Public Safety & Human Services Committee 7/27/21

Good morning.

It is July 27th.

This is the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting.

I am Lisa Herbold, the chair of the committee.

It is 9.31 a.m., and the meeting will come to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Council Member Lewis?

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

And both Council Member Morales and Swamp let the office know that they were not going to be here today.

Thank you so much.

So today on the agenda we will hear a number of items.

The first item that we will hear is the office of the inspector general's sentinel event phase one report.

That will be followed by the race and social justice initiative presentation from the Seattle fire department.

And we will hear from the Office of Emergency Management on the All Hazards Mitigation Plan.

This is a second presentation from an earlier one from the Office of Emergency Management.

And I hope to vote the plan out of committee today.

And then lastly, we'll be hearing from central staff and executive staff on the summary findings on the executive order on the reimagining policing and community safety interdepartmental team effort.

Now approve 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.

At this time, we'll transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period 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 registered on the council's website.

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

This link is also listed on today's send up.

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

And once you hear that prompt, you need to press star six to unmute yourself.

You can begin by speaking.

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

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

And once the speaker hears that time, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

Speakers do not end 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, we ask that you disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, you can do so, but please do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options that are listed on the agenda.

As mentioned, we have about 16 people signed up for public comment.

The agenda shows that we have 20 minutes for public comment.

And so to accommodate all of these speakers speaking for two minutes each, I think we do need to extend public comment.

comment for, let's just to make safe from 20 minutes to 35 minutes.

And if there's no objections, I will amend the agenda to extend the public comment period from 20 minutes to 35 minutes.

Hearing no objections, the agenda is amended.

And I'd like to recognize that Council President Gonzalez has joined the meeting.

So we'll move right into public comment.

I will read speakers' names together and just get to my comment names and we'll get started.

First, we have Howard Gale followed by Neville Basker.

Howard.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, District 7. Over the last year, we have seen the repeated failures of every aspect of our police accountability system.

We have seen the OPA ignore complaints, find against the victims, or hand out meaningless discipline in over 99% of the police abuse cases from the last year.

Today, we witnessed the latest failure of the system as the Office of Inspector General presents their findings on the police abuse of 2020 from a 12-member panel that included seven people who were part of the failed system, including five SBB officers, Four of these officers have decades of questionable actions, including abusing protesters, and only one member who identified as a protester out of the 12. It is as if the city held a peace circle for domestic violence victims and invited mostly abusers, along with a few folks to represent the abused.

The OIG and their panel accepted some of the most absurd claims by the SPD without any verification.

For example, the SPD claims that the tear gas that was used on protesters during the Pink Umbrella incident was because the fbd ran out of other means of abuse since the orgy set out to not find blame in our current policing system has no means to obtain accountability there remains as there did twenty one years ago twenty two years ago after the wto absolutely no incentive for cops to change behavior rooted in generations of culture report is an obscene whitewash and demonstrates the urgent need for us to have full civilian community control over police policy, misconduct investigations, and discipline.

Go to seattlestop.org to find out how.

That's seattlestop.org.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Neville Basker, followed by Tony Roumanier.

Neville.

Hi, my name is Nevic.

At the city council meeting yesterday, over 40 people argued for over an hour for and against council bill 120142. About four people spoke about bike lanes, affordable housing, and other important Seattle business.

A disproportionate amount of council time is spent on complex and divisive geopolitical conflict that inflames local passion.

Supporters of the bill made contradictory arguments.

Is this bill about human rights and police accountability and not about Israel?

Or is Israel an evil country committing these horrible crimes?

If the bill targets Israel, then it's discriminatory and employs a double standard.

If it's about human rights in general, why did Tollers focus on Israel's alleged decease, starting with its merit systems?

A number of callers claim that criticism does not lead to anti-Semitism, but that's patently false.

Criticism of Israel is a trigger and cover for hate crimes perpetrated against Jews.

That's what happened in Seattle with the failed shooting at the Jewish Federation.

It happened when a rabbi was stabbed in Boston last month, and Jewish diners were beaten at a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles.

Our city council has been hijacked by an extremist ideological agenda.

Please get back to serving Seattle.

Table this motion.

Get rid of this bill and make Seattle a safe, inclusive and welcoming community for all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tony Roumanier followed by Cody Zalewski.

Tony.

Hi, my name is Dr. Tony Romanier.

I'm a psychologist here in Seattle, clinical faculty at University of Washington and author of a series of books on psychotherapy training.

I'm speaking today to urge the Seattle City Council to adopt the ordinance to decriminalize psychedelics and to do so quickly before the budget deliberations in September, as this is a very timely issue.

A large body of empirical research suggests that psychedelic medicines are highly effective and safe treatment for addiction and many co-occurring diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have published dozens of studies showing the efficacy of psychedelic medicines alongside studies from Harvard, Yale, Royal College of London, and many other major universities.

Many of the Clients in these studies had tried traditional talk therapies previously, but had not had success, and then showed significant gains from psychedelic medicine.

As a psychologist, I'm very aware of the need for more treatments in addiction and related diagnoses.

Our city is experiencing a severe shortage of mental health services made ever more acute by COVID, and it just does not make sense to outlaw medicines that have such strong research support.

forward-thinking cities across the U.S. of decriminalized possession and cultivation of entheogens, including Oakland, Denver, Washington, Cambridge, and Ann Arbor.

I urge the city council to make these natural medicines available to Seattle citizens.

Please act to pass this ordinance before the budget deliberations in September.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Cody Zalewski, followed by Allie Lee.

Cody?

Hello Seattle City Council members.

My name is Cody Zaleski District 4 and I'm a part of Decriminalize Nature Seattle.

Psychedelics have shown remarkable promise for treating many ailments such as PTSD MDD and substance use amongst others.

There's no reason the City of Seattle shouldn't have access shouldn't have these medicines listed as the lowest law enforcement priority which is a small and modest step in the direction of drug law reform.

The recent inclusion of psychedelic decriminalization on the agenda of the Overdose Emergency and Innovative Recovery Task Force is a welcome step on behalf of the council.

Psychedelic therapy offers a promising treatment to the opioid crisis which has been plaguing our city and we look forward to the upcoming report from the OEIR.

We appreciate the council members and the willingness to put this issue on the referral calendar for a vote before budget deliberation begins.

Thank you for taking the time to consider the issue of entheogenic decriminalization and I cede my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Allie Lee followed by Ruth Freelund.

Allie.

Hi, good morning.

I'm Allie Lee.

I'm a climate reality leader and also a coalition member of the King County International Airport Community Coalition, which includes Georgetown, Beacon Hills, South Park, and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, along with many others.

I am calling in today to then support Amendment 1, which is Resolution 32011. I want to give a special thank you to Council Member Herbold and her staff along with Director Mayer and OEM and many others who worked on this for community.

These communities, as you know, have seen a disadvantage to many others.

Number one, the Duwamish River area has a 13-year less life expectancy than other areas.

And if there was an earthquake or other sort of excessive heat that comes again our way, these communities will be disadvantaged.

They're mainly made up of black, indigenous, and people of color, and need then to have the equity of other communities as well.

I want to thank you all so much for your time and your efforts in making sure that all communities are equitable.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ruth Fruland, followed by Karen Schoekel.

Ruth?

Thank you.

My name is Ruth Bruin.

I'm a retired geologist and educator living in the Wedgwood neighborhood.

Alex Peterson is Petterson is my council member from District 4. I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak to you in support of the group to criminalize nature Seattle.

I urge you to adopt the ordinance to decriminalize the center in the ocean.

are psychedelics, especially psilocybin, before the budget deliberation process in September.

Today would be good.

My position is based on my personal experience with cannabis and emerging scientific research results that demonstrate, as others have pointed out, the healing potential for a range of these psychoactive plants that can reduce, if not cure, persistent, chronic, debilitating health problems, including cancer, epilepsy, PTSD, and alcoholism, as well as depression, dementia, and relief from pain and harsh cancer treatments.

The list goes on.

My parents were in their 90s at the end of their lives and suffering from pain and depression when medical marijuana was legalized in Colorado.

Before offering it to them, I had to try it myself since I never had and was blown away by the negligible effects.

It just made me curious at the misguided and wasteful war on drugs, lives ruined, and the suffering and deaths that didn't need to happen if we had learned about these benefits sooner instead of not supporting research for positive effects, only supporting research for negative effects.

So now Seattle is in the position to lead by being an early adopter of decriminalizing psychedelic plants, in particular psilocybin.

The important issue at hand is to decriminalize a plant that grows abundantly in our area in a way that enables the people that really need them to access them equitably and safely along with the affordable and accessible health care.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Karen Sokol, and Karen will be followed by somebody who was listed as not present earlier but is now present, and that is Ben Sircombe.

Karen?

Karen, are you with us?

Hi, my name is Karen Sokol, and I want to speak in support of decriminalizing and the agents in Seattle.

I reside in Congressional District 7. I have been a citizen soldier in the Washington Army National Guard for over 20 years, and some of my time in the Guard has been assigned to the Counterdrug Task Force at the Seattle Steel Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

It is as a citizen that I'm speaking here today.

I'm currently also provisionally licensed as a mental health counselor here in Washington State.

and I am speaking in support of decriminalized nature of Seattle.

I believe that enviogens have a role in providing individuals who suffer with diagnosable mental disorders a powerful tool in achieving profound and meaningful change.

Current research supports this but the laws as they stand create barriers.

The laws shut down the conversation between providers and patients before it can even begin.

They make criminals out of those who exist, gather, grow, and make use of what naturally occurs in the environment of the Pacific Northwest.

Of specific interest to me is the growing body of evidence for entheogen usage in treating individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder.

In order to have the greatest amount of good for the largest number of individuals, there must be open and free communication about best practices by those who would use and those who would support uses of We lawmakers and healthcare providers can use these tools to create doorways from traumatic dysfunction into post-traumatic growth.

Seattle has the opportunity to support and join a growing number of cities at a pivotal point in our state and our nation's history.

And I'm here today to ask the council to support decriminalization

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ben Sircom, followed by Holly Kredge.

Ben?

Hello, city council members.

My name is Ben Sircom.

I'm a union organizer that lives in District 3. I'm speaking to you all today as part of Decriminate Your Seattle in the hopes that you will adopt your ordinance to decriminalize psychedelics in Seattle before the budget deliberation in September.

Psychedelics have allowed me to find peace.

I say that because I've eliminated virtually all of my anxiety and depression after using psychedelics and self-care.

Negative fatigue used to encompass a lot of components of my life.

After an ayahuasca ceremony I attended earlier this year, I finally was able to forgive myself and everyone in my life that was causing me pain.

I learned how to strengthen my empathy and make peace with the things that cannot change.

It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.

I came out with a profound love for my family and friends, that have stayed with me to this day.

Unfortunately, finding my own inner peace through psychedelic substances is an illegal act in the city of Seattle.

Something that was so beneficial to me could have landed me in jail.

My question to you all is, why does Seattle support archaic drug laws that only stand to ruin lives and throw people in jail?

We are a progressive city, yet we still have not decriminalized psychedelics.

We have heard accounts week after week from psychologists, medical professionals, sex addicts, and people like me that speak to the benefits of these substances.

Why are we waiting.

We can do better Seattle.

Pass our ordinance immediately so that others can find the same peace that I did.

Also solidarity with the gig workers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Holly Kredge followed by Valerie Loret.

Holly.

Good morning.

My name is Holly Creche.

I am here today as a Georgetown resident representing the Georgetown Community Council as a member of the King County International Airport Community Coalition to offer support of Amendment 1 to Resolution 32011. This amendment elevates the real and potential dangers airport communities face and provides a path for better understanding of what the plan is in the event of an emergency related to airport operations.

I want to thank Council Member Herbold and her staff for not only listening to our community concerns, but taking action to address them.

I also want to thank Director Kerry Mayer for her direct engagement in this work and the Office of Emergency Management staff as a whole for their time and commitment to better understand our community's needs And we look forward to continuing to partner with OEM and strengthening our relationships there.

Thank you for your time.

Our next speaker is Valerie Fleurette, followed by Michael Renaissance.

Valerie.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I'm Valerie Fleurette from District 2. This morning you're going to have a presentation from the OIG on its first part of its sentinel review of SPD's response to protests last summer.

That sentinel review panel was put together by the OIG without a public appeal or transparent process for participation.

So when throughout the report it refers to the community's findings or point of view, it is referring to the members of a more or less secretly assembled panel that does not represent the people most impacted died with violent abuse and escalating response, police response we saw last summer.

That would be the protesters who were pepper sprayed, tear gassed, beaten, and attacked with glass balls by SPD.

Community can be used to mean anything.

The members of the panel who were not police were academics from Pennsylvania and the UK, or members, staff and members of the OIG and CPC, the remote and ineffective bureaucracy that is the police accountability system in Seattle.

That's not the most representative community.

Whatever its findings this sentinel review and the report do not have a process whereby the people with the least power the people most impacted by the issue were not represented and did not have a voice.

That is not a path to truth telling let alone the real change we need.

We urgently need.

police, civilian police, accountability system that is itself accountable.

For more information, go to seattlestop.org.

Thank you.

Our last speaker that is trying to present is Michael Rennison.

Michael?

Thank you, council members.

My name is Michael Renaissance.

I am one of two campaigns directors with 350 Seattle and also a member of the King County International Airport Community Coalition.

I'm speaking on behalf of Resolution 32011, the Proposed Amendment 1. I'm in support of the amendment.

We have the responsibility to mitigate harms both after and before they occur.

These proposed amendments are supported by many in our community, but more specifically by those who are the most vulnerable and directly impacted.

This is very important when considering any plan of action.

I'd also like to uplift the calls for equity accessibility and for trainings to be in as many languages as possible to assist with the accessibility that we need.

The actions that can result from the proposed amendments will help to mitigate many of the harms members of our communities may need to cope with in the future.

I'm in support of this amendment resolution 32011. Thank you for my time.

Thank you so much.

So I just want to call the, who are noted as not present, just to give folks one more chance to join us.

We have Case Favage, Connor Waters, Velma Valoria, and Bill Watson.

If any of you are listening and can get in and be present to speak, we still have a little bit more time.

but I'm not seeing any change in status, and so with that, it is 9.55 a.m., and we will conclude public comment.

And we'll move into the items on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read in the first agenda item?

Agenda item number one, Office of Inspector General Sentinel Event Phase 1 Report.

Thank you, Alex.

I just want to start off with some quick introductions.

I want to thank you all for being here to present the Sentinel Event Review Phase 1 report.

If each presenter could introduce yourself popcorn style before we hand it over to Inspector General to present the report.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Herbold.

Would you like me to start?

I would like everybody to do a quick round of introductions, popcorn style, and hand it off, and then we'll hand it over to you to start.

Good morning.

Miroslava Mesta, Policy Analyst from the Office of Inspector General.

Amy Tsai.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Amy Tsai, Deputy Inspector General.

Passing it to Lisa.

Good morning, Lisa Judge, Inspector General.

for Public Safety in Seattle, I'm going to pass it to Donna Moody.

Good morning.

Donna Moody, EVP at Community Roots Housing and owner of Marjory Restaurant in Capitol Hill Central District.

And I will pass to, I can't see a screen actually.

I'll step in, Donna.

Yeah, John Holloway, Associate Dean at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and Executive Director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice.

And I'll pass it over to Saron.

My name is Saron Phuong, and I'm from Point One North Consultant, and I'm honored to be here.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

I think that's everybody.

And not seeing anybody or hearing anybody correct me, so we'll pass it back to Inspector General Judge to get us started.

Good morning.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Council President Gonzalez and committee members.

We appreciate the opportunity to come and speak with you this morning.

I think most of you have had the opportunity to hear about the process as it's been developed.

So I'm going to just give a very brief overview so that we can maximize the time that you have to talk to the guests that are with me today and ask questions about the findings.

So if you could advance to the next slide, just very briefly, what a Sentinel Event Review is, it's a review of a sentinel event, sentinel event being very key here.

A sentinel event is really something that happens that has tragic or unwanted consequences.

And so it's a signal that there's perhaps something went wrong with individual folks, but that there are deeper systemic issues that need to be analyzed so that you can more upstream from the problem, fix those things to prevent a similar tragic occurrence from happening in the future.

Generally in central event types of review processes, the event really is self-identified.

It's been used quite a bit in the aeronautics industry and in the healthcare industry, where you have a single tragic event, like a plane crash or a death on the operating table.

And so the event is identified and then it's broken down and analyzed so that you can fix those systemic contributors to that event.

Here, last summer, we had a rolling series of tragic events really, you know, daily for quite an extended period of time.

So part of the work was in identifying which sentinel events would be reviewed by a review panel.

And so, you know, in undertaking that work, we had to really divide it and that necessitated setting up a planning group that would help us to identify those events.

But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.

So, you know, this was unique really because it's kind of the first instance in my knowledge where the events weren't identified, but you had to do some additional work to identify those particular events.

So if you want to advance to the next slide, please.

We also really wanted to approach this from a focus on community perspectives and making sure that we were addressing community concerns.

And really a core thing that all of us and the folks who agreed to work on the panel were really concerned about was making sure that we had recommendations that would be implementable, not something that would simply be read and put on a shelf.

So, you know, nobody wanted to engage in this really, really hard work, you know, for nothing.

So we really wanted to come out of this with something that was impactful.

If you could advance the slide, please.

So just kind of laying it out in terms of our stages, in initial planning, we started reaching out, you know, to try to make this community centered to community partners.

We engaged with consultants who had some expertise that, you know, our small office did not have in community engagement.

We consulted with the community police commission and other stakeholders to really kind of get a sense of what the universe of engagement should look like for us.

And then we started broadly, we sent out a communication to, I think, over a hundred organizations and individuals, inviting conversations about what this looked like.

And, you know, it's really, it's not fair for people who might be sitting on a panel like this to be the representative of their particular communities.

And so what we were trying to do was get a broad range of lived experiences from people who are most impacted by police violence.

We really tried to center Black voices in the panel for community folks.

And to make sure that we were not just for the protests, but more broadly for the history of police violence, we were reaching out and trying to get folks on the panel who had a range of experiences in impacted communities.

So had many, many conversations with people out in community who some were interested in the process, some couldn't commit, some just frankly didn't think this was the table that they wanted to sit at.

And so through a lot of conversations with people and people sort of saying, well, this sounds really interesting.

but it doesn't sound like work that we can do, but you should talk to this other person.

We had just a lot of, it spread and the conversation spread.

And through that, we decided that we would let communities self-identify and have people just sort of filter to us from these conversations who were interested in coming together and doing some really difficult and traumatic work with with the police department to help them figure out what went wrong last summer and to implement fixes to keep that from ever happening again.

So as I mentioned, we had two segments of people working on this, the planning group, they were They were very helpful in initially just deciding, helping us frame the project and figure out what it needed to look like, who we should reach out to, and identifying panel members as well as events.

So they were and continue to be very helpful as the work moves forward.

And then the panelists who were ultimately assembled include community folks, law enforcement, individuals.

And I think that's important, you know, because at the end of the day, this report really is for SPD to take to heart and to make those changes to keep this from happening again.

So buy-in from SPD, their participation in making sure we are understanding what happened and that the things we are recommending are in fact possible and implementable was really critical to what I feel like is the success of this project.

So at this point, yes, just real quickly, because it was a question or statement in public comment, the selection of the panelists that was done, as I understand it, by sort of word of mouth recruitment, there was or was there an open call for people to apply to be panelists?

there was not an open call because we were really targeting impacted communities in our initial outreach.

So, you know, we were going to Black-led organizations, to organizations that work with BIPOC youth, organizations that work with populations like LGBTQIA, homeless, you know, people who are impacted by mental illness.

So it really was targeted to impacted communities and talking with folks in those, in those areas to identify voices that would best bring that kind of perspective to the table.

So there was no open call.

It was targeted.

And then the criteria for panel membership was established by the planning group, which had community representatives and other stakeholders there.

So really what the group was looking for in terms of panel membership, what kinds of perspectives they thought were important, to be included here and vetting of panel members was done by the planning group, not simply by OIG.

I hope that is responsive to your question.

And I'd like to throw it open, Donna, Moody, if you have anything to add to maybe your experience in this part of the process.

I would say having been on the panel as well as the planning group, that probably the thing that I most noticed when I was first approached by Lisa Judge was that I was skeptical.

And I basically mentioned that I didn't think that the behavior of the police department during the protest was something that I wanted to kind of condone or analyze and say, well, you know, this went wrong, but let's move on.

And after a conversation with Lisa and seeing where her perspective was coming from and just the process.

I thought I would give it a try.

And once I went to my first full panel, even though it was really hard to kind of visually and repeatedly look at incidents in a really close analytical and very kind of scientific way, I came away just realizing that it was really beneficial to give time and dedication and also just a focus to the incidents themselves and kind of remove in some ways a little bit of emotion and really look at things and not look at them in like the world I'd like to see, but look at them in this is what happened.

What could we do differently to make that exact incident not happen again in that approach?

the science of it kind of intrigued me.

And I think that's what made my participation kind of so heartfelt.

And I will say in reference to my colleagues on the panel, there were a lot of people that would immediately just kind of stop the conversation in the midst of it and say, you're overlooking the historic and systemic racism that we see in this situation.

Like it's not just that someone was arrested for you know, moving the crowd forward or interfering with the police.

It's that if you're Black and you're at an event like that, your arrest is going to have much different impact on your life than that of some other protesters.

So we were often and always kind of keeping that as the center of how we looked at things.

So I think it was in a lot of ways a really true representation of community.

We could always have more people, but we had a really diverse representation from our panel.

Thank you, Dawn.

I appreciate that.

Maris, if you could move to the next slide, please.

So obviously, our main goal from here, and we established some side goals along the way in terms of reconciliation and really getting to some healing.

But what we were aiming to do is form viable consensus recommendations.

And there were some components that we really had to be mindful of.

So as we've mentioned before, OIG and participants alike really didn't want to engage in a process and devote ourselves to something where there weren't going to be where there wasn't gonna be a likelihood for meaningful change to come out of this, so we had to commit to that, to establishing things that would lead to meaningful change.

We were, as I said, committed to having diverse panel experiences, not necessarily of community representatives, but of diversity of opinion, thought, experience, all of those things.

So one of the biggest hurdles was just communication, of bringing people who had really divergent and sometimes violently conflicting ideas together to have real conversations with each other.

So early on when we were planning the process, we decided that peacemaking was probably going to be the most impactful way that we could get people with really divergent feelings in a room to talk, hear one another, respect one another, and have a supportive environment so that we could have those conversations.

So we decided to use the peacemaking circle process.

And if you can advance to the next slide, I'm going to give Sarom a chance to talk about peacemaking and what we did here and his experiences.

So yeah, Sarom, are you with us?

Do you want to talk about peacemaking?

Yes, I am, Visa.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Donna.

Yeah, first of all, I just want to say thank you.

And it has been a privilege and an honor to work with John Holloway, members of the OIG, and everyone on the panel.

And I do agree that it was a very diverse perspective.

And diversity, it's difficult to tap in when we don't listen to each other, as Lisa has noted in her words.

So to me, since we don't have a whole lot of time, I'm just going to spend a few minutes to talk about why Peace Thinking Circle, adding on to what Lisa Judge has shared thus far.

Because of the distrust between community and SPD and the trauma had been caused, it's hard to build trust and create a space where people can listen to one another because of the harms and the pain and the hurts that's been happening for hundreds of years.

And so one of the things in order to build trust is that peacemaking circle promote peace and reconciliation.

The distrust means that somewhere along the line, people are feeling hurt.

And it's tapping into the emotional capacity of who we are as human beings.

So it's good to use our mental and intellectual to trying to problem solve what is mental aspects of it.

But it's really, really difficult to build safety and healthy environment where people can actually really speak to the truth and show their emotions and vulnerability.

So that's why Peacemaker Circle process is a very unique, innovative process when it comes to listening.

I think there's a lot of people who has a lot of things they want to share.

Oftentimes we create a space where people are more blaming, shaming each other in public versus listening to one another.

And just listening alone helps people heal, help people feel that their voice is being heard, valued, honored, and respected.

And healing sometimes starts with some significant small steps.

Um, peacemaking circle also is a value based approach.

Um, the truly, uh, talking, uh, speaking to what is our values.

and how do we lead and speak from the value that we say who we are, so that we can learn how to see each other as human beings, as valuable assets to our community, and to heal or make amends from the distrust that we have been straining from one another for many, many years.

And I wanted to share the trust piece.

I think that it's easy to build trust with people you find intrigued.

it's harder to build trust with people where people felt like their harm is being done to you, especially in the black community and also in other BIPOC community like myself.

I grew up on the street, involved in the system and have dealt tremendously throughout my life with law enforcement.

And so to me, peacemaking and healing is a great way to go.

And it just allow us to see each other human and to build trust with one another.

And we need to build the community.

We're not excluding people, that it's more diverse community, equitable and inclusive to everyone and making sure that everyone has a voice and a say to contribute as part of their journey.

And so, why trust is so important?

Because it allows people to feel safe together.

When we don't feel safe, we put our defense above.

And when we feel safe, people feel like they can put their guard down and be able to take things less personal and hearing each other and help each other heal from whatever trauma around doing and righting their wrongs together.

Why peacemaking circle?

Because of trust.

I think more importantly, trust, mean, collaboration, and partnership.

Obviously, this distrust to solve this problem in our community between police and community require all of us to bring our best self to the engagement.

because our young people, our family and our community are really important.

And sometimes we view system as not as part of the community.

And so that's why trust and peacemaking was really, really important.

It's just been such an honor to have a lot, a lot of difficult, challenging conversation, but do it in a way that we can listen to one another and be honest and be sincere and not taking things personal because it isn't about us.

It is about us getting together to find whatever need to work through so that we can collaborate and figure out the best solution for our young people and our family because they deserve more from all of us.

And so it's just been a privilege to work with all the panel, OIG and John Holloway, and contribute our piece and our part to connect us as human so that we remember that we're part of the human species before our skin color, before our language, our cultures, that we're all a human family existing on planet Earth together and how to be coexist together without having to view that conflict is necessary for growth.

In fact, healing, peacemaking, and trust allow us to live together in harmonies, together as human beings, as human species.

So that was my thoughts, and I've been doing this work for over two decades.

And a lot of my work is mainly dealing with the diversion program, healing family and community who needed peacemaking as a way to move forward, as much as working with government entity across this country to change their internal culture, leadership, culture transformation, system change.

And those are some of the things that I have been privileged to work with people who actually wants to change, but they don't know how to do it.

And every time when we get together, we're normally blaming and shaming each other.

And that's not a good way to build a healthy community, in my opinion.

And our young people, our family, our community deserve more than that.

So it's been an honor.

Thank you, Lisa.

And thank you, everyone, for allowing me to be here.

Thank you, Sarob.

Always great to hear you speak.

And it's been a real privilege to work with you as well.

I was not familiar, really, with much in the way of peacemaking circle before this process.

I've become a very big believer in it as a positive way to problem solve between community and government and to resolve conflicts.

So I've become a big believer and plan to continue to use this style of communication whenever we have to solve our problems with community.

So thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

All right.

If you want to move to the next slide, please.

So just a little bit about how we came to identify the events that we did.

We looked at a lot of data.

And when you aggregate it, you can see in the top of the slide, there is what looks like little waves.

And so there were a lot of spikes on certain days with uses of force, arrests, you know, those days became the significant days that turned into waves for us.

So Marisol, if you could go back, please, one slide.

When we looked at that, no, go to the next slide, please.

There you go.

So we looked at these things and it was very clear that they sort of shook out thematically in five distinct waves of activity.

So the report that we're discussing today is the wave one report that mostly encompassed the downtown protests that began after the murder of George Floyd on May 25th through about June 1st, 2nd, when then wave two starts where mostly the protests are centered on the East precinct move up into the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

You can see we've got three other steps here.

When the Chaz Chop period occurred, the leaving of the East Precinct, moving into Wave 4. After Chaz Chopper, we had some significant incidents in July.

July 25th being probably the one that springs most to folks' minds.

And then some incidents in September, followed by Wave 5, which was really after SPD had significantly changed its approach to these things and come up with the community response group approach.

So if you go to the next one, specifically to wave one, here are some of the things that we looked at in aggregating data.

So we looked at uses of force, less lethal weapons used, but, you know, using, looking at reports of that, looking at arrests, number of officer injuries, Complaints that came into OPA, claims, lawsuits, and the like, we scoured social media for certain keywords.

And so we just kind of aggregated all of this information, and it really shook out and created those spikes that you saw in the other graph.

Any questions about this before we move on?

So in taking this information, we let our planning group look through it.

and the planning group identified some specific incidents that the panel would review.

So we can talk about those a little bit more in depth, but when the panel started meeting, it was very clear that some incidents had happened right at the very beginning of these protests on May 29th in the International District, and it was really, I think, important for the panel from the panel's perspective to also look at those events and acknowledge what had happened that had started setting the stage for what we would see occur over the weeks and months to come.

And that was some property damage, significant property damage that occurred in the international district on May 29th.

So while that was not an event that was identified by the panel or by the planning group, it was something that the planning group did break down and you will see it described in some detail in the report.

So here, the incidents that were reviewed were that property damage that I described on May 30th, the child being pepper sprayed, the cars being set on fire in the Westlake area and looting happening, the officer, some video footage of an officer making arrests outside of a T-Mobile the night of May 30th, putting his knee on the neck of a couple of individuals a bike officer altercation that happened the next day at a protest, and then the pink umbrella incident on June 1st.

So those are the incidents that were encompassed by this report.

And what I'll do now, I think, is just give Professor Hallway...

Before you move on.

So I would just say that that the panel identify, I'm sorry, the planning group recommended to the panel the wave one instance, but in the case of the organized property damage in the CID, that was not identified initially.

And so it was the panel who said, planning group, we need to add this.

Based on what?

Was that based on numbers of complaints or just based on their understanding of, because of their lived experiences, their understanding of the importance of that event on May 29th?

I think it's a combination of those things.

Also, we had, throughout this process, we've invited folks to come and talk to the panel who have particular experiences and in this, I think for this particular incident, we had a guest come and talk about their experiences throughout the series of protests.

And that the guest spoke a lot about incidents that happened on the 29th.

And so, you know, the panel had a lot of opportunity to ask questions about that to then get data about that incident.

And I think it really had implications, especially for acknowledging the role that race plays in all of these events, and the perceptions of legitimacy or illegitimacy on the part of SBD's actions.

So it was something that the panel felt they needed to call out and break down.

Thank you.

Sure.

And just for your information, we aggregated a lot of potential incidents, and then the planning group ranked them in terms of what they felt were priorities and importance and what would be the most impactful for changes to SPD.

And that's how those wave one incidents were picked from kind of a larger set of potentially reviewable incidents.

So Miroslava, if you'll go to the SIR process slide.

When the panel was analyzing incidents, we were looking at particular categories of of things that might have contributed to those negative events happening.

So I think, Professor Holloway, if you want to just give us a brief rundown about what we were looking for and what contributing factors mean and their role in this process, that would be great.

Sure.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for letting me participate in this process.

It was a real pleasure.

And I'm really very impressed with the work that you and the team did and just the willingness to use this process to look at these important issues.

As you said earlier, Inspector General, the idea of the Sentinel Event Review is to understand why we had an undesirable outcome that was of such significance that everybody participating in the review believes that we should and can do better.

A number of the open comments that were made referred to the need for police accountability.

And I just want to say I couldn't agree with that statement more.

And my feeling is that Sentinel Event Review actually adds a new kind of accountability to the existing administrative reviews and OPA and all the other things that are going on.

The accountability that those reviews often are looking at is this sort of backward-looking accountability, which is, what do we do about the officers that may have done things that were improper or people who might have committed crimes or whatever it might be?

What we're missing in those reviews sometimes is the accountability of our existing governmental organizations to improve over time, to accept the roles that they played in these events, and to make changes so that their role improves.

And we're putting everybody in a position where they're more likely to succeed.

And one of the great things that's great about this process is that we had community voices helping us to understand what success would look like and how things might look differently from a community perspective to aid us in that.

And so what we did was we took the events that had been identified, we looked at them in great detail.

Miroslava and her data team gave us a tremendous amount of information about the facts, what happened at what time, in what order.

And then we worked backwards from that, asking why these events happened.

And there's actually a technique that is used in these called the five whys, where you sort of ask why backwards five times.

It's a little bit like when I talk to my young kids and they keep asking why, and we dig deeper into how things work.

And what we find, what you often find is that these contributing factor categories each come together in ways that were unexpected and unintended to result in these sentinel events.

So in this case, For example, the instance in which the child got pepper sprayed, we looked at that entire event and tried to see all of the different factors, some of which were protester driven, some of which were police driven, some of which were environmentally driven, some of which had to do with the murder of George Floyd and the mood that people were in.

All of those things coming together to lead to a situation that nobody wants to see, which is a situation in which a child gets pepper sprayed.

And we tried to then come up with recommendations that were implementable by SPD, because obviously at the end of the day, it's SPD's behavior that we're trying to change, that would have prevented that from occurring.

And as you said, they come in these categories, the recommendations are in the report, but that's the process that we went through for each of these events.

And then as Donna said, also always keeping that larger sociological lens in mind, that larger systemic review and the sort of emotional weight that our communities of color have had to carry because of the history of interactions they've had with government, with police, really for the history of our country and probably longer than that.

So trying to keep those perspectives in mind while we were doing that, so that the recommendations we have will prevent, and the next protest, the escalations that we saw in these.

Thanks.

So as just on the last slide, as you can see, what we're really breaking it down into were things like communication, cultural leadership, operational supervision, tactics, policies and procedures, equipment, environment, and others.

So when you read the report, you'll see these things called fishbone diagrams, or there's another more technical word for it.

But it was the things that the panel was identifying that fit into those broad categories that were then turned into the recommendations.

So that leads us to the group ultimately made 54 recommendations and they really broadly shake out into about five broad categories here.

The first one I think is super important, community legitimacy.

So one of the things that was very apparent with community and police is often we would be talking about an instance where the police officers felt like they were operating within existing policies and they were operating within the framework of existing law.

And so they viewed their actions as legitimate.

But when you look at it from community perspective, often the community's perception of that legitimacy was far different than what the officers were believing was their legitimacy.

So we identified two different types of legitimacy, what the police officers are believing, we call it structural legitimacy in the report, and communities.

understanding of the officers legitimacy, which we called perceived legitimacy, and we identified a pretty big gap.

So, you know, many of these recommendations go to trying to get SPD to bring their actions more into alignment with what community perceives as legitimate.

And I think if you talk about the potentials for changing philosophy and culture behind this report, that's a really critical area that we need to talk about.

The other one that's really a philosophical and cultural suggestion and category is moving away from a mindset that is common in policing with First Amendment activity of treating these as events that should be managed and controlled versus events that should be facilitated and done so in a way that everybody stays safe.

Another big, I think, critical recommendation from my perspective is a shift in that mindset And then we see things we've already identified from OIG's work last summer.

Many OPA identified this.

I think SPD has also come to some similar conclusions that communication and community engagement are really key in making sure that SPD is acting with the best information they have, that community has the information that they need to, you know, make decisions about how about What's going on at protests.

And so everybody is communicating with one another and understanding what's going on.

We saw a lot of misunderstanding as the basis for many things that went wrong in the events that we analyzed.

So that's really critical.

Tactics equipment and another component officer wellness and training.

Developing staffing models that don't have officers standing out, engaging in you know, confrontational situations for hours upon end.

Nobody engages in their best decision making or actions when they're exhausted and under stress.

So, you know, just getting officers some resources so that they're able to show up with their better selves when they're staffing.

First Amendment or some of the broad categories.

Yeah.

On the broad category of officer wellness in training, it has been suggested that another way to address officer wellness and recognizing the impacts of long shifts and prolonged hostile environments on officer wellness and behavior, is to also identify some of the tactical decisions, not that individual officers make, but that are made, you know, sort of by by the institution of the police department that lead to long shifts, that lead to hostile engagement.

So I don't think it's an either or thing.

I think it is absolutely legitimate to tend to the wellness needs of individual officers when The institution is making decisions that have impacts on their staffing and the engagements.

But I also think it's important to recognize the role that the institution plays in degrading the wellness of officers out there in the field.

I completely agree.

And many of these are interrelated concepts.

And I think you're right.

At the end of the day, the individual officer should not be put in those kinds of situations.

And it really is an organizational obligation to make sure that's not happening and that there are resources to deal with the officer's fatigue and trauma.

Thanks.

So that's the end of the presentation.

There's time if you want to talk to any of the panelists.

or get other information from OIG.

I do have one other question that was raised by a member of the public, somebody who is a police reform advocate that I really respect.

And I just wanted to share this, as I understand this particular perspective, and invite you to clarify because I don't think the way that it's being And then the last one that we received is the intended message.

And that relates to specifically the equipment recommendation.

I suppose it could be also a if there is a sufficient supply of pepper spray, then that will help mitigate the likelihood that tear gas is used.

And the response to that particular recommendation was received as if it is a sort of a a sort of a training module for SPD, how to create the circumstances that would allow them to use tear gas, i.e., just don't have enough pepper spray, and then you will be justified in using tear gas.

And I don't think it was intended to be received that way, but I want to give you an opportunity to respond to that.

Yeah, thank you.

And I think if you look at this report in the context of other recommendations OIG made last summer, tear gas should only ever be used as a last resort when, you know, you're facing potentially a lot of potential violence and in an area that is not residential.

You know, the small particulate nature of of CS gas just, in my opinion, makes it entirely unsuitable for use in a neighborhood or any place where people live.

So, you know, in a government facility that's being overrun by, you know, being stormed by armed assailants, perhaps, you know, something like that, a January 6th event, sure, do you want to have tools like tear gas on hand?

I believe the answer to that is yes.

But in these circumstances, like the protest last summer, I would hope that the recommendations that come out of this and the changes here lead to no OC spray being used.

That, I think, is the end goal for us.

And it's certainly not to create circumstances where there are scenarios where tear gas is used.

For my part, I believe tear gas is a tool of last resort when you're facing extreme violence and there is no potential for collateral harm to innocent people who are trying to get away from it, just living their lives in their own homes.

So I don't know if that's sufficient clarification, but yeah, certainly didn't mean to imply that in the report.

Thank you very much, Inspector General Judge.

Do my colleagues have any questions that they'd like to take this opportunity to direct?

Council President Gonzalez?

I just wanted to say thanks for an opportunity to learn a little bit more about the work.

I know we have been following and understanding the process, and this is the first time we've really had an opportunity to hear some of the recommendations and more of the substantive work that happened in the last several months.

I just want to say thanks to all of the community panelists in particular for participating and lending their time.

And look forward to just digging more into the details of these voluminous recommendations to really get at the systems issue.

And I just want to thank John in particular for sort of reminding us that the purpose of this particular review is not necessarily for individual officer accountability, but for ongoing review of the system that we do have in place.

And I know that there are people who have concerns about the system and a lot of skepticism and questions about the legitimacy and the efficacy of the system.

And I just want to acknowledge that that that Those sentiments come from a real place of oppression and of exclusion.

And it's our responsibility to not legitimize behavior that we disagree with, but to challenge ourselves to change and to evolve.

and to force the system to evolve in a way that will produce accountability and prevent many of the things that I know many of us vehemently oppose seen happening to members of our community last summer from happening again.

So I appreciate the opportunity to engage in that level of a conversation while also acknowledging that the legitimacy questions and the skepticism that is being expressed by members of our community who have been negatively impacted is also very quite real.

And these two things can coexist with each other at the same time and look forward to continuing to do the hard work to continue to challenge the system to do better.

Thank you, Council President.

Yes, I want to thank you as well, Council President Gonzalez.

I think it's really important that we not marginalize those voices who have questions about the efficacy of our accountability system.

I think it's important for us to make sure that our voices are heard and that they are reflective of the experiences of our community and the opportunities like the The system, the three-legged civilian accountability system will continue to hear those voices, engage with those voices, and work with all of us for continued reform and evolution of our accountability system.

There are no...

Can I just say one final thing?

Absolutely.

Yeah, I just want to acknowledge that this is a prototype process.

This really, this didn't exist in Seattle.

This is the first time that we've had any sort of review process that meaningfully incorporated community engagement.

So, you know, we're building it, we're learning from it.

This isn't the final product by any means.

So we're always trying to learn and grow and improve this process so that we can start using something that involves community in other types of reviews of SPD.

Thank you.

And just because I feel like I need to, because this is something that I've heard from members of the public, it's something I've read, and it's something I personally experienced.

This is a prototype process as it relates to a Sentinel review.

This is not the first time that we have had a process that is led by members of the community to do an engagement with the public around after action of the Seattle Police Department.

That has absolutely occurred before.

Very publicly after the WTO, many, many months of several different panels that met publicly and heard from the public and came up with a lot of very, I think, important recommendations, and some of them, some of your recommendations are echoes of those recommendations at that time.

But just as I've said before, I think one of the things I would hope that we can do in future iterations of the Sentinel review process is think about ways for more members of the public to benefit from the experience of this process, this experience of healing.

Whereas sort of the old style WTO public review process might be cathartic for some people.

It's not very healing.

This is a This is a healing process for the people who participate, but it doesn't necessarily offer the same sort of cathartic outcome for a larger number of people.

So those are maybe conflicting objectives, but perhaps with future iterations, we can see if there is a way to do more of that.

Sure, and avenues for other stakeholders and partners to pick up a piece of the work.

Absolutely, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, I really appreciate everybody taking their time to be here with us today.

Appreciate your many months of work and appreciate knowing that you're going to be continuing that work with the other sort of waves of protest activity yet to be reviewed.

So I look forward to having you back.

Thank you.

All right, be well.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Absolutely.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number two?

Agenda item number two, Seattle Fire Department RSJI presentation.

Thank you, Alex.

Just looking to see if we have the presenters changing.

Fantastic.

Like we did for the previous item, if we could just before we start delving into the presentation, do some quick introductions of who the presenters are today.

Good morning Councilmember Herbold, Council President Gonzalez, Councilmember Peterson, and Councilmember Lewis.

Today we're lucky to have members of our change team with us.

We have Matthew Butler who will do most of the presenting this morning.

He'll introduce himself in a second.

but we also have our two change team leads joining us for the presentation Captain Doug Johnson and Julie George.

So right now I will turn it over maybe to Captain Johnson and Julie George to do a quick introduction and then Matthew if you will introduce yourself last and then you can start with the presentation.

Hello good morning all.

Captain Johnson I'm currently up at Engine 8 on Queen Anne.

Julie George, my co-lead, had to leave on a family emergency, so it's going to be me and EEO officer person, Matthew Butler.

Thanks for having me.

And Matthew, go ahead.

And I'm Matthew Butler.

I am our EEO officer and lead investigator here at SFD.

My role is to be a primary overseer of the change team.

and to do their work.

Prior to being at SFD, I was a civil rights program manager in King County and practiced law before that.

I've been at SFD for about a year and a half and I've really enjoyed working with this team.

I wanna give a quick attaboy to Doug and Julie.

They really are the drivers of this work for SFD.

This department is much better because we have them here and they just do a great job and I'm really honored to work with them.

With that being said, I'm gonna try to share my screen to bring up my PowerPoint.

And I'm not sure if you can see it.

You can?

Yes.

Okay, good.

So this is our opportunity to talk about our RSJ work, RSJI work at SFD.

We have a really good team, as I noted.

And, you know, one of the things that has been good is that we've been able to note some really good accomplishments over the last year.

We've completed four RETs.

We have engaged in some really good communication with our leadership.

We believe that that's been improved.

There's been some note that Chris Santos, our financial officer, has been a part of that.

as being part of our meetings and really taking things back to leadership.

And so I also want to recognize him in this moment.

But that's been one of the things that we recognize as an accomplishment over the last year.

We've done a lot of department-wide training with Dr. Caprice Hollins and a number of other methods to try to get cultural competence and other RSI concepts out to our membership as well as our civilian staff.

And we've also engaged in and updating of our hair and uniform policies to make them more culturally progressive.

In terms of the challenges that we've had over the last year, obviously COVID-19 has been one of the big impacts on this work as well as it has been for everyone.

The ways in which COVID's had impacts are very multifaceted.

I won't get into all of them, but it has been a challenge in terms of our meetings and moving the work forward.

One of the things, I think one of the biggest challenges that we've had is that we have had some employee incidents that have impacted race and social justice adversely in our department.

And I want to note these things because of the fact that it's not to say that we have any worse problems than anybody else.

We believe that our department is reflective of a community at large and a large society.

But we had a situation where there was a noose found in a fire station.

That was a large investigation that was done.

We were not able to come to a resolution of how that happened.

And we also had a battalion chief that was terminated because of the fact that he made a joke about shooting protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally.

Again, these things are very, very difficult issues, but we recognize them and note that, again, it's not that we believe that we have bigger problems, but that dealing with these things were challenges within the department.

And we tried to recognize the way that these things have happened and become better and more pliable in terms of how we deal with them.

Other challenges are collecting data for research and the ability to get numbers for comparison analysis for RETs.

Oftentimes that information is based upon individual employee information.

It's not always available to the change team to do empirical data, so we've tried to work to figure out a way in which we can get that information without compromising any employee-specific information.

Other things that have been challenges are implementation of solutions for our RETs.

We can identify the problems, but oftentimes how we get to our solutions is something that we've got to just do a little bit of a better job of.

And then communication with leadership is always something that we want to try to improve.

And the remedies to these things are continued training, leadership engagement, accountability, and the implementation of the RETs with conversations with leadership and figuring out who takes ownership of the items that are identified in the RETs.

In terms of our RETs, there are Five that we want to recognize here today and point out, they are the equitable and consistent standards for participation on hiring panels, recruit school retention, recruitment, our executive leadership academy, and our hair and uniform policy.

Those are the things that were identified by the change team as important items, and we were able to address these through RETs and make changes on all of these things.

Regarding the participation in hiring panels.

So the past policy for the panels had unintended negative consequences.

And the reason for that is that in an organization that does not have a broad base of people of color and women, it's hard to find people to participate in recruiting efforts as well as on hiring panels.

And so the prior policy would not allow people to do both because there was a feeling that it created a conflict of interest, where if someone who was engaged in recruiting was out talking to someone and then ended up on their hiring panel, that would be some sort of conflict.

But what happens in terms of that particular policy is, the negative consequence is that it deprives the department from having diverse panels if we have people that are out there involved in recruiting.

So this kind of dual roles idea, and dual participation in recruiting and on oral boards is no longer a conflict of interest and does not violate any close personal relationship prohibition that existed before.

And so the outcome of that RET is that women and people of color do not have to choose between participation and recruitment or on hiring panels on oral boards.

They can do both.

Recruit school retention is one of the next RETs that we did.

And this is a big one.

What we know is that competition to be a firefighter, it's very, very fierce.

A lot of people apply.

Hundreds of people will apply for positions and we get down to a recruit class of only 30 to 40. So once we have people that are in recruit school, they've gone through a lot to get to that point where they're one of 30 or 40 people.

And what we wanna do is everything that we can to make sure that they don't somehow get removed from graduating or removed from the process and not make it to graduation because of any sort of implicit bias or any processes that we can identify that are not based upon their ability to do the essential functions of the firefighting mission.

So there has been a lot more training in terms of implicit bias, training of recruit instructors.

I personally do some of that training.

And what we wanna do is make the recruit instructors very aware of things that may be issues that are not based upon the skills and abilities of the people that are in recruit school.

And so the outcome of this particular RET is that there's greater scrutiny regarding racial equity impacts and goals over time regarding people of color and women in recruit school.

Because again given how very very difficult it is when you have hundreds of people and you're down to that 30 or 40, we really want to do everything that we can to make sure that there are no things that are inequitable in the moving of recruits from the start of recruit school to graduation.

Question on that one?

Yes.

What do we know about the demographics of an applicant pool as compared to the 30 to 40 recruit class pool, the demographics in that pool.

How did the demographics compare?

I don't know.

Chief, do you want to address that or Doug, do you have any idea on that?

Go ahead, Doug.

I was yielding.

As far as I know, I can't pull the numbers.

I do know that we try to recruit as many women as we can.

And in the past classes, we've had anywhere from seven to 10 women in a recruit class.

Now, how big the pool is, I'm not sure, because I'm not in the room doing the interviews and the final selection.

That is the leadership level.

I believe Chief Scoggins is in there with somebody else, maybe an assistant chief.

So maybe he can speak on it.

Sure.

Council Member Herbold, we do have the demographics of each phase of the process from receiving the applications to the written exam, to the interview process, all the way going into the Recruit Academy and the makeup of the Recruit Academy itself.

So far, it runs pretty close to the demographics that apply.

But I'll pull that information at our next check-in.

I'll have that for you to review.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

So we really want to do a good job of making sure that we get people through.

And I think that by having a good process to work with our recruit instructors, we're making sure that we eliminate any implicit bias in the process.

Our next RET regarded hair and uniform policy.

What we know is that historically, hair and uniform policies have used words that can be coded language, like conservative style.

Those things have unspoken racial undertones often.

And so what we wanted to do was update the policy to create more inclusive language.

And so words like conservative style, things like that with coded meetings have been eliminated from the policies.

They've been rewritten.

so that they're more inclusive to women and people of color.

And we just think it's a good policy.

It's a better policy than what it was before.

Additionally, one of the things that we did in this policy was to create greater options for women with their dress uniform.

Traditionally, what had happened was that there was one choice of a uniform that was more tailored for men.

And now there's something that gives the women better options and more options for a dress uniform.

So again, the outcome of this particular policy was a more inclusive hearing policy for women and people of color and greater uniform choices for women.

And then this gets to a little bit of your question, council member, regarding recruitment.

One of the things that we know is that in the next five years, there's an expectation that there's going to be a significant loss of women and people of color in the fire department and especially in officer positions.

And so given the fact that that number even in the last year has declined greatly it's going to be really important to make sure that our recruiting efforts in terms of who we get into the application pool and then into recruit school that those efforts are done in a way that are diverse are reflective of the community and will hopefully reverse some of the trends in terms of losses of women and people of color based upon retirements.

There are some numbers at the bottom.

Those percentages are something that were pulled from a survey from King County Fire Chiefs and HR staff.

The percentages are not particularly important.

I think what's important to note in those numbers or what they're trying to reflect are items of emphasis that we want to look at in terms of how we recruit and what makes effective recruiting practices.

So recruiting and marketing practices are one thing, that there have been flaws historically in hiring practices, in the fire service, not necessarily just with us, but in fire service at large, that there needs to be better community outreach, again, in fire service at large.

And how do you change the culture from the traditional idea of what a fireman looks like to something that's a broader, more inclusive and equitable idea of what firefighting looks like.

That includes women.

That includes people of color.

That includes not just tall people a broad range of people that can do this job effectively.

So in terms of recruitment items there has been participation in recruitment work group that is meant to give better ideas and create some good solutions to improve recruiting and get more diverse recruiting applicants and applicants into the fire service.

So one of the things that I believe that the chief wants to do, and I'll have the chief address this, is workforce development and a recruiting plan.

I think that there is some idea that we might want to have a dedicated position for that.

Do you want to talk about that real quick, chief?

Sure.

So that's a position that the council had funded in years past and it was vacant when we entered into COVID.

So all the vacant positions got eliminated.

So it was one of the ones that got eliminated.

So that's a position we're going to be bringing back forward because this is going to be critical to our recruitment as we're going through a significant transition with a large number of retirements.

We think it's an opportunity, but we need someone dedicated to that position, not someone else taking on another committee assignment.

There's a difference in what we would get out of a person.

Thank you, Chief.

You know, one of the other things that we've done in addition to that hope to add to our staff to have a dedicated person is we have added a member of the city RSI change team on our hiring panels.

So that has been something that allows more diverse panels to, because that's one of the things that we know makes a difference in terms of how you diversify your workforce is to have diverse panels.

And so that's another item that's been identified and has been improved upon in our processes.

The next two slides essentially talk about our demographics and the change in our demographics between 2019 and 2021. And there's a lot of numbers there.

And I think I'm gonna pass this over to Captain Johnson, but essentially it's the idea of having our demographics and understanding the way the trends are going so that we can have a better idea of how it is that we want to have targeted recruitment efforts.

So Captain Johnson.

Yeah, thank you.

Matthew, you've been a great addition to the team.

I know you've been here about a year and a half now, so thanks for all your hard work.

The screen is a little jaded with me, the way it's set up, so the bottom right should have a 186, 186, and that's how many people of color we had in 2019. That did jump up to about 233. I'm not gonna ask Matthew to jump back and forth between the two slides, just to keep it a little easier to understand.

It goes to 233, so that's give or take 47, 50 people added to the department that are people of color.

The struggle that we're having currently is basically the time it takes to get promoted and have people of color and women in promoted ranks, especially the executive leadership ranks.

We lost four women that went from 15 to 11 from 2019 to 2021 for women in the promoted ranks.

We did gain one black, which would bring it to 14. But over the two years, we've probably promoted 35, probably 40 or 50 people.

So one person is really a challenge for us or something that a hurdle that we need to jump.

We have 38 retirements already this year.

Three have been women, which would leave approximately at, I believe, two or so under the age of retirement.

Because of this, we have this decline in women.

It takes about seven years to promote from firefighter lieutenant, another seven to go from lieutenant to captain.

another seven to go from captain to chief.

And that's if that person is studying hard and maneuvering and navigating the system in a way to want to promote.

So if you add those up, that's about 21 years to get into the executive leadership area.

And we will have basically women to the age of 50 in about a couple of years, as far as I know.

for lieutenant has gone a list that goes 20 deep.

Usually it's around number 35 now because of all the retirements and we have promoted no women.

There's one woman that chose to do a paramedic instead of taking the lieutenant spots.

So what it really brings us to is we need to, four of the things that we're gonna work on is increasing funding for recruiting, and changing our marketing practices.

We continue to review our hiring practices and obstacles for barriers, community outreach for entry level, of course, and changing the culture of the institution, which means being more inclusive, being on committees, policy writing, extra events in which you get experience, in which gives you avenues and material for your oral boards.

So that's really our numbers here for 2019 to 2021. Our challenge really is getting women promoted into those operational and administrative ranks.

Thank you, Captain Johnson.

And so this is our final slide.

And, you know, we were tasked to talk about the spirit of RSCI and the fire department.

And I wanna talk about the first thing because I think it's very important.

So the fire chief and firefighters actively involved themselves in community outreach and a presence at the CHOP and the CHAZ during the protests by handing out water.

I see this as not just some symbolic gesture.

This was very, very smart in my opinion on the chief's part, because it was critical that we have the ability to get services into that area.

That area needed there to be a presence of the Seattle Fire Department because there were a lot of things that were happening.

And creating that community relationship and gaining some points with them was something that was really really critically important to being able to provide services in that area.

So you know I thought that that was a great job by the chief.

And so again I think that that was just a really really big thing that showed the spirit of RSJI by SFD.

There are some other things that we've done as well.

I mentioned earlier our training with Dr. Hollins.

That has been something that was done department wide.

We had race and social justice town halls and conversations about the protests that were done after hours.

Those things were really, really important because it created a space for people to come and talk about what they were feeling, what was going on.

The fact that there was a need for our members to be in those areas and that we were in the middle of many of these things.

When cars are being set on fire, you know, it was our people that were down there taking care of those things.

And so to have those town halls to talk about our involvement and the need for these services was critically important.

Our COVID testing and vaccination locations were done with a RSGI lens.

Those things were placed in places where they were accessible to a diverse swath of our community.

And there are metrics that we have that prove that.

And then again, just our continued good relationship and communication with our leadership.

And then I think that I'm gonna finish with the chief to note that there are the local fire chiefs and their participation in some regional efforts.

If you can address that chief, please.

You know, one of our goals is to improve here in Seattle, but it's also to improve in our region, and that's important for us.

So working with my peers across the county, we have started King County Fire Chiefs Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.

We've done some things that I think are having a positive impact on improving recruitment of women and people of color.

For example, we have our women in fire and EMS workshops that we do twice a year.

Once in the spring and once in the fall and they're hosted at different agencies, one north, one south.

So we're doing that consistently.

We've done that for three years now.

So we've done six.

This year we're standing up our first King County Fire Chiefs recruitment workshop and the first one will be hosted in Bellevue.

And we're going to rotate that around the county.

So we're going to have ongoing recruitment for all of the agencies.

And we're developing some other things that are really going to help other agencies.

And we're also learning from each other.

Chief Scott, that last slide for me really demonstrates how RSGI work in a department is not just about the four racial equity toolkits that you do each year.

It's really about how you bring these principles into your everyday work.

In particular, the work that you've done around COVID vaccination and COVID testing in 2020 and 2021. is a shining example of your commitment to racial equity.

Likewise, you and I had conversations during the social unrest, and I really strongly support your decision to be present at the CHAS CHAP and to build trust with the participants through your presence, your physical presence during those really, really difficult days.

So just want to thank you and everybody at the Seattle Fire Department for your commitment to this work.

And I also want to just also, Sunlight, because of the examples that you very transparently, I appreciate that, identified around white supremacism.

and extremism within the department.

I want to thank you for the fact that you have agreed to participate in the work that Dr. Khan is doing with Peril and really appreciate how you've The department has stood up and volunteered to participate so fully in that work through the hate crime prevention work group.

volunteering again to use the Seattle Fire Department as sort of the test, one of the test groups for this work.

Peril is the American University's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab.

For the public, they are developing a anti-extremism course, and they are piloting it among external-facing city employees.

And as mentioned, the fire department has volunteered employees to participate in that pilot, and I really want to thank you for doing that.

Thank you so that concludes our presentation.

I don't know if there are any questions or not just looking to see whether or not I have any hands raised virtually or any physical hand being raised.

And no questions customer herbal, but I did, I did want to, I did want to sort of echo.

I'm not going to repeat them, but just sort of appreciate you counselor for making those observations as a follow up to this presentation and really want to thank the change team over at SFD for the really important work and for highlighting the need to to around promotional opportunities and.

and how we can continue to lift up others in these leadership positions.

Really, really critical and look forward to continuing to be a partner in that effort.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, I just wanted to thank Doug and Julie and all the members of our change team, because one of the things that I know they do is they push me and we all need to be pushed from time to time.

So I think we have some very honest and spirited conversations, but it's all because we all want to improve.

So I want to thank them for owning the work and thank them for stepping into this difficult space to tackle some of these issues.

We're going to stay on it, and I think we have a good team working on it.

Thank you.

All right, really appreciate you being here with us today, all of you.

Moving on to the next item on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read the item into the agenda?

Agenda item number three, resolution 32011, a resolution approving the 2021-2026 revision to the Seattle All Hazards Mitigation Plan for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you, Alex, and thank you, Director Mayer and Lisa Kay for being here with us today.

As mentioned earlier, my hope is that we vote on this item today as well, the amendment.

As quick background, on June 6th, Director Curry came to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee to present a draft of the plan.

I think there are some additional introductory remarks just as a refresher.

for us and for the viewing public of what the plan contains, the obligation to prepare the plan, and I'm just gonna hand it over, and the amendment itself, I hand it over to Elyse Kaye.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen just so that while I'm talking, I will have the resolution on the screen.

Okay, is that showing to you now?

Great, okay.

So I am Lisa Kay, Central Staff, and as you mentioned, Office of Emergency Manager, Director Kerry Mayer is also on the call.

Today, Resolution 32011 would approve an updated hazard mitigation plan for the City of Seattle, which will then be forwarded to the State Emergency Management Division and to FEMA for their review and final approval.

As Curry mentioned, the city needs to adopt a mitigation plan and update it once every five years to be eligible for FEMA mitigation grants.

And the council last approved this plan in December of 2015. Director Mayer presented the plan at the committee's June 8th meeting, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here.

The plan does identify hazards to which the city is most vulnerable and identifies advanced actions that the city can take to reduce the negative impacts of those hazards.

Things like seismic retrofits of structures and buildings, wildfire strategic plans, and flood prevention projects are some examples.

In addition to the city's established mitigation programs, the plan before you today identifies 47 ongoing or planned mitigation activities and projects that would reduce vulnerability to hazards.

The projects were selected using effectiveness and feasibility criteria, including the extent to which an action or a project would reduce hazard vulnerability for BIPOC communities.

Between now and the next five year update, OAM will coordinate annual reviews of the plan and make appropriate revisions based on project status, new information, or emerging needs.

I would note that if the committee approves the resolution today, Council will be asked to approve a technical amendment to clarify that the resolution is also adopting the appendices referenced in the plan, which were inadvertently omitted from OEM's transmittal.

That's my report, Madam Chair.

I can describe the amendment now or wait as you see fit.

to at least just looking to see whether or not there are any questions about the resolution or the plan is contained herein before we get to the amendment itself.

Not seeing any.

Yes, please.

Okay, so I will just scroll to the amendment.

Amendment 1, which is sponsored by Council Member Herbold, requests mitigation planning for flight disaster and excessive heat events, and adds two recitals that provide context for those requests.

Specifically, the amendment asks the Office of Emergency Management to develop a strategy to brief communities under the SeaTac and King County Airport flight paths on existing mitigation plans for plane crash incidents.

It asks the Office of Emergency Management to report to Council any deficiencies identified by those communities for OEM's consideration in a future plan.

The amendment also makes a second request to OEM to coordinate a citywide effort to identify project strategies and funding to mitigate the impacts of excessive heat on vulnerable populations in the City of Seattle.

That's what I have, Council Member.

Thank you so much.

So the amendment incorporates two new concepts.

The first was brought to my attention from the residents of the Georgetown and Beacon Hill neighborhoods.

communities that live under the flight path, and really appreciate Director Mayer's willingness to work with those community members, both in identifying what planning has been done through the All Hazards Mitigation Plan that sort of fits the needs of that community.

Because that is sort of the idea of an All Hazards Mitigation Plan is it doesn't assume that we need a plan for every hazard, but it assumes that by planning for all hazards, And that we can meet the needs of individual hazards.

But nevertheless, I think the ongoing engagement of OEM with those communities will help us surface whether or not there needs to be We have a lot of work to do in terms of hazards planning and mitigation specific to fight path related disasters.

So, again, really appreciate the willingness of OEM to continue working with those communities to determine whether or not there is more specifically to heat events.

Again, just wanting to identify that there is an interest and need on the part of the council in OEM doing heat event specific hazard mitigation planning.

We have learned over the last couple months that other cities do have individual plans specific to heat events and again, appreciate the willingness of Director Mayer to take on that body of work as it appears that because of the impacts of climate change, we are very likely to have an increased number and frequency of extreme heat events moving forward.

Are there any, questions about the proposed amendment from my colleagues?

All right.

Not seeing any, I think I would like to, let's see, first get the resolution in front of me, or in front of us.

So with that, I will move Resolution 3-2 We have the resolution in front of us.

I would like to move amendment one.

Is there a second?

Thank you.

We have described the Okay, thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment 1.

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Okay, thank you.

So if there's no further discussion of the plan, Lisa Kay mentioned, and thank you for remembering that, that we will have another amendment at full council to accept some appendices that were inadvertently not transmitted.

Lisa Kay has reviewed them.

So that will be at full council, but if there are no further questions, Looking and watching, not seeing any.

Will the clerk please call roll on resolution 32011.

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, and so this will be sent to the August 2nd full council.

Moving on to our final committee item, will the clerk please read in agenda item four.

Agenda item four, summary findings on the executive order on reimagining policing and community safety.

Thank you, Alex.

We are going to be starting this presentation with a brief overview of from the council central staff as a way of giving us context to center this discussion, important context about what we are receiving a report on.

And so I think that would be a really good place to start, and then we'll turn it over to the executive team to give their introductions and presentation.

So can we first have introductions by the central staff team, please?

My name is Amy Gore with Council Central staff.

And my name is Greg Doss with Council Central staff.

All right, great.

And I'm going to need to share my screen.

I think there we go.

OK.

OK, so as I mentioned, my name is Amy Gore with Council Central staff.

Can you see my screen at this point?

Yes.

OK.

Give me just one more second to make sure that I can change the slides.

Let's see.

So today, Greg and I will be discussing re-imagining police and public safety.

And we are going to, sorry, I'm having trouble moving the slides.

There we go.

So first we will review Executive Order 2020-10 and Resolution 31962, which laid out the groundwork for today's discussion on reimagined police and public safety.

Then we will discuss crisis response, focusing on key themes.

from the What Works City Sprint, which was an eight-week course on alternative response that many of us participated in recently.

We will discuss at a high level mobile cross-crisis response program design and alternative 911 response for non-crisis situations.

As you recall, council adopted resolution 31962 in August of 2020. It was based on the process and principles outlined in the 2020 blueprint for police divestment and community reinvestment from decriminalized Seattle and King County Equity Now.

It included a commitment to create a civilian-led public safety department to explore moving civilian functions out of SPD, to examine enforcement practices for racial disparities, and to review 911 call response priorities.

In September of 2020, the mayor issued Executive Order 2020-10, which included several strategies to reimagine policing and community safety by centering the voices of BIPOC communities.

And I know that the exec will discuss this momentarily, but just briefly, the strategies were first to establish a community safety workgroup and functional analysis interdepartmental team.

Second, to conduct community outreach and engagement about policing and public safety.

Third, to conduct an analysis of data to determine what SPD functions, practices, and policies could be eliminated, civilianized, or expanded.

Fourth, to examine models of community policing.

Fifth, to advocate for changes to state law And finally, to establish a functional transfer interdepartmental team to support transfer of functions out of SPD.

Now we will go into a little bit more detail on alternative responses to crisis and non-crisis calls, which is a critical component of minimizing or eliminating armed officer response.

First, Greg will overview some of the key themes from the What Works City Sprint.

All right, so earlier this year, city staff were fortunate enough to partner with government staff from around the nation as part of a Bloomberg-sponsored course on alternatives to police response.

The course was hosted by What Works City Sprint and featured many of the service providers that are already providing alternative 911 responses.

These included representatives from CAHOOTS in Eugene and the STAR program in Denver.

Over a series of eight one-hour sessions, we got a lot of advice from the providers.

I boiled that down into some key themes that you see in bullets here.

First, as you can see in the first bullet, police presence can be triggering for people in behavioral crisis and can unintentionally escalate a crisis situation.

We also heard very clearly that any kind of uniform can be triggering for a person experiencing a behavioral health crisis.

Not because a paramedic or a firefighter has ever harmed anyone, but because a uniform can represent a system that may have created a negative outcome for a particular individual.

We heard from representatives at CAHOOTS that in order to build trust, sometimes you have to be willing to walk away and approach the individual at another time.

And that requires a different kind of mindset from that of a typical uniformed officer who is usually trained to clear a call in the CAD system.

We heard in a breakout session between CAHOOTS and the Seattle delegation that a CAHOOTS representative thought it would be very helpful had she had access to case histories in the way that Seattle's HealthONE units have.

And then finally, we heard from Seattle's lead representatives, very importantly, that the harm that is disproportionately inflicted on vulnerable communities and communities of color can only be alleviated when police are no longer sent to low-level criminal calls like trespassing.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that later.

Done, Amy.

Thank you, Greg.

So this slide is adapted from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Guidelines for Behavioral Health Crisis Care, which recommends three core components of crisis response, which they call someone to talk to, someone to respond, and a place to go.

I just want to highlight, while it's not part of the SAMHSA model, I want to note that all crisis response relies on preventative and support services to reduce the need for crisis interventions.

Everything from housing, healthcare, case management, diversion, peer support, all of that can play a role in helping support and stabilize individuals.

In addition, the organizations which provide these services are a key resource during a crisis.

Responders often call in case managers, healthcare providers, or other service providers who have a longer-term relationship with the individual.

So even though crisis response might not be their primary services that they provide.

They are often part of the crisis response.

So as you can see, the city has resources for all three core components, including crisis call center with several types of crisis lines.

This is going to be supplemented in 2022 with the 988 emergency line.

The city has mobile teams to respond to crisis situations.

including the crisis response unit, health one and the mobile crisis team.

The state will also be including funding for mobile crisis teams as part of the 988 implementation.

And we're still working on learning whether that will fund a new program or an expansion of mobile of existing mobile teams.

I just want to note that in the presentation on the agenda, the mobile crisis team was labeled as the SPD mobile crisis team, which is incorrect.

the mobile crisis team is operated by the downtown emergency services center.

Um, finally, the third key component of a crisis response is receiving and stabilization services.

This is like, where can we take somebody who is in crisis?

Um, in Seattle and King County, they include the crisis diversion facility as well as interim services and respite program, which are stepped down intermediary services after exiting the crisis diversion facility.

The next two slides briefly outline the mobile crisis program design elements to consider.

These are some of the programmatic decisions that can really change how the program operates.

The first is what type of calls are directed to an alternate response.

In general, the types of calls that come in can be medical, criminal, or crisis, which is a broad term for a non-medical, non-criminal call, although there's a lot of overlap in these situations as we learned during the sprint.

A second key component of a mobile crisis program is how the team is dispatched, usually through the 911 system or through a direct line.

Program coverage is where and when the program is available, and it relates to both hours and geography, as well as the scale of the program, how many units are available to respond to calls.

There's the operation of the program, whether it is operated by the municipality or the jurisdiction, whether it is through a contract with an organization, or if it is a hybrid, such as the mobile crisis team.

I'm sorry, not the mobile crisis team, the health one, which is run by the city, but includes health professionals and case managers, which are through a contract with a local community organization.

Staffing for the program is key.

It can be anything from a sworn officer, if it is a police response, EMT and firefighters, mental health professionals, designated crisis responders, who are mental health professionals authorized by the state to evaluate folks for involuntary treatment.

And then we've also got peer responders who are folks that have experience with behavioral health issues that can provide services for folks.

There's different models based on police participation.

You can have police-led models.

You can have co-responder models and community-led models.

and as well as a wide range of services that are provided by the team.

And throughput is where can the team refer to people.

And we've heard from providers that it really is that throughput that is really important in terms of minimizing and reducing the need for the crisis team in the future.

Let's see.

Oh, I forgot to turn that slide.

The next three slides are a table which compares the Seattle programs, which Crisis Response Unit, HealthONE, and Mobile Crisis Team to three alternative response models, CAHOOTS in Eugene, Oregon, STAR in Denver, Colorado, and the Crisis Response Unit in Olympia, which despite having the same name as a community, it began as a community-led response in Olympia.

We don't have time to go through all of this, but I did want to highlight a couple of elements of these programs.

So the first is a direct line to the alternative response.

Both CAHOOTS and STAR can be called directly by individuals without going through 911. This reduces strain on the emergency system and also provides services for folks who might not want to call 911 for whatever reason.

In addition, CAHOOTS has access to a police scanner and self-dispatches to calls that they feel they could help with.

Second, the city currently does not have a non-SPD alternative for low-level criminal calls.

While both CAHOOTS and STARS respond to trespass, and unwanted person calls, which potentially could be criminal calls.

As Greg alluded to earlier, we've heard a lot from providers that this is a really key element of a program that helps avoid interactions with the police for folks that could be triggering or problematic.

Third, these programs are staffed by individuals with a wide range of qualifications.

In general, community responder models tend to focus staffing on behavioral health specialists and mental health professionals, as well as peer navigators and individuals with lived experience.

I just want to note in the final row of the slide, police participation reflects how the program is designed in terms of police presence in the response.

However, police can be called in as backup or in a co-response in all of these models.

And in addition, some of these programs are dispatched through police referrals as well.

So I just wanted to run through that very quickly since I know we don't have a lot of time.

But finally, I will turn it back to Greg to discuss some non-crisis alternatives.

Okay, so we've been talking a lot about crisis response and what Amy made very clear is that Seattle is doing a good job already with some of the behavioral and mental health crisis response, such as the DSC and the HealthONE response.

Not that those things can't be expanded to meet much, much greater need, but that the There is a response for that area.

I'm going to talk a little bit more about the community responder model that Amy just brought up, which is a model that was developed by the Law Enforcement Action Partnership and the Center for American Progress.

That model contemplates a couple other alternative 911 responses, breaking it out into sort of two different categories, one being quality of life issues, and these are wellness checks or intoxicated persons or substance abuse.

And that space or that bucket, if you will, is an area that I think is addressed or is likely to be addressed by what the executive is putting forth in triage one.

And so I think we're going to hear about that with the executive's presentation next.

And then the second bucket that the community responder model talks about is the low-level conflict.

And those are calls where there's a potential for an arrest if an officer is involved.

It could be a gateway into the criminal justice system.

Those are low-level calls such as a trespass or a noise complaint.

It's a suspicious person.

It's a call that might not necessarily be criminal, but sending an officer might turn it into a criminal call.

CAHOOTS is responding to these calls now, at least trespass calls.

Sending a credible messenger or a conflict mediator to these kinds of calls can ensure that vulnerable individuals are not needlessly entering the criminal justice system.

Next slide, Amy.

And then, of course, lastly, just really quickly on these alternative 911 non-crisis response, there are, of course, administrative responders that could be doing things like taking traffic reports.

The city of Tucson has civilian service officers, much like the city of Seattle, only their civilian service officers take traffic reports.

Specialized civilian responders, the Council has talked a lot about PEOs having more involvement in traffic control or special events.

There are SLI, the Council has adopted SLIs, looking at the possibility of expanding civilian involvement in Harbor Patrol.

We learned recently that over the last four years, there were 1,200 some calls for Harbor Patrol to clear debris from the waterway.

Maybe that's not an activity that requires a sworn officer.

So lots of opportunity for alternative responses that don't have to go through the 911 system.

And that concludes our presentation.

Thank you so much, Greg and Amy, both of you for, again, setting this context with the charge of the original executive order, as well as the council slides, and the intended context being identifying, as you say, Greg, the breadth of opportunities.

Really appreciate Knowing about an opportunity that we can move on quickly, but I think there's a lot more there that we need to do more analysis and more development of alternatives.

more that will not be before us today, but I look forward to continued engagement with the Executive Department on development.

So, with that, would love to hear from the participants on the executive side.

If we could just do, again, a quick round of popcorn-style introductions, and then I think, Julie, you're going to lead us, I believe.

I will.

Thank you, council member.

I will start us off and then we can pass it along as we go.

I'm Julie Klein.

I'm the mayor's public safety advisor and one of the members of the interdepartmental team that was set up by the mayor's executive order last fall.

Also present with me today, Chrissy Grover-Roybal.

Chrissy, if you would introduce yourself.

Hi, everyone.

Can I use your?

Yeah.

Oh, there you go.

Sorry, Chrissy and I are in the same general vicinity.

So we're getting an echo.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Chrissy.

I'm with the innovation and performance team.

And I will pass it over to Sunny.

Hello, all.

My name is Sunny Nguyen.

I am on the mayor's, I'm in the mayor's office as the her senior external affairs liaison.

And I will pass it over to Angela.

Good morning, Angela Sosi.

I'm the Executive Director of Budget and Finance for the Seattle Police Department.

Chris, do you want to go?

Chris Fisher, Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Seattle Police Department.

I will pass it to Director Lombard.

Good morning, Chris Lombard, Interim Director of the new Community Safety and Communication Center.

I'll pass to Chief Scoggins.

Chief may have had to drop off.

He had texted me.

But I think we've got John Ehrenfeld from the Seattle Fire Department.

John?

Hi, good morning.

John Ehrenfeld, Seattle Fire and Mobile and Great Health.

Julie, maybe back to you.

Yeah, thanks, John.

All right, I'm going to rely on Chrissy to throw up our PowerPoint here.

And then we'll get started.

And we'll try to be a little mindful of time.

given where we are.

There we go.

So as Greg and Amy mentioned earlier, first of all, thank you for having us on.

I think given the number of moving parts and us waiting and it not happening for the desk settle when it comes to SPD staffing, this We call it a final report, but I think what's going to be evident from this is that this is, in fact, not a final report.

And there is some very clear ongoing work to be done in this area.

But this report is coming later than we had wanted.

But I'm hopeful that given the amount of information and data contained in here, that there's a lot of What's clear is there's a lot of rich areas to explore in re-imagining policing as a result of this report.

One of our, you can see here, the IDT work and this report was one aspect of the mayor's executive order on re-imagining policing.

And boiled down to its essence, the IDT, the interdepartmental team that will be presenting here today, had three real main assignments to report out on.

And that was conducting some community engagement and outreach, analyzing current SPD functions and practices, and exploring some alternative models of community policing and response.

And as a part of that, we'll go through all the different aspects of that that we've been working on for the past six or seven months or so.

I think maybe longer now.

But in conjunction with the work that the IDT has been doing and the work that central staff has been doing, we thought it was very important to also make sure that we are mentioning to folks that this wasn't happening in a vacuum.

There was a lot of other things that were happening in this space as we worked on the functional analysis and data aspects of this.

Our human services department conducted a request for proposals.

to invest 10.4 million into community safety capacity building proposals.

We got 70 applications.

And these investments, for the most part, they've done some initial awards.

I think the appeals period maybe is just ending right now.

But the bulk of these investments mostly work on upstream prevention and restoration efforts.

So we didn't get any turnkey proposals that could instantly become emergency response options or alternate models, at least not in the near term.

Um, but, you know, part of the awards in this, um, for this RFP were really to start building capacity to move towards those types of, um, models.

So, um, we aren't discouraged by that necessarily, but, um, suffice to say, it is important to note that there is, um, an influx of money going towards upstream prevention and restoration efforts in this area.

So, um, that will be working in conjunction with, uh, whatever additional works work and ideas stem from the IDT work.

As Greg and Amy mentioned, there was also the What Works City Sprint.

which the IDT participated in as well, along with central staff, along with council staff, along with some community members and community-based organizations, and some of our other departments.

So, we won't need to go into that.

Amy and Greg did a great job sort of summarizing and recapping all that we learned during that.

During this process, we also had some external engagements, one with the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, which you will hear did the sort of functional analysis based on SPD's data that we cite to and discuss in our report, and then also Accenture as well.

So Chrissy Grover Roybal, who is here with me today, was sort of project managing the What Works City Sprint and getting us across the finish line on the executive order.

Chrissy and or Chris Fisher, anything to add before we move on?

Okay, all right.

So I'm gonna kick it over to Sonny Nguyen, who conducted and led a lot of the community outreach that was done through this effort.

So Sonny, go ahead and take it away.

Thank you.

So yeah, we did a lot of a few series of community engagement events, including some roundtables, some forums, and a lot of engagement with our boards and commissions, which are selected to represent different bodies or different populations in Seattle.

And we have three major takeaways.

So the first one, community is not a monolith.

I'm sure if your inbox council members are anything like mine, you know that every person in Seattle has a different idea of how we can reimagine community safety in our city.

And so while it's important that we are hearing all of those, it's also very important that we are centering and uplifting the voices of people who are most affected by our current policing system to ensure that we are building an equitable and just community safety network in our city.

And then from those engagements, we found really two kind of big buckets of feedback.

So the first one is that public safety extends much beyond policing.

And what we heard is that by the time someone is making a 911 call, a lot of times, That incident is indicative of a number of different systems failures, whether that be in youth development, housing, job resources, mental health, or even the medical institutions.

And so we are sending officers who are not well-equipped to handle the actual roots of the issues that are going on in these communities.

And the other is that people want a more visible patrol presence.

A lot of folks, especially in our downtown neighborhoods, most especially in places like the CID, Pioneer Square in Belltown, really miss their community police team officers, which were redeployed due to staffing constraints.

and really wanted to talk or speak to a time when officers were walking the beat and were going into different businesses and like getting to know their communities and the community members there.

And folks were able to build trusting and lasting relationships with the officers that are patrolling their neighborhoods.

That's just a very quick snapshot of the engagement assembly that we've been doing and some of the high level themes.

So to kind of go over our major findings, which all of my colleagues will drill into a little bit, we're having a massive staffing shortage at SPD.

We've lost over 200 officers in the last 17 months to transfers, retirement, quitting, and that translates to over 300,000 officer hours.

So we are just down in terms of physical capacity at the department.

Looking at the Nick Jr. analysis and the SPD analysis, we've identified 12% of calls for services that can be responded to with civilian forward or without SPD involvement in the near term.

So these are the calls that we can safely say we can remove or start to transfer starting today.

Um, with further analysis, we think that there are more, uh, beyond just these 12%.

Um, but to start, we're going to be looking at those person down in those priority three welfare checks.

Um, but, you know, based on what we've heard from Sunny with the community engagement, um, this, the, the shortage of hours, there is just an immediate need to identify alternative responses that can take non-criminal calls, um, away from SPD resources.

Okay.

Um, Angela or Chris, I think you're up next.

I can start it off, and Angela can catch me if I get any of the specifics wrong.

But as Chrissy sort of spoke to, as folks are aware, since 2020, we've lost a net negative of about 188, I think, depending on the day you look at it, officers.

That's 286 separations and 89 hires in the past sort of 18, 19 months.

And as Chrissy mentioned, the number of service hours that translates to annually.

The issue being there, as we talk about sort of the ability to transfer some of this workload to alternative responses, is that it actually, that work would get us closer to having a number of officers who can handle the volume of work they're handling now.

I think Chief spoke about it yesterday in his comments in reference to the uptick, significant uptick in violence that we are almost, I think, over, on average, more than five days a week going in priority call status, meaning there aren't enough officers to handle call volume and major events to where we have to restrict our call response.

So offloading service hours at this point, as we will get into when we talk about the NICJR report, I think starts to make up for the folks we've lost.

Patrol, there are a hundred less officers, even with the chief's reassignment of individuals, there are a hundred less officers in patrol.

So just the Patrol Bureau is stretched thin, as are all the other units and bureaus.

That's translated into us not meeting our response times.

We've talked about that before.

That situation has not changed.

I think depending on the week or the month and the volume, how far away we are from the 7-minute and 15-minute goals changes, but we've not met it consistently for about a year now.

And really, the message here is that as we look to this work at this point, As we try to staff back up, as we try to do aggressive hiring, some of this in the near term is making it so that these calls have someone who can respond to them.

As a lot of times, the delay for these non-emergency low-priority calls is extensive, given the officers are really focusing on responding to these major events and violent crime and priority one calls.

Some of the lower-priority calls may take a while for officers to respond, given our current staff And so the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, as Julie mentioned, we asked them, led by David Muhammad, who has a huge experience in reforming and looking at how criminal justice systems can work differently, be it L.A.

probation, New York City probation, working on consent decrees on juvenile justice issues.

David is, I think, a wealth of knowledge in how to think differently, and he's got a great team at the National Institute.

And so we asked them, to look at three years of our call data.

They've done this sort of work in other mostly West Coast cities and a lot in California.

They're based out of Oakland, so they've got a lot of sort of on the ground relationships and understandings there.

So we asked them to look at that data and in our initial conversations with them, they talked about how their approach has been conceptualizing 911 alternative response or differential response in a four-tier model.

Tier one being some alternative response goes on their own.

Those are the calls where it's clear in however you do the analysis that SPD is not needed.

Tier two is SPD is downstairs, around the corner, close by for a radio call if the alternative response needs backup.

Those are call types where maybe it's not quite as clear.

And then Tier 3 is the reverse of that, where SPD takes the lead, makes sure the scene is safe and clear, and then maybe steps back and lets the alternative response handle, and then the Tier 4, the traditional SPD, responding on their own.

Maybe when they're done, they can call in if there are any additional services.

That's sort of the model of the CSOs, and I think could be the model of some of the other alternative responses.

So we gave them the three years of data.

They did that work.

I think we've talked about it.

They identified up to 49% of calls in their sort of high level, not knowing how we use every call type.

We, as a city, have a lot of call types, over 350. Some places have less than 100. We're very differentiated in our call type.

So they didn't necessarily, and we weren't trying to be overly prescriptive with them.

They've done this work before.

We said, here's the data if you have questions, but you come back to us with your recommendations.

So there were groups of calls where I think they, not knowing how we use the system and what it means, where they probably over-indexed, thinking someone else could respond to it.

Some of those are sort of administrative calls, getting gas, doing a run of evidence, or proactive calls where, you know, if you could see where it logically makes sense that maybe an officer doesn't need to do a premise check.

But that's if you're just thinking about what those words mean.

If you actually understand how we use that, a premise check could be, this is a high crime or a high violence area, and we want officers to check out that parking lot.

We want them there for visibility.

We want them there to be in the area.

We want them to stop there and get out and talk.

So I don't think necessarily in all of those cases, that's something where it's not just going to make sure the building's secure, which still may require a sworn officer, there are other factors going in there and so I think we want to continue to do work on refining it.

We also then when we were thinking through how do we given all the many call types and that it was unrealistic to expect the National Institute to know every single one of those types and how we use it and what that means on the ground.

All of our legal we are we do have some RCW and labor issues that some of this work has to be done by a sworn peace officer some of that stuff probably easier to change another but it was too much in the time frame, and in their broad scope of the other work they do to ask them to know the nitty gritty of how we work here in Seattle.

So we were trying to think through, how could we add intelligence onto this to make it more operational.

And we remarked in a lot of the conversations we've had with DOJ around consent decrees and the experts they use, and in some of the research team here at SPD, our familiarity with experts in the field, Dr. Jeff Alpert at the University of South Carolina is a longstanding expert in high-risk police community encounters.

He's a consultant for the US Justice Department and international justice departments about sort of their version of inquest into police-involved shootings and how to think about a conceptualized force.

and how to decrease sort of risky police encounters.

We asked him for his perspective on sort of the National Institute analysis, and he came back, I think, with a really amazing recommendation that I think we were conceptually thinking about, but had not tied it all together, of we have the ability in our data to know on each call type, how often does something significant happen?

National Institute looked at whether that call type was associated with a crime or whether an arrest was made.

But we can layer on to that.

How often is the victim injured?

How often is the subject injured?

How often is a use of force used?

And what type of use of force?

What level of use of force?

And if someone is arrested or booked?

And really, you can come up with a risk-based model.

So you would think that tier one model, where you feel fairly confident that you could send an alternative response, that everything's going to be fine, that's really, when you connect these two analyses, or these two sort of paradigms of thinking, That's those calls where on face value, it looks like someone else can go and very rarely does something of significance happen.

And so I think that's the next stage of this work.

I think we've started to do that when we started having these conversations as Director Lombard will talk about, I think, about this tier, this triage one model that I know we've talked with some on council about and been announced by the mayor and the chiefs.

That's where that started to become operationalized.

We knew these two specific call types because we've talked about them for years.

as two departments.

Those are cases where very rarely is something significant happening on the ground right there.

And that's why I think it made sense from all those other considerations, labor, legal, risk.

a place to start, and we just want to keep building on to that, combining really sort of the nuts and bolts work of doing the aggregate data that the National Institute did with this risk-based model that Dr. Alpert has weighed in, I think makes a lot of sense, and I think they come together nicely.

So that's where we're going.

We also know a lot of the big group that we've heard people talk about.

is the role of police and traffic.

The Chief and Inspector General Judge were already in conversations about that and have now sort of formalized with Director Zimbabwe a process for how do we look at all the different ways that we use enforcement and education from the police side in collaboration with SDOT and their engineering and education, how to do traffic, pedestrian, commuter safety.

So I think the traffic, how to handle all those traffic and moving violations, that will be handled in a very sort of Seattle way and understanding the nature of transportation in Seattle.

So I think, long story short, is Nick Jr.

It's the abbreviation, it always clicks in my head.

The National Institute gave us the framework and pointed us, I think, really to aspirational.

They're pushing us, sort of like what Chief Scoggins said about the change team.

I think we see the National Institute's sort of high level, not knowing the weeds, Let's consider each one of those.

Let's look at what the risk profile tells us.

Let's look at what the law and labor tells us and see if it is possible.

And some of those will be, and some of those won't be.

As Greg noted, at the moment, I think the harbor stuff is complicated, but there are options there.

But I think this gave us a good framework to continue to sort of group of calls by group of calls, group them, analyze them, and figure out who's the best team to respond to it, be it something we need to create or something that's already in existence.

Thank you, Dr. Fisher.

I notice that the screen keeps flipping back and forth between seven and eight, but it's great because the question I have is sort of related to information that's on slide seven as well as slide eight.

I thought that the critique at of the Nick Jr. report was interesting, the critique from Dr. Alpert was interesting because it's my understanding that the tier one analysis wasn't simplistic.

It wasn't just about the number of calls that fit into tier one, but it also did an analysis of the number of times that those calls required some sort of follow-up action by a police officer and found that that was a very low percentage of calls.

And so, in my mind, that is the risk analysis, and it is not a simplistic analysis.

It's a layered analysis that is actually looking at possible harm.

And that is specific to, I think, the Tier 1 calls.

I do have some questions about the numbers of Tier 1 calls, though.

is that in the near term, SPD agrees that there are approximately 30 incident types where it is apparent that SPD does not need to be the primary responder if other resources are consistently available.

This represents 12% of total calls and 6% of total officer hours.

As I understand the information on slide eight, 12% of calls is about 144,000 calls.

I'm assuming that is over the entire three-year period of time.

And that works out to be roughly an average of 48,000 calls a year.

Yet your recommendation to have triage one address a person down and welfare checks is only about 7,000 calls a year.

So given that the statement is that 12% of calls can handle a response that does not have SPD as a primary responsor, and if that 12% is 48,000 calls and we only have a proposal to deal with 7,000 calls, what is the executive's proposal for moving forward around that additional 40,000 calls a year that you, it sounds like you're saying that you agree would benefit from an alternate response to that of an officer.

Yeah, Chris, do you want me to take that one, Dr. Fisher?

Thank you, council member.

I think the short answer in a nutshell is that the triage teams that proposal that we've put forward is the first step, essentially.

We view that as kind of low-hanging fruit, an area where we know these are sort of outside the body of work of the fire department, outside the body of work of the police department, so we're not going to run into labor issues there with either one of them.

We're trying to work very collaboratively with them on defining what those calls are.

And I think, as I indicated at the beginning of the presentation, I think there are going to be several other types of response models that will be born out of the analysis.

This is just the first of what we anticipate of being probably many that will fit into this category.

So, I think that the short answer is we're not done.

This proposal will not be the only proposal I don't believe that you'll be seeing that addresses this initial tranche of about 12 percent of calls.

I just add there, I mean, just just for illustrative sake, you know, some of two of the other call types, you know, littering, noise.

I don't they don't fall naturally into the triage one team approach, but they don't necessarily I don't it doesn't really seem to call for an SPD officer.

It needs someone.

And I just don't think we've thought about who that someone would be and where they would sit and just the other.

I think from having a follow-up conversation with Dr. Albert, the simplistic what he meant was the initial cut that the National Institute did was really looking at what is the call type and does it match up with a crime.

That was level one.

So they matched up every call type, final call type.

with whether it sounded like it matched up with an RCW or really RCW is all the misdemeanors reflected there as well.

And if it didn't, they sort of naturally put it in tier one.

Like if it wasn't clearly, if the officer clearly didn't close the call out as a crime, it was likely to be a tier one call.

Now, I think we can get into the there's many reasons where there's many times where criminal behavior has occurred, but with officer discretion, they don't necessarily close it out as such.

That's one issue.

But it's really more they've been layered on.

But for whatever reason, was someone arrested?

And I think both about Um, the work that's been done broadly in our system, uh, you know, sort of both across the country and really specifically in Seattle about trying to minimize, especially on lower level stuff, how often we arrest.

I think the arrest part might just be too narrow of a decision to make the determination ultimately if police were necessary there.

If someone was was hurt.

If there's a victim that was hurt or if something happens other than an arrest, it's just it's something I think we need to consider.

I think we'll have to have the conversation about how do we score, for lack of a better word, the different factors in that risk model about, you know, how chancy is this encounter.

But I think that that's the direction I believe he was pointing was just the whether the call type sounds like it's connected to a crime and whether it was an arrested might be leaving out other factors that we might have more access to data that when we had this initial engagement with the National Institute, we didn't think about, you know, could we share that data with them?

Were they thinking about how to conceptualize that in their modeling?

And that's just that's our next step there.

And I was just saying that it's my understanding from my review of the executive summary that that next step has been done for the tier one calls because that's where you've decided to focus.

that is the place to focus because of what has happened at those calls when police have arrived.

The data shows, the analysis shows that there was not need for SPD follow up for a majority of the calls.

I don't have the percentage right in front of me, but it was a very, very low percentage.

Right, so they, the National Institute put 174 call types in Tier 1, and we, I think the slide has a mistype from the final report, but we identified 30 of those 174, so there are others that may very well be Tier 1, but we just want to consider other factors.

That's very helpful.

Thank you.

Yep, council member.

I'll add to that.

We've learned some great lessons from the health one implementation about the importance of scaling these things up to that to automatically assume and just start trying to respond to 40,000 runs is a far different cry from trying to work at 8000 and then adding an additional unit, adding an additional unit and so on and so forth.

We just we learn what we don't know along the way as well.

So that brings us, it's a great segue, Councilmember, thank you, to discussing the new alternate response triage model proposal that the IDT has worked on in conjunction with Director Lombard from the CSCC and Chief Scoggins and John Ehrenfeld.

from his team.

And so, we wanted to give you a quick overview of what that is.

And I know we've had a chance to brief some council members on this to some extent, but welcome the opportunity to put this out there again.

So, again, focusing on that 12 percent and the types of calls that were identified by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform that are sort of ripe for diversion.

We took a look at those.

We knew from our community outreach that people are supportive of developing alternate response models for non-criminal type crimes.

And we sort of We're keeping an eye on the HSD, the human services division requests for proposals on community safety capacity building as well.

And we're aware that there was no actual turnkey, as I said, immediate alternate response model for these types of calls for the types of calls in that 12% we were looking at.

And it was clear to us that what we needed to do was start developing a model to triage, and we use this word in the true sense of the term, triage non-criminal and non-health emergency calls currently.

And I think our overarching, we had two considerations that we were really making here.

The first was not making life more complicated for our 911 dispatchers.

I think we are very aware that giving them too many options or giving them too many choices to make in that very short time period that they have to make a decision on what to dispatch was something that we wanted to avoid.

The other sort of context that we had was 911 callers are making decisions on who to dispatch based usually on second-hand information from the community.

And these are folks generally who aren't trained in recognizing behavioral health issues and things of that nature.

So what we thought might be very helpful was to develop an alternate response model that essentially gave our 911 dispatchers the ability to get eyes on and get more information before an ultimate decision of who should be the secondary response handling the situation should be.

We have, and John Ehrenfeld, please feel free to weigh in on this as well.

What we kind of did here was put side by side the different types of response models that we have.

We, again, focused on these, what we call person down calls, which just for everyone's information are the calls where you have someone from the community call in and say, this person is laying prone on the sidewalk.

They appear to be breathing.

I can't figure out what's going on with them, but can somebody come in and deal with them?

And then there's sort of these welfare check calls, which are generally along those situations, along those lines as well.

Or you have people who are clearly in some sort of altered mental state, either because of drug use or mental health issues.

They aren't posing an immediate risk to themselves or others, but their behavior is concerning to someone in the community.

And so they call 911 and ask for that to be addressed as well.

So we have already at the Seattle Fire Department, our HealthONE unit, which has been wildly successful, which is under the Seattle Fire Department's mobile integrated health team.

They deal with those low acuity calls, crisis type calls, where there's a comorbidity, an actual health concern, right?

Depression, anxiety, intoxication, and chronic mental health that leads to, where there's a nexus of an actual physical health concern.

They are primarily, they're not dispatched through 911. They are primarily dispatched through other means, either the fire department may call them out to address an individual, at times the police may as well, but they do follow-up and short-term care management for those folks who are experiencing health concerns related to their behavioral health issues.

And then we have the Seattle Police Department Crisis Response Team, which sort of deals with the other end of the spectrum, those high acuity behavioral health incidents or issues where there is a threat of danger to either that person or someone else that's immediate and concerning.

They are generally called upon by SPD patrol and at times are dispatched also by 911 as well.

They are there to support SPD patrol and provide resources, appropriate resources, when there is a crisis call where there is a public safety concern.

They also do DCR referrals.

They do tailored response plans for individuals who are chronically having crisis issues that create public safety concerns.

And they're sort of a mid-level engagement.

So those are two great resources that we already have in the city, but there's this sort of, there's this gray area of calls that don't fit into either one of those.

And these are sort of these man down or person down calls and these welfare check calls.

And in order for us to get a really good understanding of what the proper response is, I think everyone who was in the IDT agreed that you can't make that decision over the phone with a 911 dispatcher.

They don't have the time.

They don't have the ability operating on secondhand information to make a true tailored decision on who should be helping this individual.

And so that's where we see this triage model fitting in.

I just wanted to give you a chance to weigh in.

So, on this slide, I want to first mention that my recollection of the report suggested that there was some data lacking as it relates to the dispatch of the SPD crisis response unit.

And then as it relates specifically to the triage model and maybe also HealthONE moving forward, I'm really trusted to know the thinking of how nine 988 will interact with these resources when it launches next year.

For the viewing public, 988 will be an alternative to 911 that focuses on meeting the folks in mental health crisis and their needs.

It's launching statewide in about a year.

Here in Seattle, crisis connections will very likely operate 988. They already have the ability to dispatch alternative crisis responses, such as the Mobile Crisis Team and designated crisis responders, as well as to coordinate with 911 to ensure that an appropriate response to calls, both avoiding duplicate responses and ensuring a call doesn't fall through the cracks.

So, that's a question I have, 988, flagging the lack of information, as I understand it, about the dispatch data for SPD's crisis response unit.

And also, on slide 9, it states that HSD did not surface any proposals for our community safety capacity building RFP did not surface proposals that could implement a community-led emergency response in the near term.

And we don't, you know, I don't, we don't need to have a discussion about an individual application, but I do know that there was at least one proposal to stand up a community safety hub in North Seattle with the capability to dispatch around the clock, seven days a week.

So, you know, maybe we could, at a later time, return to that proposal.

But I don't think it's accurate to say that there were no proposals to the most recent RFP.

With that, I'll just let you respond to the one question that I had here.

And that is how it will interact with 98 and I think it remains to be seen councilmember and I I don't want to punt it to director Lombard necessarily, but I think First of all, I think there are plenty of these types of calls to go around I don't have any idea or we don't have any information on how many teams they're gonna have or at least we don't have any information on how many teams they're going to have available for dispatch and through the the 988 call number, but I think it's safe to say that I For the foreseeable future, many of these calls are still going to be coming through 911. And we're still going to have the need to make a decision on what the appropriate response is.

And so we still see a need and a use for these particular models.

If once that is stood up and there's some redundancies there, I mean, we're calling this a pilot.

We're seeing how it goes and we're learning from it.

We'll have the ability to make adjustments.

And that's part of the beauty of having it be a city program with city employees doing it at least initially.

We don't have to renegotiate or rework a contract if we need to change midstream and make adjustments if something's not working.

to course correct pretty easily.

So anything to add to that, Director Lombard, on the 9-8-8 question?

The only thing that I would add on that, Julie, is that for 30 years we've been conditioning the public that 9-1-1 is the number to call for all your problems.

So even though we have 8-1-1 before you dig and 3-1-1 for information in some communities, Those people, they still call 911 for questions too.

So even with the advent of the new numbers, it is still going to be a long time before people stop calling 911 to fix their problems.

And that is definitely true, Director Lombard, with some portion, some demographic of the population.

There is a demographic, and I appreciate central staff highlighting this at the beginning.

One of the things that we learned from our sprint call engagement, there is a demographic that does not call 911. And there is a demographic that is increasingly not calling 9-1-1.

I am increasingly getting feedback from members of the public who want an alternative, not theoretically.

They have a situation, and they want me to refer them to somebody who is not 9-1-1.

So I think that is really important to keep forefront in our mind.

Yes.

Julie, can I jump in real quick on that previous slide?

Thanks, John, yeah.

So, Council Member, one thing I'd like to just kind of quickly call out, because, you know, I think that there's a lot of teams out there.

You know, this graph, you know, does not include partners such as the sobering van, such as mobile crisis teams.

There's a lot out there.

I think one area where this proposal differs is on the length of engagement.

I think that on the police side, the crisis response team and on our side, Health One, They're really specialty units, and they are able and willing to spend really lengthy periods of time with these extremely complex clients.

And I think we are very confident that that is the way to go.

And frankly, we're a victim of our own success here.

When you get these successful engagements, it takes a long time.

I think the idea with this triage team, as Julie mentioned, is that it's going to be a faster engagement, so they can process more of these calls, take more off of SPD patrol operations, which isn't to say that it's just going to be a one and done, but I think there's going to be a deliberate emphasis on doing quicker transports or quicker referrals and then returning to service.

And the details here, I think we just could not get it built real deliberately.

Thanks, John.

All right, Dr. Fisher, you want to walk us through some of the analysis on the person down and welfare check calls that we've been talking about?

So I'll be brief.

I know we're running very short on time.

So just, I mean, part of our figuring out the capacity was we looked at how often these calls come in and what time.

And I think folks anecdotally knew in their head, but it was good to see it played out in the data that it's really happening during the week.

a little bit later on the weekends, but really during the week, really from seven or eight in the morning till about seven or eight at night.

The densest part being, the darker the color here, being around lunchtime in the afternoon, running up to dinner.

I think any person who looks at 911 data or happens to listen to the police radio or see the fire live stream of their calls, that's when we have a lot of people who are out and about going to work.

downtown for lunch, walking around, that's where they encounter the person who's down.

Or when they go, someone doesn't show up to work and someone calls in and says, can we do a welfare check?

So I think this all makes logical sense, but we saw it in the data about the when and the where.

I think a lot of this is concentrated in the downtown core, just in terms of the volume.

That's how most of our calls are concentrated.

If you do a heat map of where are we going, most of the, there are more responses downtown.

Um, writ large, obviously, specific call types will have.

Densities elsewhere, but just the volume of work downtown, especially post pandemic or pre pandemic.

Um, always makes a density there.

Um, and as we did look at most of these.

Um, resulted in a final disposition of the offer.

They rendered some assistance, but nothing that necessarily met a.

criminal justice sort of assistance.

There was no formal legal response.

They just helped the person, either got them up, maybe they had got them moving again.

We'd have to read all the comments to understand what the different types of assistance rendered was.

But in less than 10%, was there anything where it really seemed like it needed an officer?

And it says here, only 2% was there an arrest for some reason.

And again, It would take a review of the notes to understand the why of the arrest.

Was it specific to what happened there?

Or was it found for some other reason?

This was somebody that folks were looking for.

Maybe they had a warrant or something and they knew them, but there could be multiple reasons about why an arrest occurred.

Right and and so the staffing structure again, we're trying to work really collaboratively with the unions that are going to be impacted by this new model and pay very close attention to tailoring the types of calls that we target for this response to be the types of calls where it's safe to send.

So we do anticipate this will be a civilian forward response, crisis response, de-escalation, homelessness outreach, chemical dependency, essentially systems navigation to understand what's out there and what is the best secondary response to deal with the incident before them.

So we would need to make sure that there is going to be robust links with all of the existing resources that are out there.

including the mobile crisis team, the crisis response unit, health one, community service officers, et cetera.

And then the initial build out, again, risk management purposes and the ability to be very flexible and nimble, city employees initially with future opportunities to incorporate community-based partners either in secondary responses or as a part of the team potentially as well.

But we're trying to work very collaboratively with the union so that we can come up with a model that works for everybody and is safe for everybody.

Right.

John Eric, do you want to take this one?

Sure.

So I think that, again, right now, how is this team conceptually going to differ?

I think that the ideal pipeline here is going to be from the CSCC, from that first 911 call out to the field, allowing the first line of dispatch to get eyes on and refer back as need be.

And I think we really see them as having that immediate direct link to both police and fire operations.

you know, the the triage is going to be the first thing, you know, is this immediately criminal act?

Is this someone who's in a medical emergency or is there some other sort of undetermined need?

And I feel like our feeling is that that third category is going to be overwhelmed, the greatest one, you know, with, you know, regardless, again, of how the call is kind of presented at nine one, which, again, is really it's an imprecise tool.

Um, you know, what we've seen both on the health one front and then I think with crisis response team with our colleagues over there and police is that, again, you got to have some back end opportunities to do referrals, you know, the system as you know, extremely fragmented of physical health, behavioral health, substance use disorder, housing, etc.

These these take a long time.

So you got to have a source to pass them to.

On our end, again, because we've had such good luck with our human services staff, we're suggesting a similar approach here, we have a back end case manager would say, yeah, this person was found on the street, they're interested in housing, maybe they're a veteran.

Okay, I'm an expert in that I'm going to start connecting You've got to have to be sort of open about that there's going to be that that follow up process.

Um, you know, I think we already talked about the hours of operation again this is kind of getting into this bank.

And then, you know, again, this is going to be collaborative with with the bargain units and operations.

I think that the person down calls and the welfare check calls we've gone over already is it's a good it's a good way.

I think that right now the feeling is that we have a really good index of suspicion, as we would say, in the medical community for these going the way we want to in terms of being able to provide effective alternative response within layering on the future, further opportunities for for, you know, passing other call types over to this team.

Thank you.

I am going to need to wrap this up.

My apologies.

I do see there are a couple of additional slides.

A couple of us on the committee have another meeting that is starting up right now.

I do want to address I think that's all I have to say.

In closing, a couple of the things on the additional slides.

One, the reference to the CSCC dispatch protocol system.

The bullet suggests that the proposal would fund an IT project, build out a criteria-based dispatch system, We have been working for several weeks on identifying a sooner opportunity to fund this system.

I do not believe we should wait until the passage of the 2022 budget in order to fund the system.

It is very clear that the system needs to be in place and there needs to be training on the system before I do have an amendment that I want to thank the finance and budget committee during our deliberations on the second quarter supplemental.

I would like to see a recommendation from SPD not look at a $2 million investment over the next couple of years, but to front load $500,000 of that investment in the conversations around the second quarter supplemental that we are in right now.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

We are still absolutely support funding those vacant positions and intend to propose legislation or propose an amendment to the budget to do so next week.

But as far as future additional expansion beyond filling.

I'm looking forward to talking more with my colleagues on the council as well as SPD on that priority.

And again, really excited to know that the council's funding for the health one expansion to add to the mayor's funding for the health one expansion that already happened, that we are going to be able to have another expansion in quarter four.

Before, I'm sorry that we're rushing to get through this last bit.

Before we end this item, are there other comments in closing from either the presenters or council members?

Just to thank you for letting us come and present at the committee, Councilmember, and I know that there's going to be a lot of questions about the data from the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, and so we're happy to set up a briefing to do a data deep dive either with central staff or whomever, if that would be helpful.

Thank you very, very much.

You know, we've all, we've been very excited and eager to get this information, so definitely look forward to having the opportunity to do more of it.

So with that, next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for August 10th.

Before we adjourn, are there any other comments from my colleagues?

Hearing none, the time is 12.34 p.m.

Thank you for staying along with us today, and we are adjourned.