Public Safety & Human Services Committee 11023

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Peterson.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Present.

Chair Herbold, five present.

We will now approve our agenda for our committee meeting.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will transition into public comment.

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We've got two people signed up for public comment today.

And with that, we'll move into hearing from them.

First, we have Howard Gale, and Howard Gale will be followed by Castile Hightower.

Good afternoon.

Good morning.

Sorry.

Howard Gale, SeattleStop.org.

As you reappoint Community Police Commission members today, reflect that in a matter of weeks, the Community Police Commission will start its 11th year, 11th year of work.

Does year 11 hold any more promise than last year or the years before?

In regards to Seattle police abuse, these are some of the Seattle Times headlines from just the last two months of 2022. Can Chief Diaz, SBD insider, end Seattle's federal consent decree?

SBD conducts a SWAT exercise near a school one day after the Ingram school shooting.

Seattle officers suing council member over murder comment face another setback.

Seattle cop on leave amid probe into alleged stalking.

Seattle police arrest prolific taggers who caused over $300,000 in damage.

Washington Police Academy eyes removing more recruits who show red flags.

Women suing Seattle hip-hop artists in Seattle's sex trafficking case face a ticking clock.

A Seattle man began the night in crisis, then a sudden death in restraint.

Former 911 Seattle manager says he warned city about deadly dispatch problem.

SBD sergeant investigated by leadership over sex assault memo record show.

This would suggest more than enough topics directly related to policing and the consent decree for the CPC to focus on with a near $2 million budget.

So what did they spend their first meeting of 2023 discussing?

Small business and crime, a topic wholly irrelevant to constitutional policing and the purpose the CPC was created for under the consent decree in Seattle law.

If this doesn't indicate how detached and alienated from the community the CPC has become, then this should.

Last week's CPC meeting happening exactly one day prior to the one-year anniversary of SPD's brutal murder of a man in mental health crisis starts out with an entirely false explanation as to why over one year later that man's name has not been made public and the CPC is fine with functionally ignoring this case.

Good luck with year 11. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Lucille Hightower.

Hi, my name is Casta Hytale calling about the affected persons program.

My family, like so many both before and after my brother Herbert Hytale Jr.' 's killing, continue to be impacted by the aftermath of police brutality.

While millions are poured into the defense and justification of the harms perpetuated by Seattle police, our pain is exacerbated and prolonged unnecessarily due to the bureaucracies we have had to navigate and whose hostility creates an added layer of trauma unnecessarily.

Victim complaints being lost, minimized, and dismissed with no right of appeals, being treated with disrespect in spaces created to uplift our voices, struggling to pay for funeral and burial expenses during one of the most traumatic times of our lives, the impact it has had on our housing, our mental health, and the list goes on and on.

Therefore, I am here to express my gratitude to the council for passing legislation to create a work group that directly addresses these issues head on, that goes beyond condolences for our loss and window dressings of supposed accountability, and instead is willing to tackle the multitude of harms and generational trauma created by violence perpetuated by city employees and prolonged by city bureaucracy.

I look forward to continuing to work with you all to create a program that allows for tangible change to a community whose pain and trauma has been stigmatized for far too long.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With that, we will conclude public comment and move on to the other items on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda items one through three.

Agenda item one is appointment 02430, reappointment of Alina Santillan as member, community police commission for a term to December 31, 2025. Agenda item two is appointment 02429, reappointment of Erica Newman as member, community police commission for a term to December 31, 2025. Agenda item three is appointment 02428, reappointment of Mark Mullins' member, Community Police Commission, for a term to December 31, 2025. Thank you so much.

We are joined by

Community Police Commission co-chair Merkel, as well as Noel Aldrich from my staff.

They will both be presenting the appointments since, as I mentioned earlier, the reappointments have differing appointment authority, one being the commission and the other being the city council.

Before proceeding to consideration of the appointments and hearing those appointments, Co-Chair Merkel, could you please speak briefly to the work that the Community Police Commission does?

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

My name is Joel Merkel.

I'm a co-chair of the Seattle Community Police Commission.

And as you know, the Seattle Police Commission was created out of the consent decree between the Department of Justice and the city of Seattle.

And following the 2017 accountability ordinance that the city council passed, it established the police commission as a permanent independent city.

department.

And currently we have assigned to us 21 members, seven each appointed by the police commission, the city council and the mayor's office.

And the mission, the heart of the work that we do at the police commission is to uplift community voices, particularly underserved communities and communities affected by most affected by policing and also to hold the Seattle Police accountable by making recommendations to our accountability partners, the mayor's office and the city council while listening to the community and uplifting their voices.

And so for those reasons, it's very exciting to see the three commissioners being reappointed to continue the work of the CPC.

We have a busy 2023 ahead of us and we're excited to have each of these three commissioners to be considered by the city council.

And we're grateful for the time the committee is making for this.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Noel, could you please present the council reappointment?

This is the appointment of Alina Santillan.

Elena Santillan works as the Director of Racial Equity for Seattle Center Cohort, supporting Seattle Center organizations to strengthen their racial equity strategies and practices.

Previously, Elena worked at KEXP 90.3 FM in several roles, including as Community Engagement Manager.

Alina is a graduate of the Seattle Community Police Academy and has volunteered for a number of nonprofit organizations, including Youth Care, the Rainier Valley Corps, and the Black Prisoners Caucus at Clallam Bay.

Alina earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Thank you.

And since these are all reappointments and they're not here with us, if council members have no objection, we're just going to hear them all together.

So with that, we'll move on to the next reappointment.

Coach Merkel, could you please present the next appointment?

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I believe the next appointment is Erica Newman, Erica Newman is a CPC appointee and she's been a valuable and contributing member of the police.

Commission, and there are several work groups that she's contributed to, and the work groups are really the heart of of the CPC's work, and so we're pleased that she's interested in continuing to serve and we're pleased that the council is considering her appointment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then appointment number three, back to, you know, Oh, sorry.

Number three is also a CPC appointment.

Yes, that's correct.

The third appointment today is also a CPC appointment.

That's Mark Mullins.

Mark Mullins has been a valuable member of the police commission.

The work group that he's been most active on is community engagement.

And as an officer who's been in the field for over 20, I believe 25 years, Mark Broughton, He's been working closely with Commissioner Alina sent on his also before the committee committee today and they've been a really good team on the Community engagement work group and we're looking forward to.

Mark Broughton, The work they can do this year together and again we're thankful for the committee to make time for for all of the appointments today.

Thank you so much.

So now that we have all three appointments in front of us, I'm going to go ahead and move that the committee recommends confirmation of, let's see here, the appointments 02430, 02429, and 02428. May I have a second?

Second.

Thank you.

We now have a motion and a second.

Can the clerk please call the roll?

Are there any comments?

I should say first.

And seeing no other comments, can the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis?

Yes.

Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Five votes in favor.

Thank you so much, and thank you, Co-Chair Merkel, for joining us.

And please pass on our congratulations and thanks for the commissioners that we are reappointing today.

Thank you, Council Member.

Excellent.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number four?

Agenda item four, Office of Inspector General 2023 Work Plan.

Greetings.

Thank you for joining us today.

If we could just start with a quick round of introductions for our presenters before we get into the meat of the matter.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Council Members.

It's a pleasure to be here.

My name is Lisa Judge.

I'm the Inspector General for Public Safety.

I'm joined this morning.

Good morning.

My name is Matias Gaudet.

I'm the Investigation Supervisor with OIG.

Fantastic.

Thank you both for being with us.

The Office of the Inspector General is one very, very important leg of our three-legged civilian-led police accountability system.

And the accountability ordinance requires the development of a work plan and the solicitation of work plan items from from other parts of the system.

And given the resource limitations and challenges of OIG.

They every year do their very best to facilitate the requests of the community and of council and of the items that they are required by ordinance to work on.

And as we'll be hearing a little bit today, there'll be more responsibilities that the city will be contemplating for the OIG moving forward.

as we move into the next step of the consent decree.

But we'll hear about that more in a bit.

And with that, I'll just turn it over to Inspector General Judge to lead us through their presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that.

And thanks for the context for this presentation.

So what I'm going to do is just work you through a little bit of our process, how this is developed, and then talk to you about the audit and policy work that we're doing.

And then I'm going to turn it over to Matias to talk about the OPA work.

Then I'll come back and talk about things that are on our horizon that we simply don't have the staffing or resources to take on in this current year.

So assuming I can operate this.

I knew I would need technical assistance.

Thank you.

It is not working.

There we go.

Okay, so just a little bit.

I think that we've discussed our office and the structure a number of times, but just a little bit of a recap.

The authorities and duties of OIG are to provide oversight to the Seattle Police Department and to the Office of Police Accountability.

We recommend system improvements.

So we are responsible for systemic oversight of these entities.

And we were created to ensure fidelity to the consent decree over time.

So we were created as an entity that would eventually take over for the federal court and the monitoring team with that type of oversight of the Seattle Police Department.

How do we do that work?

We do audits and reviews of SPD and OPA.

We engage in policy work that involves research, best practices, convening stakeholder groups, and making policy recommendations, providing policy technical assistance to the Seattle Police Department.

And we engage a lot collaboratively with community stakeholders, with other stakeholder partners in the system, and try to incorporate as best we can a variety of perspectives into our work and our work product.

So just a little bit of a heads up of the projects that we were able to take in given feedback that we received from stakeholder partners and that includes council members, includes the Community Police Commission, OPA and the Seattle Police Department.

So the projects that we've accepted as new work this year are an audit of the 911 dispatch center.

That's been a priority, I think, of council and of the CPC for a while.

And it was on our horizon, but we just weren't able to take on that work in 2021. as there was a transition going on or in in 2022 but this is the year for that work we're also looking to go back to our improvement of spd disciplinary processes so we're going to be following up on all of the audit products that we've produced thus far determining the status of recommendations making additional recommendations and suggestions for improvement So we will be doing follow up on everything to include the discipline audits.

Also, we were requested to do an audit of SPD supervision, and that will necessarily be encompassed in the monitoring teamwork that we will be taking on this year.

So projects that we're going to continue to assess and try to take on, if we can, are review of OPA actions taken to address findings in the 2021 user survey, audits of chain of command responses to supervisor actions that are issued by OPA, and also in the force review board process.

We are looking at reviewing how SPD evaluates candidates applying for SPD for possible extremist ties.

And that we are really hoping to do a hiring audit in the near future.

So looking to hopefully do that potentially at the end of this year or even in 2024 and the use of frontline investigations.

This was a request from the Office of Police Accountability to get better information and feedback on how those types of investigations are going.

So just a little bit on how we prioritize our work.

We use a risk assessment matrix.

We take in stakeholder input.

We do research on what's going on around the country and look at best practices.

We then prioritize those things based on the amount of risk that would happen if realized, if certain work wasn't done, and how significant that risk was.

And so the projects that rise to the top of that risk matrix over there in quadrant uh three three are the ones that we we take on based on the resources that we have available and so that is how we got to the items in our work plan and i think that you probably in looking through it saw that it's pretty pretty comprehensive there's a lot of work going on and we're poised to take on some additional work as Council Member Herbold indicated.

So starting with audits, some of the projects that we have going on right now is an audit of the Youth Miranda Rights Ordinance that was passed, the My Chance to Unlap Gittens Act passed by Seattle City Council, and then further strengthened by state legislation that happened a year later for Youth Miranda Rights.

So this project actually came as a request of Council Member Herbold.

and it is well underway with the audit project anticipated to be completed in early to mid 2023. Next up is Leave Administration by SPD.

This was an audit that was generated at the request of the mayor's office.

And in it, we are assessing SPD's controls over use of leave so that we can assess whether there's fraud, waste, abuse, things like that.

And that is also anticipated to be in the first half of 2023 that we finish that project.

Mutual Aid is a project that we've had going on for a number of years now.

It was put on hold during 2020 and 2021. It is really kind of a comprehensive look at all of the arrangements that the Seattle Police Department has with other entities, be they federal partners, other law enforcement agencies in the jurisdiction, how those folks work together.

And so what we're hoping to do with this project is to provide insight and transparency into those arrangements and just do an assessment of what that looks like, where there may be pitfalls, where there can be improvements.

And that is anticipated that we'll pick that back up and complete it in 2023. And I mentioned a little bit earlier that we're doing an audit recommendation follow-up.

So we'll be going back through all of our previous projects to make sure that the recommendations that we've made are being implemented.

Any questions so far?

Quick question.

How does the audit recommendation follow up item differ from the earlier item that you mentioned about the discipline audit follow up?

Sure.

That is part of this.

So we had gotten an ask from a stakeholder partner to follow up on discipline, and there is much more work to be done in the area of auditing SPD's disciplinary processes for fairness, effectiveness, efficiency and all that.

So that piece is part of this larger work of going back and making sure the recommendations we've made are being implemented.

Thank you.

All right.

Some of the recurring audit projects that we have that are mandated by ordinance are the collection of information for law enforcement purposes under Chapter 14.12, otherwise known as the intelligence ordinance.

And this this is an ordinance that regulates how the Seattle Police Department collects and uses intelligence information, which is information about people's religious or political affiliations or sexual practices.

And so it's in some ways a fairly antiquated ordinance that was adopted in the 70s, you know, sort of controlling the keeping of dossiers.

Things like that was adopted prior to the invention of the internet or at least the widespread availability and use of the internet so there are some aspects of it that are potentially needing a bit of a refresh in 2023, but we have an ongoing obligation to take a look at how SPD gathers uses intelligence for information and complies with the ordinance so we did a fairly comprehensive look a couple of years ago we're going back we're almost finished with this year's look at uh at that information so we should have that report available in early 2023 the other requirement that we have by statute is taking a look at spd's use of surveillance technology acquisition and use.

Up until 2022, there were no approved technologies for SPD.

So OIG had no nothing to really review.

You know, we submitted a report, but it was a very, very brief This year, we have an obligation to review eight technologies.

We, given staffing limitations and just the amount of work with eight technologies all at once, we asked and received an extension from council.

So we will have reports coming due in March.

at the end of Q1.

And we're working currently with a consultant to try to get this first look at those eight technologies.

More have been added since then.

So for this year, we will have, I believe, 12 technologies that we will have to review the end of 2023. Could be more than that.

And these are some of them that we will be looking at.

And do I understand correctly that as the Council works on approving the technologies that are in the backlog, your obligation grows?

Correct.

And is the obligation to review all technologies every year?

all technologies annually.

And I think one of the complicating factors there is we are required to review the previous year's technology acquisition and use to make sure that they're using it appropriately pursuant to their stated purpose, assess disparity, look at budgetary issues associated with the technology, but we're required to produce the report by September.

So it only gives us nine months rather than a year to do a whole year's worth of past look at technology use.

So yes, the obligation will continue to grow.

I believe SPD is planning to do a technology push this year.

So I anticipate that this just continues to grow.

And it's a little bit of a balance.

When we do the first look at a technology, that's going to be the most labor and resource intensive, getting to understand it, to know where to look for the information, how to pull the data that's relevant.

So once we get a technology done, we'll have a baseline.

And I think the ongoing reviews of those will be probably, hopefully, less labor intensive.

But as they're added, we're going to have

that ongoing obligation to learn about new technologies and figure out all of those things so um it's just a body of work that's going to get bigger wait can I make oh Councilmember Nelson so there are six Technologies that are teed up to come through the uh economic development technology and City Light Committee this year so that is the number that we're looking at okay for um retroactive approval for those technologies.

And we did two last year.

So I imagine that's what you're referring to also today.

So are you staffed appropriately to do this work?

uh council did give us an additional position for a second surveillance auditor thank you very much for that beginning this year hiring is on ongoing right now and we hope to have that staffed very quickly i think two two individuals reviewing all of these technologies is still um probably significantly under resourced So I would imagine as we add and to the extent we were working with a consultant this year, which has been very helpful, you know, a company with a lot of expertise in this helping to guide us through these first technologies.

So if there is a balance of staffing and consultant ability, I think that helps.

with things, but I would say, no, we are not appropriately staffed to take on six new technologies with two individuals.

If we have a nine month period to, to assess those, unless the reviews that we do are significantly scaled back in terms of the amount of, you know, what we have to look at, what we have to report on.

I look forward to speaking with you more about that.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Yes.

Council member Peterson.

Thank you very much for highlighting this issue of surveillance technology and the exhaustive reviews that are going to be required based on our current version of the surveillance technology ordinance.

Appreciate the chair of that committee, Sarah Nelson, for shepherding those reviews through.

And with the loss of officers over the past couple of years, we may need to rely on technology to improve efficiencies with crime prevention.

I know that some parks facilities that get broken into could benefit from some cameras, for example.

And so I want to take a close look at whether, as you are reviewing these technologies every year, if there's a way that we can perhaps recategorize some of them and maybe the review time isn't annual for each one or looking at some sort of efficiencies in the review process, if these are just standard technologies used for efficiency purposes and there's less of a concern that we hear from some folks who are concerned about surveillance, but it seems like we'll need to take another look at this in the near future.

Thank you.

Yes, I appreciate that.

And I very well understand how technology can be a force multiplier in law enforcement, but very careful to balance it against civil liberties and privacy.

I think that your suggestion of perhaps a tiered approach for review might be really helpful.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, moving on.

New performance audits.

And I think I've mentioned these a little bit when I started.

One is an audit of the Community Safety and Communications Center.

So looking at the impacts of transition out of SPD and into its own department.

to examine issues around that transition to address areas of community concern in terms of call assignments, dispatch protocols, response times, crisis and equity training that is received by those folks and how it shows up in the work and any disparities that we might find.

And really, we try to add an element of looking at disparity into all of our projects.

So capturing that here.

Next is an audit of taser effectiveness.

When we talk about the tools that SPD has and how those can sometimes be force multipliers, I think the TASER is one of those pieces of equipment that people make reference to quite a bit.

I think there's a lot of perhaps...

I don't know that we really understand practically how effective they are.

I think there's a lot of belief about their effectiveness.

And so we want to kind of dig in and figure out what is reality there.

So we're going to look at taser deployments.

assess their historical effectiveness by looking qualitatively and quantitatively at SPD use of force reports.

We are going to look at how often their deployment is a significant factor in resolving a conflict without the need for increased uses of force.

and look at their policies and training.

So that sort of came out of a look that we did of responses to people in crisis where there was a good outcome or an outcome that involves less uses of force.

And so from that work, I think what we teased out was we really wanted to take a more heightened look at the taser itself and how effective that is.

Any questions?

Great.

Great.

Okay, so policy work, I think everyone is probably very familiar with our Sentinel event review process and the deep dive that we did into the SPD protest response from 2020. We'll be wrapping that up.

We're currently in final edits of the last Waves 4 and 5 report, so you should see that product coming out very soon.

And then we're looking, because this was such a valuable opportunity problem-solving process between government and community, especially between SPD and community.

We're looking to build a process that looks at officer-involved shootings using a Sentinel event review process so that there is true community involvement in figuring out what led up to a particular use of force, a deadly use of force, whether there were factors upstream that could be changed, something that could be done to keep negative outcomes like people being killed by police from happening.

So we plan to start looking at cases where there's an intersection with people in crisis.

because that is also a great matter of community concern.

And so we thought if we combined those two and started with that intersection of officer-involved shootings of people in crisis, that might be a good starting place for us.

We've also been working with the Seattle Police Department on deprioritizing certain traffic offenses that are civil in nature, don't have an impact on public safety, trying to minimize the number of times that officers and community members are brought into unnecessary contact, where especially in traffic stop situations where things can go terribly awry, either for officers or community members.

So we had a work group put together, worked very collaboratively with the Seattle Police Department, and Chief Diaz had deprioritized a list of offenses at the end of 2021, beginning of 2022. So we're going to go back to that work and continue to look at whether there are other ways perhaps traffic engineering solutions or things like that, where we can continue to add to that list of civil offenses for which there won't be primary basis to stop somebody.

We will also continue working on our effective interviewing project, which is using the peace model developed in the UK to develop a training program and supporting policies for SPD in implementing that.

We're working with SPD on data collaborations.

We know that SPD's data, the transparency of it, the ability of the public to consume it has been an issue of community concern.

So we've got projects going on with SPD, and it is part of ongoing consent decree work as well, doing this data collaboration.

A couple questions?

Questions?

Thank you.

As it relates to the recommendations coming out of the four Sentinel event reviews, I appreciate that the three recommendations Accountability agencies have a dashboard where they track recommendations and the implementation of those recommendations.

Are the Sentinel event review recommendations included in that?

Yes, the CPC has an ordinance obligation to track all recommendations made by all accountability partners.

So they're kind of the designated clearinghouse for these.

But part of OIG work in the coming year is going to be developing our own dashboards.

We've got meetings scheduled with SPD.

They have a whole matrix of recommendations that came out of Sentinel event with statuses of each one of those recommendations.

And we're up over, you know, a hundred plus recommendations.

So we're hoping to be able to update this committee very soon on that work and make that information publicly available.

Thank you.

And then on the item related to the use of deception by SPD officers in investigations, I just want to flag the fact that it's been a year this week since it was publicly revealed in a – well, it was – longer since it was the issue was identified, but became more of a more public awareness of it in early January of last year.

And I appreciate the information that you provided about the draft policy that you've been working very hard with a number of stakeholders, including SPD on development.

But I'm just concerned that it doesn't seem like we're moving forward in actually implementing those recommendations that resulted from that intensive stakeholder work that you've been doing both with stakeholders as well as with the collaboration of the police department.

So where are we in that?

Yeah, unfortunately, I think that's an SPD question because we did a number of rounds of stakeholder engagement around officers using deception in a variety of contexts.

And in the first round of our work, we focused on patrol officers and sort of the ruse situation and, you know, when officers in a patrol capacity could appropriately use deception and when it was really just...

more undermining of trust and not productive than you would want.

So we issued that set of recommendations to the Seattle Police Department.

They have been working to incorporate those into their policy.

And I think that's where it is right now.

So I can certainly, you know, we plan to reinitiate and I'm going to talk about that on one of the next slides, more work.

into deception in investigations.

So we focused on one aspect of it that was of public concern last year.

Now we're going to get into other policies that go beyond patrol into interrogating suspects, suspected of significant crimes, those kinds of situations.

So we will be continuing that work, but I can follow up and try to provide you as best information I can on where the ruse policy is at with SPD.

Thank you.

My recollection is that the OIG draft was submitted back in October.

I first heard you say I should direct the question to SPD.

I appreciate your offering to find more information.

But then I heard you say that they are working on integrating the policy and the recommendations into their policy.

How do we know that?

Just conversations with leadership at SPD and the folks working in the policy development.

I think that you had seen at least one draft from SPD of what they were proposing to them.

The representations were that they were working to incorporate that feedback into the policy.

And that's the information that I have at this point.

Thank you.

Okay, some of the recurring projects we have are working with the city and city partners on state legislative agenda.

One of the big items this year that's going to be a project for us is on traffic stops.

So it'll be work that is that dovetails with the work we're doing with spd on on traffic stops if there is legislation at the state level my understanding is that there are some provisions in some of the proposed legislation that would provide fundings for things like vehicle repair things like that so there might be other um nice funding options for folks uh to deal with traffic infractions like broken tail lights, not working mufflers, things like that.

So I think that the state legislation, if it passes, will be very helpful to the efforts that are ongoing here in Seattle.

We're also required to look at trends for the city with claims and lawsuits that the data that we got from the city attorney's office was a tad spotty for last year.

So I think we're going to make some efforts with the city attorney's office to try to get a little bit more of a comprehensive look at that information this year.

We are also required to look at OPA's use of sworn and civilian staffing and to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of civilian personnel there.

As we know, they are constrained by CBA requirements that they can only have a certain number of civilians and they can only do certain things, but that will factor into our look at their work this year.

and the last two policy projects i'm going to talk about are i don't know if if you recall but one of the first policy projects we did was mapping of the discipline system and it was very helpful i think for us to understand the system and for our partners and community to really understand how a complaint flows from the time it comes into resolution That was part of the foundation for doing our discipline audit.

And so as we move into doing more auditing of use of force, I think it's important to understand uses of force.

You know, from the time force is used, how is it investigated?

How is it reviewed?

What are the ramifications of that review?

So we're going to take, first of all, map it and then use that in our force analysis.

And I think that council member, you wanted to speak specifically about the work that we will be taking on in the transition from a monitoring team and oversight by the federal court to our own oversight processes here in the city of Seattle.

So we're currently working to develop an overall methodology that will sort of lay out our plan for how we look at spd's use of force effective supervision uh interacting with persons in crisis you know all of those kind of main subject matter areas from the consent decree um taking some information from this process that we've been in with the the federal court but also creating our own more you know meaningful process what do we want to know as a community what do we want to know as leaders about how SPD engages in these activities.

How can we make these things more efficient?

How can we ensure that they're being done in a constitutional fashion?

So we're really trying to put our own sort of innovation into how we look at those processes.

It'll be a whole new body of work that we develop.

from that overarching plan, we will develop specific methodologies for those.

And I think, you know, really the consent decree since 2012 has only focused on patrol operations.

So not trying to sweep any additional operations of SPD into the consent decree process, but acknowledging that we will as the oversight entity once the consent decree is dissolved and we're no longer under it, we'll have to look at SPD as a whole.

It'll be a much more holistic approach, including oversight of investigative processes, training, all of the other functions that have really not been part of the monitor's assessments of SPD.

So we'll be establishing our own ongoing metrics to maintain compliance.

We'll be, of course, working collaboratively with SPD and other stakeholders to make sure that we're doing that in a way that is meaningful and important to everybody and making sure that our reporting out processes are comprehensive and transparent.

Thank you.

Just a couple of comments and questions about this item.

Appreciate understanding that the Office of the Inspector General is working on getting to that point where you're able to take on the monitoring assessment work that the Department of Justice Monitor has been responsible for.

the sort of transferring of those responsibilities will be dependent on the court agreeing.

So I'm guessing that means that this methodology that you're developing is part of what the court will be evaluating to determine whether or not what you propose to do in the place of the current monitoring approach.

is sufficient.

So that is part of the process?

Correct.

Yes, those methodologies will be submitted to the court for review and approval.

Okay, great.

And like the question of Council Member Nelson, I would ask the question of sufficient resources to take on this very, very important new body of work in the...

the development of the assessments is one piece, but then actually doing the work itself.

Correct.

Yes.

Thank you for that.

It is an entirely new body of work for us.

And as you can see from all of the other projects we have on our plate, we've got a lot going on separate and apart from taking on this new responsibility.

Historically, the monitoring team which has done this work has been involved anywhere from three to upwards of seven or eight members of the monitoring team that are actively contributing to conducting assessments.

So with also the use of consultants and other experts.

So I think the answer for us in terms of staffing is somewhere in the middle of that, but it is going to require staffing to take on this entirely new body of work.

Folks with some expertise in police oversight, in criminal justice, who have statistical analysis capabilities.

Part of this also is SPD is a good partner and they have a lot of expertise in-house.

So some of the work will be OIG doing analysis, doing policy development with SPD, but some of it will be SPD doing their own quality control, their own analysis, and then OIG checking that work and making sure that it's accurate, that it's transparent, that it's getting to what we need to get to.

You know, I think some of this will be letting SPD do their own internal quality control and making sure that they're doing it appropriately.

Some of it will be taken on as new work by OIG.

So I think, you know, on the sort of middle to lower end of those monitoring team numbers is probably a good start before we figure out what else we need to do.

And I recollect that during our most recent budget process, we asked some questions about the funding that is devoted to the monitoring work.

I understand there's some planning reserves that have not been directly allocated to this point.

And I just want to make sure that you are having conversations with the executive about the planning needs and that we can expect the resources necessary to meet those new obligations that you're taking on.

want some reassurance that we can expect to get some sort of a mid-year request to help facilitate your staffing needs to fulfill this important body of work, because I imagine that is another question that the court will be looking at, not just what you propose to do, but that you have the resources to do it.

Yes, thank you.

I appreciate that.

Conversations have been ongoing with the executive.

I've produced some materials with budgetary projections and descriptions of what we think our needs are there.

I'd be happy to share those with you in this committee, if that would be helpful to you.

And we will be keeping both the executive and council apprised of needs that we have there.

Thank you.

Questions?

I'm not seeing any others.

Okay, this will be a big piece of work.

And so perhaps we can come back and talk a little bit more in depth about what this work might look like at a future time.

Yeah, I think it would be helpful to have that conversation.

I know that you're having it out in community or beginning to have it out in community, but I think before we submit that methodology, I think making sure that all of your partners are informed on it would be really helpful.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Thank you.

I'm feeling overwhelmed for you.

I have to say, in addition to what is required in the transition from the consent decree, you opened this discussion with talking about a lot of audits that are requested sort of on an ongoing basis.

And I don't know how you say how you Do you have to accept the recommendation to do audits?

It just seems as though you've got a lot of work on your plate.

And at some point, we will have to discuss whether or not, you know, how we staff your office and make sure that your work plan is workable.

Yes, thank you.

And we give a lot of consideration to resources.

So what you're seeing is our estimation of a scaled back plan.

So I appreciate that you find it a little daunting.

I I do too.

But fortunately, I currently have a really excellent group of folks who are really smart, capable, and are getting this stuff done.

You know, when we add the additional surveillance technology work, the additional monitoring team duties, that is going to require additional resources.

But this work plan that is chock full of things is what we expect we can do with existing resources, notwithstanding the monitoring assessments part of it.

So this slide in particular is new.

And as technologies are approved, that will be new work as well.

But thank you very much.

I appreciate that acknowledgment.

Okay, and now it's time for me to turn it over to Matias and his capable hands.

Thank you, Lisa.

So in addition to the OPA review work that the investigations team already does, we don't have quite as much latitude as the rest of the office for projects as most of our work is really dictated by the accountability ordinance as it pertains to reviewing OPA investigations and certifying them as thorough, timely, and objective.

um there are some other things that we're going to do we that we can do and uh what we're going to one thing we're doing is returning to real-time review of classification decisions that are being made by opa um what this means is we'll be taking a weekly look at cases that opa classifies as contact logs supervisor reactions or bias reviews We'll be looking at those weekly, and that will allow us to go back to OPA if there are any cases that we do not agree with this classification on.

We can go back to OPA in real time with time to change those classifications if we can reach that agreement with them.

So that's very good.

Previously, OIG did real-time classification review.

They did this weekly review.

When that was done at that time, there was such a high level of concurrence with the decisions and limitations on staffing at the time that that was switched eventually to a sampling, quarterly sampling of classification decisions.

But now we have the appropriate staffing levels, which is really great, and that will allow us to return to the real-time sampling, which is important.

We've learned that there is quite an interest in the public in the investigations role that happens at OIG.

One of the things that we're going to be really, really working on that I'm really excited about is increasing transparency in our work through more reporting.

We're going to do more reporting on that.

With the classification reviews that I just spoke of, we will start reporting on those quarterly and produce a report every quarter on the classification reviews.

We're going to go to full reports on investigation work semi-annually, so twice a year we'll do those.

which is really important to us we really want to increase the transparency in the office because we feel that the public is really asking for it so that will be great um tying into this reporting we at the end of last year we developed a new case management system that we've just launched and started working with the first of this year which is going to help us in that reporting and transparency it will improve the work flow of the investigations team through oig it will capture the data much more effectively than what we've done in the past greatly improve our ability to work with that data and customize reports and and really get the data out there that the public is looking for so that's very exciting and all of this helps us with you know our goal of increasing transparency through the reporting for the year um as lisa discussed earlier um the investigations team will also be working on a dashboard um that the the complainants can use to track cases that oig is investigating so they can keep up on the status of what's happening with their case as it moves through the investigation within oig also as lisa mentioned earlier with the the interview training we did with dr griffiths we did that last year which is great um and we are going to continue developing that into 2023 And put some focus on on more staff training on interviewing techniques and investigative techniques, so that we can ensure the team is uniform across the board on expectations and training and all of those, so I think that's about it for for investigations, if there are any questions.

I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOR BEING COMMITTED TO CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT OF YOUR OWN SYSTEMS, BEING REFLECTIVE, INVITING OTHERS IN TO REVIEW THE SYSTEMS AND BEING OPEN TO THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS.

I UNDERSTAND THAT.

Some of these items that you've just covered have come from a result of that reflection and collaboration with other folks who have expertise in the system.

And just want to thank you for your commitment to that work.

I think that's really important in generating public trust in the system.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Nope, nope.

Just Horizon Projects, if we have a couple of minutes.

Okay.

We eventually want to look as soon as we can at hiring practices.

I think I discussed that a little bit earlier.

We've had requests for us to look at SPD's response to hate crimes.

And as I mentioned, the discipline follow-up, we want to...

envision additional work in the area of discipline.

Some of the issues that hampered our previous look were we were looking at the grievance process, but really there was no set of data.

There were no grievances that had been resolved in our data set period.

So we're hoping to come back when there is actually information to take a look at and refresh that part of the audit.

And just want to flag on the SPD response to hate crimes.

The A number of years ago, the city auditor did a series of audits on SPD's response to hate crimes.

And those audits resulted in a number of recommendations.

Some of them have been implemented.

Some of those recommendations have been implemented.

I do recall looking, they too have a dashboard that identifies recommendations that they have made that have not They have been implemented, that are in progress, as well as have not been implemented.

And my recollection is that there are a couple related to hate crimes that are still pending from, I believe, from either 2017 or 2018.

Thank you.

Yes, and that's work that we will engage in collaboratively with the city auditor's office.

There are, you know, really particular rules in the yellow book world about who makes recommendations and who can follow up on those recommendations once made.

So we'll be in our work, working with the city auditor for for that follow up piece.

Thank you.

uh overtime and personnel management and spd contracting and purchasing are also on our horizon and we will get to those as staffing and resources permits And then of course, all of this is sort of wet cement, right?

I mean, there are always emergent issues that come up that necessitate us moving things around and shifting our priorities.

So as of today, this is our work plan.

Depending on what happens, that may change, but we like to remain flexible so that we're able to address critical issues of public importance as they arise.

So thank you for this opportunity.

Wet cement analogy.

I've not heard that one before.

It's a good one.

I'm going to use it.

All right.

Thank you.

There are no further questions, comments.

Really, again, appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your team.

And I appreciate all the hard work that you do and the diligence in doing it.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate this opportunity and the support from, uh, especially from, uh, you chair Herbold and, uh, council members.

Thank you.

Couldn't do it without you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Madam chair.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I wasn't appropriately raising my hand in the electronic version, so I can, I can see our guests and I just wanted to take a quick second to say something real quick.

If it's still appropriate manager.

Absolutely.

Okay, great.

So I just wanted to thank the OIG team for being here and especially the director.

Thank you so much for being here and all that you shared.

There's a few things that I wanted to lift up.

One, thank you for, in your initial comments, Lisa, mentioning the, excuse me, director judge, for mentioning the importance of the Stapp, Extremist ideologies amendment that we included in the budget and the requirement that the analysis of Stapp, Our current recruiting practices must include whether or not we are screening for extremist ideologies.

I appreciate you lifting that up, given that we just are on the heels of the January six insurrection from two years ago.

And we still have the highest count of sworn police officers who were present at that rally.

I think it's really an important opportunity for us to turn our attention to how we learn from that, especially here locally in this Washington within our own police department.

So I appreciate the work that you've committed to doing there.

I also want to thank Melanie Cray in my office, who worked with Greg Doss on Central Staff, who mirrored language from the FBI's own internal analysis as they look at extremist ideologies.

We lifted language from the FBI as well.

So this is something that's not just unique to Seattle's police force.

It's pervasive across our country and within law enforcement arms and branches and the FBI has recognized that.

And so that's why we lifted up the language that they've already chosen.

I also wanted to thank you for the work that you've done and you noted it in your presentation.

You say the policy work will include ongoing efforts to address the use of deception by SPD's officers and investigations.

And we know that the chair commented on this earlier.

We have A lot of interest, I think, in this council and continuing to make sure that the power, the immense power that officers have with the badge and the shield that they have, that they are able to have your body really provide oversight.

The immense power they have over people they're investigating means that we need to take every action possible to level the playing field and really make sure that we're evaluating that power and checking it when it's being misused.

I also wanted to say thanks for the data transparency.

I know you've commented on that and our Council colleagues have as well.

However, I do hope that we will be receptive to making changes to the use of data once we see the analysis from OIG.

We need to not only sort of review the reports that come in on the current use of technology and then put it on a shelf and have it aged there.

We need to act upon those reports once the OIG has put those forward.

And we've been working with you.

I've only been on council going into my sixth year now, but I'm very excited to have been here as the OIG got its legs underneath it.

Again, thanks to Councilmember Herbold.

and her stewardship over the Public Safety Committee.

But I do want to make sure that as we receive those reports, we're acting with urgency to respond to any recommendations that OIG puts forward.

And I understand that there is a separate committee that takes that on, but I want us to, across public safety technology and the City Council as a whole, be poised to act on those recommendations.

And finally, I just wanted to say I'm really excited to see the policy priority in your report that is prioritizing examining the civilian ization of OPA.

And we're thankful.

And I see Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell on the team here waiting for the next presentation.

But really appreciate that Director Juno Betts as well has come on and that we've had direct conversations about how the accountability partners can be more effective with really owning an independent role within our city.

So while OPA is currently housed at...

you know, on paper within SBD, it's really important for us to continue to recognize the independence of OPA.

And as you put in your policy, prioritization is further examining the ways that we can civilianize the OPA.

This is something I've advocated for for a long time.

My staff has spent a lot of time looking into this, and I'm glad to see the same attention is being paid by the OIG.

So thanks for your really comprehensive presentation.

And I wanted to save those comments for the end.

I don't know if there's any response necessary, but I just wanted to lift up those pieces from your presentation.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

And if there are no comments further?

No, I just appreciate the sharing of priorities with the last comments and look forward to ongoing conversations about those.

So thank you very much.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

With that, we'll move on to the next item, the last item on our agenda.

Agenda item five is city response to flooding in South Park.

Thank you so much appreciate folks who are with us today, unfortunately, my.

zoom has now been.

closed down, so I cannot see the presenters that are remotely with us, unfortunately, if.

IT is with us, perhaps they can help me.

But in the meantime, I just want to say thank you for the executive departments who are with us.

I understand Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell is with us.

I'll let her kick it off.

We are going to hear about the work responding to the flooding in South Park that started on December 27 as a result of a combination of a confluence of a number of different.

factors, including a king tide and a low pressure system and we're going to hear both how the city.

has responded to that and how we are preparing for the next king tide, which is anticipated to be, I believe, January 23rd, and how we're working to make that community more resilient moving forward in a more sustainable and permanent way.

So we're less responsive and less focused on needing to be responsive and more focused on being proactive.

With that, I will turn it over to Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell.

And Mr. Clerk, could you get me some help?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

And thank you to the committee for having us here today.

As you had mentioned, the flooding began on December 27th during the recess period where we indeed had a lot of staff who were away from city government taking their holiday breaks at the year.

And yet we still had a lot of city staff who were here and responding to this urgent issue.

And so I just want to start off by thanking all of those city staff who were here, boots on the ground, who really made sure that those families in that community that had as much help as possible to be able to meet some of their needs during this very critical time period.

I was on the case actively tracking this on behalf of the executive and our work in South Park will continue.

particularly as we have another potential flooding situation.

We have another king tide that is in the forecast for the next couple of weeks, but really just want to take a moment to say thank you to all of our city staff for their support.

The CBOs that were on the ground immediately helping the community and the community members who really stepped up to aid their neighbors in this moment.

It could not have been done without the broad range of support that we had.

And so really heartfelt thank you and support.

And I will pass it over to Currie Mayer, who is our Director for the Office of Emergency Management to go through exactly what happened during that time period.

Currie.

Yeah.

Thank you, Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell.

good morning um committee thank you uh chair hairbold um we're happy to share um this presentation with you first we wanted to start out with a map um showing where most of the damage is for for this particular flooding event uh the kind of darker orange are industrial business buildings and then the kind of lighter orange hopefully you can see those color changes on your screen HAB-Juliette Boone, Are the residential dwellings or houses and you can see that those are all kind of clustered in a one particular area.

HAB-Juliette Boone, So as senior deputy mayor harrell has stated the flooding and South park really started on December 27. And it was an extreme storm, meaning a combination of very low pressure and extreme king tide and heavy rain.

Those three things happening together are very unusual.

And so the Duwamish River overtopped its banks and quickly inundated those areas that you saw on the map.

To date, there are approximately 49 properties who have substantial have substantial damage and homes and businesses.

There are 14 agencies involved, city departments and community-based organizations, and also including King County.

This is really an urban flooding response initially with Seattle Public Utilities in the lead, and then it quickly became a recovery effort.

So for our role, the Office of Emergency Management, we are now assisting with some on-scene project management.

But as I mentioned, it's really an SPU-led effort, as they have the majority of the expertise, along with our Human Services Department for all of the impacts to families and residents on scene.

The recovery focus of this incident really makes it unique, meaning that it moved from operations and what SPU was doing, which is continuing to how are we going to best meet the needs of the community.

our connections with both the Khmer community organization and villa via commentaria really proved to be critical and those engagements are ongoing we also are working with king county and state emergency management organizations to find some possible funding opportunities That has proved challenging, but there is some new money coming from state emergency management that we're excited about and may in fact work well for this event.

So with that, I will pass it to Seattle Public Utility.

Thank you, Council Members.

I'm Carrie Burchard Juarez, Deputy Director with Seattle Public Utilities.

So we were on site when this storm event happened.

We had activated our wet weather preparedness activities and since South Park is a flood prone area, we had staff positioned there ready to respond and to observe how our system was operating.

So we had staged some resources in the community, including sandbags.

We also had set up a contract with Just Health Action to help us work with the community to get them prepared for the flooding events.

Also, you might remember an event last year where we had sewage backing up into people's homes.

And in response to that, we've installed some grinder pumps this year, along with backflow preventers, and we have more grinder pumps that we're still planning to install.

So this event as Director Mayer mentioned was extraordinary and it exceeded the predictions.

The National Weather Service did not predict that the river would overtop.

Okay, thank you.

And so we really weren't prepared for the river overtopping element of this event, although we were prepared for the other elements of it.

So we quickly realized that we needed to provide some emergency housing to get people out of their homes that were damaged.

So we have provided emergency housing for up to 15 families.

It changes day to day as people leave and go back to their homes.

Sorry about that.

Give me just a second.

I was trying to change the view and then it just disappeared.

So give me just a second.

No worries.

So as we activated in the community, we have out there now a trailer that some of the volunteer organizations are using.

We've set up tents for city staff.

We have our shower trailers, portable toilets, sinks, laundry facilities.

So that's what we have out there on site supporting the community.

Many city departments have activated.

Office of Emergency Management, of course, along with HSD, Department of Neighborhoods, SDCI, and several others.

And of course, we're partnering very closely with the community-based organizations, particularly the Duwamish River Community Coalition, who has just been a really strong partner with us on the ground and a really critical part of this effort.

So once we got people into safe housing, we started to focus on cleanup.

That has primarily included debris collection and actual cleanup inside people's homes.

So we've got vendors that are inside people's homes doing cleanup and then also hazardous materials mitigation, which is occurring this week.

Go to the next slide.

So there are typically three significant king tides every wet weather season, usually during the months of November, December, and January.

And we had our first king tide last year in November during the Thanksgiving weekend, the second one on December 27th and 28th.

And as Council Member Herbold noted, we are expecting the next and last king tide of this rainy season to be the week of January 22nd.

The predicted tide for January 22nd is approximately 10.6 to 10.7 feet, which is actually two feet lower than the tide was on December 27th.

Although it is significantly lower than that December 27th tide, which overtopped the banks of the Duwamish, there is still a risk of a low pressure storm system elevating the tide above the prediction.

And for that reason, we're preparing really diligently for this upcoming king tide with the understanding that there is a risk of flooding.

SPU will be implementing an incident command structure, also known as ICS, in advance of the event to make sure that we have a solid emergency response structure in place in case it is needed.

We are absolutely going to be monitoring the weather very closely with our partners at National Weather Service in case a low pressure zone is expected.

We will have an onsite presence in South Park prior to and during the periods of highest tide, and we will obviously be in touch with our partners at the Office of Emergency Management in case the event requires us to stand up the Emergency Operations Center or bring in other departments on the response.

In addition to those preparations, we've identified several locations along the riverside where we observed the river overtopping during the December 27th event.

And we will be placing strategically sandbags at low points along the river to protect against a similar overtopping.

In addition, at least one of the sites where that overtopping occurred was actually at our SPU pump station site.

And that's in construction right now.

So we've already asked our contractor on that project to install a berm prior to January 22nd.

As another level of protection, we are making sandbags available to the affected residents and businesses on Chicago and Kenyon streets and 8th Avenue.

We're placing sandbags also along the alleyway between Chicago and Kenyon to provide additional protection.

Bottom line, we're putting in as many protections as we possibly can before the next king tide to protect people and properties in South Park.

Next slide.

So the event on December 27 was absolutely extraordinary.

However, we have been aware for years that with climate change and sea level rise, there would be the need for significant planning and investment in South Park to provide resiliency against both the current as well as future flooding events.

SPU, the Office of Sustainability and Environment and Office of Planning and Community Development have been working for the last five years with community to develop a resilience district for the Duwamish Valley, which includes both South Park and Georgetown.

This effort includes a focus on sea level right adaptation, but also on community capacity and wealth building and financing mechanisms to empower community.

The picture you see on the right of this slide shows an example of a sea level rise adaptation strategy.

I know it's hard to see the details, but the strategy includes things like property acquisition along the river, as well as construction of physical infrastructure to prevent future overtopping of the riverbank.

We're fully aware that there is gonna be a need for significant investment to provide long-term protection for South Park against river overtopping.

We have been in touch with the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers, with FEMA and the King County Flood Control District about the future investment needs.

And we remain optimistic and hopeful that we can all work together as partners to provide the needed investments in this community.

Next slide.

There's a lot on this slide, which is a table of all of the South Park related efforts that our city has underway right now.

I mentioned the ongoing effort with the US Army Corps of Engineers.

We have completed a preliminary cost benefit analysis and flood risk management study with the Corps in 2017. We also mentioned the sea level rise adaptation strategy, which was completed in 2020. um apart from the river overtopping spu and sdot are already investing about a hundred million dollars in stormwater drainage infrastructure and roads i mentioned the south park pump station project we also have a first phase of roadway improvements and drainage infrastructure that will be completed this year and we hope to have a second phase of roadway improvements and drainage infrastructure beginning in the next few years We are planning and beginning to plan the preliminary design work for sea level rise infrastructure this year, and we have a FEMA BRIC grant that we're working on for that.

This will lead to significant work involving, like I mentioned, property acquisition, contamination cleanup, and what will amount to funding partnerships with other parties like the Corps and the King County Flood Control District.

And I mentioned we've been in touch with those agencies recently.

Going to the last slide, slide number seven.

I'd like to finish off with this final slide summarizing our next steps.

Carrie mentioned, or actually she didn't, but we had an open house and community discussion on Saturday.

Council Member Herbold, I want to thank you for attending that community meeting.

And I also want to thank Council Member Peterson for his interest and attention and being out of the site.

We were able to provide answers to many questions about preparations for the next king tide at that community meeting.

We also provided supports to residents for the claims process and even support on things like utility bill assistance program.

It was mentioned earlier by Curry, but I want to thank the Duwamish River Community Coalition for organizing that meeting and organizations like Via Communitaria and the Khmer community of Seattle and King County for their incredible service that they're providing to the community.

We're planning on having another community meeting in late January, early February to talk about more future investments.

I mentioned our work to prepare for the next king tide on January 22nd, and we're working closely with residents on the recovery process for their homes, as well as our partners and with community on our sea level rise adaptation strategy.

At this point, I'll hand things off to Tanya Kim from the Human Services Department.

Great.

Thank you, Director, or CEO Lee.

The Human Services Department, when responding to emergency situations, is responsible for the city's emergency support function six.

So we have a formal role.

And this includes typically mass care, housing, and human services.

For the South Park flooding response, HSD is holding regular coordination meetings with community-based organizations heard about some of them already, and HSD Deputy Director Michael Bailey will speak more on that shortly.

And these partners who are leaders are invaluable because we have trusting, they have trusting relationships.

They bring culturally appropriate and in-house language services.

They're able to get communication out very quickly in a timely and appropriate manner.

HSD also provided $35,000 into new emergency contracts for things like case management and being able to have those CBOs respond to related needs quickly.

In addition, HSD is coordinating with the CBOs and American Red Cross on meeting non-shelter needs.

They are including topics such as medical support, transportation, food, et cetera, listed here.

And, you know, I do want to thank the many colleagues at the city, as well as community, but going to hand it off over to HSD's deputy director, Michael Bailey, who has been leading our department's efforts, and he will be able to share more detail.

Thank you.

Hey, good morning, everybody.

And thank you, Director Kim.

For the record, Michael Bailey, Deputy Director here at Seattle Human Services Department.

The city has been working with several community partners to support the families and individuals who are negatively impacted by the storm.

And you've heard a few of them mentioned here, but I just have to call out the amazing work from some of these partners, some of which include the American Red Cross and their volunteers, the Duwamish River Community Coalition, GIST Health Action, Cultivate South Park, Kamai Community, Seattle King County, and of course, Via Communitaria.

HSD has contracted with the last three to once again provide that culturally and linguistically appropriate services.

And as the Red Cross opens cases for families within South Park, both the Khmer community, Seattle King County, and Via Communitaria are supporting the Khmer, English, Vietnamese, and English-speaking families with really understanding what's happening and assisting them with navigating next steps.

And parallel to that effort, we have Cultivate South Park that's working to ensure that folks have culturally appropriate food options.

Our strategy for engaging families was really developed in partnership with these organizations.

And as our understanding of the situation matured, we identified really four daily objectives, which ultimately turned into our four guiding principles for some of the mass care and housing work that we're doing.

And you see those listed here, but just want to provide a little bit more context.

So number one is ensuring that everyone receives a checkup every 24 to 48 hours.

We recognize that SPU did a phenomenal job with immediately offering shelter in response to the flood, but we also recognize that needs will mature.

And it's important to collect those needs in real time, just so that we can continue to support those families.

Number two is assigning unassigned families to culturally and linguistically appropriate organizations.

This really allows for a familiar face and presence to remain in play from start to finish.

This is really intended to be their go-to person for questions and allows us to remove some of the barriers that may prevent quality service delivery.

They also operate as somewhat of a trusted messenger, and I'm sure most of the folks here are familiar with that, but really just using them to help communicate opportunities to the impacted families, but also to any additional friends, families, folks that want to provide assistance.

Number three is ensuring that impacted families have a housing option and a food option.

So we have a housing group that's working diligently to support individuals who wish to be housed elsewhere as their homes undergo remediation.

We're also working to house individuals who wish to permanently relocate and that's for various reasons.

Some relates to the flood, but some not so much.

Seymour, Office of Housing, SPU, and HSD, we're all working with Khmer community, Seattle, King County, and Via Communitaria really to explore those options and really identify solutions on a house-by-house basis.

I will say that some of the units are currently being shown.

We started that process Saturday and will continue to show homes to impacted residents over the course of this week.

So we have that light at the end of the tunnel, if you will, but continue to work with our partners.

And now that we have a better grasp of the long-term rental options, or the needs rather, we'll continue to pull in additional partners like housing connectors and other folks that can provide that assistance.

And when we look at our fourth and final principle here, it's really intended to support the timely and accurate sharing of information amongst all partners.

That's our CBOs, that's our city departments, that's the community, of course.

But just ensuring that we have that that strong flow of communication so that as we identify questions we're being timely with providing those responses and we also have a standing agenda item when we meet with the cbo's to continually improve that work and opportunities like this past saturday to hear directly from the community will also inform some of that work moving forward So I'll talk at a high level about next steps and this first bullet item is really intended to reference the work happening with SPU and others to support testing around properties.

And as new information is identified, we're working with CBOs to communicate that information out.

That's typically with an equity lens and that's also with a risk management lens and just ensuring that we're being proactive with any questions that may pop up.

And then for this final step, As the CBOs work with the American Red Cross to collect the information needed to support individuals with securing housing, we're again working with our housing group and our housing partners to support that work.

And parallel to that effort, the Office of Housing is also contacting housing providers that may meet residents' basic criteria and helping to identify opportunities to show available units.

So that's our summary and happy to hand things back to OEM.

Thanks, everyone.

So just in summary, the recovery efforts have involved and continue to involve multiple departments and outside agencies.

Our engagement with those community-based organizations that you've heard throughout this presentation really has been critical to the success of the all of the efforts that the city is involved in.

The ongoing operations means that we will eventually have an after action report and an improvement plan to be developed.

But that will occur after all of the operations have concluded.

Also, as Director Lee mentioned, the Office of Emergency Management Carolyn Gallagher, is stands ready to activate the emergency operations Center should that level of coordination be needed, of course, in conjunction with the mayor's office.

Carolyn Gallagher, So that concludes our presentation, but pass it back to senior deputy mayor harrell for any concluding comments.

Carolyn Gallagher, Thank you so much to the team for joining today and, and this is just three of the departments that are involved, there were many other departments also involved in.

in these efforts.

Also, we had OSC, DON, CBO, OIR, all of these departments played a huge role in ensuring that government, city government wasn't a barrier to recovery for these communities and that we were trying to cut down as much of the coordination that they would have had to do on the outside by doing it on the inside so that while they are in an emergent situation for themselves and their families, that we were eliminating as many of the barriers as possible for them to reach a state of recovery.

So this is just a part of the team, but there are many other departments that have been and continue to be involved in this effort.

Well, I have a few questions and want to make sure that providing opportunities for my colleagues to ask questions as well.

Councilman Peterson, of course, is chair of the committee with oversight of Seattle Public Utilities.

So I'm sure he will have some questions.

I guess I want to just start with, again, my appreciation for um the work that all the departments have been been doing um and that appreciation extends um even doubly so considering i don't believe we have a city department who is responsible for this type of flooding my recollection is that um flooding associated with um with storms um is spu's responsibility uh flooding that's related to uh wastewater is king county's responsibility um but we don't have i believe i don't believe we have an entity who is responsible for flooding associated with river topping and climate change so um that really i i think um underscores um the uh value of uh all these departments coming together and doing what needs to be done but it also i think points to um a future state where we do need to have um a delegated um department um who who has uh responsibility um for this this this type of response and and preparation for resilience And my saying so, again, is not to take away from anything that our partners at the City of Seattle, in King County government, or in the community have already done above and beyond any formal responsibility.

um so uh i i think my first question is just confirming that it is it is the case that there is no um city entity that is responsible for um addressing this this particular type of uh of flood response so i'll jump in there and just say that um yeah there were this was a multi-faceted there was no there was no uh department that was responsible

But in our connections, we wanted to make sure that we weren't leaving the neighborhood and the family without resources.

So that's why you saw a lot of coordination amongst a lot of different departments to ensure that we were doing everything we could to meet these needs.

And you actually reminded me that this initially started out as a rescue effort with fire and SPD.

where there were people who were trapped in vehicles and other places that needed to be rescued.

So I think that again, commendations to the city staff for not saying this is not my responsibility, but for jumping in to be of support to a community that needed it.

And we will have to address in the future how we handle these situations as climate change clearly impacts a coastal based city.

Thank you, yes, and my question was designed to be more what have we learned from not having a particular point agency, not that everybody didn't, again, perform admirably, and what did we learn so we could be forward-looking to ensure that we do have a department that does have responsibility for this area moving forward.

I want to also just echo what Director Bailey and a number of other presenters mentioned about the appreciation for both governmental stakeholders as well as NGOs, in particular the Duwamish River community coalition and appreciate that HSD is working to ensure that many of the NGOs that are working in this community have the resources so that they can partner with the city to do a lot of outreach that is necessary for an adequate flood response.

As mentioned, I did attend the resource event on Saturday.

That resource event sort of turned into a little bit of a Q&A from the NGOs who have this responsibility of sharing information with the community.

And I just want to flag that following up from that meeting, I have received several questions from those entities who are charged with partnering with the city and communicating with impacted impacted families.

And there is still some significant confusion about some of the information that they are responsible for conveying.

There's still a lot of confusion around the claims process and what the claims will compensate people for.

There is...

there is a lack of understanding about who actually is responsible for making the determination of whether or not homes are safe to live in, whether or not that means returning or people who are still in their homes.

I thought I heard somebody reference or use the phrase relocating all of the people in impacted homes.

And I don't believe that's happened.

Maybe that's because not all families need to be relocated because the living conditions aren't dangerous.

But I think there is a lack of understanding about who makes that determination.

There's also reportedly a lack of public formal communication on what substances people were exposed to as it relates to the flooding in the river.

And I know this is not within our bailiwick, but it is our partner government at King County.

There's a request that public health really address the question of what whether or not there's been testing um of the um of the flood waters and whether or not community members should be watching for certain um certain things as as relates to um to toxic materials in the flood waters um the um the uh I think the last thing I would want to flag relates, again, to the upcoming King Tide.

I appreciate, Director Lee, that you referenced some of the planning that's being done.

some of the elements of that planning can be provided in a written format so that we can have some more time to be before the 23rd to to to delve into that to those those plans and also share them share them with the community.

That's another um thing that people are asking me is what are the plans for uh preparedness for for the 23rd again appreciate that we've addressed some high level um planning efforts but uh would be appreciative of having um additional uh more in the weeds information and then um lastly i just want to um say that i is my understanding that you know we have relocation assistance programs for um for tenants in certain circumstances.

We have relocation assistance programs for tenants who are being displaced because of high rent increases.

People are being displaced because of substantial renovation and demolition of property, change of use.

We have rent assistance programs for tenants relocation assistance programs for tenants who live in properties where the property owner has allowed the property to fall into disrepair and there are significant code violations.

But I do not believe we have a tenant assistance program for tenants in a situation like this where they need funds to help them move.

So my question is whether or not we're working to set something like that up I APPRECIATE THAT WE HAVE BEEN PROVIDING SHORT-TERM HOTEL MOTEL VOUCHERS.

WOULD LIKE TO ALSO KNOW HOW LONG THOSE ARE GOING TO BE CONTINUING TO PAY FOR PEOPLE'S IMMEDIATE HOUSING NEEDS.

FOR SOME REASON MY RECOLLECTION IS THE 11TH IS THE LAST DAY THAT WE'RE FINANCING THOSE.

BUT THEN ALSO WHETHER OR NOT WE'RE WORKING TO ESTABLISH some sort of an emergency relocation fund that will help tenants pay for their security deposit, their first month's rent and last month's rent, and other deposits that are often required by landlords moving in.

Thank you.

I'm going to start by kicking it over.

There was a lot there, Chair Herbold.

So I'm going to start by kicking it over to Director Lee just to talk about the testing and then Michael Bailey can talk about some of the other aspects with claims and moving.

So, Andrew.

Yeah, yeah.

So, Chair Herbal, thank you for addressing a lot of these issues.

I'll speak to the public health side first.

There is quite a bit of follow-up that we're doing with Seattle King County Public Health, and we will be looking to public health to issue out communications with respect to safety items as they return back to their properties.

With respect to testing, we understand that there have been concerns about asbestos and obviously mold.

And the contractor that we've hired will be testing for those two specific materials as they do any of their deconstruction work.

And so we will be working with EPA to test, evaluate samples, and then working with public health to communicate on any sort of toxological or risk.

or risk associated with those things.

So there is going to be testing on those.

I know there's been some things brought up by some of the residents also about the fact that it's a Superfund site along the river and concern about some of the sediment from the river getting inside.

So our plan is we have a relationship with one of the faculty or the staff at the University of Washington, and they're interested in doing some testing out there.

And so we're going to be coordinating with them on that as well.

We did do some of our own testing as well prior to, or kind of immediately after the event.

And so we have those results that we've been sharing as well.

You also mentioned the housing side about the January 11th day.

We have actually extended that.

So we recognize that.

some of the residents are going to need more time to transition to longer term housing.

And so we have extended that through the end of the month at this point.

And so, but we'll be working on a case by case basis to identify what the specific needs, because some of those property owners may be able to return back to their properties earlier than that.

I'll pass it back to Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell.

All right.

And Michael, if you want to address some of the other questions that Chair Herbold had.

Yeah, certainly.

And once again, we appreciate the council member for joining this past Saturday.

It was an opportunity to hear from the community directly on where some of the gaps were.

And as mentioned earlier, we're doing everything in our power to try to improve communication and ensure that folks are getting the information that they need.

In support of that, we do have a daily huddle with both the CBOs, city partners, and basically anybody who's on site.

HSD, Department of Neighborhood, and DRCC are co-facilitating that meeting.

It's an opportunity for the CBOs to lift up questions and for us to track down answers in real time.

I think what you referenced here is kind of that sequencing.

And there have been questions about what's going to happen next.

After that, what happens?

We were lucky enough to have a contractor come in and assist with removing items from the homes.

That was Rubicon and incredibly thankful for their service.

It's a group of veterans, so I'm somewhat biased there, but greatly appreciate them helping out.

And following that is when a lot of the claims started to come in.

We saw an influx come in this past Saturday.

I believe we're tracking north of 30 so far.

So we're headed in the right direction, but we recognize that people still have questions.

As part of our messaging yesterday, we aligned on messaging to start communicating to community members that, hey, if you have questions, we'll have someone here on site from 10 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

for the remainder of the week up until Friday.

And if you need help walking through the claims process, we're happy to have that conversation with you.

If that doesn't work for your schedule, send us an email or work with your case manager and we'll get you the assistance that you need.

And I can also confirm that SDCI joined the daily community meeting earlier today.

And the director is present and ensuring that the community organizations have what they need to ensure that the families have what they need.

But here again, we welcome any additional opportunities to improve, and we will continue to improve throughout the process.

What kind of expenses will the claims process compensate residents for?

And I myself would not be able to speak to that.

That would be an and potentially item, but happy to work with partners to collect that information and bring that back to you.

Is anybody else in the panel able to speak to that?

I think, as I say, there's confusion about the claims process, and I think that lies at the heart of it.

People want to know whether or not they should use the claims process based on a layman's understanding of what the claims process will pay for.

We have not entirely been sure of all of the things that the claims will cover.

We've been trying to also work with our other partners, as you mentioned, King County and other intergovernmental partners.

This is a natural occurrence.

And so we understand that some of these community members have not been able to successfully get things like flood insurance to be able to support these claims.

We are reaching out to federal partners to see what they may offer.

And so while it's still fresh, we're helping them collect the information and submit it to whoever may be available.

We are not guaranteeing them, and we're being pretty clear with the community, that we can't guarantee what will be able to be covered, but we want to make sure that they're put in the best position for any recovery if that is available to them.

So This is unfortunately one of those areas where particularly in terms of flood coverage for these homes and other things, a lot of them have not been able to secure that level of insurance.

And we are working as best as we can to just make sure we don't lose anything in the process.

And we give them every opportunity for what might be available without knowing certainly that there is a certain recovery.

And so given that uncertainty of what people can receive compensation for outside of flood insurance with city resources and other governmental resources that might be made available, given that there is that uncertainty, can we create some certainty that around the costs associated with low-income residents' needs to acquire new housing.

Can we create a fund that will help people pay for their first, last, and security deposit?

Our teams have been doing, again, evaluating each situation on a case-by-case basis, seeing who qualifies, how we can get people support for relocation, particularly If they're renters and they're not particularly tied to staying in that location and they're open to movement, we have been offering assistance.

Our general guidance for the people impacted has been send a claim for everything, have it and have it reviewed so that we don't want to, we want to encourage them to take every avenue possible.

And we are advocating in every avenue possible.

So, We are advocating to our federal partners and others for support, and we will see what remains uncovered and how we can continue to help.

Thank you.

Just want to make some time and space for my colleagues.

Thank you chair herbal thank you for hosting this interdepartmental team today and the concern for those residents and small businesses impacted in South Park and also in your district and.

Really appreciate the Herald administration for their rapid response, their coordination, and then anticipating the event the week of January 22nd, setting up the incident command system in advance.

I wanted to speak to the future and resiliency through infrastructure.

And I know there had been a mention of some concerns work going on since 2017. Well, since then, of course, we've got something new available to us.

The congressional earmarks came back in 2021, and I know that our congressional delegation will share our concerns about this area.

But we would, for our part, I believe we need to come up with the architectural drawings and cost estimates within the next 75 days to provide our congressional delegation with a request of what we might need to have a physical fix to this area, whether it's a more permanent berm or a wall that goes up against the Duwamish River there.

But it seems like we might want to take advantage of this federal funding that we could get and work toward that effort.

So I wanted to ask what your thoughts are on that.

Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Peterson, I appreciate you identifying that.

And in fact, I think there are two things that are very helpful as well.

The other thing is, like you mentioned, there are some grants, like we mentioned the FEMA BRIC grant, that are immediately available to us.

There is also the bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed, which is also providing an influx of funding.

I spoke to the fact that we've had conversations with with the Army Corps of Engineers and they have expressed strong interest as well as staffing availability.

to begin having additional conversations about some of the improvements that were discussed and launching ahead with a feasibility study, which would be the next step to potentially secure a stronger partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers.

You're correct.

Planning is the next step, followed by design.

We've also, I just want to say, we've had some initial conversation with some members of Congress as well, Um, they've expressed strong interest in, in identifying funds specifically for this.

So, so bottom line, there's quite a bit of work ahead of us, but we have so far received strong interest in this, um, from, from all the partners that I've mentioned as well as the county.

I forgot to mention the county, but, um, county flood control district is another partner and, um, and they've also expressed interest in working together with us.

I appreciate the various departments being proactive about this.

And then as the political leaders in the area, I think we're really unified on this.

And so we'll continue to be engaged with the congressional delegation as well so that they know that we have a unified care about this and want to get it fixed.

Thank you.

And just to follow up on that question, I did really appreciate the opportunity I had in August to take the tour that SPU hosted with Senator Murray and Representative Smith's office to support the Army Corps of Engineers funding for this feasibility study to address river topping and sea rise-related flooding.

I understand also that there was a separate tour with Representative Jayapal's team.

As I understand it, this funding will support a feasibility study.

We don't have to do it now, but I do need to get more understanding of how the feasibility study relates to the study that was already done on this issue and how that next study moves us down you know into into further steps and i also want to um i want to flag how important um as i as i heard from uh from spu in in my briefing prior to this meeting um you know A berm is one solution to the issue of river topping and sea rise.

But as I was reminded, we do have to do community engagement around that solution.

And so I just want to flag that we don't always have to do things sequentially.

Sometimes we can do things simultaneously um and i really hope that we can uh we can um not only uh expedite the the the request for funding uh for this feasibility study um as well as any any earmarks for design work and and community engagement but i i really think that we need to be moving on multiple multiple tracks simultaneously um because i think as was mentioned um this particular event um was um not anticipated for i i believe another 10 years um and the fact that we are seeing more of these events more um happening in a more compressed fashion uh says to me that our our planning predictions are are based on um our planning efforts are based on maybe um outdated predictions

Yeah, I appreciate that Council Member Herbold and agree with your general kind of thought about moving things concurrently, share that desire.

With respect to the studies, you know, and I've come to an understanding on this as well, the Army Corps of Engineers, what they did initially was a benefit cost analysis.

And that benefit cost analysis planning level analysis was more based on, more to kind of get them to a point of saying, yes, we want to engage on this.

Fortunately, what it showed was that there is a high level of interest from Army Corps of Engineers, high kind of benefit cost ratio.

for Army Corps of Engineers to engage.

And they have indicated, their Seattle office, that this is their highest priority, actually, and so for kind of an upcoming project.

So all of that is positive.

And so, yes, I think the pathway is paved.

The feasibility study is the next step.

And that's, in essence, looking at different options more definitively.

There were a few options that were looked at, I think like seven or eight, in the original planning level work that they did.

This is to dive into that more, and it provides a basis for funding partnership with the federal government, so that would be the next step.

Fantastic.

As Councilmember Peterson mentioned, We are interested in working with our partners in Congress on the issue of federal earmarks.

I believe through our inquiries with OIR, the earmarks are solicited, I think, in March.

So if we can determine quickly what our next ask is, we are at the ready to help.

Thank you for that, Chair Herbold.

We actually are organizing right now a meeting with our congressional delegation to be able to view the site with us with a tour and collectively figure out how they can support.

So that was one of the reasons we engaged OIR at the very beginning of this incident.

So I think we're on the same page there and really looking forward to working with all of our partners for the support that they can help provide.

fantastic thank you so much again I am just so appreciative of everybody's teamwork and the number of city staff who have been engaged in that work is really encouraging to me and I know it's encouraging and heartening to to community members as well I just I cannot express more deeply my appreciation um and um Director Lee I would appreciate a follow-up on the um on the January 23 plan after after the meeting okay thank you so much any other comments or questions seeing none thank you all for making the time on a short short notice um I I know my request was made last week and really appreciate everybody um joining us here today next public safety and human services committee meeting is scheduled for tuesday january 24th before we adjourn just checking to make sure there are no comments from my colleagues seeing none it is 11 34 a.m and we are adjourned thank you