Seattle City Council Public Safety Committee Meeting 12/10/2024

6 a.m.

December 10th, 2024. 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 is excused.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are three members present and one non-member present.

Yes, Council Member Hollings will be here shortly, and I do want to welcome our latest, newest member of the Seattle City Council, Council Member Rink.

Welcome, and look forward to you participating.

Full participation except for voting, so there you go.

Thank you for having me.

Okay, approval of the agenda.

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

Seeing and hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

For the chair's report, first, I just want to welcome everybody back.

It's been a long time since we've had a Public Safety Committee meeting.

And so I'm looking forward to getting back to the work that we've been doing all throughout 2024. And we recently celebrated Thanksgiving.

So I just wanted to say that I am thankful across many fronts for the committee work throughout 2024. As you know, it resulted in eight bills being passed here in our committee, the Public Safety Committee.

We also had two additional bills passed in the Governance, Accountability, Economic Development.

That was the Recruitment Reform Bill and the Incentives Bill.

And, of course, we had one in the Select Labor Committee, and that was the SPOG, the Seattle Police Officer.

So for a total of 11 bills so far in 2024, I have to say this is a team effort.

And I'm glad Council Member Rinks here today because it's important that this is beyond just the five members of the committee.

We started off the year with our first bill, the vacant building abatement bill that has been so effective and so helpful to Chief Scoggins and Seattle Fire Department.

And that was co-sponsored with Council Member Morales.

The automatic license plate reader, the ALPR.

A great amount of work that Mr. Maxey can attest to by Councilmember Rivera, who worked the amendment pieces.

And that actually showed up again later on with CCTV and the real-time crime center, the RTCC.

And, of course...

YOU KNOW, AT TIMES DIFFERENT COUNCILMEMBERS ON THE COMMITTEE ALSO LED.

SO THANK YOU COUNCILMEMBER MOORE FOR YOUR LEADERSHIP ON THE STAY OUT OF AREA PROSTITUTION, THE SOAP BILL.

AND MORE GENERALLY, AS ALWAYS, MY VICE CHAIR, CHAIR COUNCILMEMBER SACA, COUNCILMEMBER HOLLINGSWORTH FOR HER HELP ON A NUMBER OF BILLS TO INCLUDE ONE COMING UP IN OUR SISTER COMMITTEE RELATED TO AFTER HOUR LOUNGES.

And of course, Council President Nelson, her leadership of the governance and accountability, particularly in those two bills that we've done.

I also wanted to say I'm thankful very much, and I know they're listening right now, but to the central staff, led by Director Noble, but in particular to his kind of like public safety team, if you will, Mr. Doss, Ms. Gorman, who's no longer in central staff, but through the year, I'm really thankful for her work.

And then of course, Mr. Johnson, for his work as well, particularly those that have more of a legal piece.

And separately, I'm very thankful to the clerk staff that have been so helpful and And then more broadly, Mayor Harrell and his team, obviously with a lot of representatives here, City Attorney Davison and her team.

And I also want to really give a shout out and say I'm thankful for the nine departments, offices, commission, and court that our committee oversees and the work that we did with the departments, hearing directly from the departments.

Like I mentioned earlier about Chief Scoggins on the vacant building abatement bill.

having that access and that kind of coordination and work with the department heads is so helpful as As we try to do the work of the committee You know in review of 2024 by the way, we're back after a period of time and this is our last meeting of 2024 As a review beginning of the year we did create our mission, you know basically to be in two couple words to create a safe base in our city our vision is in terms of how we're trying to bring this about.

We looked at the public safety problem set, identified underlying challenges, and I know this is one of the executive's favorite terms, the permissive environment.

And we created our strategic framework plan, and it's six pillars.

And we executed on this.

And the mission, vision, and the plan focuses our efforts, and it really drives our efforts.

And this is what drives our efforts.

I know there's discussion about different pieces and so forth, but what drives our effort is the mission, the vision, and the plan.

And working through these pieces that we're dealing with on a daily basis as we read the paper each day.

And we appreciate the partnerships, understand our role as a legislative body with respect to policy, oversight, and we just learned budget, which was an eye-opening experience for me.

And we'll drive a little bit for what we'll do in 2025. Speaking of 2025, moving forward, we're going to have a focus on ordinances.

And as it happens, less lethal will be kind of the first one.

as it turns out, as we bridge over from 24 to 25. But there's others.

I'm really interested in the criminal justice system.

We need a very healthy criminal justice system.

If we don't, if it falters for different reasons, that could be really problematic for us as a city and our goals in terms of mission and so forth.

And I mentioned the budget.

One thing that I've learned coming out of the budget is that You know, we have the nine departments, including care.

You know, we have alternative response.

In fire, we have Health 199. You know, we have CSOs and SPD and so forth, the alternative response.

We've been kind of focused on those kind of bigger building blocks.

But one thing that came out of the budget process is that there's a lot of community public safety efforts with the nonprofits and the like.

and they've coming from different directions.

And so this committee will look at that area as well.

You know, some are department neighborhoods, you know, human services department, different parts of the city, all these things need to be looked at.

You know, we had a lot of budget ads that came from different members that come from different directions.

We have to make sense of this, so we need to work with the Department of Havens, work with the Human Services Department, work with the Director of Public Safety who's here today, work with Deputy Mayor Burgess, and to ensure that that area is in sync and working, nested and working in collaboratively with the bigger picture pieces like CARE, SFD and SPD, but then also the overall piece that we're looking to do.

So 2025, those are like three kind of areas that we're looking to do.

And so again, I just want to thank everyone and welcome you back.

And with that, we will now open up the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of the city, of the committee.

And one thing I wanted to note here, too, before a clerk reads this, you'll say that it's up to 60 minutes.

We'll go as long as we can.

But one thing that I need to note is we're a morning committee.

We do not have this chamber all day.

So we cannot...

It's not a public hearing, basically.

So we try to do this and we really appreciate the public comment, which has been incorporated in those pieces of legislation I mentioned and could be incorporated, for example, in the less lethal.

And on that point, clerk, before we do that, I'm also thankful for the emails, particularly when they come in your own voice, in your own email address, related to less lethal.

And along those lines, I've gotten the Seattle OCR review of this And my team will be reaching out to OCR in terms of organizing a meeting.

So with that, Clerk, please, over to you.

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

Each speaker will have two minutes, sorry, 16 remote speakers.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll start with in-person speakers first.

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 end their comment within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first in-person speaker on the list.

The first in-person speaker is Bennett Hazelton.

Good morning, Bennett.

Morning, Council.

So, I mean, everyone here who followed the issue from 2020 onwards is probably aware of a lot of the incidents of use of force complaints against Seattle PD.

Many of you probably saw the viral photo of the nine-year-old who was at one of the peaceful rallies, and a Seattle police officer ended up shooting them in the face with pepper spray, and the video and the picture, of course, rocketed around the world.

Now, I'm sure the cop would say, look, okay, I obviously did not intend to shoot that kid in the face with pepper spray, and they're probably telling the truth, but I think what happened was if somebody else did something illegal and the cop was maybe trying to hit that person, hit the kid instead, The thing to keep in mind is that if this had been a crowd of, say, Christmas shoppers and somebody does something illegal and then runs off into the crowd, the cop's instinct is, oh, these are innocent bystanders.

I can't shoot the pepper spray because I'm probably going to hit somebody else.

And if they're willing to do it, however, in the case of a group of protesters, that means they're thinking of that group of people differently, you know, less deserving of that level of restraint because they're protesters, not Christmas shoppers, and they're not supposed to look at it that way.

So I don't want to relitigate every one of those issues because that was, in fact, literally litigated, as you're all aware, Seattle PD, the city, by which I mean me and my friends, had to pay out about $10 million to protesters on top of the $10 million that they spent defending the case before it was settled in mediation and they paid the money out.

So what I would ask you all to consider is Would you be okay with lifting the restrictions on SPD's lethal methods if each of you had to pay only 1% of any amount that SPD had to end up paying out as a settlement to processors as a result?

Because if you would be hesitant to do it, if the money would come out of your personal pocket, then you should ask yourself why you're okay with it if the costs are borne by someone else.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Kathy W. So I'd like to speak also on the use of the force that has happened.

And being a senior citizen, which I am, having a service dog, It's frightening sometimes to just be able to get out there and voice and support the causes that I feel necessary to support.

I did a lot of the marches and rallies, and there were a lot of times when I would just have to leave out of safety concerns.

And I think that it should be fair for everyone of every age, whether it be a nine-year-old that got shot in the face or a senior citizen such as myself, to not be in fear of being able to go out with a group of people and voice your opinion and support for our rights.

And that feels like it's being taken away if a lot of those reversals are to happen and lethal force is able to some of the things that I saw and witnessed, I would just have to turn around and leave.

And that's taken away my right to be able to peacefully protest.

Thank you.

Next up, we have James Passero.

To be followed by Rose King and then Johnny Peterson.

Either one works.

I'm not going to take up two minutes.

I just want to say I'm against this bill of allowing less lethal weapons that have already been banned.

And I think it will result in...

fatalities, injuries, and people getting maimed, as well as a fellow pointed out, it's going to cost everybody money when the city has to pay out legal settlements to people who have been harmed.

And even those people won't be whole, even with all that money being spent on them.

And yeah, I just think it's a big mistake.

For the people of Seattle, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Rose King.

Hi, I give public comment pretty often.

Usually I have like a script and today I'm like having, I'm like trying to just feel this.

I'm here to speak on the less lethal.

I wanted to wait till Joy was here because she's my council member.

But I guess I had three things.

I am curious, like, who is in support of this?

I'm kind of, I'm confused as to who benefits from this ban being lifted.

I don't know any people that are, I don't know any constituents that are, so I'm trying to like understand where it's coming from.

My second thing I wanted to say was to Joy.

And I just, the third thing is I just wanted to be here for support and solidarity and I'm feeling so much because like I can see like The people aren't coming anymore.

They don't think you're listening anymore.

And that's like, we want you to represent us.

It's hard when we feel like we can't talk to you and it doesn't make a difference.

I heard somebody at the back, like security dude saying like, yeah, you know, there might be three hours of public comment, but the vote's going to be 8-1.

And like the person who votes against was always going to vote against anyways.

So...

I don't know, I don't know why you guys have public comment kinda.

Like, I don't know what we're doing.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Johnny Peterson.

Good morning.

I'm here today to urge you to oppose the repeal of Ordinance 124622, which protects peaceful protesters and upholds our community's fundamental right to free speech.

During the 2020 racial justice protests, the Seattle Police Department violated the rights of thousands of protesters by using excessive force, including tear gas, pepper spray, and blast balls.

As you're aware, a federal judge ruled these actions unconstitutional and the city has already paid a $10 million settlement for injuries caused by SPD.

Removing these protections now will open more doors to violence, more lawsuits, and further erosion of trust in our police.

Repealing this ordinance also contradicts recommendations from the Community Police Commission and the Office Inspector General, both of which emphasize the importance of de-escalation and accountability in crowd control.

Instead, this repeal gives SPD broad discretion with the subjective definition of violent public disturbance, which history shows can lead to indiscriminate harm to peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders.

We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of 2020. Tear gas and other weapons pose serious health risks, disproportionately harm marginalized communities, and undermine public safety.

Furthermore, SPD's continued presence under a federal consent decree should compel us to strengthen, not weaken, oversight and accountability.

Seattle must remain a leader in protecting civil rights, not a cautionary tale.

Please do not undo this vital ordinance.

Please protect your community's right to protest safely and without fear.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes the in-person commenters.

We'll move to the remote commenters.

The first person is Howard Gale.

And then the second will be Maria Raducanu.

Please remember to press star six when you hear the prompt or you've been unmuted.

Go ahead, Howard.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Okay.

Good morning.

Howard Gale from District 7. This morning, you will be considering legislation to abolish protections for protesters against the harm and severe injury caused by the SPD's abuse of what are referred to as less lethal weapons.

The council voted in these protections unanimously in 2021 with not a single council member voting in opposition.

Four years later, this council wishes to abolish those protections, including the right of legal action in state court for people harmed by the SPD.

For over a quarter century, Seattle police have consistently and egregiously violated people's rights and severely harmed them with the use of these very weapons.

They did it in 1999 during WTO, continued to do so during the early 2000s at anti-globalization and anti-war protests, did so again during the Occupy Movement of 2011 and 12, repeated the abuses in 2014, 15, and 16 during Black Lives Matter and May Day demonstrations, and then again in 2020 during the George Floyd protests.

These abusive patterns are reflective of police culture and a lack of accountability and cannot be explained as something unusual or the result of a stressor.

Yet this council is now asking Seattleites to believe that instead of restrictions legislated in 2021, simply restating the rights codified in the U.S. and Washington state constitution, along with a bunch of aspirational statements, will somehow magically prevent Seattle police from repeating this long history of abuse.

This is a very dangerous gamble, especially in the context of the consent decree ending soon.

Council Central staff notes that this legislation relies on, quote, crowd management recommendations outlined in several best practices documents, most notably the 2022 paper from the Police Executive Research Forum.

However, that very paper states on page 34, quote, flashbangs and grenade-type devices should not be used in demonstrations.

Yet.

Despite this currently proposed legislation would, in fact, allow blast balls, a grenade-type device, to be used by the SPD.

And just last week, the SPD gave a presentation to the CPC claiming falsely that blast balls do not injure people.

This is bad legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Howard.

Next up is Maria Raducanu.

good morning can you hear me yes go ahead i strongly oppose the reintroduction of less lethal weapons in seattle the essential areas of focus training accountability and oversight have not been adequately addressed leaving significant risks of misuse and harm examples from the 2020 protests highlight the severity of this issue like protesters suffering devastating injuries like permanent blindness caused by rubber bullets chemicals and explosives despite recommendations to improve training and oversight SPD policies still fall short in crucial areas, trading in large-scale, high-pressure scenarios, accountability that has the power, urgency, and support to address issues, and oversight that defines subjective definitions.

As an artist, I am particularly alarmed by the potential for injuries that could compromise my ability to work.

Peaceful protesters exercising their constitutional rights should not face the risk of life-altering harm.

I ask the committee to genuinely prioritize public safety and uphold community trust by considering more effective methods of de-escalation and conflict resolution, like negotiations, before hastily reintroducing dangerous weapons.

Without substantial change, the cycle of injury and mistrust continues as we repeat the same mistakes.

Almost all protests since 2020 have been peaceful and encouraging less lethal, they can still kill.

Weapons have the risk of beginning more violence.

I urge the committee to consider ethical and empathetic solutions for the future of our freedom of speech.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Maria.

Next up, we have Alice Lockhart to be followed by Lila B.

I'm Alice Lockhart calling from Licton Springs, where in this morning's freezing weather, SPD and Parks and Rec swept our homeless neighbors.

I just happened to be walking my dog in the park at the time.

This is your policy.

You increased funding for potentially lethal sweeps in the 2025 budget.

So we know you are comfortable with risking deaths of our homeless neighbors.

Today, you'll consider returning SPD permission for so-called less lethal weapons.

Seattle paid millions of dollars in judgments and claims in 2020 when SPD fired on peaceful protesters.

I fear you are fine with taxpayers again footing those bills.

In 2020, when a woman's eye was severely injured by so-called less lethal weapons and a child was pepper sprayed, if those roles had been reversed, that child could have died.

I'm sorry.

So are you all fine with potentially causing the death of a child.

I fear that seven of you are and will vote for this legislation.

I hope I'm wrong, particularly given the dangers of a Trump presidency.

Now is not the time to curb free speech, and this legislation is designed to curb free speech.

That's all I got.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Lila B.

to be followed by Charlotte Kane Amaro.

Lila, please press star six when you're ready.

Hi, my name is Lila B.

in D4.

I'm calling regarding the so-called less lethal weapons you are trying to justify.

During the protests of 2020, so-called less-lethals filled people's homes with toxic gas banned by international law that is known to cause harm to reproductive health, maimed and almost killed people, including a woman who died three times before being successfully resuscitated after being hit by one of these blast grenades you are so eager to reimplement, and who could forget the image of the seven-year-old who was pepper-sprayed by SPD's Sergeant Moore?

OPA was contacted 19,000 times in 2020 about SPD misconduct at demonstrations, And still, you want to expand SPD's arsenal with these so-called less lethal weapons that actually can and will be lethal, which is already known to be true because we've seen it happen here by SPD specifically.

And as Councilmember Morales pointed out just three weeks ago, you yourselves partially defunded OPA over time.

So any assurances about accountability around these so-called less lethal rings especially hollow at this first Public Safety Committee after the budget vote.

And now that the jumpstart funds no longer have guardrails on how much the general fund can take out, I ask how much money that was meant to house people will instead be spent on these munitions.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Charlotte Kane Amaro.

To be followed by BJ Last.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Charlotte Amaral.

I'm an elected PCO in district three, and I make my home four minutes from the East precinct.

I'm speaking today in vehement opposition to council bill 120916. This bill would roll back police reforms enacted in response to the 2020 George Floyd protest.

The mayor says he believes SPD to have undergone policy shifts such that he believes they can be trusted with discretion needed to use these weapons.

I'm apprehensive to these assertions.

I hope that neither the committee nor council member Hollingsworth would forget that SPD's use of tear gas in 2020 was so heavy that it wafted into apartments up and down the hill, including areas far from the front lines, causing adverse health effects even to residents and minor children uninvolved in the protests along Pine.

Like others have said, this would open the city up to multi-million dollar lawsuits when the city is already up a creek financially.

How on earth is that good governance?

All while this council raised the jumpstart fund and refuses to entertain the use of progressive revenue.

I do not trust the words of SPD who swear up and down that there'll be good kids again, only to be caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

I urge the committee to reject this bill.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to welcome the people's council member, Alexis Franks, to her place on the dais.

The people of Seattle have your back, and we look forward to seeing you fight for the everyday Seattleite.

Thank you.

Next up, we have BJ Last to be followed by Jamie Hansmeyer.

I'm sorry, it doesn't look like we have BJ anymore.

Jamie Hansmeyer, you're up to be followed by Andrew Rines.

Hi, good morning.

As a resident of Capitol Hill, it's important to me that my neighbors and I are able to safely participate in nonviolent protests, an essential part of the democratic process.

In the summer of 2020, crowd control tactics used by police against protesters in Capitol Hill resulted in extensive injuries to protesters and bystanders.

Seer gas leaking into apartments turned my home into an inescapable, dangerous environment.

Future protests can and should happen as it is part of our First Amendment right, but the response by the city and law enforcement in 2020 was completely unacceptable with people's lack of trust in the Seattle Police Department, and any use of less lethal weapons could widen that gap of trust between the people and law enforcement.

The only way to build trust back is by demonstrating through actions that best practices are being followed to de-escalate situations and maintain the safety of protesters and bystanders.

If people are discouraged from participating in nonviolent protests for fear of state-sanctioned bodily harm, that is suppression of free speech.

Mass demonstrations are a crucial part of the democratic political process without which the foundation of democracy will crumble.

Please maintain the ban on less lethal weapons in crowd management settings.

Protect our right to free speech, keep our city safe, and set a good example for the rest of the country.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Andrew Rinds will be next, followed by Sam Patera.

Good morning.

I also want to speak today to strongly oppose lifting the ban on police usage of so-called less lethal weapons.

I really do think that doing so would be an enormous step back for the city.

I also think that it's important for us to remember why the ban was introduced in the first place as a response to the excessive usage of force against BLM protesters in 2020. And I want to just rattle up a few analytics to provide some insights.

The majority of the protests during 2020 were overwhelmingly peaceful.

I think that 94% of them were non-violent and non-destructive, yet police responded to about 51% of these demonstrations with physical force and less lethal weapons like tear gas and rubber bullets.

The excessive response to these protests often escalated them, furthering an already strained trust between the public and law enforcement.

These weapons are often framed as less harmful, but their widespread usage during 2020 showed otherwise.

About 15 or 16% of individuals injured by less lethal projectiles during these protests experienced permanent disabilities.

These injuries included things that were not just limited to the head, but also caused significant long-term physical impairments in other parts of the body.

I think that this really emphasizes the potential for less lethal weapons to cause life-altering harm, highlighting the risks of their use in crowd control settings, particularly against peaceful demonstrators.

On a positive note, I am genuinely proud of the work that Seattle has done to foster accountability and rebuild trust between law enforcement and the community, but lifting this ban would undermine that progress.

It would send a message to the city um that we are more concerned with control than with protecting its residents rights to assemble and speak freely we need to continue prioritizing de-escalation of respect and public trust over outdated and harmful tactics uh so once again i i urge you to uphold the ban and continue building a city that values justice and accountability thank you thank you for your time thank you next up we have sam patera to be followed by andre mattis

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, go ahead, Sam.

Sam, can you try again?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Thank you.

So, yeah, so I'm just going to say the same thing everyone else has said, but much better than how I can say it.

Um, yeah, police violence was the reason behind the 2020 protests in the beginning.

And, uh, the band, which has often been ignored against the use of the dangerous weapons that we're now trying to reintroduce for some reason, the proposed ordinance, why is in the face of everything you learned during that time?

And it's a direct attack on our first amendment, right?

During that time, police injured in some cases permanently, as we've heard, Many protestors, and people not even protesting, using excuses such as water bottles being thrown, mobility-impaired people were moving too slowly for the police, sidewalk chalk and stickers being used, got people beaten, using umbrellas to defend themselves against gas.

And we know from history that SPD cannot be trusted.

Use your strength.

and to protect the rights of protesters rather than assaulting them.

So, you know, as we've heard, multiple judges and court rulings have confirmed this, like the $10 million settlement.

Yeah, and then the consent decree that is in place to protect us from SBDs, irresponsible use of force.

And, you know, instead it's been drawn out and used as a tool to delay meaningful action.

And finally, culminating in this, opposed proposal ordinance to ultimately undo all the hard-won reforms from 2020. I mean, SPD already has an arsenal of weapons and tools at their disposal.

They're not going to have any problem if there's like huge rights that break out.

There's no reason whatsoever for this law.

It's merely an attempt to undo those reforms leading into, you know, potentially tumultuous times when Trump is going to be back in office.

The ban on these dangerous crime control weapons needs to be upheld.

Work on diverting spending to critically needed public services and housing needs to be continued and ramped way up if you actually want a safer city.

Otherwise, these are all just excuses and distractions.

Thank you, Sam.

Next up, we have Andre Mattis to be followed by Susan Moskwa.

Go ahead, Andre.

Good morning, members of the Public Safety Committee.

My name is Andre Mattis.

an ICU nurse who is just coming off of a 12-hour night shift to speak to you all today regarding Council Bill 120916. Four and a half years ago, I was a nursing assistant in the emergency department when Black Lives Matter protests sparked across the country.

Emboldened by John Lewis's spirit of good trouble, I took to the streets in blue scrubs and red duct tape crosses to offer my support as a protest medic.

The injuries and patients I treated because of SPD's sheer brutality against Black Lives Matter protesters still haunt me to this day.

Ocular damage from pepper spray and tear gas, ruptured eardrums from blast balls, sprains and breaks due to crowd-cattling techniques, and a literal cardiac arrest due to chest trauma.

It's impossible to forget the sound of people screaming for help as you yourself are desperately trying to fight the pepper spray in your own eyes.

quote-unquote less lethal is just SPD's way of saying, quote-unquote, just short of killing most people.

By bringing back supposedly less lethal weapons, you are arming the people meant to keep us safe with weapons they can use at their discretion on protesters fighting for their civil rights.

This should not and cannot be the standard to which we hold ourselves to.

If this ordinance passes, I promise you there won't be enough nurses to treat the Black, brown, queer, and other marginalized voices SPD is going to terrorize using these supposedly less lethal weapons.

Please do your job and keep us and our First Amendment rights safe by voting against Council Bill 120916. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Susan Moskwa to be followed by Aiden McCall.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, go ahead, Susan.

Hi, Susan Moskow, longtime District 1 resident.

Man, I am very moved by everyone's testimony this morning, and I hope you are all listening because we are not just, you know, like an advisory committee that you can kind of listen to us.

Like, we're literally your bosses.

It's your job to represent our interests, and we are speaking very clearly this morning against the idea of giving more leeway and judgment to Seattle PD to use violence against us.

If you are in favor of public safety, you should be against increased use of weapons against civilians.

Like literally trying to say that Seattle PD needs more ability to use violence against us in order to keep the peace is like straight out of 1984, right?

War is peace.

When we see it in media, When we hear, you know, we watch Hamilton the musical and the king says, I will find a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love.

Like it's clear that violence against civilians is wrong when we see it in media.

So are we going to be able to see that in our own, in our own city and our own decisions?

The people do not want Seattle police to use more weapons against us.

And I was really moved.

by the first remote commenter's testimony showing that, you know, we've all heard the statistics about how, what a terrible job and what terrible judgment they used in 2020, but this is a long history.

Year after year after year after year, incident after incident, social movement after social movement, Seattle PD is consistently showing bad judgment In using weapons against peaceful protesters, federal judges have clearly said this has a chilling effect against free speech.

It is not, you know, are we going to perpetuate the cycle of oh, sorry, yeah, you know, we did it poorly last time, but I swear this time is going to be better despite decades of evidence.

To the contrary, the people are speaking very clearly.

Please listen to our voice.

Thank you, thank you next up is aiden mccall to be followed by Karen Taylor.

Good morning public safety committee, my name is aiden mccall and i'm a student who attends university in Capitol hill district three.

I'm speaking to oppose Council Bill 120916. As we've seen today, giving SPD permission to use less lethal weapons to deter protests is not well informed by history or public opinion.

2020 and also previous decades are long past, but the lessons that we learned that summer should stick around.

15,000 complaints were lodged against SPD, probably even 19,000 during the summer 2020 period over their usage of less lethal weapons.

While the judge responsible for SPD's consent decree acknowledges there's been progress, I personally do not feel reassured that these weapons could be on the table again when they've caused such harm in the past.

What I do feel is that this is a step backwards.

This change does not uphold the Office of the Investor General and the Community Policing Commission's recommendations from 2020. Nor does it align with the research conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum, a group that encompasses the opinions of civil rights organizations like the ACLU, academic professionals, and even police departments around the country.

All of that considered, please oppose Council Bill 120916. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Aiden.

Next up, we have Karen Taylor to be followed by Michael Malini.

Hi, my name is Karen Taylor.

I'm calling in today to oppose lifting the ban on so-called less lethal weapons.

I'd like to echo a former commenter who was talking about how we've totally given up on giving comment at city council.

I personally have talked to over 30 people about this issue and told them about this council meeting and to a person they said, I oppose.

this lifting the ban on less lethal weapons, but this council is so corrupt.

I just don't believe they listen.

They're going to make the decision they're going to make.

They're not going to listen to the people.

But I feel it's my civic duty to come here and say that if the police are so reformed, why do they need these weapons?

If they have such great crowd control techniques and they're so calm now and they're so good at de-escalation, why don't they just do that?

We can't have the city paying out these massive amounts and injuring our young people who are just gathering to protest.

I have no faith that you'll listen to us, but I had to come and not obey in advance and tell you my thoughts.

Thank you.

I see the rest of my time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Michael Molini to be followed by David Haynes.

And then our last remote speaker will be Sean Issam.

Hello, my name is Michael Molini.

I'm a resident in District 3 and I'm also calling to oppose the potential repeal of these weapons.

During the 2020 demonstrations, I lived several blocks from Cal Anderson Park and leaving my windows open on a nice spring evening, my apartment was flooded with tear gas and I was forced to evacuate, which again, as a reminder, was during a global pandemic.

If the Council and mayor are so worried about a potential uptick and demonstration, the incoming Trump administration, rather than bringing back these harmful weapons that are used against their own citizens.

They should be exploring policies that will support the marginalized populations who may be losing our rights in the coming years and healing the need to demonstrate rather than aligning themselves with the violent tactics and rhetoric.

Calls of the Trump administration.

Thank you.

Thank you.

David Haynes is next, to be followed by Sean Issam.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

Public safety has not improved because City Hall and the police chief are still exempting criminals from jail, allowing rival drug pushers to escalate violence, while blaming guns for why evil keeps getting a pass by ill-trained, unwilling police chief.

more concerned about getting the remainder of the federal consent decree approved regarding how cops respond to protesters.

That's the most pressing issue for the police chief and the only reason that she was hired interimly.

Yet we know the Find It Fix It app is used to bypass 911 calls to combat homeless people.

In addition, the police leadership have given out these non-emergency phone numbers to people like my boss, for certain businesses to bypass the 911 call and get a crime fighting cop to silence workers, exercising their free speech rights, holding a sign that says back pay still owed, homeless in Seattle, boycott such and such company, like boycott Clipper Seafoods.

And yet, and all I was doing was like asking for money that I'm still owed.

Yet the criminal crime fighting cop automatically sided with the corrupt business and threw me in jail.

And this George Soros-sponsored judge who exempts repeat offending drug purchase from jail throws the book at me.

It's not fair that we have a misinterpretation of police reform that prioritizes virtue signaling about gender-based and skin color priority hirings while not making laws to combat real crime.

And it's offensive and revolting that Bruce Harrell and Tim Burgess were both on the city council when they agreed to exempt low-level drug pushers from jail and sabotage police reform.

And now they're in charge, still running interference for repeat offenders and undermining society.

They should be purged from the city hall or we should boycott Seattle's fight book.

Thank you, David.

Our last public speak commenter is Sean Isom.

Hello, my name is Sean Isom.

Uh, I am here today to talk about the repeal of less lethal ban.

The broad discretion that this allows SPD is more access and tools cause harm against civilians.

Your citizens, you live here.

You are one of these people.

I wish I was there in person to ask you and look at you council members in the eye.

least a few of you who decided to show up.

However, I first found about this last night.

And as you mentioned earlier, uh, this is not a rather public forum, so it almost slipped my notice, but, uh, Rob Saka, I live in West Seattle.

You were my representative.

Rob, have you ever been hit with one of these devices?

Have you ever broken a bone?

Have you ever had a bone shattered by a rubber bullet?

By the way, rubber bullets are a misnomer.

They're most often just a rubber coated metal bullet.

Have you ever had someone that you thought was supposed to take care of you, look you in the eye and permanently maim you for speaking your mind?

From the police executive research firm, Guide to Mass Demonstrations, quote, it is important that any law enforcement response to mass gathering is measured and proportionate and take steps to avoid even inadvertently heightening tensions and making the situation worse, end quote.

You are responsible for the health, safety, and well-being of the citizens of this city.

What you are prioritizing now is providing harmful tools to a group that has a long history of abuse of your citizens.

I yield the remainder of my time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes all of our public commenters.

All right, thank you very much for all the public commenters to include those here with us today.

And as I stated earlier, you know, public comments, can be helpful in terms of amendments and different ideas that our colleagues have in terms of potentially adjusting, amending any legislation that's before us.

So our public comment is completed.

We'll now proceed to our items of business.

Members of the public are encouraged to either submit written public comment on this here to the council or email the council at council at seattle.gov.

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

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

30 by 30 report presentation with Dr. Lois James, Lieutenant Gretchen Hughes, and Kerry Keith.

Good morning.

I want to welcome Dr. James.

I really appreciate you joining us today.

So please come up.

Also, thank you for your report dated 8 November 2024. and your briefing, which you'll go over.

I also want to welcome Lieutenant Hughes and Ms. Keefe, also from the Seattle Police Department.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us this morning.

Over to you, Ms. Keefe.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

We'd like to thank the Council for taking this opportunity to hear from us an update on the 30 by 30 initiative that has been underway at SPD.

As you mentioned, with me is Dr. Lois James from Washington State University and Lieutenant Hughes from Seattle Police Department.

Thank you.

Can I also add, we also have Council Member Rivera joining us.

Yes.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier, but we also, so please go ahead.

My name is Carrie Keefe.

I'm the Director of Program Development at Seattle Police Department, and I've been very involved in the 30 by 30 project.

So if you could go to the next slide, please.

We are going to be presenting a brief overview of phase one and phase two of the 30 by 30 project, and then go into phase three, which is why Dr. James is present here regarding the report.

as well as Lieutenant Hughes with regard to some of the hiring that is underway and additional information on our training and recruitment and childcare efforts.

Next slide, please.

So I'd like to remind the committee that last May, Dr. Tanya Meisenholder, who is the director of the 30 by 30 initiative at the New York NYU Law School Policing Project, came before council to testify about the efforts that SPD has been undertaking as part of one of the original signatories of the 30 by 30 project.

And basically, what is 30 by 30?

It's a grassroots coalition of researchers, police leaders, professional organizations aimed at increasing the number of women in all police recruit classes by 30 percent by the year 2030. And research shows that when you get that level of women within a department, then cultural change can really take root.

But as Dr. Meisenholder advised the council last May, 30 by 30 is not a quota.

It's aspirational.

And really what the end goal of the 30 by 30 initiative is to increase the representation of women throughout policing.

Next slide, please.

So why 30 by 30?

Women currently comprise 13%, and this is national statistic, of the sworn officers.

Among leadership rank, women represent only 3%.

Yet decades of research shows that women often produce better outcomes.

safety outcomes in many of the areas that we care about.

And what are those areas?

Women have fewer complaints lodged against them.

The use of force is used less often.

And better outcomes are realized with women officers and crime victims, and especially victims of sexual assault.

So that's why it is important to increase that representation of women within the policing profession.

Next slide, please.

As I mentioned, March 25th, 2021 was when Seattle signed on to the 30 by 30 project.

And Seattle as an organization realized the benefit and the value of this initiative and was one of the early signers, signators of it.

The phase one, which was the original initial phase, was the quantitative survey.

And SPD complied with all of the initiatives requirements of phase one and the immediate action, which included strategic priorities around gender diversity in hiring, retention, and promotion, a zero-tolerance EEO practice, and increasing nursing accommodations for returning mothers, which included private, sanitary nursing spaces, refrigeration, you know, something more than just the closet that many of us in earlier days had to, you know, take advantage of.

So it's recognizing making the workplace more accommodating for the needs of its workers and appropriate equipment.

So realizing that women's uniforms fit differently than men, so you can't have a one size fits all.

So it's really adjusting to the workforce to make it more accommodating and more welcoming for women.

Next slide.

So third, SPD's commitment and phase two, the qualitative assessment report of 2023. And that was conducted by Dr. James.

This was initiated by SPD.

It wasn't a requirement of the 30 by 30 project initiative.

This is something that SPD voluntarily undertook to get a better handle on what was really the sentiment of the workers within SPD.

And in that regard, Dr. James conducted focus groups over a time period of August 7 through 9, 2023, with workers.

female workers at SPD, both sworn and civilian.

And there were emerging themes that came from that focus group, or those focus groups, which included the push-pull.

You know, what is happening within the workforce that's pushing women out, and what is happening externally that's pulling women from the workforce.

And from that, the themes that emerged were the masculine culture and expectation for women, Sometimes there's a double standard, and that's something that I think women in the workforce, regardless of even policing, have experienced.

There's generational distinctions that were going on.

The pregnancy and child care issue, which is obvious when you have a workforce of childbearing ages, that they have these competing interests that are taking place.

And then promotion and leadership opportunities.

as well as exclusion and pigeonholing.

So those were the underlying themes of the focus groups that Dr. James conducted.

And the key recommendations, you know, awareness, have a culture of respect, department childcare options, that is something that I really want to give a shout out to both Council Member Moore and Council Member Rivera of showing an early interest in supporting SPD in this effort and attending one of our meetings to really get down into the weeds on what those issues are.

So I really appreciate your interest and efforts in that regard.

And mentorship for women.

You know, you need to have those built-in mentors that are championing you throughout a career.

And I think all of us have found our mentors, but this is more acutely needed in women in policing.

Next slide, please.

So that leads us to phase three and the commitments of phase three.

So SPD formulated the internal 30 by 30 working group.

And that is a cross department, both civilian and sworn, It's all welcoming, and this working group meets every other week and has done so since last spring in identifying the issues that are most needed and how to put in an action plan to achieve those goals.

The building, the mission, indicated it's building off of the phase two report and to advance and implement the measures to mitigate the documented external challenges and to develop an internal culture that keeps women and supports women within that workplace.

In that regard, the training and mentoring What steps we've taken so far is the mentoring program has been reestablished for recruits and student officers.

And we're building up the mentorship opportunities for in-service employees of all ranks.

So that's a two-track, both with the newer recruits, but also the employees that are already present in the department.

The women-only defensive tactic training that is on the training books for training in 2025. This arose out of information shared by women that the defensive training tactics, when It's both gendered with men.

Sometimes, you know, we'd inhibit women from really participating fully within those defensive training tactics or, you know, make it a little, make it less comfortable for women to be able to fully explore their defensive training.

So hearing that, SPD has put into place a women-only defensive training tactics for this next training period.

And then trust.

centered leadership, and I just want to take a brief moment on addressing what trust-centered leadership is. a program that's immersive, comprehensive course crafted to equip law enforcement leaders with the skill and knowledge needed to lead effectively.

And this is a very comprehensive program.

It goes over about three months.

It's both online, interactive.

There's cohorts of 24 members within a cohort.

And the key topics of this curriculum includes emotional intelligence, effective communication, and cultivating a healthy culture.

So it's a comprehensive type of training.

It's a leadership-focused training from all ranks, from sergeant to assistant chief, as well as civilian leaders.

It's grounded in two core principles, promoting lifelong commitment to learning and ensuring leadership training is practical and immediately actionable.

To date, 24 people have completed that training.

And what is planned for 2025 is nine additional cohort trainings so that by the end of 2025, there will be 240 leaders within SPD that have been trained in this transformational training program, which is trust-centered leadership.

I will then, I'm gonna be coming back at the end, but right now I'm gonna have Dr. James talk about the Imperial Assessment Gender Disparity and Promotion, and if you could go to the next slide.

In the interest of transparency, SPD has on this slide the link, the GitHub link, which has the report, technical appendix, and Python code.

So with that, Dr. James will be addressing this phase three report.

Thank you, and welcome again, Dr. James.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Can I get the next slide, please?

Yes.

Can you pull the mic a little bit closer to you?

Absolutely.

Is that OK?

Excellent.

Thank you.

Super.

So in brief, the quantitative analysis that we did, the methodology was propensity score weighting, which is a technique used when you see disparity in numbers, for example, men and women employed in an organization.

And it uses a lot of variables to kind of balance out some of those differences to get a truer estimate of any disparity that might occur.

We looked at promotions over the prior nine years from when the data was accessed.

And within that sample, there were 2015 current and former employees during that study period.

The data itself included 10 control variables, so any variables that possibly influence promotions.

And then we also had four target variables, and those were the number of promotions received per person, the highest rank achieved per person, the total gross earnings, and then complaints received per person as well.

And the major research questions were whether target variables were significantly different between men and women for each of those four variables.

Next slide, please.

Several findings emerged from this analysis and were written up in the subsequent report.

The first one was that the number of promotions received between men and women across the study period was not significantly different.

So both men and women in the sample were promoted an average of two times across the nine-year period.

The second major finding that was discovered was that the highest rank achieved was also not significantly different between men and women across the study period.

And that average rank for both was police officer detective.

The third finding was that although women did receive fewer complaints than men on average, the difference was not statistically significant.

And then the final finding was there was a disparity, a significant disparity in gross income received between men and women across the study period.

And when that was adjusted for hours worked, this resulted in a 3.7 disparity in earnings across the study period.

Next slide, please.

There are various caveats and discussion points that I would like to mention.

It is, of course, encouraging that women received an approximate equivalent number of promotions and rose to approximately equivalent ranks.

But I do think it's very important to note that this does not necessarily represent a lack of gender bias, especially when we look at the disparity in total dollar earnings.

whether women had more challenge or more difficulty in receiving those promotions is not something that can be assessed from a statistical analysis.

beyond the scope of this particular study.

We also found, of course, with the disparate pay earning, that adjusting for hours work did not completely eradicate this difference between salary.

So what is likely going on here is difference in overtime in terms of opportunities.

We've seen a lot in this type of work about the notion of a kid tax and differences between men and women in terms of the opportunities that they can go for based on childcare and other family-based obligations.

It's also possible that men were potentially receiving overtime opportunities that were a bit more lucrative based on type of overtime and task.

Again, a little bit beyond the scope of a statistical analysis, and end of the day, additional research is likely required.

Thank you.

So with that, I'd like to have Lieutenant Hughes talk about the recruitment efforts and outreach efforts that SPD has been undertaking.

Lieutenant Hughes.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

All right, thank you for the invitation to share recruiting highlights and upcoming strategies.

The recruiting team continues to attend.

A little bit higher, a little bit closer.

All right, let's see.

How's that?

You got it there?

All right, perfect.

Continues to attend events to facilitate outreach to female candidates.

A sampling of some of the events is posted in the PowerPoint here.

It ranges from trade fairs to public safety hiring events, colleges, universities, trade schools, community events, and local advisory boards, and military bases.

The team has also been refining the work we do most successfully in the area of in-person workshops.

The workshops facilitate a personal interaction with potential candidates and support a high-touch recruiting model which has been shown essential for today's candidates.

The workshops have also been very well received.

They allow the team to make long-term connections with potential candidates, which we are able to revisit.

And we have seen an increased attendance at each successive event.

One of our workshops boasted nearly 50% women attendees, and another workshop boasted over 100 total attendees.

And the workshops feature keynote speakers like Chief Rahr.

Also have featured department specialty units.

Certainly in the audience for the viewing public, I should add.

I wasn't going to bring that up.

It's also featured a department's specialty units like K-9, Harbor, the EMT program, Bomb Squad, to allow candidates to understand what the career opportunities are available with the department.

We've also offered ride-alongs during those events so people can have an in-person, up close and personal observation of the work that we do.

The testing team attends those, as does recruiting and backgrounds, and in the very last event, they were able to actually conduct the physical agility test so people could come and sample what that looked like, as well as people who were currently in the testing process who needed to complete that part of the testing.

The team now administers the Skill Bridge program, which is a program that provides active duty service members a direct route to becoming a Seattle police officer.

The program was launched here for our department in the summer.

It's just picking up speed, and we have 5% of the applicants that are, 5% of the applicants so far are females.

Excuse me, I need a little bit of water.

Thank you.

In support of candidate success, the recruiting team conducts monthly virtual workshops.

We share resources with test taking hints and tips.

We also share a training app to allow for physical agility readiness.

And we also offer one-on-one coaching for that physical agility test.

And in late September, it's not on this, I guess we can move ahead to the next slide.

In late September, SPD welcomed Julie Antefave.

She's our new police recruiting manager.

She has a wealth of subject matter expertise and acumen to refine and build new processes.

And she's been full speed ahead on assessing current practices.

and building frameworks for new methods with priority projects such as candidate sourcing through LinkedIn and expanded in-person presentations so we can circle back and connect with Council Member Hollingsworth and some college athletes.

So we're looking forward to that.

And later this week, Julie will be part of a panel for hiring of a new recruiter so we can build our team a little bit more.

It's a small team, mighty team, but we need all the assistance we can get.

Moving on to advertising, in 2025, there is a planned transition from the current marketing team to a team that specializes in police marketing.

They'll be able to showcase the department with fresh branding, marketing photos and videos, and a new jobs website.

The potential firms we've been exploring have some pretty amazing statistics demonstrating how they've been able to increase female candidates and candidates that are diverse in nature.

And lastly, but not least...

The Public Affairs Unit has produced a series of videos celebrating women on the Seattle Police Department in their unique roles and assignments throughout the department.

And those select videos are now posted on the seattlepolicejobs.com website, the National Testing Network website, which is the testing team that the department uses, or testing platform the department uses, and on social media as well.

Thank you.

All right.

Next slide, please.

So recruitment is obviously very critical in building up the department.

But even more critical is retention, because to have a healthy and sustainable workforce, we need to be retaining the officers that we have.

And with regard to building out our retention, SPD continues to support the Women's Law Enforcement Summit, sending representatives from SPD to that national summit.

We are exploring a new parents focus group to get additional information, not only just the childcare aspect, but what other needs are the new parents experiencing that impacts their ability to remain at SPD.

We continue to review departmental practices and civil service structure that impact equity in interdepartment mobility.

So specialty assignments, promotional opportunities for both sworn and non-sworn.

And I think that's touched upon in what the work that Dr. James was looking at.

what is happening with that interdepartmental movement within SPD.

We are developing affinity groups, so both departments sponsored and independent, we're supporting the independent groups also.

And the affinity groups are really important to provide a, whether it's based on cultural association, racial association, interests, to build that natural mentor group mentorship group and supportive environment for Groups within SPD and that's actively going on under the leadership of assistant chief Tyrone Davis We're exploring opportunities for alternative work schedules and that is really dependent on staffing improving because when you're working on with such a lower staffing level that SPD, it really kind of ties your hands in being able to implement some of these other workplace scheduling that will have a positive impact on flexibility that's needed, that's been highlighted in the reports by Dr. James.

And then the childcare, next.

Slide, please.

SPD is in the, well, we completed our internal survey of employees' interests, because this is an employee-driven, we wanna find out what the needs are, not, dictate what we believe the needs are, but find out from the employees where are those needs.

And a significant percentage of respondents have children or are likely to have children in the next three to five years, which demonstrates that the need is very acute.

A significant percentage is interested in child care, especially during major events and mandatory overtime, which a number of the SPD officers are having to do with the staffing situation as it is.

We're finalizing our contract with the consultant to develop childcare solutions for SPD officers to build support for SPD's workforce.

This report will likely be ready in Q2 of 2025 and will include options for existing childcare capacity and hours of availability, opportunities for exempt and licensed care, costs and timelines of solutions, and analysis of the legal liability and risks.

And as I'm sure council members are aware, there's a unique challenge when it's shift work, because traditional childcare is, for any of you who have children or experienced it, generally from 6 or 7 a.m.

till 6 p.m.

at night.

But when you have shift workers that are working all throughout the night, that makes it even more challenging.

And those needs are recognized, and that's what we are really focusing on.

Next slide.

All right.

We're at the end of our presentation.

Are there any questions?

Well, thank you so much for all of you.

And I appreciate the ability just to walk through, because you designed the briefing in a certain way.

So there's kind of like the contrast, having questions all the time versus allowing the briefing.

I think it was good to have the sequencing.

And I'm sure my colleagues will have questions.

And I almost forgot because it's been so long since we had a committee meeting, but I always start with the Vice Chair, Vice Chair Saka.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And I appreciate the presentation here.

I do have a couple quick questions, but I would first like to yield the opportunity to the rest of our colleagues here.

Okay, so...

Other colleagues to include our Council Member Rivera, Council Member Rank.

Any questions?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

really appreciate always getting to sit on this committee, even though I'm not an official committee member.

And I really want to thank SPD for all their work on their 30 by 30 efforts.

And I very much appreciate that interim chief Rahr is also very supportive of this effort.

I also appreciated being able to sit in and listen to officers and other staff, including admin staff at SPD, who provide an invaluable service, as do the officers.

And also, we want to promote women at the admin level, too, because it's all, Mayor Hero likes to say it's one Seattle, it's one SPD, and every person at SPD adds value from the officers to the admin staff.

So I know that there's a lot of women on the admin side who also are experiencing, you know, have needs and we want to be able to retain folks.

I will say I very much appreciate in terms of the child care piece.

You know, and beyond child care, there are other things, and I was glad to see on here as possible what I call low-hanging fruit, being able to provide a parent, a mother, with a place to pump so they can, you know, feed their babies when they go home.

is really important.

And I will say as a mother who's had babies in the last 20 years, when I worked for a government agency where I didn't have that benefit, and the best they could do is provide me a bathroom where I could pump, which if you are a mother trying to pump, that is a very stressful environment that is not conducive to being able to produce milk for your child And, you know, I have to say what was especially disappointing about my experience is that my supervisor and the head of the department were both women and mothers.

So we as women need to do better for other women, and this is also why I'm especially interested in this.

I want to make sure that young mothers have better than I had when I was a young mother.

So I very much appreciate the efforts not just with the child care piece, which is really important, but with some other pieces that I think we should be able to do that if we're not.

It's surprising in 2024, almost 2025, that we're not providing those easy, what I call easy pieces for new mothers and parents in general.

because, you know, children have moms that are trying to provide milk and they have fathers who want to support their wives, mothers who are trying to provide for their children.

So it impacts everybody.

I'm very happy to hear, like I said, about the low-hanging fruit and the other pieces that I find that we can find to support that are easy in that regard.

I really would love to find those opportunities and would want to, more about that I know there are other pieces like the child care piece that are more challenging and full disclosure I know that a number of years ago this this has been an ongoing conversation across the city and I know that a number of years ago there was some exploration on can we start a child care center here at City Hall there was not space for it but I'm glad to see that we continue to have this conversation because it is a really critical one So, this was more a chair comment, more so than a question, but I really want to commend the staff at SPD for all that you are doing and the partnerships that you are managing in support of women at SPD.

It's very much necessary.

We need women all across all entities and all professions, and including Police officers and like I said other other staff positions at SPD So thank you for your efforts.

I look forward to the continuing partnership and would welcome Joining any future meetings and please let me know how I can be of In particular support to the current efforts underway.

Thank you Thank You councilmember Rivera councilmember Hollingsworth

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Appreciate it.

I want to thank Ms. Keefe, Dr. James, and Lieutenant Hughes for your presentation today.

Really in-depth and created a really good context.

And it's also good to see the active work that you all are doing.

I know you all are doing a lot, so I really appreciate that.

I have a quick comment and then I'll ask my question.

I can't begin to tell you how important it was.

I was working at an after school program with a bunch of girls, like 20 inner city girls, and we used to have, invite like Detective Cookie or the former police chief, Bess, to come in to speak to the girls.

And for them to see someone who looked like them in a uniform or just in this profession, how important it was for them to see someone who looked like them and could just have regular conversations and talk and just how inspiring it was.

And so that's something that I know that you can't really quantify or, like, capture percentage-wise.

But I just wanted to put out there how much of an impact, just for kids, the...

exposure to certain things that, you know, they see certain images on the screen, but to, like, have a real-life person just to be able to touch and talk to, like, just incredible.

So I love to see that you all are out in the community, and thank you, Lieutenant Hughes, for the comment.

I know I owe you all something for the sports thing.

I know you're putting me on blast, so thank you for that.

You kindly did.

The question I had was regarding...

Is there a department in the country that has increased their number of female officers that you all are looking towards?

Like, hey, they have done it really well, and there's some things that we can take from.

Some examples across the country, potentially.

Yes.

The departments are tracked by the 30 by 30 project.

The website, if you haven't been able to go onto it, it's the NYU Law School Policing Project.

If you Google 30 by 30, it's a really comprehensive website with learning tools, links to other departments, best practices.

I believe Minnesota, is it Minneapolis?

One of the departments has 30%.

And some of it is dependent on the size of the department.

30% of a very small department is maybe two women versus a large city department.

So that's why that whole 30 by 30 It's catchy, and it captures the sentiment, but it's not a quota.

But yes, we are looking actively.

Last week at our meeting, last week, our twice-a-month meeting, Dr. Meisenholder participated remotely in the meeting and talked about what they're doing nationally and some of the different...

you know, helpful tips or just initiatives that are taking place.

So the dialogue is ongoing and yeah, we are learning some of the best practices from other departments too.

Awesome.

That's good to know.

And I also want to thank, I know Chief Juarez here, you've been phenomenal just in the community.

I've just gotten really great feedback and just wanted to thank you as well.

You've been great representation of the department.

And I know a lot of people in the community really think highly of you.

So thank you.

That's all I had, Mr. Chair, and I will throw it back to you, sir.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

I don't see any other hands up.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

I, too, wanted to echo the comments of my colleagues in thanking everyone who's here today for your presentation and for the incredible work that you've done and to Chief Rahr for your commitment to this and to Rebecca Boatwright.

And really, and to the chair for bringing forth this presentation today and taking this seriously and making sure that the work, we are kept apprised of the work that's being done.

And I think this presentation shows to the public that we believe this effort is important and worthwhile.

and serious, and then our support is behind it 100%.

So thank you for what you've presented.

I think it's very thoughtful.

It seems that this is a sort of organically driven, and I know there was some nervousness about whether that was going to work, but it seems to be working very well.

But I also want to do a shout out to my colleague, Council Member Salka for his moving in the budget to have money for an FTE to kind of provide some additional support.

I think that that's important.

We don't want to manage it, but we want to be allies and supportive in that.

So thank you, Council Member Salka, for that.

And again, as Council Member Rivera has said, in the extent that we can be helpful, move things forward, have additional conversations, please reach out to my office.

And again, amazing work that you're doing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Vice Chair Saka.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And I, too, plus one, want to thank you all for the excellent work you all do on this really important strategic initiative for the department and the broader city.

It is highly impactful, and this work matters, and it produces direct immediate results today and has the potential to yield even more results IMPACTFUL RESULTS TOMORROW.

SO THANK YOU.

THIS IS A GREAT PRESENTATION.

TWO QUESTIONS, BUT FIRST OFF, I WANT TO JUST COMMENT ON WHAT COUNCILMEMBER MOORE SAID.

THANK YOU.

I APPRECIATE YOUR ACKNOWLEDGMENT ON THAT.

YOU AND I BOTH, I GUESS, CO-CHAMPION THAT EFFORT TOGETHER, BUT ALL OF US IN THE BUDGET, THAT WAS INCLUDED IN THE CHAIR'S BALANCING PACKAGE.

It's a great reflection on this entire council, not just me or you.

And I also recognize that this work preceded my tenure here and will live on past my tenure, hopefully.

And there's been a lot of great work to date.

And through the leadership of my colleagues here, Councilmember Moore shout out to her other Amendments in the recent budget to for I think it was a child care consultant to again better amplify and uplift this work So there's any number of things that we can and will continue to do on the council to do exactly that amplify and uplift this work and and At the end of the day, that is my primary goal.

At the end of the day, ultimately this involves culture change.

And that is something that we need great leaders within the department to help drive and carry forward and make truly meaningful progress.

And so that's why I also want to thank the leadership of Chief Rohrer for helping to do that, a known leader in this space.

Other quick comment.

Council Member Hollingsworth, you had an excellent question.

You know I, too, care deeply about benchmarking and understanding performance across other comparable jurisdictions and, you know, gleaning best practices.

I ask that same exact question to Ann Gorman.

And when she was our central staff expert, when she was with us at the time, and that's what I just heard was consistent with what I recall from earlier this summer.

Minneapolis is one of the model jurisdictions, and I believe there's a jurisdiction in Southern California somewhere offhand, maybe San Diego that has produced great initial results in this area.

But it's a great question.

So, two questions, I guess.

First, for the department, as you know, recently there was a really cool organization that launched this summer, the Seattle Police Women's Alliance.

And it was launched by a group of amazing leaders in policing across the city and region.

including a constituent of mine, Heidi Tuttle, who is in her day job as a lieutenant within SPD, and I think, as I understand, is also the board president, founding member of this great new alliance organization, and had the pleasure of joining this organization, the launch event earlier this summer.

I think I see many familiar faces, including the chief.

Great, great event.

And you mentioned in some of the report out here today that you've been engaging with various affinity groups.

Can you talk a little bit more about that, that work and that level of engagement, I guess, particularly with respect to the Seattle Police Women's Alliance?

I know it's fairly new, but what kind of engagement do you all have with them so far?

Right.

Thank you for the question.

We are, um, I think the, and the slide deck, the new parent forum is going to be in coordination with the Seattle or the Seattle police women's Alliance.

And that will be, uh, coordinated with 30 by 30. We are open to collaboration.

We are seeking to, um, coordinate any of the efforts that the Women's Alliance is going to be undertaking, including mentorship or any other initiative, so that we're all rowing in the same direction.

Because, you know, power of multiple people rowing in the same direction is a powerful thing.

So that's where we are with the women's alliance.

Um, we're also supporting women going to the national summit.

Um, and many of those are, uh, Seattle police women alliance members.

So it is, it is a new organization and as much as we can coordinate our efforts, that's what our interest is doing.

We have the women's alliance members on our board on the 30 by 30 initiative.

Um, both Lieutenant Hughes and Detective Beth Waring.

And we seek additional membership, I mean, additional representation from the Women's Alliance on the 30 by 30 initiative.

That's great.

Thank you so much.

And my second and final question, this one is for Dr. James.

And so to preface, Just being involved in various employee affinity groups at various organizations and prior employment in companies that I've worked with and for in the past, like being involved in women's affinity group, for example, at other organizations.

One thing that I learned as a sort of male ally, if you will, is that, and I think this addresses the the child tax that you noted in the earlier presentation, but one thing that men can do to be better allies in this space is to talk more openly about our respective childcare obligations and responsibilities.

And so, and basically to normalize that like people, all people, Can't have families and children and also corresponding duties associated with that to look after and properly care.

I aspire to be the best ally I can be in every space, but I can never...

We heard a moment ago from my colleague, Councilmember Rivera, talking about the struggles with pumping, and I can never understand what that is like, but I can...

And I do talk about the impact and the import of the pleasures and sometimes the challenges associated with being a parent.

And so, for example, I regularly...

I've been late to a few of these meetings.

And I excuse myself by saying, sorry, new child care structure routine, which is usually the case.

And so I just openly...

try and find opportunities publicly and behind the scenes to talk about.

And I'm proud of being a parent.

But I would just be curious, Dr. James, I don't know if this is within your direct set of experience or expertise here, but culture change is something that it really takes all of us.

And...

You know, we, like, women-led affinity groups, leadership, everyone setting an example, but you also need allyship, too.

And so, just curious, from your perspective, if there's any best practices that...

In my way, I think the same...

Any comments you may say probably have universal applicability across industries, not just historically under or workforce organizations like policing that are historically underserved by women.

But are there any best practices for men that men can employ or non-binary individuals can employ to better show up in the space and be better allies to advance this kind of initiative?

Yeah, great, great question.

And I think it's really important.

And you already noted that this is a problem, obviously, that goes a long way beyond policing.

Policing is a historically male profession.

So oftentimes, the challenges show up more in those types of industries.

But this is a fairly universal phenomenon in terms of the majority of child care and the majority family obligations falling to women.

We see that across industries.

From an ally perspective, I think one thing that's really, really important structurally is obviously to invite this type of investigation.

And that's where I think Seattle Police Department is, to an extent, one of the leaders in this space as one of the agencies that did invite this type of audit, which is a great thing to initiate.

So part of it is actually understanding the nature of the problem and kind of investigating, okay, what are the specific issues that women are raising so that men know what they can do to help?

Because oftentimes these aren't things that are...

deliberately or maliciously perpetuated, right?

As you say, there's a culture, and culture takes an awfully long time to change.

Representation will help, but it's not enough.

It's not enough just to increase the numbers of women.

It's about...

making sure that those conversations around inclusivity really occur.

So I think from the ally perspective, that is one of the most important things, is just being open-minded.

Understanding because you don't necessarily have personal experience with something doesn't mean that it's less salient or less real.

right so um that's an important one and then um you know a lot of this kind of goes back to mentorship as well we know from from you know our understanding of implicit bias that we tend to subconsciously favor those who are like us we tend to reach out and mentor those who are like us and that can go across gender lines as well so again being very mindful and aware and understanding how how humans operate is important for starting to kind of dismantle some of those pieces and really making sure from an ally perspective that those mentorship opportunities are extended across gender boundaries.

That's my best answer.

I'm sure there's many, many more elements, but we'll start with that.

Oh, thank you.

Very helpful and insightful.

So no further questions, Mr. Chair.

All right.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I do have a question.

On the child care piece, Ms. Keefe, so this report is due out second quarter of 2025. And so I'm wondering along the lines of Council Member Saka and Council Member Hollingsworth's question, is there a police department across the country that is currently doing this child care piece?

that will be part of what the consultant will be looking at, just as a preview, if you will?

Right, yes.

In the lead up to retaining Imagine Institute, which is, we're finalizing that contract, San Diego, where Councilmember Saka mentioned San Diego, that is where they have a childcare provided.

There are those limitations, though, as far as the timing for the shift work.

So it's unique, and that's why the scope of work covers multiple different investigations into what works.

And it could be a hybrid situation where there's, you know, some type of voucher system or some in-home daycare, you know, seed to build up independent businesses in addition to, potentially some type of city facility.

It's not unique.

The shift work to SPD, I think City Light probably has shift workers too that are women that are family members.

And for child care, it isn't just women.

It's a family issue.

And so, you know, there are parents of both sexes that need child care.

So I think looking at San Diego and then also coordinating with the 30 by 30 initiative out of NYU and finding out other departments that are paving the way.

But that was the topic of our conversation last week.

And again, Dr. Meisenholder was very encouraging of SPD in getting to the point we are with our consultant.

So we will keep you informed of how that progresses.

Terrific.

I know it's a complicated topic because beyond child care, if you have a preschool or a school-aged child and you have a night shift, for instance, you can't necessarily drop those kids off somewhere, even if you had somewhere, because they have school the next day.

And so I understand looking at the in-home care as well.

Really appreciate I will look more into San Diego and I really look forward to hearing more in the second quarter next year as to what the consultants recommendations are for things that we can do and and I imagine that that will include things maybe that we can do rather than other things that might take more time because It is a complicated issue.

And I also, Chair, wanted to just say that my comment earlier, I very much support more officers in the force.

I just bring up that admin and that other half of the department because I know and I heard from sitting in the conversations that that is also an issue because you have folks that work around the clock and all aspects at the department.

So I did want to acknowledge that we want 30% of the force to be women or a good number, because it's not a static number, and acknowledging that there are women who are in officers that also need support at the department.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

No other questions?

Okay, great.

Just to conclude, because we do need to move on to item two.

Thank you very much for coming out, everyone, Ms. Keith, Dr. James, and also Lieutenant Hughes.

It's interesting to me, I see the parallels, like with the military.

I'm a career naval officer, so I see those parallels, and it's interesting to see the contrast, but also the similarities.

I'm also interested in your point about SPDOT.

SPD overtime is a topic of interest.

This is another aspect that we can add to the list regarding oversight of overtime in terms of men versus women.

Everybody in the seats, I'm sure, is just hearing that, and so don't be surprised if there's a question.

Recruitment.

I've been to Before the Badge a number of times as Councilmember Hollingsworth.

I'm not sure if there's been any other council members to the Before the Badge, but But we've seen women, but not at the 30% level.

So that's kind of anecdotally to me in terms of, you know, it's to the point it's aspirational.

We're not quite getting there.

Really appreciate the military outreach.

Thank you for keeping Council Member Hollingsworth on her toes related to athletes.

No pressure, but we'll, internal to the Council, we'll have some follow-up with her just to make sure everything's tracking there.

Another area, and it's not on your slide, and I just wanted to bring it up, because I was in an event a couple weeks ago.

As it happens, we have three new college presidents in the Seattle system, Seattle North, Central, and South.

And I was speaking to all of them and guess what?

I brought up SBD to all of them.

And they have programs, they have a group of individuals that could be a great source for the Seattle Police Department.

And I bring this up too because they're very representational, actually more representational in terms of the communities, like the comments that were coming up earlier in terms of the communities, the black and brown communities and so forth.

That is very well represented in our Seattle College System with the Seattle Promise Program, and I just view that as an opportunity.

It's not on your slide, but I just wanted to bring that up, and I know Deputy Burgess knows some history about this from previous generations, but I just wanted to bring that up.

Lieutenant Hughes, have you already done some of that?

Thank you for that.

We have contacts.

We are working on that.

There are just so many different things.

We just haven't had anything that has happened definitively for 2024 other than some of the workforce development seminars that have happened at the community college.

So yes, they are on our list for more outreach.

Well, early feedback, they seem to be receptive.

Right on.

Thank you.

Moving to retention, I note all of this, again, a little bit with my military experience, child care, family care.

Maybe family care is also a way to engage families.

And I will admit as a former stay-at-home dad until January 1st this year, you know, I got some funny looks being a stay-at-home dad at the park or wherever, and particularly because I'm older.

But I think it's to Vice Chair Saka's point, we do need to lead by example, both in terms of what we're doing, but also in support.

OF PARTNERS, SPOUSES, MOTHERS, WIVES, ALL OF THE ABOVE.

AND THANK YOU, COUNCILMEMBER RIVERA, REGARDING SWORN, NON-SWORN.

WE'RE STARTING UP THE REAL-TIME CRIME CENTER.

YOU KNOW, THAT'S ANOTHER END.

IT'S NOT JUST THE ADMINISTRATIVE PIECE.

IT'S THESE VARIOUS SUPPORT PIECES WHICH PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES IN TERMS OF RECRUITING And I just want to conclude by saying I really appreciate the one Seattle, one SPD.

And there's a voice of a fire battalion chief in the back of my head who says, you know, we can't have that one Seattle, one SPD or one SFD.

We can't accomplish it without working with one another.

So Chief Dan, I forget his last name.

I really appreciate that.

And this work can have ripple effects in terms of less lethal weapons.

You know, if 30% of our force, and they're engaging in terms of engaging with the communities, public protests and the like.

So the work here can show up in a lot of different ways.

And that's my transition to less lethal weapons.

So thank you very much for joining us today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

And I apologize for the delay, but it's very important in terms of item one.

Item number two, an ordinance relating to the Seattle Police Department mandating that police department adopt and maintain crowd management policies that prohibit the use of less lethal tools in crowd management settings unless specific facts and circumstances are occurring or are about to occur that create an imminent risk of physical injury to any person or significant property damage and repealing Section 3.28.146 of the Seattle Municipal Code and Ordinance 126422.

Thank you, Clerk.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Burgess, for joining us today.

Director Walton Anderson, again, thank you.

Mr. Maxey, along with Assistant Chief Nelson.

And I also want to extend as well a welcome to our Inspector General, Lisa Judge.

Very important that you're here.

And of course, we're going to start off with Mr. Doss from Central Staff.

Always a great way to beginning our meeting.

So thank you, Mr. Doss.

Actually, Mr. Doss, also thank you for a very comprehensive Central Staff memo on this piece of legislation too.

So thank you.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, committee members and new committee member.

Greg Doss, your council central staff, here to talk with you about Council Bill 120916, which is the mayor's proposed crowd management ordinance.

Speaking of thank yous, Chair, you had asked me to work with folks, the SPE and the mayor's office, to determine what some of the best practices are that can be employed in crowd management, and I need to say thank you for All these folks working with me because I couldn't have written the staff memo or come to understand how complicated this subject is and how we in Seattle are becoming national leaders in this topic without their help.

So I just want to say thanks to the work group for guiding me.

I'll go ahead and give you an overview of this bill and SPD crowd management policies.

SPD and the mayor's office are up next.

I've made sure that my presentation is not duplicative, hopefully not too much anyways, but we'll get moving through.

Start out with a history and timeline of the court orders and crowd management policies.

The first thing I'll say is that the city's use of less lethal weapons for crowd control is currently unregulated by either the Seattle Municipal Code or any council ordinance.

We've heard today talks about a ban.

Make clear that there is currently no Seattle Municipal law or ordinance that is affecting less lethal weapons.

In short, this is because the city council ordinances on less lethal weapons and crowd control never actually went into effect.

And as we move through this timeline, I will tell you why that is the case.

Start out in January of or in June of 2020, the council passed Ordinance 126102, which enacted SMC 328146. And this is the law that you heard about that completely banned the use of all less lethal weapons.

But shortly after its enactment, the United States District Court enjoined the ordinance and thereby prohibited it from going into effect.

So while the ordinance still remains on the books, it's still in the Seattle Municipal Code, it has no legal enforceability.

Soon after the court enjoined that ordinance, SPD began making a series of significant changes to its crowd management policies.

That culminated in 2021 when the department submitted to the DOJ, the federal monitor and the judge a set of revised policies that are now interim policies that incorporated several improved practices for crowd management and use of less lethal weapons.

The court subsequently approved those policies and those policies are now what is governing the city's use of less lethal weapons for crowd management situations.

Later in 2021, the council made another attempt at regulating less lethal weapons by passing Ordinance 126422. That ordinance would have updated and revised the SMC to allow some less lethal weapon use in certain situations by certain trained SPD officers.

However, that ordinance did not take effect.

It had a section within the ordinance that required the court to approve compliant policies And per recommendation from the mayor's office, the federal monitor did not allow a submittal for review of those policies and that ordinance.

It's worth noting that neither council ordinance was signed by the mayor, Mayor Durkan, at the time.

And attached to my memo, you will find memos that she sent to the council indicating her reasons for returning the ordinance.

Lastly, say that in a hearing on October 16th, 2024, the court indicated that the city is very close to being ready to conclude the consent decree and have the case dismissed.

But first, the city must submit final SPD policies on crowd management to the federal monitor, the DOJ, and Judge Robart.

The city cannot submit final crowd policy managements that are inconsistent or in conflict with any SMC or ordinance that is still on the books, even if those ordinances carry no legal effect.

As I mentioned earlier, while it has been enjoined by the court, the SMC still does reflect provisions of ordinance 126-102.

Therefore, SPD's bill, the executive's bill before you, Council Bill 120916, would eliminate all city laws and ordinances and clear the way for SPD's current interim policies to be submitted to the court for review and ultimately released from the consent decree.

I'm gonna stop there and ask about questions on this or on the timeline.

Okay, move to the next slide.

So the first thing I want to do is talk a little bit about SPD's interim policies.

As I said, they have been significantly overhauled since 2020. The interim policy is written to provide clear guidance to officers on how to employ crowd control management, intervention, and control strategies to facilitate free expression and peaceful assembly.

And more specifically, it provides incident commanders with guidance on how to determine When to use less lethal weapons against violent individuals within a crowd or use of less lethal weapons to move or disperse a crowd.

And that is an important distinction because some less lethal weapons are more discriminant than others.

And SPD's interim policy allows officers to make better judgments about when to use which less lethal weapons and in what situations.

Officers make these determinations with the assistance of a multi-layer matrix called the CMIC, and SPD and the Mayor's Office are going to go into that matrix and the policies in detail later, so I'm not going to talk too much about it now.

I will go ahead and move us to the next slide.

Mr. Doss, can I just, it kind of relates to your timeline.

Can you go back one slide, please?

You've not mentioned different state action, the RCW related to tear gas, that change.

Can you speak to that briefly?

Yes, thank you.

That isn't in my timeline, but the state legislature did pass a number of restrictions and reforms about use of tear gas.

I want to note that the RCW restrictions have been incorporated into this bill.

And so the mayor's office will talk a little bit about how that is part of their policies.

And I think they'll also talk about how the proposed policies that they have go even a little bit further and are even a little bit stricter on the use of tear gas than the state code.

Thank you.

Because that is a function that we have in terms of aligning Seattle Municipal Code with the RCW, the Code of Washington.

So thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

So moving along, what I was going to say is in talking about SPD's proposed policy, I think what is important, probably more important than what the bill does to the council, is what it does not do.

And so I want to talk about that a little bit.

It does not incorporate SPD's interim policies into law.

It doesn't incorporate it as a reference in the bill or as an attachment to the legislation.

And this is by design.

The mayor's office has taken an approach that would allow SPD to address emerging changes in both available crowd control technology and best practices.

That is to avoid drawing the council into technical rather than policy level discussions about the appropriate use of less lethal weapons.

The council can choose to stay within this framework or can become more prescriptive with this legislation.

When I reach the end of my presentation, I'll provide some options that you all may want to consider.

Thank you.

Go to the next slide.

In continuing to talk a little bit about SPD's interim policies, I want to note that these policies are intended to provide officers clear guidance to what juncture a demonstration or assembly leaves the realm of legal protest and becomes an abridgment on life, safety, or the property rights of others.

It is the case that incident commanders can use this guidance to determine, as I said, when less lethal weapons become used against violent individuals within a crowd or when they can be used against to disperse the crowd itself.

And these guidelines also provide restrictions for the use of less lethal weapons under Title VIII.

and for the specific deployment of weapons in those settings, either blast balls or 40 millimeter blues nose, as I've indicated here on this slide.

So let's go to the next slide.

So under the direction of the chair, as I said earlier, I was asked to look into best practices for crowd management and less lethal weapons.

And I was cautioned by the OIG that there is no one definitive set of best practices, but rather there are some novel emerging practices in the areas of crowd psychology, police facilitation techniques, and civil rights law that can be applied to crowd management situations.

Also, as I've said, Seattle OIG has become sort of a national leader in identifying such practices through its Sentinel Event Review.

The Sentinel Event Review contained four phases or waves that resulted in approximately 136 recommendations that would allow SPD to facilitate peaceful demonstrations, deescalate violent behavior, and safely disperse a crowd when that's necessary.

SPD has incorporated recommendations from the OIG and has also incorporated recommendations from several other policing organizations that have studied crowd management.

And I have up on this slide a number of organizations that have produced, again, I use it carefully, best practice documents.

The Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, the Center for Policing Equity, the Washington State Attorney General's Office, and the International Association of Police Chiefs.

So go ahead and move to the next slide.

So as I say again, I was fortunate enough to work with the work group on these policies, reviewing SPD's policies and reviewing them in conjunction with those best practices that I referenced earlier.

And coming out of these discussions, I identified about four issues for the council and SPD to consider during your review of 120916. And I think it's important to stress that in all cases, the issues that have been identified boiled down to a potential need to have SPD sync up its practices with its or sync up its policies with its current practices.

In the upcoming weeks, the council is going to expect to hear about other issues that will be identified by the Office of Civil Rights.

I understand you've received a communication this morning already from them.

the Community Police Commission and the Office of Police Accountability.

Those latter two organizations have provided in the past recommendations on the use of less lethal weapons.

They are currently in the process of updating their recommendations and you should be seeing them in the upcoming weeks.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead and go into some of the issues the work group has been discussing.

The first one is about property damage threshold, the property damage threshold that would be used for dispersing a crowd.

And we talked about SPD including in its CMICS matrix the term significant or substantial when referring to property damage that would be used to disperse a crowd.

And this is a good example of what I said earlier about SPD needing to sync up its policies.

Their dispersal policies in other areas note that there needs to be significant or substantial property damage.

It's just a matter of incorporating that into the CMIC metrics that's used by incident commanders so that everything's consistent, and they're going to do that.

The second thing is that only officers that are ranked lieutenant or higher should be able to authorize crowd dispersal.

This is a best practice identified by many policing organizations.

It's something that is, again, consistent with SPD's current training practices as they train lieutenants to, when it is appropriate to disperse a crowd and use less lethal weapons.

It is just the case that the policies were written for each group of officers arriving on scene.

However, less lethal weapons wouldn't be used until a lieutenant or higher ranked officer arrived on scene.

And so this just, again, syncs up the policies.

The next issue is on mutual aid.

Some of the organizations in the previous slide have made recommendations that when other jurisdictions provide aid, they should follow the specific less lethal weapons of the jurisdiction that they are helping.

The work group discussed this issue and SPD indicated that this particular recommendation may be more aspirational than it is practical.

I'm told that it's difficult to have other agencies follow your jurisdiction's policies, and I will let SPD talk more about that when they're up.

One potential workaround would be for SPD to prioritize non-crowd control work for mutual aid of partners.

And so, for example, there, the King County Sheriff's Office could answer 911 calls and free up time for SPD officers to go out and work crowd control issues.

although that is not always going to be feasible or practical depending on the kind of event that's happening.

And so SPD will talk a little bit about that when they present.

And then finally, we talked a lot about blast balls.

All three accountability agencies, as well as external organizations, have issued recommendations to SPD on the use of blast balls, which have the potential to inflict serious injury or even death if detonated close to a person.

The OPA has specifically pointed out that a blast ball's two-stage combustion can create some degree of inaccuracy during deployment, potentially disrupting the blast ball's trajectory between three and six feet from its intended target.

SPD's blast ball policies state clearly that absent a life safety emergency, blast balls should not be thrown in a manner that would have a significant likelihood of striking a person.

However, they also say that a blast ball should be thrown near a person who is engaging in acts of violence or property destruction.

Considering the potential inaccuracy of blast balls and the potential to hit peaceful protesters, it might be good if SBD policies could better differentiate between uses for crowd control, movement, or dispersal, as opposed to times when it's necessary to use them to interdict individuals who are presenting imminent threats to life safety.

At the Community Police Commission meeting last week, SPD had two SWAT representatives in attendance and giving demonstrations of lethal weapons and answering questions.

And what those two representatives said specifically is that SPD's practice is to throw blast balls away from individuals.

And so one potential change that SPD could make to its policies would be to say that during crowd management or crowd dispersal, the blast balls are thrown away from individuals.

And again, differentiating between times that are life safety emergencies and they would use against individuals within a crowd.

Um, I know that the department is taking this issue very seriously and they have said that they are working on refining their policies to ensure that the intention intended use of blast balls is wholly clear.

So go ahead and flip to the next slide.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the framework of the council bill allows SPD the flexibility to modify its crowd control policies without council review.

That's not to say that it'll be without review at all.

The accountability ordinance requires that SPD policies are reviewed by our accountability agencies.

Currently, the court, at the time that the city is released from the consent decree, it will no longer be the court, but OIG will be taking over many of those review functions.

That said, the council still has some options that they can exercise with this bill.

Four of the options that I've identified here in typical central staff framework, the council could add uncodified discretionary or mandatory high-level guidelines, similar to what the executive has done in section two of the bill.

That is essentially staying within the framework, not being prescriptive on less lethal weapon use or banning or prohibiting certain less lethal weapons.

Another option would be to create a new section in the Seattle Municipal Code and then to specify either on use or ability to use less lethal weapons.

And that, of course, as we discussed, is the path that was taken by the previous council.

The next option would be to incorporate, by reference, portions of SPD's current policy.

so that it is for lack of a better way of saying locked down until counts until it comes back before our council for further changes and then the last option would be no changes and so Finally I would just conclude by saying as the chair said earlier today is the I think the chair said that today is the first of two hearings and The second one is on the 14th of January, and then a full council vote is anticipated for the 21st.

And with that, I will stop and ask if there are any questions.

Any questions from my colleagues, vice chair, committee colleagues, visitors, vice chair?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you for this awesome presentation, Greg.

And I also appreciate the pre-briefing from yesterday.

And after I had, so last night I went through and reviewed the memo, the underlying memo, and then all the attachments here.

Really insightful memo.

And I guess just a quick question.

Some additional questions for the department, but we'll wait until that comes up.

But I guess first, you mentioned on one of the slides here, Greg, that on the SPD's interim crowd management policy.

That slide, it states that that third bullet out of four there states that it distinguishes between less lethal weapon use against violent individuals within a crowd or use of, use to disperse a crowd.

And so just be curious to better understand at a very high level, how does the SPD manual 14.01 9-0, the interim crowd management policy, how it goes about distinguishing between those two things.

Yeah, thank you.

And I think, Councilmember, you're going to hear a real in-depth explanation, but at a high level, there are phases of crowd management, and it's in the first several phases where you my understanding is, may see individuals within a crowd, isolated individuals, either displaying violent behavior or damaging property.

And the CMICS matrix is encouraging or requiring, I should say, SPD officers to, in those cases, interdict with those specific individuals.

I'm going to use an example I hope is okay with the department.

For instance, if an individual within a crowd whipped out a knife and started threatening or assaulting others, that might be a case where SPD would need to use one of its 40 millimeter launchers to stop that individual or a blast ball near the individual to disrupt them from stabbing others and get in there and stop that individual.

And so that's the situation where you're not using a less lethal weapon to disperse a crowd.

Alternatively, once a crowd has been declared an illegal assembly, once you have multiple individuals in a crowd that are pursuing violent behavior or property destruction, it's at that time that SPD may call for the crowd to be dispersed.

And there's a number of procedures they have to follow about...

routes to allow the council the crowd to leave Making sure that there are announcements and then there you would use potentially the department would use more indiscriminate less like the weapons like pepper gas and so they'll go into They'll go into those differences in the sea mix.

It's it's It's an approach that the Inspector General recommended, and it's also one that is, again, reflected in those various best-practicing policing documents.

Yeah.

I hope that answered your question.

Yes, very helpful.

And the second question is, you mentioned the Centennial Event Review, and that was definitely one of the attachments there, one of the five attachments in the underlying memo.

And you note that there were 136 recommendations that were included in that Sentinel event review resource.

And you also mentioned many of those were incorporated into the interim policy.

Any sense of high level, how many of those 136 ultimately were incorporated into the policy?

As I looked at the list, there's a checklist at the end.

Nearly all of them were.

It was a matter, I think, of SPD and OIG coming to agreement on how some of them were worded, it appeared, and I'm going to let them talk about any discrepancies there.

Well, that's good to hear from my perspective.

That's substantially all of them.

Some minor differences on wording, but it sounds like it was an iterative collaborative process.

So in any event, thank you.

No further questions, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Greg, for a very thorough presentation and memo.

I appreciate everything that's been provided.

And as you see, I'm trying to grapple with what I think is...

a profound amount of information and a lot of stuff that's in the weeds.

So I guess I'm just going to put my cards on the table initially.

The idea of blast balls is profoundly giving authority really under any circumstance to use blast balls is profoundly troubling to me.

And I think we have to be very clear that that authority would be used in the last resort.

And in the few reports that I was able to read by the Attorney General's office, by some of the PERF, which is a professional police organization, and I can't remember the other one, they all routinely expressed serious concern about blast balls.

And there seems to be some...

sort of contradictory positions about when they would be used.

So sometimes it said we're going to use them because they're the most effective crowd dispersal tool we have.

And then other times it's mentioned, well, we're going to use them to basically incapacitate a particularly violent bad actor.

And so I'm sort of unclear.

purpose actually going to be used and I think we need clarity around that and then the other thing that I wanted to and I have so many questions and I'm really not I'm gonna have to come back to you with them but just in terms of looking at the ordinance that was passed by the last council that we are being asked to repeal and I know that Mayor Durkan did not approve that for a variety of reasons But you very helpfully provided a chart that shows the less lethal tools that would be allowed under that ordinance and the circumstances in which they would be allowed.

And I just would maybe kind of like to walk through that chart because it seems to me that there's actually a fair amount of overlap and We're not being asked to repeal something that prohibits the use of, categorically prohibits the use of less lethal weapons.

We're being asked to repeal something that perhaps sets different parameters.

So maybe you could just walk us through a little bit more about the...

and even if you refer to the chart because, you know, I'm looking at it and it says, you know, use of less lethal weapons for crowd movement or dispersal.

Well, the current ordinance that hasn't been approved by the mayor allows for pepper spray, tear gas, and 40 millimeter launchers, but not pepper balls and irritants.

You know, allowed by the interim policy, pepper spray, 40 milliliter less lethal launchers, tear gas.

The one difference that I see there is blast balls.

If I could ask, Brent, if you wouldn't mind pulling up that chart.

In recognition of what you said, Council Member Moore, about weeds, I'm going to try not to get too into the weeds.

Do you by any chance have that chart at the end of the presentation?

May not.

I'll summarize it at a high level.

I recognize what you're saying, that the Ordinance 126422 and the less lethal weapons policies, SPD's interim policy, both establish that less lethal weapons are used only when circumstances are occurring that create an imminent risk of physical injury, that the risk of injury through violent actions is outweighing the risk of injury to bystanders, and that only properly trained personnel can use the less lethal weapons.

Thank you, Brent, for getting it up.

At a high level, SPD could not use the differences.

SPD could not use less lethal weapons to move or disperse a crowd that is causing property damage alone.

So that is a large difference between the original ordinance and SPD's interim policies.

It is also a difference between those best practice documents that that you noted that are in my slideshow, all of which say that when there's a potential for significant property damage, like a fire to a building, that that is an appropriate time to use less lethal weapons to interdict with an individual.

The second one, SPD uses less lethal weapons to move or disperse a crowd until 12 or more individuals are creating a violent public disturbance.

This has to do with the threshold by which SPD would determine that a crowd is to be dispersed.

Their current threshold is one that is reflecting RCW's definition of criminal mischief with four individuals or more engaging in property destruction or violence.

That is actually a threshold that until recently the state had used to define riot.

So in terms of determining a threshold, That is one that the state had used, obviously, in the prior council ordinance, 12 or more individuals.

That is a different standard, but I think what you're going to hear from the department is that overall, when they're using their CMICs to determine if a crowd should be dispersed, it's the totality of the circumstances that they take into account.

There's also the restriction in the current ordinance that only SWAT members can use less lethal weapons and I'm sorry not current ordinance ordinance 126422 and then also 126422 created a private right of action.

so that if someone was injured by misuse of a less lethal weapon, and by that I mean use of a less lethal weapon against the ordinance policy, then they would be entitled to a private right of action pursuing for $10,000.

But there are...

I'm not going to go too much into this chart, but what I want to say is that in my work with the work group and reviewing best practices, The council ordinance is not necessarily in alignment with many of the best practices.

For instance, the council ordinance would allow use of 40 millimeter blue nose tips for crowd dispersal.

And that is a case where you are using a weapon that is designed for individual interdiction to disperse a crowd.

And that's not consistent with best practices.

Best practices would say that Those kinds of weapons are used in cases of emergency life safety against an individual not to disperse a crowd, and that is consistent with SPD's policies.

There in the ordinance 126422 is a prohibition on blast balls.

However, the ordinance did allow use of flashbangs and DFFs, which are very similar to blast balls.

except for they don't split in half and create the same kind of impact explosion.

It does allow for use of NDFFs, but not in crowd dispersal situations.

Trying to sum up, some of it's not consistent with best policies.

Some of it's more restrictive than what SPD's policies are now, and some of it is less restrictive.

So it really is a matter of going through each specific circumstance and figuring out whether or not it's consistent with best practices.

Okay, so thank you for that.

And just to clarify about who can use, so is community response group different than SWAT?

Yes, the special weapons team, the SWAT team, all trained in use of less lethal weapons, could be deployed in situations with crowd management, and they are the only ones under the previous council ordinance that could use less lethal weapons.

But also trained in the use of less lethal weapons and consistent with the department's crowd management policy is the community response group, and that is the group that currently does respond to crowd management situations.

And so, um, again, it's, it's looking at, at the individual situations or the specific situations, given that the CRG responds to, uh, crowd management situations now and that they are trained to use less lethal weapons.

Um, it seems more appropriate that they would be allowed to do that, which is not, uh, contemplated under this ordinance.

And I don't in any way mean to, um, uh, speak against the prior council that did this.

This is a, a situation where the CRG has really come more into its own over the last few years.

And so again, it's a situation by situation comparison to see what's appropriate now.

Thank you, if I may ask.

So I guess my thinking then is, Because what we're being asked to do is to repeal that entirely, and we're not really being asked to look at it and go through each of the differences that you've pointed out that are particularly troublesome, like the definition of requiring 12 versus 4. you know, addressing property damage, that alone, that could certainly be.

It seems to me that in a way we could take a scalpel to the current ordinance rather than repealing it entirely and basically just saying we're going to rely on policy.

And that's just my particular position about this because Frankly, we do need to be very, very much in the weeds on this issue.

Thank you to Council Member Morales for requesting from our Office of Civil Rights their position.

And when you look at the photographs that have been provided, they are deeply, deeply important.

troubling.

And I personally have participated in demonstrations, particularly against the Iraq War, when I took my children, my three sons.

And God forbid, you know, we had one bad actor, an SPD, in attempting to deal with that, utilize blast balls or tear gas inappropriately.

And we have so many unfortunately, such a poor track record.

And we are going to see, when Trump starts his mass deportation, his promised mass deportation, it's gonna come here.

And we're gonna see people in our streets protesting that.

And we need to be very, very careful And there will be bad actors.

There are always going to be people.

There are going to be people from white supremacists who will be in the crowd agitating.

There will be anarchists in the crowd agitating.

So we have to really, really give serious thought to the discretion.

And I am not trying to impugn the integrity of any of the officers out there.

I would not want to be in their shoes.

Absolutely not.

I do not necessarily think that it is inappropriate for us to say that there are certain types of devices that are inappropriate for use in crowd control when people are exercising their First Amendment right of protest and assembly.

And the position that SPD doesn't like, you know, tear gas is a viable alternative.

SPD doesn't like it.

I appreciate SPD doesn't like it.

But they don't like it for a valid reason.

And the blast balls, maybe the ones that SPD are currently purchasing do not contain tear gas, but some of them do.

So do we know for sure that what we're getting doesn't contain some level of tear gas?

They certainly contain pepper spray, which is a chemical irritant.

I think we need to have a very, very high level of threat and very clear, we need to be very clear.

Are they being used to disperse a crowd or are they being used to decapacitate a particular bad actor?

And too much discretion has been allowed in the past, and that's why it's important we really be in the weeds.

And also, I think if we're looking at a crowd dispersal tool like blast balls that can blind people, that can cause people to go in cardiac arrest three times, that can cause people to look at the, those weren't blast balls in particular, but they were less lethal weapons.

that completely destroyed people's lips and jaws.

Like, if we are going to authorize the use of those, what I consider to be minor weapons of war against our own citizens, then somebody at the top needs to be responsible right now tear gas the mayor has to make that decision maybe the mayor should make the decision about blast balls because they need to have those people's physical emotional and top of mind in making that broader and very, very difficult decision.

I'm not minimizing the struggles of these decisions, but simply having it be a lieutenant.

Right now, there's an exception that this can be implemented by sergeants, and I know there's discussion about moving it up the rank, but even lieutenants and captains are Yeah, I think we need to have some serious discussions about who makes the call on blast balls.

So I'll get off my soapbox.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you chair and thank you for allowing me to sit in and participate in today's meeting and thank you all for the presentation.

And thank you also to those who came out today to stand by the need to protect our residents right to free speech and assembly.

I further share the concern in blast ball use as well as broadly utilization of less lethal weapons.

But one of the things before us also within this bill is the matter of modifying crowd control policies without council review, particularly providing flexibility to implement new technologies.

And so I have a question about the history of council involvement in improving these new technologies.

Because at one point, blast balls were new technology.

So could you help me understand a little bit about previous council's role in approving less lethal weapons and technology?

I'm fortunate to have with me the former council president who may have better memory on it than mine but my understanding is is that prior to um prior to ordinance the ordinances that that came about in in 2020 that uh review was uh exclusively done by spd i don't think that as new technologies were brought forward they're brought to the council for approval um are you aware deputy mayor of any are you referring to

Are you referring to the surveillance ordinance?

No, new technologies and less lethal weapons.

So when a blast ball was first developed or any new technologies, I'm not aware that SPD came to the council and...

I'm not either.

Chair Kettle, I think it would be very helpful if...

the group could make its presentation, which many of the comments that have been made will be addressed.

And some of the questions that have been asked will be addressed by our technical experts here, if you want us to proceed in that way.

I'm happy to follow up with that question after the presentation.

One thing from an administrative point of view, too.

Obviously, there's a lot of different pieces to this, and I'm just going to take the opportunity before Mr. Doss finishes, is that HE'S MENTIONED THE WORK GROUP.

MY TEAM'S BEEN WORKING WITH THE VARIOUS PLAYERS.

THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE HAS BEEN PARTICIPATING AS WELL.

AND SO THERE'S A LOT OF MOVING PIECES, AND WE'VE NOT TALKED ABOUT IT AS THE FEDERAL MONITOR AND, YOU KNOW, AND JUDGE ROBARTS AS PART OF THIS OVERALL CONSENT DECREE PROCESS.

SO THE POINT HERE THAT I WANT TO MAKE FROM AN ADMINISTRATIVE POINT OF VIEW BEFORE SHIFTING TO THE NEXT PRESENTATION IS THAT If there's going to be any amendments, they have to be done sooner rather than later.

There will not be any walk-on amendments from this bill because everything, every T needs to be crossed, I needs to be dot, and consideration with the federal monitor and everything else.

So we have a month before our next meeting.

And my recommendation is if you have any proposed amendments to get with Mr. Doss prior to the recess, but definitely no later than January 9th.

We cannot have anything happening after January 9th and it really needs to happen beforehand because There's so much coordination that does have to work on this due to the fact that it has this other aspects to it related to the consent decree.

I just wanted to put that.

I'm going to put an email out on that as well separately, but I just wanted to take this point as it relates to Mr. Doss's presentation and his role in this process.

With that, we'll move to the next presentation.

If I might really quick, Mr. Chair.

I may have stepped out of my comfort zone there.

I was trying to answer questions at a high level, but I was also answering some questions that are specific to operations.

And so, SPD, I'm glad was listening.

And please do correct anything that or offer context for anything I said.

And thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Doss.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, council members.

Good morning.

I'm Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess, and we're here to make a presentation to you on the proposed crowd management ordinance.

The ordinance is before you today for several reasons.

First, as Greg has observed, no city law is in effect today that governs the use of less lethal tools in crowd management environments.

The proposed ordinance intends to change this reality by clearly establishing the values and rules that govern using less lethal tools in crowd management situations.

To put it another way, the ordinance you are considering today will establish restrictions on when these tools can be used.

And these restrictions are more substantial than what is required under state statutes.

Second, city ordinances and policies must be consistent so that there's no ambiguity between what you and the mayor establish as city policy and the practices of our police service.

The department will share its updated policies with you in the next day or two, and you will see that they are consistent with the proposed ordinance.

Finally, aligning city law with police practices and police policies will allow us to send these policies to the Federal Monitor and the Department of Justice for their review, and then to Judge Robart for his final approval.

Judge Robart initially approved the current policies in 2021. But this second review is needed because of the changes made to comply with state law on the use of force, the use of tear gas, and changes recommended by the Inspector General.

Director Walton Anderson will now briefly summarize the proposed ordinance's values and restrictions.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Burgess.

And thank you, Council, for allowing me to present what this ordinance does.

First of all, this ordinance affirms the civil liberties that Seattle residents and all that come to the city to do the most things that are most important to us.

To engage in celebratory activities, to gather in large groups, be part of audiences, partaking in sporting events, arts, music, and culture.

And perhaps most importantly, it also affirms the right to gather and assemble to express opposition or dissent.

The freedom that each individual has and the ability to gather in masses in our community is a fundamental right and requires the community to be safe in doing so.

And SPD plays a major role in supporting safe gathering spaces, and we must continue to recognize the importance that SPD has to facilitate those safe conditions and support that for all.

Part of ensuring safety is the way in which SPD first engages with those participating in large groups, demonstrations, or protests.

They prioritize first contact, an engagement strategy that is based in communication and dialogue.

Each officer is trained and utilizes de-escalation strategies in every crowd management situation.

when it is safe to do so.

And utilizing these de-escalation tactics as a first tool sets the stage for better outcomes.

This ordinance affirms our values and provides, to Councilmember Kettle's question, for a heightened standard of use of less lethal tools.

It restricts any use of less lethal tools unless there are circumstances that create an imminent risk of physical injury and significant property damage.

The ordinance governs the use of the crowd control tools and mandates that any action taken is needed and objectively reasonable and must be in proportion to the threat that's been assessed.

These protections are in fact real, and this ordinance not only incorporates Washington State's strict requirements for the use of tear gas, but sets an even higher standard than the state law, requiring imminent risk to life and .

We require intense, ongoing, and rigorous training of our Seattle police officers, and this ordinance reaffirms that expectation.

and mandates that police officers are restricted to only use approved less lethal tools in which they have been trained and in which the command staff that's designated for that approval.

We value and are steadfast in our commitment to transparency, and that's why this ordinance requires the Seattle Police Department to issue and make available an annual report on the use and frequency of these tools.

And this report will be completed with the agency that we have tasked to conduct systematic review and oversight of SPD's policies in the Office of the Inspector General.

This proposed ordinance allows SPD to incorporate the emerging best practices regarding crowd management, and in addition, it confirms the city's dedication and commitment to the right to assemble and free speech safely.

I'll turn this over to my colleagues.

We ask Lisa Judge to be with us today, our Inspector General, to share her perspective.

Good morning, or good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members.

Thank you very much for letting me be part of this conversation.

I've got some remarks.

I was asked to talk about the benefits of this approach of regulating the use of these tools versus the possession by SPD of these tools.

I think I want to just lay a little bit of foundation for what we're talking about.

And Council Member Moore, I think that's some of the weeds that you're talking about that need to be unentangled here.

And I think the fact that we had two ordinances previously that in some ways differ from each other highlights the...

the problematic nature of trying to regulate the possession of these tools by SPD.

Because SPD uses less lethal weapons in a variety of circumstances, for people in crisis so that they're not using deadly force, for barricaded subjects who are wanted dangerous people, hostage situations.

So what the ordinances previously were trying to carve out this very small subset of the use of less lethal weapons in a crowd context, and even further, in a crowd context once it's turned into a riot and it has to be dispersed.

So I think it's important to just acknowledge the context in which we're talking about the use of those tools here.

Also, in crowd facilitation, which I think is the appropriate philosophy that SPD is adopting here, is there is use of less lethal weapons if you need to disperse a crowd that has indeed gone beyond your ability to control it in terms of violence and life safety concerns, and the ability to go in and target specific wrongdoers within the crowd and remove them so that everybody else can continue to demonstrate and gather in a safe fashion.

And I think SPD has gotten good at that differentiation between the two.

So, Council Member Moore, you were talking earlier about using blast balls against people.

That's not an appropriate use or a recognized use of a blast ball.

It would be area denial, so that if you're trying to move the crowd, you are creating a buffer or a barrier between police and the crowd or something else where you're trying to deny So if you take away the ability to use those kinds of tools in a worst-case scenario, what do you use instead?

And I think that puts SPD in the position of having to use something that's perhaps a bit more onerous than a blast ball.

But I agree with you, Councilmember Moore, and I just want to acknowledge all of the folks that joined us earlier to give public comment.

OIG took public sentiment, public concern very seriously when we engaged in our Sentinel event review, and it underlied many of the recommendations that we made because we really, as a city, need to ensure that people can come out and demonstrate safely and that the role of police is facilitation of that safe exercise of free speech.

I just want to say that taking this approach that is being proposed allows SPD to maintain the capability to address worst case scenario situations, but it emphasizes de-escalation and other strategies to prevent the need for use of those certain tools of last resort.

And I do believe blast balls and tear gas should be tools of last resort when we've got nothing else left to turn back on.

Council's direction and SPD's philosophy have to prioritize and emphasize relationship building and communication before, during, and after these events.

The other essential component here that we need to make sure is happening is strong back-end accountability.

for authorizing uses of these kinds of weapons and for ensuring that such use is consistent with SPD policy and community expectations and any sort of use that is outside of policy or training be dealt with appropriately.

It's got to be evenly applied for line officers using those weapons and for commanders and supervisors who are authorizing the use of those weapons.

strong emphasis on sound policy and training, ensuring that it's underpinned by appropriate philosophical understandings of the right to gather and protest, while maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of the public of any use of force by the police in these situations is a more effective approach than simply regulating whether SPD can possess a potentially necessary tool.

This approach allows SPD to retain that capacity for handling disastrous circumstances that threaten life safety while emphasizing innovations and reforms that are emerging in terms of our understandings of how crowds behave and that kind of behavior and ways to ensure that you can provide safety during crowd events.

The one thing that I noticed in the language of the ordinance as it's proposed, because that's the opportunity for the city to set expectations for officers, is in the communications bullet about emphasizing communication and relationship building, it says, if feasible.

I think that should always be prioritized.

You know, there may be circumstances where SPD needs to use force.

They need to authorize force.

That doesn't remove the obligation that they are still prioritizing communication and facilitation.

So those are, I think, my remarks at this point.

I will turn it back over to the mayor's office.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Assistant Chief Nelson will now lead us through the checklist or the phases of engagement that incident commanders use in a crowd management environment.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Chair Kettle and members of the City Council for allowing me to speak this afternoon.

Before I begin, I just wanted to highlight that the CMIC, which again, we love acronyms, is the Crowd Management Intervention and Control Matrix.

It memorializes our change in philosophy related to SPD and how we're approaching facilitating protective first place activities.

It models international best practices in prioritizing dialogue with event organizers and the entire crowd as a whole.

when addressing dangerous behavior or unlawful behavior during one of these events and it's also important to IG judges point is each step builds upon the previous step and so this should not be looked at in a vacuum it's a continuum so as we move through the different progressions understand that attempts at de-escalation will still continue communication with the crowd as a whole will still continue all the way through these processes so it's not a check off, and now we're going to go to the next step, and we're not going to do the previous steps anymore.

So it's a building process.

So with that, the CMSE is essentially broken into six phases.

At the low end of the spectrum, we have phase one, and these are events that are typically static or small in scale and do not require any police assistance.

We have these Almost every day in the city of Seattle, and these represent events, First Amendment activity that the police department is not assigning any resources to.

We will often give the precinct to command heads up like, hey, there is a banner dropping event happening or we think is going to happen in your area.

around this time, just for your awareness.

And that's really where we leave it.

So that's, again, the low-end phase one.

Moving up to phase two, again, this is likely larger or pre-planned events with designated groups or organizations.

Our primary response is to ensure we have our POET officers, which stands for Police Outreach and Engagement Team.

This is a team of officers and supervisors who have additional training and engagement in talking with community members, have a very demonstrated high-level understanding of our crowd philosophy, crowd management philosophies, and public engagement.

And they also wear different uniforms.

And so they actually integrate into the crowd.

They'll reach out to community organizers in advance of the event and during the event.

And so their role is to figure out exactly what is the intent of the community or the event.

Like, what do they want to have accomplished?

Are they planning to stay static?

Are they planning to march?

Are the people who are looking for getting arrested to make a political statement?

So on and so forth.

So they do all of the engagement with those community organizers as well as kind of putting boundaries on, this is acceptable behavior and this is unacceptable behavior, and then look for continued engagement throughout the event.

Additionally, we'll have some resources, little resources, and this goes to the change in philosophy.

Previously, if you look at You know, SPD's response to crowd management, you have a swell of officers immediately adjoining whatever the demonstration is, which, you know, per the Sentinel review, we found as alarming and escalatory.

So now we have a much more reduced footprint at these events.

We'll have a couple folks putting eyes on, and then the remainder of the resources staged outside of the site of the community event.

but close enough to respond if necessary to provide public safety.

My group in the operations center will develop the incident action plans with an established chain of command.

The incident commander's responsibility is to develop the incident objectives and priorities for that event, which is present in the IAP, is what we call them, incident action plans, and determine the appropriate level of police response.

Prior to any type of a deployment, there is an operational period briefing during which the incident commander and their deputies will outline behavior expectation, what their intent is, how the flow of the day, and make sure everyone is aware of their specific assignments and role in the overall operations.

And the goal is we provide copies of the IOPs so everyone has an opportunity to ask questions and verify understanding.

Moving on, if you could advance the slides.

Three and four so phase three is defined as we starting to see some escalating behavior inside of the crowd And councilmember more and this is again to inspector general judges comments.

Our goal is to differentiate criminal conduct and not penalize the crowd as a whole and we've done a lot of training and this is again facilitated through our poet officers with hey, we're getting reports from the crowd that A person with this general description is punching people or breaking windows or throwing stuff off an overpass or whatever that is.

Our intent is to identify and isolate and hold them accountable.

And we would like your assistance in doing that.

And we've actually recently had a lot of really positive success with this strategy.

We've had folks who have, you know, integrated into crowds with the suspected intent of kind of just kind of causing mayhem or doing bad acts.

And the groups are doing a very good job managing themselves.

And the communities are actually throwing them out of the organizations, which is really, really positive to see.

We're not completely...

eliminates our need for high-level interactions.

again back to you know our response in these again we're going to attempt to use organizers to monitor and gain voluntary compliance outline the specific behavior we're observing or being reported utilize our public officers for communication using amplified sound to communicate our intent and so that was one of the things bore out from previous demonstrations is the only tool we had available was our inadequate PA systems which were a not loud enough be not clear enough and see we're not directional and so While we were trying to communicate with the crowd through these PAs, again, that's the tools we had available at the time, they were not an effective resource.

And so the department has acquired these LRADs.

They're called long-range acoustical devices, which, again, had previous capacity of being weaponized.

Ours are modified, so they do not have the ability to be used as weapons, as a sonic weapon.

But they do provide a very...

clear directional ability to communicate with the crowd at a whole.

And so how this works in conjunction with identifying isolated criminal conduct is we'll work with the crowd organizers, say, this is what was being reported.

We're trying to identify this person, hold them accountable.

If we identify the person, we'll start talking on the LRAD to the crowd, let them know our intent is to assist in facilitating the First Amendment activity.

There is somebody in the crowd who is engaged in criminal conduct.

We are moving forward to arrest them.

Please do not interfere with officers as they're moving through the crowd.

Our goal is to return this to a facilitated event as soon as we can.

And so the crowd, we're kind of being thought partners with the crowd and communicating our intent.

So it doesn't look like we're going in to disperse the crowd, because that's not what our intent is.

And then also from there, continue to assess and modulate responses as behavior changes.

Again, our goal is to return back to a facilitated event as soon as feasible.

Escalating up to phase four, again, this kind of goes in conjunction with phase three, but again, we have isolated unlawful behavior.

Again, individual violent acts in the crowd, property damage, unpermitted traffic disruptions, and defacement are not protected activities.

That is not a First Amendment protected activity.

groups within the crowd should not automatically form the basis for declaring an unlawful assembly right again we're going to differentiate that contact is this one or two bad actors or is this the crowd as a whole and again that follows a very similar process I've just described for the sake of time I won't again the goal is to isolate arrest remove law violators again at this point everything will be well all contacts with any of these demonstrations will be captured in our body one video again our goal is to attempt to use organizers and monitors to gain voluntary compliance again still using the l-rads i'm using low profile tactics when possible again that could be if we have a bad actor in the middle of a crowd that's not the time for us to go and try and hold them accountable so we'll monitor that person and as they work through the you know fringes of the group or towards an out or maybe after the event's over and they're walking off we're going to try to prioritize those type of tactics to uh again try to mitigate our implementation of the crowd.

Any force used should be reasonable, necessary, and proportional to affect necessary arrests.

Again, these are the individual officers making arrests, again, have access to their less lethal tools as part of our normal force continuum.

And when it's not possible to make an imminent arrest, again, identifying and tracking suspects for a later arrest.

And then, again, continuing to assess and modulate responses as behavior changes.

So, again, the first four phases...

OF OUR OVERALL STRATEGY AND PHILOSOPHY DO NOT COVER ANY NEED FOR USE OF BLAST BALLS OR A CS.

THAT IS ON THE EXTREME END, WHICH WE'LL GET TO HERE IN A SECOND IF YOU CAN ADVANCE THE SLIDE.

And Councilmember Moore, just to answer your question specifically on the types of blast balls we use, currently we have inert blast balls, which make a very loud bang and then just kind of produce white smoke, and there's no chemical stuff to it.

And then also OC spray, like pepper balls.

We do not have any CS blast balls.

That's not something we have.

So just to answer your question on that.

And again, it's important to note that as we talk about CMIC phases five and six, all of these actions and use of fourth authorizations will come at the direction of the incident commander.

Again, that will be a lieutenant or higher.

How that works, it follows our normal span of control, be it if there's one lieutenant they'll be running the show.

If there's more than one lieutenant, we'll have a captain assigned to the event.

If we have two captains, we'll have an assistant chief assigned to the event, and so on and so forth.

And so that's how we manage span and control.

But any authorizations to use force to move a crowd will be at the direction of the IC.

And just to follow up on the accountability piece, if I, as the IC authorized force, use an example as blast balls, to move a crawl to move a crowd i am responsible for documenting in a statement why i made that decision what was my what was my justification what was my understanding what was my intel like what was my intent all of those factors in addition to the officers who use force writing individual use of force statements as well.

So I just wanted to make sure we're very clear on that.

So phase five, unlawful assembly, the riot, unlawful behavior within or of a crowd cannot be controlled through intervention strategies.

Assemblies may be dispersed.

Again, we have crossed over from the place where we're able to differentiate and identify individual actors in a crowd, and so we need to address the crowd as a whole.

Again, violent acts by former persons or acts that pose an imminent threat of violence against persons or substantial property damage, significant and permitted traffic disruptions that pose imminent threat of harm to members of the assembly or traveling public.

Um, other criminal acts, we actually, as an example, um, there was a couple of years ago, um, a group that wanted to protest and they wanted to sit in on a freeway off ramp wearing all black.

It's like, well, that's, can't do that because you're going to get run over.

And so, um, so we, we forced them off of, off the road, um, so that they would not, um, the border in public.

Other criminal acts in the crowd cannot be addressed through crowd intervention strategies due to size, intent, nature, or acts of members of the crowd.

So our response is, again, when safe and feasible, considering the risk of officer safety members of the crowd, force may be used to disperse the crowd or address acts of violence.

So prior to any of these actions, we are required to give an advisement to the group or the crowd.

Say, hey, this is what's not OK about what's happening right now.

This is our intent.

We would like you to disperse, you know, following the dispersal order that's prescribed in our policy.

We're going to highlight where we want them to go.

There is an avenue of egress or exit directly behind you or to your left or to your right.

We're going to provide that direction to them.

And we're going to identify appropriate staging areas for any observers or media folks.

just just make sure that they're not in harm's way if police action is necessary and then also describe what type of force we're considering like we need to move this crowd because of this reason we're ordering you to leave this is how you do that if you don't have if you don't comply this is what tools we're going to bring to bear and it could be blast balls or so on so forth then again continuing to assess and modulate responses as behavior changes so if that warning does it for us, and like, okay, that makes a lot of sense, or hey, we agree with you, and we're not trying to obstruct this, and they move, then we modulate back down, right?

And that's fine.

Then we'll, again, continue communication with the group and thank them for their assistance and so on and so forth.

Moving up to the final phase, phase six, again, immediate life safety.

In certain circumstances, crime management events may escalate to immediate threats to life safety that require immediate action.

Some examples in the CMIC, again, crime members throwing Molotov cocktails, or if there's vehicle ramming attacks and things like that.

So our response, again, identifying order to disperse, identifying those dispersal routes, understanding that the use of fourth authorization will come from the incident commander, but that force should be reasonable, necessary, and proportional to disperse the crowd.

And then, again, continuing to assess and modulate responses as behavior changes.

And then if we get to that point where Nothing else is effective.

Blast falls aren't effective.

We're there.

That's when we're going to start pinging the chief executive and talking about the use of CS if authorized.

And again, that's in compliance with the current RCW if everything else fails.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Lisa.

I just wanted to add one thing for Council's understanding about the importance of communication and having the LRAD and the ability to tell the crowd what is going on.

The primary factor in escalating a crowd to violence as a group is the perceived illegitimacy of what the officers are doing in that crowd.

AC Nelson explained, if you are communicating, here's what we're doing and why we're doing it, that has a de-escalatory effect on the crowd because they say, oh, they're not just going in there to shut us down.

They're going in there because that person is throwing a Molotov cocktail.

So to the extent that, communication within the crowd and to the crowd is effective, that has a strong de-escalatory component there because it maintains the legitimacy of what the officers are doing.

So I just wanted to throw that out there as how important this is.

And I think we've seen since 2020, SPD's adoption of this approach of communication, of over-communication, has resulted in, I think, Very little, if any, uses of force since then.

Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification.

And finally, Chief Operating Officer Maxey will summarize the working group and some of the changes that they've made in their policies.

Yes, and thank you once again for having us here.

I really appreciate the opportunity for SPD to be actually at the table discussing these ordinances and all of the work that has been done over the past several months of engagement with central staff directly with many of you council members on the what the why the how and taking the time to try to understand this and i applaud the effort of the council to get deep into the weeds because this work is really nuanced and does have is multi-layered and it does take some time to understand so i really appreciate this engagement And in particular, the central staff collaboration that we have had over the last few months has been exceptional.

And in my experience, a decade at the city, this is a new governmental approach to collaboration that is far deeper and does provide for better understanding.

So I want to thank Director Noble and Greg Doss in particular for this engagement and the hard work that we have done before we brought this forward to you.

Outside of the collaboration just with central staff, however, there's been an ongoing multi-year collaboration that has happened.

In 2019, our policies were considered a model for the nation.

They'd approved by the federal court.

They'd been approved by the monitoring team.

And we thought we knew what we were doing.

Then we hit 2020, and the rules changed.

And we watched departments across this nation struggle with the new community expectations the new development that the protest itself was about the police and at the police.

Without going deeply into 2020, there were, I would argue, systemic leadership failures that decided to put SPD officers on lines for 100 straight days, working probably 16 plus hours a day.

That was not a good situation for anyone involved.

Certainly, it's a little ironic to me that we had the 30 by 30 presentation prior to this because one of the major complaints that I've heard from many of our officers with families, they didn't see their kids for weeks on time.

They had to put their kids in 24-hour childcare because of what we, the city of Seattle, compelled SPD to do during 2020. None of that is to suggest SPD did not have missteps of its own.

Certainly, there were many errors and I think we know many of those stories.

At the end of 2020, though, SPD was already in the process of pivoting, realizing this is not working.

There were many changes that were being done.

And even as those initial ordinances were developed and passed, SPD was not at the table to help inform or discuss or debate those propositions.

Instead, I think our first real engagement with the city was through the Sentinel Event Review, which is a multi-year process that involved SPD It involved community members.

It was led by the Office of the Inspector General.

And as I say, it was multi-year.

So there were five phases to this that were many months of discussions.

And those discussions came back in through the department.

We were also learning through our own force review board.

We were looking through all of the OPA findings that were emerging during that time.

And we completely reinvented crowd management.

We sent several cohorts over to Europe to look at some of the European models.

Yes, that was in furtherance of FIFA and what we know is coming soon with the club games next year.

But it was also just to learn from the European model.

How do they deal with these things?

What are their approaches?

And there were some things that were really beneficial.

There were things that we couldn't implement because we have a constitution and they do not.

And that creates...

I would say we're better for it, but it definitely changed our approaches.

We went through the Sentinel event review.

We've been engaged with the monitoring team and DOJ.

DOJ continues to send other departments to us to learn from some of our experiences, and we share nationally on lessons learned here.

I realize it's a little complicated.

probably way too soon to ever say that was then, this is now regarding 2020, and that's not my message here today.

My message is to say that we have evolved and learned a lot since then.

And the approach that Assistant Chief Nelson just walked through is very nuanced, very sophisticated, and really does center that dialogue.

Let's talk to the people that want to express, let's figure out how to facilitate them, and let's have as low an impact on them as possible.

And that is at the forefront of all of our IAPs and our approaches and our policies.

Specifically regarding the central staff memo, one of the really strong benefits of such a collaboration is that as issues are raised, we talk about them.

And we go, OK, does our policy meet our expectations?

Does it meet our practice?

And in going through this central staff, I identified several things within our policy that were inconsistent with our practice.

So for example, the substantial property damage was not articulated in our policies previously.

It was in some sections, not in others.

It was usually tool specific on when you could use a specific tool.

We imported that into the CMIC, put it into the crowd management policy, made it connect with this ordinance in a seamless manner, and that was beneficial to all, because that's what we do, but it's not what we said we do, and that's problematic, as one of the major significant reasons we have public-facing policies is to let our community know exactly what we're going to do and why and what the rules are.

So we fixed that.

Recommendation number two was that dispersal orders be given by officers that are ranked lieutenant and above.

That really is our policy.

We realized that as we'd had it laid out in our crowd management policy, we allowed sergeants to be incident commanders, but that really did not rise to the level of crowd dispersal.

By the time you're dealing with something where you're moving from you know, a Fourth Amendment intrusion into people's rights into a First Amendment, when you are saying this is now an unlawful assembly, we fully agree that needs to be at a much higher level of the department.

We put it at lieutenant to allow some flexibility.

However, in practice and in reality, I cannot imagine that would not be way up the chain of command before we start issuing dispersal orders of any significant event.

I'm going to skip to number four, which is SPD should consider clarifying its blast ball deployment policy to ensure that absent life safety threat and when used for crowd control dispersals, officers to deploy blast balls in empty spaces away from people.

That's precisely what we have changed our policy to say, is that officers will deploy blast balls into open spaces when feasible.

That is what you're trying to do.

We took out the towards or away or anything regarding people.

It's empty spaces is the goal.

And we also have clarified in the definition of blast ball in our policy under 8.050, which makes it clear that a blast ball is a crowd dispersal tool.

It is extremely rare that that device could be used on an individual.

You know, if that's what you have in your hand and there is something that is catastrophic that's happening, theoretically it could be, but it's not what we train and it's not the go-to tool if there are available options.

So to be very clear, this is for crowd dispersal.

That means we're at the CMIC level five or above.

and we are saying it is no longer lawful to be here, and we are attempting to disperse the crowd.

The only other tool we have for that is CS, which, as indicated here, SPD really disfavors the use of CS.

We heard some of the public commenters talking about being in their homes and having CS come into their homes.

That's the problem.

It is pervasive and indiscriminate.

Blast balls, while not a perfect tool, and nobody loves them, they are less indiscriminate than CS is, and those are the two viable tools for this purpose.

Again, that is the exception.

The past four years, we've not deployed a blast ball, I think, since October 26th of 2020, and our use, as described by other members of this panel, has not been curtailed by law.

I think what we saw earlier is there is a strong perception that the current ordinances are controlling SPD's behavior.

No, we follow our policies at this point.

But we have not needed to resort to crowd dispersal, less lethal tools very much over the last four years.

So I just ask that that track record be at least in the thinking as we consider what the best path forward is.

Just on the last point, number three here, which is about mutual aid.

And I may ask AC Nelson to jump in briefly on this, but when we ask for assets to come to SPD to support us, there can be a variety of things we request.

We might get bike officers from Bellevue.

We might get a SWAT team from the Valley SWAT groups.

We may...

King County may help us as well.

There are different requests for different purposes.

And what's important is we would never allow SPD officers to work under another policy.

We've seen this under federal task forces.

In fact, we had the federal government ask us to allow officers to do pre-tech stops when supporting task forces.

We said, no, that is not our policy.

It's not our standard.

We follow our state law and our community values.

So we've pushed back on that.

For the same reason, other departments are not going to follow our policies.

However, what they are going to follow is our command and control.

When they come to work for us, they are under our supervision.

And the distinction's been drawn here between individual officer discretion and then something that is managed at the incident commander level, two ways where less lethal tools could be used.

When we make a mutual aid request, we ask them to itemize what tools are you bringing, and we clarify what the assignment's going to be, and we work with them to figure out the best use of whatever resource is coming to us.

Those departments would always retain at an officer level the ability to use less lethal tools for imminent life and safety, self-defense or defense of others, but they're not going to be ISSUING DISBURSAL ORDERS AND THROWING BLAST BALLS AND TIER GAS WITHOUT A WHOLE LOT OF OTHER INVOLVEMENT FROM COMMAND AND IF IT GETS TO CS WITH THE MAYOR'S OFFICE.

SO FULLY UNDERSTAND THE CONCERN ABOUT MUTUAL AID PARTNERS.

THE RECIPROCAL CONCERN, HOWEVER, IS MIGHT NOT BE THE RIGHT WORD, BUT ANOTHER CONCERN IS THAT WHEN THE ORDINANCES WERE PASSED IN 2020 AND 2021, OUR MUTUAL AID PARTNERS MADE IT CLEAR THEY'RE NOT COMING TO HELP US.

We're so short staffed right now, I don't think we're in a position where we could responsibly manage the club games next year and FIFA in 26 without mutual aid support.

And we will be working with our partners in advance of all this to get clarity on expectations that they will get the IAPs, the Incident Action Plans, and they will be under our command and control while that's happening.

So I just wanted to make that clear.

And I think in the council memo, Greg Doss did a good job of explaining how we vet and control mutual aid that hopefully helps inspire confidence in the council.

Thank you, Chair.

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

And from All the various elements from the mayor's office, SBD, OIG, and of course, our own central staff.

We're running late.

Any questions?

Council Member Moore, I see your hand.

I don't know if that's older.

And thank you, Council President.

Yes, at least an hour ago plus, Council President joined us here on the dais.

I don't have any questions right now, thank you.

Thank you for all that additional information and context.

I appreciate that there's been a lot of thought put into this, that we're not, SPD and all of the accountability partners are not rushing into the change.

So I just wanna be very clear that my concerns and my questions in no way express an opinion that I don't think this has been thoughtfully and carefully approached.

I just don't necessarily agree with the conclusion.

And I think that's fair.

But I think the fact that we've taken the time to talk about this, we're going to take the time to talk about it, It's being talked about a lot, and SPD has truly made tremendous progress.

I want to acknowledge all the progress that SPD has made.

And they have, and to your point, like, you've been following this interim policy, and to date it's been very successful, and that shows a good track record for much to look at.

So, it's important to keep all that in mind.

That said, I did just want to say to Chair that I will be bringing amendments.

And I also think it's important that we—I appreciate that we want to get out of the consent decree.

I think all of us see that there's benefit to getting out of the consent decree.

You know, Judge Robart is going to have to make a decision about whether or not the policy, this ordinance and the attached policy addresses his concerns.

And even though he might have approved the interim policy, I don't know where he lands now, particularly as this is a condition to get us out of the consent decree.

And I'll note that Judge Jones, that case is still pending and there is a restraining order and there's some guidelines around what use of force can be used.

And we need to be mindful of that as well.

I just, I don't think, there can be a false sense of urgency that we've gotta get this done so we can get the consent decree lifted.

There's no guarantee that what we do here today is going to result in the consent decree being lifted, and I think we need to use this opportunity as we are to be very thoughtful about this policy going forward.

So, just my thoughts on that.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

And yes, I do expect amendments.

My earlier comment is related to the timing.

And it has gone through the budget process.

What we cannot have is what happened there with this topic.

So as I said earlier, we've got over a month before our next meeting.

Please work with central staff, with Mr. Doss.

And this is for everybody.

And with me, if you're you're willing because obviously my team has been working early on this again as I mentioned with the central staff and all the executive sides plus the city attorney's office so we can continue to do that as well I usually go first to the vice chair but you know since council member Moore was there and it was kind of continuing from where we ended off vice chair over to you

Chair, and thank you to the mayor's office and SPD and OIG for your work here and sharing out these policies, some specific learnings, best practices, or trends, whatever we're calling them.

Emerging practices.

It is up to the hearer to determine, I suppose, whether they are truly best.

And that's fair.

I want to double click on the contract of, or the specific tactic of blast balls.

And first off, let me also thank my colleague, Council Member Moore.

I appreciate her comments today, and especially her earlier comments.

Right after Mr. Doss's presentation, I would say that I generally agree with the essence of everything, you know, she said and you said.

And so I appreciate you being explicit and calling out some of the opportunities here.

And I would also agree, for example, that I think blast balls in particular should be used as a matter of last resort when we're talking crowd control and disbursement.

Not never used, but as a matter of last resort.

And I also, and then just looking back, circling back to the outstanding central staff memo here, page nine of the central staff memo, that very first paragraph under the options for council action, it talks about the importance of flexibility.

which I generally support.

And the second sentence is really poignant.

I find it really poignant is that this ordinance would allow SPD to address changes in both available crowd control technologies and emerging best practices or emerging trends without the delay associated with the legislative process and without drawing the council into technical rather than policy level judgments about appropriate tools and methods and That is a proposition that I strongly agree with.

And I think the same challenge manifests itself in other policy areas and topics, including with respect to policing.

And for example, there's an opportunity.

I don't think the council should have to personally review and approve every single deployment of technology, such as hostage negotiation, throw phones, not an efficient or effective use of time.

But in any event.

And I should also say I have not yet had the opportunity to read the OCR memo that was circulated with us.

Well, I'll speak to myself, me, this morning, right before this meeting.

But I also did quickly scan it and saw some of the disturbing pictures that Council Member Moore referenced earlier that appear to be from incidents all across the world.

And one of those shown was from Seattle, it looks like.

At least one that I'm aware of at a quick glance.

But blast balls are very dangerous crowd disbursement tools.

And they should be, again, from my perspective, be deployed on a very rare basis.

And there's any number of amendments and things we could do to better address that.

I'm...

INCLINED TO REVISIT THE APPROPRIATE AUTHORITY THAT COULD AUTHORIZE THAT KIND OF ACTION.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS OFF HAND, BUT UNDER THE STATE LAW, I UNDERSTAND IT TOOK A DEEPER DIVE INTO THE SPECIFIC USE OF TIER GAS, THE MAYOR HAS TO AUTHORIZE THE USE OF TIER GAS, BUT HE DOESN'T, HE OR SHE DOESN'T LITERALLY AUTHORIZE THE USE OF TIER GAS.

it must declare a certain state of emergency of some sort, right?

And then which could then trigger potentially the use of tear gas.

I think that probably makes a fair amount of sense to add the use and deployment of blast balls to that analysis.

But a lieutenant is probably not the appropriate authorized approver for something of this nature.

potential consequence on the issue of state legislative kind of deep diving if you will into specific methods and tools of crowd control there's there's a lot of well There are some regulation, as I understand, and maybe this is a question for Greg, I don't know, but if anyone has thoughts, I appreciate it, but there is definitely some state regulation that governs the use of tear gas, and including which authorizes, requires the mayor to declare certain states, or like in order for tear gas to be authorized to be deployed.

Why do you think it is that the state legislature took up the specific topic of tear gas deployment but didn't, as far as I understand, also consider or assess or regulate or put any guardrails around the use of blast balls or any other kind of crowd disbursement tools?

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

I think, as I pointed out earlier, ROIG really is a national leader in this area.

So I would probably defer to the Inspector General if she has any thoughts on why the tear gas issue alone bubbled up to the state.

I do not.

I don't purport to be able to read the minds of legislators.

But if I was having a somewhat educated guess, I would say that tear gas is widely indiscriminate.

The particulate nature of it is it's very small.

It can seep into, you know, environments where a blast ball can.

A blast ball is a discrete deployment of something.

It can have a bounce that goes in a different direction, an unintended direction, in a fairly short radius.

But that's it.

Tear gas, if you deploy it, especially in an area where Occupied by you know, it's densely residential It can impact a variety of people who are not even participating in the First Amendment event So I think that's probably one of the primary reasons that there was regulation because it can impact Folks who aren't even anywhere near the the deployment of it That's my best guess

That makes sense and really appreciate your comment and expertise on that.

So my second and final question here pertains to current deployment under current policy of blast balls.

But before I get there, I was encouraged or comforted to learn that under the current revised policy, we generally kind of throw that away from people.

She kind of begs the question, what does a way mean?

And how is that calculated within the specific blast radius or impact radius of that device?

Too deep technical of a discussion for this, especially under our time constraints.

But I would just say that, you know...

I hope a lot of thought and consideration is given to what away means and who is involved in the scene.

And for example, we heard a scenario earlier of a nine-year-old being impacted by this.

And so I think the mere presence of tender age kids Maybe that's not the best deployment of these kind of things.

And I think children is the one and only, unlike elderly and infirmed and people with different mental acuity and capacities, where you can't always discern at a quick judgment, and nor should frontline rank-and-file officers necessarily be able to discern Make that call on every, like, it's pretty clear.

You can understand the generally pure motives and intents, regardless of whether someone around them is being obnoxious and acting unlawfully and violently, that maybe deployment in front of a tender age individual is probably not the best case.

I digress.

Can you talk a little bit more, and I saw the matrix on the chart there of like the police response and the crowd action and police response.

Can you double-click a little more specifically on the police response specifically for the use of blast balls?

When and how does the department decide when the deployment of blast balls is necessary?

Councilmember, before they answer, can I clarify on the away piece that you've been speaking about.

I want to be clear that the word away was something I heard SWAT members, I heard them use that word after they acknowledged that there is a potential trajectory change with a blast ball.

They said that they recognize that they can vary by three to six feet and that that's why they throw them away from people.

So I think what's inherent in that is that the SWAT team recognizes that there is an area by which there could be a trajectory change.

and they are throwing them away in a way that they recognize that, and consistent with the SBD policies, are not targeting an individual.

But I'll ask for someone to tell me if I've got that wrong.

Oh, that's right on.

So, Council Member Sack, to your question of, like, Why would we deploy or when would we deploy blast balls?

It's kind of an area, it's an area denial tool or if we need to make space because there's something beyond the crowd that we need to address.

So some examples, just anecdotal examples.

If there was, at times we'll get reports of people who are down in a crowd.

So they're in a crowd, they're having a medical emergency and we need to get, that person.

Again, we're going to lead with announcements, say, hey, there's someone down in the crowd, we need to get to the crowd, all that stuff, please back up.

If we are met with resistance or if the crowd at a whole is not responsive to that request, We do have an obligation to get to that person who's down in the crowd.

So that would be an example of when we would use blast balls to start moving the crowd.

So historically, the behavioral response to crowds is people scatter away from the device.

And so then what we do is we move up and then we take that area.

And then we continue to give advisements and continue until we get to where we can address whatever the life safety concern is.

Another example from years past was there was a vehicle on fire.

And we needed to get the fire department, it was parked close to a building, we needed to get the fire department to that vehicle so they could extinguish it with their hose.

Again, advisements were made, warnings, there was no crowd movement.

Blast balls were authorized to move the crowd.

We moved up on the space and then the fire truck was able to move up and they hit it with the, long-range water cannon, and we're able to extinguish the flames.

So those are the types of incidents in which we would use blast balls, again, to kind of take space for an area so we can deliver the need or take whatever action is necessary.

And I think Inspector Judge had some comments.

As I mentioned before, I share concerns about blast balls.

And I think there's a section in the proposed ordinance that requires OIG and SPD to collaborate on an annual use of force report that talks about this.

In my mind, waiting a year to look at things is too long.

And so I've talked with SPD about having some real time reporting to OIG of use of intermediate weapons in crowd control circumstances so that we can sort of start aggregating things, look at trends, spot things that may be problematic in a closer time period than a year after the fact.

So, you know, I will offer that.

I've also heard from community stakeholders' concern about disparity in the use of these kinds of weapons.

Like, when they're used, who are they primarily used against?

And so that's one thing that OIG will be also monitoring.

I just wanted to offer that to Council.

Thank you.

Okay, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll try to make this brief.

I want to say I agree.

I appreciate Council Member Moore's comments, and I agree about getting in the weeds.

I often get in the weeds with most of the policy.

I think I have that track record now, so definitely agree.

That's why I actually did reach out to, had a conversation with Greg Doss.

Thank you for all the work.

everything that you do and working with the mayor's office and SPD to make sure that our policies really reflect our intent and the best practices particularly when it comes to these really important serious topics and Also, I reached out to SPD.

So thank you Brian maxi for the conversation about a lot of the things that that mr. Das you raised and I will say I really appreciate the information today and getting in the weeds on those levels, the green, yellow, red, to explain really when this tool is being used because it should I agree with what my colleagues have said.

It definitely should be a tool of last resort.

And I also appreciate the levels because I think there's an unfortunate conflation on when it is being used.

And so I very much appreciate getting into the weeds as to when.

And I very much also appreciate Inspector General Judge Yu weighing in and being very active in this conversation.

It is important.

It's obviously your responsibility, but I also know from our conversations in the past that you take this very seriously and that you meet with community and that you are giving that eye and that you are working together.

So I very much appreciate that as well.

And I particularly want to say that thank you for raising the point about in terms of crowd control, making sure that the people that are there to express their First Amendment rights are being protected as well, because there are some bad actors.

That is the truth.

It's the unfortunate truth.

And some of the folks that show up, I mean, I know I've gone on strike with the teachers in the middle of downtown, and we were actually We had an SPD escort because we overtook, and my kids, my little kids were there downtown.

And so, you know, really appreciate that we do need to keep folks protected who are showing up to protest peacefully.

And that is important as well as there are people that got caught in what happened in 2020 who weren't there to protest.

They worked downtown and they were actually...

hurt in some cases by bad actors and that is an unfortunate truth of all of this as well and I know it's what everyone's trying to address and also mitigate for.

I do have in all of my statements I do have a question and that is this issue of who should have the responsibility of making that call on the spot in terms of sergeants and I understand now it's been changed to lieutenant but it has been suggested that the chief perhaps should have that responsibility or the mayor.

And I'd love to hear why Lieutenant was chosen and then what is the best practice nationally?

And Inspector General, did you weigh in on that as well?

I'm sorry, did I weigh in in terms of the designation of the rank at which?

Correct.

Did you?

Not necessarily.

And I don't know that there is really a true best practice standard nationwide.

It would depend on each individual jurisdiction staffing and who happens to be on duty at any given moment.

I agree that by the time you hit level five or level six, it...

If you've already had the mayor involved, then there should be somebody who is correspondingly high up in the organization authorizing blast balls.

But that's really a policy decision that I think is best made by the chief and SPD.

We're constantly in conversations with them about policy and policy decisions.

So I will defer to SPD.

But yes, we are at the table.

And then SPD, can you speak a little bit about why you've chosen to do lieutenant versus chief or mayor?

Yes, absolutely, Council Member Rivera.

I mean, it really comes down to flexibility when we look at the size of different events.

Some of these can be small, somewhat spontaneous, and then extremely violent at that point.

We want at least a lieutenant on scene, but I think practically, if we're dealing with any sort of predicted or large-scale event, I mean, it's been our practice over the last year to assign an assistant chief to have citywide incident command for each month.

So there's always an on-duty assistant chief to help guide decisions and to help with planning.

And we've seen that to be a pretty robust engagement, even at the assistant chief level.

I think the lieutenant was really selected not because that's where we think it's going to happen, but that would be the floor on that decision making.

And again, that would be, you know, if we hit, if you look at the CMIC and you look at level five, that's usually something that's evolved and it's large and we know about it and we're all involved in it.

Six is like spontaneous.

What happens there?

And, you know, the, I think the two examples in CMIC level six, one is a, you know, similar to the French Christmas parade tragedy where the truck drove through the crowd there.

You need people to be able to address that immediately.

And actually, then the second one in the CMIC is, oh, like, so Molotov cocktails.

Again, if you have people that are engaged in immediate life safety and we need to intervene, we may not have the opportunity time to go seek out the chief or the mayor.

We need to react now.

Um, and that's, that's the flexibility where we're looking at.

Again, I see this as the floor, not the standard.

Thank you, Brian.

I do think that by the time you get to a six, my understanding from what I heard here today is that mayor's probably in chief at the very least is going to be involved.

So from a practical standpoint, if that's the case, then you know,

Assistant chief Nelson did you want it you look like it depends on you know the the pre-event Intel assessment And what are we anticipating and again?

CEO I'm actually brought up a great point if it's an impromptu thing and a group of people have predetermined it meet at a time and a place like that's going to undermine our Normal incident planning processes to where we would not have the robust staffing and I see a structure pre-identified and so but At that same time, they could be a group of four or more who are engaged in behaviors that are creating an imminent risk of life safety to folks.

And so to prescribe it to an assistant chief level initially, just for argument, might not be the best fit for those types of events.

Whereas if we are anticipating a large-scale demonstration and we're anticipating some level of crowd behavior, We will lean in forward into that to ensure we have very well established lines of communication and incident command and control.

And again, doing the pre-operational briefings and all those things we can do.

to put ourselves in a position of success.

And so, again, the Chief Maxey's point, again, that's the floor as a lieutenant, but there is the expectation that that lieutenant, if they're seeing this escalation from the crowd, will be making phone calls to the, again, if it's overnight, the night duty captain who will be pinging the on-duty chief to talk through these different issues.

Again, you know, defer to SPD about their staffing, but it feels like level six is a point at which you could have an exception to you could have it as a higher ranking person who makes that call, unless it is truly a life safety emergency that crops up and then whomever is making that has to adhere to the criteria for when it's appropriate, and they just have to demonstrate why they chose to authorize instead of seeking higher approval.

So that feels like having something set that's high and then creating a workable exception in those emergency circumstances might be another option.

Thank you.

And Chair, I had one other question, but I know we're in the interest of time.

I'll get with the team on that last question.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you so much.

I will also try and be brief.

Assistant Chief Nelson, earlier you stated that there are two kinds of blast balls, and I'm wondering again if you can differentiate between the two and if there's any distinct uses or cases where you might use one over the other.

Yeah, so the two types we're currently using are inert.

The first one's inert, so it's a very loud bang and it just dispels white smoke.

There's no chemical irritants associated with that.

It's just an inert blast ball.

So those are used again to create distance if we need to move a crowd, create distance, things like that.

The second time we have kind, we have our pepper spray blast balls, which do obviously contain a chemical irritant.

And so if we have stagnation or the inert blast balls aren't being effective or not moving the crowd, that has a secondary effect in that there's a chemical irritant, so people will want to leave the space to kind of escape out of the chemical irritant zone.

And so it really is just dependent on what's the appropriate tool at the moment in time to affect what we're trying to accomplish.

Deeply appreciate it.

And you mentioned there's also required documentation for use of any of those.

And those go through internal leadership.

Yes?

Wonderful.

And I know from the report that we got from Office of Civil Rights, they did find 72 cases of injuries between tear gas and black blast balls.

I don't know the full breakdown between those, but would love to know.

But moving a little bit to, you know, we've talked a lot about intended use of blast balls, ideally away from people.

But I am curious and just want to be clear for the record that improper use of a blast ball towards someone rather than towards an open space would necessitate a report up to OPA.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

That would be outside of policy.

Right.

Thank you.

And circling back to the question, I had a little bit earlier just about some of the history behind approval of new technology, so to speak, and council's involvement of that.

Just part of what really I'm curious about in that realm, understanding some of that history, is just making sure that we are setting ourselves up for a future where we're able to potentially weigh in, particularly acknowledging the moment we're in with interim leadership between SPD, CPC, and OPA.

And I say that more as acknowledgement of this moment of flex and also deep appreciation of interim leadership.

I know it's not easy to step up into that moment, but just acknowledging that we are in an interim space and finding new leaders and want to make sure that we are ensuring that there's stable leadership in this area and ensuring that we're accountable in making those kind of decisions should new technology become available.

So ideally holding decision-making potentially in this area until we have more clarity on leadership in those agencies.

Thank you for allowing me to join today and I look forward to further discussion with our panelists.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Ring.

Council President?

Thank you very much.

And I apologize for missing the beginning of this discussion.

Just a quick question on the use of the technology of blast balls.

How long have they been in use by SPD, both the inert and the chemical and the smoke kind?

And I ask because I met my husband at WTO November 30th, 1999. Lots of tear gas.

I don't remember blast balls.

So how long have they been in use?

I don't have the specifics on how long these tools have been in use.

Brian?

I don't have the specific timeline either.

I think I first saw them surfacing around 2012, 2011 in that time period, but I'd have to go back and look at our purchase records to know.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President, for that historical reference.

I didn't realize you had a personal connection to it.

Okay, thank you very much, everyone.

Just to conclude, we'll work through this.

Obviously, I encourage everyone to engage with our panelists.

A lot of you, I think, already have.

I know Deputy Mayor Burgess has been meeting with teams with a number of people.

Obviously, continue to work with central staff.

We'll continue to work through this.

Obviously, there's some themes.

One is the incident commander, the rank, and involvement of senior leadership, obviously understanding life safety pieces.

The mutual aid point was a theme.

I've been highlighting the aligning, you know, the SMC to state law, and that's primarily with the tear gas, but there's, you know, that's a piece that we cannot forget about is aligning, and we need to do that right.

Fourth, this is very important, how can we assist OIG in its role in terms of oversight?

Not mentioned also CPC and OPA, and also we do oversight, which is kind of leading to My last point in terms of theme is council review.

So we'll look at that.

We'll definitely be working with all involved to the point I made earlier regarding there's a lot of different players in this and we cannot have any last second pieces.

So key is early and often engagement.

And I really appreciate the engagement thus far.

And I suspect...

that at this point we have reached the end of today's meeting, and I suspect there's no other business.

So hearing that there's no further business, seeing there's no further business before the committee, we are adjourned.

Thank you very much.