Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 1/26/21

And welcome to the January 26, 2021 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Herbold?

Here.

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Councilmember Lewis?

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Four members present.

Thank you, Alex.

So, on today's agenda, we will be hearing the appointment of Curry Mayer to the Office for Emergency Management.

We'll be hearing a presentation and discussion from the Human Services Department and partners in the Community Safety Initiative.

We'll also be hearing a brief update from the Human Services Department on the Community Safety Capacity Investment Process.

And we'll be engaged in another discussion and possible recommendations moving forward on the less lethal weapons draft bill developed based on recommendations from our police accountability partners.

And finally, we'll have a discussion only on Council Bill 119981 regarding a supplemental amendment to SPD's 2021 budget.

Before we begin public comment, I want to highlight the unusual.

process for deliberations on our less lethal weapons bill.

Just want to note for folks who may be listening in or intending to use public comment today on that topic, that any recommendations that the committee makes on less lethal weapons will have to be submitted to the monitor and the U.S.

Department of Justice and the U.S.

District Court before we have any full council actions.

We have to do this because the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department are under a consent decree, under the supervision of a consent decree, and we have to meet terms that are laid out in the consent decree that include the review and approval of bills related to police use of force.

So under the consent decree, the monitor and the DOJ must review and the court must approve any proposed changes to the use of force in the city of Seattle.

So just as a point of information, the bill that we have before us today that we have had several meetings on since the summer, will not be moving to full council, as is typically the process.

Normally after a committee vote, legislation will move on to full council for the full council vote.

That will not happen.

After this committee recommendation, then we will be submitting the legislation to the court for the review.

And so I see that Council Member Lewis has now joined us.

Good morning, Council Member Lewis.

And we'll now approve our agenda for committee meeting today.

There is no objection.

Today's committee meeting will, committee agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Now we'll move into public comment.

And it looks like we have 35 people signed up for public comment this morning.

And in order to facilitate the public comment session.

We will identify an amount of time for everybody to speak.

We have 20 minutes on the agenda, and I want to do everything I can to allow for as many people to speak as possible.

So instead of the normal two minutes of time, we're going to have 1.5 minutes to speak, so a minute and a half, 90 seconds for speakers.

I'll call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you haven't registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public hearing by going to the council's website.

And this link is also noted on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, you will hear a prompt, and once you've heard that prompt, you need to press star six to unmute yourself.

Please begin by stating your name and the item which you're addressing.

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

Once the speaker hears the chime, We ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comment at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you've completed your time and completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, you can do so at the Seattle Channel or the list of options that are also listed on the agenda.

So again, we have, public comment in order to allow as many speakers to speak as possible.

As I mentioned earlier, I've adjusted the speaking time from two minutes to 90 seconds.

Now, if there are no objections, I'll amend the agenda to allow some additional time for public speaking.

Again, if there are no objections, I'd like to amend the agenda for 30 minutes of public comment rather than 20 minutes.

Hearing no objections, the agenda is amended to allow for 30 minutes of public comment.

So next, I'm going to begin calling on the speakers in order to speak.

We will start with Howard Gale, followed by Stephen Ramos.

Good morning.

As the Seattle Times recently noted in relation to the many months of horrifying abuse committed by Seattle police, quote, the OPA sustained misconduct allegations or policy violations in five of 22 cases, only one officer so far has been disciplined and that with a written reprimand.

We are now well past the contractual 180 day timeline for disciplining officers for many of the most horrifying abuses of last summer.

guaranteeing that police will escape sanctions and boldening them to continue their abuse.

Yet here we are today.

This morning, you will be discussing banning certain tools of police abuse, a worthy goal, but meaningless as long as police have some method of abuse, clubs, fists, bicycles, guns, false arrest, et cetera, in a system that completely lacks accountability.

This evening, the Community Police Commission will hold a forum on police use of force policy with no real opportunity for public input and the total complete absence of the victims of those policies the particular irony here is that you will be discussing laws you have no control over because of the federal court consent decree while you ignore actions that is accountability you could take to bring officers to justice.

Imagine the city engaging in a policy discussion around domestic abuse where in the morning they discuss what methods of abuse abusers have recourse to in a system that really fails to uphold to account and then in the evening they have a discussion led by experts without hearing from the abused.

Please, you must do better.

The next speaker is Steven Ramos followed by Kate Rubin.

Hi, my name is Steven Ramos.

I'm calling regarding the changes being made to the chemical weapons ban.

I would like to remind the council that use of these weapons escalated an already tense and horrifying situation and not only injured protesters, but also those that lived in the homes nearby and sent many people who lived in Seattle into fear and chaos.

Please remember the people that you are hurting, have hurt, and will be hurt by these weapons.

Thank you for the time today.

Thank you, Stephen.

Kate Rubin will be followed by Barbara Finney.

Good morning.

My name is Kate Rubin.

I'm a resident of District 2, and I'm the executive director of vSeattle.

I'm calling today to demand that City Council uphold the ban on crowd-control weapons without any loopholes.

I am so frustrated that this is even up for discussion again.

Nonlethal does not mean nonviolent, and I've witnessed firsthand how use of these weapons escalates violence and causes physical and emotional harm to peaceful protesters.

Not only is it a massive waste of resources, it will, of course, put Black and brown activists at further risk.

ourselves as progressive, so we need to be leaders and show the rest of the country how to take care of the people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kate.

Barbara Finney will be followed by Lindsay Anderson.

My name is Barbara Finney.

I'm a retired registered nurse speaking in favor of keeping the ban as it is.

Scientists and medical community have recently weighed in.

The Chemical Weapons Research Consortium, a group of scientists, published an open letter to American elected officials on January 19th requesting that you leverage any and all avenues to halt current and future use of chemical weapons against civilians and calling for a complete moratorium on chemical weapons being used on humans in the US.

On January 13th, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article injuries from less lethal weapons during the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis.

It concludes, although the results represent only a single region in worldwide protest, these findings reveal that under current practices, projectiles are not appropriate for crowd control.

Keep your original strong legislative ban on SPD having and using these weapons against people, the people you represent.

Keep the ban on police use of tear gas, rubber bullets, flashbulbs, and other so-called crowd control weapons.

Black lives matter.

Thank you, Barbara.

Next speaker is Lindsay Anderson, followed by Tara Miller-Berry.

Lindsay?

Lindsey, are you with us?

If you are with us, you need to hit star six.

All right, let's move on to Tara Millerberry.

And if Lindsey comes back, we'll try to get Lindsey in.

Tara?

Hello?

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi.

OK.

Good day, City Council.

My name is Lindsay Anderson, and I am wanting to discuss today if I can to defend the ban on the police force.

I really believe that it has been very extreme, the use of the police force on our people.

And these are people who are coming to make safe and peaceful protest, and they've been using deadly force upon our people that are homeless.

I believe that it is the police's responsibility to be protecting and serving us, and this is not protecting and serving us by using deadly force upon people that are sleeping.

They used, upon Clayton Norton, a black ball upon his ear when he was simply laying down.

Now, laying down is one of the most peaceful and trusting things that you can say to someone.

It's saying that, police, we expect you to be protecting us.

We trust you that you're protecting us and serving us.

And this is what we expect of them.

Thank you.

OK.

Thank you, Lindsay.

Next, we have Tara Millerberry followed by Leah Buck.

Tara?

Hi, my name is Tara Miller-Berry from District 1. I work at Faith Action Network, and I'm a member of Trinity United Methodist Church in Ballard.

As someone who faced the nightmare of the militarized Seattle Police Department using some weapons not even allowed in war, I'm urging you today to side with the thousands of protesters who have continued to stand up for Black and Indigenous lives and hold firm to your commitment last year to ban these so-called less-than-lethal weapons.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant, for your continued support of this ban.

Trinity UMC also urges that, quote, Seattle City Council and the use of tear gas and military-style tactics for protest control." Last summer has made it clear that SPD has no control over their tactics and they cannot be trusted to assess a situation and use weapons of any kind as a means of crowd control. From macing a child to terrorizing the Capitol Hill neighborhood nightly, hitting a protester in the chest and then firing at the medic tent as they were reviving them, these weapons can be lethal and are extremely dangerous, especially in the hands of a trigger-happy and racist organization. This comes in stark contrast to the very light to no police force used in the January 6th coup attempt in D.C. and in capitals around the nation, including Olympia. SPD has argued that without these weapons, police will be forced to use more brutal weapons such as batons and real bullets. I urge you to stand up against this rhetoric and commit to imagining a world without police violence altogether. Please continue to uphold the ban and do not water it down. Thanks.

Thank you very much.

Next, we have Julia Buck followed by Carol Forney.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Julia Buck in District 6. I'm calling to express my concern that the Council is considering weakening the crowd control weapons ban.

I would ask the Council instead to please petition the federal court to remove the stay order on the weapons ban placed at the request of the Mayor's Office and former Chief Best.

It seems very counterintuitive that taking weapons out of SPD's arsenal would be a violation of a consent decree that was put in place because SPD cannot be trusted with its deployment of force.

I'd also like to ask the council to hold SPD accountable for their $5 million in excess spending in 2020 by removing that same amount for 2021 SPD budget.

I believe it sets a very dangerous precedent for city departments not to be required to adhere to budget allocations.

particularly a militarized force when that amount is set by our elected officials.

We have civilian control of the military for this reason.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Thank you, Julia.

Next, we have Carol Forney followed by Anna P. Carol, are you with us?

I'm not seeing any logged in, so let's move down to Anna P. Anna P., are you with us?

All right.

Next speaker is Mark Taylor Canfield.

Mark?

Good morning, Mark.

All right, moving to the list here.

We'll work to get people back in if people come back on.

Next person that I have listed present is Anitra Freeman, followed by her cat, Seat.

Anitra.

Anitra's not on the line.

Hello?

Hello?

Can you hear us?

Yes.

Hi, Anitra.

OK.

Good morning.

Yes.

Good morning.

You know, I'm speaking to you this morning from the Wheel Women's Shelter, which is up by 8th and Cherry.

And I was just told this morning that back in June, they had tear gas pouring in through the windows here.

And just one of the incidents where the police use of crowd control is more of a threat to the public than what they are supposedly protecting us against.

Clayton Yorton was a homeless man who was asleep in Cal Anderson Park on June 1st.

He was hit in the head and the chest by blast balls.

He was bleeding from his right ear.

He had been asleep on the ground.

He was definitely not a danger to anybody.

The police have demonstrated that they are not good under pressure, that they are not indiscriminate in their use of these weapons, when they need to be denied the use of these weapons.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anita.

The next speaker is Her Kate Seat, followed by Sunita Reid.

Okay.

Good morning, Councilor.

My name is Hrakacic.

I'm the ERT team coordinator for Tzu Chi Foundation, who has an office at the Seattle Chinatown.

I would like to share Tzu Chi Foundation partnership experience with Currie Meyer, who is appointed as a director of our Emergency Management Office.

So, first of all, two and a half years ago, Currie was the one who contacted Tzu Chi Foundation first time and after she was referred by the City of Redmond Emergency Manager.

And last night I sent an email sharing my experience with Currie when Currie conducted the third light training classes at the Tse Chi Foundation office.

Currie was the one who initiated the idea for providing the training to the Chinese communities at Bellevue.

So, we are impressed by her dedication, outreach to various organizations, her diverse inclusion thoughtfulness.

We are lucky that we did not have to work together during any disasters even yet.

However, we already built our connections, trust, partnership with City of Bellevue through all these awareness activities organized by Karimaya.

Thank you.

Next we have Zanita Reed followed by Jeff Fernandez.

Zanita, are you with us this morning?

Hello?

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, hi.

I'm Zanita Reed and the reason I'm here this morning is to introduce the Lived Experience Coalition to Seattle City Council.

And before I get it, just want to say that those of us with the Lived Experience Coalition recognize and sympathize and support all of our women leaders and understand that this job isn't easy and we respect the work that you do.

The Lived Experience Coalition is a diverse group of people who are coming together to lift each other up, advocate for ourselves and others and advance race and social justice.

We work beyond oppressive structures by unifying our voices and efforts to dismantle multi-system barriers impacting people who are experiencing homelessness, involvement in the justice system, face unmet behavioral health needs, and or fleeing violence or emotional, psychological victimization.

Paulo Sierra wrote, the power of the oppressed is the only power that can liberate both oppressed and oppressor.

We are also the only Black and Indigenous-led organization upholding the theory of change and not centering the voices of those in the homelessness population.

And we define and design the Ombudsman Program to ensure that people receiving services have a formalized avenue for grievance and assurance for quality and low barrier services with dignity.

We have many items this year that we

Thank you, Zanita.

You can send the rest of your testimony via email, if you would.

We'd love to read it.

Jeff Fernandez will be followed by Linda Crearar, I believe it is.

Good morning.

Jeff Fernandez here, D5.

I want to speak up holding and expanding the weapons ban.

Dear council, we as free people have the right to occupy our streets to protest the violence, racism, and injustice of our police without being attacked by them.

How many SPD officers are on publicly funded paid vacation after brutally attacking civilians in Seattle?

And how many SPD officers are collecting taxpayer money while on vacation for supporting an insurrection in D.C.?

The draft legislation is assuming laughably that SPD is not a right wing racist institution corrupted by the ideals of white supremacy.

A policing was created to capture and often kill runaway slaves.

The mission of policing remains very much the same.

It is to protect the property of the ruling class, whether it is a glass window of Starbucks or black slaves.

You would endeavor to enshrine in law once again the legal authority for a right wing racist institution to attack citizens who demand justice in our city.

Right-wing fascists like Mike Salon applaud Lisa's efforts to reauthorize the use of military and barbaric weapons by SPD against Black Lives Matter activists.

Instead of arming and legally shielding our oppressors, I am calling for every cent of the tens of millions of dollars the police spent on chemical attacks, munitions, vehicles, fuel, and overtime used in 2020 to attack BLM protesters, redirect those funds away from the racist SPD and into Black communities.

Thank you for your time, especially the leadership of Shawna Swann.

Thank you, Jeff.

Next speaker is Linda Crearar, followed by Benjamin Kenneed.

Good morning.

My name is Linda Crearar, and I Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Okay.

I'm the Director of the State Center of Excellence for Homeland Security Emergency Management with the State of Washington.

And we work with and report to the State Community and Technical College.

I want to add my support of confirming Curry Mayor as the new Director for the Office of Emergency Management.

Curry has served as our co-chair for Homeland Security Emergency Management Center since 2016, and she has been a board member since 2014. Over the past six years, she has been our driving force with the center's effort to provide effective leadership and coordination in helping to respond to our educational institution and employers for effective leadership and coordination in dealing with our educational institutions.

We work to develop a prepared and skilled workforce in the all-hazard emergency management care field.

Curry has been instrumental in helping the center reach its goals as a board member and co-chair and educator

It has been a- Thank you, Linda, for your support of the appointment to the Director of OEM.

Benjamin Kinnaid will be followed by Emily MacArthur.

Benjamin, are you with us?

Yeah.

Great.

My name is Benjamin Kinnaid.

I'm a third year at the University of Washington School of Law, and I'm here to defend the ban on the police use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and blast balls.

Over the course of the past eight months, the Seattle Police Department has demonstrated time and again a childish inability to handle the power of wielding military-style weapons.

They have indiscriminately attacked medics, legal observers, members of the media, and protesters on countless occasions.

I have personally been tear gassed, pepper sprayed, hit with rubber bullets, and countless glass falls.

I did not break any laws, but my body has been left burned, bruised, and abused.

I have witnessed the Seattle Police threaten violence on a crowd of people for placing flowers on the ground.

They have tweeted a picture of a candle for a memorial and called it an explosive device that was used against them.

I have witnessed the police throw blast balls at people's heads.

One has exploded next to my head.

People have gone deaf.

Deaf.

People's hearts have stopped.

I have witnessed the police brutally arrest people for using sidewalk chalk.

The police are acting like grade school bullies.

Using these weapons has never been about crowd control.

It's been about controlling the voices of marginalized communities.

Five members of the Seattle Police Force were present in DC for the insurrection at the Capitol.

The head of the Seattle Police Officers Guild blames this insurrection on the BLM movement.

These people are deranged and explicitly racist.

They are aggressive and weird.

We must defend the ban on crowd control weapons and we must protect the people of Seattle.

Thank you Benjamin.

Emily MacArthur will be followed by Sophia Lopez.

Emily.

Are you with us?

There you are.

Emily.

If you haven't already, please hit star six.

Emily, you're still on mute.

There we go.

Are you there?

Hello?

Oh, there you are.

Emily.

Hello.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Failure to disperse, trespassing, violating a curfew, these are all so-called crimes that police often charge protesters with after the fact in order to justify violence against them.

I would ask council members to read the New York Times article from November 19th titled, Why Charges Against Protesters Are Being Dismissed by the Thousands, which describes the phenomenon which is nationwide of police officers charging protesters with crimes which are completely unable to be held up in court and totally unsubstantiated.

This is the weapon that you are handing to SPD when you say that you can use these dangerous weapons if only someone does a crime, because we know that these crimes will be invented, new laws will be offered to be used against protesters and in order to squelch dissent, as Attica Scott describes in this article.

uh...

if you think workers deserve an eight-hour day if you think black americans deserve uh...

access to eating in uh...

you know uh...

uh...

other talent and using water found that you think women have the right to vote you need to vote again people Thank you so much to Council Member Shama Sawant for being a voice of clarity, standing against these egregious loopholes and this rollback.

It's the strength of your convictions and your willingness to stick your neck out, which is why you're facing vile right-wing attacks.

And it's shameful that the other council members haven't stood up against you, against Mike Salon and the five STD officers who went to the Capitol.

Thank you, Emily.

Let's see here.

Let's.

Hello, can you hear me?

Okay, we can.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Sophia Lopez and I am providing comment on agenda item number 1, the appointment of curry mayor, the director of emergency management for the city of Seattle.

As an emergency management subject matter expert myself, something I consider to be a great personal accomplishment for me is that I was the one who chose Curry Mayor to be my successor for the city of Bellevue in her previous position.

She is as experienced and brilliant in action as she is on paper.

Her passion and determination to serve the whole community is unmatched within the emergency management community here in the Pacific Northwest and possibly nationwide.

One thing that I learned from Curry during my time working with her is that your approach will always determine their response.

Such a simple statement yet so much truth and power behind it.

Curry welcomes the tough conversation.

She is more driven and determined than anyone I know to upholding the ideals of equity and social justice.

She brings with her a wealth of knowledge and expertise across all levels of government and private sector.

She'll know who to call, what to say, and how to continue to do the job in light of the unexpected that could afflict Seattle and the entire Pacific Northwest.

There is no one more qualified and prepared to guide the city through whatever emergency or disaster that might occur.

I currently work in King County as a program manager in the Office of Emergency Management, and I am grateful and thankful to know that Curry will be right there in the city of Seattle leading the way.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sophia.

Our next speaker is Lamont Green, followed by Julie McKay.

Lamont?

Can you hear me?

We can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The Lived Experience Coalition is a multiracial organization that is focused on building leadership capacity amongst Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Pacific Islander, and other people of color overrepresented within the current homeless population.

The Lived Experience Coalition is completely ran by people who have experience are currently experiencing homelessness.

The Lived Experience Coalition has deep and trusting relationships with our many unsheltered relatives.

The LEC has provided much needed hygiene masks medical resources and other resources to over 400 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in the last four months.

Our ask is that the City of Seattle Human Services Department partners with the Lived Experience Coalition regarding the community safety initiative and investment processes.

The Lived Experience Coalition can be a huge asset to the city's community safety initiative to ensure that solutions are co-developed by those most impacted, especially our Black, Brown, and Native unsheltered community members experiencing unsheltered homelessness, who often fear interactions with law enforcement personnel and lack trust with outreach workers they don't relate to.

Lastly, it is important that we shift the model of development to a recognition that those closest to the problem are often an untapped source of awareness and leadership on the most effective solutions that could work for people in our community.

People with lived experience or homelessness are tremendous assets in developing strategies that minimize harm and facilitates trust with outreach workers.

Thank you, Lamont.

Our next speaker is Julie McKay, followed by Harold Odom.

Julie?

You with us, Julie?

I am not seeing Julie on the line here.

Oh, there she is.

Julie, can you hit star six?

Julie, your showing is muted.

Still muted.

If you have not yet hit star six, Julie, please do so.

I think we have to move on to the next speaker.

My apologies, Julie, for the technical difficulties.

Our next speaker is Harold Odom.

Thank you, Chair.

My name is Harold Odom.

I'm District 2 and with Lived Experience.

Good morning.

Thank you.

I'm with the Lived Experience Coalition, and we are here today to introduce ourselves as the only advocacy program and lobby for homeless people.

Homeless people are unintentionally affected by such things that are being discussed today.

We wish the HSD and the City of Seattle Council to recognize us as that leadership team that will promote homelessness and the well-being of homeless people, not agency, but of homeless people.

From the unintentional consequences that we have, protests where people are just trying to sleep, get out of the way and have a night of some type of comfort.

We wish to be more of a partner with the city and the HSC department in multiple changes.

We are on the governance council and the new regional authority and our implementation board of the new regional authority.

We hope that the City Council recognizes us as a valuable partner in the year to come and our great plans and our expectation for the city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Harold.

Our next speaker is Kyra Miko, followed by Ella Sean.

Kyra?

Hi, my name's Kyra Miko.

I'm a resident of District 3, a grocery cashier, and a member of UFCW 21 Local.

First, I want to extend my solidarity to Council Members Sawant and Morales The death threats and hate mail that you've been receiving is unacceptable, and I stand by you both.

I'm calling in today about the lethal weapons ban.

It's extremely disappointing to be going over the same amendment that Council Member Herbold already tried to introduce and then pulled this summer under strong pressure from the community.

We already heard from people who had their apartments flooded with tear gas, veterans whose PTSD was triggered by flashbangs, and protesters brutally injured with impunity.

Last week, I went to the hospital to have a respiratory test done because I'm still experiencing breathing issues from the tear gas.

as well as the permanent hearing damage from a flashbang next to my head.

And now I have to call in again on my day off to beg you to not let the police use weapons banned by the Geneva Convention on your own constituents.

Please do your job and don't back down on this bill.

Thank you.

Ella Shawn will be followed by Catherine Gendry.

Hi, my name is Ella Shawn and I'm a member of or a resident of District 6. I'm calling today to ask that you follow through with your commitments to pull $5.4 million from SBD's 2021 budget.

I was supportive of the resolution last summer, stating that the council would no longer be backfilling SBD's overtime spending, much of which last summer was used to engage in responding to protesters violently.

Council ended up backfilling SBD's coffers last fall by $5.4 million, but also introduced legislation to cut the same amount from this year's budget.

By passing that legislation, you will be continuing to honor your word to hold the line against mayors and SPD's unaccountable spending.

By putting this money toward participatory budgeting, our city could instead be funding projects that actually promote true public safety.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Catherine Gendry?

Hi, my name is Katie.

Thank you, Shama, for your continued support and for fighting for the well-being of all of our community members.

We need to uphold this ban with no loopholes.

This CS gas is banned internationally during war.

I'm not the only one, but I'll just speak for myself here.

I was tear gassed during the protests, were peacefully protesting, and I had my period for three weeks afterwards, which is not normal at all.

Planned Parenthood is currently doing a reproductive health study on the effects of CS gas.

Because we don't even know all the effects.

What if folks who have a uterus cannot have children because they were gassed by SPD?

Are you okay with that?

Because I'm not.

Police are clearly incapable of using discretion and incapable of deciding when is violent and nonviolent in order to justify the use of these weapons.

They simply cannot be justified at all.

And if they are used improperly, there's no accountability and consequences.

The gas itself cannot be contained.

Countless protesters have been harmed physically and emotionally.

Do your job and ban these tools of oppression and violence.

Defund and abolish police.

Black Lives Matter.

Thank you, Katie.

Our next speaker is Richard Tai, followed by Eric Salinger.

Richard?

I believe I'm unmuted now.

Yes, you're good.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Richie.

I'm a software engineer living in District 4. I'm calling in defense of upholding the ban on crowd control and chemical weapons as it is.

I don't believe it's responsible or appropriate to be using these these heavily militarized weapons in the city and on citizens, on residents.

I really appreciate everybody going out with the whole Black Lives Matter movement for bringing forward these issues and participating democratically and make the way the current system allows them to and the way they need to do to get their voice heard.

And I don't I don't think the police should be using these violent tactics on largely peaceful protesters.

And if we want to address this crime, which isn't what these protests are in the first place, we need to be investing more in the community, in things that will actually help reduce crime instead of just more heavily arming the police, making things more violent.

I think tools like the tear gas, It's escalating the situation.

Thank you, Eric.

We've got four more people signed up for public comment.

We have exceeded our time on the agenda.

But if there are no further objections, I'd like to.

Hello.

Oh, so members, we have, as I said, exceeded our time on the agenda for public comment, but we've got four more people signed up.

And if there are no further no objections to doing so, I'd like to further extend the time on the agenda to for public comment to.

10-16, and shortening everybody's speaking time to one minute, please.

So next we have, I believe we have next Eric Salinger followed by Aiden Carroll.

Hi.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Yeah.

Hi.

So my name is Eric Salinger.

I live in District 7. First of all, last meeting when we had this discussion about crowd control weapon bans, Andrew Lewis made a comment that he was concerned about banning tear gas in all situations, specifically referencing the events on January 6th at the nation's capital.

And the thing about that is that during the events in the nation's capital on January 6, we had Capitol Police taking selfies with the insurrectionists.

So the idea that the cops are going to use tear gas to protect you from a real threat is frankly just not based in reality.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, you need to base your policies in and around like the results that we've been seeing.

A seven-year-old kid got maced.

We tear gassed a residential neighborhood repeatedly.

If you roll back the ban, that's just going to keep happening.

So there needs to be a mechanism in place.

There's no accountability for anyone.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Aiden Carroll, followed by Oliver Miska.

And again, your time has been reduced to one minute, so we can get everybody in.

Aiden?

Thank you.

uh...

my name is aidan carol in uh...

district six i want to echo many of the excellent comment today especially the three coalition uh...

i want to think uh...

counselor so on for her work on this and customer her bold for her work on the misdemeanor reform proposal although the media has uh...

field time to return back to it start that in this case most important thing is to be that the content decree ought to be a floor and not a ceiling for what city council can impose in police accountability we have a new attorney general and justice department turnover perhaps who are more uh...

interested in police reform than the termination uh...

certainly tear gas and blast balls which i have personally experienced and uh...

plastic, wood, rubber, bullets.

Thank you, Aiden.

Please do feel free to send your testimony in so we can fully appreciate it.

Oliver Miska will be followed by, we've got Anna P. present from earlier, the 10th speaker who signed up, who we didn't get in when we called her name.

So first, Oliver Miska, followed by Anna P. Oliver?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Oliver Miska.

I'm an educator located in District 3, but long-time resident grew up in Sudan.

I am calling today to first thank Khashoggi for her support and her leadership to hold accountable City Council to this weapons ban that they promised and have since watered down.

I think I've heard a lot of folks talk about insurrection and the capital being used, and I really want to warn Democrats to not be using this as an excuse to increase surveillance and increase policing and the militarized violent policing that we've seen from the SPD.

That has gone ultimately unchecked.

And using the far right, the threat to increase enforcement against peaceful and or otherwise protest is not what I think of as the.

Thank you, Oliver.

Our last two speakers, Anna P. followed by Mark Taylor Canfield.

Anna?

We're getting a number shot here if you can be here with us.

And I see that there's somebody on the line who is muted.

But it doesn't look like Anna's with us.

Do we want to try Mark Canfield?

Again, Mark?

Can you hear me?

we can thank you yes this is articulate i'm not going to cancel executive director for democracy watch news international news organization covering pro-democracy movements around the world this is an historic moment i've been covering this issue since the world trade organizations twenty years ago i've been subjected to tear gas and pepper spray as a reporter let's be clear this is a major civil rights issue too often we've seen these weapons used in an attempt to stop stop legitimate protest by people practicing peaceful civil disobedience These weapons are potentially lethal.

They've been used at times to stifle political dissent, and they've harmed residents of the neighborhoods and bystanders who had nothing to do with protests.

Please decide once and for all, is this a real move to ban these weapons or only a half-hearted political gesture?

I don't buy former chief best warnings that without these devices, he is only responsive to use lethal weapons.

15 people were arrested on MLK Day and no chemical weapons or crowd control devices were used.

Thank you, Mark.

That concludes public comment for the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting.

We are going to move into our items of business, and we will start with the first item on the agenda.

Alex, will you please read into the record?

Item number one, appointment 01757, appointment of Kareem Eyre, Director of the Office of Emergency Management.

Thank you, Alex.

I really appreciate it.

Let's do a quick round of introductions of everybody who is at the table for this item, joining the appointed or nominated Director Currie-Mayer.

Just you, or do we have anybody else with us?

Just me.

All right.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, you bet.

It's my honor to be here.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Wonderful support that we heard in public testimony for your efforts to lead Seattle's Department of Office of Emergency Management.

And I want to thank you as well for the responses to the questions that council members developed and sent on to you.

And I think maybe what I would like to do first is open up the floor to my colleagues on the council to see whether or not they have any particular follow-up to the questions and answers that were submitted last week.

Madam Chair, this is Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis, yes, thank you.

Thank you.

I'd actually be, I don't have any follow-up questions, but if there is an opportunity for the nominee to make some general remarks, you know, I would definitely be interested in hearing that and maybe have some follow-ups there, but just very happy she could join us at committee today and looking forward to fully considering her, but I don't have any initial questions.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

I was jumping right to the meat of the questions because we did have the candidate in committee two weeks ago where we heard about her experience and we heard from Deputy Mayor Fong.

about why they feel that she is the best candidate.

And we also heard not just from the nominee about her experience, but why it is that she's interested in serving in this role at this very challenging time.

But absolutely, happy to open it up to any additional thoughts that the nominee has about this new role that she's about to embark in.

Okay, thank you.

First of all, thank you very much for your time today, council members.

I very much appreciate it.

I'm honored that the mayor and the deputy mayor have confidence in my work with them, and I appreciate the opportunity to serve in Seattle.

So just a couple of things really quickly.

I am very much committed to using the lessons that we've learned in COVID about continuing to reach underserved populations, both in the BIPOC community and also for people with access and functional needs.

COB, Bethany Collins, Moderator): The the coven pandemic has emphasized that that's still an issue for us in all of the work that we do for preparedness mitigation and, of course, in response.

COB, Bethany Collins, Moderator): And then, as the city moves into recovery, so the office of emergency management is very much involved in.

the COVID response and the vaccine deployment.

But we also have a number of other hazards that face Seattle.

So our focus this year will also be on those more traditional, if you will, kinds of emergencies, hazards and vulnerabilities.

So earthquake preparedness, the Nisqually earthquake anniversary is coming up here in February.

Earthquake preparedness will be our topic in a lot of different venues as we continue to to work with the community to help them understand how they best prepare for that.

We're also looking at we're also super excited that we're going to be an independent organization.

So our own department.

with the ability to work directly with the mayor's office making decisions, but also working with all departments.

Emergency management is really a team sport and it's connected to everything.

So it requires all of the departments and agencies to continue to come together the way that they did in COVID to make sure that we serve everybody in Seattle, all the neighborhoods, regardless of how we do that.

And so I'm excited to lead that team in coordination and collaboration to best serve Seattle residents.

And thank you again for this amazing opportunity.

I'm really honored to be here.

Thank you.

And just because I think it's useful for the viewing public to have the benefit of some of the questions that the council asked in your thorough and helpful answers, I want to just uplift some of the questions asked and give you an opportunity to share your answers with the viewing public.

One of the questions we asked is, what you see as among the most effective tools to address racial equity in the field of emergency management?

And another was, how specifically would you work to recruit, mentor, and train BIPOC communities to enter the field of emergency management?

Sorry, I'm on mute again.

So yes, I'm happy to talk about that.

So, you know, in addressing racial equity, in preparing for responding to or recovering from a disaster, it really starts with understanding how systemic racism has adversely impacted BIPOC communities and other vulnerable populations.

Those with access and functional needs as well, because everything that impacts people's daily lives and things that make it hard for them to get services or do the things they need to do, whether it's access to education or transportation or health.

All of those things that impact your life also impact your ability to be resilient, which is really what emergency management is about.

So, if we're not addressing those things, then it would be impossible for us to help people be prepared.

So, it means that we learn and understand what a community needs and believes is important.

and then work with them to help them understand what are the vulnerabilities and the hazards that they face.

And then we can talk about what does it mean to build community resilience, which will make people more prepared just by virtue of the fact of that community resilience building.

So OEM's partnership with other departments to address these daily life issues allows us to be more successful at focusing on preparedness issues that will make sense to a community or a neighborhood.

And all of their needs are different.

So when we first address those things that a community struggles with every day, then we can look at how do we help them be how do we help them be more prepared?

So one of the things that you can do is first a community needs assessment.

Sometimes we do that with a survey and the survey, it would not just be done through technology, but also using, we use community safety ambassadors who are people who are trained to do preparedness and work with us in teaching skills, but they also are connected to a community they speak that community's language.

So that survey of what's important to you and what do you know about the hazards you face would be the first thing that you would do.

The second thing that is to make relationships with community leaders.

So people that already have a relationship in those different areas, be it a neighborhood, a particular community, community organizations, nonprofits, the private sector, all of those community leaders are important, not only messengers, but sort of what we call culture brokers.

There's a lot of folks who still don't trust the government.

They may have had a bad experience, or it may just be that that's not something that is part of their cultural understanding.

So when you make those relationships with those people that have relationships already in the community, then we're able to work with them, again, in understanding what a community needs, but also then helping us provide messaging.

And very much focused for everyone, not just BIPOC communities, but on how do we get our messaging out and how do we work with people not just using technology?

There's still a large portion of the population everywhere, not just in Seattle.

That is not an option.

Some of the other things that I've used that are successful are working with the schools.

So children are great teachers.

They are also adamant about when they learn something new that they go back and work with their families and stay on that message for a long period of time.

So two of the really well-known campaigns that children actually had a big part in were the non-smoking campaign that now seems like that was a long time ago, right?

And also recycling.

Those were things that children championed.

So working with children and talking to them about what are the hazards we face?

What does this community resilience thing mean?

Also then targeting specific populations in the schools.

In Bellevue, we worked with a special ed teacher and some special education students and first responders.

We developed a script where we're going to put together these little mini videos on what does it mean when there's a disaster?

Who's going to come?

How do you know it's safe?

What does a place of refuge look like?

What does it mean to do sheltering?

So starting with really brief, short targeted messages through children often is super successful and is something that I've used in the past.

Also, the community emergency response team training that you've heard about that grownups use, teenagers are often also very successful in that program and then they carry the message forward.

So those are just a few of the methods that I've used for reaching vulnerable populations of all kinds.

Thank you so much.

And I'm not seeing anybody come off mute.

Oh, Council Member Morales.

Oh, sorry.

I thought we were supposed to be using the raise the hand feature, so.

Please, Council President, you better hand raise first.

Go ahead.

Absolutely, Council President.

Thank you.

Just really quickly.

So I reviewed some of the materials in terms of the responses that Interim Director Mayer provided to the committee.

Thank you so much for those detailed responses.

I would like to get a little bit more of an understanding of how you are going to approach language competency within the Office of Emergency Management I saw that you referenced it essentially once in the context of preparedness and getting emergency information out to non-English speaking populations or limited English speaking populations.

But it has long been a concern of mine that particularly in the Office of Emergency Management, we don't seem to have a a strong strategy and work plan to ensure that all components, all business lines of work that is being done by the Office of Emergency Management has a language and cultural competency perspective.

But I really want to focus on that language component.

I continue to be concerned that our focus around integrating language competency at OEM seems to be limited to the preparedness aspect as opposed to throughout every aspect of the Office of Emergency Management.

OK.

So if I'm understanding your question, it's about how to integrate how to integrate, uh, reaching limited English proficient, uh, messaging, or I'm not sure.

I totally understand your question.

We, we live in a city in which over 150 languages are spoken in our public school system.

I personally come from a family where my parents grew up, not speaking English.

I was their translator.

I was their interpreter.

There are many families in Seattle who I think are living in that same existence.

The Office of Emergency Management does a lot of resiliency work.

They do a lot of preparedness work.

They do alert work.

In other words, there's an emergency happening right now.

This is what you need to know.

As a clear example, when the Ride the Ducks massive fatal crash happened on the bridge, um, on the university of Washington bridge.

Those were mostly foreign students whose family members and many of them didn't speak any English.

And we had a heck of a time scrambling to try to figure out who was going to translate and who was going to interpret.

And we were doing that in real time.

Now, I think we've learned some lessons from that.

But I still feel like that is the sort of component around language access and understanding that people in the city of Seattle receive and process information in a language other than English.

That culture, I feel like it's still not getting baked into the Office of Emergency Management.

And when it is being talked about in terms of the work that Office of Emergency Management does, it is, in my experience, been very limited to, to notifications or to, or to, you know, the preparedness bucket only in terms of language access.

I would like to get a better understanding of what, what your strategies are going to be or whether you're going to prioritize ensuring that there is language access in other aspects of the work that office of emergency management does.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

So one of the programs that we use currently that can be expanded beyond preparedness is the use of community safety ambassadors who are community members who speak other languages and are connected to different parts of the community who can translate not only ahead of time but also in real time with different communities.

So we have focused mostly on using them in preparedness and in messaging as you described.

But we also all of our plans around what are we going to do post post emergency or also with our mitigation plans are things that we can use those translation services, not only the community service ambassadors, but the contract that we have for translation can also be used when we ask for public comment on those really important plans.

So the hazard mitigation plan is about, which is on the website right now.

Here are the things that we're vulnerable to, and that we want public comment on the actions that we're taking around mitigation.

All the rest of our plans are also posted for public comment.

So we can use those.

I'm sorry, lost my.

we can use those community service ambassadors and also our translation services to translate those plans so that we have that access to translate it for those other pieces of emergency management, not just preparedness.

So the mitigation, the response plans, and how we do emergency management in general.

We ask for public comment on everything that we do.

So you're right, making sure that people who speak languages other than English also have access and know about those plans is really important.

It also then would require us to take those plans to people and not just post them.

So they're not just on the website, but that we're actually meeting with community groups and saying, hey, you may not be aware of this, but there's a hazard mitigation plan.

First of all, what is hazard mitigation in words and with experiences that they understand?

And then asking them, this is how that might affect you and how would you engage with us?

Or what are the things that you would change?

What makes sense to you?

What is like, that isn't gonna work at all?

But I see that as probably the most effective way to do that language translation is in those other areas, as you mentioned.

And you're probably aware there's also, there was a bill about two years ago now that required that all of what we do in emergency management, including messaging, needs to be translated into the top languages in a jurisdiction.

So that either 1% of the population or 1,000 people, whichever is smaller, are the languages that you have to translate what you do in emergency management for those communities to engage.

So it's definitely a challenge, but not something that we can't do or something that we're not striving to do.

So thank you for that question.

And let me know if you need more detail.

Thank you, Curry.

This is an area that I know Council President Gonzalez might have some additional follow up on, so I appreciate that.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I am interested in a different preparedness question, particularly around the unreinforced masonry issue.

I'm sure you know we've had many studies done here in Seattle.

And as somebody who represents Chinatown International District, where we have, I think, at least 100 buildings on the list, problematic structures.

I'm really interested if you have thoughts on this question of what steps the city can take, both immediately and in the long term.

You know, when we're talking about the cost of doing retrofits in some of these buildings, It's substantial and given that so many of the residents of these buildings are low income, raising the rent to cover the cost of a loan to make these sorts of repairs is really not an option.

So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts again and just give you an opportunity to share that in this forum as well.

Sure, absolutely.

So there are a lot of unreinforced masonry buildings in San Francisco.

I'm from California, so I'm very familiar with the efforts that happened in California.

And then also here in Seattle, URMs have been studied, and we've been attempting to deal with the issue of how we remedy their danger for about 50 years, so way longer than any of us have been around.

And there really is, as you mentioned, a very high cost for retrofitting these buildings.

So we've never really identified a solution that would effectively incentivize private building owners to seismically retrofit their buildings voluntarily.

And attempts to implement voluntary retrofitting of URMs in California proved to be really unsuccessful.

So most likely, a mandatory retrofit ordinance is going to be the path to making sure that there's more than 1,100 URM buildings in the city of Seattle.

And some of this reluctance to this mandatory ordinance is exactly what you stated, and that it's expensive.

And the worry is always that the building owner will then pass that expense on to the community and raising rents, and that's not a good thing.

that's not a good solution either.

There's also over 2,000 affordable housing units with URM buildings here in the city of Seattle.

So I think one of the things that we could begin to do is to stop looking at seismic safety by itself, that it's really tied to a number of other initiatives that I think we all agree are important.

So affordable housing, Historic preservation and clean energy are kind of all wrapped up in this thing that we talk about with seismic safety and the issue of unreinforced masonry buildings.

So a successful mandatory retrofit ordinance will require some financing mechanisms, some creative financing mechanisms that will help absorb some of that burden so that building owners don't feel like it's only on them and that they're gonna pass it on to their residents or the people that are renting from them.

And there's been some significant work done in identifying what the funding mechanisms might be.

working with the private sector and the National Development Council has done some work around this and they shared a report with the city and we can certainly share that with you if you're interested.

There's also an Alliance for Safety, Affordability, and Preservation where building owners can get certain credits for other kinds of work that they do if they do the URM work so that there's kind of a trade-off to that.

So in the short term we're also OEM is looking at some funding opportunities through the federal government that could help with that, some mitigation grants that might be helpful, and then more long-term looking at these other ways that we can offer creative financing and working with the private sector I think is going to be the thing that is going to get us the most traction in this area.

There was an example that most recently with the federal government provided us a $5 million grant that we were able to provide to an owner of the Bremer Apartments, which is a 49-unit affordable housing and so they were able to get some money for that and that helped tremendously.

But really the solve, I think, if you will, and the path to that is the partnerships that we have with private sector and other community organizations to look at how we do this and that the financial burden is not just on one sector or one portion of the community.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Just a follow-up on that question.

I also had URM buildings on my list of things to talk about.

This is a topic that I know a couple years back the entire Land Use Committee wrote to the executive out of concern that this topic was not on the work plans for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections for developing a program to address the many studies that have been delivered over past years related to how to begin dealing with unreinforced masonry, seismic deficiencies and how to go about identifying the priority buildings.

You mentioned in your comments, and thank you for doing so, I'm glad to hear that you are familiar with them and are talking with the Alliance for Safety, Affordability, and Preservation.

Just want to, and you referenced the retrofit credit program as a tool.

for some of the financing needs associated with addressing URM buildings.

Just want to find out from you, do you support a retrofit credit program as a tool to help with the financing?

And then secondly, I've been working with the Alliance for Safety, Affordability, and Preservation to develop a resolution.

that would outline the steps that the city needs to take in order to create a mandatory URM program.

And the resolution includes sort of a specific timeline for deliverables that are part of the development of such a program.

And, you know, that's everything from the financing We have a number of priorities that we want to address first.

want to find out in addition to whether or not you're supportive of the retrofit credit program, whether or not you're supportive of working with me on this resolution in the next few months so that we can, and I'm very flexible on what a desirable timeline is for the development of this program given the fact that we are dealing with a lot of simultaneous I know we have a lot of work to do to address some of the crises in the city, but I just want to know whether or not I can count on working with you in the next few months to develop resolutions so that we can all hold ourselves accountable to finally addressing the needs of our URM buildings.

And, you know, when we talk about the COVID impacts or any disasters disproportionately impacting BIPOC communities, URMs is a good example.

They also disproportionately affect BIPOC communities and other people with access and functional needs.

So vulnerable populations.

So as an emergency manager, all of those things that we want to do with mitigation and helping people understand what their vulnerabilities are and all of that include the continued use of URM buildings for housing.

So all of the people that are in those structures right now, if the earthquake were to happen today or tomorrow, are going to require, they're gonna be unhoused, they won't have electricity, they could have serious injuries, all of those really dangerous things that happen to somebody after a disaster, whether it be an earthquake or something smaller than that, will be in serious trouble if they're in a URM building.

So I absolutely applaud your efforts and, Very happy to work with you on that.

Thank you very much.

I don't have any further questions.

And I'm now monitoring people's meetings and the hands-up function on our Zoom call here.

And if I'm correct and there are no further questions, I would like to move the appointment of Curry Mayor.

And that is appointment 01757. May I have a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Any further comments to the recommendation?

Thank you.

Seeing no further comments, I just want to again thank Interim Director Mayer for her willingness to serve.

And with that, I'd like to please call the roll on the recommendation.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Thank you.

And this appointment will move on to the City Council full agenda on Monday.

This is right.

It's Monday, March 1st.

Alex?

That's correct.

It's where you just give us a little.

I'm sorry, February 1st.

Okay.

It was like, why are we holding it for a month?

All right.

Thank you so much.

So this will move on to a full council this coming Monday, February 1st.

Thank you so much.

Let's move on to.

Thank you very much.

Oh, absolutely.

Thank you.

Appreciate you being with us.

And you are invited to join us on Monday.

Alex will fill you in on the details about that.

Okay, thank you again.

I'm really honored.

I so appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, moving on to item number two on the agenda.

Alex, can you please read it into the record?

Agenda item number two, Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate everybody's patience.

And if we could start off, perhaps, with a round of introductions of everybody who is joining us for this really awaited presentation on your really important work.

implementing the council's policy objectives as it relates to supporting community-based public safety interventions.

Hi, I'm Dominic Davis from Community Passageways, a.k.a. Coach Dom.

I want to thank us for having the opportunity to present to you guys.

I just want to open up real quick with a couple of quick statements and then I'll digress to my team.

We are four community-based organizations, four different community-based organizations under four different banners that have been doing work in the community for a very long time.

We've been doing this work in the community for such a long time and the effects that we've had in the community have been great, but we've been working in our own silos.

And so due to COVID, the uptick of violence, the things that our community are facing, we decided let's come together and work together as one big unit, as one big team.

So what you're seeing is community organizations coming together out of their silos and working as a unit to address gun violence and gang intervention processes in our community.

I want to say, first of all, we are the community.

We live in the community.

We grew up in the community.

We are part of what we are doing.

This is not a job.

This is not just an initiative.

This is not just work.

This is our lifestyle.

And so you're seeing all these people come together to work together to heal the community that they've been in for their whole life.

and all the people in the community we are so connected to that we are grounded in this work so deeply.

I wanna say thanks to HSD for supporting this work in this gun safety work, this gang intervention work at a high level.

We have a good relationship with HSD and HSD has been a powerful partner in this work and moving this work forward.

I'm gonna go ahead and hand the baton off over to Paul Patu and let him start the presentation.

Thank you so much.

And I'm just hoping that before we launch into the presentation, can we just do a real quick go around of introduction, just so we know, based on the faces that are there present, who's here for this particular panel discussion?

If that's okay.

Yeah, that's fine.

Hello, everyone.

This is Paul Patu.

I'm Chantelle Patu.

And we are the directors and co-founders of the Urban Family.

It's good to be here.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Marty Jackson.

I am the Southeast Network Executive Director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County.

Hello, my name is Martin Lawson.

I am the Director of the Passageways Community Support Team, and I'll also be functioning as the Executive Director of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative Central District Hub.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Marvin Marshall, and I'm the Violence Prevention Director with the YMCA.

And I currently oversee the Alive and Free program and will be a part of the West Seattle Hub.

Hello.

We've got you.

Hello, council members.

It's Helen Howell.

I'm the new interim director of the Human Services Department.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Glad to have you here for your first visit to committee in your new capacity.

Thank you.

Morning, council members.

Tiffany Washington, Deputy Mayor.

Glad to be here.

And likewise, you, Deputy Mayor Washington.

Glad to have you here in committee in your new capacity as Deputy Mayor.

Thank you.

And this is Tonya Kim with the Human Services Department.

And Tiffany will open this up.

Great.

All right, Chase, round of introductions.

Okay, well, I guess I will pass it back to Paul Patu.

Are you opening us up today?

First, we're going to begin with Helen to do the overview slides.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Well, good morning, Madam Chair and committee members.

As you mentioned, Chair Herbold, it's my first council briefing in my new role.

And the Human Services Department is at committee in support of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

Along with the introductions that you've just heard, our partners will provide background information and an overview of Seattle CSI.

And we'll begin with Dominique Davis, I believe, Dom.

Yeah, I jumped the gun and just jumped right into speaking, but the statements I was making, I just wanted to make sure that we have a clear understanding that this is something that's unique in our community.

This is something that's kind of a new launch of unity with community-based organizations.

The community knows all of our organizations and the young people that are in the streets in our community know the work that we do.

The families know the work that we do and we supported our community at a very high level.

And so now here we are bringing all these organizations together so that the community can see us united as one, working under one accord with one agenda.

to stop the violence in our community and to provide the services for the community families that are in need.

So that this is not just an initiative that we're pushing forward, but it's something that they can visually see because it's about bringing the community together and uniting the community to stop the gang violence.

But now they get to see different organizations coming together out of their silos, uniting to show them that this is what the community can do also, right?

So we're gonna go ahead and start with the presentation.

I guess we're now, Paul, you can go ahead and take over, brother.

Right.

Thank you, Dominique.

I can tell you are a preacher.

That was your second closing.

But thank you.

It's good to be amongst family and friends and leaders from our community.

I'd like to show you a video, but before I do, I wanted to state the purpose of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

And then you can push play at the end of this statement.

This is kind of a lob to the tech guy.

So the purpose of the Seattle CSI is to build and strengthen community connections and neighborhood safety, particularly for black and brown neighborhoods in Seattle and eventually South King County.

Thank you for allowing us to present this initiative to the city and more importantly, the people affected by violence.

Push play on the video.

And by Lily's queuing up the video.

Oh, fantastic.

Thank you, son.

What are we going to see here?

So what you're going to see is an intro.

They say that a picture's worth 1,000 words.

Well, this is our version of 1,000 words through this nine-minute video.

Oh, OK.

Thank you.

In the state hardest hit by COVID-19 came one of the strongest warnings this week.

We are going to have to change our lives in ways that are uncomfortable if we're going to succeed as a community.

Anger erupted following the arrest and death of George Floyd on Monday.

He pleaded for his life.

There's also a growing feeling of anxiety from many voters as we get closer to Tuesday.

We know that one person at least one person was shot.

Neighbors say that victim may have gone into the school for help.

Boom, boom, boom.

You understand?

It looks as terrifying as it sounded.

A young man opening fire in a crowded playground, people running for their lives.

Whoever did this to my son, that baby needed a hug.

And we've got to make sure that his name is not drug through the mud like this was just some kind of gang related gang land.

And again, this happened around 315, right at 22nd and Union, near that area.

Her baby was only 19. He didn't even make it to 20 yet.

It's too many young kids getting killed in these streets.

We need to do something about it.

It's getting to be out of hand.

There is a movement in the United States of young people who I am very proud of, We're dealing with the structural issues that need to change if we're going to be a better society.

But there is this political ploy to try to pit police brutality and police misconduct against black-on-black violence.

But it's a fiction.

It's all connected.

When you think about decades of failed housing policies and poor educational structures, when you think about persistent unemployment and underemployment in a community, when you think about poor health care and then you throw drugs into the mix, and duffel bags full of guns, little wonder that you would see this culture of violence emerge.

But the solution is mining the assets that's there in the community to have a strong community component in the collaboration around violence reduction.

They're there.

Bring them together with law enforcement and the private sector and the city with the one aim of reducing violence.

But make sure that that community component is strong.

Because that old adage that comes from Brundy is right.

That you do for me, without me, you do to me.

As a system, we're like, we have to look at, we're suspending far too many black boys.

What do we need to do?

What do we need to do differently?

I'm tired of seeing a lot of people being murdered over stupid things.

I don't want that to be my story.

From the incident with George Floyd to the incidents at the Capitol.

Institutionalized racism has divided us for too long.

All of these things that have transpired this past year, for those of us who are people of color, and I'm going to say black and brown people, we've been experiencing institutionalized racism and internalized oppression for a long time.

And so these incidents really have brought light to the situation.

I think people are paying attention to it.

Maybe I think white people are paying attention to what's happening right now.

We can't have people come from outside of our communities thinking that they have the answers for the problems in our community.

When are we going to be able to take the onus on what happens in our community.

We have the solutions.

You know, we are the oppressed people.

It's been said that it takes a village to raise a child.

When I was growing up, I could be corrected by my mother, my father, my aunt, my uncle, and sometimes even Big Mama.

Now more than ever, particularly with black and brown communities, we need to pull together.

We need to be our own safety.

We need safety that comes from the inside out.

I mean, we grew up in here.

We have heritage here.

We have history here.

And we just want to come back to these neighborhoods that we grew up in and restore that sense of peace, that community, that connection.

I want to welcome you to my neighborhood.

It's bigger than the work, you guys.

I grew up in this neighborhood.

Rainier Beach is known for it to be rich in human resource.

We are known to have rich culture here.

And not only did I graduate from here, I came back to work in this neighborhood.

Behind me, I have the iconic Chief Sealth High School.

For me, working in West Seattle would be very important.

I remember living in West Seattle as a kid, you know, and my older brother, he made his way to High Point, you know, and from High Point to Dale Ridge to 35th.

If you know anything about West Seattle, you know that there's a lot of history in this community.

We want to make it to where the resources are flowing, free-flowing back into the community.

You know, we want people to have neighborhoods in which they can walk in and they can have fun in and they can be at the park and throw picnics and barbecues and cookouts.

The historical significance of being located right here, this church has been in this community for 47 years.

Prior to the gentrification fire, to the community being driven out to South King County and other areas further away, this whole area was African American.

This is the central district.

It's changed a lot now.

The demographics of this area look nothing like it looked when I grew up, when we used to run in these streets.

Man, we're overwhelmed with joy about being able to come back here, do this work in this community, and do this work with members who are from this community, who know the history of this community, are invested in this community, have family members here.

a community safety initiative based out of the South End, Central District, and West Seattle.

Community safety is about relationship, and it's about community, it's about extended family.

Imagine having black and brown, safe, caring adults in the neighborhood, on the street,

in the schools surrounding our communities with care and support and love.

How much greater and safer our communities would be simply because we are serving us.

So just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes the collaboration and cooperation of multiple organizations to end the violence and marginalization in our communities.

YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, Community Passageways, Urban Family.

One of the things that I'm excited about related to this initiative is the opportunity to work together with trusted

and organizations.

My name is Martin Lawson.

I'm with Community Passageways.

I will be functioning as the Executive Director of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative's Central District Hub.

Hello, my name is Paul Patu, and I'm the Executive Director of Urban Family.

On behalf of the initiative, Urban Family will lead the training, technical assistance, and consulting.

Hi, my name is Marty Jackson, and I'm the Southeast Network Executive Director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County.

For the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, I will be the Executive Director for the South End Hub.

Hello, my name is Marvin Marshall, and I'm the Violence Prevention Director with the YMCA of Greater Seattle.

On behalf of the Seattle Safety Initiative, I will oversee the West Seattle Hub.

Thank you.

As you say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I believe that we also have an accompanying slideshow that we're going to go through?

Yes.

We can start off with background.

There we go.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

So I want to first say I am deeply, deeply honored to work with my colleagues in the initiative.

In truth, we all know each other, and we found each other again in the perfect storm that was 2020. 2020 was difficult, very difficult for all of us.

COVID-19, George Floyd, and the election, the cap off the year, It really put a demand on community folks like ourselves to really pull together and to figure out what we can do on behalf of the people that we serve.

And so the intention was to really focus our efforts on the idea of power to the people.

and the emergence of black and brown grassroots leadership emerged during this perfect storm, if you will.

And it really helped to forge our will to work together.

We can't change a lot of the things that are outside of our control, but what we can control is how we react to them.

And so in honor of this, I just really honestly like moved by the video, even though we put it together, just the images of our neighborhood and all that this year has produced or last year's produced.

I think in closing and to move us on, I think the place for black and brown communities before we can move on is really healing.

and us really grounding ourselves in healing.

And that starts with working together, hashtag move together.

And so I'd like to introduce the members of our initiative.

And we'll start off with Marty Jackson from the Southeast Network, South End Safety Hub.

Marty Jackson.

Hello, everyone.

I'll be brief.

I'm Marty Jackson.

I'm the Southeast Network Executive Director for this safety net over at the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County.

I am, as you see from the video, born and raised in Southeast Seattle, particularly the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

I'm not just a practitioner in this work, but I'm also a mother and grandmother.

of young people that also go to school in the South End over at South Shore, and also graduates of Rainier Beach High School.

So it goes much deeper than me.

These are our family roots, generations of young people who grew up in the same neighborhood I grew up in.

And to have the honor to be able to work in the neighborhood for a number of years has definitely served me well, especially addressing some of the issues that we're serving, that we're facing right now.

Thank you.

I'll go ahead.

I'm going to lead it to Marvin Marshall.

Hello, everyone.

As was stated, my name is Marvin Marshall, and I am the Director of Violence Prevention Programs with the YMCA.

I currently oversee it alive and free.

And for me, this work is very, very important because I'm forever impacted by these issues.

You know, I am a Seattle native born and raised.

I've lived a little bit of everywhere in Seattle from the South end to the CD to West Seattle, you know, and I feel that it's very, very important for us to be working together because a lot of times we all do great work in this industry, but it's siloed work, you know, and so to be able to break down those walls and come together, you know, I've seen these folks do great work, you know, laterally, but as we're all sitting at the table together, I think that that creates, you know, a unity that will get a lot further with, you know, as opposed to being divided, you know, but I'll pass it along to Martin, Martin Lawson.

Thank you, Marvin.

The Seattle Community Safety Initiative is actually part of the larger Seattle Peace and Safety Initiative, which is a collaboration of community elders in about 20 black and brown nonprofit providers that serve the black community in areas such as employment, housing, mental health, and wellness, reentry services, educational opportunities, financial literacy, and family support services.

And all of these services will be provided in the hubs that will be located in the Central District area, the South Seattle area, and also West Seattle.

These initiatives are started, were started to coordinate grassroots community prevention, intervention, and post-incident services in response to youth and domestic violence actions.

We are currently in the process of surveying the neighborhoods where the hubs will be located.

And we will also be surveying groups like the Madrona Moms, the Mount Baker Moms, and the Rainier Beach Coalition to introduce ourselves to those groups and get community feedback and input.

We are passionate about this work.

Like Dom stated earlier, we are passionate about healing the spaces where we are located and have been located for generations.

And we are working hard to create and maintain an effective and sustainable alternative to the traditional forms of policing that have been harmful in many ways to our community.

So we are looking to nurture and encourage community-led and centered efforts to ensure community safety.

With that being said, Paul Patu.

Thank you.

I'm Marty Lawson.

Urban Family was co-founded by Chantel and I.

We are a husband and wife team.

Um, but yeah, we, we are serving the neighborhoods that we grew up in.

And I think that that, um, is unique, uh, in this.

And I would be remiss to say that, you know, what is also a power dynamic shift is to, uh, grassroots organizations, um, partnering with two large nationally well-recognized organizations.

and all black and brown leadership.

That's extremely important.

Our role in the initiative in terms of urban family is really to bring our 20 plus years of experience and intervention work.

and particularly around crisis response, critical incident response, and the technical assistance and consulting needed to scaffold and really build the competency and the skill of our safety teams.

Our leaders are already trusted and I feel really good about that, but it's extremely important that this be a holistic initiative and really from the ground up, nurture and cultivate each area with care and support.

And so Urban Family is extremely, you know, excited to get going on this process and to tell you more about the initiative and particularly the Nuts and Bolts Initiative.

I'd like to hand it back off to my colleague, Marty Jackson, and she'll explain more about the model of the Seattle CSI.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, Marty, can you hold on one second?

Council member, how much time do we have left?

If we could wrap up the presentation in the next five to eight minutes and then allow for some questions from council members, that would be great.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sorry, Marty.

No, you're fine, Tiffany.

I'm glad you asked that because I was looking at the time also.

And so so I will go ahead and just talk a little bit about the model.

I think if you look at parts of this model, you'll see that the components of this model, all of the different aspects of it are already evidence based.

And so I think for me, really looking at the importance of the safety hubs, What we're taking is, and what we've already been implementing, I think it's important to know that we have already had results and have implemented a lot of these best practices, a lot of the models, and we have seen the results.

We've seen it in different aspects of it.

Part of the awesome part of our organization's coming together is we all own a piece of that.

And so bringing those pieces together and really looking at that safety It is a place-based approach to community violence.

This place-based approach, looking at our community hubs, we already informally are these hubs within our neighborhoods.

We know that kids come to us in different parts of our neighborhood for help, families, we help families.

A lot of this has unfolded during COVID, during the pandemic, around food insecurity and other things that were needed where our community pulled together, but they knew who to call, they knew who to go to.

And we served our community in capacities we haven't served in or prior to COVID.

And so I really think it's a testament to that.

So these safety hubs in the neighborhood, we're not doing anything new, right?

But what we are, what is different, all of these safety hubs will have now be resourced properly.

Part of what happened before in terms of us just operating individually, is we didn't have the proper resource to provide critical incident response.

and wraparound services, follow-up, outreach and recruitment, looking at other employment opportunities.

All of the things that I think were mentioned as a part of community violence really is just a symptom.

And all of the roots to that are all of the deficits or what our communities have not been fully serviced with because of funding.

That's what's happening now.

So you'll see the safety hubs and each safety hub will have all of these comprehensive services to help youth and families.

This is not limited to just a youth initiative, but as a safety initiative, we're addressing youth, we're addressing the entire family, we're addressing the entire community.

Again, I really want to emphasize that place-based approach in us addressing our community needs on a local level.

And so another piece of this is our safety teams, which is safe passage, which has been operating now for the last five years.

We have been able to see some results within our, the Rainier Beach neighborhood in particular, but looking to replicate this in other neighborhoods.

I'm sure some of you have already heard and have heard the results of what's happened with safe passage.

And through some of the other efforts that are happening within the Rainier Beach neighborhood, but crime has been down 40% that first year that we were operating and since then 30%.

And a lot of these, the data around this was reported by law enforcement.

And what I think was unique in that is to attribute that to the community.

What we're doing is we're taking that and we're really moving that and replicating everything that we all have been doing that has been working in our own neighborhoods.

And then we're sharing these resources and we're aligning our efforts in a way so that we can be able to address all of the things that are happening within our neighborhood and serve our and better serve our community.

I'm going to hand it over to Marvin.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And just to add to that briefly, you know, we'll all be bringing the services that we've been doing in the community for a long time, you know, and with the YMCA being part of that bigger umbrella, you know, but then being more specifically programming with the live and free.

being community based, you know, and almost like being a grassroots within that larger umbrella, you know, so bringing that lens of alive and free to the work and looking at the resources, the abundance of resources, you know, and then also identifying culturally relevant resources within each community, you know, because you can make a million referrals, but if they're not applicable to your young people, to your community, then they're not really going to be effective.

You know, so just looking at the balancing of which resources to apply and where to apply them to is very, very big.

And with that being said, I'll pass it along to Marty Lawson.

And I'll be brief.

I think another, Marty Jackson and Marvin have already kind of talked about the structure, but I think another important piece is that we'll be working together.

Although Marty's in the South end, I'm in the CD and Marvin's in West Seattle, we'll be collaborating.

We'll be talking about incidents of violence.

We'll be talking about the players who participate.

because we're all connected directly or indirectly.

And so if I got a relationship, if I have a relationship with someone who's participating in the CD, then I can call up Marty who can tap into her team out there and we can work together, deescalate from all sides.

So we're creating a net to address these issues.

Now with that, I'll pass it on.

I believe it's Paul or back to Marty.

No, it's back to me.

Thank you, Lawson.

So, The last piece in terms of the model, and we'll give you kind of a visual as well, as you can see on the screen, is the training, technical assistance, and consulting, particularly around critical incident response.

I think it's important to realize that this is not a replacement for law enforcement.

That is extremely important.

This is a safety support for, you know, that can interface with both, you know, our local law enforcement as well as community residents.

And I think that that's what the unique feature is of this initiative.

The other thing I wanted to say is that, you know, the foundation has been laid, right?

The foundation has been laid from initiatives like the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative and many millions of dollars of investments in the city of Seattle's history.

And one of the things I think is extremely important for our respective council members is to figure out how we can stop clearing the deck every time there's someone new in office.

and to build on the foundation of the former council member or mayor that may have contributed.

One of the issues that happens over and over again is this initiative is really, you know, because we stayed in the work, right?

We just simply stayed in the work and the city has made investments.

I know critical incident response because, you know, the last initiative provided training for critical incident response.

This is an investment, an ROI that is now coming back to bless the city.

because the city made that investment.

But if it does not get captured in the cities, particularly our lawmakers and council members, if they lose organizational memory, then you'll have to make the investment all over again and start off with a whole new project and call it something different during your term.

There has to be a better way and a smarter way for us to build on our investments.

and you guys are trusted officials.

We've voted you in the office and we would pray that you would give ear to some of the wisdom of the things happening respectively.

So basically, in short, the four key components of the safety initiative is our community safety hubs.

Our community safety hubs are literally a hub of resource, of life, of care and support that sit in the middle of those respective communities, right?

Everything emanates from these safety hubs.

This is where community partners connect.

This is where, you know, everyone is invited to the table.

That's a part of that neighborhood.

The second piece is our neighborhood based crisis safety teams.

One of the unique features of this pulling from safe passage is that we will have regular safety.

safety patrols of black and brown safety teams making their routine patrols through the neighborhood.

You know, in hot particularly in hot spots right there's been a lot of research done by.

I want to say George Fox University that basically has a whole kind of set of data and research on hotspots, right, and monitoring hotspots.

And so our safety teams will be deployed to do patrols.

The other aspect is critical incident response.

A critical incident response is literally responding to shots fired to violence in the community by highly trained safety team members that are trained to respond to violence in the neighborhood.

And the philosophy there is really kind of 48 hours, right?

48 hour period statistics and research bears that if you can get closer to the incident within that 48 hour period, the likelihood of you resolving and bringing some sense of resolution to that crisis increases.

And once again, I want to reiterate, we are not the police.

We respect law enforcement.

We are a support, a safety support.

The next piece is training and professional development.

We built in training all year round.

We think that the greatest investment that we can place into this initiative is on the leaders of this initiative, right?

Because at the end of the day, initiatives and programs will end, but the leaders that we prepare through these initiatives will continue to be an asset to our communities.

Which leads me to my last piece is investment in black and brown leadership.

It's extremely important that these are pathways to education and pathways to empowerment for our young.

black and brown leaders that are engaging in this good and sacred work, right?

It's important that we invest in the leadership.

Also the leadership, I would be remiss to say of our elders.

It's time for us to invest in bringing the voices and wisdom of our elders to the space again, so that it's balanced and that they have value, add value to this initiative.

And so these four key components we feel like, are extremely intentional.

And we're really excited to get going on this.

So with that, I will hand it back off to Tanya.

Yes, it's Tanya Kim here with the Human Services Department.

In the interest of time, I just wanted to share with you what slides nine and 10 are.

We pulled some performance metrics from the contract that we have with Community Passageways community passageways, then subcontracts with these wonderful organizations.

And so together, that is the partnership that we have at this time with the hub model.

And just to, and I can come back or Dr. Helen can come back and just kind of get into the nuts and bolts of the contract and the elements of the hub itself at a later time, if that's your wish.

But just highlighting a couple so we can get to some question and answer if there is time.

So one is, of course, not only just are the participants that the hub providers are working with, but really looking at enrolling participants and having them on case management to create a service goal plan, everything you could see from housing, education, financial.

So when there is a situation, it's really you want to intervene immediately, but it's what's next.

And another that I wanted to highlight is of those participating in case management is that we do want to see a decrease, a reported decrease in involvement in violence and general crime and or feeling safe.

With the next slide, I'll just highlight that part of just underscoring what people are saying.

They've been doing this work.

And so what is different?

It's really around just the additional coordination as well.

And so part of that is the coordination, what you should see, even though it's neighborhood-based, there are going to be some unique aspects, is that there's going to be some similarities as well.

So coordination around trainings, coordination with our Seattle Police Department, and coordination internally just in how data is shared and gathered.

And so I think with that, I'll stop because we are short on time.

And I wanted to, if there is, some time just giving more space back to our partners to field some questions.

Thank you, Tanya.

I see that Council Member Morales has a question and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for being here.

I first want to say I agree with what Paul said.

It's really important, not just that we have Black-led organizations doing this work, but that it's not just the larger, more established organizations, that the smaller community-based groups that are really doing a lot of the frontline work are also.

part of these solutions, so thank you for that.

I have a question about your work.

I know that so much of what you do, particularly through Safe Passage, I worked for a couple of years with Rainier Beach Action Coalition, so I know the Corner Greeter program is very similar to Safe Passage.

And that work has, as Marty said, really had an impact reducing crime.

I think 35% was the number I saw over the last few years.

So we know that these programs work and that they are an important part of helping our young people.

And I know that because of COVID, it's been hard to do that work.

I think, you know, just having folks out on the street right now is not something that we are able to do.

I fear that that's part of, at least part of why we have been seeing an increase in violence in the Rainier Beach area.

And so I would like to hear a little bit about your plans, you know, until we are through COVID and we can really start to ramp back up.

Um, and then I have another, uh, just comment that I want to make, but I would love to hear the plans for that right now first.

Well, as it relates to, well, thank you, uh, council member, um, Morales.

Um, I would like to relate it to the current climate of COVID has been extremely confusing, right?

What is with the social distancing, et cetera.

But one of the things that we are paying attention to is really being able to have that layer of safety in place.

but also recognizing that there are situations in crisis response where at least on behalf of the perpetrators and the victims where the, you know, there is no social distancing from, you know, from certain aspects and that safety piece, at least from that perspective gets kind of thrown out the window.

However, I do think that it is a very kind of sensitive topic.

We will apply all kind of current social distancing and COVID standards.

We will, though, at the same time, you know, train our staff to also, you know, be ready to respond to multiple aspects of the crisis response work, which will be done on a consistent basis through drills.

Thank you.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

No, sorry.

I just wanted to chime in because I do want to make sure I want to clarify that our safety teams, our safety teams are in place.

So, in terms of Rainier Beach, Safe Passage, and I just want to clarify, Safe Passage and Corner Readers, we're all a part of the collaboration around the Rainier Beach, a beautiful, safe place for youth separately.

But I do want to make sure that it's understood.

The roles for both of our teams are different.

And so safe passage as a part of this collaboration is addressing directly, intervening with fight disturbances, deescalating certain situations, which is not the role of corner greeters.

And so I wanna make sure that part's clear.

But we have since some of the influx of violence that's happened, particularly Rainier Beach, have started a community healing space back in June.

And that was to address the two, homicides that took place for our young people who we lost in that parking lot at the Rainier Beach Safeway.

And so as in response to that, and that is in collaboration with RBAC and a couple of others, but that's, I do want to say that we are currently operating and already responding.

This initiative allows for us to partner and align our efforts.

So even if there is support, we are talking about, hey, if we need more manpower, we have that now.

with our other partners to be able to come in and align, you know, kind of align our efforts in that way.

I think it just builds capacity to be able to respond.

And I think that there is also just not information out there for folks to know that we're already addressing what's happening.

And those recent shootings that have taken place in our neighborhood, we've already addressed it and it's happening when we're not in the space.

And so we're strategizing now to look at, okay, when is this happening?

And I think that there is this response sometimes from community who are not involved to want to be reactive and kind of reinvent.

We've been out there.

Our team has been out there on the pavement, on Rainier and Henderson, in the Safeway parking lot.

And we have been collaborating with our partners in our neighborhood to address this issue.

It is something that doesn't happen overnight because of the pandemic.

There is nowhere for young people and older people to go because the bars and some of the lounges are closed.

And so we're addressing these issues.

We are being very proactive and we are including the rest of the Seattle Community Safety partners to help in strategizing around that.

Hopefully that answered.

Yeah, thank you, Marty.

I know we have all been hearing plenty from our neighbors in Rainier Beach.

I know there's a lot of concern and I know we've got a couple of meetings scheduled, so I'm looking forward to having those conversations.

The last thing I do want to say is First, I understand that this particular initiative came out of discussions around youth violence interruption.

So there is a particular framing for this work.

And I worry that as we talk more broadly about community safety, that that's the only framing.

And so, especially as we move into the next agenda item here, I just want to say that it's important for us to be thinking about community safety, not just in terms of you know, reducing gun violence or addressing the challenges that some of our young people are having, but really creating the kind of community conditions that lead to greater food security and more, you know, employment opportunities and greater access to health care and affordable housing.

All of the things, I think Paul sort of ran through a similar list of the things that I always think about when I think about what does it mean to have true community safety.

And that is for our young people and their families to be able to thrive in place.

So I just wanna make sure that we are not thinking too narrowly about what community safety means, even as we set up this initiative and support the work that you're all doing.

Thank you for saying that, Council Member Morales, because that is, we're intentional about that focus.

It's not just about responding to incidents or just looking at the incidents.

We want to look at all of the underlying causes of those incidents, that marginalization, the food security, mental health, addiction recovery, all of those things that lead to these incidents of violence.

So we are, yeah, thank you for saying that because we are intentional.

about looking at all those different aspects.

And if I could just make one more quick comment.

Yeah, I just want to say the part of why I was struggling a little bit with the slides, and I think it's because I understand the framing for this, but the context of that work that this is about, you know, the violence interruption work per se, that context isn't included in the slides.

And so it would be easy for somebody who isn't aware of the particular work that you're doing here to misconstrue.

And I think about, you know, typically these sorts of presentations are crafted and drafted by our departments.

not by community, and so, you know, when I see things like, you know, trusted organizations, incredible organizations, if I think that our departments, which are very often white-led, are saying things like that about black-led organizations, you know, these are trusted organizations, It makes me feel some kind of way.

And so I just wanted to sort of state for the record that we know that this is the work that is being crafted in a very particular way for a particular reason.

And I just appreciate all of you and the work that you're doing.

And rest assured Council Member Morales, Marty Jackson, Paul Patu and Dom Davis will never let us write their own presentation.

They are very strong.

They actually reorganized everything to highlight community.

So in this space, that's never anything you have to worry about.

Thank you.

We are so, so over time.

Council Member Lewis, you have a question?

Yeah, I mean, I'll just be really brief.

I'm just kind of curious because I haven't thought about this before and it was raised in the presentation.

I mean, first, I just want to say, Thank you, everybody, for the work that you're doing.

This is really fundamental to being a city that is investing in community-led projects.

And I just couldn't be more excited to continue this.

Dom, whenever we have a phone call, I always look forward to that when you're on the schedule, because I know we're going to talk about some really impactful stuff.

So I just want to say that at the beginning.

It was mentioned earlier that when we were talking about the safety teams, there was a reference to the safety team training.

I actually haven't had an opportunity in the past just to ask exactly what the training entails.

And so I thought I'd just ask that here in terms of the combination of training and experience that goes into being a safety team member, just out of curiosity.

That's it.

And I don't think I'll have a follow-up question in the interest of time, Council Member Verbal.

Absolutely.

And I think it's important to understand that this is dynamic, right?

This is a culmination of expertise.

The trainings were in part an investment.

from different models, right?

So the first thing typical of the city is you find the experts and then you send people to go get trained in them.

And so that's been kind of the pathway, right?

And so the investment for critical incident response, which comes out of Shaw Heights and safety protocol, which Akil Bashir trains on and contact work, Chantel and I have our own kind of wealth of training and subject matter expertise around this work as well.

And so the culmination of the training is really, you know, from our cache of experience and experts in the field related to, you know, you've referred to violence interruption.

That is a model out of ceasefire in Chicago.

If you will, unplant yourself from the models and really kind of trust the leaders that have absorbed the models on behalf of our context.

Every city is going to be different.

You can learn as many best practices you want, but the reality is it takes practitioners that are from the community to implement things on behalf of our community.

The emphasis is really about, you know, people changing people, you know, and being able to, to empower black and brown communities.

And I'll reference an old adage from the Black Panther era, each one teach one, right?

We have to be about training anyone and any young person that comes in our pathway and to really live into indigenous leadership and indigenous ways.

Thank you.

Hey, this was awesome.

I just want to say thank you.

Dom, you're muted.

Dom, you're muted.

Can you guys hear me now?

Yes.

Okay, so I just want to close out.

Thank you, Council Member Harville.

Thank you, all the other council members.

I appreciate you guys letting us present to you guys.

I just want to say This is an opportunity for us to do something different and unique.

Thank you for partnering with us because you guys are also part of this community.

We're all one community.

We all have to work together on your end and our end.

So let's meet in the middle and heal our community together.

Thank you.

What's the hashtag?

Hashtag community healing community.

Hashtag move together.

Thank you so much.

a similar model that we're going back to now, which is really focused on learning and benefiting from the expertise of the community and also breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration.

Just want to lift up, I have a couple of questions.

I don't need them answered now, but I would love to learn more about how referrals are received to CSI, how does the community know about your work and how to call you, and then how you prioritize your referrals.

Would also be interested to know more about how your work is coordinated with or communicated to the police department.

And then finally, I have a few questions about contract performance measures that I know Christina in my office can follow up on.

And with that, again, many, many thanks and gratitude for the important work that you guys are doing in community, doing what you do, and lifting up and developing leadership in the efforts to make safer community.

With that, Alex, can you read item three into the agenda?

agenda item number three, community capacity investment process.

Briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

So the last item we heard was how trustee has allocated $4 million in funding that the council identified for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, an initiative that was developed by our community partners.

They came to us and said, hey, we want support in funding this initiative.

And so what we just heard is how those dollars were used and how they're going to be used.

What we're going to hear now is a very brief We have a presentation on another pot of dollars that the council put aside in the 2020 summer rebalancing package.

And again, not, you know, working to try to reduce our reliance on traditional policing.

And this is the community capacity investment process.

Those dollars have not gone out the door yet, but I've invited HSD to give us a short briefing what the progress is and the status is for getting those dollars out the door and developing this particular program, which I think is really, it has foundational objectives of creating safer communities in a more broad way than, as Council Member Morales was reflecting on, the, violence reduction versus safer communities.

I think this is intended to be a little bit more of a broader look at what makes safe communities.

Mayor Washington, are you going to take it away for us?

Yes, I was just writing down what you said, but thanks for bringing me back.

So again, this is a short, brief overview on the $12 million RFP that will be administered by HSD.

And so I believe that Tanya Kim, are you walking us through this presentation?

Yeah, thank you.

Helena is going to just share with you what we're going to go over, and then I'll take it away.

Councilmembers, a few weeks ago we forwarded to Councilmember Herbold a memo that provided an overview of the status of the community safety building investment.

And so as Councilmember Herbold and the Deputy Mayor have stated, we're just presenting an overview for committee members and the viewing public to learn more about the council approved 2021 investment process, which includes the 12 million for scaling up community organization.

Just want to thank you and the entire council for your continued partnership on this work.

And I'll now turn it over to Tanya.

Okay, this will be quick and dirty.

So with the $12 million, I just wanted to highlight a couple key aspects of the budget.

But before I do that, you know, just to reiterate that the community safety investment, really, we're going for a broader approach.

And there are two benefits that I wanted to underscore.

One is that we'll gain new or expanded services.

And then secondly, the more community based organizations we support, we will have to help and reduce the root causes providing for better community security, resilience, and vitality.

So we're zooming out a little bit from the presentation that we just heard previously.

With the budget of $12 million, we are estimating that there will be a minimum of $10.4 million in contracts to community-based organizations or groups to provide these new or expanded services.

And there will be approximately 15% or up to $1.6 million for administrative costs, such as things like external evaluators, technical assistance, stipends for community raters with the request for proposal process, et cetera.

We're not getting into the nitty gritty of the RFP because we're developing it.

And for those of you who know our request for proposal development process, you know that we start with community engagement.

So at this time, HSD is actively developing the proposal guidelines and application.

Now, rest assured, we are using existing community engagement feedback that we have already procured, that you're procuring, everybody's procuring.

So we are taking all of the analysis into consideration.

But for this community engagement, we're honing in on the needs around capacity building specifically.

And so with that, We are having one-on-one conversations, small group conversations to understand what those capacity building needs are for our safety providers.

And it really is along the spectrum.

So conversations are with community, government, academic experts.

So I want to assure you that we are talking with, for example, equitable development task force, public health specifically, the regional approach to gun violence and its impacts on youth work group, Cities United and others.

HSD will ask our community providers many questions, but specifically for this, we do want to ask them where they see themselves within the safety continuum or in what you are familiar with, with the intercept model.

So we're thinking about, you know, prevention, crisis response, diversion, intervention, restoration.

Where do they see their programming or where do they see themselves?

Secondly, we want to know how they would contribute toward a community-led public safety service or solution.

Third, we're interested to know whether the response would replace a police function or be provided as a co-response with Seattle Police Department.

And lastly, one of the known questions that we're going to ask is if their service would be in response to violent or nonviolent crime.

So we are going to really have a stronger landscape analysis.

And our plan is to come back to Council with some information in February as we are continuing the development of the RFP.

So I talk a lot about the RFP.

It is our way that we're doing the competitive funding process.

And so right now, we are focusing on scaling up the existing organizations.

We know that we need to seed new organizations and then explore new strategies.

The bottom line is, with the increased capacity, it means more services for neighborhoods and people.

Capacity building, as you can imagine, is a broad definition, but we can imagine every organization and every neighborhood is different.

So we can expect requests for things like staffing support, financial management systems, training, you know, it could be around database, etc.

Proposals will be reviewed by a panel of community members, and that community member will, or group rather, will make the funding recommendation to our department director.

And lastly, I just want to note that we do know that there is urgency to release these funds as such.

The RFP will be released March 1st.

Proposals are due April 9th.

Awards will be announced around May 13th.

And then contracts will begin July 1 and we've skipped ahead and we're showing you a slide that demonstrates that as well.

But really, this is for those of you who know our department.

This is expedited and we've got all hands on deck.

Going back to the performance measures, just a quick note to say that I know that that is of interest.

It's of interest of community as well.

Once the awards are made, we are going to be working with the providers to identify the performance metrics.

Because it's capacity building, the organizations are going to be in different places.

We might start with some initial performance metrics, for example, things like the percentage of increased services.

or the percentage of increased capacity as demonstrated by something like the improvement of management oversight.

But at the end of the day, we need to bring our cohort together, along with our other investments, to work with an external evaluator team to support the cohort in their community-led evaluation process.

And so together, we will agree on the outcomes we're trying to accomplish.

So starting with short-term success, that will lead us to long-term success.

as well as also identifying some common ways to measure it.

And so we want to work together to build that out.

And so just moving back to that timeline, underscoring again some key dates.

And so next up for us is to return back to council with some information around our preliminary landscape analysis and progress report, at which time you will also receive our spending plan to lift the proviso.

From there, you can see here, we're going to release the request for proposal in March, and we're going to get us to a July 1st contract start.

And that is our brief update.

And there's a little bit more detail in the memo that is also provided.

What questions do you have?

Thank you so much, Tanya.

I really appreciate the status update, and I appreciate that the timeline allows for continued council engagement.

And so it requires it because there is a proviso included that we have to act to lift in order for these dollars to be contracted.

Council Member Morales, I see your hand is up.

or is that before?

Yeah, thank you.

This sort of goes back to the point I was making before, which is that I'm a little bit concerned about the framing or the priority here seeming to be around violent and nonviolent crime rather than thinking about community safety and public safety is broader than that.

And especially when I'm looking at this diagram one about the community safety continuum, it looks like prevention and what I think of as some of those broader community safety conditions is not included in this.

So I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about that question.

Well, part of the communication that I mentioned is we're going to be sharing that diagram.

And what you're referring to, we don't have on the data deck for the viewing public, but it's in the memo.

And we are going to ask providers, or just as we connect with people, where they see themselves along that continuum, if it's prevention, crisis response, et cetera.

And once we get some good information, it's where do we see some gaps and where might we ought to focus or where there is particular need based on what we're hearing.

And so For the conversation around safety, you're right that that prevention looks like it's hanging off the side, but it depends on how we're defining prevention as well.

So are we talking upstream where we want high quality access to universal preschool, or are we talking about some immediate prevention interventions that might support people who would not further engage.

And so that's something that we're going to further define.

But your comment is noted.

We've definitely got that down in mind.

Thanks.

Yeah, thank you.

And I just want to add a little bit too.

I think the council's budget action that aligns with this particular funding talks about community safety.

And again, I think it's broader than the discussion we just had around that's very focused on violence interruption.

But it may not be quite as broad as maybe we would in retrospect like for this item, but the action itself asked HSD to make a proposed spending plan organized around the intercept model framework for public safety.

So there is a, you know, I think a best practice of investing in what's called intercept zero, that is the kinds of things that will, make it less likely that somebody has any interaction with the criminal justice system.

And I think one of the things that I'm really eager to see is what the recommendations are for the community on how much to invest in each intercept.

Because I, like you Council Member Morales, I think we're gonna see a lot of interest in funding intercept zero elements of this timeline.

So, again, this is just getting our toe in on this investment, and I appreciate the acknowledgement from HSD as it relates to the timeline around getting these dollars out the door.

My sense of urgency is in recognition of with the council's sense of urgency.

We voted three times on this funding between September and November of last year, first in approving Council Bill 119825 during our 2020 rebalancing process, then in overturning the mayor's veto it, and then finally appropriating funds in the 2021 budget.

And so, you know, there was an expectation that I know HSD would begin some of the work around developing the RFP in 2020 and not waiting until the start of the new year.

And so I think the sense of urgency is consistent with the council's actions in the past and what we've expressed before, but I know HSD will the best it can within the confines and context of where we are in this moment.

Can I just add really quick?

I think Council Member Morales, you're right.

In the words of Dr. Marshall, who created the Alive and Free method, he sees the community as an immune system.

And it's either a weak immune system or a strong immune system.

And so we need to strengthen the immune system of the community I don't think I mean, as a black woman, I think you're spot on in terms of we don't want to be seen as problems to be fixed.

If you invest in strengthening the immune system over time, you will decrease reliance on.

police interaction.

And so I think using a strengths-based approach may land better as well with community and when we do our community engagement to just say, what needs to be strengthened to ensure that you're better off five years from now?

So I just wanted to acknowledge that and Council Member Herbold, you can do both.

It's redefining community safety, right?

So the community, community safety may be, give us the resources we need to thrive.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's what capacity building is all about, right?

It's about moving from a place of recognizing where the strengths of the community are and doubling down in our investments in them.

So absolutely.

Sorry, I was just gonna say really quickly.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Washington for those reflections.

I think that's really important.

And what I was gonna offer in terms of the sort of framing of the issue here is I think right now we're in a little bit of a both and.

world, right?

There is a need to engage in prevention work.

There is a need to engage in violence interruption work.

And I'm not hearing anyone suggest that we move away from doing those strategies.

And so I don't want to end today's presentation with sort of you all walking away with the impression that we want you to do less of those things, because I do think that community really wants those things as well.

And do appreciate the opportunity to, on the front end, just mention that in reading your all's memo on page three, it does talk about those violence prevention issues, right?

that some of the community indicators at the macro level in terms of metrics will be that we will see decreased gun violence among young adults, decreased reports and calls of violent crimes to the Seattle Police Department, a decrease in 9-1-1 calls, decrease in nonviolent crimes, decreased interactions with police, decreased recidivism.

But then it also starts talking about the things that we do want to see on the positive side, not on a deficit side, which are increased participation in resiliency strategies like mentorship, cultural activities, community organizing.

an increase in feelings of connectedness, health, and hope, as reported by the Health Youth Survey and other measures, and an increase in perceptions of safety.

And I think that's an area where some of the other upstream strategies that we'd like to see invested in more significantly can be bolstered in terms of the metrics that we're looking for, right?

So making sure that there's a balance there, there's a lot more of the decreased language in there and a lot less of the what do we want to see increased language in the in the memo that's laying out the strategy.

And so I would just want to see.

some of those strategies that are framed in the positive in the strength-based context.

How can we create greater balance on that side of the ledger so that folks understand that we're looking at it in a balanced way, both upstream but also dealing with the reality of needing to decrease some of these other we're seeing happening in the community that do continue to need a response and an interaction by the city and our community partners.

Thank you, Chair Hope.

Thank you, Paul.

I really appreciate this important conversation.

I appreciate the work HSD is doing in community and really am so very humbled and grateful for the work that community is doing.

Alex, can you please read item four into the agenda?

And I'm just letting folks know now, we are not going to get to item five on the agenda today.

Alex?

Agenda item number four, discussion of less lethal weapons, draft bill, and recommendations on draft bill for discussion and briefing.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

So this is the fourth meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on less lethal weapons.

On September 11th, the Community Police Commission, the Inspector General, and the Office of Police Accountability each presented their recommendations as relates specifically to the bill that the council passed back in June.

On December 17th, there was a roundtable discussion with the accountabilities present as well as the Seattle Police Department present.

On January 12th, the committee considered a draft bill that amended the bill adopted by the council back in June based on some of the consensus recommendations of the three accountability bodies.

And then we considered a decision agenda for items where the accountability bodies had varied recommendations.

The intent for today is for the committee to vote.

which will in essence be a recommendation.

Again, the legal counsel would then send the draft legislation to the monitor and the Department of Justice in line with the process described in the consent decree and required by Judge Robart in his temporary restraining order.

Under the consent decree, the court ordered, the court-appointed monitor can approve the proposal or determine that it conflicts with the terms of the consent decree agreement.

If the city or the Department of Justice object to the monitor's determination, they can meet and confer with the monitor, and if they choose, petition the court.

Ultimately, the court approval is needed for an ordinance to go into effect.

If we don't have court approval, we will not have a regulation related to the use of less lethal weapons.

So ultimately, the court approval, again, is needed, and full counsel action will take place after the completion of the consent paper.

decree process.

Of course, this is very different than the standard process for legislation laid out under the charter.

And under the terms of the consent decree, the council cannot override a decision of the monitor or the court on legislation regarding the use of force.

Judge Robert specifically expressed an intent in hearing from the three accountability bodies, as did the council in the ordinance that we passed in June.

And this is a key reason that the committee has met twice to hear, discuss, and ask questions about the accountability body's recommendations.

And it's why the discussion today and in past meetings has been structured specifically around their recommendations.

Again, in the July temporary restraining order, I think it's important to be aware of some of the comments that Judge Robart made when he issued this restraining order prohibiting the ordinance from going into effect.

He was critical of the ordinance adopted in June by the council saying it does not increase public safety.

Given that for any council legislation regarding the use of force to go into effect, we have to note this perspective, we have to keep it in mind, because it could be a signal that he would be unlikely to authorize the legislation adopted by the council last June.

So, ideally, we would have been able to take up this legislation for action during 2020 after the July restraining order was put into place.

However, due to the need to revise the 2020 budget due to the panic and then the regular two-month 2021 budget process, only the Budget Committee has been able to hold hearings and we are just, we've just been able to get to this this year.

I just want to also address some of the things that we heard in public comment.

Somebody referred to the way that the TRO was put into place.

It's important, I think, to recognize that the court rejected the motion of the mayor-in-chief, and the TRO itself was put into place in response to a motion I think some people are suggesting that the reason we have a accurate according to the record of how we got here.

I've heard many people refer to the chemical weapons convention adopted by the United Nations and the prohibitions against the use of less lethal weapons that have chemical irritants.

Those conventions do specify that purposes not prohibited under the convention includes law enforcement, including domestic riot control purposes.

And I think what our purpose here today is to really work to tighten current SPD policy about how they interpret the right to use these weapons in domestic riot control purposes.

And so with that, I think I want to hand it over to central staff to talk us through a PowerPoint presentation.

Lisa Kay, I'll hand it over to you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am sorry to say that my camera, which worked when I logged in this morning, decided to stop working.

So I'm going to test to see if I can share my screen.

If for some reason I can't, I sent the presentation to Mr. Clardy so that I can run it.

I'm just a little annoyed here, but let's try sharing my screen here.

See whether you can see that.

Is that coming up for you all?

Yes, it is.

Yes.

That's grand.

Okay, everything is good then.

All right, so thank you so much, Madam Chair.

With your permission then, I'm going to today briefly recap what was in the base bill, what's in the revised base bill, and how these compare to the original ordinance 126102 that is subject to that temporary restraining order.

Actually, temporary injunction, I think, at this point.

So I'm going to skip forward here.

So taking you back to your December 17th committee meeting, the committee discussed a base bill that was built around four areas of consensus from the three accountability agencies for the public.

Those are the community public, I'm sorry, the community police commission, the office of the inspector general and the office of police accountability.

Three of the areas of consensus were to allow specific non-crowd control uses for pepper spray, 40 millimeter launchers, and noise flash diversionary devices.

The fourth area of consensus was to ban patrol use of tear gas.

And there's an asterisk on this because it means that we drafted the base bill as a complete ban on tear gas because there was not consensus among the accountability agencies for what a partial ban would look like.

This is going to make more sense to you a little bit later in the presentation.

So at your January 12th committee meeting, you discussed whether you would want to expand the base bill beyond these four areas of consensus.

And that discussion is informed what we are calling the revised base bill.

The revised base bill then would ban some less lethal weapons and would impose conditions on the use of others.

So I'm going to walk you through that right now.

So as to the less lethal weapons that would be banned, the revised base bill would ban 40 millimeter launchers when used to deploy chemical irritants for crowd control in any demonstration or rally.

It would ban noise flash diversionary devices for crowd control during any demonstration or rally.

It would ban tear gas and chemical irritants other than pepper spray.

And it would ban acoustic weapons, directed energy weapons, water cannons, disorientation devices, including blast walls, ultrasonic cannons, and any other device primarily designed to be used on multiple individuals for crowd control and to cause pain or discomfort.

Lisa, I'm confused about, in item four, about the exception for noise flash diversionary devices as not being banned.

And I understand, as explained in number two, that they are banned in the revised base bill.

They are banned.

There are some conditions that are being established that would ban them outside the, or that would apply to their use outside any demonstration or rally.

So you'll see that in my next slide.

Right.

But it seems to me that item four combines items that there is a total ban and items for which there is not a total ban, but can, can, be used under certain circumstances.

I believe the bill includes a total ban under any circumstances for acoustic weapons, directed energy weapons, water cannons, disorientation devices, including basketballs, ultrasonic cannons, but it does not include a total ban for noise flash diversionary devices.

Is that because that was one of the requests from the accountability bodies is to allow it for SWAT circumstances.

That's right, and I'm gonna cover that a little bit later.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so moving to the next slide here.

The revised base bill would impose a set of specific conditions on some of the less lethal weapons.

This slide shows the conditions that would be applied to pepper spray.

So specifically, pepper spray may not be used for crowd control in a non-violent demonstration or rally.

And only special weapons and tactics officers, that's the SWAT team, may deploy pepper spray products using a 40 millimeter launcher and only for purposes other than crowd control in a demonstration or rally.

And finally, pepper spray may only be deployed in circumstances in which the risk of serious injury from violent actions outweighs the risk of harm to bystanders.

The next set of limitations are the specific conditions on the deployment of noise flash diversionary devices.

So specifically only SWAT officers may deploy these devices and SWAT can use them only for purposes other than crowd control in a demonstration or rally.

Slide 6 shows that the revised base bill would require that mutual aid partners operate under the same policies as SPD with respect to less lethal weapons.

The language is carried forward from Ordinance 126-102 and the base bill.

The revised bill would also add the recommendation of the city attorney, modify the right of action clause, to read that it would exclude a person who, in the judgment of a reasonable person, commits a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of less lethal force.

It would also set the effective date of the ordinance at 30 days after the court's review and approval by the mayor.

So the next two slides compare policies across ordinance one, the initial ordinance, the base bill, and the revised base bill.

And I would just ask you, Madam Chair, I know time is short.

Do you want me to walk through these tables or just come back to them in the event that they become applicable to the discussion?

I think the latter, coming back to them, if we need to talk about an option or alternative and see what the original ordinance said about it, I think this is a good reference to have.

I do want to, again, state, though, that In my mind, we've always known that we were going to be in this place of having to revisit the ordinance.

We included two amendments in Ordinance 126-102.

One, ordinance asking that the accountability partners report back to us on their recommendations as it related to the bill by August of 2020. And the other, asking the city attorney to submit the ordinance with the court.

By construct, we have acknowledged in the original bill that we might need to revisit the bill.

I don't know that we all expected that there would be a temporary restraining order placed on the implementation of the bill while we considered the input of the court or the accountability partners, but we have made the commitment to consider consider that input, and now implementation of our regulation is contingent on our consideration of that input.

So I just think it's important to ground this discussion today in what we knew and planned for in Ordinance 126-102.

Hey, I'm just going to show you just so that you know you have it here should come up in discussion.

This is the second half of that comparison.

And there's also a table here that shows how the provisions of the revised base bill.

compared to the Oversight Agency's initial positions on banning less lethal weapons.

And you saw that at both of your previous committee meetings, the original one.

So at this point, that completes my report, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

And so in the last meeting, I stated sort of what the new base bill was going to strive to do and how I was going to make an effort to make sure that it captured the committee discussion.

It largely did that.

It does address some things that we did not discuss in committee.

Thank you, Lisa, for lifting that up, specifically as it relates to receipt of some of the law department's advice around the private right of action and the effective date of the ordinance.

I made a commitment in last week's meeting because it was very apparent to me that there was strong disagreement of whether or not we should maintain the total ban on tear gas or whether or not we should look at trying to to regulate and create narrow conditions for the allowance of the use of tear gas.

And so in the recognition that I believe that there was an interest in discussing those two options, the base bill maintains the total ban as contemplated by the ordinance that we passed last summer.

And I have brought forward an amendment that creates the allowance for use of tear gas in some narrow circumstances.

And so, Lisa, do you want to go over all of the amendments that we have first very quickly, high level, and then we can delve into the individual ones?

Certainly, so did you want to, so I've got both an Amendment 1 and a potential Amendment 1A, and then Council Member Sawant has three potential amendments.

Shall I go ahead and share those?

Thank you.

Yeah, I kind of explained sort of the background on Amendment 1. If you want to go a little bit more into the detail of 1 and then 1A, that would be great.

Okay, let me share her bold.

I had some comments to make before you start talking about amendments because we haven't really even gone over that one slide that talks about what this new bill does not only in reference to the original ordinance that was passed last summer but also in comparison with Uh, what you summarized at the last committee, I mean, the, the, what you call the base bill that you have presented.

Last evening, which the public never got to see as far as as far as my knowledge is concerned.

Other than the email that went out from my office, that so-called base bill is actually not only remarkably different from the ordinance that was passed last summer, but it also contains elements that were not discussed at all in the last committee.

I mean, I would say that given that this committee has so little time left, it's 12.24 now, and in fact, the committee that I am chairing, the Sustainability and Renter's Rights Committee, is scheduled for 2 p.m.

today.

We have to get ready for that.

I would urge that this crucial vote not be rammed through today.

As I said, this bill was sent to council members themselves last evening, which is less than 24 hours.

And then as far as I know, it wasn't formally even introduced or linked on the agenda.

And I mean, you've said repeatedly that you're consulting with what you call accountability partners.

And though my accountability partners are working class people, I have spoken to a lot of people in the BLM movement, and they have not had a chance to see a lot of the aspects of it.

I wanted to speak to those for a few minutes.

I said at the last committee meeting two weeks ago that I would have been happy to support any legislation or amendment to support ending the injunctions that the bill can go into effect, but that cannot be an excuse to create giant loopholes, left movements like the Black Lives Matter movement.

The bill in front of us today not only creates large loopholes in what militarized crowd control weapons the police are banned for using, it also removes almost all enforcement even when the law has been broken.

The original ban that my office authored and the BLM movement won last summer created, among other things, a private right of action.

And you mentioned this, so I wanted to speak to it.

So that any time the police broke this law, anyone impacted can sue the city for $10,000.

And the political establishment may not be serious about holding the police accountable, but the reason we put that in is because when money is involved, you will become more serious about avoiding lawsuits.

But this private right of action was literally the only thing that would have actually enforced the ban.

I mean, we saw this past fall.

Federal Judge Jones issued an injunction prohibiting the police department from continuing to abuse the BLM protests with tear gas and flashbang grenades.

The police department then ignored the injunction and continued using these militarized weapons.

This isn't just me saying this.

The court said that the police violated the injunction.

But what was the consequence?

Nothing at all.

Of course, that's the whole point.

The police violated the injunction because they knew that there was not going to be And today's bill has been presented as necessary to make it more likely that it is approved by Judge Robart overseeing the consent decree.

But I don't agree with that characterization at all because the city of Seattle has made no effort so far to actually ask him to approve the ordinance as is, which is what the vast majority of people in Seattle want.

So I don't accept that all these loopholes are needed because the consent decree requires it.

But even if it were true, why is this new bill removing the private right of action?

The private right of action is totally unrelated to any of those questions.

The only reason- The bill does not remove the private right of action.

Let me just finish, you're free to, it's your committee, you're free to disagree.

I just want to make a clarification.

I'm not trying to stop you from talking, but the base bill does not remove the private right of action.

The private right of action is the only thing that people have to hold the police accountable.

The problem is that the bill that you have provided, it just punches massive loopholes into that private right of action.

It's a question of what ordinary people are actually able to do in private right of action.

It's not whether formally in the letter of the law the private right of action exists or not.

That's not the standard by which we should measure whether people will actually have private right of action.

And also, let's also look at some facts.

I don't think that what was characterized as the process leading to this was completely accurate.

I mean, the reality is that soon after our movement won this ordinance last summer, Mayor Durkin and former Chief Best, with the assistance of the city attorney's office, shamefully tried to derail the ban and stop it from being implemented.

They went to Judge Robart in his role overseeing the consent decree to effectively get a temporary restraining order against the ban.

Now, as you correctly said, yes, Judge Robart refused it at first, but then just days later, was granted in response to a request from the Department of Justice.

You're right.

But the city attorney joined that effort.

So it's not accurate to say that the mayor's administration did not play a role in this.

But regardless, I don't agree that the role of the highest legislative body of this city is to water down the legislation.

Really, gut principle elements of it is what's happening here.

that it's essential to lifting the court's restrictions so that the legislation can go into effect.

It's true that while the ban has not been struck down, it cannot be enforced until the legal restrictions are lifted.

That's accurate.

But as I said last time as well, there is no evidence to indicate that the court is demanding the legislation to be watered down, as I believe community member Leah Buck said in public comment today, it just seems counterintuitive and sort of mind-boggling that this ban would be opposed to a consent decree that is in place because a serious investigation was called for in the first place into the excessive use of force by the police.

But even if there was evidence that the court was demanding that this legislation be watered down, shouldn't self-professed progressive council members be fighting for the strongest possible ban on police weapons first and really put a lot of public pressure on the court to approve a legislation that is needed given the just example after example of systematic violence from the police?

But instead, it seems that most of you are getting ready to make an offer to the court to weaken or cut the ban.

The city hasn't made an attempt yet to have those restrictions lifted.

And so I mean, the bottom line is we don't expect the courts and the police under capitalism to be on our side.

So what we need is elected representatives who will fight for the strongest possible legislation.

And I appreciate the discussion that is going to happen on amendments.

But as Lisa Kay said, my office is bringing amendments to restore the strong enforcement in the private right of action.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Swan.

I'm very pessimistic that we are going to get through all of our amendments and the discussion at this point, given that a number of us have another meeting that starts in 15 minutes.

I would like if Lisa Kay could describe the amendments that have been proposed and maybe go back to the base bill.

I thought between you and I, we did explain what was in the base needs for more detail.

So perhaps if we could just do those two things before we end today's meeting and we will bring back the vote on the amendments at the next meeting.

Okay, I will, the first two amendments would, the first one would, let me just pull this up, my apologies.

The First Amendment would allow the use of tear gas when used for crowd control and violent public disturbances.

And it also then defines a violent public disturbance as any gathering where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten to use unlawful violence towards another person or group of people and the conduct of them taken together as such, as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety.

That's really hard to absorb.

audio, you know, by hearing it, I apologize.

So the amendment one would allow the use of tear gas for crowd control and violent public disturbances, but only when deployed under direction of officers who have received training for its use within the previous 12 months and used with a detailed tactical plan developed prior to deployment.

And the use is reasonably necessary to prevent threat of imminent loss of life or seriously bodily injury.

These exceptions would not come into would not be authorized until the SPD's annual use of force policy reviews completed as required by the consent decree.

And just as a point of information, those use of force policy review is going on simultaneously to our legislative discussions.

And I believe they are supposed to be proposing changes to the use of force policies in early February.

I believe it's February 11th.

And so, That will have to go through the consent decree process, the same process that I described earlier.

And so the effective date of the ordinance and the restrictions around tear gas would go into effect after that time.

And again, I just wanna underscore that currently we don't have any restrictions in law on the use of less lethal weapons.

And unless the court authorizes a council bill, we will not.

Okay, Amendment 1A then is really kind of a provisional amendment.

If Amendment 1 passes, the law department said that given the adopted definition for violent or allowing tear gas to be used in a violent public demonstration, they would amend the right of action clause to set the, or basically to prohibit any person whose participation in a violent public disturbance prior to or during the use of any less lethal weapon would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety may not recover under the section.

So it's basically preventing, prohibiting somebody who was involved in the violent public disturbance from recovering damages and court costs through this right of action.

So how, Lisa, how does that differ from the language in the base bill that I proposed relating to the private right of action?

It's just a different, it's a somewhat different definition in terms of It specifically says that the person participating in a violent public disturbance wouldn't be eligible as opposed to the previous language would have said somebody who had participated or was committing a crime.

And so it seems whether or not somebody has committed a crime is a bright.

is a brighter line for not allowing somebody to recover money in a private right of action.

Whether or not somebody has committed a crime is a brighter line for exclusion than participating in a violent disturbance.

It seems like that would be a better way more consistent with what Council Member Sawant describes as a potential loophole.

But I could see why it might give the attorney a little bit more comfort as it relates to sort of this dirty hands concept.

Sorry, just as a clarification, are we discussing what you're calling Amendment 1A?

And if so, could the language be shared on the screen?

Because I'm not sure if I've even seen it.

So I'm a little confused what exactly we're talking about.

OK, did you want me to show Amendment 1 or 1A?

You've seen 1A.

I think 1 was distributed.

Yeah, 1 has been distributed.

It's 1A that I think is new to many of us.

So my challenge is going to be whether this is going to be small enough for you to see, but are you looking at it now?

So does it say Base Bill Proposed Amendment 1A to you?

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

Yay.

So I'm not quite, sure how to zoom this so that it all fits onto one page.

I'm sorry.

I'm going to scroll down through it.

So you'll see this is the language that would, what you're calling the dirty hands provision that would prevent a person who was a participant in the violent public disturbance from recovering.

And I'll scroll back up to that.

So that's, that's basically the language.

And again, I am comfortable with the language that is in the base bill.

I agreed to bring this forward for purposes of conversation because it was a request of the city attorney's office.

I'm not committed to moving it forward because as I said, I am comfortable with the language in the base bill.

And if there are no questions about this amendment, we can quickly go over Council Member Sawant's amendments.

and convene.

So amendments 4A, 4B1, and 4B2 are variations on, well, 4B1 and 4B2 are variations on Amendment 4. Amendment 4 would basically take the right of action language back to the language that was in Ordinance 126.102.

Does that seem accurate to you, Council Member Savant?

Is that the description?

You would use?

Yes.

Would it be okay with the chair if I said a few words about the amendment?

Absolutely.

I can also share it on the screen if you'd like.

That will also be good in addition to what I'm saying.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I just want to make note that Council Member Lewis has a comment as well.

But yes, Council Member Swann.

Thank you.

This amendment will restore the private right of action.

As I said, that is the only real enforcement of the ban on crowd control weapons.

Police officers are not held individually accountable, partially because the decision to use these chemical and other militarized weapons is usually made at the top, not by the individual officer, but more importantly, because police are virtually never held accountable for abusing left-wing and peaceful protesters.

I mean, that is just a statistically established fact.

This is just what happens.

It's not about theory, but this is what actually happens in real life.

The legislation that the council passed last summer holds the city establishment accountable.

If the police fill the streets with tear gas and explosives, the impacted protesters can sue for $10,000 each.

And the reason we put that in is because that's a real consequence for the political establishment.

It's not just about the police.

It's about the political establishment that's allowing the police to carry out actions that are completely objectionable, so then it forces them to take the ban on the militarized crowd control weapons seriously.

The reason I don't think that what is in the base bill is enough and I do think it's a loophole, it's a crucial loophole, is because it makes it far, far more difficult for people to sue even when the police flagrantly break this law.

Essentially, if by not approving this amendment, Council members will be building into the law the exact same lack of police accountability that all council members claim to be worried about.

The loophole is twofold.

First, the loophole says that the private right of action only applies when the police use banned weapons during a, quote, nonviolent demonstration, end quote.

The problem is that we know, again, this is real life, we know that the idea, you know, the quote, unquote, violent demonstration is conveniently defined and what's violent and what's nonviolent is conveniently defined by the police to whatever to be whatever they want it to be.

During the Justice for George Floyd protest, the Seattle Police Department declared peaceful protests to be violent and even a riot when they wanted to clear the streets of those peaceful protesters and I as I I testified in committee last time.

I saw that happening while I was at a protest, which then resulted in massive tear gas, pepper spray, blast balls.

Somebody actually counted the number of grenades that were unleashed the morning after, and it was, I think, over 300. I mean, it's something insane like that.

So, and I can tell you from my own testimony that the protest was completely peaceful.

So that's the problem.

Also note that this loophole prevents enforcement regardless of whether you were personally involved in any violence.

Someone in the crowd has a water bottle, the police claim the protest is violent, start firing illegal blast balls, and then you cannot get justice because of this loopholes.

Let me just, I think I get your point.

I think what you're saying is if we are going to continue to have banned less lethal weapons that are 100% banned in their application in crowd control situations, what is the punishment?

What my amendment tried to do is acknowledging that if the base bill together with the tear gas amendment passes, there will be some allowance of pepper spray and tear gas in narrow circumstances.

So perhaps between now and the next meeting, we can create some other alternatives.

I understand that you want to maintain the full ban of all less lethal weapons, but Maybe we could create some language that assumes some outcomes around these amendments.

Whereas there is still a punishment for the use of less lethal weapons that are supposed to be banned in all crowd control situations.

And then a punishment for the ones that are not banned but are misused.

I need to adjourn this meeting.

It is 1244. Four of us have another meeting that we have to be at.

And so I really appreciate.

I understand that, but I just want to finish what I was saying.

It may address what you're saying, but I'm not proposing that we discuss on that.

I just, in the interest of public, I just want to finish that.

It'll take me a minute or two, but I'm, of course, as I said, I'm completely open to discussing a strong enforcement.

I have no problem doing that, and I look forward to that.

But I would just say that beyond what I said, it also – the second loophole says that the private right of action does not apply to, quote, a person who in the judgment of a reasonable person commits a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of less lethal force, end quote.

I mean, in my view, police brutality is never okay, but Beyond that, it does not even require the person be convicted of a crime, just that a reasonable person would think that they did.

But most dangerously, we have seen how police regularly charge protesters with quote unquote criminal offense to justify brutality.

This happens all the time.

People are charged with offenses like parading without a permit, failure to disperse, resisting arrest.

As a member, so what would you like to say in the meeting?

Because the four of us have to leave.

I will leave the meeting open if you want to continue.

But we have to adjourn.

It is 1245. We are all expected in another meeting.

So with that, unless you wish to stay in the meeting without the council members who have to leave to the other meeting, I am going to have to adjourn.

I don't want to, so go ahead and adjourn, but we'll have to discuss this.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Yes, there is more discussion to happen, and I'm sorry that we weren't able to get further in discussion today.

With that, it is 1245 p.m., and the Public Safety and Human Service Committee is adjourned.

Thank you all.