Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 5/25/21

Thank you, and good morning.

The May 20, 2021 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

I know that Council President Gonzalez has informed my office that she would not be in attendance, and we have Council Member Peterson acting as alternate.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Lewis.

Verizon.

Councilmember Morales.

Here.

Councilmember Swann.

Present.

Councilmember Peterson.

Here.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

Five present.

Thank you so much.

So on today's agenda, we'll be hearing the Office of Police Accountability's 2020 Annual Report, hearing from Dr. Meyerberg and Anne Beckforth.

Just wanna start with some chair's remarks on the one year anniversary of the murder of Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

Reflecting on this day, I came across a column written by K.

Ward Cummings that the Seattle Times ran last week about the risk of the pendulum of support for the Black Lives Matter movement swinging towards the status quo based on the history of that occurring when past generations have called for justice for black Americans.

Cummings wrote, Like freedom, selfishness is a foundation stone of the American experience.

Our history is one long pattern of certain people satisfying their selfish needs at the expense of a selected few, beginning with the dispossession of the indigenous peoples and then the exploitation of enslaved Africans.

The observant quickly learn that racial justice in America arrives and recedes like the sweep of a pendulum out towards justice for a time and then back again towards selfishness.

Last summer, we asked the court to maintain the consent decree in the face of outsized police response, mostly peaceful protests.

And now we are faced with a consent decree that is a barrier to passage of policy, regulating the use of weapons like blast balls and tear gas, and a consent decree that is a barrier as well to the council fulfilling our commitment.

to reduce the police department's budget, to hold them accountable for unauthorized overtime spending beyond the budget granted by the council, and using those funds for other pressing needs.

Just a few words about the budget bill, since we did not hear it in full council today.

The budget bill may be one such example of that swing of the pendulum and the risk of our efforts to work to increase funding for alternatives to policing and increase the number of things that we ask the police department to do.

The bill that we've discussed in committee has been intended to be a compromise that sticks to our commitment to hold SPD accountable for excessive overtime spending to police protests.

It includes $3 million in reduction in SPD spending, and it's opposed by some on the council because it's not the full $5.4 million, and opposed by others because it's any cut at all.

This despite the fact that SPD will have $13 million in salary savings available in its 2021 budget.

To me, this is an example of a loss of urgency in City Hall to find ways to reallocate funds from the SPD budget towards other public safety investments.

And I worry that it signals that this pendulum is swinging back to the status quo, away from the unity that the Council has had over the last year on our efforts.

Another example yesterday was the temporary, hopefully, unraveling of the council's unified position from the fall on moving the SPD parking enforcement officers into the new community safety and communication center in support of the PEO 100 worker majority BIPOC workforce vision of community safety, and mostly in response to the administration lobbying.

We also were asked last summer to withdraw the city's lawsuit opposing King County's new inquest process.

The city was engaged in opposing that new process.

We did so, we withdrew, and yet today families are still waiting for inquests and still don't have answers.

But I also wanna recognize our accomplishments over the last year.

We've allocated $30 million for the budget process to increase civic engagement and inform future policy making and making investments to build community safety.

We've invested $4 million to launch the Seattle Community Safety Initiative with three community safety hubs and wraparound services in the Central District, Southeast, and West Seattle.

We've invested $12 million to build the capacity of community-based organizations working to build safety from the ground up in our neighborhoods, including ending violence and reducing crime.

We've moved the Police Department's Victim Advocacy Team for Crisis Response to the Human Services Department.

We've restored a million dollars to the Office of Civil Rights for grants for organizations pursuing alternatives to or addressing harm created by the criminal legal system.

We've granted mental health professionals on SPD's Crisis Response Unit to the Human Services Department to better respond to behavioral health crises.

We've also invested a million dollars to expand neighborhood-based teams of mental health, medical substance abuse disorder professionals to respond.

individuals experiencing chronic or acute behavioral issues, particularly people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

And we've refunded a restorative justice pilot program in the Seattle Public Schools.

We've passed the My Chance Don't Lap Gettin' Youth Rights Ordinance, named after a teenager who in 2017 was shot and killed by plainclothes deputies during a misguided King County Sheriff's sting operation that wrongly targeted two teens.

We added a crisis counselor to the Seattle Fire Department to increase positive interactions with people in crisis.

We're requiring, with a new law, Seattle police officers to display their badges and their badge numbers while wearing morning bands.

We've expanded HealthONE to create three response teams, two of them new, to allow firefighters and social workers to respond to more 911 calls and lessen police responses.

The council created a community safety and communication center, which just yesterday transferred 9-1-1 dispatchers out of SPD.

This is a big step forward in recalibrating our efforts to things that do not require sworn officers to respond.

We've reached an agreement for the first time for the Community Police Commission to have a formal role in police union contract negotiations.

And we've reduced our reliance on incarceration by redirecting $8 million from this year and next in the King County Jail contract, community-based and health programs to promote upstream safety and health.

We've removed outdated drug and constitution lawyering laws from the Seattle Municipal Code as recommended by the reentry work group.

And in addition, a number of council members advocated at the state legislature for changes to state law in pursuit of greater accountability measures.

The council took these votes but were made possible by the voices and sustained action of thousands of protesters who made it clear day after day in the middle of a pandemic, no less, that community safety cannot be achieved without the mental restructuring of our response to crisis calls and non-police alternatives to people in crisis.

You swung this city's pendulum towards justice.

And when I say you, I mean everybody out there who has been doing this work.

I know these changes are because of your efforts, and I know this work is not done.

In closing, I just want to say before we move to public comment, it's appropriate that on this day we hear from our Office of Police Accountability about their work over the past year.

Director Meyerberg has himself said that the OCA isn't perfect.

In fact, he says that changes are needed to help keep improving accountability systems both locally and statewide.

Hearing his report, together with the recommendations of the Office of the Inspector General, and the community police commission is all part of improving an imperfect system of accountability.

I want to honor the life of Floyd this morning, but also recognize the deaths of John Furr, Terry Caver, Derek Hayden, and Gregory Teller at the hands of Seattle police officers over the last year.

I want to take a pause because I have, um, I have received your indulgence in receiving some opening remarks.

Council colleagues, if you folks have points that you would like to add, you are certainly invited to do so.

Otherwise, I will move into approval of the agenda.

Council member Tawant.

Thank you very much, Chair Herbold.

I appreciate the chance to make some opening remarks.

And in fact, in order to be able to not interrupt the presentation at different times, and because my questions are more overarching, not about specific slide items, I would like to just also quickly front load those questions as well.

And as I'm sure everyone who's watching would know, my office is completely convinced that the Seattle's police accountability system as we have it is fundamentally broken on a structural level.

This goes far deeper than any individual decision made in the office of police accountability, although I, of course, have substantial disagreement with those decisions.

But the point is this overarching context.

And I wanted to be crystal clear about that overarching context, because otherwise the points that come from my office and some of them I lay out right now about why the police were not held accountable for the mass brutality of the Black Lives Matter movement last summer will be lost in secondary details.

And unfortunately, this has happened repeatedly from OPA presenters where the overarching context of the failure in police accountability is not kept in the context.

We need an elected community oversight board with full powers over the police to hire and fire police officers, set policies and procedures, and carry out investigations and have subpoena powers.

It is misleading to call the OPA a civilian oversight board.

Yes, Director Meyerberg and others in the leadership of the OPA are not sworn officers, but they are not independent of the mayor and the overall power structure of the city's political establishment.

And that's why it's not just about the OPA or individual police officers, the culture of the police force, obviously all of those are crucial components, but this is not in a vacuum of an overall city political establishment that has failed in its task on police accountability year after year.

The OPA leadership reports the same mayor who ordered the police to gas the people of Seattle last summer in addition to using other weaponry.

against the so-called less lethal weapons on peaceful protests repeatedly night after night.

So how can they be expected to honestly hold the police accountable after that overwhelming police violence?

And some of my specific questions, I'll just lay out quickly.

The police contract, which I was unfortunately the only elected representative on the council to vote against, effectively creates a 180 statute of limitations on police being held.

Does that mean that all the investigations into the police violence against the Justice for George Floyd movement are effectively over?

You did not sustain the thousands of complaints against the officer who pepper sprayed a child in the face.

How can you justify that?

I have asked this question in the committee before and have not had any kind of satisfactory answers.

The response has been that it is regrettable but consistent with police procedures.

This is the response we've had from Director Meyerberg and others, we respond when our office fought for legislation banning the police from using these chemical weapons against protesters, you oppose that.

So you say this is regrettable, but that is simply not credible when you oppose every effort to stop it.

You exonerate the police officer saying that the officer acted within the law, and then you oppose changing the law.

Why do you think the police are so confident that they can brutalize Black Lives Matter protesters without consequence?

Do you think that the Seattle police were generally held accountable for the violence they unleashed on our community during the Black Lives Matter movement last summer?

So these are my questions.

that today will be different, that we will have different answers.

And of course, on the specific question about the 180 day statute of limitations, but I'm unfortunately not very hopeful, but I did want to register those questions because I think it is extremely important for us as elected representatives to continue pushing on things, even though we have not had results yet.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Swat.

Seeing, No other hands.

I will move to approval of the agenda.

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

public comment period.

I will moderate public comment period in the following manner.

by the end of the public comment period by going to the council's website.

The link is also listed on today's agenda.

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

You can begin by stating your name and the item which you are addressing on the agenda.

speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

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

The speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted minutes provided.

The speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line, and if you You continue following the meeting, you can do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options that are listed on the agenda.

Right now, it looks like we have 10 people signed up for public comment.

And I will call on the first two speakers.

Let me just get over to my...

sign-up sheet here.

All right, so we have first Howard Gale followed by Cody Zalewski.

Gale, please.

Good morning, Howard Gale, District 7. Today is the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's death, a day when our eyes and hearts were open to the extent and brutality of police abuse.

And today, OPA Director Meyerberg will go before you to blind us and harden our hearts with numbers and lies.

This will be done by a man who has spent his entire professional career, 13 years, defending police, including defending the New York City police against the legal and righteous claims of the Central Park Five.

Here are the only numbers that matter today, the numbers that Director Meyerberg is here to obscure.

Eighty seven the days that terry cavers murder by sbd went unnoticed with marver claiming there were no complaints are planned investigations by opiate despite the fact that i can but i could make a complaint three hundred seventy one for the days that we are still waiting for an opiate report on sbd's murder of terry caver twenty seven for the number of people killed by sbd in the first decade of the century before john t williams twenty nine for the number of people killed by the sbd in the last decade that is after john t williams and the start of our police reform process By the way, 29 is bigger than 27. All these killings ruled, quote, lawful and proper or never investigators still waiting for the investigation to be completed.

One is the number of SPD officers disciplined with anything more than a reprimand for all the abuse and harm unleashed on hundreds over the last twelve months to his number of days suspension with or without pay we don't know suggested as discipline for that one single officer receiving more than a reprimand nine is number of years we pretended to have police accountability there are far too many heart-rending traumatic stories buried in the numbers margaret will put before you today for me to note, but two stand out.

Last July, when an SPD officer intentionally threw a blast ball at Renee Rackety, that same month, over a dozen officers stood passively over Samantha Six as she suffered repeated epileptic seizures.

After being illegally arrested in both these cases, Meyerberg ruled that the abuse complaints were not sustained.

We need to have civilian oversight.

I invite everyone to join us at SeattleStop.org.

Thank you, Howard.

Our next speaker is Cody Zaleski followed by Ben Thurcombe.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay, great.

Hello, Seattle City Council.

My name is Cody Zaleski and I'm a resident of District 4 and a medical researcher here in Seattle.

I'm here representing the organization Decriminalize Nature Seattle.

Our group seeks to have entheogenic plant medicine be listed as the lowest law enforcement priority with protections for medical practitioners.

In the wake of the Blake decision, many lawmakers on the state level are wary of pursuing progressive drug law reform.

The bill recently passed by the state Senate, SB 5476, is another regressive continuation of the drug war.

If the city of Seattle acts now and passes the resolution decriminalizing entheogens, protecting medical practitioners who prescribe them, it can demonstrate that there is still public appetite for change in the status quo.

A similar law, I-109, was voted on in Oregon in 2020. It passed by double digits in the overwhelmingly demographically similar city of Oregon.

This is an incredibly popular issue.

Our organization has won the endorsement of dozens of local medical practitioners drug law reform groups indigenous healers and all of the local legislative district Democratic parties within the city of Seattle we've spoken with.

Personally I think the efficacy of these plant medicines in treating substance abuse depression PTSD amongst others is unparalleled even relative to modern pharmaceutical medicine.

The city of Seattle should join almost a dozen other municipal bodies such as Washington D.C. Oakland and Denver in passing these reform.

Thank you and I cede my time.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Ben Sircum, followed by Lila Burns.

Hello.

Hey, my name is Ben Sircum and I'm a resident living in District 3. I'm speaking today as part of Decriminalize Nature Seattle in the hopes that you will adopt our resolution to decriminalize psychedelics in Seattle.

Today I would like to talk to you about my own experience with psychedelics and how they relate to broader studies of psychedelics across the country.

My first time taking psilocybin was over a decade ago.

I experienced the most euphoric sense of peace with myself and the world I've ever felt.

I came out of the trip with an acceptance and confidence in myself that made me a genuinely happier person.

There have been multiple studies that have shown that over 66% of patients receiving psychedelic treatment regard the session as the most spiritual experience of their lives.

You have heard from me and other volunteers that these substances have healed depression, addiction, anxiety.

My question to you, City Hall, is why would we want to continue incarcerating people for trying to better themselves?

Psychedelics are non-addictive and have shown to have incredible medical benefits.

Could any of you say the same about alcohol or tobacco?

I'm asking you to take a look at the facts and testimonials that we have given before you and ask yourself, how keeping these substances criminalized at the highest extent of the law benefits anyone.

We can't let Seattle get left behind practicing archaic drug laws that have proven to not work.

Let's allow equitable and safe access to these substances, just like so many cities have done before us.

We can do better, Seattle.

Support our resolution.

I yield my time.

Thank you, Ben.

Our next speaker is Lila Burns, followed by Valerie Silveret.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

We can hear you.

Hi, I'm Lila in District 4. I'm calling today regarding Council Bill 119981, which as amended gives money to SPD that should be going to participatory budgeting after you committed to defunding last summer.

I urge Council to reject this bill and follow through with defunding SPD.

Today marks one year since the murder of George Floyd.

U.S. police have killed at least 1,068 people since, 414 of them just in 2021, including Seattle police who killed both Gregory Taylor and Derek Hayden in the span of a single week.

Police do not make us safer.

SPD does not need more money.

The OPA findings can be overruled by the police chief, and the consent decree claims to be an oversight body, but it's been used to evade the tear gas ban last summer and even delay this bill for months.

Black Lives Matter and are directly put in danger by this bill as amended.

Reject Council Bill 119981 when it goes to full council.

The conviction of Derek Chauvin is not justice.

It's one rare form of police accountability that was only achieved through immense and countrywide pressure.

Seattle City Council has power over SPD's budget and must use it to intervene in their continual killing and brutalization of your constituents.

Honor George Floyd and please consider the commitments to Black Lives you made or have broken in the years since his murder.

It's been one year, and the demands of the protest have not been met.

One, defund SPD by 50% at least.

Two, reallocate those funds to black communities.

Three, release all protesters without charges.

Four, no new youth jail.

Five, Jenny Durkin resigns.

Please reject Council Bill 1199811. It goes to full council.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Valerie Horad, followed by Andrew Carnahan.

Good morning.

I'm Valerie.

Good morning.

I'm Valerie.

I live in Beacon Hill.

On today's agenda is a presentation of the OPA's annual report.

I've read it.

It reveals the pro-police bias that is baked into our current system of police accountability.

There are multiple points where the report's language associates protests after the murder of George Floyd, with complaints to the OPA as if protest was a cause of complaints.

Let's be clear, protest is the exercise of the constitutional right to freedom of speech.

It's possible to have protest without the police response of escalation, retaliation, and attacks on civilians that we saw last summer.

Those actions by SPD were clearly unnecessary.

That was documented in many videos.

Protest is not in itself a reason for people filing complaints to the OPA.

The abusive behavior of SPD in response to protest is the reason for the complaints.

How SPD handled protest and how it polices at other times are obviously related.

The problems with policing in our city take a high toll year after year.

That's an ongoing problem that is obscured in the annual report the OPA is presenting today.

The report gives some metrics without giving real information about complaints or consequences.

At several points, the OPA says that it increased transparency this year in response to public interest.

My jaw dropped when I read that.

What we have gotten from the OPA is not real transparency, but a higher profile in response to a season of crisis and criticism.

Let's not pretend that we have real transparency or real police accountability.

We need to start over with a fully civilian police oversight board that is elected by the people and accountable to them.

Go to seattlestop.org for more information.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Andrew Carnahan, followed by Dominic Davis, who's showing is not present, but maybe he'll be back by the time Andrew is done speaking.

Hello, my name is Andrew Carnahan.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Wonderful.

So I'm a licensed mental health counselor and substance use disorder professional.

I've been working in the city of Seattle for over 10 years.

During that time, I've served thousands of people, particularly around substance use disorders.

Of the thousands of people I've worked with, exactly one of those people has had a primary diagnosis of psychedelic related substance use disorder.

I'm speaking in favor of the effort to decriminalize nature and decriminalizing theogenic substances in the city of Seattle.

When I look at the fact that in my anecdotal experience, I've had such a minimal amount of problems that I've seen related to these substances, and when we also look at the literature on the topic, we see that these substances have an incredibly low profile for abuse or dependence, and they also have, when used responsibly, a really good safety record.

When we couple that information with the new research coming out about the medical efficacy of these substances, and furthermore, we look at the fact that many spiritual traditions, for example, the Santa Ana Church or the UDV, which are in theogenic-based religions, have a profound effect on their participants or the people in their congregation, which reducing addiction and mental health disorders.

as well as the Native American church which uses sacramental peyote, I forgot to mention that, we can see that clearly the harm done by these substances when balanced against the very likely benefit to individuals and the community as a whole, it makes no sense to keep these substances criminalized.

I'm not just speaking about the medical use of these substances, I'm speaking particularly about their spiritual use.

and that the studies that have found that the spiritual use and the use of these substances by lay people.

Thank you.

The next person that we have signed up to speak is Dominic Davis, but Dominic is showing as not present.

We'll come back to him if that changes.

The next person that we have showing as present is Ken Charnley.

And then we have two other people signed up who are showing as not present, Bob Johnson and George Soto.

If we get to the end of Ken's comments and neither Dominic Davis Ben Johnson or George Soto are showing as present, we will conclude our public comment.

Ken?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay.

My name is Ken Charnley and I currently reside on Accent Island, formerly known as District 1. I'm a mere carpenter, and I'm taking time away from my day to use my voice here at City Council in advocacy of DecrimNature Seattle and what they're going to accomplish with your help.

We all know that the war on drugs is an incompetent war on marginalized communities.

It's over.

DecrimNature is proposing a gift-gather-grow philosophy.

I think we can all agree that the government shouldn't tell anyone what they can and can't grow.

Psychedelics have helped me in more ways than I could have ever imagined, and I want that for everybody if that's something they desire.

As research continues, the therapeutic benefits become more and more obvious, and the therapist you will hear from or have already had the pleasure to hear from will agree.

Unfortunately, if it wasn't for this movement, I would have never spoken with nor could I afford to speak with these brilliant minds.

Dental insurance, retirement, providing for a family, and space travel are all legal, yet they all seem equally as unattainable to me and many of my peers.

We see how this is working out in Oregon.

Keeping this in a strictly medical realm will snuff regular hardworking people like me from all the benefits that are associated with psychedelics, thus continuing the vicious cycle.

Bondage of consciousness isn't a good look.

As far as psychedelics go, I agree with get gather girl.

I see my time.

Thank you so much.

Public comment.

I see that the last three public commenters are still showing is not present.

So with that, we will.

Thank you all for joining us here today.

And we'll move on to the items on today's agenda.

We have the office of accountability before the committee to present their 2020 annual report.

As mentioned earlier, the Office of Police Accountability is one of three bodies responsible for accountability in Seattle.

The Office of Police Accountability is specifically charged with investigating reports of misconduct.

Thank you for joining us today.

I really appreciate your flexibility on scheduling.

Director Meyerberg, in addition to the presentation, I'd appreciate if you could also provide at any point during the presentation, it doesn't need to move to the top, but provide an update on the investigation.

of the six officers who were in D.C.

on January 6th, the timeline for completing that investigation.

And again, because it's, I think, top of mind for a lot of folks, a brief description of the work that the OPA did on the pink umbrella case also would be helpful.

At this point, I'm just going to turn it over to our presenters today and ask that the presenters from the Office of Police Accountability introduce yourselves for the viewing public.

Real quick, I'm just going to read the item into the record.

Agenda item number one, Office of Police Accountability 2020 Annual Report.

Thank you.

Much appreciated.

Good morning, everyone.

Andrew Meyerberg from the Office of Police Accountability.

I'm the director.

Good morning.

My name is Anne Betazorth.

I'm the Assistant Director of Public Affairs and Policy at the Office of Police Accountability.

Good morning.

I'm Lauren Caputo.

I'm the Data and Policy Analyst at OPA.

Again, thank you so much, all of you, for joining us.

And with that, let's just dig right in.

We can proceed with your presentation.

Great.

So I'll lead us off.

You know, like everyone on the Council, I really appreciated, Council Member Herbold, your words this morning.

You know, I think we all were horrified by what we saw last spring and into the summer.

And, you know, I think, you know, the points that Councilmember Sawant makes, I'm happy to discuss during the course of this presentation and answer whatever questions you all feel like are necessary to answer.

But, you know, I think what we're going to talk about today is that we worked incredibly hard and did our best through a very, very difficult year to try to move our system forward, whether through our investigations, whether through policy recommendations to try to modify and alter SPD's demonstration management policies, or through our work with the legislative, during the legislative session into the, through the spring and into the summer.

So, but today, I think what we want to do is talk about the whole of our work product.

And again, answer whatever questions that we can.

So, without further ado, I will leave it to Anne, I think, to start or to Lauren.

Do we have the presentation that we can display on the screen?

Is that?

That would be ideal if you could do that.

I'm sorry.

I thought council was showing the presentation, but we can try to pull it up here if we need to.

Alex, is that?

Yeah.

That would be great.

Usually, the folks who are presenting run the show because you know the cadence of the presentation.

My apologies if we didn't make that clear.

That was not clear.

Lauren, do you have it to pull up or do you want me to?

Do you mind doing it?

I'm looking for it.

It is attached to our agenda.

Okay.

One moment.

Is that showing on the screen?

It is not.

Okay.

One moment.

And loads us up.

I'm going to give a quick overview of where we are.

Great.

My old radio is making me anxious about the dead air.

Thank you so much.

So, so we.

since we've been giving periodic updates at the CPC, but I'll kind of give the label end of where we are right now.

We have interviewed all six of the involved officers.

After those interviews occurred, we went, two of our supervisors went to Washington, D.C.

to do further analysis and investigation.

We're trying to pull responsive records, for example, hotel records, meal records, video, and other evidence that would be relevant to the case.

We're now in the process of re-interviewing at least five of the six, potentially all six officers prior to issuing findings.

So right now our findings are due in July, in early July, and we are on target to be getting that case done within the 180 day timeline.

And I think this might be a good segue to address the issue that Council Member Sawant raised about how your office deals with the timelines when the investigation is butting up against the 180 days and sort of our track record at getting those timelines extended as needed.

Sure, I'm not sure that I totally understand the initial question, but what I'll say is that we all cases are governed by 180 day timeline.

So a six month disciplinary timeline, unless there's some unique facts at issue.

For example, if the officers unknown, if we don't know the officer's name, then obviously there's no 180 day timelines.

It only, it only starts moving for a member of a bargaining unit and an unknown officer is not an identified member of a bargaining unit.

But unless we seek an extension, for example, if someone's on leave or if the case is pending criminal investigation, generally all cases have to be done within six months.

So with regard to the protest cases, and I'll just keep this quick because I know Anne will move into the report, but with regard to the protest cases, we had about 145 cases roughly that stem from around 19,000 complaints.

And these complaints came in, a lot of them came in in the very beginning of the protest, but they've kind of lasted through the fall and into the spring.

So we do periodically still get demonstration cases, but usually they're one-offs as opposed to five, six, seven, eight from one day.

So each of those cases is governed by a 180-day timeline.

With regard to the ones that have already occurred in which the named employee was known, unless there was some tolling, those cases are all completed.

So findings have been issued, whether sustained or not sustained, and the 180-day timeline is completed.

So the cases are not outstanding, so I'm not exactly sure what the question was, but anything that is still pending the 180-day timeline is still an open investigation, and we expect that with 99% of our other investigations, that all cases will be done within the timeline.

Thank you so much.

All right, let's move into the presentation.

Appreciate that.

All right.

If we could go to the first slide, please.

So we'll start with the employees who received complaints.

40% of sworn officer employees received a complaint last year.

This graph here is showing both sworn and civilian employees.

And so with those two together, it's about 30% of all Seattle Police Department employees received at least one complaint, which is pretty standard.

In 2019, we also reported 30% of all SPD employees received a complaint.

And a majority of them just received one complaint.

There were five officers who received seven or more complaints in 2020.

I would love to pause here.

I just want to highlight that I had requested that Director Meyerberg do some analysis on the number or the percentage of officers who have voluntarily left the department over the last year.

The percentage of those officers who also had pending And I believe, Director Meyerberg, you found that between 20 to 30 percent of the 200 or so officers who at that point of your analysis had voluntarily left the department had received a complaint over the last spring, during the period of sustained protests.

Yeah, so basically, I think what I think the purpose of your question was, was to figure out whether there was a correlation between officers leaving and having complaints.

Were officers trying to leave SPD with pending complaints in order to potentially avoid discipline?

And I think what we found was that, yes, while some officers had complaints leaving, the rate of complaints against officers leaving was lower than the overall rate against officers remaining.

So, and I don't think that that proves the point one way or the other, but I think it doesn't necessarily create an inference that officers were leaving to avoid discipline.

Correct, but can you confirm it was 20 to 30% of officers?

Yes.

Thank you.

And can you, that was over officers who left up until, it was the first like 200 or so officers that had left, is that correct?

I think approximately we had run it up until the time that you'd made the request, which I think was, you know, about a month ago.

So, yes.

All right.

Thank you so much.

If we can move.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So the most common allegations received were professionalism, use of force and bias-free policing.

These are the same top three that we've shown in recent years as well, although it's slightly reordered.

Use of force moved up significantly this year.

OPA logged a 58% increase in total allegations received.

And if we move to the next slide, we'll get a little deeper into this.

So each of these four allegations increased significantly regarding SPD's response to the protests.

As I mentioned, use of force increased significantly.

It was up 170% from 2019. Also a pretty significant increase in supervisory responsibility.

And that's because a lot of the responsibility in crowd management falls up in the chain of command with supervisors, commanders, equipment and uniform allegations, and a lot of cases related to those morning badges or the black tape that was covering officers' badge numbers initially.

And then later on, mask-wearing complaints also stemming from protests.

So that's equipment and uniform.

And then, of course, de-escalation increased, and that's kind of related to use of force there often.

analyzed together.

Thank you.

Can we just pause here?

Just a couple questions about these slide four and five.

Wondering if you could give us some examples of professionalism complaints.

And then for the top three categories, do you have a sense of how many of the complaints are from the public compared to complaints from within the department itself?

And I ask because another slide notes that 64% of the complaints were from the public during 2020 and 36% were from within SPD.

So interested to know sort of what that looks like for the top three categories of complaints.

And just are there categories that are more likely to be reported by the department or by the public?

And then finally, supervisory responsibility complaints went up significantly.

What kind of allegations does this type of a complaint entail?

So I can start with the internal versus external complaints coming from the public.

So we're going to get to that in a couple of slides.

Generally, we analyze that on a case-level basis, whereas you can have multiple allegations within a case.

And so we will talk about community member-filed complaints in a couple of slides.

Andrew, do you have any examples of professionalism?

Sure.

Yeah.

What I would say, too, about allegations, so generally, Generally, a community member, even an officer, is not actually defining one of these categories of allegations that we use.

They'll generally say, I was hit by a blast ball and I shouldn't have, but then we're analyzing the case and we're saying, okay, that's a use of excessive force.

It was essentially de-escalation.

It's potentially crowd management.

You didn't use your blast ball appropriately.

So we are self-identifying these allegations.

Each case, and I think this is something that is confusing at time, but each case includes one or more allegations, and generally many more.

So usually a case has between two to six to seven allegations.

So a good example, for example, of force would be either under Title VIII, which is the general use of force policy, or Title XIV, which governs the use of force in the demonstration management context, would be the use OC spray, blast balls, 40 millimeters.

That's much of the force that we're seeing in the protest context.

However, we're also seeing pushes or other types of force during the course of an arrest that would fall more under the general use of force policy, which is 8.200.

Thank you.

Yeah, I am.

Regardless of who defines the complaint.

I am, and if it's covered later, that's fine, but for the top three complaints.

Yeah, no, professionalism, forced use, and bias-free policing.

I am interested to know what percentage of those complaints, once designated or categorized by the OPA, what percentage came from the public and what percentage came from within the department.

And yes, I would love some examples of professionalism allegations and in super There's a real responsibility allegations.

So so we'll cover the your first question later on in a couple of slides with regard to the second question.

I mean professionalism is generally it's.

There's two ways in which we look at professionalism.

It could be the use of profanity or derogatory or contemptuous comments towards an individual.

So, for example, we had cases in the protest where people maybe made statements over radio or made statements that were captured while they were assigned to protests that were deemed to be, again, profanity, contemptuous, derogatory, and resulted in sustained findings.

Professionalism also can be broader in that it's conduct that undermines public trust and confidence in the department.

For example, and this is not in the protest context, but you could have a case where you use the department database to look up information about your neighbor, right?

That can be profanity or something along those lines, but it would be conduct that it's improper and it undermines trust and confidence in yourself and in the department.

So that's generally professionalism.

Supervisory responsibility is basically supervisors, in most cases, made the decision to disperse crowds and the decision to authorize officers to use less lethal tools, including, you know, blast balls, 40 millimeters, OC spray.

So in the protest context, it's unlike a normal patrol interaction where an officer is making that unilateral individual decision to use force.

Here there is supervisory approval and authority provided to officers so we focused very much on the supervisors, and I think almost every one of the big picture protest cases that involved the dispersal and the widespread use of less lethal tools involved a named employee who was a supervisor.

And obviously the tricky thing, and this is something that we've discussed on Councilmember Herbold, is the tricky thing is that we are required to interview those individuals and to investigate those individuals with our supervisors, and we only have two of them.

So certainly that was a big workload issue for us, but that's an example of the supervisory responsibility, if that's helpful.

Thank you.

And if we could go back and two more slides back to the allegations main table.

So I would say that professionalism and bias-free policing often do come from community members and force use as well.

However, there are, you know, the force review board and force investigation team that forwards a lot of complaints internally to OPA regarding use of force.

And the same can happen with bias-free policing.

We have bias reviews that come to OPA internally from the department.

So while a majority do come from the community, they can be forwarded internally.

Yeah, I think also just to piggyback on that.

I mean, a lot of the internal referrals are on behalf of a community member.

So by policy, officers are required to pass on community member complaints.

So those may be classified as an SPD referral, but it's SPD referring information provided by a complainant, a community member.

All right, and we can go two more slides.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So more than half of cases in 2020 were classified for investigation with 2020 being the navy blue here in the graph.

We had 432 cases that were conducting an investigation or have already completed an investigation that was received in 2020. I mean, it's an increase from previous years.

And this is generally, I think, a result of the allegations and the nature of the cases.

I mean, we, by our manual, we are required to investigate any use of force bias allegation.

We can't process it back to the chain of command.

So this is, I think, a function of the increase in use of force allegations that I think we showed in the past slide.

More of OPA's investigations in 2020 stemmed from community member or external complaints.

So this is what I was saying when we measured this kind of on a case-level basis.

This graph for the 2020 calendar year is referring to those 432 investigations that I mentioned in the last slide.

Nearly two-thirds of them were filed by the public to OPA and so that's not even including the the bias complaints or other ones that are forwarded internally from SPD.

The community is, so not only, I guess, are investigations increasing, but more of those investigations are coming from community filed complaints.

I just want to take a moment so we can adjust this.

This chart indicates that 72% of complaints were internal in 2018, 52% of complaints were internal in 2019, and only 36 complaints were internal in 2020.

It's a little bit different.

An important distinction is this is just complaints that were classified for investigation, so not complaints that were contact logged or went back to the supervisors for action.

important clarification.

Thank you so much.

So just wondering, I think the report notes that the growing number of complaints classified for investigation are from the community in part due to the unsubstantiated misconduct screening program that Director Meyerberg, you have initiated.

The report says in I'm going to turn it back over to you.

documented in the field by the chain of command rather than referred to OPA's complaints.

I want to highlight that the Office of the Inspector General conducts quarterly audits of the OPA's determination of these incidents.

I just want to give you the opportunity, Director Meyerberg, to speak a little bit to your efforts to spearhead this program and how you believe it's working.

Yes, so I think your first point, I think you're correct that I think some of the so so backing up for a second.

So this is this is the number of investigations that come from complaints to the number of to the percentage of complaints that were classified for investigation.

So so but I will say that you're right in that the number of internal referrals that we receive have the percentage has gone down because normally those 100 and let's say it was 150 potentially would have come through our office and then they would have been investigated.

So the purpose of the program was to take cases and this was we saw this a lot early on in 2017-2018 was to take cases that could be that could be clearly refuted by body-worn video for example or in-car video for that matter where we had allegations where someone said you know you broke my back or you broke my legs and I can't walk and the video shows them walking and no force was used or allegations of sexual assault that occurred in patrol vehicles where the in-car video shows that it didn't occur.

The purpose of the program was to streamline the reviews of that type of misconduct and to allow supervisors to affirmably disprove it propose how they want to handle the case to OPA and then we would do our own review by looking at body worn video.

And then obviously at the back end, the OIG would audit it.

So the program started as a pilot in 2018 and then expanded and then was, you know, obviously approved by the court and by DOJ and the monitoring team and has expanded over time.

So, generally what it does is it allows OPA to focus its resources on the cases that are not easily disprovable or not inherently disprovable by video.

And it also ensures that the chain of command is taking more responsibility over doing more of an investigation in the field and then providing that information to OPA.

Thank you.

All right, so 18% of cases completed in 2020 resulted in one or more sustained findings.

And since this presentation is about 2020 data, there were no sustained findings were returned or reversed by the chief of police last year.

So on that slide, I just want to highlight the 18 percent of completed investigations that were classified by OPA that contained one or more sustained findings.

That is very similar to previous years' rates of sustained findings.

Is that correct?

Yeah, it generally hovers around 20-ish percent, 18 to 22 percent.

And help me out with my math here, given that we're taking out cases that at fit into the unsubstantiated misconduct screening program?

Couldn't we expect, I mean, everything being equal over a number of years, shouldn't we expect the sustained findings to go, percentage, the rate of sustained findings to go down if we're taking out a lot of the the cases that there's just no basis for the complaint?

Potentially, you know, a lot of those complaints, I mean, the tricky part about that, about those complaints, some of those cases were handled as contact logs previously, where they were just, you know, clearly unfounded.

So I don't know whether we have assessed that to say whether the rate would go up or down.

I mean, certainly we, this rate has been consistent over time, you know, perhaps a little bit lower and maybe you're right.

Maybe it does, maybe it does correlate in those cases, but I don't know that we have a ready answer to that council member.

Thank you.

68 employees were disciplined following OPA investigations in 2020. Four employees were disciplined in more than one case each.

The most common discipline, and again, this chart is showing sworn and civilian, but the most common disciplinary action is a written reprimand followed by a suspension and then oral reprimands.

Go to the next slide.

So, Disciplinary appeals dropped 70% from 2019. There were eight appeals filed in 2022 through the Public Safety Civil Service Commission, and six went through the arbitration route of appeal.

Those are the two types of appeals that officers can do.

And OPA now has data on appeals on our website for the public to view and download.

It's in our case data page on our website, and we update that when we're notified by the city attorney's office of a new appeal being filed or closed.

So obviously, this is a big drop.

We, I mean, we have ideas as to what, we have ideas as to what may have caused this, but not a definitive answer.

So, I mean, there just could be a ton of different reasons why this drop occurred.

I mean, if you look at Comparing you know this year 2020 to 2019 we had more investigations, a similar sustain rate so that's more sustained cases.

So there were more sustained cases to be appealed, but they weren't appealed.

We sustained more use of force allegations in 20 than we did in 2019. And generally, those are the types of allegations that are appealed by the union.

But almost all of them were not appealed.

So it could be that the union was more judicious about what they brought to appeal.

It could be that they felt that they didn't have a grounds to appeal the decisions that were issued.

It's very, very difficult to say why this drop occurred, but it is a a very, very significant drop.

And Dr. Meyerberg, moving forward, I'm wondering if you can speak to how the resolution, of course, we can't account the findings of this case for 2020 because it's relatively recent, but if you could speak a little bit for the viewing public on the potential impacts of the Adlai Shepard case on appeals moving forward, and how that affects the ability of SPOG to argue for appeals.

I think that would be really useful.

So, as most people know, the Adlai Shepard case, which was involving the punching of Ms. Dirden-Bosley in the back of a patrol vehicle, resulted in Mr. Shepard's termination.

An arbitrator upheld the sustained finding but reversed the termination and imposed a disciplinary penalty but brought Mr. Shepard back.

The city then appealed and the court agreed.

It then went to a higher court and fundamental, I think, to your question, Council Member Kerbel, was that the appellate court upheld the Superior Court and said that and recognize, I think, for the first time, a public policy in ensuring that excessive force is not used.

And I think we view this as incredibly significant.

So many of the cases that are pending appeal are use of force cases.

So for example, very early on at OPA, I had sustained a finding in an officer-involved shooting, which was the East Lake shooting.

That was in October of 2017. And both of those officers were terminated.

So that case is up for appeal, and we expect it's going to be one of the next that's appealed.

And I think the city is in a stronger position today, given that ruling, insofar as I think it provides more deference to the determination of the department that that the terminations and the sustained findings were issued in furtherance of that strong public policy towards preventing excessive force.

So, you know, obviously we'll see how this is applied, this precedent is applied by arbitrators in the PSCSC moving forward, but I think we view it as very favorable for the city, particularly in the context of excessive force cases.

I'm going to take over now and talk a little bit about OPA's protest data and response.

So starting in late May and throughout the rest of the year, we've kind of calculated roughly the number of times that we've been contacted about police contact, excuse me, at protests.

And it's been over 19,000, probably closer to 20,000 contacts that we've received.

A lot of these were about similar incidents or the same incident.

About 13,000, I believe, were about the child pepper spray incident.

So what we did was sort through these and determine which ones needed to be investigated.

It resulted in about 145 unique incidents that required investigation.

So that's the number of investigations we have right now.

That's the 145 number.

And of those 99% or I'm sorry, 99 total have been completed and are shown on our website.

The remainder should be done in the next couple of months.

They all have 180 day timeline.

Those have been extended for a couple different circumstances, including based on COVID and other timeline necessities.

Of the 99, cases that are completed, 18 can contain sustained findings.

So there are often multiple allegations within a case.

And so of those, like I said, 18 of the cases, there are sustained findings within them.

There are also OPA has the ability to to make systemic policy recommendations.

This this is an option for Director Meyerberg when he feels like the individual did not commit misconduct.

It was more a deficiency in the policy or the training that's the issue.

So we have made systemic policy recommendations in 12 unique cases.

Those range from policy recommendations about blast balls to providing medical aid.

There's really a range of those and those are all shown on the website as well.

I think Council Member Morales has a question.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Morales.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, if we could just quickly on this slide, you mentioned of that 19,000, about 13,000 were related to that one incident with the child.

Can you talk a little bit about what the other 6,000 were for and how that got distilled to 145 that resulted in investigations?

Sure, so there were tons of different incidents and we sorted through and tried to figure out which ones were talking about the same incidents and then initiated investigations into those.

We go through and list every individual case on our website.

We created a protest case dashboard and we talk about, we kind of summarize each individual case on there and talk about the progress and where it is in the process.

Yeah, sorry to add a little bit more detail I think to your point and customer rallies, I think we, we don't have I mean, the one that we focus on when we talk about numbers was the child pepper spray case and obviously that was 13,000 there were several other complaints that occurred early in the protest.

that did go viral that we received a number of complaints on.

We probably could do, it's a little bit difficult just because of the massive amount of information, but I think we could go back through the cases and give you a better idea of which complaints resulted in the most concern or the most complaints, but we don't necessarily have that readily available right now.

We worked really closely with Microsoft very early on and they helped us go through and de-dupe some of the complaints.

So we were able to de-dupe enough.

And some of them, for example, contain the same language.

They were just cut and pasted, and it was the same exact types of complaints.

So we were able to de-dupe and go through all of the different contacts, again, one by one by one, and come up with 145 unique cases.

And where there was a question, we definitely deferred to creating a unique case.

We didn't just lump things together because we thought maybe they're connected.

We were careful to create as many unique cases as we deemed appropriate.

Does that answer your question, Council Member?

Thank you very much.

to Director Myberg, it would be helpful to get a sense of the other complaints or other actions that drew a large number of complaints.

I imagine the pink umbrella case is one such case.

I imagine the punching in the face of the protester on the ground is another such case.

I think it would just be helpful to get a sense of that big picture.

If you could follow up afterwards, that would be great.

Yeah, and I think it's fair to say you're correct in the ones you aim, plus the case with an officer who put a knee on somebody's neck.

I mean, the vast majority of the complaints that we received just by a percentage were from basically from the first day of the protest to June 1. That was the vast majority of cases that we received, the complaints that we received.

And then we continue to receive them periodically, but that was the massive amount that came in.

Thank you.

So straight from the get-go in late May, we recognized a need to increase transparency.

There was a lot of public interest around the protests and about how OPA were going to respond to them.

So we put our heads together and came up with a few different ways that we could give the public more information.

We created a public dashboard that shows progress for these protest cases.

It has donuts for each particular case, similar to what you're seeing on the screen.

And we created a list showing each of 10 steps in an investigation process, just broadly.

And it shows for each of these cases, what step OPA investigators are on for that case.

Every three weeks, and it used to be less, it used to be more frequently, but now we're at every three weeks, we roll out a new batch of cases that we kind of, we've been, so that we can roll them out on one day and show the public at once instead of kind of trickling them out.

And we put out a tweet on social media, often do a press release, and Director Myerberg often does media interviews to give additional information.

Sometimes we have explanatory videos, which we started doing, which seemed to be very helpful for the public, where we have someone on our staff go through and pull pieces of the videos that help to explain the findings that Director Myerberg has come to the conclusion about the case.

pull these video clips together.

It can be a mix of body-worn video or third-party video.

And we either do a voiceover narration or have a text on the screen that is just a much simpler way for the public to see what the findings are rather than reading a, you know, for example, a 10-page document that lays it out in detail.

So those were a few ways that we expanded our kind of public presence and tried to give more information on where we were at and why we were doing what we were doing.

Does it relate to systematic policy recommendations?

I know that each report from OPA includes that information when appropriate, but I'm wondering if it's pulled out as well.

I know the CPC has, the Community Police Commission has created a dashboard of its recommendations and tracking which ones are implemented, which ones are not.

I'm wondering if the OPA has already done something like that.

I believe that you have been double checking.

Yes, we have a page on our website under the policy tab.

that lists each management action that we have issued.

It has a link to the actual letter that we send to the police department that summarizes the case and the recommendation.

Then it lists the status, whether it's active, whether it's been partially implemented or fully implemented.

Then we link on that same status, we link to documentation that the police department sends back to us where they describe what they did to put that recommendation into action.

Does your report have findings around those recommendations, the number of policy recommendations made, the number that SPD has either is in progress on or has already taken?

This particular annual report does not give a breakdown of the number implemented versus not.

We do list in an appendix every recommendation made.

Because SPD's resources were so slim based on staffing and protests and a lot of attrition, they weren't able to address a lot of the recommendations issued in 2020 because they were so late in the year.

So it didn't feel like a fair statistic to put in the report that we had issued all of these in the last, say, month of the year, but they hadn't implemented them.

It takes quite a bit of time often to make the policy change or the training change.

So I understand.

Thank you.

And I think we did know where something was declined.

And I think I want to say that there was only one that was declined action, which means that SPD had said we've received it, but we're not going to take further action.

Most of them are or have either been implemented or either active or under active evaluation by SPD.

So in 2020, OPA also conducted a lot of state legislative work, and this was a first for our office.

We conducted, we gathered up a team of staff.

When all of the protests were happening, there were so many various recommendations from sources in the community, from city council, from legislators, and we wanted to in-house take a look at a lot of these recommendations and evaluate how they could be implemented what research was behind them, what was done in other areas, for example.

We started evaluating these recommendations.

We put them all in a spreadsheet and looked at about 52 recommendations.

From there, we drafted white papers, basically did a bunch of research and crafted papers for ourselves to just educate ourselves so that we could talk better with legislators and with council members about it on 23 of these topics.

And from there, from those 23, we developed seven proposals to highlight for the state legislature.

And these seven proposals were the things that OPA felt would be most effective to implement at the state level.

So these seven, I'll just run over them very quickly.

The first was reforming collective bargaining.

The second was improving the officer decertification process.

The third was creating an independent special prosecutor to make charging decisions.

The fourth was creating an office to conduct independent investigations into deadly force by police.

The fifth was reforming objective reasonableness.

The sixth was creating a statewide use of force database.

And the seventh was to create statewide de-escalation and force policies.

So we transmitted those one-pagers to state legislators.

We participated in committee hearings and gave testimony.

We engaged in direct meetings to provide facts and answer questions from legislators.

And we had a staff member who participated in the governor's task force on independent investigations of police use of force.

So we definitely had a strategy and engagement that we stepped up for this session with state legislature.

Thank you.

Just a question on these seven priorities.

Of the seven priorities, which of them I think the question I'd have is really focused on improving Seattle's own police accountability system and how many are in support of the efforts statewide, which of course are very important.

And as a leader here in Seattle, we want to share the work that we've done in improving the statewide system.

But for instance, the statewide de-escalation and force policies and the statewide use of force database and mandatory reporting, just wondering how those items would impact Seattle.

conducting an office to conduct independent investigations into deadly force by police.

Just trying to get a sense of how many of these were really focused on needed Seattle improvements versus the necessary improvements of police accountability statewide.

I can jump in there unless you want to answer it.

Go ahead.

I mean, I would say that it's both.

I think most of them would impact Seattle fairly significantly.

So for example, you know, putting in place reforms to the objective reasonableness standard.

You know, one thing I've discussed, you know, I discussed it in front of the committee at the, I think it was the Senate side or maybe the House side, was that OPA's decisions, and I think this is something that's not well understood, but OPA's decisions are based on the application of a reasonableness standard, right?

So we're required under case law to look at what would a reasonable officer do in that officer's place with the same training and experience and without applying 20-20 hindsight.

That is an extremely deferential standard for police officers.

So one of the things that we talked to the legislature about was, are there reforms that you could make to that standard to make it less deferential and more in line with having changing expectations around police force.

Ultimately, they did not make changes at the state level to the reasonableness standard.

What they did do, and we were very supportive of this, was they did create a baseline policy for both de-escalation and for use of force that would be applied statewide, which we thought was Great.

We were very supportive of it and we worked with those legislators to develop that.

For example, the statewide entity that would look at all deadly force.

Right now, SPD is under a consent decree, but absent this legislation, when the consent decree was lifted, SPD would have been investigated by a task force of officers from other jurisdictions.

We have pushed for years, and this is not just OPA, but it's OIG, CPC, the Seattle Deadly Force Investigation Task Force that was convened a couple of years ago, pushed for exactly this, was to have an independent civilian-led, civilian-staffed entity that investigated uses of deadly force and serious and deadly force statewide.

So this is a huge accomplishment and something we were very supportive of and very much mirrored what our recommendations were in our proposal.

You know, the database is something we feel very strongly about, we feel is very important.

A special prosecutor, we did not get the special prosecutor, but again, this is another thing that OPA feels is very important because the charging decision should be with someone that's totally independent from political pressures and someone that can make a decision without worrying about working with those same officers the next day or the next month.

and not that we are doubting the ability of elected prosecutors to do so, but I think it just puts in another layer of accountability and another later layer of independence and transparency to have a special prosecutor.

So these are all things that are probably going to be future state.

You know, for example, collective bargaining.

One thing that we had discussed was the possibility of putting in, creating a law that would say that accountability bargaining is effects only, right?

So you wouldn't bargain implementation, you would just bargain the effects of the bargaining.

You know, there's changes that still need to be done for arbitration.

So there's a lot of things that are out there that we cannot do at the city level necessarily, but that greatly impact city work.

So exactly why why I asked the question you and I both often say that We are hampered by the consent decree and making changes to our current system Because they all any any change that we would make would have to be approved by the court and we are also limited in our ability to make changes because of our current contract with SPOG.

And so I'm really interested in the changes that would in sort of real time have made improvements to Seattle's current system that we were successful in making progress at the state level.

while also really appreciating the advocacy that's really important to do with our partners all over the state, including police accountability advocates for statewide reforms that may not directly impact Seattle.

So really, really appreciate that detail there.

And I would also say the decertification bill is also, I think, an extremely important bill that has come out and You know, there was a lot of work from, by Seattle partners on that bill, from Anne Levinson, you know, we worked very closely with Senator Peterson's office.

Like, there was a lot of Seattle work that went into it, and I think this could be very much a sea change in police accountability, too, in that this TJTC canal itself investigate, you know, uses a force.

It's another check on local jurisdictions, particularly those jurisdictions that don't have any sort of independent internal affairs, because Seattle, for all the criticisms of our system, we're still, as far as I'm aware, the only internal affairs system across the state that is civilian-led and civilian-staffed.

So again, empowering the CJTC to take more affirmative action to be able to decertify officers when appropriate and to ensure that they don't get employed again is another big change that's going to be occurring within the system.

So we were very happy with the result.

I mean, obviously, did everything that we supported get passed?

No, but I don't think we expected that.

And certainly, I think, though, that the progress that was made this last legislative session was immense.

Thank you.

So I'll talk really briefly about staffing this past year.

This is our current organizational chart.

This is actually our 2020 organizational chart.

Yeah, it's our 2020 chart.

We have, as you can see, we fully civilianized the two open civilian spots that were existing.

We're still at, I believe we're at eight sworn to civilian investigators.

we expect that, oh, sorry, nine, nine and two.

So, and again, that's a function of the contract.

I mean, I think people always say, well, you should civilianize half of your staff.

We don't have the ability to do that absent an agreement with the SPOC.

So since the first SPEMA contract was passed, well, I mean, the last SPEMA contract was passed, we civilianized all of our investigation supervisors.

So our two lieutenants and our captain are now civilians.

Um, and we, again, as I said, have added those to explain investigators and our expectation is that we will continue to civilian eyes when it's agreed upon by all the parties and be moving forward accordingly.

So, a couple of future state issues for 2021. One thing Ann had mentioned earlier about transparency is one thing we found very effective was the creation of videos and putting out videos that explain not just what occurred but showing multiple born video angles and going through our conclusions and why we reached those conclusions.

So my hope in 2021 is to bring on a full-time video analyst that will have that be their full-time job that they will be responsible for creating a video, ideally for every single sustained and not sustained case that will explain the findings.

So that can be provided both to the complainant and could be linked to the closed case summary when it goes online.

And again, it's just putting more information out there and having people, even if they disagree, understand why we decided what we decided and how we got where we got.

We're also, you know, as I think Anne talked about, is we're very focused on data and dashboards.

So one thing that we're working on, for example, we rolled out our appeals dashboard that talks about all the pending appeals and dispositions of those appeals.

We're going to work on putting together a dashboard, given some of the significant public concern with the chief's reversal of the pink umbrella case.

a dashboard that talks about every case that's been reversed, whether by the chief or just based on a chain of command, disagreement with OPA, and links all the relevant documents so that people can see for themselves what the rationale was for the reversal and then what the result of it was.

So, for example, in the Pink Umbrella case, that would include linking some of the emails that you sent, Council Member Herbold, or that Council Member Lewis sent, as well as the correspondence from the chief, as well as the underlying decision, as well as the letter, disagreeing, and then any discipline that's eventually imposed.

Again, having this information all in one place, it seems like a small thing, but I think with information comes power.

So as much information as we can put out there is super important from our perspective.

Thank you, Director Myerberg.

On the issue of the civilianization of your investigative unit, could you just, for the viewing public, just what is the limiting language in the contract?

Specifically, is it specifically to civilian investigators are allowed?

So in the last contract with SPOG, the specific language said that OPA can hire up to two civilian investigators, so it gave us a specific number.

So if you recall, the accountability ordinance from 2017 did not have a specific number, but basically what it said was it should be within the OPA director's discretion to decide what that staffing arrangement will be.

And certainly the monitor, Merrick Bob, before he left, was a very strong supporter of a 50-50 split of civilian versus investigators.

Thank you, Director Mayerberg.

So I'm not sure whether at this point there are questions about what we discussed, whether there are just questions about certain cases.

I know Council Member Swann had brought up the child pepper spray case.

I'm happy to walk through that finding.

I think I've already gone through it, but I'm happy again to describe why we issued the finding that we issued in that case, if that would be helpful.

And I'm happy to talk about some of the recommendations we've made specifically around demonstration management, some of the things that we've pushed for as far as less lethal tools, what we've seen as far as changes in tactics, what we expect the tactics to look at, like if protests occur again this summer.

But again, it's really up to the council as to what we answer, if anything.

I see Council Member Morales' hand is up.

I don't know if that's a holdover or a new question.

No, holdover.

Sorry.

I will lower it.

Tamara, I do think it would be helpful to, again, just, you're on record around the child support case.

I do have a question related to There are employees with 7, 9, 11, and 14 complaints.

And I'm just wondering on that one, when you will know how many, if any, of those complaints will be sustained against officers with large number of allegations, and whether or not we report it out of the way so that the other components of our police accountability system, the OIG and CPC, as well as the general public, learn while I understand there's a requirement to not divulge the identity of officers with complaints against them, even when sustained.

But will we know, for those particular officers who have a lot of complaints against them, how many of those complaints were sustained?

And then, yes, absolutely, talking to some of the policy changes that the police department made because of your work.

in the area of changes that the department has made around crowd control weapons, I'm sorry, crowd control, I should say, and how that was in response to feedback received by SPD from the OP, I think would be useful as well, and also opening it up to the questions of other council members here as well.

So I'll start with the first question.

So the complaint for the child pepper spray case came from the video that was taken in the aftermath of the pepper spray occurring where the child was in the middle of the street and was crying.

So what we did was we went backwards where we worked to isolate where the child was in the crowd because that private party video was taken after the fact and did not show the use of force itself.

So we were able to isolate where the pepper spraying occurred.

And as you all may recall, initially an officer was identified by name as being the officer who had used the pepper spray.

And we determined pretty quickly that that was not the officer that had done so, but we were able to identify who did.

So again, by looking at the body worn video, by isolating the body worn video and looking at body worn video from, you know, between eight to 10 different officers on the line, what we were able to see was that At some point, they made an arrest at the right-hand side of the line.

It was an individual who had thrown brandished pepper spray at an officer earlier and then thrown the pepper spray bottle at the officer, and that was discussed in another complaint.

But we evaluated, we saw that that individual who was identified as doing that was arrested at the right side of the line.

When they did this, the bicycle officers moved out to push the line back to allow a buffer to make the arrest.

What happened was that people convened into the line and started pushing into the officers.

At that moment, a male with a child was viewed quickly walking towards the line and going towards where the conflict was occurring.

An officer at that point deployed pepper spray at a woman who was actively grabbing another officer's baton.

That woman turned and ducked at the time and the pepper spray went off of her shoulder and struck the father and the kid who were standing directly behind that one.

When we evaluated that deployment of pepper spray, what we looked at was, first of all, was the pepper spray of the woman who was pushing through the line and grabbing the baton, was that justified?

And from my perspective, the answer is yes, right?

The woman was pushing through the line, was grabbing onto the officer's baton.

They had other people pushing through the line.

It was a chaotic situation.

They were entitled as a matter of law to move the crowd back and to prevent her from doing so.

The officers explained that they had a couple options available to them at that time.

They could have used a blast ball, which would have been inappropriate.

They could have gone hands-on, meaning they could have pulled the woman down or away or pushed her away or used some sort of other force, or they could have deployed pepper spray.

And they felt that pepper spray directed towards this person was the best option under the circumstances, and I agreed.

The question then was, was it a foreseeable result of the pepper spray that the woman would duck and that the pepper spray would bounce off of her back and would hit the father and the child who had moved behind them.

And from my perspective, the answer was no.

It was not a foreseeable result of that use of force again that had targeted the female.

This was a decision that obviously was a difficult decision to reach.

There was a lot of criticism regarding the decision, which I accept.

And the reality is, no matter what I say about this, I've described my findings on this case multiple times.

No matter what I say, there's going to be people that disagree with the findings.

And that is totally acceptable.

And you can disagree with me and say that I'm wrong, and that's fine.

But again, looking at the policies that were in place at the time, looking at the conduct, looking at multiple vantages of video and assessing interviews and other evidence, that's the finding that we reached.

What I will say is that, you know, I think it's correct to say that that case in and of itself did not result in a change of policies surrounding pepper spray.

And I think it's accurate to say that I did not support the council's initial bill that would have banned I mean, that was the initial iteration that was changed over time.

I'm significantly more supportive of the bill that exists now that I think is much more targeted and understands that, you know, while we never want any sort of less lethal tools to be used in a protest, there may be times that it's required.

So there is a balance.

So the council member's response, correct, is I don't support a blanket ban of all less lethal tools.

I never have, and I won't, because I don't think it's realistic.

I do support, and one of the changes that we've made, one of the recommendations that OPA has made over the last couple of cases is more and more, I tend to support a blanket ban on blast balls, for example.

I'm very concerned with blast balls.

I'm concerned with the fact that even if you deploy a blast ball perfectly, that blast ball can, you know, move 10 feet in another direction.

Shrapnel can come off from the blast ball and can affect other people.

I think what we've seen is that using a blast bowl to move crowds should not be done.

And really the blast bowl, if ever used, should be to target a specific direct threat.

But again, you know, I don't like blast balls because I think blast balls are the least targeted of all the different tools that SPD officers have at their disposal.

So I think it's inaccurate to say that we haven't pushed for changes to both the law and to SPD policy.

we have, and many of the tactical changes that SPD has put in place.

So for example, they will not use blast walls simply just to move crowds now.

They're required to point to a specific identifiable threat of harm when you're going to be using these less lethal tools on people.

And I think these are results of the cases that we've investigated and recommendations we made, along with the work that our other partners have done, both in the CPC and the OIG.

tactical changes that have gone into place.

One thing we really pushed for, and this was a result of the report that Council Member Herbold had asked us to issue very early on, was we had pushed for, if the protests are about SPD, stop interacting directly with protesters.

One of the big tactical mistakes that SPD was engaged in, and this isn't rocket science, SPD has admitted this and has confirmed this, was creating artificial lines and trying to move crowds when it was unnecessary.

Again, there's always a balance between preventing property destruction and harm to people, but unnecessarily interfering in protest and not allowing people to walk through the city and to make their voices heard.

And I think what SPD will do differently this summer, to the extent we see these protests again, is they will not be creating lines like we saw at the East Precinct.

They will not be trying to dictate where everybody is moving at any given time.

I think they're going to stage and respond for life safety issues and to intervene for specific acts of criminality.

But other than that, they're going to let people exercise their First Amendment rights without unnecessarily causing conflict.

And I think this goes to de-escalation.

It goes to reducing harm.

It goes to increasing public trust and confidence in the police department.

And at the end of the day, I applaud SPD for modifying that tactic and doing so in response to what they heard both from the council and from the accountability entities.

So, you know, other things that were put in place is we really pushed for us to the OIG for better communication.

A lot of what we saw early on was that people, for example, if you had 5,000 people in a crowd, it's possible that the people in the back did not hear a dispersal order.

So SPD has now has the LRAD, which for people who are concerned, does not have the capability.

It cannot be used as an acoustic weapon.

It's only an amplifier.

So that is used now to amplify warnings and it is effective and that you can clearly hear from all areas of the crowd what is being announced and you know that there are crimes being occurring.

You know that there's been an order to disperse.

You know where what what dangers may be present.

You know, there's all these things that SPD can now communicate better with the community and the protesters that should yield better outcomes.

You know, we are anticipating and excited to see the results of the OIG sent all that review, which we expect will have even more systemic recommendations with more of a community lens where we have a very systemic system lens.

And we think that they'll be talking more about communication and even having people specifically geared to communicate within crowds, to coordinate with protesters, to person-to-person communicate goals and tactics and decisions by the police department and try to build communication and collaboration with demonstrators.

We expect, from OPA's perspective, again, a very different response to these protests than what we saw last spring and into the summer.

And we've been to the trainings.

I've seen the rollouts of the tactics.

So this isn't just conjecture.

This is what I've seen.

And obviously, we're going to be holding SPD accountable to these new standards.

And again, we expect to see positive changes.

Lauren, there was another question that I kind of skipped over, a middle question by Councilmember Herbold.

It was about the number of complaints against certain individuals.

So I don't know if you want to talk about that.

I would I would guesstimate that that some of those are supervisors who were named in multiple complaints for the ones that had seven or 11.

A lot of them were heavily involved in the protest response last year.

I remember when we presented last year's annual report at the end of it, you asked for a similar set of data and we were able to provide that to you.

So I can definitely run that data on those officers who received seven or more complaints and then give you the outcome of that.

But like you mentioned, we don't identify those officers by name and we wouldn't report specifically on those cases because it involves those officers.

So it's not to identify them.

Yeah, and I would guess I mean again without knowing the data and Lauren is a better handle on this than I do, but I would guess that some of those will be supervisors that were in charge of multiple protest responses and were named multiple times.

That's what I would guess.

Higher up the chain of command, correct.

Thank you.

I'm just looking to make sure that my colleagues don't have any additional questions.

I have, I think, one additional protest complaint-related question, and then I want to move shift over to use-of-force complaints from – related to individuals in behavioral mental health crisis.

So on the – to related to recommendations that you see as potentially coming out of your investigation of protest-related complaints.

I have noted that it might be useful to make changes to Seattle's observers' Bill of Rights in recognition both of the courage of observers like Darnella Frazier, who use her rights to observe and record the murder of George Floyd.

But it occurs to me that we have a law that is our own sort of codification of the rights of people to observe and record, but that it might be useful to make some changes to that law coming out of potential recommendations that you have from investigations that you've done.

I believe, Director Meyerberg, you have referenced some changes that you might like to see specifically related to the rights of the press.

I have noted that there were charges that officers obscured observers' viewing of certain actions that they were taking in instances where the protesters were not a distance that was unsafe to observe.

They were a safe distance away, but yet it appeared that officers intentionally were blocking their view.

Just wondering whether or not you might have some additional recommendations for us to strengthen what I think is a really important law here in Seattle.

Yeah, well, I will say one recommendation that came out of the July 25th protest was surrounding the increase of protections for both media and legal observers was creating designated areas, making sure that unless, you know, unless, unless absolutely necessary, that you're not dispersing those folks out of an area and that they're not being subject to force.

I mean, the complicated factor is that there are times when media may be interspersed in a demonstration, so they may be in front of or in the midst of a demonstration, and then it's, it would be very difficult if, for example, there was a life safety issue, it might be difficult to not affect the media, but where the media is in an area off to the side, A, they need to have a sufficient vantage point, but also they need to be that there may be a law enforcement need to disperse the crowd.

So it's creating that balance, and that's something we've asked the department to further develop in its tactical plans and in its incident action plans and in its policies.

You know, I would say fundamental, you know, mentioning people that have taken that role of recording seriously.

I would also give credit to Omari Salisbury, who was really fundamental to our understanding of some of the things that went wrong in these protests.

For example, the June 1st Pink Umbrella case, you know, that was his video caught that firsthand and showed the experience of someone in the front of that line and was a huge piece of evidence that we relied upon.

But for, I think, the ordinance that you had championed, Council Member Herbold, and that existing, I don't know that we have that evidence.

we do feel like it's very important obviously and we have recommended changes and obviously I can update the council at a later point and we'll update our website to let you know what changes were put in place by SPD.

Thank you, Director Meyerberg.

On the issue of use of force against individuals who are in a behavior or mental health crisis.

I just want to get a little bit of information specifically on the, because I understand we are, this is a case that is, I don't know if it's bumping up against the deadline, but it is of the deaths at the hands of police over the last year, I think it is the oldest one, the Terry Caver case.

Want to just get a little bit of a sense of what the timeline is for your disposition on that?

I know there's a lot of interest in that.

It's a case that I have a lot of concern with the officers and the de-escalation tactics used in that particular unfortunate case.

And would like also if you could speak a little bit to some of the recommendations that I know you, Inspector General a judge and myself have made to SPD around less lethal force tools that can be used in these types of cases.

I had the opportunity to participate with the CPC, other members of the community.

The Office of the Inspector General was represented as well on a demonstration of a new tool that the department is considering piloting.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about that as well.

Sure, I want to be, you know, as far as the the shooting of Terry Kaber, you know, I just want to be cognizant of the fact that it's while while my investigation has been completed, it's still an open case.

So I don't necessarily feel comfortable right now commenting on the disposition until until that's gone through a further resolution, but we we a big focus for that case and certainly for the the shooting of Derek Hayden was de-escalation was looking at the tactics and decision making of the officer and whether that whether they the failure to apply certain tactics may have increased the likelihood that force and a high level of force would be used and that certainly is the the fundamental question for both of those cases and I think those cases will likely be relevant to each other and to the determination that we reach.

So again, we're still, I probably will have an update, I think, in the next 30 days about what the final disposition is on that case.

But for right now, I can just say that OPA's work is done.

We're just waiting for further proceedings.

We, you know, as far as recommendations, I think You know, one thing that we have seen from that case and from others I mean this is not new right this was john T Williams as well, you know, is the approach of police officers that people armed with knives and obviously not all.

cases with knives are created equal, but certainly the ones that are very concerning for us are the ones where you have the ability to put in place time distance and shielding, and you don't.

So, for example, you know, the John C. Williams case, you know, the officer was multiple feet away from Mr. Williams.

And, you know, were there other steps that he could have taken prior to firing his gun?

I think the consensus was and the finding was that, yes, there were.

Same thing with some of these other cases.

You know, really the problem is that right now the only tool that's really, you know, if you get to the point where you need to use force, the only tool that really makes a lot of sense in that scenario is a 40 millimeter launcher, which is, you know, it shoots a round that can incapacitate a person with a knife.

The issue with that is that very few people are trained with a 40 millimeter, so maybe, a couple people on a squad, so it's not like every officer is trained with a 40 millimeter.

So in some cases, if there's not a 40 millimeter trained officer present, then you won't have a 40 millimeter at that scene.

And that obviously greatly limits the amount of standoff distance you can have.

One thing that Council Member Herbold, that you had mentioned and that I actually had issued a recommendation to the department that they consider is you know it has different terms but it's called basically a net gun right but what it would do is it is it sounds kind of ridiculous but what it would do is it literally would shoot a net like it it shoots a a net that would go around or bolos that would go around an individual and and prevent that individual from moving and cause an individual to fall down to the ground so You know, I think we're very open to a lot of different possibilities.

I think SPD has actually gotten the approval to go ahead and get one.

And maybe you saw the demonstration of it, Council Member Herbold.

But, you know, we think that kind of everything needs to be out there.

The other big gap is just training.

And training is obviously not a panacea to everything.

But, you know, both from you know, academy, right?

When you're taught that, you know, anyone with a knife represents a mortal threat to you, no matter how far they are, right?

And I'm not saying that CJTC teaches this, but many academy, many police academies across the country teach this.

And also the training you get internally, you know, very few officers, I mean, SPD doesn't have this sort of a fluid mobile training where you're outside and you're following someone down the street and all of a sudden they turn towards you and run like that is not trained in SPD.

So we very much feel like it would make sense and we know again the limitations for COVID and the limitations for resources but to have an outdoor fluid training that puts officers in the scenarios that they're going to face in real life and not just rely on classroom training.

Because again, if you don't build up muscle memory and an ability to contemplate these situations, what you then expect is that you're going to put someone in a classroom, then you're going to put them out in the street, and maybe they've been on for a year, and you're going to expect them to make a perfect decision in three.

Like it's just, it's, it will happen in some cases, but it won't happen in other cases.

And how do you better ensure that you have good outcomes.

Again, I think it comes down to better policies, better tools, better training, and that's really what we're pushing for SPD.

And I think OIG is on the same page, and SPD has been a very willing partner.

I think they understand that there's a gap, and it's not just SPD, right?

This is a nationwide gap.

I don't know any jurisdiction, I've said this before, I don't know any other jurisdiction that does this well.

And that doesn't give SPD an excuse, but certainly it means that SPD has the opportunity to innovate and to create a better way.

And I really think the vision from the chief, the articulated vision from the chief should be that we never have another shooting of a person with a knife.

Thank you so much, Director Meyerberg.

That is all of the questions I have.

I really appreciate your ongoing work and your recognition that our system of accountability is evolving and it is sometimes the criticisms that we receive about our system that leads to ongoing and enhanced improvements to that system.

I would also caution all of us who think about those questions is to say You know it's good to sometimes have perspective as to where we've come and where we are right i mean i think in 2017 when these systems were created they weren't created didactically to say like this is all we're never going to change the systems we're never going to get past the system so i mean the reality was that.

Those the systems that were created in 2017 were created based on extensive research, you know I was part of the team working as the council and others attorney that worked on that research to come up with what are the models across the country what existed and I think we were confident across the board that this was the best model that existed, I think, to this point.

I don't know of a model yet that I think is a better model than what we have with our system of checks and balances, with our three accountability entities.

That doesn't mean that that system is going to be perfect, right.

But what I think is that out of all the models that exist, out of all these bad imperfect models, we probably have the best.

Does that mean that we don't try to change it?

No, of course it doesn't mean that, right?

But I think that I want to be careful with the changes that we create because they should be based on evidence.

They should be based on research.

They should be based on changes that would be positive and not just kind of coming up with a system that's going to have its own flaws.

And there are reasons why maybe those systems weren't adopted in 2017. So I just caution the group to recognize what we have, the benefits of our systems, the downsides of those systems, and then to work collaboratively to keep improving them.

We will be a willing partner.

You're muted.

I get to say that.

Thank you, Director Meyerberg.

Trying to get off mute before you said it.

I just want to, on that same note, I want to recognize some of the words of Reverend Harriet Walden in a recent letter specifically focused on the need for ongoing and continued improvement on reduction of use of force with a specific focus on individuals in behavioral health, mental health crisis.

She wrote, in 2012, the city entered into a consent decree with the Department of Justice that guaranteed an expansion of the program to reduce the use of force against individuals in behavioral or mental health crisis.

At that time, 70% of all use of force encounters between citizens and SPD officers involved people in a behavioral health crisis.

At this point, as of I think the last analysis was received in 2020 based on 2019 numbers, but SPD has reduced the percentage to 23 percent.

So 23% of all use of force encounters are now against individuals in behavioral or mental health crisis.

She goes on to say that of the 10,000 contacts that SPD officers have each year with people in behavioral health crisis, only a fraction use any physical contact at all.

But again, recognizing that progress does not mean that we do not continue to strive forward and address the issues that we are identifying as continued challenges.

And I think everybody recognizes that police contacts with armed, specifically with armed individuals and behavioral health crisis continues to be a challenge for our city.

With that, again, more of your time than normal, perhaps, for the annual report.

I think it's really important to dig into your work on this one-year anniversary.

If there are no other comments or questions from my colleagues.

I see none.

The next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for June 8th.

And again, if there are no other comments from my colleagues, we are adjourned.

Thank you.

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