SPEAKER_01
Morning.
I had to check to make sure it was still morning.
I'm very happy to be here today and want to thank all the people who are here.
I want to thank Councilmember Bruce Harrell and Gonzalez for their work in making sure that this resolution came forward.
and Council Member Herbold, who I think was coming up.
Is she able to make it yet?
No?
Also, really have to thank all the people who've been working on the campaign for Andre and Dove, for all the work you've put into it.
And of course, Katrina, for you people to turn your grief into positive action is what we need more of in this city.
For people to come at the hardest times in their life and think, how do we take that, harness it, and make sure that we move forward in a positive way.
So we are in the government and I am happy and proud to say that the city government, council and mayor are endorsing initiative 940. And we are able to do that in a formal way.
We're going to be signing the resolution that council passed and I will be signing as well to make it clear that as a city and a city government, everyone stands behind this.
We know how important police reform writ large and these kind of changes are to building more trust between community and police officers.
Nobody in this room ever doubts the importance of police officers into community safety.
But what they do say is we need to have better connectivity, more trust, more consistency from city to city to make sure that police officers can be held accountable at the same time.
This law will give new skills and training to officers.
We've done tremendous amount here in the city of Seattle and I'm proud to say yesterday they released a report showing that we had more crisis calls than ever before in the city of Seattle.
Police officers did thousands more, but the number of times they even had to use force is reduced to a small amount because we've required training.
We've required de-escalation.
We've required people to not just have it as part of their training, but to really put it into the culture.
We need that so that in every police force throughout this state is trained to the same level and that our laws catch up to the reality on the streets and that there isn't a shield that protects people if they do something that is contrary to the law.
That police officers can be held accountable.
I've heard a lot from both police and communities around this.
We know how important this is because, look, people don't stop at city lines.
And if you're driving from Everett to Seattle to Renton to Olympia, people should know that wherever they are, the police officers are trained to the same minimum standards, that we use our focus on community policing everywhere in the state.
and that when people are pulled over for whatever they're pulled over for, their first thought isn't, uh-oh, am I physically in trouble?
It can be an interaction that people should be able to have to have that.
So we know that, for example, here's some Really interesting things.
So our report that we released showed that there was almost 16,000 crisis contacts in a year between Seattle Police Department and members of this community.
16,000.
And if you think about that, policing is changing so rapidly.
If we don't give officers the tools they need, we're doing a disservice to them.
If they can't interact with people starting from their basic humanity and know how to deescalate and connect with people, we're doing a disservice to those officers.
Less than 2% of those interactions ended up in any force whatsoever, and most of those were the minimal force which we never tracked before reform.
the you know come with me handcuffs pain and the like so we know we're doing better we know we can continue to get better but we wanna make sure that everyone knows here in Seattle we're not done as Chief Best has made very clear reform is not a destination it has to be continuous improvement it has to be building continuously trust with community and neighborhoods we know that police officers are given a tremendous amount of responsibility We need to give them the tools that they need to do their jobs, and we have to make it consistent.
And community needs to know that they also, wherever they are, they know that every police officer in Washington State can be trained to the same high standard, and that we're making it better for police and better for community.
So in closing, I just want to say again, I want to thank the council for being a partner with me.
But I want to thank all the people in this room and rooms like them across not just the city, but the state, who every day are standing up saying that we want justice.
We want to make sure that people in our street know that they can have justice.
I again want to thank the families who have grieved so much and taken that grief and said, we're not going to look backwards.
We're going to look forwards.
We're going to build that better community, that better state, that better country that we know we deserve.
And I-940, it's not perfect.
Reform is never perfect.
But we've got to get things better.
And so sitting down together with people across the state, I've talked to the Criminal Justice Training Center, which trains all police in the state.
I think it's going to be so great to get everyone on one page, to be building trust, to giving tools, to holding people accountable.
And if we do that, I think that we can then start healing in ways we haven't been able to heal as a community.
So thank you so much for your work.
Come on up while I sign this.
It's a really good day for the city of Seattle.
Come on, don't be shy.
So the council's already taken its action.
It's been signed by the president of the council, Bruce Harrell.
And once I sign it, then it will be official that the city of Seattle, its government, Seattle Council, and the mayor together have joined to endorse initiative 940. Everyone's wondering why she's using so many pens.
Because then when I hand you the pens, you can say, I have one of the pens they signed it with.
That's right.