Public Safety Committee 9/9/2025

Roger that.

Happy that.

Okay, good morning.

Good morning here in chambers, but also offsite and to most likely include somewhere on public transportation.

Good morning, the Public Safety Committee will come to order.

It's 9.35 a.m.

September 9th, 2025. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council President Nelson?

Council Member Saka?

Here.

Chair Kettle?

Here.

Chair, there are three members present.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Hollingsworth is excused, and Council President Nelson is excused until she joins us.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Normally I look left and right, but I'll look above, and I'm not seeing any objection, so the agenda is adopted.

For chair comment this morning, I wanted to speak to our consent decree decision from last week.

It is a major accomplishment, a major milestone, but also a major stepping stone.

And I say that because the work continues.

But I did want to congratulate the men and women of the Seattle Police Department For the work that they did in order to do the reforms, to work with the Judge Robarts, to work with the Federal Monitor, to work with all those involved, to include the City Council, particularly over the last 20 months, it's really important for the work that they've done on this front.

It was also important to work with our accountability partners, one of which is represented in the chambers today, the Community Police Commission.

But the OPA, the Office of Police Accountability, and especially the OIG, and I put especially because the Inspector General is basically absorbing the functions of the Federal Monitor.

So all these entities, I really wanted to thank for their work in order to return to Seattle the complete oversight of the Seattle Police Department, something that this committee will do in cooperation with the executive, with the mayor's office, and others to include the accountability partners so that we will continue to step forward.

For those who don't remember, the consent decree process originally, it really started, and Council Member Juarez can speak to this as well, really started with the killing of John T. Williams here in Seattle.

That started the process in August of 2010. Just two years later is when the consent decree process started.

And here we are, basically 13 years later, completing the process.

But I thought it was very important, and Council Member Juarez and I sat with Mr. Williams' brother, Rick Williams, during the course of that court proceeding with Judge Robarts.

And I spoke to him, and following up on the outreach of the CPC to Mr. Williams, offered him a position with the City Council slot of the Community Police Commission.

I think it's really symbolic.

I think it's really worth noting that on the day that the consent decree finished, that started with the killing of Mr. John T. Williams, that we started that day, ended that day, with the announcement that his brother, Mr. Wick Williams, was joining the Community Police Commission.

I think that it shows that the work that We will do.

We'll continue.

It shows that we have somebody from the Native community on the Community Police Commission, which is something that's really important to me and something that I have been working on for 20 months.

And so I'm really thankful for Mr. Rick Williams for agreeing to join the commission because it's so important.

But ultimately, it symbolizes our commitment as a city to move forward.

And again, with cooperation, collaboration, with the Seattle Police Department and I think we have a partner with Chief Barnes now in place to continue that work with all those that I've worked with over the years across all five precincts.

And so I just wanted to make a note of that because it's a major milestone, it's a major stepping stone with the ending of the consent decree and as I mentioned with Mr. Williams joining, will soon to be joining as you'll see during the course of the fall of the Community Police Commission.

So that said, thank you for that.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period, and public comments should relate to the items on today's agenda or within the purview of the community.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have today?

Mr. Chair.

Yes, Councilman Juarez.

Would you mind if I said a few things in regards to your opening statement, Chair, before we begin?

Yes, Council Member Juarez.

Chair comment extended to Council Member Juarez.

Go ahead, please.

I just want to put into context a few things because I know people are listening, obviously, also for the Community Police Commission and those.

The whole idea of the consent decree didn't really begin Unfortunately, with the death of our brother, John T., unconstitutional policing had been going on for decades.

It just took that to happen, for people to realize that the unconstitutional policing, the use of force, racial profiling, the culture of SPD, the lack of reporting, not having an OIG, not having an OPA, shifting power to the chief to be able to make decisions, Having what we called accountability partners, doing the legislation.

So as a former public defender and judge, I can tell you from the 80s, I'm dating myself, and way before I showed up, these issues were there.

And what happened was we had a, you know, obviously we lost John T, but because the circumstances were so horrific that you had an elderly gentleman who was deaf, who was shot, walking away on video, Even though we've known how these incidents had happened many times before, happened when I was a public defender.

And I'm just going to say this without people getting all crazy.

People lie sometimes, including police officers.

And, you know, it's unfortunate, but I think, and you know this, Mr. Kettle or Councilor, or Chair, because you sat next to me at the court hearing.

I think the question that was the most profound to me is when Judge Robart asked Chief Barnes, and I don't have my notes with me because I took six pages and put certain things in quotes when he asked him, and if I can paraphrase, how do you change the culture at the police department?

How do you foresee that?

How do you change that?

And I think Chief Barnes, without my notes, responded on paraphrasing, basically said that officers get awards for a lot of things, but they don't get awards for the things that we also need to value.

And that is being in the community, protecting the community and not having this culture of that somehow you can wield power because you have a gun and a badge.

And that community policing in the 21st century does not look like it looked in the 20th or the 19th or the 18th.

And it cannot be militaristic.

And there has to be not only internal controls, but self-reporting amongst each other to keep each other accountable.

And I know there's a lot more there because you were sitting there, obviously.

And I thought that that was incredibly profound.

And I really appreciated Chief Barnes's response to have a federal judge ask him to step, come up to the podium and respond and address the court.

So I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez, and she's on point with that.

And this is the kind of thing that's come up in our conversation with Chief Barnes.

I also wanted to note, since you noted Judge Robarts, Judge Robarts more than once, the council wasn't an active participant in the court hearing, but more than once he called out the council along with the executive in terms of supporting the accountability partners.

And that is something that I said in the press conference afterwards and I will say again today and I've been making this point repeatedly that yes, we do support and will support our accountability partners.

We're doing this during two budgets or almost two budget cycles right now and we'll continue to do so.

And I think that's important to note because he specifically mentioned the city council in terms of supporting.

He understands our system of government here in the city and our responsibilities as a council.

So thank you.

And thank you for highlighting the historical context to Councilmember Juarez for you're quite right in terms of the points that you made and also on the points of culture.

As someone who saw the change in culture in the Navy in the 90s and Generally in the military, it is something that takes time, but it takes leadership.

And it takes leadership from Chief Barnes, but also from this council and from the mayor.

And I think we're in the process of doing that.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

And so now, Clerk, in terms of public commenters, do we have any?

We have zero in person.

There are four remote signed up, but only one present.

So we'll start with the one present.

Start with one and see where we go.

Yep.

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not and their comments within the allotted Sorry.

Do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first remote speaker is Howard Gale.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt.

You have been unmuted.

Mr. Gale.

Go ahead, Howard.

Okay.

Good morning.

Howard Gale.

A recent study estimated there are approximately 45,000 total crime victims in Seattle, the vast majority, 87 percent, victims of property crime.

Imagine lawlessness threatening over three and a half times that population, that is, over 156,000 Seattleites in the coming weeks and months.

But unlike the vast majority of prior crime victims, these potential victims become too frightened and traumatized to go to work, to go shopping, to take their children to school, to go to church, to enjoy cultural or religious festivals, to never know when or where they might be abducted.

Unlike the vast majority of prior crime victims and their loved ones, these people will face life-altering traumas that they might never recover from.

That will soon be the reality for over 156,000 Seattleites who are foreign-born In an America where Seattle is high on the list of cities our federal government wishes to go to war with, the question we must ask ourselves is whether in the coming years we want to end up like the Americans of the 1940s who could only say, we were good, we did not partake in sending folks to the internment camps.

Or do we want to be able to say, we did what we could to prevent folks from being taken.

Therefore, a central and urgent task before this public safety committee is to create legislation that direct Seattle's police to go beyond simply not participating in the abductions of Seattle residents, but instead works to actively protect the Fourth Amendment rights of all Seattle residents, guaranteeing that no federal enforcement of immigration laws happens on Seattle City property, absent a judicial warrant, and that no person is taken from public spaces without a judicial warrant or clearly articulated individualized suspicion.

I have discussed this and sent Thank you.

Thank you, Howard.

Next up is David Haynes.

Seattle is still not Practicing constitutional police reform.

I know the drinking and thinking judge lets you all off the hook, but when the negotiation was originally negotiated, Jenny Durkan sabotaged the integrity of the entire thing by introducing one sentence that said low-level drug pushers exempted from jail.

The police negotiator agreed to it and Judge Robar signed off on it and then Bruce Harrell The council voted to exempt low-level drug pushers from jail under 3.5 grams.

And then the entire city has been imploding ever since.

And this council has not changed the rules and the laws and implemented the crime-fighting tools that the CPC browbeated to convince the chief and the police reform to take away to make it almost impossible for cops to be proactive in combating crime.

And a perfect example is city council sabotaging the video feeds and not allowing it to be plugged into the CCTV slash new kiosks that could help make it safe.

It's like you all picked low quality lenses and video feeds to make sure that you couldn't identify the individual so that if he's wearing a blue jacket and goes around the corner and takes his blue jacket off, all of a sudden he's got plausible deniability and reasonable doubt.

It's like there's people on the Public Safety Committee whose families are proud gangsters and criminal underworld characters.

And we see amendments that are attempting to further undermine the integrity of police reform by sabotaging the use of the technology by making it seem like the cops are the biggest threat in the community.

And it's revolting.

It's another reason why we have a right to bear arming in this country.

Because we have tyranny on the government's legislative branch who don't have the best interest of community at heart.

They always act like some black and brown drug pusher has a right to do what they do.

And then they ruin somebody's life.

Thank you David.

And then Last call for Amy Juravitsical, Amy Bailey or Penny O'Grady.

Not seeing them on the line.

Okay.

Thank you, clerk.

The public comment period as expired.

We will now proceed to our items of business.

Members of the public are encouraged to either submit written public comment on the sign-up cards available on the podium or email the council at council at seattle.gov.

We will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item number one into the record?

CB 121064, an ordinance relating to removing the city residency requirement for judges pro tempore in Seattle, amending section 3.33.140 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

Good morning, presiding judge Crawford Willis of the Seattle Municipal Court.

Please join us along with Mr. Sattler, the court administrator and Mr. Johnson from central staff.

Good morning and welcome back.

Please introduce yourself for the record and begin your presentation.

So again, welcome, presiding Judge Crawford-Willis.

Yes, good morning.

Good morning.

As the chair has said, my name is Judge Crawford-Willis.

I am the presiding judge from Seattle Municipal Court.

And I want to thank you, Chair Kettle, for inviting us and the council committee members for inviting us.

It's nice to see you again.

I'm very happy to be here.

And I think Josh is going to be my...

So first again, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak today to ask you to support our legislation to change the Pro Tem language in the Seattle code.

We really appreciate the opportunity to continue strengthening our relationship with you and our communication, and that is really a high priority for me and for our court.

So let's start with our second slide, just to get myself organized here.

And also, good morning, Council Member Juarez.

I was hoping you would be here in person, too.

It was nice to see you on screen.

I think the chair should know that you were my tutor in law school because you were one year ahead of me.

She gives me too much credit, but I'll take it.

So let's go to our next slide.

As you know, Seattle Municipal Court is the judicial branch of Seattle government.

We provide the community with a forum to resolve alleged violations of the law in a respectful, independent, and impartial manner.

Our court adjudicates misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, things like DV assaults, regular assaults, theft, harassment, DUIs.

And this is under the Seattle Municipal Code and the Revised Code of Washington.

We also process all of the infractions in the City of Seattle.

So that would include parking, traffic, camera infractions.

We handle all of those cases.

You can go to the next slide.

Thank you.

So, Judge Pro Tem, or as the formal name is Judges Tempore, but we refer to them as Judges Pro Tem.

These are attorneys who sit for the elected judges when they are out due to vacation, illness, disability, or disqualification.

And they cover for the elected judges.

Pro tems are authorized both under the RCW and the Seattle Municipal Code.

They are appointed by the presiding judge.

And they take an oath that covers the same time period as the judges.

Currently, pro tems in Seattle Municipal Court are required to be residents of the city of Seattle.

Good morning.

That's a quick reference to the arrival of Councilmember Rivera, who's, as I've said before, not on the committee, but always welcome.

All members of the council are always welcome to join the committee.

So welcome this morning.

Thank you, Chair.

Apologies for it.

I mean, I wanted to slip in so I wouldn't be disruptive, but apologies.

Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure to meet you, and I think I'll see you later today.

So the next slide.

So the legislation that we are asking you to support is Ordinance 121064, proposes a change to the Seattle Municipal Code to remove the residency requirement for Seattle Municipal Court pro tems.

Now, over the last year, we've worked really closely with the City Office of Intergovernmental Relations to change the state law and to remove the residency requirement.

Seattle Municipal Court is the only court that's authorized under the RCW that requires cities with a population of over 400,000 to establish a municipal court.

There's a separate law for all of the other courts, and so this only applies to our court.

With that comes the requirement that The pro tems be residents of the city of Seattle.

We want to thank also State Representative Daria Farivar that helped us make the change on the state side, and also our OIR colleagues who helped ensure the passage.

Also, thanks to Judges McDowell and Chess for testifying at the state legislature in terms of changing this.

Other municipal courts do not have this requirement, and of course Seattle is the only city with the 400,000, and so they are able to recruit pro tems without the residency requirement.

Seattle Municipal Court already uses our magistrates to service pro tem judges, and our magistrates do not have a residency requirement, so we already have them So you might say, well, why is this so important?

Well, pro tem judges, we use them to ensure that the court can continue to operate smoothly.

When we have judges that are out for vacation, sickness, whatever the reason, We need to have pro-tems to cover for them.

Otherwise, we are delaying justice to our citizens.

And as you know, our whole mission is to make sure that we resolve these disputes, and we want to resolve them in a timely manner.

We don't want the reason they're not resolved to be because we don't have judicial officers to hear the cases.

It's been really difficult for us in the recent years to recruit pro tems.

A lot of reasons, but one primary reason is many of the attorneys who would be able to sit as pro tems, they appear before us.

And so because of that, they're disqualified.

So we cannot recruit people in Seattle So that, I think, is one of the main reasons.

When we don't have pro tems, again, as I said, we have to cancel court hearings.

We have to consolidate.

And so there is a delay in justice.

Now, we do utilize our magistrates to come up and sit for the judges.

But then we're taking them from their caseload, which is very robust.

So that means that we have to cancel some of their great programs, such as the debt reduction program.

And again, that delays justice for the people who they are adjudicating.

So we really do need to have enough judicial officers in both spots so that we can keep the work going.

It seems to be no rational justification for keeping that as a requirement since we already use our magistrates and they are not residents.

And also the overriding value is that we will have judicial officers available when we need them to keep the cases going.

So, thank you for your consideration of changing this legislation.

I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

We also want to share some of the exciting things going on at our court, so I'm going to turn that over to Josh.

I will take questions, or you can hear from Josh first.

Let's finish with Mr. Shatler, yes, and then we'll turn it over to questions.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thanks, Judge, and thanks, Chair Kettle and Councilmembers for the opportunity today to provide you with a couple updates going on with the court.

As you know, last March, about 18 months ago, SMC launched a new technology system.

I'm happy to share that we've been working diligently to stabilize that technology and ensure all critical data exchanges are In place with our system stakeholders, a few weeks ago, our partners with the city attorney's office went live with their case management system, and those data exchanges are up and functioning properly.

I just wanted to share that these investments in technology are ensuring a smooth working criminal justice system, and we appreciate the funding from counsel and the support as we work to get those established.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank council for approving our supplemental budget requests related to the drug prosecution alternative.

This is another collaboration with the city attorney's office.

That program went live a few weeks ago.

We've started to see program participants opt in to that.

Included in this funding were two marshal positions, which are critical to support the court.

As we shared at that time, we've had a massive spike in the number of defendants being transported that require extra marshal support and keeping the courthouse safe.

As I said, the Drug Prosecution Alternative has officially launched, and our pretrial services team is working with those participants to coordinate referrals to community partners through our Community Resource Center, the CRC, located in the courthouse.

We have also contracted with King County Public Health for an SUD assessor to support the program participants, and that person is already hired and on board and working with participants as well.

While participants are at the court, they have access to other CRC resource providers that assist with health insurance, food, medical benefits, as well as immediate supplies, such as clothing, hygiene products, and cell phones, all located in our courthouse.

Thank you for the opportunity today, and we're happy to answer any questions about anything going on at the court or about this legislation we're asking you to consider.

Thank you, Mr. Settler.

Mr. Johnson from Central Staff, anything you'd like to add?

No, I think our judicial branch has covered their legislation quite thoroughly, but I'm available for if there are technical questions I can assist with.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you.

And I really appreciate this.

You know, this is very important for the committee.

Mr. Sattler, you mentioned it.

I forget the first word you said, but then functional criminal justice system.

It is so key for us, and that's been a theme for this committee moving forward.

And before I go to my colleagues for any questions they may have, I just wanted to note that, you know, I think there's always the danger of using cultural references.

But looking across the crowd here, I think everybody will get it.

It's almost like a scene from Sesame Street when you had the box of four and one of these things is not like the other.

So no pressure, but I'm the only one without a JD.

So teeing up my colleagues.

Well, we didn't want to shame you.

And of course, I always start with my vice chair, Vice Chair Saka.

Do you have any questions?

Thank you, Chair.

And yes, noted, you are the only one at this dais, physically or virtually, without it, J.D., but we won't hold it against you.

All good.

I will.

I'll hold it against you.

All good.

Well, thank you, Presiding Judge Willis Crawford, for this presentation.

It's always good to see you.

Thank you.

I had a chance to look at some of the presentation materials before this, and then you kind of walking through it was very helpful.

Red, Tommaso, Mr. Johnson's excellent and nice and short and terse, given the nature of what we're being asked to consider today, central staff analysis memo.

It's always helpful from my perspective to, to the extent possible, trying to quantify the scope of the challenges and sort of related opportunities.

And so here, just would love to better understand, you know, like is there an initial estimate of the current slate of pro tem judges?

Like how many are currently serving?

Like how many are in the pool, if you will, of pro tem judges today?

If I had to guess, I don't have an exact number, but I would say we have about 15. But again, many people aren't available because they have a practice.

And so I think probably ones that actually show up for upstairs, I would say maybe five or six.

Got it.

Got it.

And then we use those same pro tems to help us in the magistrate's office also.

Sure.

More numbers of people in the books, but they're not always available.

And so by being able to recruit outside of Seattle, that gives us a bigger pool and have more numbers available.

And we've already had a lot of interest from attorneys outside of Seattle that are interested in pro teming for us.

Sure, sure.

No, that makes sense.

Thank you.

And so of that rough pool of 15 or so pro tem judges, rough estimate, what is the utilization rate?

I don't know how you would Best measure that.

I'll 100% defer to you on that in terms of number of times that they're asked to step in or on a case basis, whether they resolve something from hearing to resolution.

But at a high level, how often are they called upon to serve their duty in this case?

And, of course, this isn't statistical because I don't call them in.

Our staff does.

Sure, sure.

I would say that we have pro tems in a couple in at least every week.

If not upstairs, sitting for the judges, downstairs sitting in the magistrate's office, because many times we have to call the magistrates up, so then we call a pro tem to fill their spot.

But it's pretty often that we, and that could be due to a lot of things, you know, if judges are affidavited, you know, we have to bring somebody else in to cover their calendar if people are out sick.

And sometimes we don't know, you know, until the morning of or Very shortly after.

But we use protems pretty often.

Sure, sure.

Now that...

We could get back to you with the specific numbers.

I don't have that.

No, I was just curious, your initial rough take.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

And then finally, So you mentioned that part of the purpose of the initial state law change would be to expand the pool of prospective pro tem judges, because there's a lot of people in Seattle, and there's a lot of lawyers, and I know that firsthand, because I am one, and I am a member of a number of bar associations.

I'm a non-practicing lawyer, for clarity.

So there's a fair amount of lawyers in the city of Seattle, but to your point, Well, myself, Even when I was practicing, I'm not a litigator, principally a transactional lawyer, and the other 85% of lawyers are litigators, and then of those, a certain amount would be precluded from serving in this capacity because of the rules, because if they, for example, appear before the court regularly, so this would remove that city residency requirement, expand, so more practicing lawyers from Renton, Bainbridge or wherever, right?

So that makes sense.

But you also mentioned that if this doesn't happen, sometimes justice is delayed because the pool's not deep enough, essentially.

I'm paraphrasing.

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of the paraphrasing or anything else.

And so today, just want to get a better sense of the severity and scope of that problem.

How acute is it exactly?

How frequently do we run into circumstances where justice is delayed because we don't have enough?

And because of the last-minute requests, people get sick, and you go down the line in unavailability, and that ultimately results in justice being delayed for some time.

How frequently does that occur today?

So again, I don't have the exact numbers, but I can give you a good example.

We currently run two courtrooms for trials and most weeks we have more than two trials that need to go out but because we can't run another courtroom because we have a So that happens pretty regularly.

And you know, as you lawyers know, we have expiration dates that we're trying to meet.

It causes an issue there.

We have to consolidate calendars sometimes if we don't have a judicial officer to sit, and so that means, you know, a lot more cases for the one judge, and sometimes we have to cancel calendars and set them over if we don't have a pro tem.

We try, I mean, of course to us, That's our priority, is to resolve the cases timely.

We don't want us to be the cause of it, but sometimes that is necessary.

And in the magistrate's office also, you don't have to cancel things that are serviced to the public, like the debt reduction calendar.

And I think the thing that's important is that we are the only court in the state that has that added.

Everyone else can recruit from wherever they'd like.

And you're right, there are a lot of lawyers in Seattle.

Everyone doesn't want to pro-tem.

I get it.

No.

No, all that makes sense.

Thank you, presiding judge.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks for your questions.

I appreciate it.

No, thank you for your thoughtful responses here.

Very helpful.

All we're doing here is essentially aligning city code with state law and this is a very important piece of legislation, very helpful I think for all intended stakeholders including members of the public who everyone benefits when we avoid delaying justice as a general proposition.

I'm going to find ways and opportunities to say, insert the words as a general proposition, as a lawyer, it's my duty to do that.

But in any event, fairly straightforward, even though it is important and somewhat technical.

And I thank you and your team for being here and sharing this with us.

No further questions, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Query whether there's any additional questions from our colleagues.

Councilmember Rivera.

I defer to my colleague, Council Member Horace, since I don't sit on this committee, but if she doesn't have a question, then I'm happy to go.

Council Member, do you have any questions?

Thank you.

Well, thank you for indulging a couple of questions, Chair, and thank you, Presiding Judge Crawford Willis, and thank you, Josh, for being here.

Nice to see you.

Thank you again.

And I really want to thank you, Councilmember Saka, because even though we're essentially aligning to what the state has done, It's really great to ask these questions and for the public to know why we are taking action on these things beyond just we're just aligning with the state.

That doesn't give the information as to the why and it's important.

And the piece about delaying justice is really critical and I think it bears daylighting as we're having this conversation.

I, for one, really appreciate all the questions that you asked.

I had similar.

I had one additional question about, is there a practice or a best practice on how many pro tem judges you want to have at the ready?

And if you don't have that, we can talk offline because we're going to meet later, I believe.

But I also suspect that there's a certain number you want to have on hand for the reasons that we talked about earlier.

And I understand that there's just a scarcity of folks willing to do this.

So I think that is important.

So I don't know if you have a response now or we can talk offline.

Either is fine.

That is a great question.

I can say we probably haven't sat down and we haven't come up with a particular number.

But I would say as many as possible because, as you know, we get the list and you start going down the list.

Well, you know, this person can't do it today.

This person can't do it.

And so, you know, we haven't come up with a number, but I would say as many as possible and people that the difference, too, is people that can actually serve.

A lot of people sign up, but for different reasons, when we call them, they may not be available.

And so more of People that can be available.

We find that people that are solo practitioners, they are really more available because, you know, they get to set their own schedule, but as many as possible.

But you give me a good something to think about, to think of a number.

We actually haven't come up with a number yet.

So thank you for that.

One, thank you for your answer about the fact that It is a list and you don't know at any given time how many of those folks are available and you literally have to sit there and start calling and because these folks don't know that they're going to get called that day, it makes it really tricky.

They're willing to serve but they might not be able to serve that day not knowing whether they're going to get called.

You know, at any time.

So thank you for that reminder.

That's exactly right.

And just so we're clear, I don't do the calling.

We have wonderful staff.

Yes, of course.

Of course.

We all have wonderful staffs that support us, like central staff here today.

We can't do without them.

No.

And I always try to give credit to our staff because they're the folks that people don't know.

But they're the ones actually helping do all of this great work that the city does.

So thank you, Judge.

And then my final question, and I'm not sure, this is related, and Chair, maybe this is something that you have or you're going to bring back, but related to the drug prosecution alternative, of course, this is something that we very much care about when, you know, folks are And if they get arrested, we want to make sure that there are alternatives because folks need help.

They need help with, that's an addiction, obviously, and we really want to.

The goal is to get folks the help that they need to be successful.

And so this particular, I'm interested in these types of alternatives and would love more information about how this is going.

Understood.

It hasn't been I've been around for a long time but would love to get some information on how well things are going and not just beyond like number of referrals because I think people always look to how many people it's how well those people are doing is to me more equally or more important because we want to make sure people are getting the help that they need so again if you don't have a response to that Josh happy to talk offline but Would love to know how it's going.

We'd love to do both, honestly.

We have a great pretrial services team.

We'd be more than happy to come back to this committee and present after we have a little bit more time.

We haven't even been live for a full month at this point, but we already do have some really cool success stories of people being engaged with services immediately upon release from jail.

So I'm more than happy to do that once we have a little bit more data and stories to share with you, and we'll bring the right team to speak to those points.

I must say, I had my first one come before my court to set for that court, and it was very exciting.

And just to clarify, these are folks that are diverted instead of jail.

They get services, or am I misunderstanding the program?

Sure.

So there's still, um, upon arrest or charge, uh, the city attorney's office determines who will receive this offer.

If they accept this offer, they are immediately released from custody, um, and are brought over to the court by a pretrial services officer, and they meet with an SUD assessor.

They're connected to resources at the CRC.

And they enter into this agreement if they're successful to have their charges dismissed.

It's also offered to those folks who are appearing out of custody who are charged.

They have the same opportunities.

But that is in the purview of the city attorney's office of who's offered this diversion opportunity.

Great.

But it is diversion.

So thank you for clarifying that.

Councilmember Rivera, I was just going to add as well, I believe we have representatives from our city attorney's office here today that will present on a variety of updates later during this hearing, which will include DPA, I'm sure.

Thank you, Tomaso.

And Chair, didn't mean to task this committee that I don't even sit on and that you graciously let me attend, give you one other item for your committee, but we can talk offline.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Yes, always working the issue, so I'm happy to take input from everywhere, something that will come up later.

Councilmember Juarez, before I finish up, any questions you may have?

I'm good.

Thank you.

All right, great.

Thank you so much.

I do appreciate the questions.

Again, I do thank you for coming here.

What's not really known is that we have nine entities that report to this committee, and I as chair, and my colleagues do as well, but in terms of chair responsibility, I engage with each of the nine on a regular basis.

Chief Scoggins knows this too, who's joined us in the chamber.

But I enjoy working these issues related to Seattle Municipal Court because, again, it is so key in terms of that functioning criminal justice systems because all the work that we're doing could take multiple steps back if there was falters here.

So the work that you're doing with the City Attorney's Office, that in itself is very important, the relationship between the court and City Attorney's Office.

So with the Drug Prevention Agreement Program, thank you for the update on the Case management systems, now that we have both up, really important in those pieces.

And as we've talked about in different meetings, staffing like with the marshals, it's important to me and I think it's important to this committee to ensure that Seattle Municipal Court is working well.

And these points that you highlight in your briefing point to that.

And so thank you for coming.

And we will then vote in committee next time for the pro tem.

But it seems to be very straightforward, no-brainer.

And also, I think it's also an opportunity for professional development.

It gives these opportunities for those that may be interested in becoming a judge.

Get some experience in it and see what it's all about, at least at the municipal court level.

And I think that in itself is a positive for those that are, you know, are thinking about moving into judge.

And then maybe as council member were as shown into becoming a council member, I don't think pro tem council members are going to work, so we'll just leave it to pro tem judges.

So thank you.

So I appreciate it.

And we'll follow up next committee meeting.

For the record, the deciding judge had already asked me.

And thank you so much, Chair Kettle, for your support.

Yes.

Thank you.

And I do recognize, too, there's the Band of Brothers, the famous...

You know, the miniseries and all that.

But I also recognize in Seattle, there's the Band of Sisters.

All these women who went to law school and are about the same time, worked in various jobs and are about the same time.

And that's what we need.

So thank you for your service in this longer term.

And it's also a thank you to our colleague remoting in from her location.

So thank you.

All right.

Nice meeting you, Council Member Rivera.

And always good to see you, Council Member Sacco.

Thank you.

Nice to meet you, Judge.

We will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Fire code update briefing.

Okay, good morning.

We have Assistant Chief Munis joining us with Ms. Grove and Mr. Brouillette, if I said that correctly, from Seattle Fire Department.

As tradition continues, we have from our central staff, Ms. Bull.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

Over to you.

Can you please introduce yourself for the record and then jump into your presentation?

Good morning, Mr. Chair and honorable members of the City of Seattle Public Safety Committee.

I am Karen Grove, the Executive Director of Fire Prevention.

Ken Purlett, Fire Code Specialist.

And I'm Tim Munnis, the Fire Marshal.

Karina Bull, central staff.

Thank you.

Okay, over to you.

Great.

So I wanted to start with just summarizing what this ordinance does.

This is a technical ordinance, no policy changes.

It's a cleanup to the fire code.

We are updating a reference to a revised code of Washington statute just to align with the code reorganization the state made.

And we're also making some other updates to language to make sure that it's as clear as possible for the people who use it.

That would be the public as well as our inspectors.

And I want to also give you just very briefly my intention for us today.

So the first thing I'm going to do is just give a brief overview of our code development process.

And then I'm going to look at some of the changes.

And one of the changes actually mentions the dangerous building provisions in the code.

And while we're on that topic, I do have a quick update for you on the status of our work since the legislation you passed last summer.

Spoiler alert, it's really been effective.

The evidence shows that was good legislation.

And that will be the end of my presentation, and we will have time for your questions.

So the Seattle Fire Code's purpose is to establish standards intended to preserve lives and protect property.

It is based on work done by technical committees at the national level, representing a wide variety of interests and expertise.

And that national code, also referred to as the model code, is then further amended in the states that choose to use it.

So you have a California version of the code, a Washington version.

In Washington, we are allowed under state law to amend it further.

Those amendments are typically proposed by the executive, approved by you all.

And the law gives you some parameters.

You can do things to work better for Seattle that meets equivalent safety, or you can do things that make the code even higher standards, but you can't go less than the code that the state has adopted.

In Seattle, since the 1950s, under council ordinance, we do our work with the Fire Code Advisory Board.

It's a volunteer board.

It represents building owners and managers, the public, architects, insurance, 15 different interests.

And this ordinance, as well, has been through our advisory board.

You know this, but the codes are typically adopted here, whether it's the building code, the fire code, on a three-year cycle, so 18, 21, 24. But you also have authority to make cleanup in between, so mid-cycle cleanups.

And that's what we're doing today, local amendments to meet our local needs.

The first item is the state has changed how they're basically organizing their own code, and so we just need to reflect that.

What is the subject matter of this?

The state provides some fair and due process that explains if the city is enforcing the fire code, what type of evidentiary requirements And the state law, good throughout Washington, says properly signed statements are allowed in lieu of having that specific employee show up in front of a judge or show up at a hearing.

So if that inspector or officer happens to be out of the country or happens to be retired or happens to be perhaps working that day in a fire engine, We can still proceed with a properly signed statement that meets the requirement of the law.

So it's a good thing to have.

We need to update our code.

This is happening across the state right now.

Many other jurisdictions are doing it, and so also are other departments here in the City of Seattle.

That is interesting.

My version of the slides look a little different.

Let me just try advancing.

Okay, got you.

So, perfect.

There's animation.

So, we have the authority under the fire code to take action to ensure that vacant buildings don't cause a public nuisance.

And how the code approaches this is it first talks about vacant buildings.

And it says the very first obligation is that you keep your vacant buildings safe so they don't become dangerous.

And when the code lays out these general obligations, it says, Rather than saying vacant, it says temporarily unoccupied buildings must follow all these.

And in talking with our inspectors as well with our code expert and our law department, that temporary concept isn't defined.

So it's a little unclear.

Is 180 days temporary?

What if it's 200?

And so we ended up saying really the intention is if the building's unoccupied, you just need to keep it safe so it doesn't become dangerous.

That means maintain it.

That means secure it so you don't have people breaking in.

Another thing that we have historically done is the code says, you've got to keep the premises secure.

And we've historically been requiring fences for that.

And we recognize the code doesn't actually call that out, that fencing could be required, and it doesn't actually say that you have to maintain the fence.

It gets knocked down, you have to put it back up.

And so we just wanted to make that as unambiguous as possible, that that is what the code here says.

Okay, let's see.

Let me click through my animations here, perfect.

Okay, so you all know this, last summer, and in the lead up to the summer, we worked with you all, with a lot of support from you all that made a big difference, Create legislation that put in place some incentives for property owners to fix or demolish their own dangerous buildings.

And really the innovation that you made was that if property owners don't do that, the city can.

And since that time, We've really seen a bunch of progress.

You probably remember before the legislation, these buildings just hung out there.

There was really no progress.

We'd inspect, we'd leave notices, but nothing changed for the community.

And since that time, we've seen, I think our list now, our dangerous building list is shorter now than the list of buildings that have either been demolished or rehabbed.

So it's well under 100 now.

And since the legislation, we have a better number, a higher number of buildings that have either been demolished or rehabbed.

So that means it's new safe housing or the potential for that in these communities.

It's pretty good evidence of what this has done.

Another thing I just want to mention about the law is you said to the community, if you don't do anything, SFD can, but how often have we had to use that?

Honestly, all this progress has been led by building owners.

We have now demolished only one building ourselves.

The rest of this is done by the property owners themselves.

And that's better for them.

They tend to get a better price point than we can.

It's a pretty punitive step we could take, but we're very grateful we aren't having to.

So we've done one court-ordered demolition, and we have one more in contract.

But all the rest of this progress you see has been initiated and completed by the building owners on their own property.

And just reminding everyone why this matters so much, these buildings truly are nuisance properties, histories of previous fires.

It puts others at risk.

I think this building that I have a picture of, that was from 2004, and I want to tell you where that is, but this is one that actually spread to the neighboring building.

Let me give you a quick...

Yeah, this photo was from August last year.

First Hill neighborhood, 1700 block of Belmont.

And in this case, the vacant building fire did extend to an occupied building next to it.

It's also dangerous, obviously, for the public and our first responders.

Okay, switching gears now to false alarms.

Making just a couple of cleanups here as well, and one example I wanted to share with you is the ordinance used to state that the owner's responsible for false alarms on their property caused by a tenant or an occupant or a guest, and we just listed out more, enumerated more clearly, yeah, that could be a contractor, which is sort of included in occupant, but let's make it super unambiguous.

By the way, it could be a guest of somebody who's allowed there.

And, oh, by the way, if there was trespassing and that person was not on your property with your permission, we're not going to make you pay a citation for that.

So we'll take that off.

So we also wanted to clarify that.

We think it's a fair approach.

We think it's very clear language.

And it's just helpful for us to have super clear rules of engagement when we work.

And that brings me to question time, should you have any questions for us.

And thank you for your support with our work.

Thank you, Ms. Grove.

Any additional comments, Fire Marshal?

Okay, Ms. Bull?

No, that was a very thorough overview and just reiterating that it's a technical piece of legislation clarifying the intent and historical practices.

Okay, colleagues.

Looking first at my vice chair, but if there's any questions.

Again, this is fairly straightforward, but...

No, thank you, Mr. Chair, if I may.

Just to quickly acknowledge and recognize the department, I appreciate you all for being here today and walking us through this fairly technical and highly specific piece of, but important piece of legislation to put us more in line with best practices that exist today.

But yeah, thank you.

Thank you for being here and thank you for all you do.

All right.

Thank you.

And this also is helpful for our schedule, of course.

I'm not seeing any other questions.

I'll just add there's a reason why this was our first bill in this term of the Council.

Chief Scoggins and I have had multiple conversations about this and it was because It's about taking action.

It's about putting in place our strategic framework plan.

This issue is a pillar of that plan.

And this really kicked off all the work that we've been doing, which now totals over two dozen public safety pieces of legislation out of this council.

And the effect of what you're doing on the communities, both from a public safety point of view, is the reason why, In terms of creating a safer neighborhood, but also helping these neighborhoods more generally, too.

You kind of alluded to it, Ms. Grove.

That is so important for these communities to step forward.

And that was something that came about from my co-sponsor of the legislation, Council Member Morales.

from District 2. That was a big piece for her as you know when we pushed this legislation forward.

And so I just want to thank you and for the hard work because I know with the 24 numbers it's incredible what a difference this is making.

And so I want to thank the men and women of the fire department led by you but also Chief Scoggins for this work because it truly makes a difference.

And it also syncs up with the other works that we're doing, like after-hours establishment bill, chronic nuisance property bill, which are SPD-centered.

These bills working together really are starting to make a difference.

2024 was a transition year from what we were dealing with previously, and now those bills are being butted into practice, and you leading the way, fire departments leading the way, butting this legislation into practice, putting it into action, and getting results is so important, and that is the model for the other departments to follow, to include the Seattle Police Department.

And at the end of the day, the combination, bringing these pieces together, are really making a difference for our city, so thank you.

Okay.

Mr. Chair?

Yes, Council Member Royce.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I was reading three things.

One complaint, need page numbers.

That's always why I'm trying to flip through the pages, but that's always like, use page numbers.

On the page, we're a dangerous building update and you broke it down by district.

Thank you for that.

That is something that we had been asking for when I was here before.

So thank you for breaking that down into districts so we know what was demolished and what was remodeled.

As you can see from D3 and D5, there's a difference between what's demolished and what actually gets rebuilt.

And that's been a problem for, and I'm sure Councillor Morales recognized that in her district, where either it was just a public nuisance, it wasn't being demolished, and It would be nicer to see, obviously, that things are demolished, that they're remodeled, that there's something in its place.

And the other thing is just a question.

When you said you had one court order demo set up, what court do you go to?

Do you go to municipal court or King County Superior Court or district court or not district?

Where do you go for those?

Council member, we go to the King County Superior Court for the warrant of abatement.

I think it's a warrant of abatement of a public nuisance.

And let me explain my table a little bit better.

So looking, for example, at District 3, where it says nine were demolished and one was remodeled, that's a total of 10 properties.

And nine of them, I don't know of those nine how many have subsequently been remodeled.

The remodeled column, that means that building didn't need to come down to the ground, if that makes sense.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So it would be a different research endeavor to figure out, okay, so after they demolished it, how many of those have now been redeveloped, sold, new housing?

And I am curious about that, honestly.

So maybe we can come back to you at some point.

Yeah, I know that's not your job, but...

It all dovetails with what we're doing with housing.

And when we see, like, I'll just quickly, thank you for indulging me, Chair.

So when we see something demolished, like I've seen up here and across the city, that's good that it's demolished.

It's a lot of public nuisance.

You know, you don't got people squatting in there.

You don't have dangerous, you know, people put up fences.

The other thing is, it's always better when we can drive by again and see that, oh, they're putting housing up, oh, they're putting a pre-K up, oh, they're beautifying the neighborhood.

So that's probably not your job to do that, but it would be interesting to see how that space is being reused after it's demolished.

I think we share your vision of the end result, and I will see what type of data we have, and if I get something, I'll definitely report that back.

Thank you.

And thank you for, again, for putting it into district.

That really puts it into focus.

I can see why Council Member Morales was concerned.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

And I was just thinking in terms of referring things to other committees, you know, like potential housing, you know, we'll check in with the chair of the Housing and Human Services Committee on that.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

It's going to be like that.

All right.

You can play it that game, buddy.

Councilmember Rivera has jumped in.

Go ahead.

Sorry, Chair.

Thank you.

I, too, was reading through some of this stuff and didn't that quickly enough to raise my hand.

But thank you for indulging me.

I just wanted to just thank you.

Thank the Department for the great work.

This is a conversation when I first started here early last year, the chief and I, and even before I started in this role when I was in the mayor's office, the prior mayor, chief and I had talked about this as an issue and so I'm glad to see that this law we put into effect last year has really helped and you can see that the The data here has really helped the department be able to address this issue.

You can see very clearly here it's across the district.

So I'm going to thank you for taking care of D4 because that's the district that I am privileged to represent.

I'm always singing SFD's praises.

So just really wanted to add my note of gratitude.

And I appreciate the data because it shows that this has been an issue and that you all are working to resolve it.

So with these tools that you have.

So I really appreciate that.

Thank you, Chief.

I see you back there.

Thank you, Chair.

All right, thank you.

Again, I made my point, particularly as it goes to the work generally that we're doing and comprehensively.

So thank you and continue the hard work and please extend our thank yous throughout the fire stations and the offices within the fire department.

Thank you.

All right, clerk, we will now move on to our third item of business.

Will the clerk please read item three into the record?

City Attorney's Office update on new public safety tools.

Okay.

We'll be joined by City Attorney Davison and Deputy Mr. Lindsey.

And, of course, Mr. Johnson's always welcome to join us again.

Not needed, but if you'd like to, he's more than happy to do so.

I was hoping there would be water here so I could get some.

Okay.

Well, welcome again to the Public Safety Committee meeting.

Following up on presiding Judge Crawford Willis, it's today's Criminal Justice Day here at the Public Safety Committee.

So thank you, City Attorney Davison and Mr. Lindsey for joining us.

Could you please state your name for the record and then start your presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you again for having me, Public Safety Committee members.

I'm Ann Davison, Seattle City Attorney, and I have Scott Lindsey with me, my Deputy City Attorney.

And we're here today to just give you kind of a mirror reflection of the Public Safety legislative tools that you put in action, building upon what you just went through with the Fire Department and how Now, over into the criminal justice system, what you have put into place, tools to supplement public safety and to improve that, and creative strategies.

I appreciate your support on those things, so I wanted to come and give you how those things are progressing so you can know your work is meaningful and is making a difference, as you said earlier, Councilmember Rivera.

So we'll go through some items here.

I just have the first page.

I hope that Council Member Juarez, we have page numbers for you.

I'm not positive if we do, but I hope...

I saw that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Slide two.

On my paper, so you may have to help me.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate that.

So we'll go through these items here one by one, but that's just our general introduction.

I don't think I need to review those for you.

But I will give you some just statistics for us so you can understand where things are at the moment.

As everyone knows, I took office in 22. So you can see a difference then in the decline rate.

That's been one of my main things I've been focused on.

is to improve that so we are declining less referrals from our officers who are out there when they do decide to make arrests and referrals.

We are working on a number of improvements from report writing to the evidence we need to what do we need to have on our end in order to move forward when we believe we can prove things beyond a reasonable doubt.

And then what alternatives can we also have?

But that's all a big building the system out, which again, Chair Kettle, I appreciate your great efforts on seeing it as a system-wide view.

I believe we are all just temporary system holders, and we're trying to leave it in a better functioning capacity than we found it.

So you can see steadily our misdemeanor referrals have stayed around 11,000 per year.

Excuse me, we're just under 3,000 over the second quarter here.

And so it's stayed about the same even with our change in number of officers.

But the piece for me that's been significant is our median time to make our decision of what we're going to do with the case, whether we're going to decline it, whether we're going to divert it to an alternative, or whether we're going to charge it.

And so right now, for the end of Q2 of 2025, we're at a median time of eight days.

That is just a self-imposed rule for myself, trying to make sure I keep track of our productivity and understanding where in the system there are delays, and so I can better make decisions with the resources I have to make sure the system is functioning well.

We'll start over with what some of which you were talking about earlier with presiding Judge Crawford Willis related to the drug prosecution alternative, but also just in drug prosecution in general.

So in October 23, the council put in our Seattle Municipal Code in response to the Blake decision, the use and possession of controlled substances into our criminal code.

And so that's the flow that's here on the left.

If there is an arrest, then, and if the officer decides to divert that to lead themselves, then that's the lead policy there of giving them 30 days to take intake.

We monitor those cases.

We're aware of those cases, but they're not within our authority unless they are sent over to us.

Some of the cases, officers send it directly to us, and so we have those, and we file those.

We have 258. This is since October of 23. These are the total numbers.

of cases since the start of the drug use and possession law for the first time in the state's history at the misdemeanor level.

It had been a felony before that October 23 change.

So this is the first time that municipalities are having to contend and respond to and set up treatment and accountability for use and possession of controlled substances.

So, related to the Drug Prosecution Alternative that we launched and created, My Criminal Chief designed, and I'm very happy to have the support of the Mayor's Office, of Chair Kettle, and of Seattle Municipal Court, and Public Defense, because it really is about getting people into treatment.

We're wanting to make sure we understand what is happening for that individual.

However, we cannot continue to have criminal activity associated with it.

And so we're trying to address both.

We should not and cannot be the sole solution for how that all takes place.

But what we're trying to do is help streamline the response, the societal response that we provide, and close as many system gaps as possible.

So earlier, the SMC people were here to talk about the Court Resource Center and how that is working and functioning.

I will just note for the number of courtrooms, though, there has been two active since COVID and has remained two since.

We've been requesting for a third to open for quite some time, but there's still just been the two.

So we have a number of participants in the DPA.

It is still early, as Mr. Sattler said in the earlier presentation this morning for you.

And we keep that discretion with us, which is different than what, say, the community court was, which was an automatic routing to that type of diversion.

I think that's where we should be taking in our role within prosecutorial discretion to decide what type of a case and what do we have here and the specifics for that person.

Is that alternative what we should be offering?

Because we don't want to dilute the diversion resources we have.

We want it to be something that's specific, that we think someone is more likely to respond to.

And then we hope that we don't have them again in the criminal justice system.

We'll move on to the stay out of drug areas.

Council passed this in August of 2024, and we have the areas here noted for you where those zones are and the number of soda orders in there.

And Council Member Rivera, note that in yours, we just don't have any referrals for you there, but we are tracking those so we know where those are coming from.

And what is happening.

So this is the operational, I was trying to use a different word than operational aspect of this coming to be because it took some time to implement, to training, et cetera, for officers.

And so now we're seeing it on a more regular basis.

And some of which we now have some violation of soda orders.

My hope is we don't have very many of those because the soda order itself is working and people are then staying out of those open-air drug markets because, again, the legislative intent was to disrupt the open-air drug markets.

And so I don't think we have to see a violation of them.

I think if we just see less of the activity, then they're working.

But I just wanted to give you the numbers of those for that.

The next will go into the state out of area of prostitution.

The soap law also passed at that same time in August of 2024, and this is for the North End specifically.

We have 32 soap orders to date, and most of those are for people who are looking to purchase within the commercial sexual exploitation And some of them are people that have actually been identified as being involved in trafficking and at least one with significant multi-state trafficking.

So I applaud this council for putting this into our Seattle law because it is actually helping officers to engage with this criminal enterprise in the North End.

And finds those that are looking to come here from all over the country to do this type of criminal activity and to make the North End notorious for that.

And I just greatly disagree with that.

So I'm very proud that we have this up in standing and we're getting to show some results for that.

We also have the possibility of an additional supplemental tool on this topic that we're looking at, so we hope to bring that to the light for everybody in the near future.

Again, staying focused on that topic.

Next we'll move into the street racing, which is not district specific, but really is something that is all over our city and I've heard all over the city and everyone's districts that this is something that is significant for them because it's terrorizing because it can be so many people at once and it doesn't seem to be controllable.

But I think that your passing, the street racing ordinance, has deterred a lot of this.

This is where we have issued 19 street racing infractions so far, and the monetary fines that you all set was $500 for the first offense, $800 for the second.

And 1,500 thereafter, which is significant because this past weekend our Seattle Police Department was able to disrupt one that they knew was coming with Canadian and other state people coming here to do street racing in Seattle.

And so with this tool and the responsiveness of our police department, that was able to be disrupted and we were able to keep neighborhoods safer.

So I think that's a tremendous thing because if they were to get the first and second, then the third and subsequent ones starts to become a hefty fine for them.

So I really do appreciate you, your efforts on that space.

And Council Member Saka, I remember you were particularly, this was one for you, I remember.

And really, if you want to talk about where can we make the most improvement for the most people in public safety, it's in road safety.

So I really do appreciate this one a lot.

Next, I'll talk about graffiti, which is also a topic that sadly I think all of you hear about, as do I, where we see other cities that don't seem to have the difficulties that we do on this topic.

So we're trying to use all types of creative tools to deal with it.

We will continue to do criminal prosecution when we have the evidence to support that.

But this alternative allows me to pursue civil litigation.

And so we will be working on that.

We have some that are coming in the very immediate future.

But this was passed in July of 24. Oh, I'm sorry.

I've now moved on to it.

We passed this in August.

That's right.

I have my different page here, I'm thinking.

And so focusing on the violations for these people, $1,500 penalty per tag that we can associate with that tagger.

And so we have some lawsuits that we are actively have in preparation that hopefully we will be filing in the very near future to be responsive to this law that you put into place.

So we can show the public that we will hold people accountable.

They can choose to do some of the cleanup themselves.

They can pay the fine, but the choice is theirs.

They also have the free choice to simply not commit graffiti.

And the last one that I wanted to review with you all was the chronic nuisance updates.

So I've given you a map here.

The ones on the left, the Emerald and Seattle Inn, were places we were able to shut down and get into corrective agreements prior to the change of the chronic nuisance law that you all did.

But they were related to a lot of sex trafficking in the north end, again, around prostitution that we're trying to focus on with the SOAP law.

And so we were able to change the behavior of those businesses that were closely associated with that type of criminal activity and others in the north end.

The three locations on the right were scenes of gun violence and homicides prior also to the law being enacted.

The urban one was the one that helped inform us of the legislation changes that we needed because some of those incidents happened off the property, so this helped modernize that law for us so we can be more responsive and more timely when there is associated gun activity or other serious criminal activity associated with the business.

It's been a significant piece.

That's what the after-hours legislation that we passed related to gun violence.

We're not trying to shut down venues in the 2 to 6 a.m.

time period, but we are wanting to regulate them to make sure that they are safer, and we have the tools with the chronic nuisance piece that you all updated to take action very quickly.

The most recent of those was this past July when Chief Barnes sent a chronic nuisance letter to an oak tree motel again on North Aurora with significant human trafficking going on, sex trafficking going on, and drug activity in the north end.

So these are very, very important tools, particularly these last two that we are using to help neighborhoods be safer.

It doesn't be dependent upon the number of officers that can respond After a crime has occurred, this is proactively where we can use data to see that there are people that are exploiting commercial zones and using that for their own criminal enterprise, and we want to disrupt those to help make neighborhoods safer.

Those are the updates I have for you on lots of topics.

Happy to answer any questions that you all might have.

City Attorney, thank you so much.

And again, welcome to Mr. Lindsay as well.

Really appreciate the briefing and the tie-ins really with both previous briefings.

First, with presiding Judge Crawford Willis and the presentations and the look angle, the perspective that she and Mr. Sattler brought.

But as it turned out with the fire department, because of the tech updates, technical updates for theirs, which was our first bill, the vacant dangerous abatement building bill, is teeing up You know, this review of all these different bills and the impact.

And you can see with your graphics how they can be intertwined, like, you know, chronic nuisance property.

So, but then also vacant buildings, dangerous vacant buildings.

And so, so that was all planned perfectly, by the way.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk and the team for that.

As usual, I start with, well, I also should note that Council President Nelson has joined us.

I will go to her, but I always go to my vice chair, so Vice Chair Saka.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you City Attorney Davidson for your presentation today.

Thank you, Mr. Lindsey, for being here as well.

And appreciate the update and your collaboration and helping our city implement some of the key legislative pieces that have been passed over the last few years.

And just kind of sharing out rapport and progress and sort of where we're at.

Of the items on this list, one of the strategic initiatives that remains, you know, one of the highest priorities for my office is the anti-street racing legislation.

And so going back to your slide seven there, really appreciate the data underlying that in terms of what we're seeing.

Just to be clear, is that number of infractions there listed and broken out by the offense category, is that from July 2024 through present?

So like September?

Yes.

Okay.

And so for that one, your office is obviously heavily reliant on a number of, you know, counterparts and partners to help do the job here.

Well, across the board with all these, but, you know, this is the canonical example.

So in this case, there's dependencies on the Seattle Police Department.

And so in terms of, The last year and a half, or I guess a year now, for this bill in particular, what are some things that you think are working well and is there any potential opportunities for further enhancements to make the implementation and operationalization of this initiative like a little more seamless from your perspective.

Is there anything else or is it maybe too early to tell or what are your initial thoughts on that?

Well, I think that your work on it is significant.

Again, highlighting this past weekend when we were able to disrupt one, I think that the clear message the council sent was this was a priority for all of you in all of your districts.

And so resources were used to make sure that they disrupted what was people coming in from out of town thinking they could come here.

And again, try to be some form of celebrity criminals and put their street racing on their social media, whatever chosen platform, and have our city's skyline in the background.

And to help deter us having a reputation of that, of lawlessness, of a city that is not well governed, of one that public safety is not a priority, You have helped to change that reputation, and so I think that was instrumental.

I think it's important that we see the predominant number of first infractions as 16, and it's a very small number for a second and third offense.

I'm hoping that means the first one is a deterrent, and we're not seeing a lot of second and third ones, but if we do, Then we'll go there with them.

We will continue to do that until the person gets the message.

And so I think that's a significant piece.

I'll see if Scott has any additional pieces that he wants to add in for that.

Yeah, a couple of thoughts, and we've had a lot of conversations with Seattle Police Department about this.

Number one is continuing to emphasize training for officers.

This is a relatively niche and specific tool, and street racing isn't an everyday crime that we see.

But really training officers on how to use this, how to get those reports, how to get these filed.

Second is using technology, and I think you guys are addressing that in part today.

But technology is really key to capturing the information to be able to use these and then analyzing that to issue tickets.

That's really important.

Third is a challenge, which is that I think some of the street racers genuinely are being deterred.

And we're seeing some impact and reduction in the amount of street racing activity specific to Seattle, them going to other jurisdictions.

But some are also evolving by stripping their plates off, putting them in their trunk before they get to Seattle, before they head into these events.

This tool depends on issuing a ticket to the registered owner of the vehicle based on identification of the plate.

And so if they strip their plate off, that's a challenge that we face.

So there are ways to get around that, including more cooperation with other jurisdictions, including Bellevue, Kent, Kirkland, other places that sometimes have already ID'd some of those cars that have specific customization, a particular spoiler or other things that might be recognized.

We might know that vehicle from somewhere else.

I know the plate number, but SPD won't have that plate ID.

But the folks involved are trying to evolve to evade this specific infraction right now.

Very helpful, and thank you again.

And again, just want to emphasize this, the issue of anti-street racing legislation and initiatives is really important to me because it's important to my constituents.

In my district in particular, there's been a few design changes to the road along some problem areas in Elkai and Harbor Avenue that I think have made some good progress to address the street racing problem in particular.

However, it doesn't prevent, doesn't at all prevent, you know, people still from gathering and then blaring their music loud into the night and loud and excessive noises traumatizing people at 2, 3 a.m.

Doesn't prevent those design, those speed humps and speed cushions, don't prevent people from doing donuts, no different than what we see depicted on the picture there on slide seven.

Check out Don Armini Park, you'll see all of that, all over.

But with respect to the problem of street racing, it does these kind of design changes, smart, And so, you know, engineering solutions can and have made a difference across our city.

And we need to pair that with more investment and more empowerment for the departments and more legislation.

But we also need to, because constituents You remain concerned, Council Member Rivera, for clarity.

I know in your district, Magnuson Park, and some of the related challenges with racing and revving the engines and noise, excessive noise and traumatizing noise, that remains an issue for you.

But I think that's the next piece.

And I think part of the solution there is we need the state to act for automated enforcement technology for sound, specifically for sound.

But in any event, appreciate your presentation today, City Attorney Davidson.

And also I want to echo the sentiment expressed by our colleague, Councilmember Juarez, earlier.

It might seem like a nit, and I suppose in the grand scheme of things it is a nit, but these slide numbers, these pesky slide numbers are very important and help us quite literally, you know, ensure we're all in the same, reading from the same sheet of music, so to speak.

So you're the only presentation that has included that, I think, out of the three today.

So thank you.

Very helpful.

All right, thank you, Vice Chair.

All right, we will move on to Council President.

Thank you and thank you very much City Attorney Davison for this presentation today of these new public safety tools that this council has put forward.

I think it's really clear that we prioritize public safety and we're always looking for other tools and methods for improving it and many of these bills were initiated by you so thank you very much.

So given that this is our priority, I do have to say that we're often accused of passing laws that don't work.

Soda doesn't work.

Soap doesn't work.

And so my question to you is what could be the What could improve the performance of those new tools from your perspective?

Because we're not the boss of the police, so we've done our job and passed the law, but is there anything that we're missing here?

Well, on these specific ones you're asking?

Yes, those two.

And then I have a question about another one.

I think it is just continuing to make sure the police understand priorities, which is again why I think this past weekend with the disruption of the street takeover, the priorities of our leaders has been clear.

Street racing is significant.

I'm fully committed to that with you as I pursued having to shut down the Belltown Hellcat for Councilmember Kettles District here in downtown.

We used every tool we needed to, from the civil side of things to the criminal side of things.

And so that type of consistent and letting a policy unfold fully so we can see it actually does address the problem that we are asked to help improve by neighborhoods has been a significant piece.

A lot of what, when I look at, when I keep track of what I can control, for me sometimes it really is a person is out on family leave and I have the inability to continue doing something.

It's that literal that we're holding some of these system things together.

So I guess for me, it sounds like non-responsive to your question, We should not be in a space where we're having to, from a budget standpoint for resources, where you're putting your prioritization for spending public safety at the local level.

We understand, you understand what the problems are because you hear from constituents and we should be the ones that are being responsive to public safety because you implemented these tools and then you helped build the system that responds to it so that we can adequately show the improvement in those areas for you.

Maybe non-responsive, but I feel like that's what my focus is, is that we have to have the people, the resources to actually then follow through with the implementation of the law.

These laws being on paper and people doing the work, it won't show up if we're not following through on the work.

So we can come back like we did here to be that reflection to you of what tools you put in place and how they have improved the situation.

Thank you for that.

I think I see what you're saying or hear what you're saying.

You're talking about implementation.

You know, we pass the laws and the executive implements and the city attorney then proceeds with cases.

My related question has to do with the information on slide four.

This is the drug prosecution and alternative because I'm wondering if...

I'll just say it.

So I would like to know, or do you know, the top category there, suspect caught violating drug laws.

That box does not have a number after it, but we do know that 220 intakes were completed and then 258 cases were filed.

But what is that top number?

I do not know that number, you're correct, because that could be maybe an arrest wasn't made, maybe there was an interaction with an officer, but a decision was not made to arrest, or maybe it was arrest and then release at a precinct station.

So I don't have that data, but I just have it after it goes out from Seattle Police.

We don't have the specific data in front of us, but I think it's fair to say it's significantly larger than the sum of these two parts.

It would be over a thousand.

That gets to the implementation part that I'm wondering about, because in my mind, arrests, which don't necessarily result in going to the precinct, an arrest is a pathway to treatment, it's a pathway to also the alternative form of Well, the alternative to incarceration, which is a soda order, right?

And so I'm just wondering if we're not making those stops to address public drug use, then people don't get into the system so that the downstream tools that we have provided can be relevant or can work in the whole package of the steps.

So can you address that?

It is, in my opinion, it should be the last red flag for society that there's something going on for that person.

And so really, the intervention of police, there should have been somebody else long before then, but now we're in the space where there's criminal activity going on, and we should not then just let it continue.

So there should be an intervention, I think, by police so that then it gets into the system and we then can figure out how to get somebody into treatment and recovery, stop the criminal activity, and then stop using a lot of other resources at the same space and the same person because we're just simply not doing anything.

So I do see the arrest as an important piece because then we are then aware of that, whether it be LEAD or us, but at least we're heading into a place where it goes into something other than leaving it out in public and unaddressed.

Thank you.

We did try to conform to state law that made public drug use and possession a gross misdemeanor, but we didn't quite fully comply to the letter of the law.

I don't know if this is substantiated in data, but I would hope that the added burden of having to substantiate the perspective that there is a threat of harm to others is present in order to make that stop.

I don't want that to be the barrier for helping people get into treatment.

So we've talked about fixing that, but the point is we need to make sure that our laws are supporting the policy direction that we need to go.

So thank you very much for your information.

Thank you, Council President.

Before going to Councilmember Rivera, I want to check with my last committee member, Councilmember Juarez, if she had any questions.

I think she had to go and it was on the phone.

Okay.

Well, we can come back to Council Member Juarez, so we'll move to Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you both for being here.

And, you know, to pick up along what the Council President was saying, and what you were saying, City Attorney Davison, is that, you know, this tool is a disruption, and then when you do the disruption, you can work with that individual to try to get them treatment, which is really the ultimate goal when folks are using, you know, drugs.

So to me, that's what also these tools provide is that disruption, which then provides the opportunity to get them out of the system and then to help if we can.

So that is another way that I see these tools.

I do have a couple of points on slide five on the stay out of drug areas.

I noted that there were, you have, well, this hasn't, this is only being tracked.

When was this first implemented?

So this is a short period of time, right, that we're tracking this data?

This is over the past year.

Over the past year, okay.

So the one thing I'll note about University District, even though it's zero here, I know there have been a number of Or at least that I know of three or four drug dealing arrests that have happened in the U District.

And I just wanted to say that if anyone's watching for the constituents that I serve, that they know that work is happening in the U District and that arrests are being made.

That has helped keep, you know, they're not going back, maybe.

I don't know, but I did want to state that for the record.

I'll also back up.

Yes, can I just interject?

Yes, of course.

We're just saying that no referrals have been sent over from me.

That's right for SOTA.

So therefore, no SOTA order has been requested.

Yeah, no SOTA order has been requested.

But in the context of that, I did want to say arrests have been made, which that is happening.

Work is happening in this space in the U District.

And then I should have started by saying that I really appreciate this information because often, you know, this is good governance to me.

To the Council President's point, and I know Chair Kettle has said that also, and Council Member Saka, and I've said it many times as well, that when we use a tool or start a program or do a pilot, we need to come back and get information.

It's good governance to look at how well that's working.

Council Member Saka, you asked about, are there any tweaks needed to the street racing laws or anything?

This is important and this is good governance.

So I really appreciate you all coming here to give us this information.

And on the street racing part, I'll say as of late, I've not heard from Magnuson about street racing, though I went out there and I saw donuts last year, so I don't know whether this particular law has had an impact on the street racing on Magnuson, but I have not gotten emails particular to the street racing.

Now, speeding is happening on Sandpoint Way right in front of the park, so that is a huge issue.

And in other parts of the district, and that's something I'm addressing with SDOT because I look to them to do mitigation efforts and implement mitigation efforts that will cut back on the speeding, which is an issue, but obviously not an issue for this conversation today.

But just to say, again, if constituents are watching, I know about the speeding and I'm working with SDOT to try to get them to do something, some mitigation efforts for that.

So that was all I wanted to say about this, the soda and about the street racing.

And then on slide six, and Chair, thanks for indulging me on a couple more points, which is on the soap piece.

I understand there were admin challenges at the beginning that perhaps needed I don't think we have admin challenges.

There have been enforcement challenges.

So we've got the stay out of Area of prostitution orders, which can apply to either buyers or traffickers.

We also passed the promotion of prostitution loitering bill, and there have been challenges with SPD being able to enforce that bill.

So that piece of it has been complicated.

I thought there were also admin challenges with King County when folks weren't necessarily...

They weren't...

Oh, thank you.

Yes.

Yes.

And let me speak to that.

Yes.

Specifically what was happening is...

Two things.

When sex buyers were arrested as a part of a biesting operation, they would be booked into the King County Jail and then very often released, pre-released by the Seattle Municipal Court.

They called them the PR screeners, and they would release them in advance of them seeing a judge at their first appearance, usually at 9 a.m.

the next morning.

As a result, The procedure of the City Attorney's Office is to request the SOAP order at that first appearance hearing.

The judge grants it and the person receives the notice at that point, but that person would have been released at 7 a.m.

So we worked with the Seattle Municipal Court to get them to stop doing the release on those folks.

And in fact, the Seattle Municipal Court has announced that they are Shutting down that PR screening program because that really only impacted a very small fraction of all of the defendants that were coming through the system.

And thereby, I would think, allowing you the opportunity to issue more soap orders to those buyers.

And to clarify, this law is being used for buyers and promoters, not for the individuals that are doing that.

Yes, correct.

Which is really important.

This is an important piece because, sorry to interrupt you, City Attorney Davison, but last year when this came before us, This was an important piece.

People were very concerned that we would be using this against the women and individuals that were being exploited.

This is not the case.

And this has not been used for those individuals.

And I understand that North Precinct has worked with community groups that are helping the women and the individuals that are getting exploited.

in that sense but they are not being issued so orders and I want to confirm that with you and very state that for the record that it is not being used against the individuals we are trying to protect.

I greatly appreciate you making that distinction because it provides an opportunity of intervention so we can send them over to people that are now standing up services in the north and to be responsive in real time in the middle of the night whenever it might be to give safe housing for predominantly women and girls who are being trafficked in that way.

But this is to respond to the criminal enterprise of people looking to profiteer literally off the backs of other humans And we are gonna not have that happen in the North End.

And so this, again, a gap in procedure was causing people to not be knowledgeable that they were under the stay out of the area of prostitution, so that then if they were found there again, we would not be able to have that new criminal law violation.

By closing this procedural gap with our partners at Seattle Municipal Court, now those people when released, they are aware that they are under that SOAP order.

So if they are seen there again, they will be found guilty of another criminal violation because we want to disrupt that market up there.

That's right.

I'm sorry.

I think I said King County, but I meant SMC, Seattle Municipal Court.

And the last point, Chair, I'll make is just that, you know, this is another disruption tool to be able to help the people that are being exploited and really hold accountable those buyers and promoters who are causing the harm.

Yes.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Before going back to Council President Nelson, I see Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Juarez, did you have any questions?

I just had a quick one for City Attorney Davidson.

How long are normally imposed the soap or soda orders?

Do they go as long as the deferred?

I'm just trying to get a sense over there if it's...

A misdemeanor, then I'm guessing one year.

Okay.

So if they go for a year and you have 24 active, three have expired.

That's why you had three expire because August.

This was passed in August 2024?

Soap and soda?

Yeah.

Okay, so that makes sense.

That was all I was asking.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

And I should clarify, in some instances, including I think at least one or two of those expired soap orders, for whatever reason, the Seattle municipal court judge issued a shorter duration.

So the standard is that the city attorney's office requests 12 months, in some cases requests 24 months, Because we have up to 24 months.

But in some cases, there have been 30 and 60 days ordered.

Oh, okay.

So you have the legislative authority to go 24 months from the time that they plead guilty or are found guilty?

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council President.

Scott, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said enforcement challenges, and we can take this offline, but again, you know, it really does, we pass the laws, the executive implements, enforces, et cetera, and then there was a question just a moment ago about how can law be improved, and that is our department here at the council.

So, you know, we have, what I was trying to get at is that by not conforming Strictly to the state law, the Blake fix, that just by the addition of requiring an officer to perceive a threat of harm to others adds a whole other layer of decision-making that then could weaken the case and that could open it up to criticism.

And so I do believe that And at some point, I'd like to get your thoughts on whether or not that is a barrier to making these arrests.

And again, I'll say that an arrest is a pathway to treatment.

So to be continued.

Yes.

And I will just say the RCW has built in that diversion is the preferred approach that's built into the state law.

So that's already part in that.

So if it's adopted as is, that's included in there.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council President.

And we're getting close to the end, so I'm just going to close.

Clerk, can you go to slide number four?

First, I want to say thank you very much for coming again.

As I mentioned with Presiding Judge Clarford Willis, you know, my role, again, everyone engages with the various departments and entities.

But as chair, you know, particularly with the nine entities that report to this committee for budget, for issues and all these different things, And to quarterback with the strategic framework plan all the various bills that we're doing, executive, judicial, the city attorney's office, and the different pieces like the court and so forth, bringing them together.

I just want to thank you, along with the other members of this group for your active participation and engagement with myself and my team but then the broader committee and then the council because it's really particularly when we're working the executive judicial and the legislative branch work in these different pieces and we do this at a more worker you know deputy level I think it equates to good governance and again as I mentioned earlier that that is what leads to the 24 plus pieces of legislation which help each other and that's why I love having the the fire code update because the vacant building abatement bill was kicked this off but it shows like with your slides related to you know chronic nuisance properties and the after hours and so forth it really shows how these things come together street racing and The technology bills that they all come together.

And I do recognize part of this in terms of the enactment of these bills, operationalization of these bills.

Sometimes it's budget related, like the technology things don't kick until the budget year starts and they have to do RFPs and so there's these delay actions.

But again, 24, As opposed to 22 and 23 was a true transition year where these pieces and particularly now in 25 are being butt in place and they're starting to have an effect.

And so I want to thank everyone for that.

And so acknowledging the council president's point on that.

I also noted your point about disrupting and all these bills do this to one degree or another.

And they kind of create a negative.

Like we didn't have a street racing incident.

So then the challenge becomes, how do you prove the negatives?

And then we have to be careful about that, presaging other discussions.

And that's important for us as a council.

If you demand something to make a decision regarding whatever topic, proving the absence of something is important.

Again, presaging perhaps a conversation this afternoon.

Going to slide four.

In my role as Chair of Public Safety, I'm in this every day of the week.

I get questions on it, I'm engaged with it, community, all the time.

And to Council President, she makes a very good point.

I'll be clear about it, because it's all about functional criminal justice system.

So on page, slide four, you had LEAD intake.

Well, LEAD doesn't get any referrals if there's no law enforcement assisted diversion.

And that's a big issue for a functional criminal justice system, because if LEED is not taking these people in and creating it as part of the case management system, the background on that, this plays out in so many things.

Like we're talking about Medicaid and the like, and then getting them to treatment.

But if we're not getting that diversion, that's a problem.

And I'll be clear about the problem.

The problem is the amendments to the Public Drug Use and Possession Bill, directly to the Council President's point about harm and the definition of.

It creates a situation where the officers are on their heels.

So therefore, Ms. Dugard at PDA and her lead program are not getting that intake.

That is a problem.

We would have been better off with the original public drug use, the Blake Fix Public Drug Use and Possession Bill sponsored by two out of the three are here in this chamber right now, but that did not happen.

The next bill was good, but the problem was the amendments that came out of this council.

And there's three things that we have going on this year in this committee in terms of pressing.

One is fixing bills like less lethal weapons related to the Office of Police Academy and so forth, a functional criminal justice system, and then community safety.

This is hitting like a couple of those pieces.

And we should be frank about it because then you go through And then you have the soda orders.

That's also an opportunity, or actually the Drug Prevention Agreement program, another opportunity for diversion.

It's only then that you go to the soda.

Soda has been defined by people across the city as like harming that one person on the street that has substance use disorder, and that's it.

It's gaslighting to no end.

And it's especially gaslighting because after you go through the lead diversion and now the public prevention agreement diversion, essentially, each case is done individually and is signed off by a judge.

But it's characterized like the detriment of public safety in Seattle.

Again, gaslighting that we're having here.

And this slide really shows that.

So thank you for the slide, City Attorney Davidson.

If you go to the next slide, this just highlights the point, these steps.

First, the LEED program, and we need to have that working.

So we need a proper, Legislation that the officers can work on, so then lead the PDA can get them to then have you, because this drug prevention agreement program is much better than the one that was disbanded.

And it had to be disbanded because 80% of the people would never show up to it.

It was a failed program.

We should state that out loud.

Well, let's be clear.

There were no drug offenses going through that because it was not at our municipal level.

It was still at the felony level.

So we were never prosecuting use and possession until after October 23.

Yes, for the broader public safety.

Yes.

And thank you for that.

And so again, these SOTA orders are signed off by judges based on each unique individual case.

And now they're going to come after two diversion opportunities.

First, with the officers themselves to lead, and second, with the new drug prevention agreement program.

Again, a step up in the general context.

And then they stay out of the area of prostitution.

Similarly, it is so important for the area.

We should be matter of fact.

Unfortunately, HSD is zeroing out the more we love from a budget perspective.

Clearly nobody from the executive or the department has been to the north precinct like I have and spoken to lieutenants who say that they're the ones who show up at second or third watch.

It's not the other groups.

I know that too.

And so we're going to be doing this.

See, this is another example where we need to be doing public safety right.

And public safety, particularly that scene, and LEAD is part of this, that scene between public safety, public health, public safety, and human services needs to be addressed.

And I'm stating this for a reason, because the course of this budget season, we need to address it.

And this example, this HSD decision to zero out the more we love, again, the group that actually shows up at second or third watch.

And I've spoken to the lieutenants in the men and women of the North Precinct.

But here we are.

Our job is about getting results on the street in a constitutional policing way and doing things the right way, the Seattle way.

The diversion pieces, the Drug Prevention Agreement Program is a perfect example of doing things the Seattle way because we're offering that opportunity.

But we still have the accountability pieces.

Street racing, slide seven, another example.

Again, as Mr. Lindsey pointed out, all these pieces come together.

It's not by accident the strategic framework plan has been built and these bills have been put into place.

You talk about the technology bills, automatic license plate reader, the CCTV and the RTCC.

Key in this, but also the other areas, the street racing is an example of this and that we need to be pressing forward.

And again, ultimately, this is about addressing the permissive environment.

If we as a city do this and do nothing and allow things to happen, whether it's street racing, whether it's prostitution on Aurora or other parts of the city, whether it's the drug markets, wherever they may be, all the above, We get where we were before the transition year of 2024. And the graffiti piece is important to this.

And this is something that we will continue as a committee and as a council because it goes to what we need to do.

So thank you for your work in this area.

I know it's relatively new, but it's important, particularly because it ties into The vacant building abatement.

It ties into all these different pieces.

And as I know with my colleagues, particularly my district colleagues, every day we get contacted by people in our district, or across the city in my case with public safety, about the issues that we're facing.

And it's really important.

And so I wanted to thank that.

And the Chronic Nuisance and After Hours plays this as well.

I think it's really important that we continue to do this work and to create a situation.

So I wanted to thank you because I know I've gone over five minutes.

But I think it was important to kind of sum this up and show how the different pieces play together and how we still have more work to do.

And that more work we need to do is fixing old ordinances where they need to be fixed, because generally they may be good, but there's fixes that need to be made.

Or the functional criminal justice system, like having a group that actually does the work at second, third watch.

You know, from the budget piece.

To address the seam between public safety, public health.

Address the seam between public safety and human services.

That is so important.

And by the way, this is where alternative response comes in.

And so we have to support our care department.

And we need to get these pieces lined up straight.

And this is my job.

This is our job.

And we have an understanding of these challenges, and we continue to work.

24 pieces of legislation over the course of this term of the Council is just the pieces that were put into place.

But this is work that needs to be continued.

So thank you, Council President, for highlighting some of these pieces.

As you noted in your questions, it's really important.

And along with Vice Chair, the other members, and It shows how important it's in because one of the areas I also get contacted in is the north, District 4, 5, and 6, but, you know, District 4. And so I appreciate, you know, it reflects the importance of public safety to Councilmember Rivera and the issues that you have in district that you're here.

So with that, not too many questions there, but I think it's important to line these pieces up And again, to counter the gaslighting that happens in this city on these topics, all those orders were signed off by a judge based on those individual characteristics.

This isn't some whatever.

This is a judge looking at the facts of the case.

And now that comes after PDA doing its work with the law enforcement assisted diversion, and now the Drug Prevention Agreement program that we're seeing today The cooperation between Seattle Municipal Court, presiding Judge Crawford Willis, she came up first and she spoke to it first.

That is another good development of having the SMC and the CAO working together.

Not just on that, the case management system too.

And these are the work that we as a committee and as a council need to continue as we look to achieve our goal of creating a safe base in our city.

So I know we're out of time, but

Can I have a moment to thank you?

I just want to say and make sure the public realizes that when I talk about our job is to pass the laws and the executive implements, our job is also oversight.

And I really appreciate you bringing members, components of our public safety system in to present the evidence, what's going on now, so that we can then make further decisions for refining laws.

or making budget decisions to accommodate what's happening really out there in real life.

And so thank you very much for your work to bring this before us.

And I'll just take the opportunity to say thank you and perhaps goodbye until after the budget.

Really appreciate the work on the High Utilizer Initiative.

City Attorney Davison, that has been really helpful.

And also the use of...

Civil infractions to get at some of our most persistent issues, street racing, graffiti, instead of relying on a different set of evidentiary standards to get at those.

The people that are violating those laws is really important.

It makes change faster, so thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Council President.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I know we're over time, but I just wanted to thank you for your leadership on these pieces and for making all the connections that you just did because all these things are connected and all of the city departments need to work together to make this city safer for folks and also to get folks the help they need to succeed, in my mind, in life.

And I will say in terms of thank you for raising up And I didn't want to take this necessarily as an opportunity, but since you mentioned it, The More We Love is an organization that is doing great work on the north end.

I want to give a call out to our former colleague, Council Member Moore, worked with the organization, not just that organization, the other organizations that are also doing work in this space.

But I do want to mention that there is so much work that multiple organizations can participate and work in this space.

And I do want to say, as we come up in budget, it starts to become like the Hunger Games.

There is enough room for everyone to help do the work that we need to do in the city.

And The More We Love is an example of they are doing great work.

They're not the only folks doing the work, but they are one of the folks.

And therefore, they should be able to continue to do this work.

And of course, organizations need to show, just like you came here today to show us how these tools are working, organizations need to also show us how the work they're doing is working.

There is ample work to go around for all of these groups.

And the unfortunate part is the groups start to try to tear each other apart as if there isn't value in every group and as if there isn't enough work to go around.

And I understand the resources are limited, but we still need to make sure that this work is getting done and that there's opportunity for everyone who's doing good work in this space to be able to also contribute.

So thank you, Chair.

I really was to underscore something that you said because it is important.

So thank you for your leadership there.

Vice Chair Saka.

Thank you chair and a lot of important discussion going on now and so I just want to thank my colleagues for their comments and in the interest of time rather than pile on and on every single aspect I will just also note my support for The organization you mentioned with Christine in the North End doing that work, that is critically important.

They are not the more we love, they are not the only organization doing that work, but they are having impacts in one of Multiple, I'll say, organizations doing that work.

So we need to continue to uplift and empower and amplify organizations exactly like the more we love in others.

Again, they're not the only ones.

So thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just so you know, I did express my concern about HSD denying that application, so I can share you more information afterwards.

I'm sending out some comments on that as well.

Thank you.

I too reached out to HSD so we can talk offline.

It's clear that's going to get fixed, so don't worry about it.

And by the way, just a final close.

This point about this seemed working public safety and public health, public safety and human services.

I am optimistic.

I had a fantastic meeting this past week or end of last week with Evergreen Treatment Services, the REACH program, their mobile unit.

It was fantastic.

And there was a lead representative, PDA representative there too.

So I am optimistic because everybody's seeing what's happening on our streets and we're taking action and they're taking action.

us as a council leading and particularly to bring the various pieces together because we have that kind of role, we have the oversight and we have the budget responsibilities.

So thank you so much everyone for participating today, particularly in this case City Attorney Davison and Mr. Lindsey.

And so we have reached the end of today's meeting agenda and I suspect there's no further business to come before the committee before we adjourn since we are 15 minutes over.

I try not to do that.

Hearing and seeing no further business come before the committee.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.