Seattle City Council Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee 9/11/19

Good morning.

Today is Wednesday, September 11th, 2019, and it is 9.30 a.m.

Welcome, everyone, to this meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.

I'm Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, chair of this committee, and I know that both of my colleagues plan to join me later, so we are still waiting on Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda and Councilmember Abel Pacheco to join us this morning.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Part of the chair's report includes an overview of today's agenda.

First, we will consider a vote on an appointment to the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy Oversight Committee.

Second, we will hear a presentation on the final report and recommendations of the Serious and Deadly Force Investigations Task Force.

And last, we will receive a briefing from the Human Services Department regarding the recently announced awards for the new safety request for proposal, which aims to support youth and their families experiencing negative impacts from interaction with the criminal justice system.

So before we go ahead and go into public comment, just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that today is September 11th, a day that we all as Americans and around the world remember as a day where we lost over 3,000 lives in our country due to a terrorist attack here at home.

Just want to invite us all to take a moment of silence in commemoration of those lives that were lost and in hopes of being able to achieve additional peace in the future.

Thank you so much for joining me in that moment of silence.

I know that all of us have our own individual memories of where we were on September 11th and what was happening that day, and really appreciate all of the work that our first responders did on that day, and our thoughts, prayers, and hearts continue to be with those family members who lost loved ones and also with the survivors.

All right, we will go ahead and begin today's agenda.

And as usual, we start with public comment.

No one has signed up for public comment today.

Is there anyone who is with us today that intended to sign up for public comment but didn't have an opportunity to do so?

Seeing no one, I will go ahead and close out the period of public comment.

So I'm now going to invite folks who are here to present on the FEPP Levy Oversight Committee appointment to join us at the table, and then Cody is going to read this into the record.

Agenda item one, appointment 01399. Appointment of Susan Yu-Yi Lee as member of Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy Oversight Committee for a term to December 31st, 2022.

Great.

Thanks, Cody.

All right.

So we are joined now by both our nominee and the Director Chappelle.

So I will go ahead and ask both of you to introduce yourselves for the record, and then I'm going to hand it over to you.

Yeah, use the microphone.

Make sure, I think the little green light is already on.

You'll need to get it a little closer to you, Susan.

Go for it.

So just tell us your name, and then Duane will do the same, and then Duane will give us a little ditty.

My name is Susan Lee from Rewa.

Thanks for being with us.

And I'm Dwayne Chappelle, proud director of education and early learning.

Great.

Thank you for being with us this morning.

Dwayne, you want to walk us through the nomination?

Absolutely.

Good morning, Councilmember Gonzalez.

I am here to introduce our final nominee to be appointed to serve on our Department of Education and Early Learning's Levy Oversight Committee.

This committee oversees the Families Education and Preschooling Promise Levy.

And I would just also want to just start off by thanking you and your colleagues for just your support from the Levy Oversight Committee and the work that we've been doing with the levy.

So we've worked hard to make sure that all of our nominations have met the criteria and the ordinance, and that all of our nominees, such as Susan today, have the professional and personal research and experience with the necessary growth and development that our children will need, including student academic achievement and some type of post-secondary readiness.

for the criteria.

So today, as you mentioned, our final nominee, she represents a cultural and language-based organization and she has experience working with and representing historically underserved groups across this amazing city.

So, This nominee, I would like first to thank Mayor Durkin for this nomination.

And her name is Susan Lee.

Susan Lee is a mayoral appointment to the Levy Oversight Committee.

Susan is the Director of Early Childhood Education Operations and Volunteer Services at REWA, which is the Refugee Women's Alliance.

Susan has numerous years of experience both in corporate and non-profit agencies, and there's a little bit more about her.

Susan has experience in sales, human resources, early childhood education, professional development trainings, volunteering, fundraising, leadership, management, mentoring, communications, and other financial organizational development, as well as speaking to communities and universities.

So as the director of REWA and volunteer services, Susan has worked really close with the School of Nursing at the University of Washington.

as well as the School of Nursing at Seattle University.

And she's done this to provide an opportunity for our future community health nurses to understand and to have direct contact with clients from her organization REWA.

And this includes infants all the way to seniors, males and females, and immigrants and other refugees.

Susan also is the point of contact for all of internships that comes through their organization.

And the last little bit about Susan, and then I'll turn it over to her, is as the Director of Operations for the Early Childhood Education Program, Susan oversees and ensures that this program is in compliance and is supporting all of the families that we serve directly and supervises over 40 staff.

And being part of REWA team, their mission is to promote inclusion, independence, personal leadership, and strong communities by providing refugee and immigrant women and families with culturally and linguistically appropriate services.

They advocate for social justice, public policy changes, as well as equal access to services while representing cultural values and the right to self-determination.

So I wanted to share that brief bio about Susan.

I know it sounds good.

Listen to it.

And so I'll turn it over now to you.

And thank you for having us here today.

Great.

Well, thank you so much for that detailed overview of her background and experience.

And Susan, this is obviously a formal setting, but we just like to engage in a little bit of dialogue here.

So this is my first opportunity to actually meet you, so just wanted to give you an opportunity to tell us why you're interested in serving on the Levy Oversight Committee and what you hope to be able to accomplish.

I feel a sense of responsibility to be a voice for the marginalized and underserved populations that are in our community.

As a first-generation immigrant myself, I have witnessed and experienced firsthand some of the challenges and barriers that often newcomers face, such as you know, challenges with acculturation, financial burdens, and navigating through the complex education systems.

You know, nowadays in 2019, we have a lot more opportunities, such as the levy funding and SPP programs.

I wish I had that when I was growing up.

I did not have that.

So, you know, seeing my parents struggle with working two jobs and trying to understand how to enroll in kindergarten, for example, but also not having the language component was quite a struggle.

And personally, I like to try to remove those barriers that my family's faced because as a new immigrant, it is very challenging indeed.

And I am very fortunate to work in an agency where we try to ease that burden and try to help our new families succeed.

So, you know, I work with approximately about 265 families now at REWA.

And to see the successes that the levy program has provided for our families is very rewarding indeed.

So I'm hoping that with my experience, background, and my passion, I will be able to provide some insight into some of the challenges that my families face, as well as being a representative and a voice for the early learning centers in our community.

Great.

And I have, as a representative of the city council and the chair of this committee, also serve on the levy oversight committee, so we'll get to see each other a lot.

Wonderful, wonderful.

Which brings me to the next question, which is just checking in to make sure that you have the support of REWA and the capacity to be able to fully participate.

Absolutely.

My executive director is very enthusiastic about me joining on board.

And this is an opportunity for REWA to represent all of the thousands of families in our program.

And I have a wonderful team of teachers that have benefited from the SPP program where they have, you know, pursued higher education from associate degrees to now bachelor's degrees and moving forward with master's degrees.

So my staff are phenomenal.

They can probably run the program without me at this point.

So yes, I'm pretty confident about that.

Great.

Welcome, Council Member Mosqueda.

We are still on agenda item one, which is an appointment of Susan to the Families Education, Preschool and Promise Levy Oversight Committee.

Mouthful.

And so we're just wrapping up a series of Q&A here, but you're welcome to settle in.

And if you have any additional questions for her, please feel free to let me know.

Happy to call on you.

Anything else that you think is important for us to know about your background or the work that you do that would contribute to the work of the Levy Oversight Committee?

Well, Dwayne did a whole mouthful about my bio, so I'm pretty good right now.

But I'm really excited and very honored to be a part of this program and this committee.

I think that it is going to make a huge impact on our communities, and I'm very honored to be considered and part of this team.

Great.

Well, thank you.

I know that I was hoping that we would be able to identify a nominee in this exact space around early learning and childhood education.

I saw that as a gap in terms of the membership and representation on the levy oversight committee, which was in its, you know, previous iteration, I think a little bit more hyperfocused on the K through 12 system.

So I appreciate you bringing your perspective and your subject matter expertise to the Levy Oversight Committee as we continue to look at how under this version of the Education Levy we'll be expanding, almost nearly doubling the number of preschool slots available to three Yay, three and four-year-olds now, not just four-year-olds, which is very exciting.

And really sort of helping us, you know, better come up with some better solutions around some of the childcare subsidy work that DEEL does and sort of grappling with realities of what I see to be still the gap in our childcare services area, which is in that birth to three space, incredibly expensive, really difficult to site many of these centers in an urban city like the city of Seattle.

And there are some investments in the FEPP levy in addition to that in terms of better supporting our childcare providers to help to make sure that they are best equipped to help us meet the needs of that very young population of children throughout our city.

So looking forward to hearing more from you about those particular issues and how we can better solve for providing some coverage in those areas of gaps in services.

Absolutely.

So I am very fortunate to work with children birth through five years old.

And one of the challenges that I face is that I have, I work with five, six different funding sources from ECAP, SBP, DSHS to SPP and private funding.

And I guess one of the great things about that is that we're offering many of our families a diverse avenue to attend our preschool, which is a dual language program.

That also offers me an opportunity to see all of the challenges and the gaps that they face as well.

You know, last year, we did not have children that were able to participate in our program because of the age requirement.

This year, because it has changed from four-year-old to three-year-old, we have eliminated that huge gap.

But there is still a lot of work to be done, especially for those families that are not part of the SPP program.

The birth to three is still facing a lot of different challenges.

From special education, that is not available for zero to three.

The early intervention is really challenged.

So there's a lot more that can be done.

So I'm excited to be a part of this team and just share.

That's great.

I know that Council Member Mosqueda and I have both talked a lot about a deep interest in that zero to three birth, zero to three age space for childcare and really do think that that's an important area of work.

And there were some, as part of the implementation plan and evaluation plan for the levy, there were some bodies of work related to policy and program implementation that are sort of, continuing to be worked on and several of those areas are on the issues that you just highlighted right now.

So including how do we deal with removing the barrier of the administrative bureaucracy of having to piecemeal different kinds of subsidies to be able to get a full day of childcare is one of them.

And then the second is, How do we get to being able to provide a longer day of care for kids in our city?

So I think right now the model is six hours, is that right, Duane?

Six hours, and so we're hoping to be able to explore models where we can have more hours available for care within our SPP program, so.

All of those things would be very exciting to be able to get your expertise on.

And for all the reasons that Council Member Gonzalez just articulated, and because it looks like your direct connection to the healthcare world via your role as the volunteer director at REWA, recognizing that the zero to three category is sometimes often proven to be the best place where we can see improvements in overall health, lifetime health, and longer longevity for healthy families and individuals if they get access to early learning opportunities zero to three.

So I see your entire resume as living out the social determinants of health and looking forward to you bringing that perspective to the board and very excited to support this nomination.

Great.

Okay.

I think we are ready to vote on this.

So this is our only item for a vote on the agenda today.

So I move that the committee recommend the City Council confirm appointment 1399.

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No abstentions.

Motion passes.

The committee will recommend that the City Council confirm appointment 1399. This appointment will be considered at the full city council meeting this Monday, September 16th.

You are always welcome to join us, but you are not required to attend that full council meeting.

So that's when we will do the final vote on your appointment.

So thank you so much for being with us, and thank you, Director Chappelle, also for being with us this morning.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

All right, so our last two agenda items are only for briefing and discussion.

There are no matters to be voted on on either of the next two agenda items.

So we will go ahead and move to agenda item two, which is a briefing on the final report of the Serious and Deadly Force Investigations Task Force.

If you are here to present on this subject matter, I invite you to join us at the table while Cody reads this item into the record.

agenda item two, briefing on the final report of the serious and deadly force investigation task force.

Thank you so much, Cody.

And I don't think we have a PowerPoint presentation on this, or we do.

Okay, so we'll get that laptop fired up.

There we go.

And then someone will need to drive that clicker.

You got it, Bessie?

Okay.

So we will go ahead and begin first by having each of you state your name for the record, and then I will hand it over to all of you to walk us through the presentation.

So names first, and then we'll go into the substance of the presentation.

Andre Taylor, founder, executive director of Not This Time.

I'm Lisa Dugard.

I'm the director of the Public Defender Association.

When I started this work, I was a commissioner on the Community Police Commission.

I'm, I guess, an alumna.

I'm here to present the result of the work.

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Jim Gradin.

I'm a retired major with the King County Sheriff's Office and Chief of Police for the City of SeaTac.

And I worked with Lisa on the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program.

Welcome.

Good morning.

I'm Bessie Marie Scott.

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

Well, thank you all for being with us.

I know that this work is quite literally been a labor of love and has taken us a long time to finally get the recommendations.

But I think that this was a tremendously important body of work that merited additional amount of time to do.

And of course, in the intervening period of time between the time we passed the resolution and the time we're sitting here now, we saw the passage, the historic passage of initiative 940, or deescalate Washington, as it was commonly referred to.

And we, I think, are now even better poised to receive these recommendations to get a better understanding of how how these recommendations and the work of the task force will blend into the statewide work in this space.

So I think, as usual, Seattle is considered a leader on many innovative, creative policy solutions, and this area around police accountability, reform, et cetera, is certainly no exception to that.

to that rule.

So really looking forward to hearing more about the recommendations and to being able to have an opportunity to share the recommendations and the work of the task force with the viewing public, which I think is a super important part of what we're about to embark on here.

Thank you so much for all of the work that you have done over the last couple of years.

I think it's been two years at this point.

As a reminder to those folks who are in the audience and watching at home, this task force came together as part and parcel of the City Council's passage of the Police Accountability Ordinance in 2017. There were some areas that we as both the City Council and together with our community partners wanted to have an opportunity to legislate but unfortunately didn't feel like we had enough detail information around concept and policy positions to be able to actually do that in the body of the police accountability ordinance.

So as a result of that, there were several areas of policy work that we decided to memorialize in a companion resolution that really provided direction, structure, and metrics around the type of work and who we wanted to see do that type of work as a follow-up to the passage of the Police Accountability Ordinance.

So this report that we're about to get briefed on this morning is part and parcel of the product of that resolution, the companion resolution that we passed in 2017, and so see this as a continuation ongoing continuation of the work that we started in 2017 with the passage of that historic piece of legislation.

And with that introduction, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to all of you.

Bessie, are you going to start us off?

I am.

Great.

It's part of my role.

I love it.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair and Council Member Mosqueda, for having us here to present this report.

I'm going to man the slides and read.

All right, so the Serious and Deadly Force Investigation Task Force was convened by the CPC, as you stated, to fulfill a legislative mandate.

Resolution 31753, the companion resolution to the Police Accountability Ordinance, which was enacted in 2017, directed the CPC to convene meetings with and lead stakeholders in assessing the feasibility of establishing mechanisms to use investigation and review processes wholly external to the Seattle Police Department for cases involving serious and deadly uses of force and provide any recommendations adopted by the stakeholder group to the council for consideration.

When the task force first convened, it began to look at the feasibility of independent investigations.

However, as you've stated, with the passage of I-940 in late 2018, the task force shifted its focus from whether it was feasible to how the city of Seattle should conduct independent investigations.

In convening the task force, the CPC invited individuals to ensure that the task force would, as a collective, have a balance of knowledge and expertise on best practices, technical expertise on SPD practices and local laws, a firm understanding of the community's expectations and desires regarding issues related to serious and deadly uses of force, and demonstrated work relevant to investigations of uses of force.

For the purposes of the task force, the term community is defined as communities who are most and disparately impacted by policing, uses of force, and officer-involved deaths.

In Seattle, these communities include, but are not limited to, Black communities, Indigenous communities, and other communities of color.

Our task force included Jim Gratton, co-chair, Andre Taylor, Co-Chair, Emma Katagi of the Community Police Commission and the Filipino Community Center, Greg Kaler of the Seattle Police Department, Leslie Cushman of the I-940 Campaign, Lisa Dugard, Public Defenders Association, Kelly Harris, City Attorney's Office, Mark Larson, King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, Jim Maher, Counsel on American Islamic Relations Washington, Michelle Merriweather, Urban League, Andrew Meyerberg, Office of Police Accountability, Sweetwater Nanook, Idle No More, and Lorena Sepine, Safe Futures Youth Center.

This task force was staffed by the CPC's current interim policy director, Karen Chung.

The Task Force met a total of nine times between April 2018 and August 2019. During this time, the Task Force developed common values and expectations, studied Seattle's current investigation processes, researched best practices and models in other jurisdictions, talk to community members, including family members of those killed by police, talk to law enforcement officers who have undergone an investigation, consulted with experts, and produced recommendations.

And we're going to go into values and the next areas next.

I'm going to hand this off to Andre.

Yes.

Before I, I'm not going to read.

Andre, you tend to project very well, but that microphone's got to be way closer to your mouth.

Okay, sure.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Are you sure?

No.

I may regret it later, but right now I feel good about this instruction.

Anyway, before I get started here, let me just say that...

being involved in what Seattle and Washington State have been doing, and particularly for the last three and a half years, have been a tremendous experience where one has to have intellectual curiosity, a learning curve.

And, you know, coming from a community that has been disadvantaged over police for many, many years, you can have a cynical view of engaging with systems or law enforcement.

Before I entertained becoming co-chair of SIDFID, one of the things that I thought was very, very important was that understanding that there are elements of my own community that probably wouldn't be a good fit at the table.

Very extreme, but wouldn't probably be a good fit.

And I told CPC that as long as we are bringing people that are willing to work together and not necessarily have to agree with everything, you know, I don't believe that you have to agree with somebody 100% of the time in order to deal with them.

And so what I have found is that on the other side of the fence is that people thought the way that I thought.

The relationships that were developed with Jim and myself and others around the table were tested.

And this is just for the community, just to let the community understand that these things can work and they do work.

Those relationships were tested and found to have been clear and true.

and whatever situation came within these many months, we overcame that together.

And I just want to encourage folks in this city, the state, just to understand that we are doing things that has never been happened before.

We have brought people that represent different communities in this space, and we have created change already with 9 40. And we want to continue to create that change with independent investigations.

So in all of our research, thanks to Karen, we went to different states, not went physically, but read about their police accountability measures around the country, independent investigations around the country.

And we found something that the community supported in New York that This independent investigation probably could only be completely independent if something is housed in the Attorney General's office.

The reason why we were interested with what New York was doing is because the community in New York seemed to have been very pleased with this process.

And I was wondering, well, wow, we want to look into that and see what is going on there that make the community in New York pleased with this process.

And what we found is that from day one, when it's housed in the Attorney General's office, there is a process of transparency, that whatever was going on every step of the way, It was a transparent process.

And it's not that law enforcement officers were being convicted at a higher rate.

It was the fact of the transparency process where the community can know every step what was going on.

Also, in New York, the attorney general left his number available to family members that had experienced tragedy.

I said, wow, this is some great things here.

And if we could structure some of what we're doing, in Seattle, by how they're doing it there in New York, I think we could get somewhere.

And so right now, to me, I just wanna state that I don't think there could be any independent investigation that is done correctly if it's housed where police are investigating other police.

I believe that the best place to house these things is an attorney general's office.

So let me just go over a couple of these values.

that are very important, all of them are, but let me just read a couple of them.

Trust, community and police have confidence in the investigations of police officers' serious and deadly uses of force.

Fair, the investigations are conducted in a manner that is impartial and is not biased against the police or the victim.

Those things are extraordinarily important.

We're not saying that We want to advantage anyone.

We want everybody to have a fair shake, and we want the process to be straight all down the line.

So with that, I want to then pass that off to Jim.

Thank you, Andre.

I would first start by echoing all of what Andre said with his opening comments.

This has been a remarkable experience.

I am very thankful that Lisa reached out to me.

She may not think that on occasion, but, and our history and experience in working on the LEAD program really, I think, led to that.

I retired six years ago.

I wasn't going to be involved in this anymore, and I am glad that she reached out to me, because as Andre says, it was important to, I think, have the right people at the table.

I have, I had nearly 39 years of police experience So I brought a lot of history to the table.

I supervised our major crimes unit.

I supervised the investigations of these very matters.

And as a command level person, passed judgment on many of these matters.

But I'm also a person who has been involved in the prosecution of a police officer in our sheriff's office for murder.

So I am aware that there are two sides to these matters always.

what I thought was one of the greatest things that came out of this, and we're in the midst of it now, is the values and expectations piece.

A prime example of kind of mind changing, when I walked into the room, I looked at the language being used, the word criminal investigation into the matter of a police officer maybe having to take someone's life.

And I had a reaction to that.

It was like, oh, no.

I supervised criminal investigations.

I was the last commander of the Green River Task Force.

I know what a criminal investigation is.

We talked through that.

We talked through that.

And it's very clear to me that's exactly what this is.

And it's the right thing to call it.

It's not meaning to label anyone.

It is this done correctly, as these investigations must be, they have to be done as a criminal investigation.

And then the chips fall where they might.

And that body of work is then passed off to others for passing judgment on what happened and what does the investigation reveal.

The pieces that we're in the midst of now, the values and expectations, I will tell you for my purposes, that I am the most proud of, of all of the work we've done, and it's been a great amount of work, Those things, if you look at them, the balance struck in them, the thoroughness of the pieces that we've looked at, the pieces that we've added.

And it took two, three meetings, I suppose, to go through this.

We were proud enough of this work to share this piece with the Criminal Justice Training Commission folks.

And in the spirit of full disclosure, I am actually working with that group also with Director Rohr on doing research on these very things, have been for about the same length of time.

But this very specific area was shared with that body, was shared with the stakeholders there, because it seems if you can't find some common ground to start, Where are you going?

If you can't agree that everybody, this has to be a process fair to everyone.

The transparency has to be for everyone.

The relationships have to be with everyone.

I know how we have evolved in policing to watch out for the psychological welfare of our police officers, along with the physical, but the psychological welfare of our police officers.

And we don't necessarily think of that when we have to do that horrible thing and take a life as a police officer.

And it is a horrible thing that no officer wants to ever have to do.

But it was an eye-opening experience to listen to Andre, his circumstances with his brother, other victim families in the room.

to have a better understanding, because I've worked with victim families forever.

I was part of the meetings with the Green River families prior to releasing the information.

We were going with Gary Ridgeway.

So I know the impact that these matters have on families.

We have to remember in law enforcement, it's the same for the families of those who have been the subject of lethal use of force.

So with that, I would probably draw your attention most to number five in the expectations.

The other overarching piece was I think we all came to a realization that people with some form of policing background are the people best suited to understand and do these investigations.

There is nothing like the experience of standing at 3 a.m.

in the middle of White Center trying to piece together a homicide investigation and the work that goes into that.

I don't think anybody who hasn't lived it, I didn't know what it was until I took over the job of supervising that, I can guarantee you.

It takes a special person, it takes a special set of skills, And those tend to have been developed within the policing world.

And I think we all came to that kind of agreement at the table was that's where the expertise might lie.

How it gets done downstream, very different question.

But I think understanding where the expertise lies.

And then particularly number five in expectations about the conflicts of interest piece.

And it can be in several different spots.

And we've seen models.

Connecticut has a very interesting model where there is an affirmative declaration within their body of their investigative work that talks about, we have asked this question affirmatively.

You must declare any kind of conflict of interest.

And it's very broadly defined for them.

And we saw this in a couple of different places where some form of this declaration of conflict of interest, for lack of a better term, I suppose, relationship conflict of interest.

It's important to get that out on the table very much up front so you don't have questions downstream.

And with that, I won't, as Andre said, we won't read you the values and expectations.

I will tell you I am very proud of that, very specifically this body of work.

Thank you.

Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you so much.

So I'm trying to sort of reconcile the last two report outs.

I think one of the things that you said was that it's really important to make sure that those who are doing the policing aren't also policing themselves.

And then I heard you say that sometimes those who are doing the policing know best how the operations happen on the ground level.

But you also then added a caveat, which is later on down the road it's important to have the expertise at the front end, but down the road, maybe a different personnel.

So can you both sort of comment on how those two items were reconciled in your recommendations?

Because they sound at first like they're at opposition, but if the difference is later on down the road, that would be helpful to know.

So if I may speak to that, if that's okay.

At the beginning of the process, it was my intent that we would have multiple recommendations for the council.

As our process evolved, as 940 was passed and 1064 moved through, it was clear that we kind of had to pick a direction.

And so as a body, and this is the weird two worlds that I live in, because I've been very forthcoming to my task force members here, I was not in a position of advocating specifically for the recommendation out of CIDFID because the state, which is just now, just broaching this piece, the investigative aspect of I-940.

there are decisions to be made by the director of the CJTC and the commission itself about where this will go.

And they will have options in front of them.

In fact, if you look at Deputy Chief Chris Pitcher's report from the city of Los Angeles, he is, was a subject matter expert that we reached out to.

There will be in that, you will see, he actually lays out, there's at least three scenarios that he lays out.

So, the direction we chose to do was to, as CIDFIT, advocate for a particular kind of outcome.

We also did it with the understanding clearly that the Attorney General's Office is not built for this right now, unlike the Attorney General's Offices across many other states, which have large bodies of investigators, or Ontario, Canada, which has an entire provincial civilian police force that polices the police, we're not built for that in this state and we're not built for it yet in this state.

It depends what direction this body wants to push and what direction the state wants to go ultimately.

So this is a, I think the other thing that we would say is we chose early on to say we're not looking at price tags.

We are saying this resonates the most with those communities that are most impacted by this.

What looks the most fair, go back to your values and expectations, what looks the most fair, what appears to be the most transparent, what has enough distance from local policing to be able to have legitimacy with community?

And if you look at the values and expectations, If you build that investigative piece correctly, that legitimacy exists for all parties involved.

So this is actually one of the central pieces of work that the task force did was to Apply the values.

Can you pull that mic closer?

Was to apply the values that Jim and Andre went over against a variety of possible models and really what that served to do was to rule out many options, either, you know, approaches.

When we all entered the room for the first time, I would say most, if not all, of the community representatives on the task force had the expectation and desire that the entirely independent investigation that we were talking about that ultimately 940 required, would be done by civilians, people with no law enforcement ties or background.

And it was an enormous journey to arrive at the awareness that the skills necessary to do the work are law enforcement skills.

There is not a pool of civilians out there that does, this is forensic work.

It is really about gathering evidence and preserving it, and it needs to be done well.

And really by the end we were talking about, you know, these cases are important enough that families and members of the public who are concerned about whether the use of deadly force was appropriate, they're entitled to the best quality work.

And also so are officers entitled to the highest quality investigations.

So once, you know, there was sort of a journey of, okay, the skill set is very important and these investigations need to draw on what is traditionally a law enforcement skill set.

The next question was, well, where could that skill set be lodged such that a mostly law enforcement team could nonetheless carry the legitimacy with the community that is the whole point of this.

Right now, these cases are investigated, and why has that failed to confer legitimacy in the outcome of those investigations?

Because there is this sense of police policing themselves.

That was the thrust behind the entire...

That actually is where this resolution came from, was that even before 940, under the consent decree, Seattle put in place, you know, one of the crown jewels of the consent decree was the internal SPD force investigation process that the judge and the monitor had a great deal to do with revising.

And we sort of started from the perspective that it was possible that those investigations were state of the art, right?

Like the actual process, the actual quality of that work.

Let's just assume for the sake of argument that that's being done incredibly well.

But there were people in the room for Serious and Deadly Force Investigation Task Force who had lost loved ones, had those events investigated by that process, and were completely unable to buy into or believe the legitimacy of that process because it was colleagues investigating colleagues and because there were findings that honestly people were legitimately skeptical of.

In Andre's brother's case particularly, there were findings that were, that stretched credulity for some members of the community and that is what prompted us all to, in the 2017 work on the accountability ordinance, to recognize that we might have failed to solve for an important piece.

The 21st Century Policing Commission, one of its central recommendations was that deadly force incidents should be investigated entirely independently of the agency that used force.

And we were behind, even though this was a process that had been vetted by and governed by the consent decree in that one way, we were behind.

So if you think through, we need law enforcement expertise, but that expertise needs to be applied in a way that people who are very skeptical of and lack a relationship of trust with law enforcement can believe in.

What does that leave us?

Like, how could we arrange this so that both values are accomplished?

And the reason that the prospect of an attorney general-hosted unit became of interest is because there are very few entities in our landscape that both have a law enforcement role and have a civil rights role.

And that blend is uniquely found, almost uniquely found.

I mean, if there is some other entity, I think we'd be interested in it.

But we cast about for, you know, what could that be?

And really, the AG is the obvious place that blends those two mandates.

Also, that is the place where this work is lodged in New York, where it has managed to achieve this degree of community legitimacy.

I want to just step back and say that it is not something to take for granted.

the leadership that was brought to bear on this work by the two men sitting on either side of me, what they, what both Jim Grattan and Andre Taylor did was say, I'm going to be, if I can speak for, if I can describe what I watched you both do, it was, I'm gonna be the gatekeeper for like, I represent an entire sector that has to feel that whatever is done in this realm is legitimate.

And I know what it would take.

You know, Jim's experience, he is an expert not only on the work, but on how people within the profession feel about the work.

And there is so much emotion.

And that was in the room.

Officers who have been involved in these incidents came and spoke to the task force.

Officers who have great pride in their work investigating these incidents.

and don't want to see that watered down or compromised.

They came.

And Jim was like the guardian of that set of interests.

And on the other side, Andre and some of the other community members in the task force were the guardians of whatever comes out of this has to pass muster with some very skeptical voices.

So if these two wings can come to a point where they say, like, I can live with this type of arrangement.

We know we've got something.

And it took a lot of work to arrive at some solutions that could meet both of those expectations.

And that occurred.

I think it is, I just want to flag in sort of our opening piece, a couple of additional points.

One is, on this question, yeah, I can start.

Yeah, I would get back to Lisa.

As far as the community perspective of what made me understand the necessity of having some form of law enforcement and the independent investigation, during my brother's case, we hired a private investigator who was ex-law enforcement.

that we recognize that he knows how the system works and, you know, and other families that have had some success around the country, when they have hired private investigators, normally they are somebody that are ex-FBI or ex-law enforcement in some capacity.

So I wanted to make sure that we had that same pool of individuals for the community, that we can not only hire ex-law enforcement, but have a standard of what that looks like.

when we hire them.

We want to control the process of the hiring and be involved in that process, right?

That's what made me a believer.

Yeah.

Are we going to move into recommendations now?

Because we don't have too much time.

But I do think that some of the nuances and the details that are raised by the question posed by Council Member Mosqueda are really found within the meat of the recommendation.

So I think it would be good for us to move into a conversation and discussion around the specifics there.

So I'm supposed to sort of facilitate that.

The point I wanted to make about process, which I think it's important to note that the Seattle Police Officers Guild was invited to participate in the task force.

And though they chose not to take up that invitation, it was thought by the CPC and the co-chairs that obviously their view of this is And that was a door that remained open throughout the entire process.

Turning, oh, and maybe last point, like where does this sit with respect to, last process point, where does this sit with respect to the state criminal justice training commission led standards and guidelines process for 940 and 1064. The commission is right in the middle of considering what should be the minimum standards for these investigations.

And it was our hope always that these, that this work in Seattle would be done in time to inform that process.

So having presented this to the council, those of us who are involved in that dialogue are doing our best to bring forward the product of this eight, nine months of sharing and problem-solving because I would say right now the Seattle process best embodies the spirit of Initiative 940 and House Bill 1064 that represented an incredible coming together of people who had lost loved ones to deadly force and the civil rights community and law enforcement organizations that found a way to hear one another deeply, like what are your interests behind your position and sort of set aside the starting point and get to a way forward that met everyone's legitimate needs.

I would say that the spirit of that work has really lived in this Seattle-based conversation, and we're hoping to share that, you know, sense that we can arrive at a place that everyone feels meets their legitimate needs.

That conversation is unclear how that's going to work out.

But the state, I think the key point is that the state approach is, as was required in 940, to set minimum standards.

It's not to dictate exactly, as long as an investigation meets those minimum standards, a local community will all be allowed to go forward.

So for Seattle, the question is, you know, what options do, does this community want to have available to it to choose from?

Assuming that they meet the minimum standards, what is the optimal way to go about this work?

That question will not be answered by the state process.

Okay, recommendations.

So the long-term planning to prevent, the thrust here is that Optimally, these instances are incredibly rare and no amount of legitimate and fair and illuminating investigation can compensate for the harm done when there is an avoidable use of force.

So that all emphasis must be on prevention, non-escalation, de-escalation, so really centering that value.

Several of the recommendations are about the experience of families who lose someone in these incidents.

And that testimony can easily sort of fall to the side as we're discussing the investigation process and findings.

But really, the way in which individuals in this situation are dealt with has a lot to do with the long-term ramifications and effect.

And I'm sitting next to somebody who's gone through that.

My office represents, and we're representing the family of Charlena Lyles right now going through that inquest process.

And I can say how much of the...

the trauma has to do with things that are so avoidable, not getting information timely, not being in a position to be with your loved one as they pass, not having the incident treated as a loss in the way that people who, who have a family member who's a victim of a serious crime are treated as victims.

This was something that we rapidly all came together around, that this needs to be built into the default approach to this work.

So support, good communication at the time, and liaison functions, and regular and timely communication.

There's also recommendation around the way in which these incidents are talked about to not victimize someone who is lost, recognizing their humanity, that whatever was going on at that instant, people are much more than the set of events that were unfolding at the point that they lost their life, and that that is how many in the community hold them, has implications for how the law enforcement agency and others are talking about what happened in the immediate aftermath.

So going to the investigation itself, number five, requiring what Jim called out, requiring that the investigators demonstrate a commitment to integrity and civil rights and involve community members in hiring.

This is part of that balance of if this is largely going to be drawing on a law enforcement pool, make sure that these are special folks within law enforcement, which, you know, there are such people.

There are many such people, one of them sitting to my left.

And we need folks who can rapidly build the belief that they are there to follow the facts and the truth wherever those lead and they will do the right thing as the facts dictate.

So again, a selection process that ensures that it is a special team that blends those qualities.

And then the leadership, much like with, I'm turning to look at Andrew Meyerberg, who leads the Office of Police Accountability, he leads sworn staff, but he himself, is a civilian who has persuaded communities who have trust issues with law enforcement that he holds dear commitment to fairness and equity and built that confidence.

Similarly, this unit or the people doing this work need to be led by somebody who has effectively demonstrated that kind of commitment.

We've covered number seven about having access to the appropriate skills and expertise, and eight with conflicts, Jim's point that disclosure is paramount.

Time frame for completing investigations, the sequencing of investigations is really important, and I won't go down the rabbit hole here of criminal procedure, although I know Council Member Gonzalez I definitely could.

But so the challenge is, if this is a criminal investigation, it can't, so there's the administrative investigation in which a department decides whether or not policy was violated and whether discipline should be imposed.

And that, by definition, has to be separated out from, to some degree, the criminal investigation because officers can be compelled and are compelled to give interviews to the administrative process, and those interviews cannot pollute, if you will, the criminal investigation, or that confers immunity from possible criminal prosecution for those individual officers.

So the orchestration of the two, administrative and criminal investigations in parallel, is challenging.

We, I think, have figured out that that can be done.

But everyone proceeding rapidly in their own lane is imperative in order to reach a conclusion in both conversations in a timely way that satisfies the public expectation of sort of finality and closure and where the events are not so stale that it is defeating the purpose.

more about timely reports that the investigation itself needs to support a public conversation and various accountability processes.

And so it's sort of work product needs to be publicly available timely.

Spoke about the media policy.

And then number 13, really something that Inspector General Lisa Judge, who's also with us here, championed is that each one of these events, as with a medical loss, if somebody, you know, dies in the hospital unexpectedly, that without prejudging or judging that anybody did anything wrong, it's still an important opportunity to learn whatever lessons there are.

And so to use these sentinel events as an opportunity to learn and to build in a process that will ensure that that happens.

We've covered the structural recommendation that there be an attorney general based unit that can do this work.

And I want to say that one of the competing, maybe the main competing model for this is to have the local law enforcement entity, the SPD in this case, turn over the investigation to a peer law enforcement agency right now, SPD is doing that with the sheriff's office, or do that with a task force that's regional.

So that exists in Snohomish County and in South King County.

That's the easiest, honestly, it's the easiest route to go, and it is entirely independent, and it is not, we have a sort of a box called out in the report to illuminate that.

In our view, it is not likely that that will accomplish the goal of community legitimacy because we have seen, number one, we've seen those task force investigations fail to meet minimum standards of quality.

And there's a particular story from Linwood with a smart team in Snohomish County that really caused people to lose a lot of confidence in that model.

Not only did the investigation fail to interview key witnesses and the evidence that the private investigator, as in Andre's brother's case, came up with cast the incident in an entirely different light.

But the prosecutor in that case vouched for the work of the task force as a strong and independent investigation.

And so it's concerning that it's sort of a way of creating a false sense that something of high quality has gone on just because it was independent.

Something can be independent and poor.

We're looking for something that is independent and strong.

And so this task force model is not a recommendation that emerged, even though it is the most obvious thing.

And honestly, it's the most likely thing for communities and agencies around the state to champion.

We have serious concerns that that can meet the standards and the values and expectations of SADDFIT.

I'll stop there.

All right.

So that takes us to the end of the recommendations.

There's obviously a much longer, lengthier report that goes into all the granular details of each of these recommendations.

And I've had an opportunity to take a look at the report and the details around the report.

You know, I think that there are some questions that still remain for me, including sort of prioritization of the recommendations.

So, you know, if there is an opportunity to hear from members of the task force, sort of a level of prioritization in terms of what would be important to sort of tackle quickly, or is it the opinion of the task force that it would be important to do this all at once?

Obviously, there are things in the report that are certainly within the control of the City of Seattle, and then there are things that are not.

You know, we can't mandate that the Washington State Attorney General's Office create a unit.

We can certainly have conversations with Attorney General Ferguson around the recommendations and the interest in that particular area.

And so if there has already been some thought put into a concept around prioritization, I'd love to hear those thoughts now, or if there needs to be some time to reflect and think about that, I'm happy to hear that as well.

I guess what I would say is that in looking at these and looking at the body of work I've been doing for the CJTC, there are some low-hanging fruit pieces, more to the point of that.

Some of the things like the declarations of conflicts of interest.

That would be something, and I realize there are labor issues involved in all of these, and that's wholly understood.

But something like that, something like the discussions around family liaisons, because I can tell you from an investigator's perspective, it is imperative.

We build relationships with the families of homicide victims.

We absolutely build relationships with them.

And I mean some that last, that are lifelong relationships.

It's imperative within the investigative work to build those relationships.

It's imperative for us to build those relationships with the families of deceased, even if it's at the hands of a police officer.

We also need to understand, and this was a monumental piece of our last meeting, How do you allow that to happen?

Who does that best?

And because we, you know, honestly, you know, we're the cops, we're gonna go do that.

That's our job and we know how to do it.

But that's not...

the best approach.

So how do we deal with or through a more culturally competent family liaison, someone who has, you know, who isn't part of the body that just took your loved one away, even in the broader governmental sense.

So I think things like that could be looked at very, very quickly.

I think the...

That's a need that currently exists that doesn't necessarily require an overhaul of a system reform, for example.

And the transparency of reports, the ability, the promise, if you will, to, you know, make these things public.

A few of the states, Colorado being one, before an event ever happens, each governmental entity in the state of Colorado is mandated by Colorado state law to have on their website, for lack of a better term, accessible to the public in advance, what is the procedure involved if you have a deadly use of force?

And it's a pushing it out as opposed to, you know, come get it from me and jump through some hoops.

I mean, you can go to the websites for the 12th Judicial District of Colorado, and it's there on their website.

Things like that that really open doors.

And, you know, there's nothing to hide.

I mean, there's no reason for a body to hide what are, you know, in essence, public documents anyway.

So I think things like that could seem to be low-hanging fruit that I think you could really start this with.

I think dividing the recommendations into within the control of the city and needing to be on the state legislative agenda is a really good way of parsing these recommendations.

One piece that may not have arisen in the enumerated recommendations that's really important and that we became clear is needed is a protocol for turning the scene over.

So no matter what, right, there's an incident, the only people there at the scene are SPD officers And there's going to be an independent investigation.

So that scene has to be turned over.

It has to be secured.

Evidence has to be preserved.

Evanescent evidence, evidence that can go away, has to be preserved.

And the whole situation has to be turned over intact and in good order to another entity.

So no matter who that other entity is and whether it's an attorney general-led unit or some other resolution that many of us would not be as enthusiastic about, there still has to be that protocol, and it pretty much looks the same.

So work on that protocol, which, you know, one of the consultants, Chief Pitcher, did a lot of work, and there was a lot of dialogue among the law enforcement folks relating to the task force.

That work could probably start now and usefully be worked through so that whatever the end result is about the options that are available, The road there for these individual cases is already really well structured and done in a way, again, that officers know that they're being treated fairly and family members and community members know what the rules are and would be able to identify if they were deviated from.

Okay.

So I think as a follow-up to today, it would be really helpful to come up with some form of potential implementation plan on some of the recommendations, which is the one thing that I see missing.

So I love reports, love recommendations, I love action even more.

So I think that for me, it's really important to begin the process of identifying a concrete implementation plan to begin the process of really putting some of these recommendations into action, and I think that's been something that we've continuously struggled with in this space at the city, is we are very good at generating reports, but not as great at following through on the recommendations in the reports, and I certainly don't want to create a precedent of that happening on this body of work.

So, you know, I think in the area of assistance for families, to me, that seems like a really great place to start that doesn't require a lot of system reform, but will require some resources.

And obviously, we are about to embark on our council budget process, and there's an opportunity for us to have a deeper conversation around the proposals and recommendations in the Assistance for Families bucket of recommendations in the report.

And in that area, it talks about really four concrete, excuse me, three concrete recommendations.

The first is to create a fund for community-based organizations to provide financial assistance to family members who die as a result of use of force.

Those costs could be used, according to the report, for funeral costs, mental health counseling, crime scene cleanup, temporary relocation, if the use of force occurred at a residence and other associated medical costs.

And the report goes on to recommend that the city should also fund community organizations to conduct healing circles and utilize a restorative justice approach to address critical incidents.

And so there will be some additional questions you'll hear from me around sort of which city agency would be responsible for that particular oversight of that fund, if it is done in a grant-making model as suggested by the report, what are sort of the accountability and performance metrics that we expect, and then, of course, making sure that we have a solid sense of how this interplays, if at all, with a potential statewide lobbying agenda item related to modification of who gets to qualify from crime victims compensation at the state level, which I see as a potential connection here, right?

So many, as somebody who used to represent survivors and victims of violent crimes, I have personally walked my former clients through the process of qualifying for crime victims compensation, and it always seemed to me that there was a gap in that area in terms of who gets to actually qualify for that crime victim compensation at the state level.

I think there might be an opportunity to have at least an initial conversation with our state legislature around how to redefine that or broaden the definition now that we have I-940 in place to complement this proposal at the city level.

So that's one thing that I think I'd be really interested in seeing more granular detail and thinking around how do we actually put recommendation number two into practice.

I think three is similar when we're talking about liaisons.

Unlike recommendation number two, there wasn't a recommendation, there wasn't a specific detail in recommendation number three around Who would house the liaisons?

And so I think that's an important conversation for us to have.

Is this somebody at our human services department?

Is it also contracted out?

Is it work that's going to be contracted out?

If it's going to be contracted out, who is monitoring those contracts to, again, ensure quality control and continuous improvement to make sure that liaisons are actually not adding to the problem, but doing what the intent is.

And I think that's another potential funding policy program development area that needs, that I would really appreciate getting more guidance from you all on.

And then lastly, number four.

The communications piece, I think some of the same questions arise for me in reading that section that I just discussed as it relates to recommendation number three.

So I see that area as probably the area of sort of short, the closest short term.

potential of implementation.

And, of course, the rest of the recommendations around the independent investigations and some of the other areas are, of course, of real strong interest to me as well, but certainly seem like they're going to need a little bit more runway to be able to establish and get into place, considering some collective bargaining issues and also some potential need to speak with our partners at the state level around implementation of some of these issues.

So, and I know that the CJCC is still working on their recommendations as well and sort of figuring out how to reconcile the two to make sure that they're not in conflict but complementary to each other is going to be an important part, I think, of next steps as it relates to the independent investigation bucket.

and then continuous improvement and some of the statewide issues that you all highlighted in this report.

So that's my cliff notes, my big takeaways on this body of work and how I sort of would like to propose that we move forward in terms of these.

recommendations.

We obviously have only two more committee hearings and we won't have time to sort of publicly report out on that implementation plan, but we will have an opportunity to work directly with all of you on how do we really develop some action points and deliverables in this budget cycle and moving forward into next year to make sure that we don't lose the thread and the momentum on the results of these recommendations.

That's sort of my suggestion.

Happy to hear any reactions or thoughts.

Andre, you look pensive.

Everything okay?

What I don't want is for Seattle to have an opportunity to continue to do what we've been doing.

And leading takes tough choices.

That's just what it is.

And what we do, I'm not just saying this to be saying it, it's true that other cities and states are looking very closely at all the moves we are making today.

And communities are looking at us, not only here, but all over.

And I would like when the opportunity is given to us for us to do much as we can to take advantage of those opportunities.

When those doors open, we got to close those doors and fix what needs to be fixed.

And I would hope that that would be at the top of our thought process.

I don't want to just be a city that we're just talking about change.

Everybody's talking about it.

But like you said, no deliverables, no action.

So the motto of my organization is do the work.

So I just don't want to miss any opportunities.

We're at a very difficult place in the country, and the country's looking for leadership.

What do we do about these situations?

We are closer than anybody to show that pathway and that map.

Our people all over, here and everywhere, they need some direction, and I don't want to miss that opportunity.

And I just want to make sure that I'm partnering, that we're all partnering with you, the city, to make sure that happens.

And, you know, so that's just my thoughts.

Yeah, great.

Good, good, good caution because sometimes we do a bunch of work and we get a solid set of recommendations and then we end up wringing our hands for a little bit longer before we implement and that's not what I'm suggesting.

I am suggesting though that we begin to put pen to paper around how do we implement the things that we know we can implement right away that will have the, I see will have the greatest impact in terms of positive impact to families who are currently or will regrettably be in a position to experience the loss of a loved one as a result of the use of force.

And so that's why I was sort of focusing in on the assistance to families as sort of that area that seems to me to have, you know, potential deep impact that, you know, we have sort of a unique moment in time to be able to do something this fall about.

And so I don't want to lose the moment to be able to begin chipping away at these recommendations in a way that feels meaningful with the understanding that we're going to work together to make sure that we can come up with identifiable timelines and milestones on some of the other issues and recommendations that have been identified in the report to make sure we don't end up in a situation where things just get shelved.

We definitely need the city support.

There's not a lot of organizations outside of Not This Time that are directly dealing with families that have lost someone to police violence and our bandwidth.

Listen, the shootings are so, oh man, you know, helping one family and you got to take them all through this process and somebody else gets killed and they call you and somebody else gets killed a week after that.

You know, we do need some help.

We need some support.

When we started Not This Time, there was never a space created for families, ever, you know.

And as you know that when my brother and we went through this situation, my family, we didn't have anybody to turn to, no one to talk to.

And one of the reasons I created Not This Time is because I said to myself, if I could help and not another family in reach will ever have to go through something like that.

But creating that space and you practically the only organizations that's doing this particular kind of work, it's overwhelming because you don't have a lot of bandwidth.

So we definitely need that type of support if the city could commit to something like that, that would be beneficial for families.

Absolutely.

Great.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments, Council Member Mosqueda?

Okay.

Well, thank you all so much.

We are at the end of our time here together.

And really, again, my sincerest appreciation and gratitude to all of the members of the task force, including the co-chairs.

Thank you for your leadership in this space.

I know that this is just in many ways the kickoff point for the meaningful change that we want to create within our communities.

and sort of the positive impact that we want to leave in terms of a legacy of justice and fairness for families who unfortunately have to experience or may experience losing a loved one in this context.

While also making sure that we prioritize the concepts around procedural justice so that the entire system has legitimacy both amongst law enforcement and amongst families and survivors of use of force.

I think those are all things that have been exemplified by the work and the membership of the task force, and really want to give you all a lot of credit for centering those values and those expectations first and foremost in community, but also having a broad enough definition of community to understand that it really does take a diverse set of voices to find consensus and build true coalition.

And I know that in the I-940 context, you all did, and people who aren't in this room, did a tremendous amount of work to truly put people in uncomfortable situations to have real conversations about solutions that could benefit everyone who works and is touched in this space regardless of what your title is and what your position is in this world.

And so really, I've heard over and over again from legislators and people who participated in that process that they just deeply appreciated the diversity of voices in those rooms that really sort of yielded historic cooperation and conversations amongst people who would ordinarily never even think about speaking to each other about these issues because of the, you know, schism in terms of thinking at the beginning of the process.

So that is to be commended.

And I know that many folks have talked about how tremendous the journey has been and how the journey has directly contributed to the work that we're seeing being done at the state now and also at the city.

So a huge thanks to all of you for that work, because I know it was It's a big lift and it'll continue to be a big lift in the future.

So thank you all so much for being with us this morning and for your work.

Thank you.

We'll be in touch for sure.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and transition to our last agenda item, which is a briefing on our safety RFP.

I'm gonna, if you were here to make a presentation on that, I'm gonna ask you to help us do the transition here at the table, and then Cody will read this item into the agenda.

And we have 30 minutes allotted for this conversation, so we should be done right at 11.30.

Agenda item three, briefing by the Human Services Department on the 2019 Safety RFP Awards for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Cody.

All right.

So we're going to go ahead and start with introductions.

We got late breaking news that Interim Director Jason Johnson would not be able to join us this morning.

So we have a couple of other representatives from the Human Services Department.

So, Tonya, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you.

You'll start with introductions.

And then, Tonya, are you going to kick us off on the presentation?

Great.

All right.

Let's do introductions, and then we'll hear this exciting, wonderful news around awards in the safety RFP.

Absolutely.

Good morning.

Tonya Kim with the Seattle Human Services Department.

Robin Rosenberg, Strategic Advisor with Human Services.

Welcome, both of you.

Thank you.

So we have been talking about the safety request for proposal for several years now.

And so I'll provide a little bit of context.

So apologies if you've heard this multiple times, but want to make sure that everyone can hear it one more time with some context so we can get to the real, the punchline today, which is the results of the process itself.

Today we're going to briefly go over the RFP itself, the guidelines that we were asking for.

We'll talk briefly about the application and selection process, where we're at.

We have the funding recommendations for you.

The agencies are aware and what next steps are.

Great, thank you.

As I had mentioned, we have been discussing this for several years with council in various iterations of different council members, as well as with different mayors.

And so I know that the community has really been challenged with the different iterations and our community engagement.

I just want to show appreciation for people's patience as we move through our safety investment.

The other quick note that I wanted to offer is that we have some dedicated staff who have put so much time and energy into developing this RFP.

And I'll explain a little bit.

It wasn't our conventional process in which we developed a funding proposal.

We started several years ago doing community engagement.

We knew that it was time to do a new RFP.

And then in the meantime, there was a needs assessment that came out that really highlighted some new challenges and some gaps in our current investment areas.

So with that, really with the support of council and with the previous mayor, was asked to look at our investments and do something differently.

Well, then we have Mayor Jenny Durkin who was very supportive of both community and the process and asked us to co-design this work with our not only existing providers, but others who have a stake in this effort.

So we slowed it down.

Previously, we were expected to release the RFP in 2018. And we slowed it down, entered a co-design, and we're then scheduled to release it in 2019, which we did.

So what shifted?

Some of the things that the needs assessment, as well as lots of other studies that have come out recently, and we've been, you're very versed in this, we know that there are some shifts in crime data and also community need.

And so through our planning process, we ultimately decided to take our disparate portfolio of good contracts, good providers, but wanting to develop one theory of change, having these agencies drive towards the same result.

And so through this request for proposal, ultimately what we want to see the providers doing is ensuring that those that they work with are very focused.

And so we have identified that we wanted to focus on people who have been harmed by the criminal legal system.

And we expect that our agencies, successful agencies, are able to ensure that those they support, support them to live in Seattle for their most full lives without being further harmed by the system.

In order to do that, we got even more specific.

Previously in our investments, we were serving various age groups.

There was one initiative, the Seattle Youth Alliance Prevention Initiative, which is a part of this, that focused on youth, so those under 18. What we found was that through the data and additional needs assessment, There was a gap of serving young adults, so the 18 to 24-year-old age group.

And so we identified that as a priority population, not exclusively, but needing to focus services for that population.

And then finally, we wanted to make a commitment and really look at our racial disparity data and double down on really focusing on three specific populations, and that is ensuring that we're working specifically with the American Indian Alaska native indigenous population, black African American, African descent, including immigrant refugees, as well as the Hispanic, Latinx, and indigenous populations.

And so getting more specific, because $4.4 million sounds like a lot of money, but it isn't.

It's certainly, it's a meaningful investment, but it isn't, 4.4 million dollars is not going to meet the current scale of the need in this space for sure.

Correct.

Oh, Council Member Musqueda.

On the previous slide, you talked about prioritizing the youth population 18 or young adult population 18 to 24 under your theory of change.

I guess this is a question more for Director Johnson, but I'm happy that you both are here to potentially answer this.

You know, we have been engaged in conversations with organizations who specifically serve the youth population as it relates tangentially to homelessness and being unstably housed and repeatedly the organizations have said that we need to have a theory of change specific to youth and young adults.

Why in this situation are we applying a theory of change that looks at youth and young adults and we aren't applying that, for example, to the pay for performance standards in the HSD contracts for those who are serving folks who are unstably housed and homeless, like what's the distinction that we are applying to this RFP versus the other RFPs where we've heard repeatedly people want there to be a focus on youth and young adults?

And you might not be well equipped to answer the question on the other side of the house, but if you could at a minimum give us the information about why the 18 to 24 population here is that could be, yeah, that's fine.

And that could be illustrative for us.

Again, yeah, I think it may be more of a director question, which we are happy to redirect if you do have thoughts, so that'd be helpful.

I have a couple initial thoughts.

And so within youth and family empowerment, we actually invest more in youth development than we do in safety.

So we have well over $4 million plus, because not only do we have a request for proposal, which I'll talk about, later on, we do have investments for youth development, pre-employment, is that we also have our Seattle Youth Employment Program as well.

And so we have a large investment area for not only our direct services and youth development, but also the contracts that we have.

So, it is a significant presence there.

Within that, I can tell you that we do work with different populations who are at greatest risk.

And so, for some of those, they are the individual's youth who are unstably housed.

They are included in those investments.

For this, the reason why we got specific is because this is where not only the crime data was showing, but it was that there was a service gap.

And so because we do offer significant investments in youth development for youth, this is where we wanted to focus.

But what I will say when we get to those that we are funding through this RFP, we are still funding.

young people who are under 18, as well as of all ages, and so we can get to that in a few slides.

Very briefly, so there's a theory of change, it's theoretical, but what we're asking agencies to do is work with individuals and families harmed by the criminal legal system to get their basic needs met.

Our hypothesis is that if individuals of this population are getting their basic needs met, then they're able to be set up for success.

The second thing that we found is critical is that their trauma is also met.

And so we didn't want it to be an option.

We wanted to make sure that the organizations who can provide those services are also ensuring that they're not re-traumatizing or at least at the minimum addressing the trauma that they've already, you know, engaged in because of all sorts of things.

But in particular, the interactions with negative experiences.

So moving through that, I didn't give additional information because the philosophy is if we do this request for proposal and we state what we want, we knew that agencies would come to us with some solutions.

And so really through the application process, they said here's what, here's who we are, here's what we've been doing in the community, and here are the specific services around systems navigation, around trauma intervention.

So just so I'm clear on that, Tonya, the RFP overview strategies, which focus on the systems navigation and the trauma intervention, those were communicated to potential applicants as sort of principles of the work, but not necessarily directive of the kind of programmatic services that would need to be provided.

Is that, am I capturing, am I understanding that correctly?

That's correct.

So we gave examples of what that could look like.

And so in return, when we got applications, agencies told us we will address this community by offering this particular service.

And so for example, case management, restorative justice, reentry services, et cetera.

Okay, thank you.

So, as mentioned, it was released in spring of 2019. This is just to show you that we went through the engagement of, you know, definitely having the community meetings through the information sessions.

We had help sessions, which is something that we wanted to apply.

That's not a standard, but we wanted to apply because what we heard from council, as well as with the mayor's office, is we need to make sure that these funds are accessible to organizations.

It is difficult sometimes for agencies, especially emerging agencies, to access our awards.

So we had help sessions where they were one-on-one supports.

The deadline was in June.

We had a phenomenal, very diverse rating panel who their role is to give the recommendations and the department approves.

So they gave us their funding recommendations.

It was a thorough process.

We agreed with their recommendations.

And so we made the announcements just recently, September 5th, and here we are circling back to give you that information.

Great.

And Tanya, in terms of the, between the help sessions and the applications received, was there a delta there in terms of the number of organizations who showed up at the help session and the number of applications received?

And if there was a delta, what was it?

Absolutely, great question.

I can follow up with you on that.

I can tell you off the top of my head, we had over 60 people attend the information sessions.

And then we received 25 applications, 24 were eligible for review.

And so that just highlights, you know, and really it's because I think a lot of agencies were curious.

We also did something different, which is we had a, information session online, which made it even more accessible, as well as in person.

And so we certainly, and that's not uncommon, but we had a lot of organizations interested.

The other is because I said that there is a shift, and so people really needed to understand what is the change.

And there are some agencies who we currently work with for whatever reason didn't apply.

And I can only assume maybe it's because they thought that perhaps it no longer fit their mission or their service area.

It could be that lots of different reasons why people choose not to.

But the point being that there wasn't like a survey follow-up to evaluate or get a better understanding from some of these agencies who decided not to apply.

We have not surveyed them yet.

Okay.

Is that something that you all are interested in doing or planning to do?

We did not plan to do that, but we are interested.

Yeah, so we can follow up on that.

I think that's a really good question.

I do think it would be important to do something like that.

I mean, obviously, like not everybody is forced to complete the survey, but I do think that to your point, which I've heard before, not just in the HSD context, but in many of our RFP processes and grant processes, It is, I think, really important to continue to acknowledge that sometimes our grant making process and application process can be perceived to be or is in fact overly burdensome from emerging and smaller community-based organizations who might otherwise actually be doing really great work, but might not have the capacity to actually follow through on their desire to want to be a grantee.

And so I think we have to continue to improve our own processes, and I think a really key way to do that is to get a clear understanding directly from the people who initially expressed interest but then decided not to apply why they made that decision.

I suspect that some of the intuitions that you have about why are probably accurate, but it's always good to hear it directly from the potential applicants and potential grantees as to their motivation, as to what made the difference for them, particularly from those agencies who had received funding in this space before who decided not to apply at all.

So I just think that that would be instructive to the continuous improvement process of this grant, which is going to continue to exist for years to come, I imagine.

That's excellent feedback.

Thanks.

So you'll see in some of the upcoming slides to some of the newer agencies and frankly some organizations that I've not personally worked with.

And so I think to that end, I'm hoping that we had made it more accessible.

But in sum, we did have 25 proposals, 24 were eligible for review, and that's just logistics based on kind of the way you do business with us, the city.

We do have about $4.4 million that was included in this RFP with, and you know this, this is probably not shocking to you, that the request was over $10 million.

So here we are with the recommendations.

And so this is a slide that really just highlights the 14 organizations that we are proposing to fund and move forward for contracting.

What I wanted to highlight is that there are five organizations who are new to HSD.

And like I said, some of these organizations are, you know, have their volunteers or they've been doing this grassroots work.

And so, you know, I think that it's always a challenge when you don't renew contracts, but at the same time, At some point we all had our start in doing this work, and it's exciting to see some organizations join our team as well.

And so here are the 14. You could see that we have many organizations who are returning to HSD.

Some of them are new to this specific safety investment.

So for example, You just had at the table Public Defender Association.

They're not new to the city.

They have other contracts with us, but they're new to this portfolio.

And so we've got a mix of organizations.

There are also organizations who are part of the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative, specifically, who are also returning with us.

On this particular slide, I think it would be helpful to have this layered with the theory of change information.

So I can guess, but it's hard for me to directly understand sort of the information around what's The priority population is 18 to 24. Are they serving all 18 to 24-year-olds, some of those on the lower end, on the higher end?

Who is it that they're serving, and then the focus population?

for each of these organizations would also be helpful.

Absolutely, and we can send that to you right away.

We have a lot of documentation of this.

Yeah, no, I don't doubt that you have the data.

It just didn't make its way into this chart, and I appreciate why it didn't, for brevity's sake, but if, as a follow-up, we can have that additional granular detail, that would be helpful.

Absolutely.

So here is the challenging portion.

And so these are the proposals that are not recommended for funding.

And notably, you could see in the second column where we have current contracts with these agencies.

And so we have the total requested amount there, just so you could see what the proposal was, but really wanted to highlight the contracts that they currently have with us, which is of $1.4 million worth of current investments that will no longer move forward in our next iteration.

They've been notified, and I have additional information on how we're going to support them in the upcoming year.

And then what was the, in terms of why these organizations were not chosen for an award, what was the criteria or, I won't say reasons, because I know that the appeals process is still ongoing, but can you give us a sense of what the criteria was that led to this result?

Yeah, I have some general understanding.

So one is some of the applications or the interviews themselves, so through the application process, there is a written and then also an oral interview.

Sometimes the information that they were trying to convey wasn't clear.

It wasn't clear or they didn't provide enough information to, in competition with others.

they didn't score as high.

And so really some of it is just purely how it was presented.

The other is some of the organizations acted as a pass-through entity and we were asking how these providers would be working with people to, you know, ensure that they had their needs met as well as the trauma-informed approach.

And so while they could be compelling if another organization if they were doing that work directly, chances are that they scored a little bit higher in that realm too.

There are a couple others where there are proposals where they were introducing maybe some models that really didn't meet the theory of change.

And so, for different reasons, but those are some of the takeaways.

Council Member Skadden.

Thank you.

So I want to underscore what Chair Gonzalez mentioned earlier as we've been part of past RFP awards either in this capacity or on previous boards.

I think it really is important to recognize as it sounds like you guys do especially when it comes to oral defense of the RFP proposals or even the written submission of the request.

Not everybody comes with the same skills and capacities and so having the follow-up or exit process to let folks know either why they didn't get the full amount or why they didn't get any amount.

I think it's helpful for us to understand what kind of technical assistance we may need to provide to organizations in the future.

So just underscoring that point she already made.

And then number two, the thing that I think would be of interest to both of us given our at-large positions it would be helpful to see how these awards geographically are spread across the city.

And was that part of the criteria that was looked at for the awarding of these funds?

So first, we are providing technical assistance.

And so we let all the organizations know if they wanted to follow up with us and know more about the specifics of their proposal, the feedback, et cetera.

We would be happy to do that after the appeals process.

And so we offered that, absolutely.

And we've been scheduling that.

Second is geography was not a requirement, though I can assure you, because we did look at that, that we have representation across the city.

And so it's in a couple different ways.

One is because a focus, for example, was of an ethnic group or a language that spans the city, or it was through geography, and so we were able to look at that.

But we can follow up if you would like some more specific information.

Yeah, and in the follow-up, if you could focus less on where the place the organization is located and more on where the people they serve are, that would be helpful.

I find that sometimes we focus on like, you know, this, like Concejo, which is located in district blah, and it's like, just because it's located in that district doesn't mean that it's only serving people in that district.

So it would be, I think more helpful and frankly more precise to know of the, you know, sort of 18 to 24 population and the focus population where are their clients, you know, generally coming from.

Is it statewide?

Is it specific to a particular geography?

What is it, you know, who is being targeted where I think is the more salient relevant piece of information.

We didn't ask where people resided, but it was a requirement that the services are offered within the city limits.

But we did make a requirement to describe who their focus population is, and so we'll definitely call that information and give that to you.

Great.

Thank you.

And so the next steps that I wanted to We just reinforces that we are currently in the appeal process these these awards are for a January 1 contract start and one thing that I alluded to previously that I wanted to mention today is that our mayor was supportive of the process and paused when she saw the number of organizations that we're currently working with who are not moving forward.

And so she is asking our department through a proposed budget ad in 2020 to work with the organizations to have one-year transitional funds.

And so we are committed with the approval of the budget to work with those agencies that we're currently funded with who are not moving forward.

for one more year of transitional support.

And so that is something that we think will be important through their previous iteration of safety work or whatnot to move them through this time of transition.

And the transition fund will be for the existing current contract.

So on the proposals not awarded, the proposed budget ad would be at $1.4 million.

There's a slight nuance, which is it's 1.3, and it's only because we didn't want to give a government entity some transition dollars.

And so our focus was.

King County Superior Court doesn't get transition dollars.

They don't.

It's for community-based organizations acknowledging that this is a particular time of transition.

And then finally, related actually, I would say, is that we do have another funding opportunity.

It is competitive, but it will be released in the spring of 2020. And those are our youth development pre-employment dollars.

And so going back to the question of what about youth, here's an opportunity for some of those agencies feel that our shift was too great, here's another opportunity to apply for funds.

And so I think that is something we've put on everybody's radar, it is coming out, and then that RFP will impact the following year's contracts.

And what's the total amount of that RFP?

I do not have that, but I know it's several million, but I don't have the exact dollar amount.

Okay.

All right, any other questions or comments, Council Member Esqueda?

No, thank you.

Thank you for answering the question and taking back the kind of...

ways in which we can harmonize our commitment to youth and young adults across the department, even with the creation of the regional governance body.

I think that kind of application and early intervention approach is helpful in many of the subdivisions within the department.

So having a greater sense of how that theory of change is applied across the department will be helpful.

So we'll look forward to some follow-up from the director.

Thanks.

Anything else, Tanya or Robin, that you'd like to add?

Okay.

Well, thank you so much for the work in this space.

I know that it was a long process and timeline and really do appreciate your work to really get in the weeds in terms of identifying what the theory of change should be and could be, and doing that in collaboration with and in conversation with service providers over, it was about a year worth of conversation with many of the service providers.

And also really want to thank the mayor and you all for the addressing sort of the funding gap that was created as a result of not renewing some of these contracts for a period of one year while also acknowledging that some of the organizations who were funded could potentially be competitive in this other area that seems to be perhaps more programmatically aligned with prior work.

And so I think those are important components to making sure that we continue to address the important needs of youth and young adults that are served by some of the organizations who weren't funded.

that, you know, my understanding is that the funding decision wasn't made because they weren't performing, but because of the theory of change on our end, it wasn't perhaps quite the fit.

And so really want to thank the mayor and you all for acknowledging those gaps and coming up with proactive solutions in advance for our consideration in the budget process this year.

All right.

So we don't have anything else.

And this was our last agenda item for today.

So there being no further business before the committee, we are adjourned.

Thank you.