Seattle City Council Committee on Public Safety & Human Services 3/8/22

Thank you so much.

The March 8th, 2022 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.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present, good morning.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Vice Chair Lewis.

And Chair Herbold.

Here.

Is for President.

Thank you so much.

For folks, I mentioned yesterday in council briefings that I had been in touch with SPD about the officer involved shooting.

I did speak with Chief Diaz this morning, and he did confirm that the video, both from the car, the SPD car, cameras, uniform cameras, and also some cameras associated with the federal building, that video will be released today.

The video, the situation was described to me, and I'll just hold my comment until everybody has a chance to view that video.

On today's agenda, we'll hear from your Deputy Mayor Harrell, who will provide an update on the search process for a permanent Office of Police Accountability Director.

We'll also be hearing two Southeast Department grant bills.

The first is a bill that we are intending to vote on today.

It is to accept 1.3 million in U.S.

Department of Justice grants for funding to maintain the Northwest Regional Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Second bill, we'll first just have a briefing from SPD on the grants.

Again, this is another grants acceptance bill.

And it has this bill don't believe has been introduced yet, but we will have a briefing on it and the grants that the bill accepts are relating to the urban areas security initiatives.

And we'll be receiving a second briefing at our next public safety and human services committee meeting on March 22nd.

And at that meeting, I hope to vote on this legislation.

And then finally, the Human Services Department will present its 2021 Race and Social Justice Report, including a look at the 2021 accomplishments and the department's 2022 objectives.

We'll move into approving our agenda for today's committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

So now we'll move into public comment for this morning.

I'll moderate the public comment in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they have registered on the council website.

If you've not yet registered to speak, but you would like to do so, you can still sign up before the end of the public comment period by going to the council's website.

This link is also listed on today's agenda.

When I call the speaker's name, you'll hear a prompt.

And once you've heard that prompt, please press star six to unmute yourself.

Please begin by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

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

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

If you do not end your comments at the end of the allotted time 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 plan to continue following the meeting, we welcome you to do so, but do it at the Seattle Channel or use the listening options that are listed on today's agenda.

There are four people signed up for public comment.

And again, I'm going to call on names two at a time.

First, we have Howard Gale.

Howard will be followed by Castille Hightower.

Howard.

Good morning.

District 7. The first agenda item this morning is a discussion on the search process for a new OPA director.

Yet, it is the mayor who has complete control over the hiring, the evaluation, and the firing of the OPA director.

The same mayor who's made the last OPA director, Andrew Meyerberg, his director of public safety, despite Meyerberg's long history of corruption and malfeasance.

There is a brand new investigation published this morning in the South Seattle Emerald revealing further evidence of Meyerberg's malfeasance, corruption, and abuse of office.

In the 20 years of the OPA's existence, we have never had a fair and impartial director.

The only fail-safe for our next flawed OPA director is an OIG director who actually does their job and is held accountable.

The Public Safety Committee has complete control over the hiring, the evaluation, and the firing of the OIG director.

Yet the Public Safety Committee will today discuss things it has no control over, while continuing to ignore, for an astounding seven months now, the failures of the OIG director it has complete control over.

Given the OIG whistleblowers, that's at least two whistleblowers, revelations over the last year it is critical for the public safety committee dust from another bed opiate director by first immediately initiating an investigation of the current oig director with public hearings second remove the current oig director if the current whistleblower allegations are found to have merit and third in parallel initiate a review of the entire police accountability system This was outlined in the Seattle City Auditor's Report of close to five years ago now, a report that was never acted on.

But better than trying to fix a system that is actually designed to fail, we need to build, through a city initiative, a police accountability system that provides full community control over police.

Go to seattlestop.org to find out how.

That's seattlestop.org.

In the meantime, please, public safety, do your duty.

Don't try to control things you can't control.

Control the things you can.

look at the OIG director.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Castille Hightower.

Castille will be followed by Valerie Chourette.

Hi, my name is Castille Hightower, and I'm calling you regarding the OPA director search.

In 2004, SPD shot and killed my brother, Herbert Hightower Jr., while he was experiencing a mental health crisis.

There was no justice and no accountability for his murder.

In fact, the officer who killed him went on to become an assistant chief of police and was rewarded instead of punished for my brother's killing.

This is due to the OPA's long history of refusing to hold officers accountable who brutalized, harmed, and even killed, including as recently as January 5th, marking the 19th person killed by SPD who was suffering from a mental health crisis since John T. Williams and another shooting just this morning.

In the 20 years of OPA's existence, they have allowed community complaints to go ignored, conducted flawed investigations, and favored the police over community safety.

And since 2020, the Seattle City Council, like the OPA, has failed the community by walking back your defund promises, reinstating the use of war-level chemical weaponry by the police, and all but went back to business as usual, while the community at large continues to be put into harm's way.

Your focus should not be on a new OPA director that, time and time again, failed to hold SPD accountable and do multiple whistleblowers of complaints, such as the one covered through the South Seattle Envote, the only watchdog to the OPA.

The OIG has failed to provide independent oversight of OPA and has a pattern of concealing the truth and avoiding public disclosure request requirements, whom the Seattle City Council also refuses to hold accountable and has power via SMC 3.29 and its subsections thereof.

One reference by Howard just Your first order of business should be caring about the safety of your constituents right in the public space of SPD, OIG, and OPA.

Shame on you.

While you continue to play politics, we continue to bear the brunt of the killing, the brutality, and the business-as-usual mantra that continue to harm so many and hold accountable so few.

Justice for Herbert Howard Jr. and all of those harmed and killed by SPD.

Thank you, Ms. Hightower, for your testimony.

Our next speaker is Valerie Charrette, who will be followed by David Haynes.

Good morning.

My name is Valerie Charrette.

I live in District 2. On the agenda is the search for a new director of the RPA, the Office of Police Accountability.

City Council will have representation in the search process, but according to the City Municipal Code, you do not have the power to actually appoint the new OPA Director.

What City Council does have power to do is to hire or fire the Director of the OIG, the Office of Inspector General, the body that ostensibly exists to make sure that OPA investigations or police misconduct are conducted properly.

We all know that there is widespread dissatisfaction with OPA investigations.

and that people who care about police accountability don't see the OPA delivering that.

We also know there are unresolved whistleblower complaints that the OIG's certification of OPA investigations have not followed proper procedures.

These allegations have been reported in detail in the South Seattle Emerald over many months.

This morning, new revelations about the mass spreaders of our so-called police accountability system were published in the Emerald.

In a long and detailed article, city hires outside agency to investigate former LPA director, SBD, OIG, that investigation is long overdue.

I hope it will be done properly and yields honest and accurate results.

Our current police accountability system is an expensive facade, a bureaucracy that gives the appearance but not the reality of accountability.

To change that, we should now follow up with a thorough, transparent investigation of the OIG.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Valerie, sorry, is David Haynes.

And David, be followed by William Sims.

Good morning.

Thank you.

District 7, David Haynes.

It's obvious the police chief needs to be fired right away.

He still refuses to arrest low-level drug pushers and criminal repeat offenders who destroy lives daily, victimizing for low amounts of meth, crack, and heroin, creating nonstop open drug markets, selling stolen goods, selling strung out women trafficked on the street, while same cops who've known about the 3rd Avenue and Pine Pipe Corridor for 25 years allowed it to get worse than ever before.

since the ill-trained, unwilling cops decided to sweep everyone out of one specific area, again, after media reports, the same criminals took over Westlake Park, Belltown, and Pioneer Square, again, with evil, bothering residents while cops refused to help.

The city council going to demand a report by the police chief to find out how many drug pushers and other criminals they arrested since the first shooting on Sunday at 3rd and Pine, without hiding behind only the federal agency's efforts for felony sides of drug pushing, the cops are refusing to fight crime.

They're getting rich working overtime while only sweeping crime, resulting in spreading them out into other parts of the city, allowing the repeat of crime to continue while the police chief keeps repeating himself about 120 crimes prosecuted since January.

Most with the help from federal agencies because the cops in Seattle are not qualified nor trustworthy to fight crime.

Only respond and document and blame the homeless.

The Human Services Department should be moved to the Homeless Committee and purged of its leadership because it has become taken over by the most evil racist hypocrites, prioritizing black and brown criminals for something other than jail, while innocent, law-abiding homeless don't get help.

Seattle Human Services Department is the epitome of racists only helping certain skin colors while never judging their character, only helping

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is William Sims.

William is showing as not present.

So with that, that was William Sims is our last speaker signed up today.

And again, he is showing as not present.

Getting one last call out for William Sims.

I'm not joining us.

With that, we will close our public comment period.

Councilmember Lewis has joined the meeting.

Welcome, Councilmember Lewis.

And for our first item on the agenda, I think Councilmember, I'm sorry.

Oh, there you are.

Excellent.

Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell, thank you so much.

Do you mind reading this item into the agenda, please?

Yes.

Committee agenda item number one, Office of Police Accountability Director search process for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

So just some quick background.

The 2017 accountability ordinance says regarding an OPA director appointment after the end of a term or an incumbent's resignation, it says the following, if the mayor does not make an appointment or reappointment within 90 days of the first day of the expiration of the term, of a vacancy or of a reduction by the city council, the Public Safety Committee shall appoint the OPC director.

The ordinance also says for appointments, the mayor shall select from up to three qualified finalists identified by a search committee through a national process using merit-based criteria.

And the Community Police Commission shall constitute at least 25 percent of the search committee, one of whom shall serve as one of the search committee co-chairs, and that the mayor shall either appoint from among the finalists or initiate a new search.

The mayor shall receive input from the CPC and the inspector general prior to reappointment.

And so this item that we have before us today is an update from the mayor's office on the process for appointing a new director for the Office police accountability under the accountability ordinance.

Again, the OPA director is appointed by the mayor with the exception of if the appointment isn't within 90 days of the vacancy.

So it's really important that the mayor's office have adequate time for a thorough search and provide some flexibility with the timeline, which is my intent with inviting Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell to this meeting.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

It is, I'm really, thankful to be able to be here again today.

And I just wanted to outline the process.

So by ordinance, as you stipulated, we have 90 days to undergo a national process and bring a recommendation forward to council.

I think we all know that the office of police accountability is a tremendously important role, particularly the director leading that department in this moment.

And so we wanted to be really thoughtful in how we did this search.

We wanted to be able to pull together, you know, to pull together an appropriate review committee and also to be able to handle all of the demands of that, of a thorough process with a good review committee.

We have submitted an assessment of what we think is a really workable timeline for us.

There's always flexibility there if there's some feedback from council around this timeline.

So there is, you know, this is the plan that we would intend to adopt, but certainly we're open to feedback too.

And so I'll just kind of start with the highlights, which is we would retain a search firm that that does police accountability and policing searches deliberately.

Engaging that search firm, we would then also form a committee and have that committee be able to review and ratify a job description.

We know that the job description used when we did this search last time might need a little bit of adjustment with all of the things that we know now.

We would then post the position and we'd have about five weeks to be able to solicit of people who would be interested in that role.

And it's almost a little bit of a special unicorn we're looking for in this particular role because of we do have a new landscape of accountability issues, both as a city, as a state and nationally that we really are looking for and making sure that whoever is selected to be the director of this role really can uphold the trust and transparency that we want and really quite demand from this particular position.

We would then interview four to six candidates from those who have applied.

There would be written assessment questions, which we would make public to all who would want to see them as well as to the search committee.

And then after those interviews, one of the things that's a new element that we're modeling after some of the state advances is also doing social media searches.

We are now asking our law enforcement officers to be free of bias in doing some of those social media searches to ensure that we are getting the right character with this position in the same way that we do the same scrutiny with our new recruits, our new officers.

So this director would be under the same process there.

And then of course, reference tracks are going to be critical, both the ones that the candidate submits to us, as well as those who we may reach out to just to verify, you know, this, this is just, again, a really important role.

And so we want to make sure that there's a holistic, they have a holistic view of our accountability system.

And so then our, um, our goal would be to come back to council, uh, with a recommendation made by the mayor, uh, by June 30th.

So that's just, um, about three months from today.

Uh, and with that, uh, I'll open it up to any questions.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate the overview.

I just want to mention, folks, that I have spoke to the mayor's office about the process, and we jointly assessed that this committee briefing would be helpful before moving forward.

I am working to figure out how to memorialize the intent to allow additional time to ensure that the search is thorough while not raising any issues.

with accountability legislation, because we will be diverting from the process in the accountability legislation.

We've consulted the city attorney's office, and I think the plan is at the next committee meeting on March 22nd.

I will be proposing that we vote on a clerk file to show agreement with this timeline.

And just really appreciate Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell for flagging this early, recognizing the importance of this role and the need to be deliberative and involve community.

in the process and really also shape that there is actually within the process itself you're including a touchpoint to review the job description itself should there be intention from the search committee or other individuals to augment that job description.

That's very, very helpful.

I have a couple questions, but I just want to pause there and see if any of my colleagues have questions about this process moving forward.

not seeing any raised hands.

So one question that I have is that the legislation states that the mayor shall select from up to three finalists identified by a search committee.

And the council has begun to receive some media inquiries to ask about when the three finalists will be selected, as noted in the accountability ordinance.

The process notes suggested four to six candidates.

I don't see there being any conflict with you're narrowing it down to initially a larger group of candidates but I just want to confirm that we we can identify the May 27th date as sort of our target for when that will have reached that stage in the in the process.

Absolutely and so that That will be when we will know the candidates we're bringing forward to interview.

So we will bring forward to interview the four to six by May 27th.

And then the selections that we will then recommend to the mayor and we will keep this committee updated.

Those who we would recommend to move forward to the mayor would be made after the interviews of those four to six candidates.

Thank you.

And then one last point I want to flag again is that the ordinance does identify that community police commissioners shall be 25% of the search committee.

I see that flag in your description that you provided for the committee.

require that one CPC member also serve as one of the search committee co-chairs.

So I just want to flag that additional requirement there as well.

Absolutely.

And we're also looking for at least one council member to be helpful in the process, Council Member Herbold.

And so we always look forward to working with council to make sure that We have a process that's inclusive of our entire body, legislative, executive, and our accountability partners.

Thank you.

I will wait to be invited, but you, I think, know of my interest in my long history with this body of work dating back to 1999 when the OPA was created.

So really appreciate your being with us today.

Councilmember Mosqueda, see your hand.

Thank you very much.

Just a quick question about the process at the tail end.

You may have said this already, but if so, I'm wondering if you could reiterate.

After we've gone through the process and you have identified the top finalists, is there an opportunity for community forums for the larger community to have a chance to interact with the nominees and provide thoughts to be a part of what gets sent to the mayor for his final decision?

And apologies, I already spoke to that.

We have the panel interviews and we are hoping to have community representation on the search committee, but we can add an element for a community forum of the final candidates.

But we do intend to include community members on the search committee.

Wonderful.

Thanks so much.

And good morning.

Good morning.

member Mosqueda.

Any other questions?

I'm not seeing any raised hands.

With that, you're welcome to stay with us, but I know you have a busy morning.

Again, thank you so much for joining us today, and we'll have more about this at our next meeting.

Thank you all so much.

Really appreciate the time on the schedule.

All right.

Be well.

Thank you.

All right, Alex, can you please read the next item into the.

Committee agenda item number two, council bill 120277, an ordinance relating to grant funds from non-city sources, authorizing the Seattle Police Department to accept specified grants and execute related agreements for and on behalf of the city, amending ordinance 126490, which adopted the 2022 budget, changing appropriations to the Seattle Police Department and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing discussion and possible vote

Great, thank you so much.

Can we first start off with introductions of the folks who are here to present this item?

Just name and affiliation.

I'll start out.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff, going to tee up the item today.

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

Great.

Thank you so much.

So I appreciate, Brian, you joining us today.

And Greg is going to provide a brief introduction on this item, and then we'll turn it over to Brian to go through the presentation.

Greg.

Thank you Madam Chair and good morning and good morning members of the committee.

I'll also note that Assistant Chief Todd Kibbe is with us today to talk.

So just to tee this up, Council Bill 120277 would appropriate about $1.3 million for two grants that would go to SPD.

These grants were received late in 2021, in December, after the council had already appropriated and adopted the 2022 budget.

The city would normally have handled these grants in the fourth quarter supplemental budget, but during the process of moving to the mid-year and year-end process, there was a gap created, and these grants, these two particular grants, fall into that gap.

and need to be appropriated now as standalone legislation.

I'll mention that CBO and central staff are in discussions about how to handle grants that fall into this gap, both with SPD and on a citywide basis.

So hopefully this is something that is a one-time event here with these two particular grants.

At a really high level, one of them is for 574,000 comes from the Office of Juvenile Justice and delinquency program.

The purpose is for continuing the work of the Northwest regional internet crimes against children or ICAC task force.

It's a federal grant that runs from October of last year to September of this year.

The other one is for 750,000 and it comes from the Office of Victims of Crime from DOJ.

It is to continue the work of the Human Trafficking Task Force.

And again, that is on the federal fiscal year of October of last year into September of this year.

And so it's because they're on the federal fiscal years that it falls into that gap period that doesn't quite work for the mid-year supplemental and the year end.

But hopefully that is something that CBO and central staff can address.

So with that, I would turn it over to Chief Kibbe and Mr. Maxey for any questions on the particular grants and the activities that are covered with the funding.

Thank you so much, Greg.

I'm sorry, Assistant Chief Kidby, my agenda shows that you're up for the next item, not for this item.

So my apologies.

No problem.

Thanks for having me here.

So Council Member, I will briefly address these.

I think Mr. Das' introduction was actually pretty comprehensive about what these things are.

These are two grants.

They both have regional impacts.

In particular, the Internet Crimes Against Children grant is managed by the Seattle Police Department.

It is a regional resource.

So it actually provides funding to support the activities of many departments across the state.

In particular, it's the Northwest Regional Internet Crimes Against Children, ICAC Task Force, which really focuses on technology-facilitated child exploitation.

This is a major issue and has been a growing concern.

The number of cases have been climbing rapidly over the last few years.

The purpose of this money is that it funds one full-time program manager to coordinate these efforts.

but also supports the purchase of equipment and ongoing training of police detectives in the areas of technology and forensics.

This is an extremely complicated area of investigations where, because it is so technology-based and those technologies are rapidly developing, the coordination of these efforts and staying on top of current technologies and strategies for exploiting these children is critical to combating those horrors.

So as Mr. Doss noted, the funding for this would typically have been handled in the fourth quarter supplemental of last year.

That means that we have a lot of work with a lot of agencies across the state that are continuing to combat child exploitation that we need to hopefully get this money as quickly as possible so that we can distribute it out to support their efforts.

I know a lot of them have been continuing to work on credit.

I don't think anyone has stopped their work, but there is definitely a funding gap that we're hoping to resolve as quickly as possible.

On the Human Trafficking Grant, again, this too provides funding for the continuation of the Human Trafficking Task Force, and this also funds one FTE labor trafficking detective, overtime for detectives, administrative time, translation services, evaluation, purchase of equipment, training, and supplies to combat human trafficking.

And again, similar to the ICAC grant, this would normally have been resolved in the fourth quarter supplemental, but we find ourselves trying to fill the funding gap here and really ask for this body's support in moving this forward.

Thank you.

Brian, so these are two different multi-jurisdictional task forces.

And can you, if you have that information, can you just say which jurisdictions are part of each of the two task forces?

I don't have that.

Information for the Human Trafficking Grant, I can get it, stand by.

The Internet Crimes Against Children, the way that funding is distributed is you have the Washington State Patrol that has its own body, its own funding, and this is the entirety of the rest of the state.

So many, many, many jurisdictions tap into this funding.

And are there outcomes reports associated with both of these bodies of work?

Since I'm just assuming, since these are grant sources, there is some sort of a...

Yes, that's what the program coordination and the administration goes to, is to coordinate the resources, track how it's being distributed, and to account for those distributions.

Yeah, it would be, I think, helpful before Monday, if possible, if there is sort of just a short summary for the outcomes associated with, say, the prior year's grant funding, just, again, to get a better sense of not just how these dollars are used, but to what result?

Understood.

We can get that to you, Councilmember.

Super.

I have no additional questions.

Any questions from any of my colleagues?

Great.

Just one more thing, actually, for Greg.

You had mentioned that something was going to be changed in the budget process this year, that we won't have a situation where we're voting on grants that started back in October.

Just describe that again.

What's the process change?

Well, I should be clear.

We're CBO and central staff are talking about how to handle this.

There's no specific process change that's been that's been proposed yet it if it's just these two grants.

then maybe it'll be the case where these two grants will come forward again.

But I suspect that there are other city grants that fall into the federal funding cycle that may need a similar approach.

And that's something that the finance director and our budget director here on central staff need to figure out and need to determine how to how to fix, and that's something that they'll come back to you and the finance chair later with a specific proposal on.

Thank you so much.

All right.

I'm not seeing any additional questions or comments.

So with that, I will move Council Bill 1202.77.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

comments on the bill?

Hearing no further comments.

Again, thank you for being with us here today and sharing with us the contents of this bill and the need for our support moving forward.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

That's five in favor.

Thank you so much.

Will the clerk please, the motion carries.

The committee recommends that the bill pass and the bill will be forwarded to the March 15th council meeting.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item three.

Committee agenda item number three, council bill 120280, an ordinance relating to the 2022 budget, amending ordinance 126490, which adopted the 2022 budget, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels, adding provisos, and ratifying confirming certain prior acts.

Great, thank you so much.

So again, this will be a first briefing from the department about the Urban Area Security Initiative or UASI grants.

We are joined again by Chief Operations Officer Brian Massey and Assistant Chief Kibbe of the Seattle Police Department.

Again, thank you for joining us.

And Greg Paz will present additional content at our next committee on the 22nd.

Greg, do you mind introducing this item, and then we will hand it over to Brian and Assistant Chief Kidby.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

To this one up as well, Council Bill 120280 would appropriate to SPD $2.3 million in funding from the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security for the Urban Area Security Initiative Grant Program, and that's otherwise known as the UASI grant program.

By way of background, the city received approximately $3 million of the WASI funds last fall, and the council accepted all of those funds in ordinance 126469, which passed with the 2022 adopted budget on November 22nd.

The adopted budget included a $750,000 appropriation for the Seattle Fire Department's share of the UASI award.

But it did not include the SPD share of the UASI award, which is the $2.3 million that is in the bill before you today.

At the time, it was the decision of the Finance Chair to hold off on appropriating the balance of the UASI award to SPD until the members of this committee could conduct a more detailed analysis of how SPD would intend to spend the UASI funds.

And that brings us to the bill before you today.

SPD has provided information on the specific equipment and programmatic purchases that it would use the $2.3 million for.

You received last week a list of equipment and programmatic expenditures that totals that 2.3 million.

That list is also attached to the committee agenda.

And I should note that that list has on it a fourth column that shows how the dollars would be distributed not just to SBD, but also to partner jurisdictions that would receive the OASI funds.

Assistant Chief Kibbe and Mr. Maxey are available to talk about those projects, the distributions of the funds, or any other questions that you might have about the OASI program.

Thank you so much.

All right.

With that, we can hear from Brian and Assistant Chief Kibbe.

Thank you, Council Member.

You know, I was just going to start with just a high-level description of the UASI grant and how it's being used by the regional partners in combating both terrorism and emergency situations.

You know, once again, like the grants we just discussed, this is regional.

This is part of a coordinated effort to provide resources both for emergency management and for law enforcement throughout the region.

Although this SPD is the managing agency, and in other words, we are the ones that administrate this grant, we are not the recipients of all of the items that are discussed in the ordinance.

And I believe as part of the materials today is attachment A.

We have a listing of the UASI projects and the intended beneficiaries of each of the items on that list.

You know, the concept here behind the UASI grant is that it's to assist in high-threat, high-density urban areas in efforts to build, sustain, and deliver capabilities necessary to prevent and protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism.

While a lot of the items are focused on terrorism being the Instigating event that requires the emergency management services and the use of the items here.

They are applicable to a wide range of actual acts, whether those are human caused or naturally occurring.

The grant funds program management and sustainment, citizen preparedness and outreach, contract analysts, equipment and training to respond, mass care shelter planning with the human services department.

So this is really a mechanism by which the region comes together, prioritizes by means of a board, those resources that are necessary the region for the potential of mass casualty events.

And that's why this funding is so critically important.

It's been brought before city council for quite some time, year in, year out, and we strongly request that this, I realize there's not going to be a vote today, but as you move forward with this, that this body really support getting these resources to our region.

And I will pass it off to Assistant Chief Kibbe for any any statements he has or specific questions about any of the items.

Thank you, Brian.

I think I'll just reiterate the fact that this is a collaborative effort amongst agencies from Kingston, Elmish, and Pierce County.

The Law Enforcement Subcommittee in particular has members from all agencies throughout that region.

We attempt to identify gaps in our response capabilities and address those gaps through funding of this grant.

The interoperability of all these resources is a key aspect of our choosing what makes the cut for this grant.

And again, the collaboration and cooperation amongst all the law enforcement agencies, along with the fire departments, fire service, Office of Emergency Management, is what makes this grant really special because we're all thinking in terms of what's going to help the region.

And we try not to get bogged down into provincial type stuff.

It's more of a cooperation amongst all the agencies to further our efforts in response to terrorism events in our region.

And with that, I'm available, obviously, for any questions.

MODERATOR Thank you so much.

Greg, your hand's up.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to clarify that in any discussion or comments that I might present next week on this bill, I will not have knowledge of these specific projects that I will be able to impart to council members.

If there are questions about what options the council might take regarding the bill or legal or legislative options.

I will have those.

If there are follow-up questions that need to be answered, I can certainly do that.

But I want to encourage committee members to ask any questions that they have about the technical aspects of these projects and the security aspects of the Assistant Chief and Mr. Maxey as they are the knowledge experts specifically in this Homeland Security area.

Thank you.

There's a project list of approximately 14 projects here.

What I hear you saying, Greg, is that this is the time to ask questions about those projects.

Absolutely.

And my speaking points have said a couple of times that you are going to be giving a presentation of your memo at my next meeting on the 22nd.

But I think your memo is dated today, and there's some things in that memo that maybe we want to highlight now in preparation for the 22nd.

Yeah, I think I think that what I would would highlight is is mostly around legislative process and that the the legislation itself includes in the title the word proviso that would allow some flexibility of the committee to condition projects or funding.

However that can be tricky and Mr. Max you can talk about how if the council chose to condition projects or funding that could affect the grant or could affect the partner jurisdictions.

And so that is something that potentially we might not need to get to unless the council chose to go that route and condition some of the funding.

And that is something that might occur if the council found objections or an interest in changing any of the or conditioning any of the projects that you might discuss today.

And so that's why I think Maybe it makes sense to have that discussion in more depth on the 22nd, depending on how today goes.

But in terms of diving into the projects and learning about what they're doing and whether or not the committee would have any more questions or need any more information, I think that now would be the time to do that.

Because as I said, our knowledge experts will not be here on the 22nd.

And so again, your memo identifies that there are some options if there are concerns about some of the proposed spending and that the council could consider either imposing a proviso that could condition or restrict grant expenditures.

This could include either prohibiting use of grant funds for a specific project or purchase, or conditioning the use of grant funds to only be used in accordance with specified legislative intent.

So again, I agree that this is the time to ask questions about particular expenditures.

would prefer to vote on at the March 22nd meeting on this action so that final action could happen at full council on April 5th.

So just keying that up process-wise and so Greg, before we move to council member questions, thank you Council Member Mosqueda, I see your hand there.

Can you talk a little bit about what your memo says about what happens if council does decide to not authorize spending authority for specific equipment or projects?

Yeah, in working with the department, the department had indicated that if the council decided to restrict or not provide authority for specific projects, it would be the department's preference to attempt to shift that equipment or those projects to another agency to preserve the interoperability of the UASI program as a whole.

And when I was having discussions with the agency on this, it became clear that that would be a very complicated endeavor, especially since the UASI funds had already been accepted by the city.

And so that's something that if the council wanted to do, central staff would have to figure out how to do it is basically the bottom line.

The bill would allow you to condition the expenditure.

We might have to look into the technical requirements for any acceptance of the grant funds and especially on the department side where they have already accepted the grant funds and they have already processed all the paperwork.

So that's something that we could look into sort of if we get there.

But I think the point that you wanted me to call out is that potentially, and what the staff report says is that it's the preference of the department not to just drop the projects or the equipment altogether, but rather to shift them to another agency because of the importance of maintaining the overall interoperability of the program.

And I just want to underscore, I think, something that might get lost in the shuffle is that during the budget process, we did accept these funds.

So this is the appropriation.

And we accepted these funds for the purpose of which the grants were submitted.

So that really creates some complexity around providing different direction to the department.

And again, for many of these projects, these are inter-jurisdictional projects as well.

With that, Congressman Mosqueda.

Okay, Madam Chair, thanks so much.

I wanted to take the clear direction from you to go ahead and ask a handful of questions, and I do have a handful.

So, Madam Chair, I'm wondering if you want me to just go through them, and then as you see other council members' hands come up, feel free to interrupt me, but I do have a full list compared to the grid here.

I'm wondering if we can share that grid.

that shows the investment, the title, the total description, and then I can just walk through that.

Does that sound okay?

Somebody with us today shared the grid in the attachment.

I will pull that up here one moment.

Thank you.

And as you're doing that, I think most of these are just questions for future consideration.

I'm not necessarily making a suggestion about wanting to do one or you know, an alternative approach that Mr. Doss has suggested, but I'll just walk through the questions today if that sounds good, Madam Chair.

Okay, we have to do a dual screen here because it's hard for me to see.

Okay, wonderful.

On The Seattle USAI Enduring Security Needs for $240,000.

Can you share details on what kind of projects this would coordinate?

What is the Seattle UASI Regional THIRA and SPR?

I can, Mr. Maxey, I can take that.

OK.

All right, so, uh, the Thira, T-H-I-R-A, it stands for Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment.

That is done through our Iwasi region.

It basically is there to identify hazards, gaps in our response to terrorism.

And so that report is generated There's lots of, obviously, collaboration and meetings that go along with identifying that report that's generated through our partners at FEMA for our region.

And so a lot of the UASI grants, a lot of the requests for UASI funds expenditures are based on that THIRA risk assessment.

So that the $240,000 that you're looking at is part of that development of that THIRA which incurs a lot of costs, both in time and personnel costs.

Okay.

Let's move on to the Seattle UASI Enduring Security Needs for $174,000.

Can you talk a little bit more about where this position would be housed?

Right after.

first one, the same title.

The first one's planning.

The next one is the staff.

Thank you.

Regional law enforcement program manager.

Where this position would be housed.

I'm sorry.

OK.

Sorry, it took me a minute to see what you were talking about.

So SPD has this regional law enforcement program manager.

They are a department employee.

We have a new employee who just started in January, who took over this program.

So they are SBD employee.

Their job is to reach out among all the jurisdictions, King, Snohomish, and Pierce County, deliver equipment.

As we discussed earlier, SBD is the conduit.

We get all the equipment in to our department and then This person basically distributes it out to Auburn, Everett, and everything else.

They're also involved in a lot of the planning for the Thira and all the different subcommittees for the UASI.

But they are housed as a city employee.

Thank you.

And just so for orientation, the first six lines of this chart are the same program, different elements of the program.

And just follow up there and then if we can walk through that, that's great.

I see another hand, but is is there?

Are they coordinating with other jurisdictions who do interact with ice, for example?

I don't know what jurisdictions, what their level of cooperation with federal partners are and federal agencies, so I can't answer that specifically.

Again, these are.

These are grant proposals that have gone through the law enforcement subcommittee, the voting member, and the core group.

But I don't know how to answer that question.

Each jurisdiction obviously has their own policies.

So yeah, I couldn't answer that right now.

Sorry.

Assistant Chief Kibbe, you can speak to the fact that Seattle resources are being used in a way that is consistent with Seattle's Don't Ask ordinance, in that those resources are not being used to inquire about people's immigration status, except for in the circumstances that the ordinance, the narrow circumstance that the ordinance allows.

Yeah, thank you.

I can speak for Seattle.

Yes, and you are correct.

As far as the other agencies, obviously, I don't have, uh, control over their internal policies or city policies.

So

Thank you.

Councilmember, let me just jump in just on that one point, because you're absolutely correct that both the ordinance that was passed a few years ago and SPD policy prohibits any SPD engagement on task forces that are doing any kind of immigration enforcement, with the rare exception of some aspects of human trafficking that were carved out in that.

So yes, no participation by Seattle police employees in any kind of immigration enforcement is occurring.

Thank you.

I just want to.

If you want to invite other questions from additional council members, I want to just make sure before I do so, I know Council Member Muscata, you have other questions.

Do you have other questions related to this, the first six items, which are all the same, the same program?

I do.

It just kind of goes through the chart, but I can hold those in case other council members.

So why don't you go, why don't you have a quick one?

I would like to finish her questions about the first six items, which are all the same program.

And then Councilman Nelson, if you have questions about that item as well, I'll turn to you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Skipping to item line number four, regional enforcement enhancement, ballistic protection for 175,000.

Can you confirm that these are essentially just shields an officer would use during an active shooter situation?

That is the intent, yes.

Obviously, a shield could conceivably be used in many situations for officer safety, for rescue situations, to protect firefighters in certain situations.

But the intent is to, again, use those for active shooter response.

But if it's there and we can use it for another purpose, certainly that will be considered.

I think, you know, we definitely saw scenes and folks have experienced and called in shields being used against protesters.

So I just wanted to confirm what type of purchase this was for and if it was for active shooters.

Yeah, the active shooter scenario.

The terrorism shooter is the primary, uh, primary use for these for these shields.

Yes.

and councilman i think i may also respond very quickly so these shields the two that are being retained by the seattle police department are both both ballistic shields these are not ones that are typically used in any sort of you know demonstration or crowd management situation these are uh...

different rated and i believe one is a rifle rated and one is hand gun rated uh...

ballistic shields for the protection this has, you know, while we would use this in active shooter situations, we also are training the use of these shields for edge weapon engagement and other times when officers need to be protected in order to advance on, you know, even perhaps a person in crisis if they are armed.

So it's not solely for active shooter.

It is also for other tactical engagements where the officers need protection, but these are solely defensive items.

These are way too heavy to be used in an offensive manner.

Okay, just thank you very much.

Thanks so much, Madam Chair.

On the next line, regional screening search detection for 100,000.

What are the specialized tactical breaching tools and in what situations are they used?

So the breaching tools are essentially, I guess, a robot.

They're essentially a way for us to keep our human officers, give them time, distance, and shielding.

In tactical situations, instead of having an officer have to approach to, say, open a door to get a view into a room or something like that, we can use these robots and this technology to basically do that for us.

And so we don't have to expose an officer to do anything inside the building.

And so it basically allows us, it addresses a gap in our response because it allows us to go up to a door inside a building and not have a human officer there and a potential for confrontation obviously is not there as well.

So it addresses a gap in our response to these things by giving us a way to see what's in the building without actually having to risk an officer doing that themselves.

And Council Member, I'll just jump in here as well.

I believe that Assistant Chief Kibbe was speaking to item 14, which is the tactical breaching robot.

This particular item are the breaching kits that are used anytime there is a barricaded door to force entry into that.

Those would only be used under certain circumstances, such as when there is a warrant, when there is an emergent need to enter a building for some purpose.

So these are subject to all both legal and policy considerations on their deployment and use.

And as you can see here that SPD is gonna retain 10 of these kits and the other 40 kits are distributed among the regional partners.

Great, thank you, Madam Chair.

Those are my questions for that section.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Nelson, you have questions for this section?

Yeah.

Well, Council Member Mosqueda, the question about the employee, which was the first one, and Mr. Maxey's comment, he said something about year after year.

So that just made me wonder, this is an ongoing program and every year we get a grant or that Can you give me just some more background about this actual program?

That's all I wanted to know.

And I don't need a lot of background.

I just want to know if this is the first time that we're considering the projects associated with this grant.

So Council Member, I don't have the start date of this.

grant program, but it has been around for many, many years.

Every year we do come before council for both the appropriations and the receipt of the money initially.

The project list differ year to year depending on the regional needs.

And as discussed previously, that's decided by a board that includes both law enforcement and emergency operations folk.

This is principally a FEMA grant.

The position of the regional law enforcement program manager, we do have ongoing authority from city council for that position itself.

This is solely the funding for that position.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I have a question that relates to this item, Enduring Security Needs, as well as several of the others.

And so I'm just going to ask it now and get it out of the way, because I have a feeling the answer is going to be the same regardless of what program it relates to.

Several of the items state that technologies themselves meet the criteria.

for subject for being subject to review by counsel under the surveillance ordinance and per SPD policy the well that was it that's different that refers to a search warrant and that we have no knock warrants but But per city policy, certain technologies have to go through a surveillance review.

And that surveillance review has to be approved by the council before the purchase is made.

And so for each of these items, of which, again, there are several in this grant, that this is flagged, how are we handling that?

Because I know there's a backlog of SPD uh, technology that have not yet received a review.

So are we are we sort of approving this appropriation with the understanding that you're not going to spend the money to purchase the item in that until after, um, the technology review occurs?

So for each piece of technology, we have to write a privacy impact report.

There's nothing about this grant or this appropriation that gets us somehow past the requirements of the surveillance ordinance.

So we will be in full compliance with that.

So we write the privacy impact report as required.

And then when Seattle IT that governs The surveillance ordinance, well, council does, but it's essentially overseen by Seattle IT.

When they have additional privacy concerns or questions, then we submit full surveillance impact reports and go through the full council review process.

That will need to be done depending on what the IT assessment is for each of these pieces of technology.

So, you know, per the ordinance, as I understand it, we are not able to spend, we're not able to make that purchase until we've gone through the privacy review.

From our perspective, as this grant only goes through December of 23, getting access and approval to the funds so that we can move forward through those processes, you know, getting the appropriation done sooner rather than later will help us timely meet that within the confines of the grant itself.

I hope that answered your question, Councilmember.

Absolutely answers my question.

Thank you.

I just wanted the confirmation that the purchases themselves were not going to happen before the surveillance review process.

Thank you.

I mean, the only caveat I would put out there that I don't know the answer to, which is for technology that we are purchasing for other jurisdictions where it's just a pass-through and they are not subject to our processes, those purchases I would think would go forward.

I can validate that and we can follow up.

Yeah, I would expect that as well.

They don't have our stringent process.

And I don't think we would want to, you know, interfere or limit their use of funds that they are entitled to receive based on our policies.

So the next category of items is the, can we scroll, I just want to see how many of these are related to the category called National Priority Projects.

All right, so emerging threats, several of these are.

Do you have questions around this section?

I do, Madam Chair.

Thank you for encouraging us to ask these questions to both you and Greg so that we can have the content experts on the line here with us.

Scrolling back up to national priority projects.

I'll go to the information and intelligence sharing.

I think line two there, Washington State Fusion Center sustainment.

Appreciate the language in here that says the policy further prohibits SPD employees from contacting Homeland Security regarding foreign nationals without approval of the chain.

Appreciate that risk which is explicitly being called out.

The questions that I do have, though, are what are the four focus areas that are mentioned here for the intelligence analysts?

And does the Fusion Center, as an entity, communicate directly with ICE?

I will have to look up the four.

Give me a second.

I can do that.

My understanding is the Fusion Center doesn't have any direct contact with ICE.

Their job is to basically bring in information and distribute it.

as opposed to the other way around.

It's more of a clearinghouse.

So, but I can find out those four things for you just a minute.

Thank you very much.

All right, do you have anything to add here, filibuster?

While, or fill the air, let's say, so we don't have dead air.

I can go to the next one too, if you prefer, Madam Chair.

That works.

Okay.

Great.

I'll go to the next one then.

National priority projects, domestic violence, extremism, regional tactics awareness kit for 75,000.

Do you mind giving us a few examples of the type of open source background information this would give users access to and what situations would this be needed in?

I apologize.

Which line are we on?

Sorry, just right below.

It's the National Priority Projects Domestic Violent Extremism.

It's the ATT&CK software.

Anne, I'm sorry.

Your question.

I apologize.

No worries.

I did have a few of them.

So I was also wondering, you know, should I submit these?

But this is really helpful to be able to walk through.

So thanks for your time.

I'm wondering if you can give us examples of the type of open source background information this would give users access to and what situations this would be needed for.

And also, if you have any intel on how this type of SPD, how this type of technology is directed by any current SPD policies.

Well, obviously, in regards to the policies, we'd have to adhere to all the current ones, including the surveillance ordinance.

Basically, the open source stuff, my understanding is it is more to do with the region-wide and so that we can monitor other jurisdictions.

So Seattle would be able to have interoperability with, say, Everett and Tacoma and things of that nature.

That's my understanding of the open source background information, but I'd have to research it further to get deeper into it.

Assistant Chief, it might be helpful if you just gave an overview of what this system is.

Right.

So basically, the ATAC is all the jurisdictions in the Seattle metropolitan area tend to have different radio frequencies, different software that they use for dispatch and everything else.

And so this is an attempt to give us all be on the same page operationally and tactically and communication wise.

That's essentially what it boils down to is we have the same training.

We train with the fire department.

We bring in the emergency management folks.

So everyone kind of has a common operating picture for any terrorism attack or actually any natural disaster.

So that's essentially what this is, is it tries to bring all of the platforms together so that we can talk to each other and function as a coherent team.

Is this used to monitor other private or public organizations, or is this strictly for interoperability communications for first responders?

This is for use of first responders.

I don't have any knowledge of its ability or its desire to monitor any private source.

It's basically to enable us, in the event of a natural disaster, terrorism incident, to function as a coherent team throughout our region.

Thank you.

Sorry, Madam Chair.

I was just trying to clarify.

That's very helpful.

And Madam Chair, if I may, to Mr. Das's excellent question there.

I think probably the critical language here that's triggering the question is this uh...

open source background information and i i do not believe that information has anything to do with suspects or civilians is simply that information that through this system first responders are able to share about themselves in order to coordinate the response also noted this was previously approved under our prior you want to grant so this is an update to this system that's already been funded and approved and is operational.

Thank you.

Just generally for this particular category of items defined as national priority projects, domestic violence, extremism.

of which there are three expenditures in that category, about $370,000.

Can you just talk a little bit about how we ensure that use of these systems and technologies is only triggered in those instances of domestic violent extremism as opposed to other types of emergency management like crowd control?

My impression is that, well, first of all, crowd control tends to be a jurisdiction only level event.

It doesn't generally require, uh, cooperation of, like, say, King County, Snohomish County, et cetera.

So, um, I think this differs and that this is more, again, for those, those times if, uh, for communicating needs and resources, uh, from one end of the region to the other.

If that helps answer your question.

It does a little bit.

Um, are certainly in our recent history crowd control situations that we, um, sought the assistance of other jurisdictions.

I just I want to just know that we aren't, um, just saying that any particular large crowd control event is an example of domestic terrorism, and thus these technologies are employed.

I just – I kind of want to understand a little bit – and again, this is something you can get back to me later before the next meeting if you prefer.

I just want to understand a little bit about the protocols in place to trigger the use these particular technologies that are supposed to be refined and defined and restricted to domestic terrorism threat.

Yeah, I think in the in the some kind of crowd control situation that is done in a much kind of lower level through our Special Operations Center and coordinating with other agencies for assistance.

or for whatever it may be.

And so I guess the only assurance I can give you is that these are meant for, again, terrorism, natural disaster, and in my opinion, in my experience, that something like crowd control or civil disturbances will not rise to the level where this is needed.

Thank you.

Any other questions about this section before we move to the National Priority Projects Emerging Threat section?

Madam Chair, I'm going to try to formulate a question on the fly here.

So if a national, excuse me, if a domestic violent extremist situation or you know, the use of Proud Boys were being deployed in a ruse, let's say.

How do you protect against this type of technology being deployed if it's under the title of what you would maybe allow for it, but it's actually used for a ruse?

So this technology is about the cooperation of agencies.

It is not meant to I guess, target private groups.

We're simply looking to be able to have like a common operating picture.

So, um, you know, specific to the crowd control, like I mentioned, uh, that's generally a Seattle specific activity, which would be dividing by, um, any any policy, uh, any recent legislation that comes up.

And so I don't foresee this being used for any type of crowd control situation going forward.

And council members, I'm sorry, I feel like I'm having a hard time tracking the thread on this discussion.

Are we still talking about the tactical awareness kit and its application or not in crowd management situation?

On the grid, One, two, three, three items that are all defined as technologies and tools to deal with domestic violent extremism.

One is the regional tactical awareness kit.

The other is the electronics package.

And the last is a thermal imager.

Should we move on?

Yes, thank you.

Absolutely.

The next questions that I have are in the emerging threat section.

So maybe I'll pause to see if you or others, if I'm jumping ahead too far.

I think we're good to move forward to that section.

Great.

So in the first line here on the national priority projects, emerging threats, digital radiograph panels, x-ray systems for 150,000.

My questions are, does SPD currently have this?

And if so, how is it being used?

Or would something like this be used, for example, during a Terry stop?

So this technology would enhance what we already have.

Obviously, this area of technology is rapidly evolving, getting much better, much more clarity, et cetera.

And so this is something that would give our technicians, specifically our bomb technicians, a much better idea of, say, what is inside that backpack or that suitcase, that type of thing.

is a very specialized piece of gear.

It will be housed with our arson bomb squad.

And so just by that, I would not expect it ever to be available for any kind of terrorist stop or any kind of police contact in a non-high threat environment.

if it's being deployed, does the person who's being scanned know that they're being scanned?

Or what's the policy on on use and and notification?

Well, I can't think if you're talking about a I don't think this is really meant.

I can't think of an instance where a person themselves would be scanned there.

There may be property associated with that person, and obviously we'd be following all our policies in regards to the contact, the arrest or whatever the situation may be.

Um, but they would again.

There's lots of scenarios that I could think of on.

I'm sure you can as well.

But I guess this is for this is for a lot more high level things like, say, there's a pipe place market.

There's a suspicious package, um, something like that, where we can utilize this to see what it is.

Um, and not really in an arrest situation.

more just a potential high threat situation.

Is there a policy then on using it on, for example, a person who's wearing a backpack or something like that?

If the person's attached to the parcel, do you have a policy about how to proceed?

I'm using as many keys as possible here.

Thank you.

Well, any stop any detention is governed by our our policies.

Uh, Mr Max, you can probably give me the exact policy number.

Um, so it would have to be officers would have to develop reasonable suspicion, probable cause to believe that there is something in that backpack.

that needs to be searched.

A lot of it would be depending on the subject themselves, their demeanor as well.

But this is not meant for a dynamic situation.

This is meant for the situation has been stabilized, and we need to find out what the level of threat is from Package A. Plus, it's going to take at least probably 45 minutes to an hour for this to deploy to the scene.

And so just based on the fact that it's housed in one unit.

So again, I just don't foresee a situation where it would be able to be used with a person who's actively carrying some type of clothing or backpack.

Especially considering that if that was a situation with an individual who was wearing a backpack and you were applying the procedures that would allow you to search that backpack, you would just do that physically as opposed to hauling out a piece of equipment to x-ray it.

Yeah, this would basically happen after the person has been contacted.

And we, again, need to determine specifically what type of threat is inside the item.

Thank you.

in terms of just very very briefly i mean under a under a terry stop uh...

that's good attention you do not have the authority under the law of the state law or under the fourth amendment to conduct a search even using technology like this that could not happen we've separated out of our policies such that searches are very distinct from the Terry stop policy on investigative detentions in order to not conflate the issue.

Um, and our search policy is very clear also that, you know, you do this in favor of a search warrant unless it is a search incident to arrest, which is, you know, again, a different circumstance where you now have probable cause.

Um, There are times when there can be community caretakings searches, but again, that's the abandoned property and the concern that this might be an explosive device where this technology might be employed.

It's not designed, as I understand it, to ever be used on a person.

It is supposed to be used on containers, backpacks, unidentified items.

Thank you.

I appreciate your questions, Council Member Mosqueda.

This is helpful, I think, for the viewing public who might also have questions.

So are there any others?

Just the last set of questions I have here.

Back to robots.

On national priority projects, emerging threats, regional tactical robots for 120,000.

Could you give us an example of when SPD has used this, would have liked to use this?

If it has been used in the past, what has the outcome been?

And you started to mention some of the SPD policies that I think already dictate the use of robots.

If you could just remind me what those are as well.

So I'll give an example of when this robot would be used.

I think I mentioned it before in error.

But for a hostage and barricaded situation where we have an idea that the subject is in a certain room, a certain part of a building, around a corner where there's not a lot of cover for a human officer, that we would have to deploy resources, officers, to look in, the robot can take their place.

The robot would be able to give us active intelligence about the location, about the threat level inside whatever building or area that we want to.

It provides immediate feedback through video to the operator, which can then inform the incident commander about the situation and also help dictate tactics in order to bring situations to a safe conclusion.

It takes the place of a human officer.

So think like a hostage barricaded.

We've gone through a progression of tactics.

We've called them.

We've tried hostage negotiation.

But at some point, the decision is made, we either need to deny them access to a certain area, we want to introduce either some chemical munitions in order to deny them a certain area, or just maybe we just want to go knock on the door, open the door to get a view inside a certain area.

Right now, our only fallback is to use humans for that, human officers who obviously are armed and have to protect themselves.

And so these robots gives us that standoff distance, the ability to use time, distance and shielding so that we can accomplish what we set out to do.

We need intelligence on what is happening, but it doesn't force us to send an officer up to do the work that lessens the ability or lessens the potential for a confrontation between the officers and that that subject, wherever they may be.

Oftentimes, in my experience, that opening that first door is a flashpoint, is a potential for conflict.

If you have an officer open that door, obviously that potential for conflict is higher than if you have a robot doing it.

So it addresses that gap and allows us to get insight and intelligence into an area that we need it without exposing officers and without kind of exacerbating that confrontation.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thanks so much.

Appreciate that.

I just want to flag that my interest on this bill, just as a preview, is there are five items that are flagged as subject to the surveillance ordinance.

And I would like to know they're flagged as subject to the surveillance ordinance.

But I'm I have a feeling that some of the five might be replacements of similar similar technologies that the city might already have.

So if this is a replacement for a technology that the city already has that is already on the sort of the grandfathered list of SPD technology projects that have been sort of grandfathered in where we're doing the approvals after the fact, I wanna know which of those five items fit that bill because what we've said about those items is we aren't going to hold up the purchase of the items until after the review.

We're going to do them after the fact.

And there's just a finite number of items like that.

And I want to know if any of these five are like that.

And then for the others that may not be grandfathered in, would be interested to just sort of confirm the expectation, as you stated, Brian, that the purchase will not happen until after the surveillance review.

We can get you that information, obviously, and will do so.

The one thing that I will flag, though, is that upgrades to currently existing systems also trigger a review under the surveillance ordinance.

So even if they are pre-existing tech, as they have different capabilities, which is sort of the motivation for getting them, that may bring them back to the forefront of the review.

So they're not considered among the grandfathered items that we're doing reviews after the fact.

I'll need to go through, validate this, and we'll let you know the status of each.

All right, yeah.

My interest is not in burdening you and the department beyond our expectations under the surveillance ordinance.

And if these are replacements of existing technologies that we've already identified as grandfathered in, that we do the reviews after, their purchase, that's an allowance I'm interested in continuing.

Alex, do you have a question?

I do.

I think this last one here, the regional tactical robots question, might have come up last year in our discussion of the surveillance ordinance and the passage of the final grandfathered technologies.

Specifically, Brian, I'm wondering if This item falls into the situational awareness cameras without recording capabilities, which was something that was included in Council's passage of its last batch of surveillance technologies.

That's an excellent question, and I'll have to validate that and get back to you.

All right.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Appreciate the time and care that, uh, S.

P. D. You have spent on this on this item.

Um, members, if you have additional questions, um, or, um, uh, amendments for, uh, for Greg, um, do ask that you get that information to him.

Um, Council Member Nelson and then Assistant Chief Kibby.

Thank you very much.

This isn't about the technology itself, but the central staff memo indicates that one possible concern is that it creates ongoing funding issues.

And so I'm just wondering, is that a concern that is newly raised because of what we're hearing from executive about our budget situation this year?

because it seems as though, and then is, or, but then I was thinking if this is an ongoing program, do we already consider whatever training is necessary for receiving of these grants part of regular operations?

So thank you.

Or I guess a better way of asking it is simply, I just wanted to know a little bit more about that concern about ongoing expenses.

Council member to the, trying to remember what I may have said in the central staff report, but I think that typically the equipment that's purchased, like say the, the bomb robot that adds or robots that add additional capability to SPDs.

I guess, tactical operations.

There's not necessarily a replacement plan for that robot per se.

There's no sinking fund being built into the budget to replace that robot.

So, if the grant is discontinued for some reason in the future, and there's a need to replace that robot.

The city general fund will not have any capability to pick up a new robot, to the extent that.

that the UASI program itself has maintenance or ongoing funding for equipment sustainment, then that's helpful.

But for the larger equipment purchases, the city itself is not in any way planning any kind of sinking fund to replace those in the future.

Um, someone else.

And do you have another question?

Oh, no.

All right.

Great.

Uh, such a chief.

Okay.

All right.

Sorry for delay.

I was finally able to, uh, gather my information about the national priority projects.

Um, they're based there.

Number one is cyber security.

Soft target crowded places is the second one.

Information intelligence sharing.

The third The fourth is domestic violence extremism, and the fifth is emerging threats.

So those are the national priority projects that are developed and kind of sent down through FEMA to us to address.

That of course are the – that's the – each of those projects are named as subtitles under the categories on the grid.

So thank you for helping us track that back to the information that we had.

I was not following that either.

Appreciate that.

If there's any other questions about that, please feel free to give myself or Mr. Maxia a note and we can answer any before your next meeting.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

So we will move off of this item and move on to the last item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number four?

Committee agenda item number four, Human Services Department 2021 Race and Social Justice Report.

Fantastic, thank you.

This is a presentation from the Human Services Department on their 2021 race and social justice accomplishments.

Yay.

And a look forward toward their 2022 objectives.

We're joined by a number of folks from HSD today for the presentation.

If we could have the presenters introduce themselves with a quick round of introductions, starting with Dr. Kim, and then we will kick off in the presentation.

Good morning, Tanya Kim, Acting Director of HSD.

Thank you.

Step right up.

Rex Brown, Safe and Thriving Communities Division Director at HSD.

Good morning, Lan Pham, Manager of the Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

Good morning, Shea Brown, Human Services Department Data Analyst Assistant and Change Team Co-Lead.

Hi, Angela Miyamoto, Planner with Aging and Disability Services.

Good morning, Ron Minobono, Manager of the Community Services Unit.

Great, thank you.

I think that's everybody?

I think that's all of us.

Thank you so much for having us.

I'm going to exercise brevity with a capital B.

And so in the interest of time, especially because we're joined with so many wonderful colleagues.

And for some, this is their first time at committee.

And so we want to make sure that they have their maximum time given the rest of committee.

So thank you for bearing with us.

HSD, we're so grateful for being here and looking forward to talking about our 2021 as well as 2022. Next slide, please.

Thank you.

And I just want to give some direction to council members.

Just because we we do want to focus on hearing from folks.

I just request that we hold questions until the end of the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So today, we're very quickly going to highlight how race and social justice was was and it continues to be interwoven throughout HSD's work.

We'll share how our commitment to help and continue to help address disparities and advance equity.

And we'll walk through some of our 2021 efforts.

There's so much happening at our department.

We're just going to highlight a handful so you can have a flavor.

And we're going to hear from colleagues directly.

Next slide.

I should say there's a lot of words on these slides.

Selfishly, we do want to highlight the work that we're doing.

I'm not going to read through each one of the next set because, again, I want to get to my colleagues, but you're welcome to reference this.

We're always happy to answer questions, and I meet with Chair Herbold regularly.

And so with that, I wanted to highlight here that our race and social justice work in both spirit and practice, our value and what we do, is key to achieving HSD's mission.

And HSD is both a direct service provider and a funder.

And, you know, we do have a budget, limited resources.

So therefore, it's really important.

And it is our responsibility to address disparities and advance racial equity.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, please.

In the spirit of race and social justice planning work in 2021, I just wanted to really do a shout out to our employee driven change team and caucuses that are so integral to the part of our RSJ work.

race and social justice work, our staff engage with the community to foster relational culture.

And when I talk about community, it's our internal and external community, that we need to understand lived experience and identify opportunities that help us be intentional in our approach to service.

And so we are not in a place of just doing, we want to make sure that we are intentional and listen to community voice.

because community knows what are needed, what are the assets, and what are the solutions.

Next slide, please.

Furthering in terms of addressing disparities, our RSJ planning fosters human-centered and relational collaboration between staff and the community That helps address the disparities.

And so oftentimes we'll talk about data informed will have, you know, there's responding to needs, but the relationships are what's key to doing the transformational work.

In 2021, HSD's investments and services addressed the impacts of racism, poverty, and other factors that shape people's life experiences and access to opportunity.

There's a lot of words here.

There's examples anywhere from our HOPE team to our new Safe and Thriving Communities Division to additional investments that we're actually gonna do a deeper dive on.

So we'll move on to the next slide.

more data for you if you are data driven.

We share this on our website.

We share this in our communications and our blogs.

Just wanted to offer the general public some more stats.

And so if you look at this, it's everything from what we're doing around feeding meals to youth employment and also responding to COVID, as well as the utility discount program and making sure that folks who are eligible are enrolled in these really important services.

Again, because we're addressing disparities, and because those who are experiencing the disparities are oftentimes people of color, our services are very critical.

Next slide, please.

Some of the highlights recently from last year that we wanted to showcase are how, you know, and this is where I think it's so important for HSD to show up at committee and talk about the other areas of our portfolio, because so oftentimes, and rightfully so, we're talking about homelessness and violence prevention.

But wanted to also highlight some of the other examples of what we're doing out in the community, including the supporting the efforts around vaccinations and what our case managers are doing specifically for those who are also not going out to some of the locations.

And so there's some data here, very impressive data by our wonderful team, as well as again, HealthONE and the mobile integrated health services that we do in partnership with Seattle Fire Department and the responses just being out in the community.

And highlighting what the work that we're doing as a different example in having forums with their seniors to combat social isolation and I know that that is really important to many of our council members, but particularly to you chair herbal to.

that we're making sure that we're working with our seniors to have that socialization and offer some resources.

Specifically, again, with a focus on serving our BIPOC communities and highlighting the work that our African American caregivers are doing.

Next slide.

Okay, so as we do a recap specifically on our racial equity plans, HSD, even though we did all of the work that I just described, we were able to offer some specific racial equity plan actions that the Seattle Office of Civil Rights facilitates for all departments.

And here's a listing of the various actions that we developed and submitted.

But really, again, it goes beyond the filing of the paperwork.

This is what we do on a regular basis.

Next slide please.

So we now get to the bread and butter of the presentation.

And so I'm very excited to introduce my colleague, Shay Brown, who is our change team co-lead.

And she's going to start us off by talking more about our race and social justice champions here at HSD.

Shay, you're next.

Next slide, please, Kevin.

Thanks, Tanya.

And thank you, Council.

Good morning, Seattle community.

My name is Shea Brown.

I am a mother, I'm an organizer, I'm a lifetime learner, and I've been a City of Seattle Human Services Department employee for nine years.

As Tanya shared, I am the Change Team Co-Lead along with Krista Smeller.

Today, I'm honored to present the HSD Change Team and highlight some of the RSGI work that the Department of Human Services has been doing with you all.

Since its inception, HSD has had a deep connection and responsibility and accountability to the communities it serves.

Today, the Human Services Department Change Team continues to focus on undoing institutionalized racism in a principled manner through building and strengthening relationships with community and community organizers, addressing systemic racism, and interrupting institutionally racist practices within.

In 2021, the Human Services Department Change Team and Caucuses supported the development and completion of 12 racial equity plans, developed and utilized expectations for an inclusive hiring process with community partners, and recommended recommendations to improve equity outcomes in hiring.

Our caucuses, featuring the Latinx Caucus, partnered with Diego Luna from Highline College and others to organize conversations around race, culture, immigrant experience, and exploration of colorism.

The Asian Pacific Islander Caucus connected and worked with community to address and raise an anti-Asian hate rate, excuse me, to raise and address anti-Asian hate in response to bias COVID-19 perceptions.

Our joint caucus human resources work group developed recommendations for increasing equity and inclusion in recruitment processes as well.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So to share a little bit about our joint caucus HR work group.

In 2018, the JCHR group was formed to address concerns and experiences of bias and inconsistencies in the hiring process shared by several members of caucus.

Joint Caucus HR members collaborated to develop a set of holistic hiring and recruitment process recommendations to decrease burdens on people of color and to open the door for more opportunity.

Caucus members noted practices and processes that were not equitable.

These inequities contributed to an increase of staff turnover, a lack of representation by BIPOC individuals, and unsuccessful outcomes in recruiting and hiring BIPOC staff.

The joint caucus HR space fosters open collaboration, transparency, and the ability to address mistrust through open dialogue and building an understanding of the array of employee experiences.

Also, Black Indigenous and people of color staff can share concerns, needs, and develop solutions and actions to address these issues.

Next slide, please.

Fast forward to 2021. The Human Services Department Change Team presented leadership with expectations for an inclusive hiring process and encouraged HSD to use the expectations to conduct an equitable hiring process for all department leadership.

The goal is for HSD workforce to equitably reflect the diversity of the people and the needs of the communities we serve.

as well as being considerate of the historic and ongoing impact of underrepresented communities within HSD.

One of the Joint Caucus HR recommendations is to increase community and stakeholder inclusion in hiring and recruitment processes.

The inclusive hiring expectations and the Joint Caucus HR recommendations have been a helpful guide in the recruitment and the hiring of both the Safe and Thriving Communities Director and the Human Services Department Deputy Director.

It highlighted and encouraged the need for an understanding of mandatory reporting and compliant management, as well as transparency via data to address and represent gaps, so to better understand expectations among hiring managers.

With that, I want to thank my colleague, Ms. Krista Sneller, caucus co-leads, the change team, human services department change team, and human agency leadership and staff for all of your hard work and sacrifices.

I know that this work is not easy, but the intention is that those who are coming behind us will feel the difference.

I also want to thank community members and organizers and agency partners for continuing to keep us accountable.

Thank you for your time.

And now I'll turn it over to Ms. Lan Pham, the Safe and Thriving Divisions, Thriving Communities Divisions, and the, sorry, Manager of the Mayor's Office of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

Ms.

Lan?

Yes, good morning.

And thank you so much, Che, for that introduction.

Good morning.

My name is Lan Pham and I'm the Manager of the Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

It's my pleasure this morning to share with you our office's process of integrating race and social justice into our investments decisions.

In 2021, we were awarded $600,000 for gender-based violence COVID response.

The funding was awarded mid-year, thus it was our impetus to get the funds out to community as soon as possible.

Our office hosted seven listening sessions from April through June of 2021. The data received was in alignment with regional and national data, which highlighted the immense impact to and gap for BIPOC and marginalized survivors of gender-based violence as a result of COVID and social distancing.

Given this information, our office prioritized current grantees with experience, those who have experience working with and partnership and are BIPOC-led agencies who have expertise of providing in-language services and culturally relevant services.

as well as those who have successfully met contracted outcomes.

Next, please.

The result was that we were able to distribute the $600,000 among more than 10 organizations.

This funding increased mobile flexible advocacy and client's assistance, and also increased agency capacity, including staff overtime and purchase of equipment relating to COVID response, and mainly for grassroots agencies serving historically marginalized communities.

With one-time funding, we acknowledge that agencies will need to locate alternative funding to continue support beyond the funding cycle.

But at this time, we acknowledge that this partnership is between us and the community and our continuous engagement has been the main key component to us successfully rolling out the funds in short time and to the communities of the highest needs.

So with that, thank you for your time, and I'd like to turn the virtual mic over to my partner and colleague, Angela Miyamoto with the Aging and Disability Services.

Thank you, Lan.

I'm Angela Miyamoto, and I'm a planner with Aging and Disability Services.

I have the honor and privilege of coordinating the Asian and Pacific Islander Resiliency Request for Proposal which was a cross-division collaboration with staff from all divisions, including our API caucus co-leads.

Last year, an ordinance allocated $300,000 to community-based organizations to address the issue of racism and intolerance towards the Asian Pacific Islander communities.

Our work group undertook a racial equity planning process to clarify how to best distribute these funds to ensure equitable and needs-based service delivery and resource allocation.

This safety, wellness, and capacity-building work had a citywide impact and addressed racial equity, and it also reflected an anti-racist, multicultural organization continuum.

Planning work identified a need for BIPOC-led service provision and that the city should prioritize funding small community-based organizations that had not received funding in the past.

at the core of the work was the desire to reduce incidents of violence and trauma in the API community by providing support to organizations serving the API diaspora that are most adversely impacted by funding.

There were challenges along the way.

The expedited funding process was one of them.

The project team identified a need around language access budget to cover translation of materials, stipends for raters, and a timeline to facilitate translation and transcreation.

In addition, many BIPOC communities have an inherent distrust of government.

The schedule compressed the time to both streamline the process to meet immediate needs and build authentic relationship that fosters trust and understanding.

We conducted outreach to organizations, councils, coalitions, and individuals to center community voice.

The engagement informed the RFP, including RFP design, content and outcomes, and included community members in the RFP rating and funding recommendation process.

We also simplified the application to make it easier for small community-based organizations to apply, and as a result, we funded eight organizations, four of which were new to contracting with the Human Services Department at the time.

On behalf of the workgroup, we thank you for learning more about this effort.

And up next is Ron Mirapueno from HSD's Youth and Family Empowerment Division, to talk about youth employment and applying race and social justice to program planning efforts.

Thank you, Angela, and council members.

Once again, I'm Ron Mirabueno, manager within the Youth and Family Empowerment Division, and support the Seattle Youth Employment Program and the Utility Discount Program.

I'm here on behalf of the good people of SYEP, which includes Dan Ruiz, Elijah Warren, Cindy Sandino-Chang, Victoria West, Thuy Dang, Madison Stella, Julia Jackson, Tara Valamont, Jawara McDuffie, and Lupe Wilson.

Today, I will provide a brief recap of the Seattle Youth Employment Program, or SYP, and what prompted a racial equity planning activity.

First, I will share a few details about SYP.

The program has a long and rich history serving the community.

It's been around 50-ish years.

and provides employment and skill building through highly supported internship experiences for low-income youth and young adults 16 to 24 years of age, with a focus on those that identify as BIPOC and face barriers to employment.

In 2019, SYP began offering stipend-based foundational job readiness and life skill development workshops called Learn and Earn.

Next slide, please.

SYP is evolving and is undergoing a transition to build upon the existing model by expanding to a two-pronged program that will add higher levels of technical and or certificated training and help build up young people's marketable skills when applying for jobs.

The new future state also develops and connects young people to competitive internship experiences that offer increased levels of responsibility and independence.

This new framework provides low-income youth with a focus on BIPOC youth greater access to appropriately tiered paid employment trainings, mentored work experiences, internships, and career counseling over a course of two years.

The future state creates a tailored youth-centered experience to increase their ability to pursue careers that pay well and are meaningful to them.

It also provides mentoring for young people through positive youth-adult relationships with youth development counselors who may share similar backgrounds and or lived experiences, which is a powerful and effective means for supporting BIPOC youth.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

As SYP's programs evolve, we are partnering with DEEL and the Seattle College's Seattle Promise Program to increase the awareness and participation by income-eligible Seattle Promise scholars.

During our RSJ planning, we identified that the expansion of services to Seattle Promise students, while staying budget neutral, resulted in the unintended impacts in terms of a net reduction in overall slots for the broader group of young people targeted for program participation.

So to center RSJ and equity in future state planning and program implementation, SYP program staff recommended expanding the definition of the focus population from current Seattle Promise scholar to Seattle Promise eligible, which would include any Seattle income eligible high school student and young people not currently engaged in college but seeking other post-secondary opportunities.

This will allow the program to mitigate unintended consequences of partnering with DEEL and reopen access to the program to the broader group of low income and BIPOC youth and young people the program set out to support and empower.

Lastly, SYP is also looking for internships and mentorship sites right now.

So if anyone listening has an opportunity available or knows of a company who'd be interested in hosting a SYP intern, please reach out to SYP or myself to get connected.

Thanks to all the leaders who supported SYP in the past and helped make this work possible.

Up next is Rex Brown to talk about a major community-centered body of work, the stand-up of the Safe and Thriving Communities Division.

Thank you so much, Ron.

I've been here many times before, so I'll truncate my remarks because, as Tanya mentioned, it's really important that you hear from the people actually doing the work.

and I'm really grateful to them for being here today to let you know all that they've been doing.

In 2021, the city and the community came together to create Safe and Thriving Communities.

This division was formed to address disparities, advance equity, and improve outcomes in BIPOC communities because people, when their lives are free from violence, thrive.

STC reflects the community call for change in the wake of tragic community police interactions like the death of George Floyd.

Next slide, please.

The process to form STC included a series of public forums where impacted communities co-designed division structure based on their needs.

The process also helped define STC's contracting approach and award criteria for community safety and capacity building investments.

Through what was an equitable process, people who have been and remain most impacted by disparities consulted to the city on what service to BIPOC communities look like.

STC's work also considers intergenerational benefits and burdens and how to change outcomes for communities today and the course of future generations with a holistic approach related to families.

Next slide.

This slide reflects some of STC's notable accomplishments.

We did a lot in 2021, as you can see, and I've mentioned before to this very body.

In addition to these investments and achievements, STC also acquired the LEAD, Let Everyone Advance With Dignity contract from the former HSI division in quarter four.

All of this works is thanks to my staff and our community partners, work group consultants, and of course, leaders across the city, including those of you in this room, our virtual room.

I also have to thank my counterparts in the community.

So many community leaders, organizers, and organizations responded to the public's call for change that centers the intergenerational impacts and trauma of racism using a human-centered approach.

Last, next slide.

I want to share a few details regarding the Community Safety Capacity Building Request for Proposal, or RFP process, and the RFP award criteria.

To inform the RFP, we held 36 community engagement sessions.

This RFP led to the award of $10.4 million in one-time funds in BIPOC communities.

HSD received 70 applications, made 33 awards, and 17 of those awards were new to the organization and providers.

Thank you to everyone who has made STC's work possible.

Back to you, Tanya.

Okay.

And further thanks to Rex.

And I know the mayor's office and council supported this important work and we're very appreciative of the leadership across the board.

I want to just close this out by summarizing on a very high level the work in 2021, which led to great achievements.

And we're mindful, so mindful, that there's much more work to do.

We've also learned a few lessons, which includes, of course, the need, and you've heard this from our community members directly too, is to allow time for an inclusive planning process.

to challenge convention and usual practices.

We need to learn from the community and work together to evaluate impacts and burdens and set aside resources for things like translation and participation stipends.

And one thing that drops off, but that's very critical, is we need to report back to what was learned throughout the planning process about program impacts and outcomes.

And that is a core part of being transparent and accountable to community and to ourselves.

So a preview of the RSJ objectives for 2022, just to close us off, is that we are going to relaunch, refocus, emphasize results-based accountability.

That's a whole nother briefing in itself, but really revisiting the framework that we use to ensure that our investments have a positive impact.

that we are also going to continue engaging our community.

But we're going to codify and solidify how HSD does its community engagement by developing a framework that we can train, adopt, and be transparent about.

We're going to provide workforce, our workforce, community building and leadership development opportunities.

So again, when I speak of community, it's our internal and external community.

And then lastly, to ensure innovation, accountability, and stewardship measures to advance equity.

That's lofty, but it's important, and it centers us.

So with that, that concludes our presentation.

We thank you for allowing us to be here.

We are mindful of time that you've stuck with us, and so happy to field any questions, time permitting, and otherwise happy to follow up, of course.

I do have to, I said lastly, I do have to thank Shea, Lon, Angela, Rex, and I guess Shea again, and our behind the scenes folks that make this really valuable.

This is a representation of what our department does, but we really do have 350 plus more individuals working at HSD and all of our contracted providers who join in this effort.

They are the ones who are leading racial equity on a day to day.

Thank you.

And I think we could take down the presentation as well.

Appreciate that.

And I also want to thank you, Director Kim, as well as Shea, Lan, Angela, Ron, and Rex.

Really appreciate the work that you're doing, appreciate the recognition.

I think it was Shea who refer to how difficult the work is, but that the folks that will follow you will benefit from that hard work.

I also appreciate you working with my office to find the right time to bring forward this presentation.

And just for the viewing public as some context, the RSJI initiative team at the Office for Civil Rights leads each city department through creating an annual racial equity plan and a report on the previous year's accomplishments.

And so this presentation is sort of consistent with the expectations that we set for city departments as part of that annual process.

I have a couple of questions.

I'm gonna hold mine to see if there are questions from any of my Council colleagues here.

Not seeing any hands raised.

Maybe you'll think of some questions that you might have.

But I'm going to just jump in real quickly.

As it relates to the information on slide 17, the API resiliency request for proposal, you highlight a strategy specific to removing barriers while also trying to streamline the RFP process.

Do you mind just giving some, we hear talk about removing barriers a lot.

And so it just, I think it's helpful to understand what examples are of where you successfully remove barriers.

That's right.

And that's something that Angela, if you're comfortable offering some examples off the cuff.

Just for the viewing audience, you know, most organizations apply for funding from the city and they're through a competitive process.

And so we'll issue guidelines and then we have an application process.

We have heard that it can be cumbersome and the way in which various departments go about that can be difficult or challenging.

And so, Angela, you want to share some ways in which you were able to reduce some of those barriers and support providers to apply?

Yeah, so we reduced the amount of questions and really simplified the questions that were asked.

And also that we translated the materials into different API languages.

And also, we're willing to accept any application in a person's preferred language.

That's great.

Thank you for that.

We often talk about providing translation services, but accepting of applications in other languages is even better.

So thank you for sharing that.

And then I think I intended to ask a question about this instead because, Dr. Kim, you recognize that there's potential for a whole other committee discussion about this topic.

I won't ask the question.

I'll hold the question.

I do want to signal my interest in the discussion around relaunching results-based accountability.

Really interested to know why, considering the city ordinance related to results-based accountability, interested to learn more about why we need to relaunch and what that might look like.

Absolutely, and happy to come back.

I'll just say very briefly, during the state of emergency with COVID the past couple years, and leadership turnover.

and our inability to offer trainings and really hold to kind of the integrity of that framework.

We've been applying, of course, and following our policy and procedures around how to do a funding process, like Angela just described.

But we want to relaunch and emphasize the way in which results-based accountability is structurally developed by its founders and follow that practice a little bit more with fidelity.

And so we're going to emphasize that, but happy to discuss further.

Perfect.

And I imagine, I mean, that was several years ago that we passed the ordinance.

I imagine that some of the practices have evolved as well, because practitioners, not just here in Seattle, but everywhere, have adopted the continuous improvement mindset.

That's right.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

All right.

Great, thank you so much.

Any other thoughts or questions?

Again, lots of appreciation and just really want to honor the value of this work and how it benefits our communities in Seattle.

All right.

Seeing no additional questions.

Next, Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 at 9.30 a.m.

If there are no additional comments from my colleagues, the time is 11.46 a.m.

and we are adjourned.

Thank you.