missing title

And good morning.

The Public Safety Committee will come to order.

It's 9.34 a.m.

March 10, 2026. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lynn.

Here.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Sacco.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you.

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

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

I also wanted to welcome Councilmembers Rivera and Foster, I mean, Rink and Foster to my right with Rivera to my left.

Thank you for joining us today.

Starting off with chair comment.

Today's chair comment is centered on the Seattle Fire Department along with OEM, Office of Emergency Management and CARE.

It's come to my attention and I think it's important for this committee to know that Sound Transit 3 is proposing a tunnel through the CID.

Under this plan, the tunnel will go roughly under OEM, the Emergency Ops Center, the Fire Alarm Center and Fire Station 10. This is concerning, given the role that these entities play in, for example, a major earthquake scenario.

It's important to note, too, the EOC, the Fire Alarm Center plus Fire Station 10, were sited at this location for a reason, in the fact that it's outside a liquefaction zone, which is really problematic, particularly to the south and to the west.

Moving forward, we need full transparency on this project as it relates to this issue in terms of any impacts, again, on the EOC, the Emergency Op Center, the FAC, the Fire Alarm Center, and Fire Station 10. And we need to have a full review of the entire project and especially the engineering reviews that are being conducted.

We may need sound transit to come to committee given the direct public safety and specifically emergency preparedness considerations of this proposals that are in play right now.

And again, this is concerning.

Bottom line is we can't have a major disaster and then have the EOC and the fire alarm center be the first casualty in that disaster.

So again, colleagues, I bring this up in chair comment to raise the issue, the fact that Sound Transit 3 is proposing a tunnel that will basically go under the EOC, particularly the EOC and the fire alarm center and adjacent to the fire station 10. So thank you for your consideration of that.

Separately, along these lines, I also wanted to raise an issue, and this was in the Sunday Times, and it's about Pamela Hogan, who died on either 8 or 9 April, 2022. I want to thank Daniel Beekman, Mr. Beekman from Seattle Times for the reporting.

I recognize this is under litigation, but we have our responsibilities here in city council, and particularly with the public safety committee, and these oversight responsibilities go to this too.

Now, it's important for everybody to read this, but I will say that I have toured, going back to the earlier point, the EOC and the fire alarm center, and I have talked to the members of the fire department that work there.

I talked through the nurses line that we have, which is really needed given the challenges that we face in terms of demand and our 911 system overall.

So it's an important piece of our architecture.

And I have all the confidence in terms of that visit and conversations I've had.

I spoke to Chief Scoggins yesterday.

Full confidence in the system.

But that said, we do have our responsibilities in terms of oversight and in terms of the overall system.

and I would add that, you know, it may be incumbent for the committee to look at the 911 system and the fire alarm system as a review of this in terms of our oversight responsibilities and, as it turns out, because there was an editorial on the topic, you know, our alternative response system, too, because this all kind of interconnects.

One thing is for sure, that this is very complicated.

There's a lot of different moving pieces.

And so looking at the system as it relates to the incident with Ms. Hogan, who passed away in 2022, but it plays in the system itself, but also in the broader considerations as well.

So that is it for today's chair comment.

I did think it's important for us to recognize, to acknowledge these two points.

Acknowledgement is really important.

and then to review working with stakeholders, working with central staff and others moving forward.

Okay, with that chair comment, we will now proceed to the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently, we have one in-person speaker signed up and zero remote speakers.

Okay, our speaker will have two minutes.

and we'll start with our in-person because that's what we have.

And can you please read the public comment instructions for the record?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

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

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within their allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first speaker is Howard Gale.

Good morning.

Office of Inspector General recently reported their review of the police assault on protesters at Cal Anderson Park last May, resulting in many injuries and 23 protesters unconstitutionally arrested.

They diagnosed the event as a misunderstanding.

But the words of SBD Officer Lieutenant Matthew Didier, in charge of crowd control that day, make clear that this was no misunderstanding.

He said to the officers under his command, quote, We're going in this time with guns blazing and all our pieces in place.

We are past talking to people.

We are here to fuck people up now.

We're done with these guys and the shit they're doing.

They've pushed the envelope and now they're going to get the full something or other.

Not a single officer objected.

The OIG asserted that last May's event was a one-off and aberration.

Yet just three days later, SPD officers once more demonstrated extremely biased policing in favor of right-wing provocateurs unleashing more violence and arrests, at least eight, right in front of City Hall.

and there were other smaller but similar actions last year and in 2024. For example, in February 24 when officers slashed the tires of protesters and violently slammed an elderly lady to the ground, injuring and then arresting her.

In November of 24, officers during at least two separate protests needlessly provoked protesters by arresting teenagers for graffiti and charging one with a felony.

Last fall, we saw repeated instances of SPD officers being insensitive to people's fears of ICE agents and ignoring a credible gun threat made by a right-wing provocateur when he threatened folks in the Somali community.

Just two weeks ago, we heard from Chief Amy Barden of CAIR that SPD officers were rendering their services 72% unusable, preventing them from going to calls that do not require a badge, a gun, or needless violence.

We have the new election of a SPOG president, who is right-wing and is determined as the previous president to act in ways that are opposite of Seattle's values.

Over the last 26 years, there have only been eight years where Seattle police have killed more than three people in a year.

Last year was one of those, with Seattle police killing four people, the second highest number of people in over a quarter century.

Next week will mark the one-year anniversary of Urban Sahe gunned down by the SPD while he was in crisis.

Councilmember Rink, I asked you a year ago to have a town hall on police repeatedly killing people in crisis.

That still has not happened.

SBD has more shootings per arrest than 74% of city police departments in the United States.

I'll end by saying this.

It's no surprise that this council is so reluctant to have Seattle police officers protect people from Fourth Amendment violations.

Thank you, Mr. Gale.

Mr. Gale, stop.

Mr. Gale, stop.

Public comment has expired.

We will now proceed.

But before doing so, I will say for the record, and I said this yesterday, I met with the LGBTQ plus commission last week talking through the issues to include the Cal Anderson protests.

And I told them, as I said before, that we're going to do a review in committee of the Sentinel review that was done on that Cal Anderson protest using are accountability partners.

Having the three accountability partners come to committee to speak to it, to include the OIG, which was responsible for the report, the CPC, which was partnering in that effort, and also OPA.

We're going to do that in May.

I'm not going to say the exact date because we do have to do some coordination on that.

and that's, you know, in fulfillment of my word on this topic and that we're going to do this and I believe doing it in the manner that I've said will actually, you know, bring different viewpoints, different perspectives on the topic and get to it better.

And we will continue to address the issue as I've had with Chief Barnes and others.

To be blunt, thank you.

All right, we will now proceed to our items of business.

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

Okay, for our first item of business, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Council Bill 121164, an ordinance relating to civil immigration enforcement, prohibiting civil immigration enforcement staging on all real property that is city owned and controlled and adding a new chapter 14.125 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

And Mr. Doss has already joined us at the table.

Can you introduce yourself for the record?

Thank you, Greg Doss, Council Central Staff.

And can you speak to Council Bill 121-164, basically a summary of, you know, obviously what we had in the last meeting before we go to the next, to the amendment?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Council Bill 121-164, you all first heard on February 24th in your last meeting, and that bill would prohibit the use of city-owned and controlled properties for civil immigration enforcement staging operations.

including actions to assemble, mobilize, or deploy personnel, vehicles, or equipment for civil immigration staging, enforcement staging, or for surveillance or logistical coordination for those operations.

Okay.

We had this in the last meeting, so as part of the parliamentary procedure, I do want to move the bill.

So I move to recommend passage of Council Bill 121-164.

Is there a second?

Second.

We got a second in stereo, thank you very much.

It's moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Okay, colleagues, before maybe discussing it, I would like, we do have an amendment and Council Member Lin.

Move to you.

Okay.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Yeah, I'd like to move amendment number two to Council Bill 121-164.

This is amendment authored by Council Member Foster, and so I'd like to allow my colleague to speak to the amendment.

Do we need a second for, or I guess we'll let Council Member Foster go first.

Second.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you so much, Councilmember Lin, for sponsoring this amendment.

I greatly appreciate it.

So, colleagues, I spoke to this briefly at Council Briefing yesterday.

This is an amendment that I am bringing forward, and it is a small change that I believe has a significant impact to the language and it helps us to make sure that we are covering more properties in which a city has a real interest.

So in effect, we are moving from saying city-owned and controlled to city owned or controlled is the small language change.

And I want to thank Mr. Doss for the research that went into this amendment.

As you heard in the initial council briefing, there's about 47 properties that would be impacted by this language change, many of which are areas where community members come to receive services and are important locations for us as a city because we, in our role as a property owner or as a leasee, have a stake in the properties that would be covered under the expansion language in this amendment.

So that means that places that the public experiences very much as the city of Seattle, but may not be a place where we own and control would be covered.

So colleagues, I believe you received that list from my staff earlier this week to help give you a sense of the meaning and the impact of this small change.

And I ask for your support for this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Yes, we did see it and I've read it, so I appreciate the coordination and the work done on the floor in response to this.

I would like to ask Mr. Doss, can you speak to this amendment to include any coordination that was done, for example, with City Attorney's Office?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, the central staff, both myself and Lauren Henry, worked with the City Attorney's Office to come up with the language that you find in the bill, specifically Part B under the active language in Section 2. That language, as the sponsor mentioned, changes city owned and controlled to city owned or controlled and defines control in a way where it captures more property.

It says, for the purpose of this chapter, a city controlled property is any real property in which the city possesses any ownership interest or any leasehold interest and for which the city has not agreed through a contract or other legal instrument to cede control of the property interest as pertains to the enforcement of this chapter.

And essentially what that does, as the sponsor says, is it opens it up to three different kinds of properties.

the city leases to providers, CBOs, folks who provide an essential service to vulnerable communities.

It also applies to properties where the city leases space.

An example of that would be a community center or a, I'm sorry, not a community center, but a coordination center, a city service center, where there are a variety of different services offered.

And then the last might be a partnership with another government like KCHRA.

So sort of casting a wider net, covering more properties, the amendment creates a municipal purpose or establishes in the finding section a municipal purpose for all of these properties as key in providing for city services and therefore establishes the city's need to prohibit civil enforcement staging operations, which would surely interfere with the provision of those services.

Thank you, Mr. Doss.

Colleagues, as I noted with the coordination, I've read this and went through it.

I'm aware of the city attorney's involvement and view.

And I did want to note the findings are very good in the sense of it captures, you know, the challenges that we face as respect to federal law enforcement, particularly in the area of immigration.

And it's good to note these pieces.

I am in favor of the amendment.

I will say just one thing is, and I think this is important for the public to know, is the idea of staging an operation.

Staging an operation is a preparatory phase of the operation, as opposed to a specific federal law enforcement operation.

And I think it's important to note those two differences, because ironically, as noted in the findings, the actual operations, federal law enforcement operations, may be at some of these locations.

So we need to be mindful of that point regarding staging and what that is.

But there's definitely possibilities, like with a parking lot or something like that, that there could be some staging.

And this is something that we can work through the process of this bill in terms of injunctive relief and working with the City Attorney's Office.

So with that, I open it up, colleagues, starting off with I'm assuming this is new hand, but Council Member Lind, or is this the old hand?

New hand.

Okay, Council Member Lind.

I just want to repeat my thanks for the original bill, Chair Kettle, for this amendment, and sounds like for your support, Chair Kettle.

I believe, you know, this The municipal use of these properties is key, you know, when we're providing essential services, whether we are directly or through one of our partners, that, you know, it's critical that those services not be interrupted and that through, you know, somehow the property's being used for staging or commandeered by the federal government.

So really appreciate this expansion and just want to say thank you to all my colleagues for this amendment and for the original bill.

Okay.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

I'll let the...

Council Member Foster, you get the last word, so I'm gonna first check and see with committee members first if there's any comments, additional comments beyond Council Member Lynn.

And then before Council Member Foster, I'll check in with Council Member Rink.

I'm not seeing any hands raised on my screen, so...

So I'm looking at Council Member Rink before going to Foster.

Thank you, Chair Kettle.

I'll just chime in briefly to, again, voice my support for the amendment and to thank Council Member Foster for her authorship of it.

To really ensure that our city can do its chartered obligations, we need to make sure that folks are safe and not erode trust in city government.

I know our offices continue to hear from folks who access city services in a place or language, in languages that are culturally appropriate for them.

and that's only possible through our city leasing either from a third party or managing it and regulating it through a partnership.

So we know that the work of serving our city isn't done alone and through this amendment we're extending those protections to prohibit staging on a variety of properties in their city and I urge support from the committee.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rink.

Again, committee members before going to Council Member Foster.

Okay, Councilmember Foster, you got the last word on this amendment.

Go ahead.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I appreciate it.

And again, I want to thank Mr. Doss for your support.

And I forgot in my opening remarks to thank Councilmember Rink.

Her office had the same, I think we both went to Mr. Doss with very similar questions around the same time.

So thank you for your leadership on this issue as well.

And with that, I'll say thank you for your consideration to members of the committee.

And that's it.

All right, thank you so much.

Okay, clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment one?

Two, sorry.

First one for today, amendment two for the clerk world, amendment number two.

Council member Juarez.

Aye.

Council member Lin.

Yes.

Council member Rivera.

Aye.

Council member Sacca.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

There are five in favor and none opposed.

Thank you.

Amendment two is adopted.

Okay, before moving on the full bill, I just wanted to give the opportunity for colleagues to speak to the overall staging bill that we had before.

Any comments, Vice Chair?

No comments?

Okay, great.

Alright colleagues, I think this is important work that we're doing here and it's part of a set of bills that we're accomplishing.

We've been approximately halfway through the current set that we have and I think these bills in combination of each other definitely show leadership from the city.

It shows our intent and our concerns and the considerations that we're doing in favor of that.

Doing this bill is in keeping with the Constitution, it's in keeping with our rights as a state, as it's understood with the Constitution, and I think it's again an opportunity for us to make a statement to show our Seattle values and show that we are a welcoming city.

With that said, we please call the roll on the committee recommendation to adopt Council Bill 121-164.

Council Member Ruarez.

Aye.

Council Member Lin.

Yes.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

They're fine in favor and none opposed.

Okay, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council bill be adopted will be sent to the March 17th City Council meeting.

All right, thank you colleagues.

We'll now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Draft legislation of automated license plate recognition data protection.

Okay, Mr. Doss is still with us here at the table, and you've already introduced yourself with a record, so I think we're good there.

Mr. Doss, can you speak to this legislation related to the automatic license plate recognition program?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to be talking today about a bill and refer to it as TMP 12288. That's a number that the system assigns to a draft bill that hasn't yet been introduced.

Expect that the bill will be introduced next Tuesday, the 17th.

It is a draft that is authored and sponsored by Council Member Rink.

So provide you with an overview today of that draft and answer your questions.

And then I believe, Mr. Chair, that you are going to have a second hearing on that at the next public safety meeting.

By that time, it'll be an official bill and will be open for amendments.

So with that as background, I'll just go ahead and jump into the contents of the bill.

The bill would specify conditions for a mandatory 60-day pause in data collection for the Seattle Police Department CCTV and automated license plate recognition systems.

There is currently, by way of background, a pause provision for CCTV, and I'll get to that in a second, but give you a little bit more background.

passed in June of 2024, Ordinance 127044, which approved SPD's use of ALPR technology from a limited use to a fleet-wide expansion.

The ordinance contained a number of restrictions on how the ALPR data could be used and placed requirements on SPD around data disclosure to the public or other governments.

The City Council first authorized CCTV in October of 2024. That was a pilot authorization for cameras on Aurora Avenue North, Belltown, the International District, and the Downtown Commercial Corps.

In September of 2025, the City Council authorized more cameras.

They authorized, through Ordinance 127-297, an expansion to the Capitol Hill nightlife area, the Stadium District, and the Garfield High School neighborhood.

That most recent expansion contained a provision in the ordinance that allowed for 60 days or required a 60-day pause of data collection if the city or its vendor received a warrant, a subpoena, or a court order for Seattle CCTV data that might be used in a federal civil immigration enforcement matter or otherwise required by law a request for data that might be used for a civil immigration enforcement matter.

So with that as background, I'll just go into what this bill does.

This bill would expand to SPD's patrol ALPR system, the same 60-day pause that applies to CCTV that was put into the September 2025 legislation.

It would also require that the 60-day pause would apply to CCTV or ALPR footage if that footage is used in a manner to enforce against reproductive healthcare.

It would require a 60-day pause of CCTV or ALPR data collection if the mayor or police chief determined that the data could be used for a civil immigration or reproductive health enforcement purposes, including uses that may occur concurrently with an increased presence of civil immigration enforcement personnel in Seattle.

So if there's a surge in Seattle of civil immigration enforcement personnel, the mayor could determine that in conjunction with the police chief that the camera should be turned off.

And then finally, on the flip side, the mayor could issue an executive order that would temporarily resume data collection of CCTV and ALPR should the mayor believe that data collection is necessary to gather and transmit to prosecutors evidence of potentially unlawful acts that occur during civil enforcement, civil immigration enforcement activities.

The bill itself will have no fiscal impacts.

SPD has been in contact with the vendor, Axon, who said that it can implement within about a day a system-wide shutdown of the ALPR network.

Of course, the CCTV network, Axon, had to comply with this provision back in September 2025, so we know that's covered as well.

As I said before, this bill is expected to be before you again at the next meeting where there'll be options for amendments.

Available to take any questions.

Okay.

I have a question real quick.

Okay.

There's my hand.

Okay.

Unless Vice-Chair has any, we'll go straight to you, Council Member Juarez.

Over to you.

Does the Vice-Chair have any questions?

Go ahead.

Council Member Juarez.

Hey, Greg, thank you for the memo.

I had a chance to go through it.

It's the one dated March 6th, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

So on page two, the thing that I just focused in on that I was still trying to get clarification, when you go through the protecting surveillance data under number one, extend to SPD's patrol vehicles ALRP system, that one?

Yes.

And the last sentence is where I get, I just want to get a little wonky here.

It says, implemented when the system's data has been requested under a warrant court order pursuant to law.

So this is a, again, this isn't a criticism, it's just a question because I was wondering what we're hearing.

What we're hearing under ICE and what we're hearing from the administration is that they have warrants because they're administrative warrants.

and our argument has been, no, you need an actual judicial warrant with probable cause for Fourth Amendment protections.

So when you say under a warrant, do we need to distinguish a judicial warrant?

I know the next word is court order, but that's a little bit, are you saying court order is a judicial warrant?

Is there a clarification there or do we need to fix that or can we do that?

because I'm not buying administrative warrant.

That's not Fourth Amendment protection.

That's administrative.

The judge is not issuing that.

What I'm getting at and what we've been hearing in the arguments, well, we can't arrest people because we have a warrant.

No, you don't.

You have an administrative warrant.

That's not a criminal judicial warrant issued from a court.

So do we need to distinguish that?

Council Member, I need to get back to you on that.

My interpretation is the same as yours that we're talking about judicial warrants, but I would ask law the specific question of whether that needs to be specified in the legislation.

Council Member Juarez.

I would ask, let me, okay.

Councilor President, can I ask a follow-up question?

Yes, go ahead.

Is it critical that we go back and be laser focused on the language about having it qualified as a judicial warrant?

Does that change?

Again, if you think we have to go back to law, does that change?

I just think it needs to.

That's my opinion.

I could be wrong.

Let me get back to you on that.

If it's the case that law recommends that it specify that it's a judicial warrant, then at the next meeting, per your direction, I can prepare an amendment that would cover that.

That would be great.

I think that's real.

And I haven't seen other cities do that on the distinction piece.

The only concern I'm worried about is if we put in judicial warrant, I just don't know what red flags that would rave.

And I'm sure Lauren is listening.

So she's probably writing this down as we speak.

And then if you can get back to us, if that becomes a potential amendment, then I would love to sponsor that.

So thank you.

And thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez.

I agree with you.

I understand.

I've been observing the same piece.

I think it is important to make a stand.

Now, the question is how best to do that.

You know, I think it's, at minimum, a call-out within the Juarez clauses and then based on law in the bill proper itself.

But, yes, thank you for raising that point.

It's very germane and very important given how the federal government has been misusing administrative warrants.

Mr. Chair, if I can just add a friendly note, I don't think it should just be in the whereas.

I think it has to come and therefore in both places.

That's what I was saying at a minimum and then it's just a question of how law thinks about moving forward in the main body of the bill.

If I could just add another note for Greg when we look at a potential amendment to focus in on a judicial warrant, that we have some Fourth Amendment language in there under our United States Constitution, State Constitution.

I just think it's critical because that's what they've been using and it's just incorrect.

That's my read, so I'll stop there.

Thank you.

I agree.

It's again about showing leadership in this case on the legal piece and calling it out for what it is, so thank you.

Mike?

Okay, thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Vice Chair, nothing?

Nobody else from committee?

I have something, but I can't wait.

Council Member Rivera?

Thank you chair and thank you Greg for being here and this is a newer piece of legislation so I know we're introducing it in draft form because of that reason and also because of that reason it's newer to us as well.

I do appreciate your memo.

I appreciate you pointing out our past legislation on this particularly the pieces that we this council put in place on the privacy protections and to restrict use of this information as we were expanding it in order to help in terms of crime, excuse me, investigation.

We put some things in place and I just for the record wanna say that our former colleague, council member Moore put something in place in terms of restricting use of the information requiring the vendor to immediately notify SPD if the vendor receives a warrant or subpoena seeking SPD, ALPR data for any purpose, including purposes related to reproductive health care or gender affirming medical services.

and requiring the vendor to retain legal counsel to challenge these warrants basically or subpoenas.

And then also notifying SPD having to notify counsel upon receipt of information related to a vendor warrant or subpoena as described above.

So I just want to say that this, you know, this is something that we have the last couple years as we've expanded this really thought about this.

is not something that we've taken lightly, the use of these tools, and we did put privacy protections in there because of it.

And in addition to my colleague, and she and I were working closely because we both had, and Greg, you may recollect that we had concerns about privacy protections when we were expanding ALPR.

I sponsored a bill to revise the surveillance impact report and basically limiting who has access at SPD to this information, requiring training on the tool and also limiting who had access to it, just the one person at RT, the Real Time Crime Center, who looks at this stuff.

And also if an officer wanted to look at this information, they would have to fill out a written request to do so.

and request permission.

So all of this was attempting to really restrict who had access to the information and also what would happen if the vendor themselves got a subpoena or a warrant for said information.

So it's just important to me, Chair, to highlight the things that some of us put in place related to the safeguarding of this information and I haven't finished reading your memo all the way through, Greg, but I'm interested to know, you know, how this thing that this draft that we're looking at today differs.

The 60-day pause is what I see as different.

I do see some other pieces here that I'm not sure how it fits in, so I will be reviewing.

But it was important, Chair, for me to note for the record some of the things we've already done in terms of privacy protection so as not to let the public think that we were allowing these tools without regard for all the things that we care about in terms of these privacy protections, particularly regarding gender affirming care and reproductive rights, because those were two things that Council Member Moore and I, and many of us here who were here at the time, were really supportive of ensuring we were protecting.

Excuse me.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thank you Councilmember Rivera.

Before going to Councilmember Rink to give her the last word, given this is her amendment that's coming through me, but I just wanted to note a couple things.

One, bottom line here is to align ALPR with CCTV in terms of the 60-day pause if there's some type of federal law enforcement intrusion, you know, concern as noted.

I think that's important.

I really appreciate Councilmember Rivera, her points, because this is something that's lost in the conversation and the articles and the, you know, the reports that you see on TV related to our technology programs.

To include ALPR, there's no talk about all the contract language provisions that go to protect our vulnerable communities and Seattle overall.

There's no talk about the processes that we have with the points in terms of like computer audit capability, which is intense for all the systems basically.

And there's no really consideration either related to the real-time crime center and the pieces that are built into the real-time crime center as ALPR, CCTV and other things come into that program, to include the fact that there's only one sworn officer in the real-time crime center.

And I've just, even up to last week, I was speaking to an officer from the West Precinct about this, and these pieces are in play, and it's having a positive impact for our communities, positive in terms of our public safety posture, so I appreciate that.

One ask I have for Mr. Doss is, on going into, you know, when we bring this up next in committee, Senate Bill 6002 will be complete by then, and we've had conversations with Olympia on this piece as it relates to the state bill on ALPR, and there's protections there too for the 21-day piece, and also really importantly, and this really addresses the main issues for those who have been in opposition, the PDR request exemption for ALPR.

It's massive and really the combination of like those two pieces of the state bill and all the things that we have in our bills really completely, almost completely, I don't want to give myself a little bit of exemption there, address all the concerns.

And I think that we're getting to the point where throughout the community, there should be strong support for these programs.

And so I asked you, Mr. Doss, is to review the bill when it's done, see what impacts there are to ALPR and our bill, and how those things may be folded in as well.

Okay, I lied.

I was gonna be the last person before going to Council Member Rink, but my vice chair's jumped in, so Vice Chair Asaka.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to double-click on the comments made a moment ago by you, Chair, and Councilmember Rivera.

I couldn't agree more that this...

We ultimately, a few years ago, built these privacy conscious, I think best in class privacy safeguards into various pieces of legislation and was noted, Council Member Moore was, former Council Member Moore was one of the architects.

I too, as a non-practicing technology lawyer, worked very hard to build in any number of amendments that were ultimately passed in the final, you know, pieces of legislation.

And so, we cannot forget, you know, that body of work that led to this body of work.

So, I think that's true.

And I want to thank Councilmember Rink for building upon our work and bringing us all into alignment and championing this initiative I want to thank you and your leadership as well for that.

Multiple things are true here, and that is all I have to say.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair Saka.

Okay.

The long promised, and now here, last word for Councilmember Rank.

Thank you, Chair Kettle, and thank you for allowing this to be heard in committee today.

It's greatly appreciated.

Colleagues, as we've discussed, this legislation is similar to the amendment that Councilmember Kettle and I co-sponsored when we took up the CCTV program expansion last year.

We're looking to build in additional safeguards for that mandatory 60-day pause and data collection for Seattle Police Department's automated license plate reader program.

We know that the CCTV 60-day pause when applied to ALPR could allow us some time to be able to make some decisions.

And so, again, today's discussion was focused on this draft item, and I want to note for the record that it is my intent to put forward an amendment to the draft you see here today I want to explicitly name gender affirming care as a cause for a pause as well, just to make sure we have our bases covered.

That was the intent here, but I want to make sure that's clearly and explicitly noted.

And I believe that this legislation is aligned with previous action that the city has taken when it comes towards protecting a number of vulnerable populations.

Namely, the city has taken action previously to establish those seeking as an abortion as a protected class within the city.

We've also taken action to adopt the state shield law and incorporate it into Seattle Municipal Code.

And I hope we all can agree that we do not want data that is collected through automated license plate readers to be weaponized and used against residents in immigration action, those seeking reproductive healthcare access or gender affirming care.

So again, this bill will amend the ALPR program so that if we do get some kind of subpoena, warrant, court action, the program will be paused, and I believe that will allow us time as leaders to evaluate the program and decide on a path forward.

And to my understanding, we haven't had any kind of subpoena or warrant issued on the technology thus far, so we really haven't had a test case for what that looks like.

but making sure that we have that ability to, again, pause and reassess the program should that happen is really important.

And I wanna thank Council Member Juarez for your remarks and your questions, your focus on ensuring the language in this legislation really maps to what we're seeing coming out of courts and the legal system and will allow us to take the action that we need.

colleagues following today, I'm happy to discuss any additional amendments or changes to again, better reflect what I believe is the intent here.

Again, trying to build in some more safeguards to ensure this data is not used against our communities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rankin on that last sentence.

Yes, I believe we're all in agreement that we cannot have these pieces weaponized on that.

And as I noted, I already promised last word.

Okay.

This is the discussion I had last week with the LGBTQ plus commission, all these points that you've made.

Okay.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I would have said, well, I wanted to follow up on our colleague Councilmember Ring's points.

I just wanted to thank her for including doing an amendment to include a fully support gender affirming care.

As I read earlier, we did that when we passed this legislation and I think 24, these protections that I read earlier.

So I support naming out gender affirming care to align with what we did in the past for gender-affirming care and reproductive rights in terms of this tool.

I also want to publicly tell my colleague, Councilmember Saka, apologies.

Did not mean to slight you too broad legislation.

I had these two in my mind because CM Moore and I were so focused on this reproductive rights and gender-affirming care.

And by the way, not having the tool used inappropriately by anyone at the city as well.

So there were all these things that we were thinking about in terms of protections for folks.

So thank you for the amendments that you brought to Councilmember Saka.

And thank you Councilmember Rank for your willingness to bring an amendment to add that gender affirming care piece.

And of course I support the ability to to do the pause and align with the CCTV piece.

There's some other pieces in this draft that seem outside of that, so I still need to look at all of this, but I do appreciate you bringing the 60-day pause to align with our CCTV.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thank you.

Not to jinx anything but knock on wood, we have been using ALPR since the initial piece in November 2024 and even further afterwards.

And as noted previously, it's been instrumental as it relates to missing persons, amber and silver alerts and also suicide contact pieces, you know, reports as well.

So very key in terms of our public safety posture.

So with that said, I think we've reached-we'll come back to this in committee in two weeks.

We have reached-I just want to note for everybody, particularly my colleagues, that the Public Safety Committee is not even at the hour mark, Vice Chair, and I'm about to say we have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

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

Well, can I say one more thing, Chair?

Okay, Council Member Rivera.

Sorry, Chair, I'm just thinking...

It's only because we're so early.

Yeah, I'm thinking of these things as well.

I just want to point out that, you know, This administration came in and started attacking our vulnerable populations and at the time the gender affirming care piece was so prevalent in our minds because they'd cut funding to hospitals and such who were providing gender affirming care.

So at the time we also were thinking of folks that might be coming here to get gender affirming care and we wanted to make sure we provided those protections.

I just raise that as this constant, our doing things to protect our residents and protect information is really important and to protect our LGBTQIA plus community here in Seattle.

We've been working on this since the beginning of last year.

So anyway, I think it bears mentioning that we've been working all these pieces, as you like to say, since this administration came on and taking these, you know, taking these attacks on folks.

So anyway.

Yes, Council Member Rivera.

And for the record, I am certain Council Member Rivera is speaking about the federal administration.

Oh, yes, the federal administration.

I think people know that's who I meant, but thank you.

Just for the record.

And yes, Very important points, important for our trans community.

We've had them here at community and council and all above.

Okay, we are hearing no further business come before the- I started it, sorry.

We did?

It's only because it's 1022, vice chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Appreciate you.

I just wanted to follow up.

I appreciate your comments earlier during the Chair's remarks.

As Chair of our Safety, Transportation, Engineering, Project, Sports and Experiences Committee steps, I wanted to kind of chime in from my perspective.

I personally was not aware of the Sound Transit's plans to, you know, their current engineering initiative that would directly impact our emergency management operations, fire and the like.

And I do know that change is hard.

with any transit expansion major projects.

And we're gonna actually talk about the impact of sound transit on some specific small businesses, on our small business community and the steps committee in a later date.

Change is hard.

But I am confident, having met many, people within our fire, within the emergency management team, within the mayor's office.

There are some very smart, competent, capable people ready to put alternative plans in place and relocate to...

I'm confident that our ability as a city to you know, manage this.

All those challenges notwithstanding, we're gonna be okay.

I am also confident, well, I believe Sound Transit will work with us to navigate these changes.

I 100% support your broader call for chair for transparency.

We need more transparency.

We also need, I think Sound Transit can do better sometimes with change management.

and more transparency, but I am confident that we will be okay in the end and none of our, there will be no material adverse impacts to our ability as a city to prepare for emergencies, things like that.

And I will, my commitment to you as chair of that committee, we're looking forward to working with you to navigate and manage potential impacts because the broader goal of transparency is a shared one.

So, thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

And hearing no further business come before the committee, we are adjourned.

Too late.

Thank you.