Greetings and welcome to a joint committee of the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee, together with the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee.
This is a special joint meeting, a lunch and learn.
and it is Wednesday, May 22nd, and it is now 12.36 p.m.
I'm Lisa Herbold.
I am one of the two chairs of this joint committee.
I'm also the council member representing West Seattle and South Park District 1. Thanks to everybody for joining us.
We'll move into introductions in just a moment.
Thank you as well to Council Member Pacheco for being here with us today.
And I know Council Member Lorena Gonzalez will be here momentarily.
I appreciate folks coming together and specifically the fact that the people with us today represent several business associations who worked to commission the report that we'll hear about.
And I met in early April with directors of each of these business associations that were involved.
That's the Soto BIA, the Ballard Alliance, the University District Partnership, the West Seattle Junction Association, the Alliance for Pioneer Square, the Downtown Seattle Association, as well as Visit Seattle.
As the Council Member with oversight on economic development issues, I know how critical it is that we collaborate not only with the policy experts, but with the advocacy organizations that represent scores of small businesses throughout Seattle.
These groups have worked together to give voice to the challenges that they experience in their in their efforts to run businesses in their community, but also they've given voice to the fact that our inability to provide long-term housing options for the population referenced in the report and our inability to support long-term coordination between prosecutors, officers, neighborhood groups, case managers, and to do so in a way that ensures that we're making good individually-based decisions when known individuals engage in ongoing problematic behavior.
And they've given voice not just to the impacts on those individuals, but impacts to the larger community, both the community of folks who lived housed in our city as well as to the folks who are running businesses.
in the communities.
I want to speak, as I have spoken before, with specific thanks to the compassionate tone that they've set in having this discussion.
And I think it's specifically that they have worked so hard to start off with helping us define the problem without necessarily identifying solutions.
I think that is really the right way to begin a conversation like this, and it can help us not only facilitate a conversation about what those solutions might be, but how we can move forward in enacting them.
So with that, before we start off with introductions, I want to give the co-chair of this committee an opportunity to share some opening remarks, if she has them.
Sure.
Thank you, Chair, co-chair Herbold.
A little shift in mentality there.
really just want to appreciate your all's willingness to come and join us in chambers today to have an important conversation about how our criminal justice system can be responsive and actually do the criminal justice work as opposed to the separation that I believe is needed in terms of dealing with sort of upstream harm reduction concerns that I think we all share and agree on.
And so I think my hope is that we'll be able to have a conversation here that is an initial conversation that will allow both these economic development concepts to really blend with some of the public safety issues that we have been discussing for quite some time and really begin the process of identifying what is appropriate in terms of a public safety response versus what is appropriate for economic development strategies and really making sure that we are being conscientious of not conflating issues or brushing broad strokes to characterize anybody who is having this conversation one way or the other.
So very excited about being able to have this first joint conversation and looking forward to, as the chair of the Public Safety Committee, shepherding through potential policy solutions related to public safety in particular.
Thank you.
All right, let's kick it off with some introductions, please.
Erin Goodman, Executive Director of the Soto Business Improvement Area.
Mike Stewart, Executive Director of the Ballard Alliance.
I'm Lisa Howard, Executive Director of the Alliance for Pioneer Square.
I'm Lisa Mannion.
I'm the Chief of Staff for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
and Lisa Dugard with the Public Defender Association.
I don't think we've ever had so many Lisas or versions of Lisas at the table at one time.
So who would like to get us going?
I will, I'll go ahead and kick it off.
So first of all, thank you all very much.
Thanks for this opportunity to provide the briefing.
And I also want to thank council members Herbold and Gonzales as well.
for being part of our conversation that we held in Ballard last week.
I guess it feels like longer than a couple of weeks ago, but it was just last week.
And that was a public safety forum that was done in conjunction and brought to you by several of the improvement districts across the city.
And I think I'll sort of press rewind just a little bit and give just a little bit of an overview of where we all are.
Lisa and Aaron and I represent separate districts.
We have very many similar issues and needs that we fulfill for our membership and for our business owners and in the case of Ballard, residential members as well.
and also very divergent as well.
So we actually have been collaborating together on a number of issues for several years and really started talking a lot more about public safety over the last two years.
Together in conjunction with the University District Partnership, we held a first public safety forum in Soto last October.
And at that point in time, what we started to realize is that for our business owners, things were changing a lot.
Things are different.
It's more difficult to run a business, you know, this year, last year, than it was four years or five years ago.
And it really had a lot to do with safety issues.
I think at present, business owners now have real and genuine concerns about the safety for themselves, for their employees, and also for their customers as well.
They're dealing with a number of issues, whether it's property crime or assault issues, or even having to take greater steps to do things like de-escalation training for staff and employees.
All things that didn't need to be done years ago but now have become sort of the norm and that sort of It's a statement of where we are, I think, as a community, but it's also a reality that kind of chips away at the ability for these businesses to run an effective business in a safe manner that preserves the safety for themselves, customers, and employees.
We started talking and we had this notion that it feels like many of the instances or the criminal behavior that happens seems to be coming from many of the same people.
So an individual might...
commit a crime in a business establishment one day, and then the next week they're back again, and it's sort of a repeat.
That's what was sort of the genesis of this report.
We put our heads together.
I'm going to let Aaron go into the details about it, but we wanted to do a bit of a study on the data, just the data, sort of take a little bit of the emotion out of it, and let's just find out exactly what's happening, what's happening in our communities, what's happening around the city of Seattle.
We did that, as you all are aware, and Aaron will walk us through that report.
But in essence, it just, we established that there is a group, we don't yet know how large this sort of group is, but a group of individuals who are perpetuating these crimes over and over again in our communities.
causing various strains on the system.
And it's really a statement about clearly those individuals aren't getting the services that they need.
It is not doing them any benefit and it's certainly not benefiting the business owners and the residents in the various districts.
I will just, I'll kind of close my openings and turn to Aaron in just a second, but I just wanted to give one anecdote in Ballard.
So an individual that's actually not on that list, but is probably soon to be on a similar list, just to sort of articulate this kind of crime and this sort of frustration.
This particular individual, I'll just outline the two most recent offenses that happened.
There was an assault near the Ballard Public Library on April 21st.
They were released the next day, and at least as of last week, charging documents had not been filed.
On May 8th, that same individual was on Market Street.
One of my ratepayers, who is a property manager for a commercial building, saw this individual who was exposing himself in front of the business and on the street.
When confronted with that, my ratepayer was assaulted.
The individual was arrested on May 10th, released on May 13th on personal recognizance, and is now at large.
So that's just two instances that have happened really recently.
There are other proceedings that happened in 2018 as well.
But I just use that to highlight that it is pervasive to a degree.
And as Aaron will articulate a little bit, this list of 100 is not an exclusionary list.
This is not a top 100. This is not the only 100. I share the story just to demonstrate the fact that it's truly a sample size and a point in time count.
So we're, you know, obviously here today to talk about that and talk about what, you know, a little bit about next steps and trying to identify just how large or how pervasive this is.
So with that, I'll turn it to Aaron.
I brought a couple of extra copies.
I know you've all received them by email.
Well, good afternoon.
Thank you for having us today.
As Mike has detailed, over the past couple of years, we have increasingly heard from our ratepayers about the impact that rampant crime and street disorder are having on their businesses, employees, and customers.
So to better understand the situation and quantify the neighborhood impacts, we contracted former public safety advisor Scott Lindsey to study the issue.
During his time with the city, Scott routinely worked with each of our districts to understand and address crime and safety issues.
His familiarity with our districts and his experience with public safety in Seattle were a logical combination for this work, and he presented us with the report you have in front of you.
It's titled System Failure, a report on prolific offenders in Seattle's criminal justice system.
The report relies exclusively on publicly available police reports and court records, and the methodology was fairly simple.
Review the daily bookings at the King County Jail and identify those that had been booked four or more times in the preceding 12 months.
The next step was further examination of the records to determine total number of criminal cases in Washington State the number of years the person has been criminally active, and additional information on the types of crimes, the neighborhoods where the crimes occurred, and whether the individual complied with court-ordered release conditions.
These records also included indicators of the individual's substance use, mental health, and housing status.
It took less than two months to reach the sample set of the 100 prolific offenders that are presented into report.
And as Mike said, this is not a top 100 list or an exhaustive list, but just a point in time snapshot.
Erin, before you move on, I think Council Member Gonzalez might have some questions about methodology and I had one quick question.
When you say four or more booked in the preceding 12 months into King County Jail, Are these exclusively folks who have gone through Seattle Municipal Court as opposed to King County Court?
No, there's a mixture.
Okay, so this is a blending both of King County and also some coming from SPD and some coming from the Sheriff's Office.
And it's important because if we're looking at trying to isolate points in the system that there might be some necessary intervention.
We have to understand all of the systems that are involved.
Up until very recently, I was under the impression that these were only Seattle Municipal Court defendants.
And that is part of the reason we called it system failure, is that we weren't pointing this at any one individual part of our larger criminal justice system.
Super helpful.
Yeah.
Council Member Gonzalez?
Thank you.
As a follow-up to that line of questioning, one of the things that I noticed, and this is on page 7 and 8 of the document that you just handed out, one of the things that is unclear to me that maybe you can help me understand is that Mr. Lindsey refers to, in the generic sense, publicly available police reports and court records from recent cases, and then specifically says that generally that means sometime within the past two to three years.
Do you know exactly what specific court records he evaluated that sort of influenced the methodology or the decision to place somebody within the sample group of 100?
I know from personal experience, having been through the website, that when you look up an individual who may be in King County Jail, you can look through and see all of the supporting documentation and click through, looking back two to three years based on what is still in the system.
But right now, for anybody, there's literally a button you can push on the website that says who was arrested today, and then you can look through the different files that have been uploaded to their case.
Right, so there are plenty of snapshots I'd say throughout the report that sort of highlight some of the records that it appears that he reviewed that led to his determination that these individuals merited placement on this list and within this within the sample group.
And I noticed that it's pretty limited to GO reports or general offense reports which are generated from the police officer's perspective and aren't necessarily the place where the defendant or the person who's about to be charged is actually given and afforded an opportunity to provide their perspective on what happened or what didn't happen.
And I also noticed that the other documents that are listed here are generally the charging documents or the complaint documents, which of course, again, are going to be from the state or the county's perspective as opposed to from the defense perspective.
And I'm not really seeing any other types of information here with the occasional exception of an assessment related to a substance use disorder or another chemical dependency issue.
So that was on purpose.
We wanted the report to be replicable by anyone.
And so a lot of the documents, once you get deeper into a system, are less publicly available.
But he specifically refers to the fact that this is the start out and that they doesn't, that some of these folks could have gone through and the criminal justice system and found innocent.
This is simply a snapshot on bookings and based on the information that was provided to book the individuals.
And he clearly states it has nothing that does not say how the case was ultimately adjudicated.
And so the perspective is only from the arrest process, not following these individuals through the entire system.
Right, so I think when we talk about this report from a system failure perspective, it's important to acknowledge that it's actually just a sliver of that system and that it's the front-end arrest and charge perspective as opposed to, as you just said, following the person through the entire system, meaning from the point of the incident, the point of the 911 call, the point of the arrest, the point of the booking, the point of the GO report completion, the point of referring that to the appropriate prosecuting authority for charging purposes, to the point of filing the complaint with a judge, from the judge doing the arraignment hearing.
And I can go on and on and on and on, but I'm not going to because I just really, I mean, I think it's important for us as policymakers to understand what part of the system this is evaluating.
And I'm hearing and I'm seeing in the paper that the point that we're talking about is that point of entry.
And I don't want us or the general public to assume that what has been done is a complete full evaluation from beginning to end.
In addition to the entry, we also look at some of the outcomes that happen with suspended sentences and, you know, compliance with court-ordered conditions.
So this was never intended to be a complete, you know, overview.
We are business improvement areas.
We are experts on what's happening in our neighborhoods.
We're not criminal justice experts.
Our hope with this report was to put it forward so that the people that are could use it as a starting point to have that more comprehensive evaluation.
Yeah, and I think that's the intent and source of my questions around the methodology and sort of exactly what part of the system we're evaluating.
The criminal justice system is one that is incredibly complex and nuanced.
And I just, again, as we continue to identify next steps, which were not done in the report, As a policymaker, for me, I feel like it's really important to understand what parts of the system this is actually talking about versus the work that still needs to be done for purposes of evaluating solutions that are evidence-based that could help to address the realities of individuals who continue to come into frequent contact with our criminal justice system that maybe shouldn't be, because we should have a different solution available for that.
OK.
Thank you.
Okay, so this sample group is roughly representative of the larger population of individuals who are frequently involved in criminal activity.
We found some striking commonalities and disturbing trends.
We found that the substantial portion that has the greatest impact is committed by prolific offenders who are well known to police.
The sample group analyzed here had consistent patterns of criminal behavior, often committing the same crimes in the same neighborhoods over a period of months or years.
One individual in our sample is simply, quite simply terrorizing the Ballard Business District.
Most of his cases include daytime thefts followed by threats, harassment, or assaults on employees that intervene.
In a single day in September 2018, he shoplifted from five stores in a two-hour period, brazenly pushing a shopping cart full of the stolen items from store to store.
Police reports frequently refer to these suspects as well-known to police and often include requests for the justice system to provide relief for the communities that they are impacting.
With few exceptions, however, these prolific offenders are back on the streets committing the same crimes in a matter of days or weeks.
The hundred individuals in our sample had a combined 636 jail bookings in the preceding 12 months and represented a combined history of over 3,500 criminal cases in Washington State.
And we found that 100% had indicators of substance use disorder, and that many of the crimes included theft to pay for drugs, utilizing an organized crime network centered near Third and Pike in downtown Seattle.
The police reports often provided direct links between drugs and the criminal activity, either because the individual was caught with both drugs and stolen merchandise, or as in the case of an individual with 27 criminal cases in two years who felt, who, when being arrested for burglary at QFC on Capitol Hill, openly told officers, I am a heavy drug user and feel that I have to steal to support my using.
Every individual examined for this report also had multiple indicators that they suffered from chronic homelessness.
While the individual's circumstance and story differed, it is significant to understand that chronic homelessness is near universal for those with the greatest involvement with the criminal justice system.
This is also important because the criminal justice system provides little support in addressing the underlying issues of homelessness.
Further, we found that criminal Ken County records show that the prolific offenders struggling with homelessness and other behavior health conditions are routinely released from jail at midnight with no access to shelter, services, or even transit.
This practice can have serious negative consequences for the safety of the individual and for the surrounding neighborhood.
Of the 100 sample prolific offenders, at least 38 have been evaluated by the courts for mental health issues, and the report found that individuals in our sample with mental health issues were much more likely to engage in violence.
20% of the sample had lengthy histories of serious unprovoked assaults, posing a serious threat to public safety and to law enforcement officers.
One prolific offender on the list moved to Seattle from Chicago in 2015. Public records from Chicago show a significant history of criminal cases for violent offenses, and that same behavior continued upon his arrival in Seattle.
In a little over three years, he has accumulated over 50 criminal cases, almost all on the UW campus or the U District.
In the past year, he has been booked into King County Jail 16 times for trespass, assault, harassment, malicious mischief, disturbance, property destruction, illegal use of weapon, and theft.
He has been booked on nine occasions since October 2018 and has never been held longer than 10 days.
We also found that in cases where an individual with mental issues was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial, they were simply released back on the streets to fend for themselves.
While most had undergone multiple prior court-ordered mental health evaluations, and despite the threats posed by individuals in this small group, there was little evidence that prosecutors had sought recent involuntary commitments.
We further found that in cases where the court decided that drug treatment and mental health services would better serve public safety as an alternative to incarceration, there was zero accountability in the system to ensure that those services were being accessed and zero consequences for failing to comply with court-ordered release conditions.
Can I just pause on that?
It looks like 41% of the bookings in this report were actually for non-compliance with court order conditions.
For previous other types of assault.
And we'll get into the non-compliance bench warrants later in my little talk.
Sounds good.
Right now, actually.
All 100 failed to appear at court hearings and failed to comply with the conditions of pretrial release and failed to comply with conditions of their suspended sentences.
In virtually every case, multiple bench warrants were issued, resulting in cases that dragged out for more than a year.
Thank you.
Our report found that these individuals routinely manipulate the system by faking medical emergencies or to avoid being booked into jail and often return to the street the very same day.
King County Jail has strict rules on booking individuals with medical conditions.
Prolific offenders are aware of these rules and evade bookings by often claiming to have swallowed heroin or pills.
This causes the jail staff to decline booking until the individual has been screened at Harborview, a process that can take several hours.
If law enforcement wants to book the individual, they must first transport them to Harborview, guard them at the hospital for several hours, then re-transport to the jail, a process that requires two or more officers being off the streets for an extended portion of their shift.
The realities of an understaffed police department mean that suspects are often released to the hospital with charges being filed months later.
Significant filing delays were also found in the retail theft program.
meaning that a prolific offender who has dozens of prior theft convictions and steals from the same stores every day faces very little likelihood of short-term consequences.
The Retail Theft Program was designed to allow major retailers to directly report shoplifting incidents without requiring police officers to show up for every occurrence.
Case records for the sample prolific offenders show that charges in these cases are not filed for an average of six months after the incident.
One of the consequences of this delay is evident when a prolific offender has accumulated a large number of pre-trial or post-sentence court-ordered obligations.
In most cases, the court allows pre-trial release on the condition that the individual does not commit any new lie violations and most suspended sentences also require no new violations.
So when a defendant commits a new offense, but charges are not filed for months, the court has no way of enforcing its orders.
In one example from our sample, an individual pled guilty to 15 counts of criminal trespass following over 30 separate incidents at Pike Place Market.
He was sentenced to 364 days suspended sentence, conditioned on no new law violations.
Five months after receiving his suspended sentence, he was caught shoplifting.
The new violation was transmitted to the city attorney's office through the retail theft program, but charges were not filed until a year later.
By any measure of effectiveness, protection of public safety, reducing recidivism, fair treatment of defendants, addressing underlying root causes of problem behavior, timely resolution of cases, reducing incarceration or efficient stewardship of public dollars, our system is broken.
We presented this report in February asking city and county leaders to take steps to address these issues.
And the prolific offenders in this sample, where are they now?
Four of the original 100 are still in jail from the original booking.
73 of the remaining 96 have been rearrested 117 times since February.
11 have been arrested three times and three have been arrested four times in three months.
40 of those 117 bookings have been for crimes against people.
We called this report system failure because we cite simply our criminal justice system is failing, failing to meet its obligation to protect public safety in our community, and it is also failing to serve the needs of these prolific offenders by providing meaningful alternatives to incarceration to treat the root causes of criminal recidivism.
Questions?
I have some more questions.
Erin, one of the points that you made, which appears in the report on both pages 3 and 4, and on page 4 it's listed as Key finding number three, which talks about the fact that prolific offenders with severe mental health conditions pose a serious threat to public safety.
In that context, it talks about how 38% of the sampled offender population in this report showed clear signs of significant mental health conditions based on court and police records.
You mentioned in your remarks that this determination was based on valuation by the courts in particular, and I just wanted to get an understanding from you in terms of that 38 to 40, I mean, it's rounded up here at 40%, but it's 38%.
Of the 38%, how many of those evaluations were done by the Seattle Municipal Court as opposed to the King County Superior Court?
So when we talk about mental health conditions in this report, you heard me use the term indicators.
We don't have their full medical records and don't have a strong understanding.
So where we would use that was where the court had ordered.
I don't have the specific breakdown between the two courts, but that we actually believe that this sample, that this percentage is low, that, you know, just because they weren't listed in this place of having a court-ordered competency hearing, we think that many others are probably suffering from significant mental health issues.
And I think my question is less about the validity of the diagnosis or the methodology of the diagnosis, but really about who is doing that.
So again, as we are having this discussion, I don't control the King County Superior Court.
They are out of my jurisdiction.
And so I'm here to try to identify solutions that are within the jurisdiction.
the ability of the city of Seattle to be able to impact.
That doesn't mean that we're not partners with King County.
It does mean that there are limitations to what we can do in terms of the levers we can pull in King County.
So for me, it's important to know who is doing this evaluation and how many of these determinations are coming from the city of Seattle as opposed to a King County system?
So I think that that is a very important number, and I can get that for you.
But I think it's also important to recognize that the King County system has access to restoration, to competency services.
So if someone is evaluated in that court, and found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial, they have access to services that don't exist at the municipal level.
And so when looking at the municipal level, that is one of the key issues.
There are no tools for a judge to, you know, do anything.
You can find the mentally incompetent, the current situation means that they're back out on the street with no restoration to competency.
Can I share some additional information?
I understand that so King County has access as a health care provider to clinical information on this entire population and not speaking for them, but my understanding is that they have reviewed this list and found that competency has been raised in well over 40% of this group of 100 people, it's just a sample, in some system.
And the issue, I think, is less in what court did that occur.
The group of people is 100 people who have identified behavior or crime issues in Seattle.
and have known mental health issues.
So it's not that each and every time that arose, it arose in municipal court.
It's that there are people who have activity in Seattle that has been identified as criminal, and a very large number have objectively identified mental health issues that have arisen in some court jurisdiction within a reasonably recent period of time.
So, King County, I think, is contributing sort of a illuminating lens on the validity of this impression.
But to get to Council Member Gonzalez's point, If we're talking about needing to design interventions that may or may not exist, and there is such an intervention for those who are declared to be incompetent to stand trial in King County, it, I think, is important for us to know of this 40% that were declared incompetent to stand trial, in whose court, because it will tell us a couple different things.
Either that it's mostly in Seattle Municipal Court and will point to the need to replicate something similar to what King County Court has for this population, or it'll point to the fact that this There are folks who are being declared unable to stand trial because of competency issues in both, and we need to look at either a different intervention than King County is currently using or or some other fix.
You're shaking your head, so go for it.
Tell me what I'm missing here.
I don't want to step on the DIA.
No, I actually want to really go back to why we did this report and that statement that we're not...
did not intend for this to be the document that set everything off.
Those questions that you're asking are extremely valid, and we brought this to city leaders to start asking those questions.
We didn't anticipate answering them ourselves.
So I think the questions are valid, but I think that's the next step that we're looking for council and our city and our county leaders to take.
You know, and I just want to chime in and I want to say thank you for the report.
And I want to acknowledge the frustration of the business owners in our city who are struggling with these issues every day.
And thank you for the business improvement areas that are here having this conversation with us.
And you're right in the sense that the system is failing to cure the behavioral health and substance use disorders that these individuals are coming up with.
I mean, the top 100, I think you said in your report, there are indicators that all 100 have substance use disorders.
And the criminal justice system has very blunt tools to deal with those issues.
And I appreciate the balanced approach that you're presenting because I'm not hearing the business improvement areas saying, lock everyone up, that's the solution.
Instead, what I'm hearing for the things that are happening now, let's have a conversation.
And the mayor, I want to give her props and great thanks for pulling together a work group that is looking at these very issues and asking these very hard questions that have been raised today to think about what are the things that are working that we should replicate, because all of our alternatives They're at capacity.
And I don't think that's a surprise to anyone, but the question really becomes what's the best return on investment?
What are the programs that we should replicate?
What are the things, the new systems that we should build working together with our communities and community-based treatment?
That's the conversation that I hear that you've wanted to launch.
And I just want to assure you that those conversations are taking place.
And there is definitely a sense of urgency on the part of the business community.
And there's a sense of urgency within government, too.
And I think sometimes that gets lost just in the shuffle and in the many conversations that are happening.
But thank you very much for the opportunity.
And perhaps this might be a good chance for you to talk a little bit about King County's program.
Sorry, before we do that, though, I really feel like I need to clarify the record around mental health systems within the Seattle Municipal Court system.
We actually have a suite of specialized court systems within the Seattle Municipal Court.
And one of them is a mental health court.
And so I think we have some work to do to evaluate exactly the impact and the capacity of that program.
But Seattle Community Court does, in fact, have a mental health court that really does focus on ensuring that we're connecting defendants.
It is a voluntary program to make sure that we're connecting court-involved individuals with access to mental health treatment, including housing and specialized treatment for whatever their needs are.
So I just wanted to really lift that up that I don't see that as a I don't see that as a gap in our own municipal criminal justice system.
That doesn't mean that it's adequately funded or that it could be more adequately funded.
But I do want to acknowledge that we do have that mental health court system and we also have a drug court.
specialized court system within the Seattle Muni Court System.
So one of the questions that's been asked though is this belief that when somebody is declared not competent to stand trial that there is no place for them to go.
Are we saying that they are actually referred to mental health court in those cases where they have been declared incompetent to stand trial?
Well I have the, it has to be voluntary.
So I'm not sure how the court evaluates that component of voluntary if a person has been declared incompetent.
But those are absolutely things we should follow up on.
Lisa Howard.
Do you mind, so just to wrap up the report portion of it, is that okay?
Yes, I wanted to jump to hear about the Familiar Faces program.
I'm going to run through these relatively quickly because I don't think they're the most important part of this conversation today.
But after releasing the report, and you'll notice that there's actually no recommendations in there from the business districts, and that was on purpose.
But we did get asked a number of times, what would you recommend?
And so we did brainstorm a list of things that we would like to see implemented or explored in the short term and the long term.
So I'm going to run down those quick.
But first off, we do firmly believe that no single action is going to fix this problem that we see on our streets every day.
It's a combination of things from a combination of players.
And we really do want these conversations to go deeper past this report with more exploration than we were able to do in this short period of time.
So the recommendations that we put out, there's eight of them.
The first one is near-term mitigation of the neighborhood impacts.
So figuring out how can we have some pressure relief on our streets today.
The second one, full scope examination of the Seattle prolific offender population.
This report is, it was a good beginning to the conversation, but there's definitely more data out there.
As we said a number of times, it is important to repeat, this was a small sample, but it doesn't tell us the full scope of the problem or even the scale of what we're talking about.
And that data does live within the city system, and I think it could be, more accessible than anyone from the outside trying to push it in.
A dedicated public safety advisor in the mayor's office, which was actually an action that was recently announced from the mayor's office.
The chronic safety issues prolific up under task force, which Lisa has indicated that they're moving forward with.
new release protocols.
So this retool release protocols so that homeless prolific offenders are not released at midnight or share information if there's a misunderstanding of that interpretation.
Like what is the core problem there and how do we stop having that conversation?
Because that's one that we've heard over time for a really long time that really just keeps popping up within this set of information.
explore wraparound exit and treatment strategy for the prolific offender population, a greater sustained police presence, and not only just a follow-up in wake of incidents, but to proactively determine crime in our neighborhoods.
And then the last one, look into a victim's advocate for impacted communities.
I think both Aaron and Mike had some good stories about being able to even file a police report can be clunky and difficult and takes a pretty significant amount of time.
So how do we support victims to be able to understand their legal options and follow up on the offenders who have outsized the impacts on the communities of Seattle?
So, yeah.
Do you guys have any questions about those?
No?
Okay.
All right.
So, yeah.
Do we want to talk a little bit about, you know, one of the reasons I had invited you from the King County Prosecutor's Office, Lisa, is to talk about the program that you have that is a sort of a by name list approach with the Familiar Faces program.
and wanted to hear a little bit about the interventions that you use and whether or not there are particular interventions that show specific promise that, if brought to scale, might help us more with the population that not only includes folks moving through King County Court, but also through the Seattle Municipal Court.
Certainly, I'm happy to do that.
I want to acknowledge that while our office is involved in a lot of interventions and therapeutic courts, we are not by any means the sole party.
I mean, we have great partnership, not just with county partners, but also with the city.
And, you know, I can go through them, but I don't want to take all of that time, so I'll hit some of the high-level ones that have been mentioned.
The program that we have that deals with competency issues is LINC.
And that is a kind of short-term prosecutorial diversion program that works with individuals who have behavioral health issues.
And they're charged with misdemeanor or low-level felony crimes.
And they have a history of legal competency.
Because in order to opt into things like mental health court, you have to be competent.
LINC provides individualized system outreach case management.
Participants have access to respite housing, case management services, psychiatric providers, and medication management.
Our current capacity is about 75 individuals.
That's how many we can serve.
And at any given time, we run at about 70, 75. So that program is full.
VITAL is a program.
It is part of our Familiar Faces Initiative in King County.
And it is a kind of hybrid of diversion all the way through pending case through reentry.
services, and it's integrated case management, it's behavioral health services, medical care, housing, some legal coordination for adults who are experiencing behavioral health challenges and continue to, you know, appear in our court systems.
Currently our capacity is at 60, and we are at 60. So these programs are effective.
There are people who are getting help.
I shared this at last Tuesday's evening event.
There is a vital participant who was presented to our office.
She was arrested three times from October of 2018 through January of 2019, all with drug possession cases.
One was a felony level three grams of meth.
Another one was less than one gram of a substance, and one was exactly at one gram, but I don't remember right now what the drug was.
Prior to our office filing the felony charge against her, she connected with Vital.
Before we filed her case, she worked with Vital case managers, and she got herself into housing.
She started to do some job training.
She got connected with a job, and she's doing so well that we filed the felony charge against her.
She's getting some supervision.
She may opt into drug court for that case.
But we declined to file the one gram case because we want her to continue being involved in this program because she is turning her life around.
It's effective, but it's a capacity.
And so I think the conversation that you've initiated is the conversation that we're having now about What are the effective programs?
How do we invest in them to expand?
And then what are the programs that don't exist but should exist to catch people at the front end?
And I know I had a conversation with each of you at the start of this meeting that just said if we had a magic wand, What are some of the common ground principles that we want?
And really, ultimately, we want the behavior to stop.
And the business owners want their businesses to be able to function without disruption.
And I think many of you have said that when you pick up the phone and you call for help, it could be a police officer, but it could be a case manager.
Ultimately, if we navigate folks into services, you want them to be effective, you want them to be timely, you want them to be quick.
and you don't want to see the individual show up again the next day.
And I think those are the opportunities for all of us around the table.
Thank you.
As it relates specifically to the programs that operate through King County, do you have numbers or data about their effectiveness as it relates to reducing recidivism?
We do have an evaluation for LEAD, and I can let Lisa speak to that because she carries the numbers in her head.
We also had a really robust story in the Seattle Times about VITAL and its effectiveness, and I think the evaluation's at the early stages, but everything seems very promising.
There have, of course, been evaluations of adult drug court, which has been around for a very long time, regional mental health court, regional veterans court, So yes, those programs are effective, and there's not any one program that's a panacea that serves all individuals who present to the criminal justice system.
But collectively, they're part of the solution.
They're not the entire solution.
Thank you.
So this seems like a good segue.
Thank you, Lisa, for Lisa Dugard.
I'll talk a little bit about LEAD.
I think one of the things that would be helpful as well is I know people have described, sometimes we talk about LEAD and VITAL in the same breath.
It would be really helpful for me to understand how they're different.
Do they intersect with individuals at different points in the system?
Are they a different profile of a defendant?
Some of those things would be helpful.
Sure.
Well, first, I want to start by thanking the business leaders who have brought us here.
We are really fortunate as a city to have enlightened neighborhood and business leaders who are outcome-driven, non-ideological, and incredibly persistent about getting things right.
I in my office is in Pioneer Square and I am a rate payer of Lisa Howard and appreciate their neighborhood-based leadership and can co-sign the nature and extent of the problems in the neighborhood.
I mean, I don't think there's any basis for empirical disagreement about the nature of the problem.
And the question really is, you know, what works?
LEAD was launched a long time ago now in public policy years.
eight years ago and was in the planning stages for a few years before that.
It is a prolific offenders program.
That is exactly what it's about.
Every once in a while we get referred people who have no prior, you know, intersection with these systems, but that's rare.
It is really, and officers use it for that, and neighborhood leaders use it for that, for people who are chronically engaged in behavior that is problematic and violates the law.
It's about crime.
It's not about homelessness.
And I really appreciate your focus on law violation, criminal behavior that the public is entitled to expect a response for.
So that's what LEAD focuses on.
The original version, kind of LEAD 1.0, a diversion program for people who committed drug crime or prostitution.
Those were the only crimes that officers had the legal authority to divert to lead.
As we moved forward in practice, what became clear is that both neighborhood leaders and officers would be like, look, there's this guy and he's really problematic.
And the crime he's committing is like pedestrian interference on the sidewalk.
So that's not a divertible crime.
Also, I don't know if he uses drugs or deals drugs.
But I do know that he's super problematic for the neighborhood.
And we couldn't take him in the lead because he didn't fit through this narrow, kind of through the eye of the needle.
So as it became clear that this was not fully responsive to neighborhood experiences, it became clear that officers were frustrated that somebody who clearly needed behavioral health-related care, and they knew, you know, that they might not have probable cause to make an arrest right now, or even if they did, under no circumstances was this person going to be removed from the community forever by virtue of that arrest.
They needed a solution, and LEAD couldn't be accessed.
And then the True Blood case happened, which was litigation surrounding the fact that people with mental health competency challenges were being warehoused in our jails, and nothing was happening that was constructive.
They were not going to be...
held accountable through the justice system because competency precluded that.
Just so you know, misdemeanor, people who commit misdemeanors generally cannot be restored to competency under the Due Process Clause.
That is beyond the scope of city council, mayoral, county executive, none of them can change that.
nor should it be changed because it's a sort of balancing principle of when the state, the government uses its coercive power, what's the limit of when we should do that?
And the state legislature just further constricted when competency restoration is going to be on the table slightly.
So that's just not a road that's available for a lot of the behaviors and people that we're talking about here.
Lisa, just before you go on, on that point, I think it's a really important point.
And while I recognize and appreciate in this particular report there is a sentence dedicated to what happens to folks who are found to be mentally incompetent, I think it's I think it's, it doesn't do service to the complexities of what our constitution and constitutional rights are as it relates to people who are declared incompetent to be able to stand trial.
We certainly don't want to move in a model, I'm not saying that you're suggesting that we do, move towards a model where we, you know, take punitive actions through our criminal justice system against those individuals.
And for me, it's really important to sort of, you know, make really clear that there are folks who are going to meet that very high threshold and bar of never being able to be able to go through a criminal justice system because of mental incompetence and cannot be restored in the way that you have But then there's a whole host and layer of other people who are not mentally incompetent, do understand the impacts of the behavior, and we know that there are root causes for those behaviors that are leading to violence and other things.
And I think that's the area where we are best served focusing on is those individuals that we can still meaningfully engage, albeit in a voluntary capacity, to engage with mental health services.
To be honest, my only beef with the report is that it's missing one letter on the cover, which is an S on system.
It's really not a matter of just the criminal justice system failing.
The criminal justice system, for many people, is both not the perfect match, it does not and will not have the necessary tools, but it's also not necessary because there are other more immediately accessible responses if we put them at the disposal of neighborhoods and we're not.
So this is to me like the housing system and the way in which we make access to that available to people who pose issues for neighborhoods, that system is broken.
Medicaid and the enormous amount of money that's gone into Medicaid expansion in the state and how it's not being made available to the highly marginalized homeless, largely homeless population.
that suffers from substance use disorder and mental illness, that system is broken.
These are fixable, like these are things we could do better.
And so I just, one more letter on the, if you would consider reissuing with one more letter.
But moving back to LEAD, this was, I was raising Trueblood just to say that, so, That litigation was successful, and Judge Peckman found the state in contempt for a number of years because they were not moving people into Western State.
And a pool of $83 million was amassed, and that has been spent to fund diversion systems, including the LINC program, which Lisa Mannion, all the Lisas have to have last names, Lisa Mannion mentioned, because none of those other stages of intervention were particularly effective in reducing the pool of people who were being warehoused who are incompetent, The court monitor who's driving those investments pushed upstream and said, we need police diversion.
Well, LEAD is the police diversion model that is out there for people who there's probable cause to believe that they commit crimes.
The police unquestionably have the authority to take them into custody, and there's a public expectation that that happens.
then they need something to be able to do with that person that is going to be effective.
So LEAD proposed and was awarded Trueblood funding with support from SPD and the city attorney's office and all of the LEAD partners.
That money's been incorporated into LEAD to add six case managers in the last year.
And they are starting to work.
And additionally, the Downtown Emergency Service Center and community house working through King County Behavioral Health and Recovery Division had an adjunct proposal to provide housing and a vital-like team of care that included a prescriber and a nurse and very similar to vital but now attached to a diversion strategy.
As a result, Now, there's only capacity for 150 people with that funding.
And we're, you know, we have well-known LEAD capacity problems.
But that suite of services has caused SPD to start admitting different people into LEAD than were being accepted before, people with higher acuity issues and probably posing even more serious issues in neighborhoods.
One of the people is somebody who the Alliance for Pioneer Square identified.
He is receiving those services and he was a huge issue for the Pioneer Square neighborhood and that set of issues has been enormously mitigated by the police, case management, and multi-service provider collaboration.
that occurred there.
So I just want to, I say this to say LEAD has evolved in response to, you know, sort of, it's the original way that it was framed up was not fully responsive to all of the dynamics.
And it has proven to be elastic enough to expand to include a wider population and to allow police diversion on a wider array of criminal offenses.
That said, the scope of this problem, this was a 100-person sample, all estimates are that the group of people of whom those 100 people are typical is in the 3,000 or more neighborhood.
That's a familiar faces calculation.
And you can triangulate all the data and get to a number that bigger, bigger.
So nothing we are currently deploying in the field, it's all going to look like it fails because it's not.
It's like sprinkling a little bit of salt over a giant bowl of soup.
And you're like, oh, salt doesn't work.
That's not the problem.
But we are not right sizing the things that are effective.
We do best when neighborhoods have people to call, something happens as a result, information flows back to neighborhoods, police can exchange information with case managers, case managers trust that if they give information to police and prosecutors that will be used well and the individuals involved have a good experience and want to continue to engage.
All of that is possible.
It does not work for everyone.
There are people on that, there's one person on the Scotland Z list who has been in LEAD for five years and nothing has gotten better.
Also, so LEAD isn't just diversion, it's protracted engagement after diversion that often includes being arrested, being booked, going to jail, going to prison.
This person was diverted, got services, was then not diverted, went to jail, was then sent to prison, had a drug offender sentencing alternative that was revoked, went to prison.
Nothing that we presently have in our arsenal works for this person.
So I think it's clear that we know what to do for 75 to 80% of this population.
And we need then to put all of our heads together around the remaining 20 to 25% and look at new solutions, hopefully which were funded by the legislative changes on mental health and the funding that's about to flow as a result of the Trueblood settlement.
So just back to my earlier question, is the difference between VITAL and LEAD a difference between the population served, or is it a difference about when the intervention comes?
LEAD is a diversion program.
VITAL is not necessarily a diversion program.
It's more- VITAL runs the gamut.
It can be at any part of the system, and LEAD is a diversion program.
And one of the things I've heard you, Lisa Dugard, say about LEAD is that there are going to be some people within the population of folks identified in the systems failure report that would not serve, our lead would not be a good fit for.
One of the things I think I've heard you say is that your lead doesn't currently serve folks who have violent offenses as part of their criminal background.
Is that, that's not right?
It's not, it's not right.
People cannot be people cannot be diverted who are under arrest cannot be diverted if they have recent conviction history for certain violent crimes.
That's honestly just that that's not the history but something recent.
But people can be referred as social contact referrals because that's a crime prevention.
I mean the people with that history are out in the community.
What's the plan, right?
And so trying to engage with those individuals doesn't make them more dangerous.
It is reaching into that situation that the neighborhoods are being left to handle now.
So they're not barred from referral because there is past violent history.
There are officers are the gatekeepers for LEAD and they have a kind of a amenability and do we have a better plan test.
If they think there's a better plan or they think there's something else that needs to happen, they would not refer the person.
They do refer people who have significant violent history when there's reason to believe that the intervention and the methodology that we're using will make the behavior better.
So very nuanced, very individually driven.
and fundamentally up to officers.
And given that the police officers are the gatekeepers to the program, I've heard you mention that folks in the community, business owners, have to have a place to go.
Where does that intersection happen?
I mean, obviously, LEAD has been, since its inception, really good at having those kinds of connections with community stakeholders, both in the design of what interventions you are creating and which problems you're trying to solve.
As it relates to the business owner who has somebody who is on their doorstep on a recurring basis, how does that connection happen?
I go to neighborhood leaders to ask who their priority people are, and we take them if we can.
And at this point, we're sort of like, okay, you can have three.
I mean, that's not right sized to the dimensions of the problem.
But those channels of communication are open.
I think the problem is that when everyone is telling our business and neighborhood partners no, then that's not okay, and that is the situation that has been the case.
I also want to clarify the case that Lisa was talking about earlier with the individual.
That individual was actually near City Hall Park, and so they were impacting an adjacent service and people engaging in that service more so than an individual business.
So that was a case where It wasn't someone on First and Yesler in front of the toy store, right?
The person was up closer and actually had been, when we had done outreach to try to see if there was any existing services, because we weren't quite sure if he was a good fit for a lead, there was a lot of, he had had a lot of interactions with both SPD and other programs exhibiting violent behavior, so they were less responsive.
And so that was when we went down the path of pushing, like, this is a person that really doesn't have any other path.
And so what can you do to adjust the program to be able to answer that?
And Trueblood had come online just in time.
So this is an individual with dementia, it turns out.
And behaviors that were once clinically engaged, it became clear that his threatening behavior was related to his victimization.
It all made sense, but somebody had to go under the front to understand and unravel.
And now his relationship with the police is totally different.
It's a whole different ballgame.
But until True Blood Services had come online with LEAD, the neighborhood was getting this pushback about not a fit, not a fit, not a fit, not a fit.
And it was an individual that had been living on the sidewalk for what I would, I believe it was about three plus years on either side of the street and so he had they had been in that place for a really long time before the service intervened.
And again it's because the Trueblood dollars allowed for additional case management services that didn't exist before so it was a
And a heightened level of care that's very much like vital.
That care package was modeled on vital.
So the true blood lead version 2.0 is very much as vital married to lead and with broader capacity.
So the lessons are being learned and moved forward in program design.
I think I would just close with the fact that, to thank Lisa Mannion for stating, the real basis of what we're trying to do is to get the behaviors to stop.
And specifically remind folks that when we're talking about crimes like assault and that there's a victim.
So when we talk about 117 new cases, well, we'll take aside any of their status offenses, but those 40, that were crimes against person, there's a victim there.
And so taking that perspective and all of these things, we work closely with LEAD in our neighborhood and are very excited, but it's a tool in the toolbox and there is still a portion that we don't have the right tool for that are having a significant impact and creating more victims.
If I could add on to that too, just sort of taking it in a slightly different direction.
At the ground floor level, organizations like ours, I mean, we are set up primarily to work on things like business improvement, livability issues to an extent, but economic development, marketing and promotions, tourism, all of these things that are important to our business district.
So, when we also have the conversation about resources and not just financial resources, but when we talk about staffing resources, we're constrained, right?
And as Erin has said time and time again, we're not experts in criminal justice.
reform, nor do we entertain a great desire to be.
However...
Nor do you play one on TV.
Nor do we play one on TV, but I just say that to make the point about how important this issue is to us and to our constituents, and then also to express that we are limited in terms of our ability to be able to work on these issues time in and time out, and it is a strain.
It's a drain on our staff.
I know You know, speaking for myself, I have one employee that probably spends 35% of his time on these kinds of issues.
So that is another challenge of this.
And for folks in the viewing public who are unaware, BIAs, or business improvement areas, agree to tax themselves, basically, in order to address services to the community that the city is unable to fulfill.
And in some cases, that includes using those funds that they tax themselves to hire.
case management and outreach services in communities.
So I really appreciate your partnership in doing that very, very necessary work.
And, you know, I think this is really a conversation that is about how can we bring to scale what we know works and how can we design interventions for the gaps where we have no tools right now to address some of the issues that you've helped us to identify.
I think if no other comments are necessary at this time, I want to just check with Newell whether or not we have folks signed up for public comment.
We do have three speakers.
Maybe while he's Absolutely, yes, it's okay.
Bringing over the sign-up sheet if there are any other closing remarks.
I just wanted to echo the thanks and the gratitude.
I think it's a very diverse table that we have set here for today in terms of roles as it relates to the criminal justice system.
and really appreciate an opportunity to continue to pose the tough questions and hopefully eventually find answers, right?
That's really what we want to be able to do.
And one of the things that I just wanted to highlight that I know we've been working with the BIAs, some of the BIAs very closely, is making a more intentional investment with city resources around funding homelessness services outreach workers that are specifically tied and housed with the BIAs.
I'm hopeful that that will continue to be a good model that sort of gets at some of the things that Lisa Dugard was mentioning around sort of that frustration of how do you navigate when something does happen and how are we developing relationships with both ratepayers and the people who are experiencing homelessness within those business districts and then who is kind of connecting all of those things to make it less frustrating of an experience for both the person who needs access to case management and services but also to the small business owners in the district who are being impacted by you know, our inability to meaningfully connect those individuals with something that isn't jail-based.
And so I really appreciate the opportunity to continue to partner with the BIAs as it relates to that body of work and those sets of investments as another example of yet another tool that is available to us to meaningfully meet the needs of those who live, work, and play in business districts while also addressing the concerns with a better harm reduction approach of those who are experiencing homelessness within those same geographic areas.
So I appreciate and welcome that ongoing collaboration.
Thank you all.
All right, with that, I'm going to move into public comment.
You all don't have to sit here either.
Public comment to us.
I mean, unless you really want to.
Thank you.
So we have five people signed up.
First, we have David Haynes, followed by Marguerite Richard.
And we'll be keeping track.
Two minutes for each speaker, please.
The business community needs to realize the lies and the reasons why the mayor, Jennifer Durkin, is the number one reason we have a societal implosion.
while Attorney General and Obama appointee.
She sabotaged the integrity and the safety effectiveness of policing via the 2012 police reform by unconstitutionally sneaking an evil treasonous sentence of literally exempting the low-level drug pushers.
Low-level only meaning too poor to confiscate any substantial money and material possessions for cop bonuses.
Now, prolific offenders have two things in common.
Their drug pushers are exempted from jail and malt liquor is cheaper than water, with malt liquor taxes paying cops overtime who've allowed an open container policy to ensure consumption malfunction.
Maybe city council should take some of the money earmarked for a youth jail and create a minimum security FEMA tent type instant jail used simply to break the self-destructive habit of junkie thieves.
It's not as ridiculous as allowing the most prolific offenders to get priority housing and exemptions for stealing everything in sight and ruining businesses.
If the business community really wants to solve the problem, they have to overthrow the mayor and sue the government over the unconstitutional police reform that exempted the low-level drug pushers, who ain't a friend to anybody, but an enemy embraced by nonprofits skimming a pay plan off societal implosion, all while sober, drug-free houseless are forsaken.
Continuing to exempt drug pushers goes to the heart and the root cause of Seattle's problem.
Did you see the press release about the illegal alien living in an apartment, predatorizing a homeless encampment with drugs?
There are six or seven evil white boys who do the same thing in Ballard, Fremont, using their house to rape women who don't have enough money to buy what they make in their apartment, while the cops refuse to do anything about it.
Anyway.
Next, we have Marguerite Richard, followed by the Honorable Michael B. Fuller.
Yes, good day everyone.
It's interesting that I'm holding a picture of a person by the name of Vernon Gray.
And when you're discussing prolific offenders, you need to talk about the potential of whether or not he was even considered one because of the nature of He was homeless at one point until someone finally brought a case forward.
And he's black, living in the Central District, born and raised over there, I believe.
And so I'm wondering how much these programs are being affected.
Yeah, is that right?
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I heard nothing about race being brought up in the conclusion of the matter.
And I think everything is centered around race.
There's no way that we can get out of it.
They're shooting and killing us and doing most heinous things in history that you would even want to think of.
So when you say a person is repeatedly doing something, what are you repeatedly doing to people that might be having brain damage, dementia.
Unbeknownst to them, they ended up out in the streets, house caught on fire, they didn't have no insurance or nothing like that.
And I'm kind of like, Fannie Lou Hamer, sick and tired of being sick and tired of hearing stuff like this that's going on.
And these people like this that DSHS had to pay $8 million to him.
Where were they when he was suffering and considered a vulnerable, but don't say that around Trump.
He don't like that word, vulnerable, adult.
And we still have them in society.
But I don't see anything going up going on up in here, positive, that reflects what is being done.
And that's all I really have to say until next time.
Thank you.
Honorable Michael B. Fuller will be followed by James Willows.
Yes, I'm Honorable Michael Fuller.
I'm a Jew.
I'mma read what I gave you all.
Y'all don't like to give responses.
And I'm fully aware of what I'm articulating.
Seattle City Council members, August 25, 1619 to August 25, 2019, will be 400 years in enslavement by European settlers.
Now, Asians are smart.
They can learn extraordinary abuse, abusive bias, racial bias, breach of contract, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, and fraudulent dishonest act.
18 U.S.C. Chapter 73, Obstruction of Justice.
Title 18 U.S.C. 2381, Treason.
Title 18 U.S.C. 2382, Misprision of Treason.
Title 18 U.S.C. and 2383, Rebellion and Insurrection.
Insurrection.
Title 18 U.S.C. 2384, suspicious conspiracy.
Title 18 U.S.C. 2385, advocating to overthrow Native land.
H.R.
303, no sanctuary for criminal acts, crime acts.
H.R.
304, case laws.
H.R.
309, enforcement of sanctuary city acts.
Law, President Bruce Harrell, Kusama Sawant, Vice Chair, Violation against the United States, v. 1882, meaning no man in this country is so high to where he's above the law.
Asians are smart.
They can learn.
Racial bias, v. 1962, deconspiracy, Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, India and Indonesia, Jones versus Mars, it comes in June of 1968. Honorable Fuller?
Meaning white citizens to drive black citizens out of their community.
Thank you.
What you say?
Your time is up.
You got to realize, you the people are your boss, and you are the employee.
There's another speaker after you.
That's why you got it twisted.
Thank you.
But I'm going to see you in court.
Federal court.
Thank you.
Talking about two minutes.
You got it twisted.
I'm very articulate with this law.
James Wallace is the next speaker, followed by Larry Wyatt.
I would like to acknowledge that in my 40 years of living out here in the Pacific Northwest, this city council will never end homelessness as long as we restrict the constitutional rights of those that have to pay taxes, wake up every day, go to work, and do everything that we have to do to pay our rent, lights, water, and utilities, and possibly insurance and car tags every season, every year that we owe them.
And by looking at this, this is no great big surprise.
Right now, today, I am broke.
I'm destitute.
I don't even have any money to ride a bus.
A year ago, last June, my truck was destroyed by a drunk driver, and you're talking about you have a system failure.
You shouldn't have to have a system failure with all the tax money we keep paying and paying and paying to you people out here.
You need to understand that people are suffering half to death, not just because of homelessness and drugs, because we're taxed out.
We have no more money.
I'm paying for this broken system to be had, and it's uncalled for.
It's uncalled for in the most powerful nation on the face of the earth, why we have to have a broken system, why people have to go broke, why people have to go hungry.
And I'm paying and paying and paying.
I'm running out of money by paying the system.
Yes, I'm broke, not because I do drugs and alcohol, because I just got through paying my rent last month.
and I am broke.
I have no money.
I'm running out of money faster than I can get held and accounted for.
Will you please, people, change the system so people that do pay taxes or pay even $1 a month toward their parking tickets to get some kind of a bona fide relief to the system so we're not starving to death out here?
Can you do something?
Can you, people who sit with suits and ties, understand that there are people out here who have to work hard every day of the week and sweat their brow just because they have to pay taxes and taxes and taxes.
Please, people, please.
I beg.
Do I have to eat the dirt off the ground?
Do I have to eat poop off the ground in order for you people to understand just how hard that...
I mean, come on.
Do you dig out of a dumpster to survive?
If you don't know anything about digging out of a dumpster, you people, you people should start finding out.
It is a rough life.
Not taking videos of homelessness.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming and sharing your experiences.
I'm sorry.
Last speaker is Larry Wyatt.
I wasn't going to say anything today, but when incompetence came up, I have to say something because you're looking at it in the wrong direction.
This is coming from a broken criminal justice system.
Well, it's not only broken, it's corrupted.
And I was found incompetent over three years ago to stand trial.
All this did was take away my right to stand trial and for me to tell my story.
That's all it did.
And it was used by the courts and by the police to get rid of that for me.
It's unconstitutional.
They should get rid of the whole thing.
Forget this incompetence thing.
Let them stand trial.
The police are still after me regarding this.
I had to file a complaint with the Seattle Accountability Office on May Day because they're still harassing me over this, and I'm a completely innocent person.
This incompetence catches you up.
What it does is they took $20,000 of my Social Security benefits away from me, Social Security did, because if you're found incompetent, they consider it the same as being found guilty.
There's something wrong about that, that's for sure.
And then the governor of the state signed a bill just the other day to where you can never buy a firearm if you've ever been found incompetent to stand trial.
What?
You know, I can never defend myself against the police again?
That's the reason of the Second Amendment, and that's what I was doing.
My original arrest that put me through all this was first degree of domestic violence and 15 counts of first degree assault against police officers.
And they set my bill at $1,000.
They wanted me back out on the street.
I could have gotten out for $100, but there was no one that would post it.
And that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, with that, it's 1.59, and the meeting is adjourned.