Public Safety Committee Meeting 4/29/2025

Okay, good morning.

The public safety meeting will come to order.

It is 9.40 a.m.

April 29th, 2025. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

There are four members present.

Thank you.

Council Member Hollingsworth is en route.

Always welcome, Council Member Rink.

And I believe Council Member Rivera may be joining in.

We'll keep an eye.

Let's see if she does.

Always welcome non-committee members to our committee.

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

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Starting off with the chair's report, I wanted to start by saying nearly 15 months ago, we said to the men and women of the Seattle Police Department, give us one year.

Obviously, 15 months ago, we were having a lot of troubles across many fronts as it relates to public safety.

And one of the biggest challenges was SPD staffing levels.

It was a big challenge.

And so that was what we said nearly 15 months ago.

And what we've been doing as a committee and as a council, you know, is to, you know, have our strategic framework plan to identify our public safety challenges.

And one of them was SPD staffing.

And then we took action in different ways.

And tied to this, particularly given today's topics of today's meeting, is to ensure, as I said yesterday in a press conference, working with our accountability partners to ensure that we have constitutional policing.

And we've been doing this work, not just on the accountability partner side, but across the board as it relates to our strategic framework plan and to bringing on more police into our force.

Yesterday, I had a comment in the press statement that said, the Seattle Police Department's success is significant after the challenges we and so many other cities have faced with police recruitment.

As the Public Safety Committee Chair, police staffing and retention make up one of the most important pillars in our public safety approach.

After passing more than a dozen public safety bills last year, I am pleased to see that the impacts we as a city are having that can help make these residents feel safe.

Residents across our city.

And in my remarks at the press conference, I also noted the role of the city council.

Yes, the executive, the mayor, chief of police have their role, but we have our role too.

And it's not just regarding police hiring, but more broadly and creating an environment that is supportive while maintaining accountability in our constitutional policing approach.

That's what I said.

It's about this council showing up at roll call, at community meetings, and on the street, and engaging with communities across our city to address the public safety challenges that we have.

that we face.

I also note it's about passing legislation that can assist the mayor, Chief Barnes, and the entire public safety system to help set up our city for success.

One of the goals for me as a chair of this committee is to help set up the entities that are within our public safety system for success as opposed to failure.

I think oftentimes we've not done a very good job in terms of helping the organizations that we have oversight response.

Council President for the public safety bills that came out of the committee that she chairs, Governance and Accountability, and also Councilmember Hollingsworth, because there's a few small technology bills that came through her committee.

So this has not just been the Public Safety Committee, it's been a team effort across committees and this council.

And it shows that we understand that while we're not in the chain of command of the Seattle Police Department, that we too have our leadership responsibilities.

And these leadership responsibilities also pertain to oversight.

And I think that's a great segue to what today's meeting is because part of the oversight is working with our accountability partners and their oversight responsibilities to ensure that we are doing better, smarter for our city.

So with my chair comment complete, we'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

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

Claire, how many speakers do you have signed up for today?

Currently we have three in-person speakers and one remote speaker.

Okay, each speaker will have two minutes and we'll start with the in-person speakers.

Please, can you first read the public comment instructions?

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, and their comment within the 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 in-person speaker is Agnes Govern.

to be followed by Amy Summers and Howard Gale.

Good morning.

I'm Amy Summers, and this is Agnes Govern.

We're with a community group called Proactive Persistent People for Progress, and we're with this committee that works on the criminal legal system.

And both of us will present questions today respecting what will happen once the consent decree ends.

And I would like to thank this committee and Council Member Kettle for the commitment to exerting leadership and especially your comments about how imperative it is to set up organizations for success when it comes to constitutional policing.

So if we look at the history of other jurisdictions that have exited from consent decrees, it's not really a very optimistic picture.

And with the kind of spirit of setting people up for success, I think we have a chance to do something different here.

In our inquiries to date of the executive branch, the council, and the oversight agencies, we are not confident that to date there is coordinated planning going on for who is going to take over the roles of ensuring that we continue to have an operative system for oversight with policing.

So we would love to hear from the council about what planning is taking place now prior to the end of the consent decree that will outline the roles and responsibilities in sustaining commitments made during the period of federal oversight.

And second, we're surprised that the legislation that was passed eight years ago by the council and signed into law by the mayor has not been enacted into the Seattle Municipal Code, unlike all other legislation that has been passed, and I'm referring to the 2017 Accountability Ordinance, Ordinance 125315. And our question is when that is going to finally be included into the municipal code so that the public, city, staff, and media can be aware of the accountability requirements, which ones have been enacted and which remain to be enacted eight years after that ordinance's passage.

And with that, I will yield to Agnes the government.

Thank you, Chair Kettle and committee members.

Following the line of police accountability in item three, when the council approved and the mayor signed a contract with SPOG earlier this year that didn't include significant accountability requirements, statements were made by both the mayor and the council that another contract would be negotiated soon that would address this issue.

The question is, where do these negotiations currently stand in terms of negotiations when might the public see the results of these negotiations, which would allow us to see what public accountability provisions have been negotiated with SPOC.

In 2020, an agreement between a previous public safety chair and a previous mayor, the roles of the OIG, the OPA, and CPC, as well as council staff, were expanded in terms of their participation in CBA negotiations.

It also promised, and I quote, that once the contract negotiations are complete and contracts are ratified by the union, by union members and the city council, the accountability partners and the city council representative will provide input into the first public report that will be issued by the labor relations director.

Our question is, has this report been issued?

And if not, .

Thank you.

Next up, Howard Gale.

Morning.

I have much to say, especially given the failure of the CPC to hold consent decree mandated yearly town halls to hear from the community and my inability to provide over 80 minutes worth of public comment over the last two years because the CPC is one of the only Seattle commissions that prohibit public comment.

The first slide in today's CPC presentation absurdly claims that they are, quote, uplifting community voice and police accountability, yet a top-line conclusion from a June 22 report commissioned by the CPC at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, that would be this report here, says, quote, the CPC's engagement of the public is a subject of much criticism regarding who it engages and how.

CPC's community engagement to date is lacking depth.

CPC is viewed as uninvolved and disconnected from the community, only engaging certain voices they agree with and transactional in their engagement.

The CPC has gone from excluding the community it is supposed to represent to being actually hostile and attacking the community as they did back in 2023 when they actually attacked a person in the community whose brother was shot and killed by Seattle police.

They actually verbally attacked that person and demeaned them.

In January of this year, two of six jurors in the King County Inquest found that SPD officer Jared Keller's use of deadly force in the 2018 killing of Ayosea Faltogo was not legally justifiable and was in fact criminal.

Based on the jurors' comments at that trial, at least five and possibly all six jurors found that either Officer Keller, SBD Policies, and all the officers on scene's actions caused the unnecessary killing of Fala Togo.

Yet our much celebrated police accountability system across all entities found the killing to be, quote, lawful and proper, unquote.

How is it possible that our police accountability system could not recognize a failing clearly recognized by jurors?

And finally, last month, the SPD killed a 19th person in a period of less than 14 years who was brandishing an edged weapon or had no weapon at all in their hands when killed.

14 of these people were clearly experiencing a severe mental health crisis, and yet every one of these was deemed lawful and proper, and the CPC was silent in every one of those cases.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The first remote speaker is Valerie Schlourette.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

Hello, Valerie Schlourette, district two.

Anyone who cares should look critically at our system and ask if it really offers what communities and taxpayers want in police accountability.

To the contrary, recent articles published at hardpress-info.com give concrete examples of how behind a facade of bureaucratic process spreads what critics call copaganda, inaccurate talking points that serve to increase the political power of the police at the expense of public information and understanding.

An article there, Federal Monitor had personal contract with Seattle police executives, used public records requests to reveal what I would describe as cronyism and graft, rather than the objective and fair monitoring that Seattleites were promised and have a right to expect After all, we paid for the very expensive and lengthy reform process under the consent decree.

Please spend a few minutes reading that article and another entitled Little Financial Oversight of Seattle Police Federal Monitor, which found no normal tax reporting procedures for over $635,000 in consultancy fees paid by the city.

It's demoralizing to see this from the federal monitor, just as over the years it has been disappointing to see the lack of objectivity, rigor, transparency, and true public engagement from our accountability partners, the OIG, OPA, and CPC.

As Seattle moves toward exiting the consent decree, council could best serve the people of the city by not repeating glossy talking points, not accepting superficial declarations of reform victory, and by actually engaging critically in what is needed to achieve the enormous changes we need and still have not achieved in policing.

Thank you.

And our last remote speaker is David Haynes.

All right, thank you, David Ames.

Make no mistake, Seattle's 2012 police reform is the main reason why American cities have imploded, because it's treasonous and unconstitutional police reform that still exempts repeat offenders connected to the underworld and prioritizes them for housing and services first.

Why is it that the Community Police Commission only seems to over dramatically act like the biggest threat to the community is the actual police department?

Where is the Community Police Commission appointed representatives who are proactive and constructively criticizing the police to help them improve and perfect their noble crime-fighting abilities?

I think if you go back for the last 12 years, when the George Soros sponsor Lisa Dugard used her position to browbeat and convince the cops that the only way the CPC would ever sign off on approving the reform is by demanding the cops sabotage themselves and take away certain crime-fighting tools that help them target actual criminals.

The CPC would ask, how the police would go about profiling a criminal.

And then they say, you can't do this and you can't do that anymore, or we're not going to agree to anything.

I know council says that the community police commission doesn't have a vote, but their influence is shaking down the police who capitulated to appease them was highly successful.

Now the real sabotage of police reform was Jenny Durkin as the U S attorney and the mayor and the pedophile mayor, Ed Murray, and believe it or not, Bruce Harrell, the ex council member, and his deputy mayor, ex-Council Member Tim Burgess, who literally voted to exempt drug pushers from jail.

And council hasn't fixed that law, yet you keep virtue signaling and messaging and giving perceptions and deceptions of public safety.

Council Member Kettle, during your upcoming walk through 2nd and Bell Street, just know that the Latino cartel underworld attempts to control the waterfront up to and beyond 2nd Avenue.

and the black drug pushing underworld continues to control Third Avenue from Cedar all the way down to Pioneer Square, which has escalated violence, imploded society, and ruined the economy.

Yet you all still refuse to shut down the drug pushers because you're afraid maybe that the devil's advocates will backlash about wanting to actually improve the community and shut down these evil predators.

Thank you.

There are no additional registered speakers.

Thank you.

The public comment has expired.

We will now proceed to our items of business.

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

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

Will the clerk please read item one into the record.

Appointment 3129 appointment of Ken Nesimbi as a member community police commission for a term to December 31, 2026. Thank you.

And I also wanted to note that council member Hollingsworth is here.

So thank you.

Welcome.

All right, with the CPC team, Mr. Nazambi, please join us at the table.

And Director Amen, would you do the introductions?

And over to you.

This is my second time getting to greet you in the Doma language of Nigeria.

It's good to see all of you this morning.

We are here from the Community Police Commission.

We are very, very excited.

This agenda has a lot of items that are deeply important and personal to us.

But one of our greatest joys is the opportunity to offer a commissioner for appointment.

And in this case, Mr. Ken Insimbi is actually a council appointee, and so we appreciate the council chair for this appointment.

One of the many things that we really value in commissioners is a deep sense of commitment to community.

And Mr. Insimbi brings that.

He brings over 25 years of very deep-rooted, youth advocacy, racial equity, and social justice advocacy with many different diverse communities, including immigrants and refugees.

He is trilingual, speaking English, Swahili, and Luganda.

And so the opportunity to really represent many of the diverse communities that are a part of Seattle is a huge gain for the commission.

He also works for King County, works for the King County Executive Office, working on programs formerly known as Zero Youth Detention, but dealing with diversion programs and alternatives to youth detention.

And so we were really looking forward to just the opportunity to be able to work with him on this commission.

As you know, as I presented in February, the commission conducted a gap analysis that looked at ensuring that in accordance with the accountability ordinance that we are appointing commissioners that represent all of the different areas of Seattle that should be represented on the commission.

And so in accordance with that gap analysis, we've also fined Mr. Insimbi to bring many of the skills that address the areas of that gap analysis.

I'm going to turn it over to two of our co-chairs to also speak a little bit more to this.

And then, of course, I'd love for Mr. and Simby to have a chance to introduce himself directly to you.

So I'll pass it to co-chair West next.

Today, we had the opportunity to do an interview with Ken and just to hear his passion and his love for the community.

I've had multiple thoughts of what our team needs and Ken meets a lot of that.

A clear direction of where the CPC wants to go and everything that Ken was talking about and his passion, his experience, his lived experience at that was just really groundbreaking in what we want to actually do and steer the direction of the CPC.

So I am extremely excited for him to be appointed here, given the opportunity to help out the CPC go where he needs to go in the future.

Good afternoon.

Joel Merkel, co-chair of the Seattle Community Police Commission.

I've been a co-chair since about 2022. So I've seen a lot of commissioners come and go, a lot of new commissioners appointed, and I've seen a lot of the arc of the CPC over the last few years.

And I'm very excited today for...

this nomination because one of the most important assets of the CPC is our commissioners and especially their connection to community and their lived experience and when we have been interviewing candidates recently.

You know, this one just jumped out in terms of all of those things that, you know, he's offering, particularly the lived experience, the deep roots of the community.

And I'm particularly interested in the work that he's done on zero youth detention and all of the connection he's had in the community with criminal workers.

justice-affected youth.

So I'm grateful that the council is putting his name forward and nominating him, and I'm thrilled to be able to work with him moving forward as a commissioner.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, now I guess the floor is yours.

Please introduce yourself and your background and what you're looking to achieve.

Thank you, Chair.

I also want to say thank you to the council members for having me, and I need to take the three of you everywhere with me because those are very generous words.

to what I do.

My name is Ken Simby.

I'm a local here in Seattle.

I'm coming in from Kenya.

And I'm indeed very passionate about community because the reason I'm sitting in front of you here today in this very position is because of what community has done for me.

A single mom when an African boy landed in SeaTac in 2001, with his siblings.

We did not know that you guys had snow here, because I'm not used to that weather.

Touched down, and when we got here, got to experience what the American dream looks like.

Part of that, 6'3", dreadlocks, doesn't get me that far, is what I came to find out because of just my look. They get to know me, and they know the heart, but if you see me, unfortunately, That brings up a lot of things for people. And when you kept hearing the commissioners refer to lived experience, that's my story when it comes to being stopped, being put on gunpoint, and then being harassed. And then they find out who you work with. They find out who you are. They find out you don't have a single ticket on your record. And then... but over and over having to go through that, and then working with the young men and women that we serve, whether be it in juvenile detention or just homeless youth and young adults that I also worked with for around six years, getting to see the anxiety that happens when the police walks in the room, whether it could be a small disturbance or whatever the case might be, led me into this. I was excited when this opportunity came up because I've seen police, community policing and working closely with community work extremely well. And that is my vision and that's my goal and that's to continue the great work that's being done on the commission. I think we're stronger together than divided. And being able to speak into that, being able to work onto that and being able to advocate in the several communities that I work with. Currently, the biggest one is the immigrant population that's also facing some tension. But then being able to come through and share the experience, being able to work with all the sides in unison to create a safe and thriving community is what I desire. It's what has gotten me to where I'm at, and it's what I've seen help successful young people, and just changing the narrative of what that would look like. So I'm not going to go any further without taking time, but Council Member Kettle, thank you for the invitation, and I will make the whole group proud because I'm excited to connect my community connections and build those bridges that I've been building this past time since landing in the U.S. Thank you.

I always turn to my Vice Chair, Council Member Vice Chair Saka, to start off with any questions or comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you.

How do you pronounce your last name?

Nsimbi.

Nsimbi, Mr. Nsimbi.

Thank you very much for being here today.

I applaud and commend your dedication and commitment to serve your community, our community, and the city of Seattle.

This is tough work.

And it's tremendously impactful work as well.

And so I applaud your service and your sacrifice.

You'll learn.

Service requires sacrifice.

And so I just want to say thank you.

And I appreciate your immigrant story.

That's the American story.

Two, am a proud son of a Nigerian immigrant.

So I guess that makes me first generation.

And I understand firsthand the struggle and sort of forced assimilation sometimes and kind of what that looks like.

So in any event, I appreciate the depth and breadth of your professional experiences, your personal experiences, community experiences, and importantly, lived experiences.

And I think the commission would be well served with your leadership on this body, because your perspective matters with the direct lived experiences.

So I'll stop there.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

Council President.

Thank you for stepping up.

And I am very interested in the professional experience that you bring because I'm very concerned about our youth and how well they're being served by the programs that we have to divert from violence and interrupt the school to prison pipeline.

So I think this is an area that's extremely important to focus on.

I noticed from your resume that you manage a, or you did, manage a contract budget of $2.4 million through day-to-day supervision and monitoring of seven youth provider partners and alignment issues across the 15 King County housing sites.

That's a lot.

And I don't know very much about the King County Housing Authority.

I know more about the Seattle Housing Authority.

So I'm not sure what kinds of programs they offer.

We at the City of Seattle have a sort of a line item in the Human Services Department, which is called Community Safety Initiative.

And that's where these diversion programs live.

And so I'm wondering if you, have ever coordinated with the contract providers that we work with, or what opportunities are there for you to, I'm not meaning to say what I want you to be doing, but to form a bridge between your knowledge of the King County Housing Authority programs and what Seattle is engaged in.

That's a great question, Council Member Nelson.

Fortunately, because of my role at King County Housing, I was offered a position at King County.

If you've seen the resume, the next one on that was the contract manager to prison pipeline.

So with that was a bigger budget, and it also expanded my network with providers.

And with that one, we were able to directly fund 12 organizations, five of which did diversion programs.

So that's community passageways.

Gem in Kent.

So I have all those currently right now in relationship to be able to bring those with me onto this commission.

So I did that for two and a half years before they pulled me into the executive office.

So I'm very closely knit.

And then on this team called the Care Enclosure Team, we also partner with very similar organizations they all cross lines and we're very strongly partnered with them in being able to create healing circles in down in detention.

I think we have like 65 young people in there this morning, because I get a report as to how many, so we're able to sit down with them in a biweekly cadence and ask them what do they want to see, like what type of what type of support they need to see for them not to be coming back to juvenile detention.

So these are relationships and providers that we have closely knit, and I'm very fortunate to have jumped into those relationships through my current work with King County.

Excellent.

That's exactly the kind of response I was hoping for because I don't want the work in the region, no matter what jurisdiction it is paying them, to be siloed.

Absolutely.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to thank you for being here and your commitment and your service.

Hopefully I say this right, Jambo.

Yes.

Okay, good.

I had a player I coached who was from Mombasa, Kenya.

She was one of the best rebounders I ever coached, Brenda Adiambo.

She was phenomenal.

So anyways, just wanted to thank you for your service and your commitment.

to this work.

I think it's incredibly important that you have that youth component piece as well as we're talking about the prevention and intervention stuff that we need here in Seattle.

So just wanna thank you for your commitment and your service.

I'm looking forward to working with you and the commission.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

I see that you're bilingual too.

Just one or two words.

Any other council members?

Okay, I'm not seeing anything on my screen here and so, As chair, I usually go last.

Any questions from my colleagues that may jump in?

But three things that I'm noting and, you know, reviewing your resume and your background and then your comments today and then comments that I got from my staff, thank you for working with my team as part of this nomination process.

First is the immigration.

You talked about landing.

and seeing snow.

Like Councilmember Saka, I am too a first generation American.

Very different in one way, my parents are from England, but at the same time there's a lot of similarities too.

But they landed in, well first JFK, but then Western New York, so the amount of snow was much higher.

But I've learned from that.

I've learned from having immigrant parents and seeing other immigrant families.

And I know the drive that comes from that, the drive of achieving the American dream.

I've seen it here with contractors and small business owners who are really working hard to make a difference.

So I identify and I recognize that commonality.

And I see it in your resume.

The first question I had is the breadth of experience.

The first thing I see is the Ballard Boys and Girls Club where my daughter plays basketball in a little league there.

But then I see it crosses all over.

Can you speak to being in different parts of King County but also Seattle?

And how does that inform your position?

How does that help you in terms of coming into this position?

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

I will touch on the Ballard Boys and Girls Club.

I was also a coach there for three years.

That was actually my first job in the United States, so it holds a special place in my heart.

You mentioned, so there's Ballard, there's some Bellevue, Takuila area, working with the immigrants, Seattle, which I've spent a lot of my time, because when I was working for the New Horizons Youth and Young Adult Homeless Shelter on Third Avenue, that's where I spent a lot of seven years going there.

So being able to, and then when I was working for King County, Housing Authority, the 15 sites that I mentioned were spread all the way from Shoreline down to Auburn.

So you see me driving in the little county car across like any given day throughout doing that.

The importance of that was getting to see just the different need based on different areas.

But mainly in Seattle, I've seen that young people, even from outside, from whether it's the South and the North, congregate.

From the data that I'm seeing, especially working with the juvenile detention, whether you're coming into South Center, whether you're coming into downtown for whatever activities, a lot of the things happen here locally.

So being able to see different jurisdictions, different behaviors in young people, different encountering different chiefs and deputy chiefs that I work with closely, especially the diversion program that I'm proud of, the one in Sound Center Mall, where if a young person is caught taking something to make them avoid having a record, One of my programs, through Stopping School to Prison Pipeline, contracted a provider there, Glova Empowerment Mentorship, where the officer takes them to the nonprofit and they're able to work off volunteer hours, write an apology to the store.

and not get their name on the record that young.

Because we see once the record starts building, that just goes downhill.

Similarly, being an advocate to the homeless youth and young adults downtown shelter at New Horizons, we're able to be the the bridge between them and the law enforcement, being able to speak on their behalf and then also have their voice heard when comfortable and when appropriate.

So touching in these different areas gave me the skill and the ability to be able to know how to navigate and to build relationships with several different individuals and both in the police and then also community-wise and then the leaders surrounding in order to come together at a table.

And that goes far because when you're advocating for a young person, when I show up and I'm able, I have a relationship with a chief or deputy chief, that goes differently because they believe me, they should believe the young person, but they see me and hear my advocacy for the young person and also just people in general because these are young adults.

So having that background has helped me through relationship building and being able to bridge gaps that are much needed.

Excellent.

Thank you for that.

The last part is, and I'll just make a statement, is I'm really interested in community safety.

There's three pieces for this year that I'm looking to do with the committee.

One is addressing ordinances and the like.

That's on today's agenda later.

The other piece is a functional criminal justice system, because we do have our problems, which plays into other issues, like I said in my chair's comment, like recruitment and retention of officers, for example.

But the third one is community safety, which is in a way, it's another level of alternative response.

We tend to focus a lot on the care department and Health One and 99 and the fire or CSOs and the SPD.

But we also need to be looking at this other version of alternative response, which we call community safety.

So we'll actually have an upcoming meeting.

So part of me would like to invite you to that meeting just to sit there because I would be interested in your thoughts of the presentation because it's that important.

So thank you for coming today and bringing your expertise and your experience.

With that, I would like to now, pending any other questions, move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointment 3129. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

We've already had our comments.

Any additional last seconds?

I don't see any, hearing none, seeing none.

Will the clerk please call the roll and recommendation to confirm the appointment.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Bersaca.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

There are five in favor and none opposed.

Okay, great.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

The committee recommends confirmation of appointment 3129, Mr. Nimsimbi.

Hopefully I said that right the first time.

Council member Saka will keep me on that.

Or actually our bilingual council member here, council member Hollingsworth will do that.

So the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the May 6th city council, the full council meeting.

So again, thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

All right.

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

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Appointment 3-1-2-8, appointment of E.C.

Ame to Executive Director of the Seattle Community Police Commission.

Thank you for staying with us, Director Ame.

We might have to get co-chair Merkel back up here.

Would you like him?

No, I think you can handle it yourself.

Thank you very much.

I will do as I'm instructed from the clerks, I will move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointment 3128. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

Comments, first starting with you, Director Amy.

I'll start with culture in terms of introduction.

So again, my name is Isi Amei, Interim Executive Director of the Seattle Community Police Commission.

The culture is really at the root of my story.

I am the daughter of two Nigerian immigrants.

They came to the US as international students to the University of Washington.

And during that time, it was even harder than it is now to make that journey from a small village in Benway State, Nigeria, all the way to this big university.

And the kind of ethic that they instilled in me is the reason that I am sitting up here today.

My father came here to get two engineering degrees from the University of Washington, aeronautical engineering and industrial engineering.

And during that time that he was studying as a student, we were still in Nigeria.

He drove a cab from 6 PM to 6 AM and then attended classes during the day to make sure that his family could make it here and be a part of this opportunity.

And even though we tragically lost him in 2022, he would be so proud to see this moment right now.

And let's face it, he knew it was coming.

This is exactly what he built me up for.

So I say that to say that my culture And that story of immigration and coming here for opportunity, but also coming here to deeply invest in communities so that everybody can enjoy that same opportunity, that is my passion, and that's what drives me.

Professionally, I'm an attorney.

I've spent almost a decade of my career in Olympia in state government.

three or four different state agencies.

But I started with DSHS.

I started with the Department of Social and Health Services.

I ran the statewide program on racial disproportionality.

And that focused on the child welfare system and its pipeline to the juvenile justice system, because there are some significant crossover populations.

I moved on and became the chief legal officer for the Department of Commerce and had an opportunity to really think about all of the different ways in which government impacts the many systems that the communities experience and interact with.

Part of the journey for me coming from being an attorney and all the different paths that you can go on that way, you know, the direct representation path, but really what led me to government was the opportunity to look at systems.

It's not just, you know, this case is closed and you move on to the next one, but it's really looking deeper at what is driving those cases in the first place.

And so I'm about systems change.

I'm also about anti-racist and pro-equity.

principles embedded in government.

That is what our communities deserve.

Communities have been historically disenfranchised, particularly black and brown communities, immigrant and refugee communities, many other marginalized communities have been disenfranchised from the very services that government should be bestowing upon them.

And so for that reason, those anti-racist principles.

That means making sure that community has a front seat at the table.

Equity principles say that those that are most impacted by the decision-making of government should have a voice in it.

They often have the best solutions.

If you're most impacted by policing, you're also the person who has the best solutions about what we need to do in terms of policing.

And that's really the CPC's mission.

And so I'm really excited to be here today.

It's my second time with the city of Seattle.

The first time I served as the deputy director of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, it was 2020. For about two weeks, we attended meetings about something called coronavirus, and we didn't exactly know what that was.

And within two weeks, we were focused on sending our entire workforce home.

And then, as the civil rights office in Seattle, we had to quickly pivot to respond to what the nation called its racial reckoning around police brutality and racism, but was really something that communities had been knowing and experiencing for a long time before that.

I moved then to King County.

I spent time as the deputy director of King County's Office of Equity, Racial, and Social Justice, and was a part of making sure that that office was not just a functional office in King County, but actually then was codified into the county code as a permanent entity.

Here at the CPC, one of my focuses has been building a highly functional and healthy organizational culture.

The CPC, about six to eight months ago when I came on board, was in a state of deep transition.

We had an almost 100% turnover of its staff.

And now, the organization is highly functional, is healthy, is engaged, is passionate, is invested in community, is cross-functional, But I'll have a lot more time to talk about them, because I'll be up here again in a moment for this presentation.

So let me get back to me.

I'll just talk for a moment about a few different goals, and then I'll yield to any questions that you have.

Right now, as the interim executive director of the CPC, I've been focused on building relationships.

That means internal relationships across city government.

That means external relationships in communities.

And when we think about building a relationship in community and government, I think often our real challenge is to reach past the communities that already have access.

So the folks that are most impacted by policing in Seattle, quite frankly, have the hardest time making it to a 9.30 AM public meeting to share their commentary and how they're impacted.

They have a hard time making it to our 9 AM public meeting.

quite frankly, although we do allow for public comment.

It is a challenge to be able to reach to those that are furthest from justice.

And so that really is our mission right now, is how do we meet communities where they're at?

Another priority for me is right sizing our resources.

I think that money needs to follow the mission.

And right now in Seattle, we are in yet another budget deficit scenario.

And so I think that as I'll share with you more later in this presentation, I think that right now is a time where our investments are going to communicate our values.

And third, making sure that we center community in accountability as Seattle looks at the possibility of a post-consent decree future.

What does it look like to make sure that our accountability system is strong enough to stand on its own without oversight?

And that means ensuring that community continues to have a voice at the table.

And so those are some of my priorities.

I'll stop here and yield to any questions that you have.

Thank you very much for having me.

Thank you, Director.

I appreciate your comments.

And I think most of us have interacted with you in many ways.

Obviously, I've had many meetings with you in my office.

But I will shift to my vice chair, Vice Chair Saka.

Any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, Director, for stepping up in your willingness to serve anew in a more formalized approval capacity.

And thank you for sharing more about your own sort of background and journey, your immigrant experience, very important.

Again, that's the American story.

And I'm glad you understand who you are, where you come from, because maintaining that as your focus and as your North Star, it'll help tune out.

We'll help you focus on what really matters most.

Because there's always a lot going on.

And you have to navigate a lot of divergent views and opinions even.

And you have to listen to them all.

But saying principled and true to your North Star, whatever that is, is very important.

So thank you for your willingness to serve.

Yes, absolutely.

Your late father would be tremendously proud of you and your accomplishments and your achievements and even being here today.

My father, again, is a Nigerian immigrant, so I'm first-generation American.

I think that's what that makes me.

I don't know.

Yes, you are.

But in any event...

And he's unfortunately in somewhat ailing health himself as of late.

But I had a chance to pick his brain and better understand how he came from Nigeria, ultimately, to the United States.

And it's just an excellent story.

Long story short, he had a one-way ticket to the United States on a student visa in Lagos, ended up in New York.

And the first person, his primary point of contact, he was going to stay with to go to school, apparently no longer lived there.

And so knocking on the door, the person didn't even live there anymore.

So his backup was in Minneapolis.

So he bought a one-way ticket from New York City to Minneapolis and didn't even have an exact address.

He just had a name of his sort of backup plan.

And he got in a cab in Minneapolis-St.

Paul Airport, and the cab driver's like, where do you want to go?

He's like, I want to meet my friend.

Here's his name.

And he's like, I don't know who that is, but I do know in Minneapolis there's this 15-story apartment building where a lot of African immigrants live.

Took him there.

Lo and behold, that was the place where his backup ended up living.

And so he stayed with them, worked, went to school, where he later met my late mother, in any event.

The immigrant experience is real, it's important, and it's an important part of our collective identity, not just your own individually, not just your own as part of our broader Nigerian community, not just yours as part of our African community, or the broader descendants descendants of African or people of African descent.

So yes, your late father would be tremendously proud of you and thank you for your willingness to serve.

I'd love to learn more about kind of some of your goals for the organization and specifically what you would hope to accomplish in the near term, let's say six months to a year, if confirmed to this appointment, what would you hope to accomplish in the next six months to a year, so kind of shorter term, and then longer term, let's say three to five years?

What would you specifically hope to accomplish?

Thank you for your question and thank you for your story as well.

It's shocking how many similarities there are about just as a practical aspect of the immigration journey.

My father almost didn't make it to Seattle because he was pronouncing it as CETL at the airport.

So anyway, thank you for your question about the short and long-term priorities for the organization.

You're forcing me to give a lot of spoilers about the presentation that's coming up a little later.

I'm going to tell you, but it's good stuff.

So I'll share it now and I'll share it later as well.

We're focusing on a plan for expanding our influence during the 2026 legislative session because of the state of transition that see ability to do the robust legislative advocacy that we would like to as a highly functioning organization wasn't there.

In spite of that, we were still able to do a tremendous amount during this state legislative session.

Our policy team reviewed 37 different bills relating to public safety and the criminal justice system because our charge is very broad under the ordinance.

So we'd like to continue to build out what that looks like in the 2026 session.

We also are wanting to make sure, I was referring earlier to the right sizing of resources and making sure that we're able to fulfill our obligations under the accountability ordinance.

You know, in that 86 page accountability ordinance, CPC has over 30 different responsibilities.

And we are the smallest of the accountability partners and not by a little bit.

We are the smallest by quite a bit.

And so making sure that we have sustainable systems to be able to meet those obligations, looking at how do our partnerships with the other accountability partners ensure that we can work together as we should in order to meet those obligations.

And so looking at the overlap between our responsibilities and the responsibilities of OIG, OPA and even SPD as accountability partners and seeing how can we share resources to make sure that all of these obligations are met together.

One example in addition to that is that, you know, CPC, our special sauce is really our community engagement.

That is what we do.

And the community engagement work that CPC does pays dividends for the entire accountability system.

When we're out there, we're able to bring feedback to SPD, to OIG, to OPA, to all of the organizations.

And so there's a way in which our team can meet needs that other organizations may need our support in doing and doing better.

And there are ways that they can also share their resources with us in order to meet those as well.

We want to make sure that our website is maintained in terms of the policy work that we're required to maintain.

and in some cases make sure it's publicly accessible and accurate.

And again, the accuracy of a lot of that data and information as on our website relies on the strong partnerships, the work with our partnerships to validate what it is that we're obligated to report under the ordinance.

We also want to make sure that we are developing both materials but also policy recommendations that are responsive to the community concerns and needs that they have prioritized to us.

So that is, in essence, building an effective community engagement feedback loop between our community engagement team and our policy team, and then make sure that when all of that happens, that we're also telling the story and making sure that we are creating not just an opportunity to be able to gain insight from the community, but also make sure that that's amplified in government as part of our role.

And lastly, I would say that we're focused on a continued review of public safety policies.

We have a number of them that have to the forefront as the crowd management ordinance has shifted off our plate and now gone into effect.

But when it came to the crowd management ordinance, CPC influenced almost every amendment that became part of that past legislation.

And we're very proud of that.

And so now looking to move to other policy review, For instance, the legislation being introduced today, the Chief of Police Investigation Ordinance, you know, which does mention CPC, although the roles are largely for OPA and OIG defined in that ordinance, but making sure that we're setting up a system in which we can have effective public safety policy review affecting bills of importance to us.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Vice Chair, Council President.

So I always have to remind myself how unique the CPC is as an independent body.

And the appointment of the, or confirmation, the appointment of the director is at the discretion of the commissioners.

And we serve as a sort of a I don't want to say check the box sort of function, but your appointment represents the collective will of the commission, and it requires confirmation for the first term.

term by the Commission so that really does enable a level of independence of you and the body and so I just always like to think of our action today as a demonstration of trust and respect for the CPC itself and also the fact that of your your authority and the skills that they see in you to put before us in this really important work.

So I always just like to say that I recognize that.

So when you just mentioned something that I was interested in because continuing on this frame of independence, let's see.

well, it says, well, chapter 329-330, it says, CPC is a self-governing and functionally independent.

CPC may adopt bylaws to govern its own activities.

And then it goes on to talk about what the executive director can do.

And when it comes to policy, You really do weigh in on the, that is your role, is to be a bridge between the community and policy makers at the city.

Let me see if I can find this.

It's 300C.

CPC shall review and provide input to OPA, OIG, SPD, and other city departments and offices, including the mayor, city council, and city attorney on the police accountability system, police services, and SPD policies and practices.

of significance to the public consistent with the purposes of this chapter.

So you will not be at the table as we're discussing the draft legislation at the end of this meeting, but I just wanted to ask if you have been engaged or has CPC been engaged in providing feedback on that legislation or in crafting it up to its point?

Okay, let me say this carefully.

The CPC has had an opportunity to review the legislation.

I think that one of the themes that is a both a challenge and a necessary part of our operation is that we require significantly longer to do our job right.

And the reason is that when we provide commentary on legislation, when we're providing our policy review and analysis, it is not on our own behalf.

It's not what EC thinks about the legislation or what Taryn thinks or what Danny thinks or Misuma, my policy team.

It's about what does the community think and us making sure that we're amplifying that voice.

And so CPC's review process for legislation requires time for us to be able to do the necessary community engagement.

And that usually is a three-part process.

It's really hard to go to the community, especially folks that are operating in survival mode, those folks that I was mentioning earlier that are farthest from justice that are most impacted by policing, you cannot go to them with a complex piece of legislation and say, well, what do you think about this?

And do you see this subsection here?

And here's the requirements.

And here's the process as it is right now.

And here's what this legislation would do differently.

So there's a necessary piece of public education that involves making that accessible, right, using those culturally competent and culturally responsive communication terms to make sure that we are building understanding around what does this mean and how does this impact communities?

So that's the first part.

We hear how it affects them in a practical way and we take that information and then we do the third part, which is amplify that and make sure that we are representing that, including that in the legislation as we provide that.

I can't say that the timeline provided for CPC's review of that legislation allowed us to do that full process as we'd like to.

And so there are times that we are doing the best that we can under the circumstances.

I think it's also one of the reasons why, as you saw Mr. Insimbi's appointment today, that's one of the reasons that our commissioners are so specifically chosen as folks that represent community, as folks that they themselves have been deeply impacted by policing, because often it is them that we are going to when we lack time to be able to go to broader communities and collect the type of developed input that we'd like to.

So did the timeline allow us to do what CPC would call the gold standard of community engagement and review?

No, I can't tell you that that's the case.

Did we do our due diligence in working with our commissioners on our police practices group to take the legislation as we had it, to understand carefully what it meant, to staff them with our policy team's understanding and recommendations, and then to bring back something that is useful in moving forward with that legislation?

Yes, we did.

Excellent.

I thank you for that nuanced and thorough answer, and I want to make sure that you recognize that I did not ask that question to highlight any I'll just say it in more plain English.

I just want to make sure I have often tried to elevate the role of the CPC as a policy-making, influencing body.

And so I'm always, and I recognize the barriers that you have because you're supposed to go out and get input from community.

That's a big issue.

That's a big task.

And so I'm not trying to identify any fault or shortcoming in your process.

I'm just always wanting to make sure that your input is then whatever it may be and however you get it and however long it takes is factored into the legislation that we end up adopting.

Yes, I appreciate the question very much.

And that's how I took it.

And I think that part of that answer was also meant to share transparency of what we need in order to do our job well.

And part of it is what you just demonstrated, which is that we need the support of all of you on the dais to ask those kinds of questions about how we've been meaningfully included and to, in some cases, to help us to advocate for that inclusion and that it happened in a matter that's timely in order to do the work that we need to do.

So I appreciate that very much.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council President.

Any other questions?

Hearing?

Oh, Vice Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No, I just wanted to amplify and say kudos essentially to something I heard you say a moment ago about the scope of this work and sort of what it entails and doesn't entail.

Like, you don't go to communities with a 50-page doc and say, hey, interpret it like, is this okay to you?

No, there's a heavy education piece where you're essentially explaining the principles involved.

And then that's a critical first step.

And then ideally, you also tee up some options too and do the difficult work of like, okay, here are the principles involved, the education piece, but, Here are some options.

If you don't like this, here are the trade-offs.

Here are two or three options, and then kind of going from there.

But very, very difficult, important work, and it's not, you don't show up to any communities, and here's this piece of legislation, tell me what you think.

Counterproductive, doesn't recognize the work involved to curate the best output.

So in any event, just kudos to you for acknowledging that.

I know that's what you all do every day.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And if I may add that, you know, we also try to serve as a reservoir of community feedback and concerns.

So a lot of what we do is listen.

We're not always out in community presenting or bringing our own, you know, what do you think about this?

Sometimes we are just there to listen and to make the connections.

And things are brought to us, as I'll share a little bit later with you this morning, things are brought to us that we didn't even necessarily ask for.

And that's a reservoir.

You know, you can ask my community engagement team, Dorian, Mario, and Margitu, you could ask them, in the last month, what are the themes that you've heard from communities?

And they can roll it off like this for you.

And so oftentimes, that also puts us in the position to be able to say, as we see something coming, this is already what we've been hearing from communities around this issue.

And so it's both ways.

But you're right, there is a necessary public education piece when we're talking about a specific piece of legislation.

Thank you, Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair Kettle.

This is just a question actually for you today on process.

I'm mindful that we have a CPC presentation as well today, but mindful that I know we have a number of other presenters as well.

So would you prefer, from a standpoint of process, if we ask our questions of the CPC now, or do we still intend to have the presentation?

The presentation.

Okay, great.

I'll hold my questions with that.

And to that point, Council Member Moore?

I'll be brief.

I just wanted to say I really appreciate, though, the work that we did together on the less lethal weapons legislation.

I appreciate it.

I mean, it was a short timeline.

And to your point, it's often hard on things like that to really gather broad feedback from the community.

on that, on the nuance of it.

And yeah, it's a tough position that you're in.

So I do appreciate the work that we did together, the discussions, the various points of trying to find common ground.

And I just, to me, that's indicative of, you know, a strong leader, that you have that information, that willingness to be open to different questions and points of view and to try to find a place where we can best serve the community together.

So thank you for that.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

And thank you for all of your time during that process.

We really appreciate it.

Okay, thank you.

No questions from me.

I do appreciate the point about looking at systems and I will say that I really started being engaged with the CPC in September of 22. So I know where the organization has been and where it is now, which is a step forward, a couple steps, few steps, many steps.

Key though is to continue that forward movement.

So will the clerk please call the roll and recommendation to confirm the appointment?

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

There are five in favor and none opposed.

Okay, the committee recommends confirmation appointment 3128. The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the May 6 City Council meeting.

So thank you very much.

No need to go anywhere because we're gonna quickly go into to Council Member Rink's question to the third item business with the clerk please call read item three into the record.

Police accountability partners update.

Excellent, thank you.

Thank you, Director Amay, stay, unless you have a prearranged arrangement.

And we will have Inspector General Judge, Director, Acting Director Glenn, Acting Director Amay, and Mr. Maxey, Chief Operating Officer from Seattle Police Department, join us.

Okay, we will start with OIG and then OPA, but please go ahead and introduce yourself for the record, and then we'll turn over to OIG.

If everybody can introduce themselves for the record, and then we'll start with you, General Judge.

I'm Isi Ame, Interim Executive Director of the Community Police Commission.

Good morning, Lisa Judge, Inspector General for Public Safety.

Good morning, Alyssa Pettis-Morrison, Deputy Inspector General.

And good morning, Bonnie Glenn, Interim Director of Office of Police Accountability.

Good morning, Brian Maxey, Chief Operating Officer, Seattle Police Department.

Okay, thank you very much.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

I was going to say good morning to Council President, but she stepped away.

Members of the committee, thank you for giving us an opportunity this morning to come before you and give some updates on our work.

I just want to get us started, and then the Deputy Inspector General will be talking about a number of projects that we have ongoing with OIG, and then I'll wrap it up a little bit.

But I wanted to highlight We're just going to talk this morning about ongoing projects and some expected timelines for our work.

Our 2024 annual report was published this morning, so you all should be receiving a copy of that with a wrap-up of what we did last year.

Some highlights that I want to talk about a little bit today, because they have a high degree of community interest and implications for the nearing of the consent decree, I just wanna say we're gonna talk about crowd management and efforts that we've got ongoing at OIG and collaborative efforts with SPD on the crowd management front, particularly with FIFA planning and also with protest management.

We've got a big project going on with establishing the Real-Time Crime Center with SPD and enhanced collaboration with our partners and both internally and externally improving transparency of OIG.

So also just a little bit of a note on OIG's organization.

We have collapsed a couple of our teams, one of the compliance folks that are hard at work taking over monitoring duties, and our policy and research folks, so they can be a super group of statistical analysis, policy research, and analysis of SPD systems.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Alyssa Pettis Morrison.

Okay, so I will get started with the work of the compliance and policy team.

Their ongoing and recurring projects include this force review board observation, just continued observation and assessment of the SPD FRB.

We're completing an updated FRB memo that will be released in May.

And we find that the force review board continues to be an important internal critical review of the use of force.

We're also working on an equity assessment, which is reviewing current efforts SPD is undertaking for a more equitable workplace.

This includes, oh, sorry, thank you.

This includes reviewing current efforts SPD is undertaking current manuals and documents created by SPD to identify any barriers and potential areas of growth, change team meeting attendance, and then a review of the 30 by 30 efforts.

The OPA sworn civilian staffing assessment is required by ordinance.

We have published one report and one memo about the sworn civilian staffing and this year are identifying additional ways to complete the assessment for a more robust look into that.

This year it will include interviews with investigators to include their perspectives on the impact of the civilianized oversight model.

We also are continuing to review and identify any areas of improvements in SPD data analytics, which includes data provided to OIG as well as the accessibility to community of their data dashboards.

We also monitor bills that affect oversight and other project areas of interest for the office.

New projects include alternative response to crisis.

This comes out of our crisis assessment from 2024. We'll be taking a look into CARE to provide information and context to community and council regarding the goals and mission of CARE.

As mentioned by Inspector General Judge, we are working on crowd management.

We work with international expert Professor Clifford Stott.

He's actually in town right now for observations of the SPD response to the May Day protests on Thursday.

And he is also involved in helping SPD and the city of Seattle in preparing for the World Cup.

We also have a project involving officer-involved collision review process.

We'll provide an overview of SPD policies for investigation and review, exploratory analysis of data from collections reviewed by SPD CRB, and summarize best practices for collision reviews.

Oh, and then our SPD mapping project is to create an accessible map for people to kind of see the structure of SPD and how staffing is laid out.

Our audits team is working on a vehicular pursuits audit.

They're currently drafting the report.

It's expected mid-year.

We're looking at outcomes, arrests, collisions, terminations, and contributing factors.

Our extended leave usage prior to retirement is concluding the field work now.

We're expecting that quarter three.

There was a slight delay due to payroll system transitions, but we're assessing costs and incentives leading to a general practice of burning sick time prior to retirement.

We're also engaging in a peer review.

The Association of Local Government Auditors require a peer review performed every three years.

We passed our first one in 2022. We're also working on our annual surveillance usage reviews, which involves new technology, including the hostage negotiation throw phone and re-review of previous technologies.

We also have our biannual 1412. We issued one in February and another one is expected in quarter three.

We have an open recommendation to city council to update the ordinance to reflect modern day information sharing and values of the city.

If I could just jump in, that relates to the intelligence ordinance and SPD's collection, use and retention of intelligence information.

We're also working on the Controlled Substances Ordinance.

We've partnered with the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.

Our main focus is on how the threat of harm assessment is working in practice.

We are currently pending data access for the research team, and that's due in December of 2025. We've also been working on the Surveillance Pilot Program, partnering with the University of Pennsylvania Crime and Justice Policy Lab.

We've been working closely with SPD on the implementation of the Real-Time Crime Center, leading to an evaluation of how effective the CCTV automatic license page reader expansion and the Real-Time Crime Center itself are.

That assessment is due December 2026. We have started a TASER effectiveness audit.

It's still in the preliminary phase, so there's no objective defined yet.

And we're surveying the issue.

For our investigations team, they continue to Programmatic Reviews and Chief of Police Investigations.

New projects are OPA Referral System, Documentation System for OPA Communications, and the OIG Contacts Tracking System.

All three of those have the goal of us better tracking our contacts with complainants, with OPA, and our work in general.

And then we have reports and upcoming discussions.

Wow, that was a lot of information thrown at you in a very short period of time, so thank you Deputy Inspector General for doing that.

Just some other things that don't neatly fall into one of these previously discussed categories but are on.

and work that we have in the hopper.

As I mentioned, our 2024 annual report was published today.

Another report that will be forthcoming is around the concept of excited delirium.

It's become an issue nationally in national oversight, and excited delirium has sort of been used probably for, I don't know, what, a couple decades?

to describe a constellation of things that may be experienced by somebody that can lead to death in a fairly short period of time.

So there's a lot of new thinking research around it.

We've done a survey of jurisdictions and have some ongoing work with SPD.

We've issued some recommendations around not using that term or terms like that, but taking a more individual approach when they encounter folks who might be experiencing some sort of medical crisis that was previously described as excited delirium.

As the Deputy Inspector General noted, we have an obligation to report on claims and lawsuits that are filed with the city specifically related to SPD actions.

We do a breakdown as we're required to do in the annual report itself, but we wanted to do a bit of a deeper dive into that and look at some of the more, you know, definable contributors to why SPD has claims filed against them, what the big contributors are, what maybe we could look at doing to mitigate some of those in the future.

So that will be a more extensive report on the claims and lawsuits issue.

We have been working on a slight revision of the ordinance related to investigations involving the chief of police that we'll be talking about with you in the next item up before the council.

I'm going to let Mr. Maxey kind of weigh in a little bit about this.

It says use of force policy review, but this is really about crowd management, the policy that we've all been working on in the wake of council's passage of the less lethal weapons ordinance.

So Mr. Maxey, I don't know if you want to just talk real quickly about the engagement that we've all been doing with SPD.

Certainly.

Thank you for that opportunity.

After this body passed the updated crowd management ordinance and the guidance around, not guidance, but mandates around less lethal weapons.

SPD in real time while that was being developed, and then after the passage of that, re-revised its crowd management policy.

We made some significant changes as a result.

We actually moved all of the force-related items out of our 8,300 use of force policy into the crowd management policy for those tools that are only available for crowd management.

This consolidates the world of crowd management in one policy rather than spreading it across many that need to be cross-referenced.

As part of that, we engaged with the CPC, with OIG, with OPA in, I believe, two or three face-to-face meetings in our downstairs conference room.

We also received written feedback from these entities, and we've done our best to incorporate as much as we can.

Our policy posture is if there's something that's important to one of our accountability partners or to the communities they represent, if we can get a yes on it, we're going to do that, as long as it doesn't impact operational requirements.

So we've had a very collaborative approach to this, and we've worked to incorporate all of the feedback we've received.

We're not done.

This policy has now been transmitted to the monitoring team and DOJ, and we've received their initial feedback and incorporated that.

And now we're going to be engaging with the partners again prior to finalization of this policy.

We know, for example, that CPC has some outstanding comments they want to bring to us, and we're eager to hear them.

Yeah, and I'll just say one of the requirements of the ordinance that this body passed was that OIG and SPD work together to assess protest incidents where there may have been issues of public concern.

We have done our first round of that, and it was a highly collaborative process with SPD.

I believe some of the feedback that we gave you and results of our work made it into this crowd management ordinance and into structural changes that SPD has made with regard to the use of the POET team when they're out, some kind of structural changes that I think will mitigate the likelihood that we see those kinds of incidents again.

And that's a little bit of a teaser because I think we would like to come back at some point and present that work to you so that you can see in more detail what that process looks like.

And then lastly, I just want to highlight that we've been excited about and are ready to focus on really stepping up our engagements in collaboration.

with OPA and CPC out there and take our show on the road as the three part stool, I guess.

We have a new community engagement person who is meeting regularly with CPC and OPA and we've got some ideas in the hopper.

I'm very excited about that.

We're also working on our internal systems to make them more easily navigable and accessible to the public.

We've got our own internal mapping link on our website now where you can go and it makes it easier to kind of find a report that you want or see how our work is organized, but our website is going to be updated.

It is awful right now, but that's some of the work that our folks are doing.

So that's it for OIG's update.

If anyone has any questions or comments, I'd be happy to either entertain those now or at the end of the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Inspector General Judge.

Yes, I'd like to move through the briefs individually, but if there's a direct question to this brief, we can hit or go to the next.

OK, let's go to OPA.

All right, excellent.

Sorry, Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

Sorry for that.

So this was intimated before, but I'd like to know what the possibility of the consent decree ending Continues the work the Monitor previously has done during the consent decree.

Yes, their work was largely focused on use of force and bias.

So we have a very strong presence in SPD's use of force investigation and review processes.

I get calls whenever there's a type 3 use of force.

I screen it with them to see if it's appropriate for OIG to go to the scene.

We do go to the scene of officer-involved shootings.

We attend every force review board, give timely feedback on issues.

We issue periodic reports about our work with FRB and their progress, their process, all of that.

We oversee OPA, so we get to from that angle also see issues where force has turned into a complaint or discipline or something, so we are able to track force in that context as well.

With regard to bias, the Deputy Inspector General mentioned a couple of projects we have ongoing.

And we're not doing a chunky, like an assessment of this or assessment of that, but we've got these pillars of the consent decree that we try to infuse our work in in a variety of other contexts so that we're hitting more than just one topic with a particular piece of work.

So we've got some work that we're not ready to roll out yet.

That's a follow up to the 30 by 30 and kind of gender equity within SPD.

We've got the...

the equity assessment project going on.

So we've got a variety of ways that we're trying to still look at issues of internal bias within SPD.

And then when we do reviews of use of force numbers, of crisis numbers, we're always looking there for disparity and highlighting those numbers as well.

Anything you wanna add in about that?

Yeah, so the only thing I would add, so we did a use of force assessment that kind of stuck very closely to what the previous monitoring team was doing.

We also did a crisis assessment in the same way.

And so as Inspector General Judge said, now we're looking to kind of expand that work and kind of roll in other projects.

But there's going to be a deeper dive into use of force data, looking at disparity.

So there's projects like that that are kind of taking those assessments, but taking them a step further.

Yeah, and then I will say that the consent decree was very narrow.

It looked at patrol operations largely, mostly with those limited issues.

We have responsibility for systemic oversight of the entire department.

So we've got projects that are kicking off now that also focus on investigations and interviewing and interrogation, building a robust training and policy program around that.

We've been asked to work with the mayor's office on tracking recommendations of the sexual assault work that they had some folks do some work around after issues came to light a year or so ago with regard to investigations of adult sexual assault.

So we're expanding the work while keeping those core concepts and pillars of the consent decree alive in the work that we do.

So I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, it does.

Thank you.

I guess to that, I mean, you do have quite a work plan here, which is great.

But just wondering, are you feeling confident that you're going to be able to maintain that really important focus that the consent monitor brought through this work?

Yes.

That is essentially one of the main reasons OIG was created.

So we're always mindful of that obligation to ensure ongoing fidelity to consent decree gains.

So that is one of our priorities in our OIG mission, yes.

Thank you.

And Chair, I just asked one more question.

Under the new projects, you talk about assessment of SBD officer-involved collisions review process.

So I think that that's been going on since I got here, which is a year and almost a half ago now.

So just can you give me an update on where we're at in that process, how we're going to get this issue addressed soon?

Sure.

So we are waiting currently to publish the claims and lawsuits report, and we have the collisions report ready to go after that.

So there's kind of an order of operations.

So they're ready to go.

And then there will be ongoing work, I think, with the Collision Review Board process itself.

That's something that needed attention when I got here, but we just didn't have the staffing and resources to get there.

We had other things that always rose a little bit higher in terms of priority.

Mr. Maxey, I don't know if you want to talk about Collision Review Board or not.

I don't want to put you on the spot.

No, I'm happy to address this.

So as part of the consent decree, we developed a very robust force review board.

We bring subject matter experts together.

It's a very focused process.

We have OPA and OIG in the room to help identify issues if we're not catching them.

And the whole point was to develop a strong system of internal accountability so that we were not only reviewing force, and ensuring that it was within our policy and within our values, but also educating people that come through the board as to how to do that as we rotate them in.

So it's a major educational feature.

The Collision Review Board is not something that was touched previously by the consent decree.

And I think experientially what we're seeing at SPD is the focus of the consent decree was relatively narrow.

There's a lot of work to do, but the focus was pretty narrow.

we've done our best to exceed all of the requirements of the consent decree.

And as the project went on, it expanded to encompass new work.

As we've transitioned to more of an accountability partner oversight system with the OIG primarily doing the systemic analyses of the same sort that the monitor did, we're seeing an expanded focus.

So I think initially to your question writ large, We're seeing more engagement on a wider variety of topics than we did in the waning years of the consent decree.

So in many ways, there's a renewed focus on reform and continuous improvement at the department, which we really value.

One of the thoughts, and there's a lot of work to do around this, specifically around collisions, is to fold it into an administrative review board and have the same sort of robust structure where we're bringing the subject matter experts from across the department to look at this.

Currently, the way it's structured, it's more of a chain of command review.

But we would like to put a little more bandwidth around it to ensure the proper focus there.

Thank you.

Very important work.

So I appreciate the work that's being done and the thinking around that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Moore.

Okay.

All right.

Director Glenn.

All right.

Thank you.

First of all, I just wanted to say that OPE has been really at work.

It's robust.

And also during this transition, I was able to have a retreat with our office and talk about goals that we wanted to do.

to build upon the work, the good work that's been done in the office, and how to improve not only internally, but also things that we're doing really well.

What's the next place, next level to go?

One of the things I'm really proud of, as many of you may know, that we did win the NACOL Award for national for our work just this last year.

And one of it was, though, was due to our community outreach.

And we're very fortunate to have...

Geneva Taylor, who is our community outreach and restorative justice manager, who's working with her staff, Ms. Serena Duncan, and building that even more.

Why is that important?

Why is OPA, who's mostly investigative, involved in that?

It's about building community trust, making sure that people, in fact, understand the system.

Also, in addition to that, it's also making sure that they know who they're talking to or at least have an idea when they're actually filing a complaint.

those type of work, and so we've been very, very fortunate about that.

I'll be talking a little bit more about some of that additional work that we've been doing, but just as in buckets, again, just first focusing on just relationships, relationships internally with each other.

In the retreat, I'm just gonna pull out a couple things that we did for our guiding principles.

One of the things was to make sure about building trust, and when we talked about trust for internally, And I really like this one.

It was not got ya, but got you.

We've got you.

Because at any given day, there's always all so much to do.

How do we work together, not only just trust and make sure and give people the responsibility, but also put the guardrails in place in order to make sure for timelines and different things like that.

And trust, trust with each other, right?

And then also building trust with the community.

In addition to that, it was also regarding respectful communication and what does that look like?

Not only internally, but externally when we go out, right?

About listening, making sure to assume good intentions and leave space for being open with courageous conversations.

The other part about it, I would also say we've also been, obviously, as other people have talked, been involved in the legislative process, also on management action recommendations and things with that.

But I'll turn to my next slide, if you could.

And just to make sure, just for most people here, I think, obviously know our mission and vision, but sometimes people don't.

I just wanted to make sure we did talk about that, but it's to ensure SPD employees' actions comply with law and policy.

by conducting thorough objective and timely investigations, recommending improvements to policies and training, engaging in collaborative initiatives that promote systemic advancements.

And so that's a reminder that it's not only with regards to just the laws, but it's the policies that have been discussed today.

We've been at the table.

And it's been nice to be able to be there and working with SPD and all the accountability partners.

And also when we go out and we talk to community, actually we can actually build that in.

As an example, today I know Amy Summers and Agnes Gowan presented earlier and some of the things that they share we bring back to our office.

So we very appreciate when we collaborate with different collaborative partners in order to do that.

Also, it talks about training and those other types of things.

And of course, our vision is to safeguard a culture of accountability within SPD in different capacities.

Thank you.

Next slide.

All right, our main roles and responsibilities just to focus on is the process police misconduct complaints.

That's the number one body of what we do.

But again, with building trust to get the complaints right in order One of the things I have to remind when we go out, this is not criminal, this is a civil administrative process.

And so sometimes people come to us and they think that we have other capabilities, but this is for civil misconduct complaints.

Also, it's to enhance police accountability cultures in different ways that we can.

in which to do that, if we have ideas on policies, different types of things.

In fact, sometimes it's like in our number four, making policy management action recommendations, you were just talking about a collision board that works the collision review, and that's one of the things, a management action we have about when does it come to OPA, right?

How many collisions does it take before it comes to here?

What does that look like, having those discussions and things of that nature?

It could be when we look at one of the things, because they come from cases that we have sometimes, for the management, also known as MARS.

It's like bicycles and things like that.

When you see gaps in policy, making recommendations.

We see a lot of the different types of, whether it's skateboards, all kinds of different devices using that.

Where's that gap?

And so officers making sure for safety and how to deal with those in those circumstances.

More recently, AI, artificial intelligence, right?

That's always growing and so forth.

How is that being used and SBD?

What are some of the best practices and so forth?

And to look at that and how that might be used, right?

There's pros and there's other things, right?

So those are examples of MARS.

Also educating the community about OPA.

We actually provide Know Your Rights.

which I've been able to go out on several of those, which has been nice.

And also, it's basically Know Your Rights is a little bit part of that.

It goes into basically the background about our accountability system and OPA.

In addition to that, presentations we've done externally and internally.

We're very active in the community, whether it's El Centro de la Raza, whether it's advisory councils, whether it's the precinct.

you know, councils, et cetera, we've gone out to in different ways.

As far as our leadership team, I just wanted to make sure as far as our, it's civilian-led.

And so as civilian-led, it's 31 total staff that we have.

And independent, just to remind people that we're physically and operationally separate from SPD.

Administratively, we are connected with regards to, for data, which is very powerful because it allows us to get in real time police reports and things and stuff so that we can review when needed.

And I did want to make sure that I did highlight that it's an independent structure, but also a hybrid.

We have nine sworn staff who are part of our office and the rest are civilian.

And then you can see our leadership, Nelson Lees, our general counsel, Katie Mayer, and Dan Okada among our leadership.

Next slide.

One of the things I did that's provided was from OIG, and so the report that was just published today.

And so we will have at the mid-year, as we generally do, if we were asked to come back again, we'd have our data, which we would be presenting.

It's usually close to the same data, if not very, very close, but I did want to share that and appreciate OIG for sharing part of this data.

Yeah, if I could just say one thing about this, this is data pulled from our report.

You may see differences when OPA publishes their data because of the times during which those cases are counted.

They count them during intake, we count them after we've gotten them, and so there may be a crossover in years.

So if you are looking at these data and you notice differences, it's probably related to that.

Correct.

It's when we pull the data, and so mid-year as such, we'll be able to look at those as a whole.

So just in regards to just some of our, I just wanted to give you some statistics for this particular presentation.

And it just talked about basically our classification process.

And then under that, you can see the amount of contact logs.

You can look at the supervisory actions and expedited information.

Just know that at different times, I know you're going to hear more about it in the chief of police ordinance, so I won't go too much time because it goes into what context logs and things like that.

I can talk more in depth about that if you like then.

In addition to that, it talks about, if you can look at the numbers, pretty high percentages, and we have a hardworking staff with regards to that.

You can see on the right-hand side, you can see for being objective, thorough, and timely, which is important, of course, and making sure that our numbers hit that and actually which OIG does track along with ourselves.

And so as such, overall in the last 2024, we've done very, very well, always wanting to improve and wanting to always go deeper to see the best way that we can.

Some of the not timely stuff is sometimes, some of it was for due to the five day notice, which is no longer there.

Sometimes the classification and then sometimes a 180 deadline as far as that.

For thoroughness, sometimes it's due to witnesses, sometimes if we need to go back and actually look at another witness or also for classification.

Maybe there's a classification to add as an example.

Those are just some of the things in looking at the data.

Next slide.

Just quick for project updates, some of the things that we've been doing, that's our picture from Nicole on the right when we won the national award.

Also, our youth art contest.

We just not quite ready to announce that.

But we do have a winner again this year.

They will be on the cover of our report.

And also, we'll have that around the city.

But it's actually engaging our young people about what does good policing look like.

And so we do have a winner this year.

Did wonderful art, which we will be sharing with all.

Next, I'm gonna go through, I'm gonna skip mediation for just a moment.

Next, we have community events, our tabling and attending out at very many community events and partnering.

I'm very excited though, as we talked at our last accountability partnership meeting, that we will be working together to present jointly.

We did before once that NAACP, we look forward to doing that again at different places.

I think that's very important.

Also, the next thing is the complaint impact statement.

I just wanted to let you know, we've talked about that before.

That's something that we want to finalize, and we've had two previous meetings with bargaining units with regards to that, and so we'll be taking a broader role with regards to that statement.

And if you didn't know what that was, the complaint impact statement, that's similar to almost a victim witness statement, like if you were in court, but it would allow in writing a victim to be able to share in their own writing about that particular occurrence that they wanted to with the chief.

So we're on target with that and we have some more meetings just to finalize that, hopefully in working with the bargaining units.

Next, citywide digital access accessibility project and OPA website update for process in plain language.

One of the things we've been working with IT is being able to use the computer system to be able to identify classification of cases easier.

And what I mean is like, we have a number of closed case summaries, but one of the things that had happened was people wanted to be able to like just put keywords in and to be able to find things.

And so that's important, not only internally, but externally.

So that's in the works as well.

And then I'll just do the SPD engagement and presentation portion, and then I have a video for you.

But SPD engagement and presentation, one of the things that we've done really good at has been our community engagement.

One thing that we're picking up even more so on force review board presentations, sergeant school two times, field training office presentations, SPOG, we had not been there in three years, presented to their board, patrol tactics training, less lethal force training and before the badge attending, and so a number of things going out and working with SPD as well as community engagement.

One of the things I wanted to share, because I know it was brief, our presentation, but I did want to share our video.

We came to you before.

We're trying to grow our mediation program.

We've worked really hard.

And here's our video presentation.

This is from an incident that did happen.

And one of the things that's important is we really think, even though you can have an investigation and they're important, when you have people can sit down with each other an officer, and obviously a citizen.

If we continue to grow this program, I really think it can help out.

And these are for minor misconduct in certain cases that could be eligible for that.

So with that, thank you.

If you could share that.

OPA's job is to really make sure that we are safeguarding communities through accountability.

The goal really is to help folks to have common ground and to make sure people are hearing each other's perspective and have an understanding of what has happened in the incident.

A community member actually called us because they did not like the way an officer responded to a Priority One call that happened at their nonprofit in the Seattle area.

After the incident, I was concerned.

I felt that somewhat of an injustice had been done.

Initially, I wasn't certain that it would be fruitful to participate, but I decided to proceed.

And so I thought I owed it at least to those who may experience the same thing in the future to speak up and share the information.

I was hoping to meet and learn, listen to hear what that person has to say, get their perspective, and then give them my perspective, and hopefully we could come to some kind of a resolution and work together going into the future.

It was an opportunity to explore what happened, talk about procedures, that are in place from both sides.

Because they both had leadership responsibilities, the impacts of what happened landed on them differently.

OPA has a very important process that people go through before they enter into mediation.

So we do pre-caucuses prior to the mediation where both parties are together.

They kind of get what's, hey, I'm the mediator, let me walk you through what this mediation is going to look like.

They kind of asked me to walk through what my concerns were to express myself.

They let me know exactly what the process would include, who would be in the room, so that there were no surprises, so I wasn't caught off guard, and so that I could be comfortable as we move forward.

That foundational piece allows for the mediation to move forward in a way where people are clear about what the intent is and feel secure in the setting that they're in.

We have an actual training where we talk about accountability and talk about policing.

We have to make sure we find really good, neutral, third-party mediation team.

They walk people through the incident in a very skillful, intentional way that brings purpose to each party, and that purpose is to be heard.

And not to only be heard, but to be understood.

When you come together and it feels like it's in neutral territory, you could just be your authentic self.

When people feel like they're on equal footing, it's easier for them to connect with you.

One reason that mediation is voluntary for both parties is it really brings people together who really want to be there.

It's important for people to be invested in hearing one another.

Kimberley showed up, I felt like she was coming to actually listen and learn and also teach me.

All right.

So I felt the same way.

So we felt kind of equal.

There was information that each of us had that the other didn't.

And that opportunity for sharing, I think, helped a mutual understanding, helped me to have more empathy for what they were experiencing during the time.

And I believe it helped the officer to have more of an understanding of what my perceptions were as the events unfolded.

And sometimes you don't you don't realize that how you do your job might impact somebody in a negative way, which it impacted Kimberly.

It opened up my eyes and it taught me, hey, maybe we should be considerate about everything else that's going on around us and not just focus on the one task.

Just look and talk with each other face to face to each other.

It's not somebody coming in and saying, well, so-and-so told me such and such and getting that information, taking it back to them.

It's like they were there, they knew what happened.

And then all of a sudden there's one big ouch.

They're able to look at the other person and say, you know, this happened.

And the other person's like, oh.

It does bring a sense of justice in a different way.

Things do not get better unless you really communicate and have conversation.

We're really trying to humanize people, bringing people together and have conversations.

The ability for OPA here in Seattle to have this as an opportunity for that ability to see each other as humans and people makes a really big difference.

And I've seen it, you know, when people leave mediation different than when they came in.

I just feel like it's a great tool.

It could start a healing process for everyone, SPD and for the community.

You can't put a price on common ground.

It's something that is so missing all around us.

And if we would just give each other things rather than, you know, pointing fingers at one another.

Thank you, yeah.

It's been a long time coming, but it came, and it's just exciting work as we continue to grow that program, because I think that's where you find common ground, especially for a lot of this, all cases are important, but some of the minor misconduct, some of those type of things, I think it could be very, very helpful.

Thank you, Director Glenn.

Okay, we'll roll straight into CPC.

Machi Alekbehi for the third or fourth time this morning.

Take a sip of water real quick.

Again, Isiame, Interim Executive Director of the Community Police Commission, and we're really, really grateful for this opportunity to be able to share a little bit about the CPC.

I'll try to go quickly because we are, I've shared quite a bit earlier this morning, and so I'll try to save the maximum amount of time for questions.

Thank you.

So as I shared earlier, CPC's special sauce really is community engagement.

And we see ourselves as uplifting that community voice.

CPC started in response to many public calls for accountability following a series of very serious incidents involving SPD, but the most notable one was the killing of an indigenous and deaf woodcarver, John T. Williams.

So we exist to ensure that not only is community voice heard, but it's embedded in how Seattle moves forward.

And again, this is that anti-racist principle of sharing power with communities, which means that those that are most impacted by something have the greatest voice in that thing.

I'll let the timeline on the next slide here speak for itself, but I really just want to emphasize that CPC didn't just emerge.

It was built through years of advocacy and negotiation, on the part of many different leaders in Seattle.

Our responsibilities expanded in 2017, and now CPC is a permanent and independent body under city law.

A really common misconception is that when the consent decree goes away, CPC goes away, and that's not true.

I think that when the consent decree goes away, CPC's role only becomes more prominent.

because there is a responsibility to make sure that community voice is centered in how we move forward in our accountability system.

We're grounded in our purpose.

And so our mission really reflects not a community-based, not a community-informed, but a community-led approach that's rooted in justice and equity.

Our legal mandate is broad.

So CPC's purpose is laid out again in that landmark 2017 accountability ordinance, and we're tasked with bringing about a community-led perspective into policing practices, policies, and several different oversight decisions.

CPC is structured as an independent commission, and our work is carried out by several volunteer commissioners.

So these are folks that are giving their time as community leaders to ensure that the community voice is represented in accountability.

I've shared with you earlier that CPC has more than 30 separate responsibilities under the accountability ordinance.

And with a small but mighty staff of just nine people, we have some responsibilities that we could use all nine people just to be able to fulfill that one thing under the ordinance.

When I think about what it means to right-size the resources of this organization, it's really an understanding of how broad our responsibilities are under that accountability ordinance.

Just one example that we're tasked with under the ordinance is compiling and maintaining a database that tracks all recommendations made by CPC, OIG, and OPA and whether or not SPD has implemented them.

And so you think about the smallest accountability partner, the one that is specifically charged with community engagement is also charged with the maintenance of a database that requires accurate input that relies on accountability partners in order to ensure that.

This is the staff behind the work.

I've shared kind of the three part, I won't say three-legged stool, but I'll share the three operational parts of CPC.

We have our community engagement team, we have our operations team, and we have our policy team.

I've talked about the community engagement team and the policy team a little bit earlier in this presentation.

I want to talk about our operations team.

We have a communications director, Kieran High, And that role is an upgraded role from a previous iteration of that, which was a communications advisor.

As a small department and as one that has such a significant responsibility for storytelling, that role has been reimagined to take on greater leadership capacity in order to both share our story, but think about how to do that in a multifaceted way.

And Karen has been amazing.

You'll see some of his work both in this presentation, but throughout it as well.

And then you've got Davina Wajaya-Moser, who keeps our operations running.

Our office does not happen without Davina.

And so across this team, we have a cross-functional team.

Many of the staff on our team, out of our nine people, seven have been hired in just the last eight months alone.

And so this is a complete rebuild of an organization, and you have folks that are coming with a variety of different roles, of different skills.

So many of them have a crossover between community engagement and communication skills.

a crossover between policy and communication skills.

And they are also able to outreach to the community in very specific and unique ways.

Our team has multiple languages spoken besides English.

We have spoken Bahasa, which is an Indonesian language.

We have Idoma, which is a Nigerian language.

We have Tongan.

We have Farsi.

And we have Amharinya, or Amharic, as well represented on our team.

And I might have others.

I haven't even gotten to the commissioners yet.

And so this is really thinking about how do we connect with the diverse Seattle community.

I mentioned earlier about our impact on the revised crowd management legislation.

That's something that we're incredibly proud of.

We're also working right now to launch a training that is building community capacity around the accountability system.

So earlier, we talked about the fact that we can't just hand this big, huge ordinance to communities and say, what do you think about that?

That's not where our job lies.

And so there is a critical role in building community capacity to engage with government around these complex conversations around policing.

And so we are very excited that very, very soon we'll be ready to launch this training that really talks about CPC's role, the accountability system as we know it, and ways that the community can engage to be able to provide their feedback.

We are so proud that even just in this very short time, we have seen goals that have been identified by the CPC for the last three years accomplished in just the last six months.

And we are just getting started.

We just got fully staffed in February.

So what you see now is just the beginning of the momentum that we are catching on.

Anything that can be said about the CPC a year ago cannot be said about the CPC of today.

I want to move next to talking about the commission behind the work.

Again, commissioners are volunteer leaders that are committed to elevating the voice of communities that are most impacted by policing.

Our recruitment efforts are really focused on individuals that are willing to engage heavily in police accountability work, deeply rooted in their communities, and are reflecting a range of different lived experiences that are important to the conversation.

Out of 15 seats on the commission, five of which are appointed by the mayor, five of which are appointed by the city council, and five of which are appointed by the CPC themselves, We have 11 out of 15 of those seats filled.

Many of them have been filled in just the last few months.

And one is in progress, thanks to your votes today.

The commission does this work through both committees and work groups.

Standing committees have a permanent part of the CPC structure per its bylaws.

We have the community engagement committee and also the governance committee, and you'll see there what their responsibilities are.

But we also have work groups that are active on a variety of different ad hoc issues.

Probably the longest standing is our police practices work group.

Many of the commissioners have engaged either with you all directly or with our policy team on many of the different pieces of legislation and policy that have been reviewed.

But we also have several other issue-based work groups that you'll see below on the bottom right.

In terms of amplifying community voices, our team has really expanded its reach since becoming fully staffed in February.

You'll see the chart on the left side is just a growing number of contacts that CPC is making in the community.

On any given day or week, our community engagement team is going to a number of different events, sometimes multiple events a night, sometimes two to three, and they are splitting their resources to be able to cover different events.

And so since February, we've reached 800 different community members in 29 different events, and we are still counting because April is not quite over yet.

We've also ensured that community concern is brought up or is incorporated into crowd management legislation.

So when we worked on the crowd management legislation, we launched a community survey to try to reach as many folks as possible.

At the time we were working on that, we were going into a holiday season.

and we were only staffed with three and then four people on our team.

And so we were at our lowest point in resources, but we used what we had available to us, which was our work with our commissioners and a community survey that had 125 community members participate and give feedback on the crowd management legislation.

There are so many different stories and community experiences that really shape our work and shape our priorities.

And the voice of community, regardless of what that message is.

One of the things that's really important about the CPC to note is that we are not anti-police.

We have to say this more often than you might think.

We are pro-accountability, we are pro-community.

And so when we amplify the community voice, that means sharing experiences that are positive around what the community has experienced with policing, and that also means sharing critical feedback about issues that need immediate attention on behalf of communities.

I want to share this really quick story about Sandy Paloka.

Recently, we went to the opening blessing event of Oceana Northwest, which is an organization, a nonprofit doing amazing work in the Pacifica community.

that one of our commissioners, Commissioner Joseph Sayah, is the executive director of.

At that event, when it was time to sit down to eat, someone came up to me and said, can I sit next to you?

I'd just been introduced as the executive director of the CPC.

And she said, I want to tell you a story.

She proceeded to tell me about how she lives just blocks away from the Southwest Precinct.

She said that the police have been to her home several times to respond to different incidents involving her son, who is suffering from mental health crises.

She says that in her experiences, every time SPD showed up, They exhibited respect.

They treated her son with dignity.

And some of her worst fears as a parent in having police show up at her house in a situation like that, she was able to feel reassured.

And she was so grateful.

She specifically named Officer Lucas of SPD.

And what she told me is, if I had the opportunity, I would share this experience with the upper echelons of Seattle Police Department.

And I said, I think I can do that.

And I promised that I'd do that for her today.

But we also want to share critical feedback.

When we go to events, we heard, for instance, from the Indigenous Advisory Board, which is an advisory board that is actually convened by SPD of Native American community members convened at Daybreak Star.

We heard community members raising significant concerns about SPD's handling of bias crimes, of issues of sexual assault, in particular, slow response times.

They had told several stories and provided officers with incident report numbers of situations in which a sexual assault happened in a Native American community, and there were There was 8 to 12 hours before an officer responded at the scene.

They also shared concerns about how SPD was responding to domestic violence situations and a lack of knowledge about missing indigenous persons alert cases, MEPA cases.

That is a recent system that was, I believe, launched in 2022. And so the information about how to locate missing indigenous persons, which as many of you know, is a significant issue in Native American communities, were some of the concerns that they've raised.

Along with that, there's also a deep fear and frustration in many immigrant and refugee communities and national climates.

And so we elevate all of those stories.

When it comes to building trust through storytelling, again, that is thinking about how do we highlight oversight and action and put Seattle back on the national map around police accountability work.

The video that you see playing on the right is our team at the International Association of Chiefs of Police IACP Officer Safety and Wellness Conference in Anaheim earlier this year.

And we were there to learn more about wellness and safety programs and trainings that different jurisdictions are offering for police officers so that we can explore community's concerns about how that training is happening in Seattle Police Department.

When it comes to what's next for the CPC, Again, we are looking ahead at the possibility of a post-consent decree future.

So really right now we are focusing on centering our efforts on rebuilding relationships, on strengthening our communications, on expanding our presence citywide and in communities that are furthest from justice, and doing that through consistent and culturally responsive engagement.

We're also launching a district liaison program.

And so that looks at the districts that represent Seattle, so the city council districts, and ensuring that commissioners have a connection to specific communities that your constituents make up so that we have the opportunity to engage with you specifically on what we are hearing from constituents in your districts and across the city as well.

Our future policy projects I've mentioned is building out our legislative review process, continuing to build our sustainable systems for our ordinance responsibilities, and establishing a strong community feedback loop.

And lastly, I'll just talk really briefly about investing where it matters.

As I mentioned earlier, we believe that money is tied to mission.

And as we go into this budget deficit scenario that really has Seattle and many cities, quite frankly, in crisis, we wonder and we worry about the investment in community-led work, and particularly work that centers anti-racist and pro-equity values.

We believe that right now is the opportunity for Seattle to make a public and visible commitment to community-led accountability.

Our budget has been cut.

Our budget has been cut disproportionately.

And we are unfortunately in a position, as we go into a deficit situation, of not being able to manage further cuts.

We are at a point where cuts threaten our ability to be able to actually carry out our mission critical functions.

And so in our supplemental budget ask, CPC will be asking for a restoration of cuts that were taken in 2024 so that we can maintain what we need in order And the slide that you see there, this image of equity versus equality, is really important to us because as you look across the city budget, you could say, well, the departments are being asked to take equal cuts.

But equality isn't equity.

I think that these things need to be made based on equitable budget principles, considering the fact that we are the smallest partner and also considering the number of obligations that we have under the ordinance so that that decision could be made with all of that in light.

And so I will stop there.

I will yield for questions.

I thank you very, very much for your time, all of your time today.

Thank you.

I recognize that we're a bit over time, but questions for all three.

I mean, obviously we had some questions for OIG earlier, but given the time we kind of skipped through and we had some with CPC at the beginning.

But with that said, vice chair, do you have any questions overall, maybe for OPA?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a question for all three.

I think I, know from CPC's perspective the answer to this, but feel free to share any revised thoughts, if any.

But for all three accountability partners, what do you view as the biggest barrier to your success over the next year?

What is the single biggest barrier to your success?

And because there are way too many issue spotters in the world, what do you view as the best solution, proposed solution.

So barriers to your success, to your organization, and solution, because you can't just be issue spotters.

Thank you.

OK.

One of them that's very paramount in looking at our data, one of the things that came up from our guiding principles is data driven.

In order to do that, we work with a system, IAPRO, which I know SPD is very familiar and others accountability partners.

And it does some things, but it would be very important to be able to have something that would interface either with it or for tracking as a case management in order to make sure in real time we can actually see the dates of when things are happening.

There's so much that goes on with our work.

I know our time's limited, but we have people who go on administrative leave.

We have different types of things and so forth.

Sometimes there's criminal referrals.

All those things have dates and times and so forth, and that's done by hand right now.

People who work very diligently, that would be paramount in order to help and make sure, like when I talked about guardrails and things like that, to make sure that that's in place.

That's a major one.

I mean, budget, I know we'll talk later about it, but obviously in order to do something like that, it would be very helpful.

I know, again, that there may be cuts, but it would be nice to be able to do something like that.

So that's the second one.

And I think the support, and I have to say this, and I'm just being real, we're here gonna talk about the chief of police ordinance to be able to come to you, all of you, and also the mayor's office and people to be able to say when there is something to be able to see if we can bring that to all of you that can make a difference to make us more effective and efficient like the chief of police ordinance.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of barriers.

I can think of a number of challenges, and there are challenges that can become barriers, and I think for me probably the primary one is all of us do our work with SPD largely by collaboration and consent.

We don't have the ability unlike the federal court, to force SPD to do anything.

And so we've had a number of changes in leadership at SPD, and I think now we've got a lot of work to do, especially me and OIG, with building a relationship with the new chief of police making sure that we have that support and collaboration at the highest level of SPD to make sure that the work that we believe is important and the things that we believe SPD should be thinking about prioritizing implementing are things that the leadership will move forward because if we don't have that then I think then they become barriers that lack of authority to to you know, push things that we think are important for community and for the city.

For Community Police Commission, the one you're probably not surprised to hear is budget and resourcing.

Our ask, I think, that in the current budget scenario is difficult, but in light of everything, is modest.

What we need to be able to restore our previous cuts and be able to run We have a few unfunded mandates that have happened prior to our time.

One is the creation of a deputy director role that was added to our FTE count, but not actually funded.

And so that puts us at a deficit.

Another one is the commissioner stipends.

So we compensate commissioners for their time.

It's actually not even compensation.

It's meant to remove the financial barriers to civic participation.

That was increased significantly in, I believe, 2023, but wasn't funded in our budget.

So we are operating already on a very thin non-labor budget, and that's one of the challenges that we have going forward is to be able to make sure that we're properly resourced, both on the staff and the commission side.

The other, I'll echo what Inspector Judge said, relies on...

partnership with the accountability partners.

And so we, too, are looking to ensure that we have a strong relationship with the chief of police.

We are building that now.

and also from the rest of the partners.

I think when it comes to SPD in particular, we really benefit from communication.

And luckily, Brian Maxey and I have had several conversations about that and that relationship.

He understands the importance of that and supports the importance of that.

But the ability to be able to have communication, to see what's coming down the pike, to understand what community concerns are driving, policy changes or issues that SPD is working on so that we're not caught flat-footed when community comes to us and is looking for advocacy on our part.

So I would say those are some of the challenges.

Council Member, if I may just jump in very briefly, and I promise to keep this really short.

What was said here for me resounds pretty significantly, which is, you know, we talk about three accountability partners.

In my mind, there are four.

SPD is at the table.

We are collaborating with our accountability partners.

There's some in the community or some expectations out there that these relationships need to be adversarial, that we need to be under the thumb of the accountability partners.

For me, that's not what accountability is.

Certainly, they all hold us to account in a variety of ways, either the community through investigations, through systemic recommendations and reform.

SPD, one of our priorities is continuous improvement.

That's not changing.

As the consent decree leaves, we are still committed to being a learning organization and pushing forward into the future, and we can't do it alone.

We recognize that.

We need our partners to help us see our blind spots, to hold us accountable, to bring voices that we don't have access to.

And we are committed, and I know Chief Barnes is committed, to continuing those relationships and driving forward with continuous improvement as the fourth accountability partner.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rank?

I'm sorry, Vice Chair, did you?

Councilmember Rank?

Thank you Chair Kettle for allowing me to participate today and ask these questions and thank you all for coming to share with us more about your work.

At the top, I just wanna recognize how challenging this topic is, this conversation is, and I'm trusting that every single person in this room seeks to improve our accountability system for the sake of our residents and healing from harm that has been caused.

And there are some really hard facts here.

19 people murdered by SPD officers across 14 years is devastating and unacceptable.

This alone, not to mention misconduct and culture challenges at SPD have certainly left the public with understandable feelings of distrust, confusion, and anger.

And the public must trust that wrongdoing, harm, and misconduct by law enforcement will be helpful.

So we must carve a system and path forward that's going to deliver on improvements to our accountability system.

And I hope that we can have a solutions-oriented discussion today.

And I wanted to hold my questions to the end of all the presentations to give an opportunity for any partner to chime in on these as appropriate.

So deferring to your expertise here.

And with that, in 2018, Washington passed initiative 940, requiring independent investigations of uses of deadly force.

It's been my understanding that for at least a time, Seattle was not partnering with any outside agencies to have those investigations conducted when a Seattle police officer uses deadly force.

Is that correct?

And does SPD now have policies and partnerships in place to conduct those investigations?

As part of the state law, SPD was specifically exempted from those requirements because we were under a federal consent decree.

As we move forward to exit the consent decree, we are building those relationships, making sure all of those processes are in place.

We've had regular engagements with the King County FIT team and with the Office of Independent Investigations.

They each have a function to play in that.

Yes, those will be in place prior to the exit of the consent decree.

I do want to caution, though, that some of the transparency and some of our community engagement may be compromised as engaging with those systems because they control the release of information, and we're going to have to adapt.

SPD, as we've gone through the inquest processes into our officer-involved shootings, have We've been praised continuously for the rigor, for the amount of information, for the organization, for our policies, for our training, and for our transparency.

We will do everything we can to continue that, but we will be subject to outside forces in some areas.

And I just would like to add that we, as accountability partners, I think it was about a year ago, we all met with the Office of Independent Investigations, Director Rogroff, and we actually talked about that.

And for OPA, when they do come in, again, right now, it's not at this time, that those would be, basically, we would be told until that's done.

So our investigations would toll because it's a criminal matter.

Ours are civil.

So we've talked about some of those changes.

Yeah, and I think just to Mr. Maxey's point, there are good things and bad things.

The tolling of the ability of Seattle to look at its own following of policies and to make determinations about that, I think is a net negative.

And so I think we're gonna have to be adjusting our expectations as these processes move forward.

When I-940 was passed, I would have challenged anybody to find another agency in the state that had as robust a use of force investigation team as SPD did at the time.

And so I think that exemption of SPD during this consent decree process was helpful to allow other jurisdictions to build capabilities, to build partnerships, and to create teams that have the ability like SPD's FIT team to do a really deep, thorough investigation of officer-involved shootings.

Thank you all for those responses and for clarifying that point for the purposes of the public and understanding that and really heartened to hear that there's a path moving forward and there is work that is being done in partnership to ensure that we are compliant with state law and just want to continue the discussion there as we navigate out of the consent decree.

And to that end, I know we've had a little bit of discussion about the 2017 accountability ordinance.

Just for the purposes of clarification, what elements have been enacted and which are the remaining components that have yet to be enacted?

I think we might wanna schedule an entirely different meeting with several hours set aside.

I think it's 107 pages and you have 30 obligations.

I don't have any idea how many obligations OIG has under that, but what I would say is that and I've been thinking about this and producing materials since I started about the really core powers that the ordinance gives to the accountability partners that have been adopted in some form or another and those that haven't.

And so I think going line by line in the ordinance and saying, did we do this?

Did we do that?

I don't know that that's productive because I think some of that, especially where we are now in 2025, may or may not be desirable or helpful.

I think there are some core provisions that the city continues to negotiate, especially around, and I alluded to it in my comments about not being able to force things, is subpoena power.

Accountability entities have to be able When relationships aren't great, we have to plan for worst case scenarios, not rely on best case scenarios.

We have to have the power and authority to compel the production of evidence and the cooperation of witnesses in investigations and reviews that we do.

So I think there are things that are key to having a really strong accountability system that we need to continue to work on.

I don't know that we need to go line by line to make sure everything that was in that ordinance becomes adopted, but that's Lisa Judge's take on April 29th, 2025.

I would just echo with regards to the subpoena power and things of that nature.

But again, there might be another venue, too, where we might even go even further, just some of the ideas.

But that would be something we certainly at OPA would like to have.

I don't think I could offer anything better than that.

There is a very complicated answer that's likely underlying your question.

And we'd be really happy to go into more in-depth conversations with you, your office, anyone else interested in that?

Certainly, I'd definitely be interested in that in-depth conversation.

Again, there's certainly a lot of interest about the status of implementation and understand that there's nuance here, but wanna make sure we're doing our part in that realm.

A couple of quick questions specifically for OPA.

Are all civilian investigator positions currently filled?

No, there is not.

We were very fortunate last session that we have nine sworn in.

We have two civilian investigators.

We actually have, for the other civilian staff, we have two supervisors, civilian investigator supervisors, and then some of the other management folks.

So right now, given the current freeze, and I will just say this, we put out for that position, the position's out, and right now we, and I'll say we had 211 responses.

Right now it's on hold, obviously given budget concerns at this time.

Great, and another just quick question.

I appreciated the video just learning a bit more about the mediations process, and I'm wondering just in the past year how many mediations were conducted in 2024?

2024, we had one mediation and we had one that was almost gonna take place.

And it's interesting.

We sit down, there's a number of factors.

And the one reason we did this video, and it's not just a video in the sense of just, ooh, look at this.

It's so people, that's a real case.

And seeing people, like I said, coming together and what that could be like.

So there's sometimes there's that trepidation.

Both parties have to agree, but I'm sure that we can actually continue to grow this.

In fact, we have one coming up now.

We're going to continue to grow these, and this is one reason as an avenue to do that.

Thank you.

There has been reported some discussion about retaliatory complaints at SPD, and an independent report suggested that OPA take over some of the EEO complaints.

and would be good to know how many more staff members it would take to do that.

And so, by your perspective, do you think that there's been a weaponization of the process, and do you have any recommendations to remedy this?

OK.

Well, clearly, with regards to OPA, we do work right now with EEO and so forth.

And I did see the report about EEO work coming to OPA.

Obviously, we would need the resources in which to do that or the transfer in certain capacity to do that.

You know, when you said weaponization, obviously, it can be utilized.

I'm just going to be honest.

It can go one, then the other, back and forth, and so forth.

So it can be utilized.

That's honest with regards to that.

But I do think that with regards to resources, it would depend to be, and I'm happy to discuss that further, about what that looks like to give an accurate response the fiscal and what that would be, and what pieces or components.

I'll just give you an example, like body-worn video.

We actually took a while for that to come to us.

There's still one more piece left to do.

So sometimes it's sometimes pieces, sometimes it's all of it, or sometimes maybe there's another venue for that, right?

So further discussions, happy to discuss.

And chair, I just have two more quick questions.

I promise I'll keep it quick.

Um, to that end, um, previously the city had engaged in some work related to an affected persons program.

And I know there was previously budget allocated to do this work.

Um, and since just given of course the ever changing budget challenges of the city, it's my understanding that the funding for that program went away, but the conversation continues.

And so, Wondering for your offices, and maybe this is more a question of CPC, your work with affected families and revisiting perhaps this concept of an affected persons program.

Yeah, I'm going to, in a moment, turn it over to others that have a little bit more longevity to talk about what conversations have happened prior to me coming on board.

Since I've been involved in the CPC, we haven't had work directly with affected persons as part of this very short time that we've focused on rebuilding our team so that we can have the capacity to do that.

And some of that involves investing in the growth and development of our staff.

We are both growing skills to become more trauma-informed and also the crisis communication skills in order to be able to make sure that we're engaging appropriately in those situations.

And so, you know, with the term that I've had here in the last six to eight months, our priorities really have been building CPC's capacity to be able to take on that type of work.

But I do understand there have been conversations with the other accountability partners prior to me coming on board.

And so I'm not sure if there's someone with more history.

You define effective assistance, but I know for one thing that's been helpful for our office is our complaint navigator.

When people come in and hearing back, we used to have big stretches before people would know what the status of the case beside the computer.

So we've been working with that.

And so we're very excited about that continued work.

In addition to that, also with the complaint impact, a complaint and impact statement, I think, and really connecting them to resources and so forth is very critical in that, but also making sure we hear their voice to be able to pass that on to SPD.

So just in those two realms, just off the top of my head, thank you.

My final question and maybe a more fun one just for the CPC, where can the community catch you next?

I really want us, as we're moving forward, and I understand you're new in this role and seeking to really center community in this process, where can community catch you next?

Where can the public just broadly engage with CPC moving forward?

That's a really great question, and thanks for asking that.

We have upcoming, we attend every advisory council that SPD hosts, along with several other community groups.

I'm going to take just a moment to ask my team, where are you going to be this week?

We are actually not scheduled this evening, but next week,

Well, I was saving that for last.

Our public meeting for CBC is the first Wednesday of every month at 9 a.m.

It happens here in City Hall in room 370. We invite all members of the public.

Our meeting agendas can be found on our website.

And we also have on our website instructions for public comment, which is something that we are required as a commission of our type in compliance with OPMA to have public comment.

We review all public comment that comes into our email box and we share it with all commissioners during CPC meetings.

Those meetings are also open to the public as well and live streamed while they're happening, so.

There is no public comment.

Again, we're required by OPMA to have public comment as are all boards and commissions in Seattle.

Point of order, Chair.

Thank you.

Mr. Gale, please.

Any other questions?

That is all.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for answering my questions, everyone.

Look forward to our work together.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today.

I'm saying that in a final manner for those that were going to stay, we have to shift item four to our next meeting.

I'm sorry, but in the interest of time, we're already over.

And so we'll have to shift item four, but that just gives people more time to discuss it.

And so then we'll have a more full discussion in our next meeting, which off top of my head is May 13th.

So with that point made as chair, we have reached the end of today's agenda.

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

Hearing seeing none, we are adjourned.

Thank you very much.