about how that is beneficial to policing, we also have to think about what is the data privacy that is also embedded into those usages, right? And so I think technology itself is not good or bad, but there has to be oversight about it. There has to be a building of relationships with the folks that we're using these technologies with and for. Surveillance is a very touchy topic, right?
Rishma Khimji:
No matter where you go, nobody wants to be surveilled. Nobody wants to be in the video saying: Oh, you did this, you did that. So what are we doing to ensure that we're collecting information and data that allows us to solve crimes? One of the things that I think that is most important to recognize is that as a person of color and a citizen of the Bay Area, I don't want my data to be used against me or a fellow person. I don't want my data used to solve a crime if something happened to my neighbor's house. But at the same time working for the police department, I want that data so that I can solve that crime. So there's this huge battle between where is my privacy, my individual privacy lending way to the community digestion of data and how do we use that for the safety of our communities.
Rishma Khimji:
And I think that's something we have to battle and continue to battle. And I think the surveillance ordinance really put forth the issue of where are we drawing the line between privacy and security. And I think that's been a hot topic for years, right? After 9/11 surveillance increased amongst neighborhoods of color and the Muslim communities. We saw that a lot. But on the other hand, surveillance was really useful in ensuring we were being able to capture the Boston marathon bombers. Surveillance helped in that. Where is that fine line? How do we start adjusting and looking at what that fine line is? And so as a technology representative for the San Francisco Police Department, the question really is, how can we use tools that allows us to gather information but to anonymize it and aggregate it so that it is actually showing us a view of the instance and not necessarily the people that were affected by the instance?
Rishma Khimji:
And so a lot of it is conversational, right? We have to have those conversations with the board of supervisors and the mayor's office to say: Look, we really need this technology in place. We really need the ability to have cameras. We need the ability to put together information that allows us to track and have overview of situations. And so I think it really lends way to have those conversations and to understand what the technology is going to be used for. But again, technology can be good or bad. Technology is just a tool, right? Really what the conversation needs to focus around is the oversight. What are the policies that we have in place? And so really the surveillance ordinance is really pushing us to look at what policies do we have in place so that we can be answerable to the communities when they say, how did you get that information? How did you solve that crime?
Rishma Khimji:
And then once we have those policies in place, what are the consequences? We have to really ensure that we're putting consequences in place so that we don't use the data for bad, right? Because data is really important. Having that data is the same as having currency, right? The more data you have, the better position you are at making decisions and solving crime. But again, at what point is my individual data useful to the collective safety? So the surveillance ordinance really put us in a bind because there were some technologies that now we have to answer to and say why we're using it, but it's also opening the doors to say: Here are the policies we want to put in place. Here's the oversight we're putting in place. It's making us more transparent and accountable. But if we go back to the technology itself, the technology itself has a lot of issues too.
Rishma Khimji:
And so one of the things we should really talk about outside of just the surveillance ordinance is the impetus that was put into place to need the surveillance ordinance. We look at facial recognition. We know that facial recognition is on a 100%. Amazon recently stopped using facial recognition and no longer is growing that sector of their business because we know that there is fault in the recognition process. We know that we are not a 100% getting the right match between the human person and the image. And that is really important, right? Because you don't want to arrest the wrong person, you don't want to put the wrong person into a bad situation. So maybe we don't look at facial recognition, but what are the alternatives to facial recognition? Can we use body-worn camera? Can we use videos to assess the situation? Can we use other transactional data points to assess a situation?
Rishma Khimji:
What can we use that is better than facial recognition that gives us a better effect in solving crimes? So when we look at the technology, we really have to look at the human component and how it affects the human individual. And then is this the right choice or not the right choice? And what is the research behind it? What is the efficacy of it? And so there's a lot of questioning that goes into what kind of technologies we should be using. And I think the surveillance ordinance has really good intent in pushing the department to look at what are the right tools and what tools can we engage in that allows us to have that transparent and accountability with our communities. So it is hard to have to quantify and qualify why we're using something, but that's just part of due diligence process. And it's ensuring that we're working with our partners to do the right thing.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. There was a lot that you said there that was really good and way above anything that I normally could probably chime in about. But the policy conversation I think is super important. And you're right, technology is agnostic. It could be used for good. It could be used for bad. You can see bad actors leveraging technology in cybersecurity attacks against agencies, against different countries. And when I look at what you said about the facial recognition, it's not a hundred percent. And I think if you watch demos, you can see there's a constant moving probability percentage of who this person is. And that's a problem because if you're trying to find the bad guys, but you end up going into someone's house and they're the good guys, you make a pretty grave mistake. Yeah. I'd actually, I'd pulled up on my iPad over here the article, the Amazon halts police use of its facial recognition technology.
Joe Toste:
But I think the policy conversation, I think with the input of the community and really chewing on: Hey, what are the pros? What are the cons? People want to be safe. I'm in the airport. I want to be safe. I don't want anyone hijacking the airplane for example. And then where's that balance between. When you think about your privacy and security, where's the balance, right? And I think those are really fascinating questions that a lot of folks in a lot of cities are grappling with right now, just based on the climate and a number of other factors. You have probably one of the most interesting backgrounds because when I was looking at your time in Albuquerque, you helped launch the first Real-Time Crime Center. I was just kind of curious, what was that process like? What were the results? How did you like it? I think the audience would love to hear your experience.
Rishma Khimji:
Yeah. When the Real-Time Crime Center or the RTCC was being built at, it was led by a really innovative person who was looking to provide data or availability within a situation. We wanted to increase our availability to a situation so that our officers know what they were walking into. That's the purpose of most Real-Time Crime Centers is to understand what is happening in this situation so that our officers can go in prepped and ready to secure the scene. And so at the building of the RTCC, it was really based on the premise of how do we get more information to an officer as he's encountering a situation. It was really built on relationships with the business community to say: Hey, you have these types of cameras. Can we use those cameras to help us view situations and be more situationally aware? And I don't really think there's a true concept of Real-Time Crime Centers because so much of what happens is reactionary anyways.
Rishma Khimji:
And so it becomes this momentum of what is active monitoring and what is passive monitoring, and you can't actively monitor everything all the time. So I think the concept of the Real-Time Crime Center is really having the ability to know that something has happened. And then how do we tap into those resources around that activity and then be able to provide real time data to our officers so that they can be more proactive in the instance. The RTCC really started off as a partnership with businesses to say: Look, we want to ensure that your businesses are safe. And if something was to happen, we could at least engage quicker, or we could have some type of information of when the incident occurred and how we can then help solve the crime. But it really started off with how do I ensure that we are getting the best amount of information to provide to our officers.
Rishma Khimji:
And I really think that is the key point in having these RTCCs, and there's many all over the country, right? Albuquerque was one of them, but there's so many out there. And really it's to ensure they were able to collect as much information about the event that is occurring and the environment of that event so that the officers can be better prepared when they go to the event. And that really lends itself to officer safety. And in addition to that, it lends itself to community safety, right? Because if the officer knows better of the circumstances that they're walking into, they're going to make better decisions when it comes to deescalating the situation. And so when we started the RTCC, a lot of it was how do we get tools to monitor social media? How do we get tools to ensure that we can engage with those private camera systems at businesses?
Rishma Khimji:
How do we incorporate the traffic signal cameras as well so that we can see movement along our roads? How do we relay that information to the officer in real time? So what is the dispatch functionality that we need there? And that's really where I was a part of the program. It was ensuring that we have the dispatch capabilities to get the information to our officers. It was new to us. It was fantastic idea. It allowed us to put in some really cool ideas and technologies, but my goal was to ensure that it was really for the deliverance of data so that our officers could make better decisions. Look, in the end, no matter what a police officer does or what a police department does, it should always be reflective of how much information an officer has to make the best decisions in the field.
Rishma Khimji:
We know that when an officer goes in blind, the situation can escalate and become chaotic. And we don't want that because that does not lend itself to safety of anybody. And so my goal in policing, and especially in policing technology, whether it's through the Real-Time Crime Center, or it's through foundational softwares that we're putting in for officers, or it's in those relationship building with the community for transparency is to ensure that it's driven by the best available data so that the officers can make the right decisions and deescalate a situation. And I think that's really the foundation of all policing technologies to ensure that we're giving officers the best information so they can make the right decision.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. I love that. So before we move on to the rest of the podcast, I think I was telling you about it, Rishma. But I'm launching new series called the TechTables Suite Talk Series. These are small intimate conversations that are happening live across the US starting on Thursday, April 21st in Phoenix with Arizona state CIO, JR Sloan; Arizona Department of Education CIO, Elizabeth Neeley; Ex-CSO for the state of Arizona, Doug Lange; City of Goodyear CIO, Justin Fair; CSO for the state of Arizona, Tim Roemer; and Bradley who's the CIO at CommonSpirit, the Southwest division, plus two others special CIOs with only five vendors in the audience, 12 people total, presidential suite live TechTables podcast recording. It's going to be a blast. Also, confirmed another fan favorite, Mandy Crawford, CIO of the state of Texas; Shauna Rogers, who's the chief digital officer at the Texas Attorney General's office; Cory Wilburn, CIO at the Texas General Land Office on Wednesday, May 18th in Austin, Texas.
Joe Toste:
And on July 22nd, I'll be in Raleigh, North Carolina for the TechTables Suite Talk Series: Grillin' and Chillin with Jim Weaver, who's the North Carolina state CIO. And Mandy Crawford will be heading over to Raleigh also, plus 10 other CIOs. It's going to be a blast. You can make sure to catch episode 78, where my wife came on TechTables. My wife interviewed me all about the TechTables Suite Talk Series, had a ton of fun. Make sure to check out episode 70. And if you're a vendor, you can apply at events.techtables.com. There are again very few tickets left because there's not a whole lot of room. These are very small. This isn't like a huge conference. So it'll be in these presidential suites. Going to be a ton of fun. Going to have a blast. If you want me to come to a city near you, make sure to email me, [email protected] There's a few other cities potentially on deck, but the year is filling up very fast. And I'm already looking at 2023. And it's February 25th, 2022.
Joe Toste:
All right. We'll get back to the show. So Rishma, stories move us to acts. And I was curious, how are you leveraging storytelling at the police department to deploy new technology?
Rishma Khimji:
Yeah. So we are currently going through two major technology changes at the police department. The first is our collective and cooperative relationship with the Department of Emergency Management, where we are working with them to put in a new computer-aided dispatch system. So a new CAD system. And that project itself is going to change the way officers are able to collect information, get information about a call for service. So call for service is when someone calls in and says: I have an emergency, please send police. What we are not able to capture right now is that information that allows again, the officer to be as proactive as he can as he rolls out to a call. This new system will give us that opportunity to collect more information and more data. What is the story behind that itself?
Rishma Khimji:
The story with that is that again, if the officer has more information as they're headed towards a situation, the better prepared they're going to be to make the right decision to deescalate the event. And when you look at how that can be effective in a community that has such variable trust with the police department, it is so important for the community to understand the more we understand about the situation, the better we're going to be at making the right decisions. And for example, the police department is always pictured in the media as an aggressive force when they are called to a call for service. An event happens and it's always the police that come and have to do the things they do, but it's always forceful. And what we don't see is that there are times where officers are called to the scene of an event and that event can so peacefully be resolved because the officer knew what he was walking into and had the right tools and training to deescalate the situation.
Rishma Khimji:
And so if we have better tools in place that allows us to get that better data, allows us to capture the scenario in a more complete picture, I think what we will see over time is that officers are able to get to a situation and not be the forceful instance there, but to be the peaceful instance there, right? We are peace officers in the end. And so the goal is to ensure that we achieve peace in all these situations. So I think one of the stories that will start to come out once we put a new CAD system in place is that we are just going to be better prepared when we're engaged in a situation. And those are the kinds of stories that are really going to make policing look different.
Rishma Khimji:
Now you can say all these cities have these CAD systems, right? So why don't we see that everywhere else? And I think the point is that the San Francisco Police Department in its strategies to be transparent and accountable and to look at reform as a way of engagement in policing, I think that's really going to change the way we tell our stories.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. This is great. So for those who are not familiar, and I know a lot of CIOs think I just know everything, I don't. I didn't even know what CAD was. There's just so many acronyms in the world. So I looked this up. So computer-aided dispatch systems.
Rishma Khimji:
Yes.
Joe Toste:
Okay. Talk about, maybe I'm just curious, how does all of that work? There's probably a record system. There's a bunch of stuff that hooks into it. Maybe just from a 30,000 foot overview. You can just talk about that.
Rishma Khimji:
So when you call 911 and you say, I have an emergency and I need a cop, you have a dispatcher or a call taker sitting there with this software in place that allows them to one, get the name, get the address of the event, get any surrounding conditions of the event documented and recorded. And what that allows us to do is that then through the software, send that data to the officers while they're in the cars, or at the station, or on a foot beat, it sends them that information as well. And we can display that information on a computer, or we can voice activate it so it can be read out, but that collection of data then triggers some other things, right? So it can trigger... So for example, you call and you say: Hey, I'm at the McDonald's on fourth. You really don't know the address of the McDonald's on fourth, but in this system, we have cataloged these common places or these common phrases.
Rishma Khimji:
So if you say: Hey, I'm on the McDonald's on fourth, you say that to us on the phone, we put it in the system, it'll automatically give us the right address to that. So it allows us to shortcut some of the conversations so that what we really are trying to get to is what's the event, what's going on, how do we help, and send out the right folks. And it also allows, again, the system also allows us to look at, do we need just police there? Do we need EMS there? Do we need fire there? What are the other agencies that need to be in there, social services? What kind of mental health situation is it? So we can get the right mental health folks out there. So it allows us to catalog and disperse the right information to the right groups. And it allows us to shortcut some of the conversation.
Rishma Khimji:
To piggyback off the CAD system, the police department is also looking to invest and deploy a new records management system. So it pairs with the CAD system and allows us to collect that information. But the records management system is the after the event situation. So that's when an officer goes on site and then they have to write a report. That's the system we are looking to solicit for and implement at the... That's where a lot of the analytics for policing comes through is through that incident report, because then we know what was the situation, who was engaged in the situation, what was the end result of the situation. And we can start looking at what is the analytical view of the department. And as departments start looking at how to use data to be more operational for their departments, having the right RMS or records management system is really important.
Rishma Khimji:
It allows us to catalog those incidents. It allows us to use the reports that are coming in for investigations. It allows us to pair the evidence in the property. So it really is the management center for police. And what people don't realize, I don't think they realize outside of the policing world is that an officer is on shift for eight to 10 hours. But out of those eight to 10 hours, a lot of that work is administrative, right? They have to come back to the office or they have to work in their cars to build out these reports. And officers are spending anywhere from two to two and a half hours a shift just doing all the administrative work. And so what I'm trying to do and what my team is trying to do at the department is to make that two and a half hours, one, more effective and efficient, and maybe reduce that time because we need officers out in the streets.
Rishma Khimji:
We need them to be embedded in the community, not back at the office doing administrative work. So we're looking for tools that'll allow them to be more effective and efficient. Voice activated recording so they can speak out their incidents or speak out their report. We're trying to... When we get the call for service information, so an officer rolls out to a scene. Make that more voice activated so that the officer is not trying to juggle driving and looking at their computers in the car. We're looking at different ways to ensure that we are making them more data-centric. Again, the more information the officer has, the better decision making they'll be able to do. So we're really looking for a dynamic, a modern tool that officers can use. But on top of that, we have to also understand that a lot of the officers that are coming into the workforce now, they're the generation, and I call them the tweeters because they're the one thumbers.
Rishma Khimji:
They can do anything on their phones with one thumb. And so the goal is to make sure that the officer can do some of their work in that same capacity. So modernization in policing is more than just ensuring we have transparency and accountability. It's also ensuring we get the right data and how we're getting that data in and how we're making the officers more effective and efficient. Because we can put all the tools out there, but if there are too many tools, the officers overwhelmed. And if there's too less tools, then the operations is underwhelmed.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. This is really great. I don't know if maybe my entire audience is, they already know all this. I think this is pretty fascinating to me. So dispatcher is collecting all this information and there you go, police, fire, mental health, social services. And there's a layer of complexity, right? So there's all these other departments that have to integrate in.
Rishma Khimji:
Yep.
Joe Toste:
And then that information, let's just say in one example, flows through to the police officer, or could be maybe they have an iPad or some device where they're maybe mobile friendly or it's in their car. I have been blessed enough. I've not been actually in a police car. So I couldn't tell you what's actually in a police car. Yeah. I need to do a ride along because I am uneducated right now on the setup. I actually have some friends who are police officers. They have not offered a ride along for me and nor have I asked, but anyways. So all of that information goes into a record management system and they're cataloging everything, the voice recording. That's actually fantastic. That reminds me a lot of doctors when they're trying to get notes in much quicker.
Rishma Khimji:
Yep.
Joe Toste:
My brother and sister-in-law are both doctors. And so they're constantly talking whenever they're working. So trying to transcribe, get all that information, then all of that information gets into the record management system. Then there's probably got to be some type of analytics dashboard where the people who are whoever's head of and whether this is the decision makers for the entire police department are looking at some kind of core, I don't know if it's like a OKR or KPI or something like that, where how can we on the macro see how we're doing as a department and what makes sense of that, which now leads me to another question. What are some of the most important metrics that you're tracking as the CIO?
Rishma Khimji:
Yeah. So as the CIO, my metrics is efficiency in the workspace, right? So my goal is to ensure that officers have the right tools in place to make them more embed in the community. Two to two and a half hours a shift, that's tremendous for an officer to be doing administrative work. Go ahead.
Joe Toste:
And what are you trying to get that down to?
Rishma Khimji:
I don't know yet because we don't know if the tools we're going to put in place are going to be the right tools to get them to maybe an hour in the field. We don't know. That's still a discovery process that we're in, but it's something we have to do. We have to figure out how do we make their lives better and what services can we automate, what services can we digitize. And so some of the core metrics we are really looking at is one... And a lot of this is based and it changes to be honest with you, because so much of this is also based on this reform initiative that we are also partnered with. So one of the things about the San Francisco Police Department and one of the reasons I came here to this department is because we're really looking at reform so one, holistically, and two, so individualized.
Rishma Khimji:
And what I mean by that is we are looking at how do we make our officers better in regards to bias, right? How do we make them more effective in our communities? How do we increase diversity so that our officers are reflective of our communities? But when we look at technology and how do we use technology to accelerate that reform, we have to look at one, how much data does the officer have to collect? And some of that is, can I automate some of that collection of the data? Can I make it easier? Because even if they aren't ending up spending two to two and a half hours in the office, is the quality of that two and a half hours providing us the key indicators and the key information we need to ensure that one, we are doing the crime prevention and crime management and investigations that is necessary, but are we doing it in a way that is related to reform and making us a better department?
Rishma Khimji:
So the technology component is not really looking at: Oh, I made them more effective and efficient. So I've reduced their time in the office. It's really an interplay of how am I making sure they collect the right information? How do I make them more efficient? And how are we using that data to ensure that our officers are reflective of the communities? And we're holding up to the standards of reform that we're really trying to put up there.
Joe Toste:
This is fantastic. Thank you for breaking that kind of ecosystem down. I'm sure we could go on another podcast deeper into everything. This is always so... What I've learned just having interviews in the public sector, there's many different agencies. And especially when I interview someone like yourself and I've never interviewed anyone related to police. So it's like a constant learning process for me. Now I'm super curious. My mind never turns off. So I'm going to Google a bunch of stuff after this and just keep learning a little bit more. And super fascinating about how you're serving in the public. There's a great book. I don't know if you've read it or not. DataStory by Nancy Duarte. And she says that people only remember 5% of individual statistics. She says that data is cold, factual, and objective versus story where people remember, she's saying 63% of the stories that include empathy, warmth, emotion. I was really curious, how do you think CIOs can better communicate on the ground success stories from both the police and citizen perspectives?
Rishma Khimji:
I really agree with the statement that stories have to be related to empathy and that relationship building with communities. And so in the policing sector, we put out data all the time, right? This is the crime statistics for your neighborhood. And then branching out to the whole city. We also put out data that reflects our ability to solve crime compared to other cities. There's a whole bunch of data in policing that is actually out there already. But I think the stories that are the most impactful that I think our chief is also been really good at telling at the national level and at the local level is that when we see a reduction in crime, it's because of the relationships we have fostered with that community, right? Community policing has seen an uptick in popularity throughout the nation. And it's popular because it embeds the officer into the communities they serve. But what makes it even better is when those officers are reflective of the communities they serve.
Rishma Khimji:
And so when we tell stories with our data, what we're really telling stories of is how the diversity of our department is helping the climate of crime within the city and how those embedded officers are making an impact. And I think that's the real story in the end is one, we recognize we've had tons of protests, a lot of social change, a lot of conversations about what is the value of police in communities. And a lot of that goes back to how are we serving our communities, when are we serving our communities, and which communities are we serving the best. And we have data on that. It just doesn't get translated very much because the noise of crime statistics always comes into play. But when we really look at how are we treating diversity and biases within the department and how that is reflective of the relationships we're having in the communities, that's the stories that are embedded in empathy in community service.
Rishma Khimji:
And I think those are the stories that we're really trying to get out there. And so a lot of the stuff we're doing internally to the department, a lot of the data that we're gathering is around bias, diversity and training. And a lot of that is towards how do we make officers more reflective of the communities they serve? We know. We've seen it. There's been tons of conversation about it from within the department, outside the department, with other agencies, grassroot organizations, all the way up to the federal level. And I think we really start digging into what reform means, what kind of data we are showing, what kind of data we're able to provide. And we start attaching those stories to the quality of our service in communities.
Rishma Khimji:
That's when we're really going to make the biggest strides. And we're doing that now. We're doing that at the local level. We're doing that at the county level, the state level. And the chief is really pushing that narrative at the national level. And it's so important to hear. And I think it's right, data... What community see, maybe the crime is increasing for cars, right? Car thefts are on the rise. We know that. We've seen it, especially in San Francisco. How many stories have there been?
Joe Toste:
My car's been broken into in San Francisco. Yeah.
Rishma Khimji:
There you go. Everybody has a story about that, right? Either they were, or they know someone.
Joe Toste:
Yep.
Rishma Khimji:
But when we start looking at how is the quality of life in that neighborhood in general as we start looking at the data and those relationships, we're really seeing: Okay, car theft is... But home burglaries are down, or property crimes are down, or gun related crime is down. So yes, we'll always have those elevated stories of car thefts and things like that, but what about the holistic picture of what's happening in that community, in that neighborhood? And I think those stories are really starting to unfold. And a lot of it is due to the data that we're able to provide and produce and have those stories with.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. That's really great. I love what you said about in the beginning about relationship building, which I think is, again, it always starts with people and with humans, and not with technology. And relationship building I think with the community is so important. I think about they're not police, but I think about the sheriffs that there's a few in mind that are dedicated to the high school that I'm at. And when I say I'm at, obviously I don't go to high school, but I coached the JV basketball team there at DP. And I think about the sheriffs there and they're really awesome people. And part of the reason they're there so much is for relationship building.
Joe Toste:
And I think having them on campus is fantastic because you can see them smiling, getting to know kids who perhaps maybe they play sports. And so they have that opportunity to interact and it provides a safe situation for a lot of folks, especially if you've ever been to a high school basketball game, it can get a little heated afterwards when teams win and lose. Yeah, I know. I love that. Look Rishma, we could go a lot longer, but so maybe we'll have to do a second podcast. But in the meantime, where's your favorite spot where you like to hangout online? LinkedIn, Twitter, where do you like to hang out?
Rishma Khimji:
Well, I'm on Twitter a lot. Maybe I shouldn't say that out loud. I don't want my bosses to hear that. It's a great place to exchange ideas. I get a lot of information from Twitter. I love engaging with people on Twitter. So you can find me @RishKhimji. You can also find me at my San Francisco Police Department account, which is SFPDCIO. And then LinkedIn of course is always a good spot to connect with me. But yeah, I'm one of those one thumbers that likes to be on Twitter.
Joe Toste:
I have come to love Twitter. I've come to really love Twitter. There's a lot of really great threads around people having really fascinating topics, whether that's on blockchain or different types of technology. If you're not doing this, here's a great hack for everybody that I learned on Twitter. So when I see threads that I really like and want to maybe think about, there's this super niche app called Readwise.io. And I hooked up my Twitter account to Readwise. And on any thread I just tag @Readwisesavethread. And then that gets funneled automatically through Readwise. Then I have it dumped into my Evernote.
Joe Toste:
And so then I've got the thread in my Evernote. And from there, I can see what pieces of the thread I like. I can grab information or I come back at a later date to process that. That's just a quick hack. Readwise does not sponsor the podcast, but if you're not using this little niche app, you should. It is fantastic at being able to grab stuff online. I do the same thing with Kindle too. When I grab highlights, it goes through Readwise, dumps into Evernote or Notion, or whatever app you want to use. So anyways, fun little tangent at the end. But Rishma, thank you for coming on TechTables. I appreciate it.
Rishma Khimji:
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. And I hope we get to meet again soon.
