Public Safety Committee 5/27/2025

The public safety committee will come to order.

It's 937 AM, May 27, 2025. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the public safety committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll.

Council member Hollingsworth?

Council member Moore?

Present.

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Council member Saka?

Here.

Chair Kettle?

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Thank you.

Before moving to public comment for chair comment, I just wanted to note on recent events at Cal Anderson Park and also potentially at other locations as well, I wanted to echo the comments made by others to include the mayor regarding the fact that our city is a welcoming city to the LGBTQ community, particularly the trans community in this case.

This is part of what makes Seattle Seattle, the Seattle values.

This is something that we protect and in the course of our jobs here on the city council, but in partnership also with the mayor and his team and the various departments and also the city attorney's office.

Obviously the values of America also in terms of free speech are such that those who want to express their speech can do so.

But there is an understanding of doing so in a way that is respectful.

It's unfortunate the events that did happen I note that, and I know this to be true, the police department will complete an after action report, as I often say, lessons learned regarding the events on Saturday, this weekend.

And we'll look at that as a committee and particularly in terms of crowd management.

We obviously passed a bill on crowd management to include discussions on less lethal weapons, and there's policies that are being put in place at SPD.

And so this would be an opportunity for us to do our oversight and our responsibilities on this.

Now, my understanding is that there was other individual groups that were coming in and fomenting the violence.

And this is the kind of thing that we need to be on top of as a city, because at the end of the day, we do need to protect those in our community who are the most vulnerable.

And oftentimes our LGBTQ plus community is very vulnerable.

And I think this is an opportunity for our city to stand up and show that yes, while protecting the right of free speech, we're also protecting the rights and the ability of our LGBTQ plus community.

In fact, all of us, I shouldn't just say LGBTQ plus, but all of Seattle can live with its rights protected.

So with that, We will now move on to public comment.

Can you please read the instructions?

Currently we have two in-person speakers signed up and five remote speakers.

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 in their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first in-person speaker is Dan French.

Confirming?

I have handouts available to the council members so they can see exactly what I'm trying to bring here to deal with safety issues.

Thank you.

My concern is with regard to the so-called 130th Street Safety Improvement Project.

It is unsafe.

It is routing traffic to areas without taking into consideration the routing that's occurring.

That particular intersection is known to have accidents on a regular basis, and it's not even in consideration.

The movement of traffic is being impeded coming here.

It took me about seven minutes just to get on to 130th because of the lack of consideration.

In addition to that, the rerouting of the traffic is going to go to, I'm going from memory, 134th.

134th is one foot narrower than this location right here that shows a fire department truck that if I were at the stop sign, that he would not be able to turn.

I wouldn't be able to see, he wouldn't be able to turn.

Now, that area that I am talking about is going to be improved, Reed, more housing, so you're going to have more people there that can't even cross the street to get to the park.

You have known about this.

I have sent you multiple emails.

You know about these dangers.

You are ignoring them.

They need to be addressed.

Please look at these dangers and address them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next in-person speaker is Steve Rubstello.

Thank you.

I'm here this morning.

I usually don't come down to the Public Safety Committee, but this is a good time to take a look at the lack of service of the Seattle Police Department completely across the board for us tweeners.

I assume they do well for you and for the very, very worst in society, but The 97% in the middle are not getting service.

And I hope we're a ways away from the point in time where you didn't handle sexual assault unless a minor was involved.

I know you don't handle regular assault at this point in time.

But the policeman was absolutely correct in that if a policeman is assaulted, the person goes to jail.

It appears if a citizen is assaulted, you really don't care.

And I think this is a great boom for private security.

But I'm so old, I remember when you didn't see nearly as much private security.

You also saw a lot more small businesses, because if you can't afford security, you may not be able to run a business in the city right now.

And I think that we need to bring the Seattle Police Department back to being a police department.

The attitude that I've seen in police officers coming out and taking reports after assaults is very similar to some of you may remember Laugh-In or at least seen the reruns.

You remember Ernestine with the phone company, we don't care, we don't have to.

Well, as the motto, that's the feeling that many of us get when we're dealing with the Seattle police right now.

And I think it's time with the new police chief coming up that we should take a look at actually having a police department that serves the .

Thank you.

The first remote speaker is Howard Gale.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

Good morning.

Howard Dale, District 7. This council has spent the last 17 months praising and celebrating police, vastly increasing their pay and their bonuses, worked tirelessly to increase quantity with disregard to quality, abandoned any actual police accountability, ignored the continuing signs of police abuse of protesters, removed prohibitions on the use of weapons against demonstrators, showed zero concern when police recently killed a man in crisis and ignored the recent anniversaries of George Floyd and our local victims of police like Perry Caver and Ryan Smith.

Is anyone then surprised by the police violence we witnessed on Capitol Hill three days ago?

Is it possible to ignore a brutal police killing of a man in crisis two months ago and to also ignore the police killing of 19 people in less than 14 years who had no weapon or only an edged weapon in their hands when killed?

and then expect police to be shy about beating and falsely arresting protesters.

The videos from Saturday are classic and could have been filmed at WTO in 1999 or at the George Floyd protests in 2020, showing repeated cases of police escalating tensions with verbal and physical abuse.

You cannot change police culture for the better with just policies and words, though the wrong policies and words and sure as hell encourage the culture's worst impulses.

This is what you have done.

My advice to all those harmed and falsely arrested on Saturday is to be sure to include in your lawsuits against the SPD all the council members who voted in February to allow the police to unleash weapons on protesters.

As Councilmember Kettle often says, this pervasive environment must end.

Thank you.

The next remote speaker is Kylie Auld.

Hello, good morning.

My name is Kylie Auld and I live in Capitol Hill.

I'm here to speak today on the misuse of Seattle Public Safety Funds and lack of oversight of officers this weekend in Cal Anderson Park.

A hate group from across the state was given carte blanche to preach their anti-queer message in the historically queer neighborhood of Capitol Hill in a park named for the first openly gay Washington state legislator.

I'm curious on how much it cost us, the taxpayers of Seattle, to provide a small army of police to protect them.

What will be done about the numerous OPA complaints filed as a result?

Right-wing groups have historically always abused the freedoms of a liberal society in order to seize power and once they have it, will in short order work to destroy those very same freedoms.

We can see this happening at the national level and I see no reason why we should be helping them here at the local level.

These bigots desired only to antagonize our community and the city rolled out the red carpet for them.

The SPD has a long history of violence towards queer and left-wing protesters, and turning them loose on our community without proper oversight already has and will continue to result in not only damage to the public trust, but also actual physical and emotional harm to our communities.

I've also just learned before speaking here that another permit will be issued to another hate group in the same park for August 30th.

Will we, the voters of Seattle, once again, be forced to pay for an unaccountable police force to use violence to protect a group that preaches hate for this city and its people?

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the last...

Oh, sorry.

The next remote speaker is Valli Chlordette.

Valerie, please press star six.

There you go.

Good morning.

This is Valerie Schluret, District 2. You have an important role in defining what sort of policing we have in our city.

Please listen to the people who are telling you that the wish of a far-right extremist group to invade Capitol Hill should have been handled differently.

The far-right Christians wanted to be in the center of an historically LGBTQ plus neighborhood so that they could stage a media showdown with queer and trans people.

When a dominant cultural and political group inserts themselves into the community of a smaller, historically oppressed group in that way, it is an act of aggression that seeks to do harm.

It was very disappointing, but not surprising, to see SPD compound that harm and aggression by throwing counter-protesters to the ground and dragging them away.

There were other smarter choices SPD could have made on Saturday to de-escalate the situation rather than to come down brutally on the side of far-right extremists.

I really hope I don't have to listen to willfully obtuse comments today about how Saturday's spectacle of violence was inevitable or someone else's fault.

It was not inevitable, and it is not productive to give the police free reign in how they react to protest.

Free speech is not freedom to bully and oppress people.

Everyone understands that when their own right to exist and live is challenged, let's use our imagination and existing evidence and not .

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the last remote speaker we have is David Haynes.

Kudos to the cops on Capitol Hill maintaining the integrity of free speech, and shame on City Hall pulling a punch on the LBGQT voting block of violent agitators, hating people, acknowledging their faith in the good Lord, and celebrating biology of two genders.

That said, is council going to scrutinize the amount of overtime paid at law-abiding events for the cops, versus how many of the same deployable cops combat crime in the hotspot the next day?

Are you questioning the 911 dispatch and the civilian time it takes to process a 911 call before they actually have the cop go out?

And is that not included in the so-called 6% improvement after they delisted more crime as second priority?

Are you really like scrutinizing the response times versus how many questions they have to ask that originated from the same politicians who defunded the police and shifted the paradigm and priority, excuse me, priority hired and created policies of spending that exacerbated the public safety crisis and the homeless crisis.

Because if you call the 911 and you tell them the problem in 10 seconds, And they say, wait, hold on.

Let's start over at question one.

And along the questions, they start acting like a criminal defense lawyer questioning the veracity of your assessment of a reality of problem that's ongoing in the crime underworld.

And by the time they finish asking you 10 questions that one of the progressive bottom of the barrel politicians who was doing the George Soros bidding, who created the whole thing, There's a lot of minutes that have gone past before they even bother.

But when they don't verbatim specific the relay of the information, they trip up the cops.

So it's suspect that they're not tactically trained.

Thank you.

No more additional registered speakers.

Thank you, Clark.

Public comment has expired.

We will now proceed to our items of business.

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

I also wanted to take an opportunity to note three things.

One is in addition to the public comment that we received here, and I've said this before, we receive public comment in various manners.

And one of them is through emails and the like, and we do get them.

And I just wanted to note like from the Seattle LGBTQ commission, I received yours, understand it and understand your deep concern.

As I said, we are, as the mayor noted, we are proud to be welcoming to our LGBTQ community.

And as I noted, there will be an after action report, lessons learned that we'll be looking at as a council, as a committee.

But I do have similar questions also for the siting of this protest.

I just wanted to make that note quite clear, at least from my own personal perspective, just speaking for myself, that is a question too.

There's many parks from which you can make a protest, You can have that exercise of first amendment, but the choosing of Cal Anderson of a park is problematic for a whole host of reasons, which obviously the Seattle LGBTQ plus commission noted.

And I just wanted to note that too, because that does need to be part of the discussion.

So thank you all who have written in on this topic.

We will, as I noted from a committee, we'll look at this in terms of crowd management with SPD.

There will be other places where this will be looked at to maybe in other committees as well.

And, you know, the key thing is here is to identify, okay, we have a group that is in protest exercising its free rights.

But here's the other thing too.

We have a, like the commission and those within the LGBTQ plus community, they do have their right of free speech too and to come and to counter protest.

Now, We also need to be mindful that there's third actors as well.

And I ask the public to, as one who's seen many times the first reports, usually wrong or incomplete, let's get the information, really understand these third actors and how they play into this, because that's very important.

Separately, and going back to our public commenters, Mr. French, I do have this.

I do care about public safety and pedestrian safety.

This is not in my district.

So my clerk will work with the, where it locates in terms of district.

And we together, me as the chair of the public safety committee and my colleague, who I believe is on with me right now, if I have my location right, And we'll check in with SDOT and see what the story is.

I have absolutely no idea what it is.

I have no idea what any plans are.

I recognize what you're saying because this is not a one-off.

This happens around the city.

But I just want to let you know that you've been heard.

And Mr. Rustello, be sure that I speak to SPD on a regular basis from the chief to the precinct captains and in terms of engaging and supporting our community neighborhoods.

That goes all the time to what I say about leading with compassion for those that need, but also have the wisdom to look out for community and neighborhoods.

And within that context, this is something that we need to be doing throughout.

And this is where the the different actions that we've been taking, building up the force, the training pipelines and the like are, you know, are going to get to that point where we need to be.

But I recognize your point.

I hear you in terms of what you're saying, that your specific neighborhood and your area is not necessarily receiving that.

And it's probably because I know the precinct and there's other really hot areas.

And so this is the challenge that we face.

And this is the reason why we're looking to build up the staffing of the Seattle Police Department, for example.

I just wanted to say thank you and acknowledge the public comment that we get both in person here over the phone and also via email and on the street.

There's many ways that we hear public comment.

I'm sure I'm speaking for all my colleagues on that point.

And so I just wanted to say thank you.

And going back to the original, and thank you specifically to those who are writing in in terms of showing support for our LGBTQ plus community.

Before moving on, I do believe that Council Member Rivera is on with us.

I just wanted to note that she's been on, I believe from the beginning and through public comment.

Okay, we will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Oh.

Council Bill 120977, an ordinance related to oversight of the police revising the process for investigating complaints, naming the chief of police, adding sections 3.29.515 and 3.29.590 to the Seattle Municipal Code and amending some sections in 3.29 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Okay, Ms. Bull from our central staff has already joined us out of the table.

Can you please introduce yourself?

Yes, Karina Bull with Council Central Staff.

Thank you.

According to my notes, I should, before we go into discussing it and also with an amendment, I should move the bill.

So I move that committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120977. Is there a second?

Thank you.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any comments?

Well, there are comments, of course, but we'll start with central staff and then we'll move to the amendment and to any comments from our colleagues here on the dais.

Thank you.

In person or zooming in.

This morning marks this committee's second discussion of Council Bill 120977. It is council-generated legislation sponsored by Chair Kettle, and it would amend the city's process for handling complaints that name the chief of police.

And this process was established in 2022 by ordinance.

and this followed the city's passing of the accountability ordinance in 2017 that established the three-pronged accountability system with the Office of Police Accountability, the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety, and the Community Police Commission.

That process established a, or that ordinance established a process for handling misconduct complaints involving Seattle Police Department employees, but not the chief of police.

So in establishing that process in 2022, there were roles for OPA and an oversight role for OIG.

And since then, the city has received over 70 complaints naming the chief of police.

And in the process of handling those complaints, both the OPA and the OIG noted that certain aspects of the investigation process impeded their ability or limited their ability to handle those complaints in an efficient manner.

So this ordinance addresses those issues and its goal is to streamline and clarify the investigation process, make it more timely, make it more efficient.

And also there is an aspect of increasing accountability by adding reporting requirements.

Thank you, Ms. Bohm.

Before moving to the amendment, is there any comments from my colleagues?

I know, Vice Chair, I can't see you, so I can't do the quick look over, but are there any comments or questions from you?

No, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm camera on, but yeah, none from my perspective right now.

Thank you.

Okay.

Great.

Not seeing any other comments, so I will move to amend Council Bill 12077 as presented in amendment number one.

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to adopt amendment number one.

Central staff, you're recognized to describe amendment number one.

This amendment would make three changes to the proposed legislation.

The first two are technical and would not change existing or proposed requirements.

And then the third would expand a reporting requirement.

The first one that is technical would clarify the description of the Community Police Commission in the recitals.

The recitals have very brief paragraph or one sentence descriptions of each of the accountability partners.

the OPA, the OIG, and the CPC.

This amendment would clarify that the CPC is an independent office and works to ensure that the accountability system is responsive to community concerns.

The second part of the amendment is that there would be clarification of the investigative standard.

All of the investigations, naming the chief of police, must be timely, thorough, and objective.

And this amendment would make it clear that that requirement has three parts.

And if one of them isn't met, then the standard is not met.

So it must be timely, it must be thorough, and objective.

If one of those components is missing, then the standard has not been fulfilled.

And then the third would require the Office of Inspector General to provide quarterly reports, naming the Chief of Police basic information about these complaints and how they're being handled to the Executive Director of the Community Police Commission.

As stated before, this would be a substantive amendment that would expand notice requirements of these reports in addition to the Mayor, the President of the Council, and the Chair of the Council's Public Safety Committee.

And then on an annual basis, not changed in this amendment, but just for your reference, there are public reporting requirements.

Thank you for that rundown.

Very thorough.

And as the sponsor for this essentially a chair amendment, I just wanted to note that, you know, A lot of this is clarification.

As you know, I've been supportive of our accountability partners, all three of them.

Sometimes people say four.

And so taking in the input and the idea of adding these to the recitals in terms of support for the Community Police Commission.

And then secondly, it came to my attention, this is part of the you know, the discussion that we had the first time ago around in terms of, you know, the bucket and the like, the intake and then moving forward and so forth, just for some clarity at the beginning of with Section 5. And then lastly, just to be inclusive of the entire accountability system, and this is with a quarterly report too, and I believe this is helpful in terms of ensuring that And I know there's coordination, there's meetings and the like, but from the formal point of view that the CPC is also included in that notification process.

With that, is there any comments from vice chair or anybody else from the committee here?

Okay, chair.

Calling on me is the vice chair.

Yes.

Okay, okay, perfect.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No, I just wanna thank you for bringing forth this amendment.

I think it makes a lot of sense.

And I also think it speaks to some of my verbal comments that I raised during our last Public Safety Committee meeting that we held on this particular topic in terms of ensuring that we have comprehensive or thorough as your wording puts it in timely investigations, irrespective of who's the subject of that.

Thank you.

I'm proud to support this today.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to echo Council Member Sacco's comments that I appreciate you bringing forth this legislation.

I think it's important to get better, to resolve and clarify this process.

And I also appreciate the amendment that you've brought.

So thank you.

I will be supporting this today.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Okay, I've spoken to it, Vice Chair, Council Member Moore.

So I think we can move on.

Will the clerk please call the roll in the adoption of amendment number one?

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

Therefore in favor and none opposed.

Thank you, clerk.

Amendment one is adopted.

Okay, now with the amended bill, is there any additional comment?

Oh, Council Member Moore, is this a new hand?

No, it's not, sorry.

Okay.

All right, not seeing any additional comments.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass Council Bill 120977 as amended.

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

Therefore, in favor and none opposed.

All right, thank you.

The bill is recommended.

The motion carries in committee recommendation that the bill as amended passed will be sent to the June 3rd City Council meeting.

So thank you very much.

And thank you for the accountability partners that are in attendance today.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you.

All right, with that first piece of business done, we will now move to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Seattle Police Department hiring, overtime, and performance metrics report.

Okay, we'll be joined by Mr. Doss from Central Staff and Ms. Ochi.

Can you please introduce yourself, your name, and then introduce where you're from and your background relates to this agenda item.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Greg Doss, Council Central Staff.

Good morning, Angela Soce, Executive Director of Budget and Finance for the Seattle Police Department.

Myself and my team put together this report on a quarterly basis in response to the statement of legislative intent that was issued last November.

Thank you.

Okay, over to you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I mentioned, Greg Dawes, central staff, and here with Angela Sochi, she mentioned that her staff put together this report.

That is indeed true, and I would like to thank her and her staff for doing this.

It's a lot of work to crunch all the data and put all the numbers together, and we work closely.

I do with their staff to ensure that we're making sure that we're getting the right picture from the data, and we are giving you a thorough understanding of how operations are changing at SPD, whether it be staffing or overtime or performance metrics.

So it's my name up there, but it's a joint effort with the department.

So I'll jump right into slide number three.

SPD staffing.

And so before I describe the chart, I'm going to talk about the staffing numbers.

So I'll go ahead and point you to the right where it says 2025 Jan to March actuals versus original staffing plan.

I think the council members are well aware of the department's unprecedented success in hiring this year.

It's really actually been happening since last fall.

The department has been seeing a trend of about 14 hires per month, which is really double what has occurred historically, even in good years.

So I say unprecedented.

I don't think that...

anyone at the department has seen this level of hiring, nor did they necessarily think they were going to be able to achieve this, but through hard work and looking at every aspect of the recruiting process and some help from counsel I'll talk about in a moment, the department has really been able to step up the number of recruits that are being hired.

So I believe that council is aware that SPD and the mayor's office recently provided their own staffing update, which indicates that there have been 60 hires made through April 18th.

Uh, and that of course is true.

through April 18th.

Our focus here today is just on the first quarter and the regular updates.

And in this quarter, there were 12 more hires that were achieved than originally planned and seven fewer separations that resulted in a bottom line of 19 additional officers in the first quarter.

And what's really great about this news is that those original projections had already built in 15 new officers that would be hired throughout the year.

So what this really means is that SPD is already meeting its goals for the entire year and looks to really improve the hiring beyond the goals.

So next I'll point to the 2025 SPD annual production projections that are down below.

You'll see that original projections had been 120 hires and again that assumed an increase of 15 hires and the separation projection had been 105. At this point in time SPD has a revised hiring projection of 132 for the year.

So how do they get to that that projection.

That is typically an exercise where they take the actuals, the number of actual hires that have occurred between January and March, update those numbers but don't do any future forecasting.

They don't change the numbers for the future.

It's a conservative method.

It is a method that the department uses because it's a good way to predict budget in a conservative fashion.

In this case, that particular method is not quite so valid anymore because we've seen a paradigm shift in hiring at SPD.

So what SPD has done now is put together a low-end projection, which again is actuals plus the old plan, and they put together a high-end projection that is based on their current trends, the 14 per month that they're seeing hired, and how that might look at the end of the year.

And so that projection is 169 hires.

Again, not something I think that anyone could have imagined even a year ago.

So fantastic news.

I would be remiss if I did not also point out that the council had a role in this recent success.

You'll recall last year passing ordinance 127026, which created the formal recruitment program in SPD and centralized all the functions into that program.

The ordinance also added staff to both SPD and the Public Safety Civil Service Commission and required that each candidate receive a personal contact or personal touch from the PSCSC or SPD.

So undoubtedly that ordinance is having an effect.

And as you know, the council increased officer wages by passing Ordinance 127019 in an agreement with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which made SPD the highest paid law enforcement agency in the state.

surveys from the Public Safety Civil Service Commission have shown that officer salaries are one of the highest contributing factors to recruits becoming candidate or to people becoming recruits.

And indeed, that is helped out through the recent collective bargaining agreement.

So the chart here I'll show you is based on the more conservative, is based on the more conservative old approach that SPD used to update actuals and not, it's the low end projection.

And even at the low end projection, I think we'll see an increase to just under a thousand officers that are fully trained and 938 deployable officers.

So moving in the right direction and it It seems like it's not that big of an increase, but I think as you all are well aware, it takes a year or so for a recruit to move through the entire academy process, the field training process, and then ultimately become a fully trained officer.

So we'll ask if there are any questions and move to the next slide.

Thank you for that prompt.

Sometimes I say, hey, please wait till the end of the briefing.

But for this briefing, we will move, you know, per slide.

And so I do believe Council President has a question.

Perfect time.

Thank you for indulging me because this is really important and I want to make sure that I understand.

Can you please walk me through in more detail how the high projection is derived?

I ask this because I recall that in the past, sometimes there was an actual, and then there was a mix of the average number from the previous five years that was somehow, that somehow had an impact on that bottom line number.

So can you please tell me what is the 169 based on?

You're absolutely right.

That is how the prior methodology had established the forecast.

This new methodology assumes that the department will keep hiring at the pace it's hiring now, and that separations will slow a little bit from what had been forecasted.

I believe it was 14 people per month that you all are forecasting.

I'll let Director Sochi speak to any more detail I'm missing.

Greg is correct.

We looked, we saw a dramatic uptick in hiring beginning in October of last year.

We looked at the six months of information that we had to use a straight line average of 14 per month is what we were seeing.

So we continued that through the end of the year using actuals from the first quarter plus the 14 per month for April through December to get to that 169. Thank you.

So jump to the next slide.

So some of this is information that we just talked about.

Up at the top, it talks a little bit about the number of folks that are assumed under the low and high end projections and how the methodology was determined or used to project those numbers.

The new information on this slide is the last bullet that the FTE differences between what was in the adopted budget And what is actually occurring at the low end and at the high end translates into a potential shortfall of 6.8 million for the low estimate and up to 10 million for the high estimate for costs for the additional recruits that are being brought in.

You'll recall that in the past, it was exactly the opposite.

SPD had hiring targets, and they were funded for a certain number of recruits.

They couldn't hire for all the recruits they were funded for, and there were salary savings.

Well, now we're in exactly the opposite situation.

They're hiring more recruits than they are funded for, and at the end of the year, there's going to be a deficit in salary funding, somewhere between 6.8 million and 10 million, probably closer to the 10 million.

Any questions on that?

I have one question.

Is the executive looking at, obviously, we've had some items from Governor Ferguson's proposals and then inclusion in the budget to include for public safety, specifically police departments.

Is this something that we're looking at on the executive side?

We've been meeting monthly with the executive to monitor this and to explore different funding streams that could potentially offset the shortfall, ultimately including looking at any existing savings in the department that could offset and external sources if possible, yeah.

Okay, great.

By the way, I asked that question knowing that Director Eder is probably the better person, but let's just say this is a preemptory question that Director Eder can answer at some point in the near future.

Because I'm sure he's watching right now, of course.

My understanding in talking with Director Sochi is that It's unlikely that the department will ask for a supplemental appropriation in the middle of the year.

You normally see a mid-year supplemental budget ordinance.

It may not occur.

in that ordinance that they ask for an additional six or eight million or 10 million, I should say.

It may be that the department waits until the closer to the end of the year to see how the hiring has played out, whether it's kept up at that level or whether it's decreased.

So we will keep you posted throughout the year with these quarterly presentations and the data, and we'll see how it goes.

I feel the need to knock on wood, touch wood, don't want to jinx ourselves, so I understand that point.

Please continue.

All right, so next slide.

So I talked about how the council's hiring ordinance helped lead to the amazing increase in hiring.

As you know, this ordinance also required semi-annual reporting on the department's effort to recruit and retain women.

Due to the Council's extensive interest in this topic, I have added this slide, which breaks down SPD's hires by gender for the last couple of years.

In the next slide, I'll go into some information about the rates of applications between female, male, and other hires.

But on this slide, I'll start by saying that the department said that it has not in any given year exceeded about a 13% female hire rate when it comes to recruit classes.

In this slide, in 23, 24, and a partial year for 2025, we see that it doesn't exceed 14%.

So the application rates have been hovering around 13 to 14%, and the hiring rates have been hovering around the same rate.

So it is the case that SPD is hoping that in the near future there are more applications and more women moving into the system that could create more opportunities to hire women and potentially raise the number of female hires As you'll see in the second or the first bullet, DOJ and 30 by 30 reported in 2022 that 80% of all starting local and police recruits were male and 20% were female.

That number has been increasing and it is the case that SPD is looking to increase their percentage as well.

Certainly there have been very positive remarks by Chief Barnes that he is taking, he's asked folks to take a look at every candidate, every female candidate, a second look.

And SPD has reported that Deputy Chief Underwood is doing that exactly.

She is looking at all females that are disqualified in the process to make sure that they're not missing something.

SBDHR is also doing a separate analysis whereby they're looking at all the steps in the application process, you'll see there on the right, to see if at any one of those steps, female applicants are falling out at a disproportionate rate.

So it is the case that SPD is taking a hard look at their hiring of women and seeing where they might improve the process and ultimately make more female hires.

Thank you.

Any questions on this point from my colleagues?

You know, one thing I note when listening to you and is you know, overall pay, there's a lot of different issues that impact this increase in applications, this increase of bringing on more officers.

And what strikes me with specific to the goals, 30 by 30 goals is that This is really, in a lot of ways, going to be dependent on leadership, demonstrated leadership, not just leadership, but demonstrated leadership that filters down throughout the department that is shown to be having made changes and to be supportive and an inclusive environment for women.

You know, just some changes on, you know, which are important.

That's one thing, but I think at the end, and I'll defer to colleagues and others, but that's my sense, and as someone who went through this transition in the Navy, it takes that time and effort, and that's consistent, demonstrated leadership on this point.

So this is something that we can ask Chief Barnes when we do the confirmation process.

He's spoken to it, as you noted, which I think is great, but this is something that we need to build on.

In my time talking, I see that my vice chairs jumped on, Vice Chair Saka.

you mr chair and uh overall say i think this is very encouraging news uh on the overall hiring uh data uh of course as a slide indicates slide five here uh there's a continuing ongoing opportunity for us to do better uh as a city and the department more specifically with respect to hiring and retention of police or female officers and as greg noted earlier as well like this is a significant item of council interest because council member moore i think council member rivera and i partnered together to include some very substantive and tangible investments to specifically address this issue here as well um so i understand in that last bullet there on that slide it says historically sbd recruiting classes have not exceeding 13 i understand history um you know we like we we all don't need history lessons here uh but if we're ever going to achieve our big bold ambitious goals um you know here 30 by 30 we're gonna have to make We're going to have to shatter history and greatly exceed it.

At a bare minimum, have all recruiting classes be 30% or more at a bare minimum.

And that still won't, through attrition, won't help us by 2030 have a department.

So in any event, we're going to have to get real creative.

And we've already done a number of things from a council perspective.

Absolutely, we'll continue to confer with the chief and looking forward to you know hearing more of some of his specific plans department to help us better achieve this goal um and also mr chair you know i think later this year we could we could typically uh ask the executive and the department to come then later this year on how they're going to uh how they plan to partner with us to better address this and help make better progress because we need to move beyond history and and start seeing some progress so thank you

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Mr. Doss?

Mr. You can get the next slide, and I've got a little bit more information on female hires on the next slide.

So, what this slide shows you is, at a high level, if you look at the bottom highlighted total column, at a high level, the number of applicants to SPD, and these are applicants who have passed minimum qualifications and are qualified to sit for the exam.

This data was provided by the PSCSC.

At the highest level, There were 1863 candidates in 2023 that were eligible to sit for the exam.

That number number moved to close to 4000 in 2024. And it's already headed this year in 2025 to surpass last year's total.

So what you see is even though there hasn't been a huge change in the number of female applicants, if you look under gender, you'll see that female in the last couple of years has been 13.6, 13.7.

There is a big change in the absolute number of applicants.

Went from 253 female applicants in 2023 to 542 last year.

So with the increase in bodies, so to speak, people applying to the force, there's a greater opportunity to increase diversity.

And that's something that SPD has focused on in the past and focused on with a good deal of success.

In 2023 and in 2024, there was an increase in the absolute number of people of color that were applying to the department.

And you can see that in the data here.

And over the last couple years, SPD, with a concerted effort, has increased the number of hires of people of color from 57.8% of hires in 2024 up to 51.3.

I'm sorry.

Up from much lower than about a third to 57.8% and then 51.3% this year.

What I guess this shows is that when more people are making application and SPD makes a concerted effort in an area to broaden diversity, they have been successful.

So I thought that is something that is important to point out.

Thank you, Mr. Doss.

Next slide.

Okay, so this is a slide that I typically include in all of my presentations, and this is just To show how staffing is changing throughout the city and broken down by precincts.

What you see here at the bottom right hand corner 490 total staff is pretty much exactly the same as it was last year.

Again, we have the huge increase in hiring, but that takes a while to translate into cops on the street so This picture hasn't changed very much except for a couple officers moving between the various precincts here and there to address operational needs that the chief makes.

So go to the next slide unless there's any questions.

And so this is just the history of precinct staffing.

Again, something that I show in every presentation.

Not much changed since March of 2024, only 490 in all of patrol.

I always like to point out that the most interesting thing in this slide is if you look back to September of 2020, There are 694 people that are in patrol historically, and there were about 668, I believe, that were in 911 response.

And so the difference there, some, you know, 26 personnel were deployed on bikes, on beats, foot beats, and could do other proactive work, like anti-crime teamwork, and those officers have really been eliminated.

There are still one footbeat that's funded in the West Precinct that does purely proactive patrol, but all other proactive patrol is mostly funded on overtime.

The good news is that with the influx of officers over the next few years, hopefully the department will have the ability to add back some of those proactive resources with anti-crime teams or footbeats or bikebeats.

Thank you.

We have a few questions.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

Just looking at this, am I misunderstanding this, that our numbers of officers have gone down 911 response only significantly from 2020?

Yes, the absolute number of 911 officers have gone down from a high of 591 in 2020 down to 403 this year.

So I don't quite understand how that works with the fact that we, I thought we were sort of level in terms of hiring and loss, and yet this seems to show a rather significant loss.

So we plateaued and now we're equal with hiring and retirement or?

Well, in those years, obviously between September 2020 and really December 2023, that's when the department lost a net of 350 officers.

And it was the case that the chief Chiefs at those times tried to hold patrol harmless and reduce other areas of the department, but they weren't capable of doing that entirely, so patrol did go down.

But I might be missing your question.

Well, my question is it seems that we've actually lost officers, and yet some of the data we have says that we are equal in terms of loss and recruitment.

Yeah, that is true in the last couple of years because, again, the chief has made an effort to try to hold patrol as harmless as possible.

So are we losing officers or not?

We are no longer losing officers.

We had been losing officers up until last year, and now that curve has completely changed.

Okay.

It just hasn't changed in the numbers here yet because...

as I said before, they have to go to the academy, then they have to go to FTO.

So, we're sort of at a standstill right now, but we will be growing.

So, in 2026, we're looking to see that number go up?

Absolutely.

Yes.

Thank you.

Anything further?

This is what I often call this bridging moment.

We're in this bridging moment where we've arrested the fall, we've held steady, and now we're looking like we're going to be increasing.

But to your point, it takes a year.

As I always say, it takes a year to grow a cop.

So we're in this bridging moment that we're in.

We're trying to get from A to B.

And by the way, this is a point where oftentimes out in the community and so forth, when I'm talking to businesses and the like, I say, thank you for having private security.

And the goal is to get to the point where they don't need it.

This is part of the vision for the committee.

but we can't get there yet, partly due to the point that you noted that it takes time to make this transition.

So thank you for highlighting this point.

Um, Council President Nelson and then Council Member Rivera.

This is a related question.

Um, thank you for characterizing, uh, chair that, uh, the, the moment that we're in as the bridge.

Um, so my first question is, uh, How long does the bridge last?

Can we assume that it is at least two quarters, or perhaps three?

I understand that there is a pipeline.

That is my first question, and the answer is inexact, I realize, but just ballpark.

When could we see a surge?

My other question is, SPD have an ideal ratio for the number of officers at a precinct to make the decision to return to the BEAT patrols.

I ask that because every time I'm out talking to small businesses or even just neighborhoods in general, what they miss is seeing an officer on foot, on the beat, that builds relationships and it also builds confidence in the mind of the public that the officer really does know what's actually going on day to day.

So what is the magic if there is a, or a standard when it comes to taking officers out of a car and putting them on the street?

I'm gonna pass off to my colleague, Angela Sochi, the director of budget.

She knows staffing very well and has long history with the department, so I think she's in a better place to answer that.

Yeah, so as far as I would say, right now, current staffing doesn't allow for it.

We have all of our precincts relying on over time to meet minimum staffing requirements.

Our deployment analysis is based on workloads, so calls for service that are coming in.

And the best way to measure when you've reached that point is to look at the performance metrics around 911 response.

Do we have enough officers available to respond to 911 calls ideally within a seven minute response time for priority one?

We're able to do our performance analytics and research team is able to evaluate that and determine what that number is. we can calibrate to that number.

Historically, it was 550 officers were needed.

We've since shifted to a 410 schedule, four days on 10 hour shifts for our patrol officers.

That also plays a role in dictating how many officers you need to staff a shift safely.

And so we are able to get to that number.

At that point, once you hit that number, that's where you're able to identify officers for specialty functions.

I will say that we are performing on an overtime basis right now.

Some of those, as Greg pointed out, some of the footbeats and targeted work in the downtown core and in Chinatown ID, we are deploying people, but typically on an overtime basis at this point.

in the form of augmentation.

Thank you.

The answer I heard was it's going to be a while.

Yes.

Yeah, I understand.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

I often say the entire term of this council or those that started in January 24. But with the increased numbers, I'm wondering if we can again, keep that momentum going, that we can, you know, this bridge will not be as long as the full term of this council instead be shorter.

Council member Rivera.

Thank you, chair.

And thanks for letting me sit in your committee.

Thank you, Greg and Angela for the information.

I feel as though we're often looking back and it doesn't really portray what is currently happening because uh, we're in May, obviously, and this goes through April.

Um, and I, but I also know that, um, or, and not, but, and I also know that I will say in the north precinct, um, uh, captain Davidson has Um, uh, added some bike patrols.

I think it's voluntarily, but it's, it's happening at Magnuson Park and U District.

I know I'm so appreciative for his efforts.

So I say that to say colleagues that the information presented today doesn't necessarily reflect what's happening this month.

And I suspect that the next time you come to update us, then it will include what's happening today.

It's hard to get the information, um, to be looking back because like I said, it's not reflective of what's happening on the ground today.

And that's really important for the public.

We know we're getting information.

You know, you can only give information up to a certain point and it always is a look back, but the public doesn't always, they get confused why, you know, we're saying we don't have bike patrols for instance, but we actually have started some.

And so I just think it's important to mention that chair because Folks need to know that this work is picking up.

Even though we may not have a date by which we are gonna be fully staffed, let's say on bike or foot patrol, it's starting to happen because we have more numbers because the outlook is positive on number of officers.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

In our last meeting and chair comment, after going through the Metro Chambers index slides, I conclude with the 40 point differential and the importance of expectations management.

We cannot get wound up related to these positive numbers.

We have to keep the expectations where they need to be.

So thank you for that, reinforcing that point.

So thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you both.

Thanks.

Go ahead and move to the next slide, please.

So, just to highlight the points that you're making, Councilmember Rivera, yes, there are indeed bike beats and there are foot beats that are being funded, that are out there, but they're being funded on overtime.

And so, next slide.

So, this is where you really see that.

You see that the department has been Working with constrained staffing resources over the last few years, but as this slide shows.

The budget and the dollars that have been expended on overtime have been growing each year as the department has tried to meet the needs on the ground.

Alright, here we go so um.

I'll start out by saying that in the past we've provided a more detailed look at overtime down to the activity level, and we would be able to tell you exactly how much was being spent on overtime on bike or foot beats or investigations or other kinds of overtime activities.

Unfortunately, the department is in the process of switching its systems.

They're still tracking over time, but as they move into a new time and accounting system that was funded and is being implemented, they're in a transition period.

So I can't go down to that extremely low level as I have in the past.

But I can give you a high level picture of how the department's overtime spending is matching to its budget.

and some indication of what it might look like in the future.

And so, as you can see with the first bullet, SPD's overtime budget has been increasing.

You'll see from 26,000 to 53,000, it's more than doubled in the last few years.

What's important to note about that is that the dollars have increased.

Because there have been agreements with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, two major agreements, one that provided the 23% salary increase.

And of course, that's what's leading or helping with a number of the recruiting efforts the department has.

And then also an MOU that provides a $225 premium for overtime shifts that officers sign up for.

So in that MOU, they get time and a half for the special events that they work and they also get that $225 premium.

The good news here in terms of tracking the overtime is that the budget office had done a little bit more of a realistic look last time and instead of just matching the prior year, they they have increased the 2025 overtime budget and it's now 53 million dollars and that was really in anticipation of additional overtime spending.

They did a good job.

Right now it is the case that SPD is spending about 20 percent of its budget in the first quarter and that is about historically where they have been in spending in the first quarter, the difference being that in prior quarters they didn't have enough budget to cover.

So I'll stop and ask if there's any questions on that.

Councilmember Moore?

Thank you, Chair.

Not a question, but just wanted to clarify that that MOU, that $225 premium, that was the agreement that we reached to allow for care, correct?

Yes, it did a couple things.

It allowed for the care teams to correspond, to co-respond, mutual dispatch with SPD, and it allowed for...

more use of PEOs and civilians in special events.

Yeah, thank you.

I just think it's important that we're clear that that's how we are funding, how we were able to fund the alternative response.

Thank you.

And thank you for bringing that up.

I should note a couple other things.

That MOU does expire at the end of this year, and there are active talks about how special events will continue to be managed through this year and through next year, especially given the FIFA events.

Thank you, Councilmember Moore, for highlighting that point.

Very important.

Mr. Doss.

So go into the next slide.

So citywide response times.

What's important to note here is that the goal of seven minutes of a median response time, the department has been able to move much closer to since last year.

If you see the chart there, Last year it was 7.9, and this year it's 7. The reason for that primarily is because SPD did a reprioritization exercise where they looked at all the calls in priority one, priority two, and priority three, and determined whether or not the majority of the calls in those classifications were actually a significant level of emergency or danger that they required, that they should stay in those categories.

And what they found was, in looking at several priority one calls, that calls that just typically had been categorized as priority one, when the dispatcher or the call taker talk to the caller, they were able to identify that the caller might not be in danger from either harming themselves or harming others, or that maybe whatever danger had been called about, like say a burglary, was no longer present, the person had left the scene, and the caller was secure.

And in such cases, they were able to reduce some of those calls down to a priority two.

And so, Reducing and changing the call types allowed them to, the math of it worked out such that the response times got better.

And then this sort of leads to a natural question I had, which is, okay, if there are now more priority two calls, how come those calls are getting better in terms of response time?

And what the department has told me is that they hypothesize that it's what they call the care effect.

It is the effect of having a fully staffed care unit out answering calls with SPD.

They can't answer the call directly, but SPD can call them to come to the scene.

And then SPD officers are able to turn those scene over to care responders to help them help the caller navigate resources then SPD officers can log back into the system and can start answering 911 calls again.

And so the reduction in workload is what SPD believes is contributing to the better response times.

That's something that they're currently studying and they hope to be able to provide a final answer on soon.

So stop there and ask if there's any questions.

I WAS GOING TO SAY NO, BUT COUNCIL MEMBER MOORE HAS JUMPED IN.

COUNCIL MEMBER MOORE.

THANK YOU.

I'M JUST CURIOUS TO WHETHER THE IMPROVEMENT IN RESPONSE TIMES IS AT ALL IF YOU'RE ABLE TO TELL WHETHER IT'S ALL CONNECTED TO REDUCED RATE OF REPORTED CRIME BECAUSE THE SPD'S CRIME DASHBOARD IS SHOWING A DROP IN REPORTED CRIMES IN THE FIRST QUARTER.

THERE'S PROBABLY A RELATIONSHIP THERE.

WE'LL HAVE TO GET BACK TO YOU.

IF THEY'RE SHOWING that would obviously have an impact.

I don't know, without looking at the numbers, how much of an impact or how much of a difference that might make.

Okay, thank you.

That's an important point to raise.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

And oftentimes it's important to highlight violent crime versus property crime.

This is one where you do see that shift and the impact is real and we cannot Forget the property crime obviously violent crime being important and you have to have the response those numbers are more actual But the property crime piece is all important.

So this is a place to to highlight that and this goes to the staffing Long-term as well.

So thank you councilmember Moore Okay, go to the next slide Please.

So I realize that this table is not one that you can see right now and see all the numbers and do any kind of analysis for.

I provide this data, the detailed data, and probably way too many words on the slides.

But the goal is that you have something you can take away, both members and the public, off of the website that provides the information you're looking for.

So this is obviously a history by precinct between 2022 and 2025 of response times.

Similar to what we just discussed, all response times are looking better under this new methodology.

The North Precinct obviously continues to have the slowest response times due to its geography.

So not much to add here.

And then if there are no questions, I'm going to go ahead and hit the summary.

The takeaway here, again, SPD is hiring at an unprecedented pace.

It will increase its sworn force by at least 34 officers, not the 15 that they had projected even six months ago, at least 34. And a more accurate projection might mean that they could reach as many as 76 new officers.

Obviously, 76 new officers is going to go a long way towards replenishing the 350 officers that have left over the last few years.

As I said before, SPD is not likely to ask for a supplemental budget at mid-year.

It may be that they do so at the end of the year, but they're monitoring the situation and will adjust accordingly.

Second bullet, SPD and the mayor's staff are taking tangible steps to try to increase the hiring of women.

We talked a little bit about that, looking at the various steps, seeing if there is any disproportionate loss.

Chief Underwood's analysis of disqualifications.

Obviously, there's going to be a delay in the effects that are...

In seeing in the data what we know is happening now and seeing better rates of women hires in the future.

And so, moving along, SPD has spent 20% of its overtime budget through the first quarter.

This is really the first time that SPD has been on track not overspending its overtime budget.

And again, I think that that's due to the fact that CBO raised the budget a little bit in anticipation of the need.

And that is tracking about where the department would hope it would be.

And then lastly, the 911 times have all improved, and that's largely related to that recategorization and analysis of call types.

And I look forward to being able to tell you more about whether the department finds out that it is indeed what they call the care effect that is helping with those response times.

Thank you.

Ms. Xochitl, anything to add to conclude?

Yeah, I do actually want to highlight our increased retention as well.

Hiring is playing a big part in that net 76 officers that we could hit this year, but so is retention.

So we are seeing a decrease in the number of fully trained officers separating from the department.

which, you know, in looking back, we had, I believe, four years of net decrease.

And so hiring and retention goes into that.

And so we're we're encouraged to see that our fully trained officers are deciding to stay and continue to serve in the city of Seattle.

So thank you, Council President.

I have a few different questions, but one of the things I really want to get at is this notion that a narrative that popped up when we were doing that council bill that restructured recruiting and through a staff member at HR to reach out to new applicants, et cetera.

I can't remember the number of that, but it was sponsored by council.

There was some thinking that we were somehow lowering standards, or that would be a result if we went from one exam type to another exam.

But there still is that lingering question, I believe, out there that we're hiring more officers because we are lowering standards.

So here are my questions, and you can just say yes or no.

Have we changed the written exam?

No, we have not.

Have we changed the oral boards?

I don't believe so.

I don't believe so.

But I can confirm that with you.

Are we still doing polygraphs?

Yes.

And physical exams.

Has there anything that's been changed by the physical exam?

I know that the physical exam has been, they have reevaluated what's necessary there and that the exam has changed in the last few years.

I don't have the specifics.

I'll have to get that back to you.

Well, I don't know what other variables are involved in the hiring decisions, but I just touched on some of the main hurdles that one has to get over to be hired by SPD, and I'm not hearing anything different.

So, maybe if there are differences that you can get to me that would verify or contradict that narrative, you can let me know.

But I'm not seeing that there is a lowering of standards based on what you just said in the the objective criteria.

I think certainly all of the steps that I provided in one of the previous slides are all still there.

I think the department constantly looks at what they're evaluating when they're look taking candidates through each step and they constantly will adapt the measures to make sure that they are getting the best people possible for the job.

So in the sense that of lowering of standards, nothing in those steps has changed and they're all still moving through all the steps.

It's just a matter of whether or not someone qualifies with today's measures, and I will get you back information on the PAT and whether that's changed.

Thank you.

And I would not, I see that you want to add to that.

I would not expect that there would be a lowering.

I'm just trying to be able to evaluate such a narrative on my own.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to add that a good indicator of the quality of applicants is gonna be how many are actually becoming police officers and completing our training process.

Getting into the academy is one thing, but then actually completing the academy, completing your field training, and then also probation, that gives us an opportunity to evaluate in action the candidates that have been hired.

And I would say for 2025 year to date, we always expect a level of turnover.

Policing is not for everyone.

And so we expect up to 25 to 30% turnover in those initial phases, phase one recruiting, phase two field training.

Year to date in 2025, we've only lost 16% of our student officers.

And I think that's a testament to the quality of applicants that we're bringing in, that they're actually completing their field training and are continuing on in that, um, initial onboarding process, which is, um, challenging for everyone.

So how does 16% compared to, uh, past trends, um, past trends, let's see, um, looking at a three year average, um, about 20% we're, we're separating at the student officer level and we're at 16% year to date.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

I think you'll find that things have been the same in terms of maintaining standards.

I think the only thing that's been done change-wise is to accommodate those who are applying from other parts of the country in terms of submitting test results and so forth.

But I don't think anything's changed.

I think what's changed is how we do the business.

This goes to the recruiting reform bill that we had in addition to the interim agreement, SPOC agreement.

But those are really the important pieces, plus the additional FTEs both for the recruitment team and SPD, solely in SPD, that's another point, but also with the Public Safety Civil Service Commission.

I think all these points together show that, you know, more contact points, you know, the increased testing cycles, all those pieces come together well.

I had Councilmember Rivera next, but now I see Councilmember Moore.

Councilmember.

Well, I'm not on the committee, so you go.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Um, um, so I actually have a question on slide 13 in terms of the North precinct continues to have the lowest response times.

Would love to hear, um, what, what is being done to improve the response times in the North precinct.

It is the biggest precinct in the city.

Um, and I continue, and I know Council Member Moore has this as well, continue to be concerned by the difficulty in getting the response better response times out of the precinct I know they and we've said multiple times they need support in the north precinct the officers and the captain does so what are we doing to help provide that support and if you don't know happy to to have a conversation offline.

Well, I can give one point on that and then turn it over to Director Associates to see if she wants to add.

But one immediate point, I talked about the care factor and how the assistance that the care team is providing to officers are freeing up officers to respond to calls quicker, other calls quicker.

It is the case that in the last year, as we've hired, as the city has hired 24 and staffed up to 24 care responders, that some of those responders are being pushed out into the neighborhood.

When the city initially started that program, it was only in the downtown core.

So as there are more care responders in the north precinct, that should help with response times.

That's one particular factor that may be in the future helpful.

Ask Ms. Sochi if she has any other.

Yeah, I would...

have Captain Davison speak to any operational or programmatic changes that they've made.

The geography of the North Precinct has always been challenging, and they have always had the longest response times for that reason.

We have looked at potentially two precincts.

I mean, there's a long history there that I'm sure you're aware of.

But as far as Greg is correct that we have co-located, we have care responders who are actually working and responding out of the precinct right now.

But as far as the operational changes and how we're responding for our precinct area to reduce, I can connect with Captain Davison, or I know, I believe you speak with him frequently, so he may be able to address that for you at your next call.

I do.

I, I meet with captain Davidson monthly as I believe you do too, council member Moore.

And I will say that I am really disappointed to hear that we don't have a plan for better supporting the north precinct.

Um, they need support.

I mean, I think if Captain Davison were here, he'd probably be saying the same thing.

I'm not trying to speak for him, but it's just, it is the biggest precinct or it serves the biggest population in the city.

And I just haven't heard a plan for how we're going to better staff the North precinct to be able to address what's going on in the ground.

And while I appreciate the care team and support having Care responders, particularly when folks need services, it's not some of the activity that's happening.

It requires an officer's attention.

And so I'm not sure that having those care officers there is going to make the biggest impact.

from what I hear from constituents on the ground.

And so I continue and will continue to elevate the fact that we need more officers support and more supports in the North precinct in general.

And you're right, we've talked about in the past, there needs to be maybe perhaps two precincts, et cetera.

But the point being, it is of concern that that is the precinct that has the slowest response times for priority one calls.

I hear that from constituents.

And so I will say it again publicly.

We need support in the north precinct.

And I really appreciate Captain Davison and all the officers there for all that they do.

And so it's not on them.

They need support as well.

So I'll take an opportunity to plug again, we need to do something North Precinct related.

I also want to point out again for the public, because while it is really encouraging that we're seeing more applications to the SPD, Sometimes folks think, you know, I don't want to do this victory lap conversation and then folks get confused about how many officers we still have to respond.

So at the end of the day, how many officers, patrol officers, because I've learned this in the time here, it's the SPD has more officers.

They're not all doing patrol.

So when I started here a year and a half ago, I believe we were down about 50% on patrol officers.

Where are we today in total to take away from the great progress we've made in hiring and retention and also level setting as chair.

You said earlier today, how many patrol officers do we have?

Because I want people to understand that while we're doing better on the hiring piece and retention piece, we still are down enough officers where we're relying on overtime and it also impacts response times.

So can someone tell me where we are on number of patrol officers?

I would I would ask to go back to the slide on patrol.

I don't have the.

That's one.

Yeah.

And so this is the history all the way back to 2020. We have all patrol is 490 officers.

And within that, there's 403 responding 911 calls and 75 sergeants.

And again, as Director Sochi indicated, the department is targeting 550 is sort of the threshold by which they will be able to begin to deploy some of those officers on a proactive basis with with foot beats or bikes.

But at this point in time, until that curve starts to go up and it will over the next several months, patrol is going to be stagnant.

But with the number of officers that are coming in and the rate that they're coming in at and the fact that patrol is a priority, I would expect to see that number go up.

And and we will probably have a be having a different conversation this time next year.

So 490 now, we normally have out of about 900?

I can't remember what the...

These are just patrol.

These are just the officers that are answering 911 calls and doing foot beats.

The rest of the department, when we talk about 1,000 officers, 998, you've got everything from investigations to Marine to special tactics.

Thank you, Greg.

My question is different.

How many officers patrol officers do we need to be fully staffed on the patrol side?

And that's where I believe what Director Sochi is saying is 550 is what is sort of a minimum number they would feel comfortable with.

Historically, it was 550. We're currently undergoing a precinct staffing study to evaluate current workloads and recalibrate the targets for the precincts.

So that 550 number is a historical number that we've used as a reference point.

To which historically we were above, sorry, Council Member Rivera, because can I just ask a quick question?

Historically, we were above the 550 and can I ask a question?

This is from a slide preparation point.

Why was September 2020 picked versus March 2020?

Is 694 the high point?

Because obviously September 2020 is already being impacted where a pre more historical March 2020 would have probably been a number.

Yeah, I think that it was September of 2020 was a high point measure.

Okay.

I'd have to go back and look, but I believe that that's the case.

I don't think between March and September of 2020, the department had seen any kind of massive decrease yet in officers leaving.

I know that there was an increase in that time of use of long-term leave for officers who had gone out on military leave or some other kind of leave, but I don't think that The 350 officer loss that happened really happened between December of 2020 and, well, really up until last year, beginning of last year, December 2023. Okay, I understand.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Well, Chair, sorry, I'm belaboring the point, but 550 is on the patrol side.

Am I understanding you properly?

That is the historical target.

We're reworking that number, but I don't imagine it will change drastically unless our calls for service numbers have changed drastically.

I haven't seen the recent ones, so I can't speak to that.

But that would be for 911 responding officers only.

We currently have close, I believe, 925 deployable personnel.

So of that.

How many?

Sorry.

900. As of March, it was 924 deployable personnel.

Those are ones that Greg were describing as they might be investigators and other functions.

I'm I'm talking about patrol who can respond to priority one, two, three, four calls, etc.

We have currently 490 and we need 550.

We have 9-1-1 response.

We have 403 officers and 75 sergeants supervising those 403 officers.

And so if you look, Councilmember, at about, I would say, December of 2021, I can't quite see the sergeants and do the math, but I think probably in that year, we were exceeding...

No, it would be December of 2020. They were exceeding 550 in 911 response.

And once they exceed 550, those two columns added together, officers and sergeant for 911 response, then they can start adding footbeats.

So the 550 is combined officers and sergeants?

Only answering 911 calls, right.

And once you get the 911 force to 550, then you can start adding other dedicated proactive patrol functions.

Council member Rivera, this is starting to get more operational, which is a tee up for if you want to submit a question for Chief Barnes as part of his confirmation, you're willing to do so.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm just trying to get clear on how many officers we have to respond to all those calls.

Well, it's important, like CRGs, like to Mr. Dawson's point, CRG is very important.

I mean, maybe more in the West Precinct versus North Precinct.

I don't have the precinct breakdowns for them, but beyond the patrol numbers, there's definitely elements that are very important in terms of responding to the situation on the ground.

So that goes to that as well.

But it could be, again, a more operational, Mr. Doss, from your role as central staff, you can maybe speak to that, but it may be more in terms of Ms. Ochi, that might be more towards, Chief Barnes or somebody from his staff if it's more operational.

I'll take all of the comments back to the chief and also our patrol operations commander and we can talk through and then our performance analytics team who's also reevaluating those threshold numbers to see how many officers would be needed to fully staff and achieve all of our performance metrics.

that would be great because that's ultimately what i'm asking do you have a timeline by when that performance measure will be or or review rather will be completed we've engaged an outside consultant to to partner on that um i'll revisit the contract and let you know what the final deliverable date is thank you thank you thank you thank you chair councilmember moore

Oh, thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to echo and say thank you to Councilmember Rivera for your comments about the North Precinct.

We absolutely need more resources.

You know, just in looking at the chart, the West Precinct has 95 officers, the North Precinct has 96. So we only have one more officer and yet we are the largest precinct demographically.

And we also have a significant number of hot zones, Aurora obviously being one, which is constantly hot.

We just had 15 gunshot on Saturday with 15 shots fired.

bullets landing in people's homes.

We continue to have hot areas in Lake City and Magnuson Park.

There are a lot of hot zones in the North Precinct.

So I echo those comments that we desperately need more resources there.

I had a question, though, about the key takeaway here about based on street line projection, SBD might be needing to get mid-year supplemental budget money.

Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

That's kind of the first time I'm hearing that we might need more money in the mid-year supplemental.

Yeah, I'd ask the clerk if you could go back to the very last slide, the key takeaways.

And so, council member, this is the This would result from the additional hires that are being made and the fact that these hires are being made and there's not sufficient budget to support them.

And so obviously there's a priority at the city to hire officers, and so they're not going to slow down the hiring process because there's not sufficient budget.

But that $6.8 million that I mentioned, up to $10 million, the department will have to come up with that money to be able to pay the new officers that are coming on board.

And as Ms. Troste, you said, that's either going to be coming through savings that the department has, or potentially at the end of the year, If there's not enough internal savings in the department, they'll have to ask for that money from you all to fund the new officers.

So I'm sorry, are we anticipating we're going to have 76 new officers by the fall?

That's a year end number.

That's a high side number.

But if hiring keeps continuing the way it is continuing, we could very well see 76 net new officers at the end of this year.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

And just one more quick question.

In terms of factoring in the overtime, I'm just wondering whether, you know, now we had this protest on the weekend, I anticipate that we're going to see many more such protests coming through.

How is that, those sort of unexpected protests and rallies, how is that being factored into overtime calculations, budgeting for that?

Yeah, so I would say for, as far as overtime, we staff hundreds of events every year and there's always going to be some level of overtime used to staff demonstrations, protests, First Amendment events.

So from a strictly budget standpoint, we look at all of the overtime data on every pay period we're reviewing and evaluating and seeing where we're landing To the extent that there are unanticipated events or exceptional events that are well outside of our ability to fund, we would typically bring those forth for consideration for a supplemental appropriation.

For a singular event, I don't anticipate that that would be the case.

It would be something more like MLB all-star week or something along those lines so as far as our overtime budget goes as Greg said we're we appear to be on track to operate within the budget this year and always anticipate that there's going to be events that we're going to need to staff on the weekends okay so you're you are budgeting for the unexpected I guess is basically okay as long as the unexpected is

within the same range of uninspected from prior years.

If that makes any sense.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

And thank you for your advocacy for the North Precinct.

I'm well aware of it.

And I do note that we have a West Precinct and an East Precinct.

We have a South Precinct and a Southwest.

Therefore, one would think North Precinct.

Obviously we have to take care of job one right now, which we've been doing in this committee and this council, working with the executive and then city attorney in terms of changing the direction, like what we're seeing here with staffing.

But I agree, the North precinct needs to be better served in terms of structure and there's different ways of doing that.

And since this came up recently in a different committee, that property, on Aurora and 120 or 130th, I forget, highlights the fact that the actual physical North Precinct building is substandard and we need to take action there too.

With that chair support of my North Precinct colleagues, over, Council President.

So, I am referring to, I would like to go back to slide eight, the historical data for precinct staffing.

And I can take this question offline, but I am noting that there is no line for 2022. And that is the year that I started and that I took office.

And I remember that the chief said in February of that year, I think it was February or March of 2022, that the decision had been made to move about 100 people from the investigative units to patrol to improve 911 call times.

So that really undermined our ability to proactively police major crimes, including sexual assault and gun violence, etc.

So at some point, could you please give me the numbers for 2022 that would go across there, December 2022?

And just like we're talking about, so what's the magic number to get up to going back to maybe some beat patrols?

I am also at some point wondering when those investigative units can be restaffed and filled up, because when we're talking about CRG, that is preventative policing, et cetera.

But if we are able to investigate and prevent major crimes, then the benefits trickle down as well.

Yes, I'll get you that.

You are correct that Chief Diaz, around that timeframe, moved 100 officers from other functions into patrol to sort of maintain patrol as best as the department could, given the falling numbers of officers overall in the department.

So I'll get you that information.

And for a really highly effective policing department, we need that in those investigative positions refilled.

Not to say that it's not a highly effective department right now.

I'm just basically saying that that is really a, um, that is an absence that is, that does have impacts across the board.

Thank you.

Thank you, council president.

Any other comments before I close?

Hearing seeing none.

Okay.

Vice chair.

Nope.

Okay.

Ms. Voss, really appreciate it.

I'm encouraged by the numbers, but still mindful of the requirements for expectations management.

And it can't be just us who have expectations management because due to the point that Council Member Rivera pointed out, it creates mixed signals for the public and it creates this expectation problem.

And then as noted in public comment, when some of our neighborhoods around the city don't get that service, that creates a problem.

So expectation, we should be encouraged by the numbers, but we also need to be mindful of expectations.

Um, yes, we're meeting some goals early, but that means we just need to keep the press on.

Um, we need to keep the press on.

We cannot let up.

Um, and we, as a committee also need to keep the press on through meetings like this, but also doing our job, pushing forward on the different bills, like we did with agenda item number one, showing that we're addressing the challenges.

We're going to do this across the board.

whether it's ordinances that need to be fixed or whatever, or a functional criminal justice system, which also plays in terms of retention and the like for SPD.

And then obviously as well, community safety.

We need to continue to engage as a committee.

I encourage my colleagues to, continue to visit precincts.

I'm gonna be starting up again soon to go across all five precincts.

I also encourage my colleagues to go to the before the badge program.

I've done that a number of times.

There's been a gap I need to get back.

I know some other of my colleagues have been before the badge.

I encourage my colleagues to do that.

We also need to keep the press on implementing reforms.

You know, this is hinted at here and there in some public comment today.

We need to continue the forum to continue to improve and make the best police force in the country, whether it's those related to consent decree, those related 30 by 30, as I mentioned in that part of that slide, it has to be demonstrated leadership.

We just can't talk about it.

We have to, in addition to things like pay, this is an area where we have to have that demonstrated leadership and accountability.

I don't shy away from that word.

I say it in a very general sense, but, you know, when you have the best police force, my thoughts are that that should welcome accountability.

We also be thinking about alternative response.

This comes up, came up a number of times related primarily to care department, but also fire in terms of Health 1, 99, what they're doing.

on our streets and in support of the overall public safety effort, which in turn helps SBD.

And then in turns, again, retention helps there too.

Mentioned often, beat cops a lot.

I will tell you, bite cops, bite cops, bite cops.

It's making a difference in West Precinct.

I work with Captain Brown in the West Precinct.

Bite cops, bite cops, bite cops.

It's making a difference, allows the flex, allows to go after these drug markets, whether it's in Belltown and other locations.

It's also helpful in terms of why we have a safe Seattle center and, you know, in the areas that are for the whole of the city.

And I like to point out too, that we have to do our part as a council and as a committee in terms of showing leadership.

And this really plays out to retention because it shows that we're committed, whether it's the, you know, the resolution that Vice Chair Sok and I worked on that highlighted different pieces, which makes a big difference with retention, plus all the other bills that we have done during the course of the last year and a half plus, actually longer than that, I should account for some of the bills that happened during the first couple of years of Councilman President's term.

But I just wanted to close with the comments there that because I get public comment from a lot of different places, I'm reading one right now, and I just wanted to note that, you know, We have to do public safety as professionals.

We cannot be politicizing this.

This is about the mission, the vision, and the plan, the strategic framework plan.

We've lost many officers and there's reasons for that, but we've gained and we're showing that we're attracting more officers.

And that's because of the work that we've done, which I would argue is nuts and bolts getting the job done.

This is good governance.

This is not politicizing.

This is about doing the job that's required.

And I know because some will that many officers have left, but we've had a lot of officers come in.

We, this represents a generational shift and we need to be mindful of this generational shift and how that plays out in so many different ways.

And we need to be actively encouraged.

We're not in the chain of command here on the dais, but again, we're the upper management.

We need to show that leadership as well.

And, you know, the men and women of the Seattle Police Department are so important to meet our, to address our public safety challenges.

And I wanted to say that because this goes, as noted, both recruitment and retention.

But it's also in partnership with CARE.

The dynamic there is really important and that came up today and I think that should be highlighted.

And I also want to highlight FHIR as well.

And I know some talk about reform and all that, but I think we've done well and we've done what we've needed to do.

We've shown leadership and now that is with the court and we'll continue to press there too.

So I get a lot of public comment and I just wanted to close my comments there.

by highlighting this one public comment, but also the briefing to show, uh, to bring different points up and, um, and to, to bring a close to today's meeting before adjourning.

And I was going to ask if there's any other business I did want to highlight, obviously what happened this weekend, um, with the, the protests is very important.

It came up in terms of overtime and the like, And I know I spoke to it, but I also wanted to offer an opportunity if any of my colleagues wanted to make some quick remarks, any remarks on that topic as well.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Yes, I did want to just express my...

dismay and concern about the reports about what happened this weekend.

I think it's clear that we continue to struggle with crowd control policies.

That is one of the remaining that and the accountability piece are the two remaining pieces that are still holding us in the consent decree and I have I think been very vocal about the need for us to get a proper crowd control policy in place.

And so I still remain committed to making sure that we actually have a crowd control policy in which the roles and expectations for SPD are very clear so that they are not finding themselves in positions in which they have no alternatives, that they view they have no alternatives.

and that the roles and responsibilities of everybody are very clear in these very intense, difficult, fast-moving situations.

And I will be supporting and am supporting the request that the LGBTQ Commission has made.

We do need to have a full independent investigation of the use of force in decision-making, and I also think how we are going to manage crowd control going forward.

We need a review of the permitting process.

I just want it to be clear.

The Seattle City Council does not make the permitting decisions.

That is an executive decision made by the Parks Department and we do need to have a full review of that.

What happened here and how we're going to address it going forward.

and also to have meaningful community engagement and reforms that center the voices and safety of the LGBTQAI plus community around public safety and city planning.

I anticipate that we are going to continue to see more of these sorts of intentional conflicts and we need to be prepared to address them in a way that respects the safety and rights of all and particularly those of our marginalized and vulnerable communities who are really looking to local leadership to make sure that this remains a sanctuary city for them in all regards.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

One last time, thank you, Mr. Dawson, Ms. Sochi for joining us for item number two.

I'll also throw out a thank you to Mr. French and Mr. Estella for attending as public commenters and members of the Community Police Commission and formerly the OIG was here.

and even our news media, Mr. Daniels, and including one other gentleman who I do not know.

Thank you so much for coming to today's meeting.

We have reached the end of today's agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

I think not.

Hearing and seeing no further business come before the committee.

We are adjourned.