Seattle City Council Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee 2/13/19

Good morning.

Today is Wednesday, February 13th, 2019. It is 9.31 a.m.

This is our regularly scheduled meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee.

I'm Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, chair of this committee, and joining me at the table is Councilmember Rob Johnson.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning.

Good morning.

There are two items on today's agenda.

First, we're going to hear from the Seattle Police Department and the City Budget Office and their response to a statement of legislative intent regarding the Seattle Police Department staffing data retention and hiring strategies that the City Council adopted in the fall of 2018. 18 during our last budget process and welcome Council Member Mosqueda.

Then we will discuss Council Bill 119461 in ordinance that would create an incentive program for hiring lateral police officers to the Seattle Police Department as proposed by the Mayor.

We will not take a vote on Council Bill 119461. This is a initial conversation to hear from the executive the rationale for the proposed ordinance and to allow council members an opportunity to ask questions and highlight particular amendments that they might be interested in that central staff could begin the process of working on in anticipation of the second hearing where we will hear amendments and have a potential vote on the bill.

Okay, so before we get started, we always start with public testimony.

Nobody has signed up to provide us with any public comments, so is there anybody in the audience who thought they wanted to sign up but didn't have an opportunity to, given that the audience is full of reporters and...

City staff, I suspect the answer is no.

Okay, so we're going to go ahead and close out public comment.

And I will go ahead and ask Roxanna to read.

Roxanna, can you actually read both agenda items into the record in the event that we want to go back and forth?

That would be helpful.

And then if you were here to present on these issues, I'd invite you to join us at the table.

Agenda item one, response to slide 38-6-A-2, Seattle Police Department staffing data and retention and hiring strategies for briefing and discussion.

Agenda item two, council bill 119461, an ordinance relating to creating an incentive program for hiring lateral police officers for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

OK, so we will, let me just give a little preview about what the run of show is going to be here.

So I'm going to ask each of you to just introduce yourselves for the record.

So we have your name readily available to us.

And then I'm going to make a couple of introductory remarks.

And then, Greg, are you going to kick it off with sort of a framing of the slide?

And then we can go ahead and dig in.

How does that sound?

Great.

OK, introductions.

Greg Doss, Council of Central Staff.

Carrie McNally, Seattle Police Department.

I'm one of the recruiters.

Mike Fields, HR Director with Seattle Police.

Angela Sossi, SPD Finance.

Ben Noble, City Budget Director.

Leah Tivoli, Acting Director of Innovation and Performance.

Great, well thank you all for being here today.

This issue around hiring, recruitment, and retention at the Seattle Police Department is something that I know I have been working on as a council member since I started on the city council, I guess it's three years ago now.

time is flown.

And I just wanted to really highlight the fact that this City Council does take this issue very seriously.

It is something that since I've been on the City Council, the City Council has taken budget-related actions in order to facilitate the police department's ability to recruit, hire, and retain additional officers.

And so this is a continuation of that body of work and a continuation of our commitment as a city council to fulfill what I think we understand to be our duty and obligation to deliver public safety services to the people who live in Seattle, who work in Seattle, and who visit this great city.

So I really appreciate your all's collective effort in that regard in working with my office and with central staff to set up a collaborative, transparent process that will allow us to effectively consider and discuss some evidence-based practices that could really create some positive change in terms of the trends that we're seeing with hiring and attrition at the police department, which I know is not unique to the Seattle Police Department.

This is an issue that is faced by many police departments across the country.

It is a national trend, and a lot of police agencies like the Seattle Police Department are taking a serious look at a variety of different tools that they could be using in order to attract new recruits and also lateral hires.

So of course, we are having this conversation in the context of other people also trying to utilize some of the same tools that we're using.

So I'm excited about having the conversation today as a first step towards setting the table for additional consideration and discussion around how we can best support the police department's efforts in recruiting and retention in this particular environment that we are dealing with.

So that being said, I'm going to hand it over to Greg who, if you will kindly do so, set up the framework for the statement of legislative intent and then we'll go ahead and hand it over to the executive to provide us their report.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Greg Dawes, Council Central staff.

As you point out, Council has had an interest in police hiring and retention.

And as the city became aware last summer, both at the Police Department and at the Council, that separations were higher than normal and recruiting was down, the Council asked for some information and the Executive provided it.

really got a look at the data for the first time.

And the council then passed slide 38-6A-2, which asked to be regularly informed about the data, specifically data that shows actuals, both separations and hires through the last month.

And then most importantly, projections for the next two years moving forward.

And then that data is to come on a monthly basis, and we received that data two, three weeks ago, I believe.

And then quarterly, the department will be providing updates like this one here today on the recruitment activities that have happened over the prior quarter, the planned recruitment activities, and then the reasons for separations.

As officers are separating and talking about the reasons they're leaving, they'll be, they're recorded by the department and they'll talk a little bit more about that today.

So that's a tee-up.

It's an ongoing effort.

I should also mention that there is an executive effort, a work group that is getting together that does include council staff that is looking at the issue.

And I will leave it to the department to tell you more about that.

Great.

Thank you, Greg.

And I just want to thank council members Herbold, Johnson, Mosqueda, and O'Brien for being the original, my original co-sponsors on the statement of legislative intent that you just discussed, Greg.

And I really, truly appreciated their support.

of my efforts to make sure that we have as much available data as we can to really be able to evaluate, analyze, and consider proposals that are responsive to what some of the trends are at the police department.

So thank you all for being my co-sponsors.

It was our pleasure, Madam Chair.

I did give you a choice.

Just kidding.

Okay, so let's head over to the executive and whoever wants to kick us off.

Is that you, Mike?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mike Fields, HR Director with Seattle Police.

And let me just say at the outset that we really appreciate the collaboration that we've had so far and look to enjoy moving into 2019 on this important issue.

Thank you.

So I'll be working off the slides.

This is an overview of the 2019 sworn recruitment strategy.

We'll start with a three-year retrospective on applicants, the hires that resulted from those applicants, and the diversity of those hires.

So looking at the first slide.

This really paints the picture.

You can see from 2016 through 2018 just the aggregate number of folks who sat for our entry-level test is off 30%.

Next slide shows a similar trend, although a little more drastic with those taking our lateral test.

We're off 48% during that same timeframe with laterals sitting for our test.

And I just note that these declines from 2016 to 18 are despite increasing in-person outreach and advertising over the same time period.

The next slide shows the resulting trend in hires.

We had three very strong years historically for us in 2015, 16, and 17. And then as you can see, saw a significant downturn last year that mirrored the number of applicants decreasing as well.

Of note is that our conversion rate or the ratio of folks hired to those who applied has remained roughly constant over this same time period.

This slide talks about an overview of community outreach and I thought I'd ask Detective McNally to speak to that.

Detective Carrie McNally.

One of the things that we certainly have recognized is that community outreach actually yields us much more, many more candidates than we do a traditional job fair.

The idea is the better that we can connect with our community members, the more we can talk to them about the opportunities within the police department.

We historically are at 25 to 30 different community events a year.

and set up recruiting booths at those events, and we bring out officers from across the department to augment our staffing at those events to make sure that we're representative of patrol, other specialty units, and opportunities.

We have employed, I think you'll talk about it later, but we have asked repeatedly throughout the department for anybody who wants to help with recruiting efforts.

And we bring in people who have a genuine interest in either have they grown up in the area, they want to work with members of their community, they want to be part of the recruiting efforts, and so we bring them alongside us.

There are two of us full-time, but we have a staff of more than 50 or 60 different department members who are interested in helping with that process, which gives us a greater reach into the community, I believe.

Great.

And these community outreach examples that you gave on this particular side, the Police Explorers, Summer Youth Employment, and Late Night Programs, It seems like these are primarily focused on new recruits as opposed to laterals, is that correct?

Correct, because this is a way we also, the Police Explorer Program is from ages 14 to 21, and it gives us an opportunity to work with youth in particular that have an interest in this job and give them the job skills that they need to get them used to what the department looks like.

It also goes to the youth employment program, too, because we recognize, having been at several conferences across the country, this isn't an issue of we can just go out and find people right now that want to get hired.

If we don't start looking at a pipeline of how do we make sure that we have people that are coming in in five years and ten years from now, we're going to continue seeing this problem.

And so youth engagement's a high priority for us as a department and also from the recruiting perspective as well.

outreach at a younger age too to get them ready and prepared to get hired when they're of age.

And then of course the community events we engage with people who probably never thought about being a police officer.

They've been an entire career somewhere else and now they're seeing this opportunity that maybe they didn't have before and so I think that our recruits cross both boundaries.

We have people that come on at 21 and 22, and we have people that are coming on at 50, because this is something they always wanted to do, but now they have the, they're ready for it, and we can give them the help that they need to get on the department.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

I'm interested to hear a little bit more about the type of community events that you're talking about.

How did SPD choose the events that we're participating in?

What type of events are those?

We go to every community festival, so Pista Sanayan, we go to Seafair, we go to, we're engaged in the parades at Torchlight.

We're going to the Women's Show.

We've gone to the Women's Show for the last 20 years.

So we are honestly willing to go to any event that we get invited to.

And so that goes to our relationships with the community is that we are constantly seeking opportunities for us to be present.

We come in not in, full uniform will come in in a polo shirt or our BDUs to engage with people.

We bring along people that can try on uniforms and try on.

We go to Dragon Fest every year and we end up engaging with thousands of people throughout the day.

And we bring along, again, gear and things like that so people can put their kids in vests and get them excited about, you know, us engaging with them and getting to know us.

We are going to be attending, I believe it's an event on March 17th here with the Iranian community.

So we are always looking for opportunities and any invitation that we get.

We try to, one way or the other, we make sure that we have somebody there.

So even if one of the two of us can't be there, we will find some of our recruiting support team that can also set up and engage with members of the community.

So essentially, we say yes to everything.

And you'll see that by some of the events that we go to and over 100 events a year, because we don't say no.

If someone calls us and says we have an event that's coming up, we will make sure and make an effort to be there.

Great, and then one more question.

In terms of the type of material that you're bringing, it sounds like there's a diverse audience that you're reaching out to.

How are we working to ensure that there's a racial justice lens applied to the material?

Who's developing that?

Are we getting community feedback?

And are we applying a racial justice lens to the type of community events that we're going to?

So if we saw a map and we overlaid it with communities of color, lower income communities, diverse communities in terms of speaking multiple languages, How are we using that racial justice tool on our materials and outreach strategy?

So I came to the unit in 2015. And one of the first things that we had done, I had been involved in the Refugee Women's Institute.

And so we had worked closely with Joaquin Yu from the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

And we looked at it from a media lens as we asked him to give us all of the ethnic and diverse media outlets in the city of Seattle.

And so we put a great deal of effort into making sure that we are utilizing our recruiting materials into different communities.

We don't do stock pictures, so we don't stand by and take a picture to make sure that we have everybody represented.

We use photos from events that we actually attended in the community.

Because I think that's very important that it's a genuine response to the way that we do advertising.

We have, me having come to the unit, one of the things I was asked was about women, about how do we increase the amount of women that come into the department.

And I started our first ever Women in Law Enforcement Career Fair.

with that lens.

And so we reached out to other agencies.

The first event we did, I had more than 58 agencies there.

And most of the recruiters were women.

And so we've tried to employ different tactics with different communities.

We listened to what the community asks us for.

And it goes back to the recruiting support team.

So with the 50 to 60 different officers that we have, we asked them what their background was.

what brought you into this job.

And so we've been able to use them in different communities based on their interest in working in those communities.

And so that's been an important aspect for us, too, is we listen to our officers.

We ask everybody in the department to send us ideas or events that are coming up.

Whether it's they have a relationship, they can bring us along, and we can continue that relationship.

And so all of our efforts, we have a diversity statement in all of our literature, our website.

We are, there's some efforts that we're going to be looking at bringing in some outside people to take a look at that as well to make sure that we're not missing that lens.

And we try to make sure that we are reflective of our agency, which I think is an incredibly diverse agency, and that's what we highlight.

And I know that the next slide is going to hit on the diversity numbers and work that you all have been doing.

If I could just add.

Sure.

Some of the best ideas that we've had in this arena have come from the community themselves.

Our recruiters have literally thousands of touch points with prospective applicants.

We get to hear what's going on in their mind, why Seattle versus somewhere else, why policing versus some other career.

And one of the things we heard that was also echoed in the CPC's hiring report was that folks want to see people that look like them at events in materials.

And so we've really worked on that.

I think that's important.

You can saturate a community with advertising, but if it just for historical reasons never occurred to folks in that community to look to a career in law enforcement, then I think it's falling on deaf ears.

And so, as Detective McNally said, the recruiting cadre has been a really interesting and, I think, successful part of our overall strategy.

So moving to our next slide, the efforts that we just detailed have been productive.

You can see the trend in the hiring of people of color from 2013 through last year, to the point where last year at 42% of our incoming recruits being people of color was more diverse than the city or county as a whole.

So that number is moving in the right direction, but it's certainly something that will remain.

I don't know if that's something we should be focused on.

Mike, on this particular slide, do you have a sense of the 42% how many are new hires versus laterals?

We do.

I don't as I'm sitting here today, but we certainly track that data and can provide that.

That would be really helpful.

One of the issues that is teed up in relation to the council bill around lateral hire ordinances is new hires, and I think there's a legitimate policy conversation that we need to have around that particular issue, because if what we are seeing in terms of the progress around racial diversity is more in the new hire space, then I wouldn't want to compromise the department's success and trends in this space by skewing too much in favor of the laterals.

could create the unintended consequence of impacting some of the positive work that the department has done to increase diversity within the department.

Understood.

We'll provide that.

Thank you.

I'd be interested in seeing the demographic breakdown behind the scenes If you can hand that over for us and then one more question, I know you said at the beginning I just didn't quite catch it.

What is the y-axis here?

Is this increase in diversity hiring or is this total population of folks working at SPD?

Great question.

It's a total of those incoming in any given year.

So it's not a those working as a total population of the department.

But for example, in 2018, 42% of those coming in were people of color, not a percentage increase number.

It's a broad number.

And so 42%, the N equals?

Well, the total was 68 total hires.

OK, thank you.

And just so I'm clear, the demographic breakdown, just the specific.

Yeah, just a desegregation of the racial demographics.

Happy to do it.

Okay, so in terms of factors that are affecting SPD's hiring pace, these include the national market being tight for police recruits, incentives being offered by other jurisdictions, housing and commute issues that Seattle deals with.

generally low unemployment, negative perceptions of policing nationwide, and the residual effects of the SPOG contract.

Although settled now, we're still dealing with some of those residual effects.

Mike, I noticed you didn't have a bullet point for snowpocalypse.

That might not help as well.

Or a bullet point about the lip-sync competition that might have factored in positively for affecting hiring.

Absolutely.

Mike, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the national shortage piece, you know, as part of the discourse here.

I think it'd be helpful to know if this is a problem that's unique to us or it's one experience.

Absolutely, and if you'd allow me, I'll advance one slide while I talk about it.

So, a couple things.

One is we talked to our colleagues around the country.

This is almost job one at this point, just maintaining staffing, being able to respond to 911 calls.

I recently read that 80% of large jurisdictions in this country have a significant number of vacancies currently.

So 80% of large agencies currently have what were characterized as significant number of vacancies.

You're always going to have a few as people come in and out.

When you start moving to dozens or in some cases hundreds of vacancies, even in departments of a similar size to us, it becomes an issue.

There's a fair bit of research and literature on this and it's interesting.

One piece is as you look at folks who are 25 to 35, as was done in one study, just the overall interest of that group.

in going into a law enforcement career versus 10 or 20 years ago is just different.

And there's lots of societal reasons for that.

But the net effect is we're all competing for a very small number of folks.

And so as we travel nationally and certainly see it regionally, the high number of vacancies, incentives, benefits other than pay that jurisdictions are able to offer makes it a tight labor market.

Mike, I'm just going to ask you a really pointed question because there's a narrative that is floating out there that somehow requiring officers to engage in constitutional policing is the root cause for the hiring issues and retention issues both at the department and across the country.

And I'd like to give you as a representative of the Seattle Police Department an opportunity to respond to that particular I, of course, have my own opinion, but would like to really provide you an opportunity on behalf of the Seattle Police Department to talk about that particular assertion.

And let me start by saying it will likely be helpful for this body at some point to see either the actual exit interviews of our officers or a summary of that, however you would like to see it and hear from officers in their own words the reason they're leaving.

Constitutional policing is not an issue that is cited for folks laterally to other departments or getting out of the profession.

So I think to answer your question, the constitutional policing piece is not a driver on this trend.

I mean, I think we almost have a perfect storm of historically low unemployment, a demographic bubble both in Seattle and nationwide with a bunch of folks who were hired in the 80s and now we're seeing them leave.

So the attrition number is there, and as a result, We have jurisdictions everywhere adding folks as quickly as they can.

And so I think that is really the driver, the macro driver.

And I appreciate you providing us that clarity.

I think it's important for us to recognize a lot of the work that the police department has been able to accomplish in our efforts to to reform the department in a manner that is consistent with our expectations under the Constitution and to respect people's civil rights.

And I believe that that work has been in large part able to be accomplished because of the hard work of many of the officers that we're asking to operate in this new environment.

And I appreciate the fact that we have officers, a vast majority of officers who who are ready and willing and able to participate in the additional trainings that give them the tools that are necessary to make sure that they are policing to the best standards and practices in this particular space.

So I think it's really important for us to make sure that we are are highlighting the real root causes and drivers of these issues, as opposed to pointing the finger at legitimate civil rights concerns that I believe are shared not just in the community, but on the city council, in the mayor's office, and also by the police department.

And I appreciate your honesty in terms of helping us understand what the real drivers are here.

As you know, Chief Best is completely committed to the constitutional policing, hiring folks who are supportive of that and retaining folks who are supportive of that.

So full agreement.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, if I may also editorialize for a brief moment.

Absolutely.

I think one of the other things that should be said here is that if we didn't have full faith and confidence that that set of reforms is actually working.

We wouldn't have been positively asking for more officers to be brought on to the force and putting resources into the budget year over year to allow us to try to not just hire replacements for those that have retired, but also to hire new officers in addition to that.

And we also probably would have had a different approach to the renewal of the policing contract and the raises associated with that policing contract.

So there's also kind of a counter narrative out there that suggests that in some way, shape or form this council does not believe in the good work that officers do on the ground.

And I think that our actions, particularly in the budget space, tell a very different story there.

And so I think it's important for us to highlight that as well.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So the good chair was just talking about the real driving forces.

And I think, again, not unique to Seattle, we see this across the country, but we have staggering statistics that show that our housing costs, our childcare costs are really creating a tremendous impact on working families' ability to stay in the city.

And we hear anecdotally of a lot of officers who are now having to commute in or who have been pushed further and further away and their commute time is longer.

Can you talk a little bit about whether or not we have statistics on how many folks are having to commute in and the cost of housing being a driving factor?

I'm also interested in whether or not you've heard anecdotally or if there's any studies or statistics as you're out there talking to folks about whether or not the lack of access to childcare is a recruitment barrier.

And, you know, we have very limited resources obviously at the city.

We're going to continue to work on that.

But as we try to think about where we put additional resources to make sure that there is a fully staffed force, also trying to figure out if our resources are good investments in terms of additional housing stock for workforce housing and affordable childcare, especially for our middle income families as well as low income.

Absolutely.

We hear regularly and Carrie can elaborate but we hear regularly from folks who right now are in the enviable position of being able to sort of pick which jurisdiction they want to work in.

I mean, everyone is hiring in this region, and so you can work north, south, central.

And so certainly a factor as one is starting their career would be Seattle median home price versus somewhere south or north home price.

And we hear about that.

And if one does choose to live north or south, then as we all know, you're driving a fair bit of time to get to work.

So anecdotally, that issue comes up all the time.

We, with the recent SPOG contract, we are the highest paid agency in the state, but it's not by that much.

I'll just say that, and of course that was very helpful and appreciated.

But when people are making their calculus of where they want to work, other factors are coming into play.

And housing and commute are certainly a piece of that.

Child care, we do hear about challenges with child care and really work-life balance.

We work three watches around the clock.

And certainly, initially, there's limited, if any, ability to choose where, when, et cetera, you're going to be assigned patrol.

And that's difficult.

And so the work-life balance, child care being a piece of that, And Carrie, I don't know if you care to elaborate on that piece.

Yeah, just as Mike was saying, that's always something that people consider, especially when they're trying to relocate from another location.

Our cost of living is very high.

And so, as he was talking about, I think that people are definitely more interested in work-life balance.

And when you are commuting two hours a day, and that's time away from your family, other agencies around our area, first of all, I've been here for 29 years.

I would never choose a different agency, but there are fantastic law enforcement agencies all around our area.

So people do have a lot of choices.

And many other agencies have take-home cars.

They can also don't have to worry about the commute in and out of Seattle.

So it does make it more attractive.

And then throw on top of there that incentive that has been offered by many other agencies.

It is attractive, especially if you're a patrol officer going to another agency where you're going to be working patrol.

Not having to commute, having a take-home car, all of those things factor into maybe the reasons that they're leaving the agency.

And for new candidates, that's a genuine concern, too, is where am I going to live and raise my family?

You know, we do a great deal of outreach across the country.

So while we do a lot of efforts here locally, we do it across the country, too.

And that's a pretty big ask, is to relocate your entire family to an area you're unfamiliar with, with the housing prices that we have, and then where are you going to commute and live for your family.

entry-level and certainly laterals it's it's a consideration for everybody and I think it does factor into the people who are choosing to go it under agency that they don't have that commute perhaps And they already live in those areas and commute in so I think that it's affecting our attrition and entry-level for sure and of course if the council decides to approve the incentive

hiring bonus.

Those are unrestricted funds, as we like to say in city budget talk, which means that the hires are allowed to use those dollars any way that they wish, including to address some of the affordability issues that you all have just highlighted.

And then, Mike, before you move on, can we go back to the slide that shows the number-taking entry-level test and the number-taking lateral test?

So these two slides are specific to Seattle, and we just had a conversation about how this is a national trend.

Do you have an understanding of whether these trends are consistent with what we are seeing nationally or if these numbers are outliers?

Certainly when you talk to our colleagues across the country and read the literature, a significant decrease in both applicants and hires has been seen nationwide and within the region, and that's generating the number of vacancies that we're seeing.

So we don't have any data that indicates to us that these numbers exceed what the national trend is?

No, and in fact, there are many jurisdictions who are roughly the same size as we are that are carrying vacancies in the hundreds, as opposed to the dozens that we are carrying currently.

So in some instances, we're actually seeing a smaller degree of vacancies.

We still have vacancies, but we're not in the hundreds of vacancies as compared to other similarly sized police departments.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

You bet.

Okay, so to address the challenges that we've been talking about, we're pursuing a two-pronged approach.

The first is participation in a workgroup that we'll talk more about here in a moment.

And the second are a number of immediate steps that SPD is undertaking to try to jumpstart our numbers.

And for the workgroup piece, I will hand it over to Leah.

Hi, so I'm Leah Tivoli.

I am the acting director of innovation and performance.

And we are a team that partners with city departments to provide additional capacity for problem solving.

And part of our team includes some specialized skill sets, such as data analytics and human-centered design.

And we are partnering with Seattle Police Department to convene an interdepartmental working group.

And so I'm going to go through the composition, the approach, and some components of the work product.

Thank you.

So in terms of the composition of the work group, we are bringing together our team along with, of course, the police department, Seattle Department of Human Resources, city budget office, and the council.

And we're looking to perform a deep dive into the challenges SPD is currently facing around recruitment and potentially retention.

And one of the ways we're looking at this is thinking through what are the national best practices as.

Mike has mentioned that we are not the only city facing these challenges, and so looking to other partners such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and others to understand how they've been working through these challenges as well is really important.

We'll be looking at SBD's performance using internal and public data, and then developing long-term strategies together collaboratively.

All right, next slide, please.

So part of this approach is looking at quantitative and qualitative data to better understand the drivers, looking at how we can define and narrow this problem the city seeks to solve.

This is a huge problem space, and so thinking through what piece of this problem the workgroup really wants to address is important.

And then looking through how we can assess the options for meeting SPD's workforce needs and projecting the impacts that we expect to see if we go forward in some of these spaces.

And one of the things that I think will make this workgroup a little unique is we're looking to prototype and test some of these recommendations.

So building on the current base of knowledge that the CPC has put together that, you know, other partners have put together, and then thinking through how can we prototype and understand what these recommendations are actually going to create as an impact is important, and then culminating in a report.

So lastly, in terms of our final work product, we'll be looking to create some new research.

So we have two phases of research.

We are looking at the analysis of options and projected impacts, looking to put together recommendations and a final report in September.

So, I know that central staff, Greg, I think you're sitting on this work group, and then Cody Ryder from my office is also sitting in on the work group.

And one of the things I'd like to do is, as we are setting up the goal of having a final report for September of 2019, as I like to see more concrete deadlines related to the anticipated completion date for research phase one, research phase two, and these other components, just because I want to make sure that we stay on track.

I feel a sense of urgency in making sure that we have the benefit of that final report in September and in time for our budget process.

We share the sense of urgency, and I think we can identify some useful check-ins, and we'd be looking for the same, so that's great.

Yeah, as we know, setting, putting deadlines upon ourselves, it makes it a lot more likely that we will actually fulfill the stated intent and commitment, so I appreciate that.

Helps to focus the mind.

Yes.

One of the issues that was brought up earlier in discussion was the fact that some other of our peer jurisdictions locally offer officers the chance to drive their patrol car home.

I would assume that for a fleet of our size that there are a lot of complications associated with that, but I wonder as part of the peer research whether or not any other jurisdictions of similar size allow for that benefit.

Um, that may allow some of us, um, an easier way to help provide an additional benefit that, um, those who are choosing to work at, um, Mercer Island's police department or at, uh, the county sheriff's department as opposed to SPD, where we might be able to offer them that kind of benefit without necessarily having to scrub within the budget process itself.

Not to say that that wouldn't have budgetary impacts, but it may be a smaller budgetary impact than others.

So as you conduct that research, I'd be interested to know whether or not jurisdictions of our size have offered that as a benefit, and what the pros and cons obviously would be.

And I have some little spark of a memory somewhere in the back of my brain that is reminding me that I think at some point the department did have this as an incentive.

And so to the extent that that's true, I'd like to hear that and then any rationale as to why it isn't there anymore.

There are some positions that have take-home vehicles that are essentially their on-call status.

But the fleet is driven 24-7 pretty hard, so we don't have a vehicle for every officer.

We have enough vehicles to meet the patrol at any given time over the three watches.

I think we need to understand better whether this is a benefit that's seen in other urban environments, large cities.

And I think the budgetary impact painfully would be significant, but I think we need to understand it.

Because again, to be clear, we need to turn over every rock.

I mean, we need to get a handle on this and see what we can do.

And as they say, there's nothing off the table, at least here initially.

And of course, we're not proposing it at this juncture.

We're just highlighting one of the things that has been discussed at the table already as sort of a benefit that's available somewhere else, but not here.

Doesn't necessarily mean that we're gonna take the bait on offering those benefits as well, but in the spirit of turning over every rock, it would be, I think, a helpful exercise to at least evaluate, legitimately evaluate some of these options and then make a determination as to whether or not we're gonna pursue it.

And it would be totally strange for me as the transit guy to suggest that we buy a lot more city cars.

Indeed.

Our climate change friends are cringing right now.

But if there's availability in the fleet and it's one of those things that would make or break the difference for a dozen officers, we could certainly use those dozen officers.

And again, I'm not promoting this because I worry about the budgetary impacts.

But just to highlight, because of the 24-7 nature and the three watchers, it is one of the reasons that transit isn't inherently viable.

for all officers at all times, also given the locations of the precinct aren't necessarily served well.

So, I mean, there is a legitimate issue there around transit and getting officers to precincts.

Yes.

Thank you.

So, quick question.

You mentioned, you referenced pulling from previous reports and work of the CPC.

Can you be a little bit more explicit?

How is the CPC going to be involved in the work of the work group?

So we have just initiated meetings with the CPC and IG to talk with them and develop a more collaborative approach.

So more to come.

All right, great.

And then I assume, similar to the conversation we had about recruitment and outreach, the RSGI element of the type of work that you're doing, the work group's focus, there would be an element of RSGI analysis to this as well.

Yes, correct.

And we're looking at demographic data in all of the data sets that have it currently available.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay, so as I mentioned, in addition to the work group that we just talked about, that we really have a sense of urgency within SBD to take some immediate actions.

Based on best practices, again, based on the thousands of interactions that we have with prospective applicants and a review of the literature, I'd add that all the steps that we'll describe here in a moment will be reviewed regularly moving into 2019 so we can make course corrections as necessary.

So the strategies themselves separate into four categories, the first being related to branding and social media.

Here we have retaining some outside help to help us articulate really the concise value proposition of being an SPD officer, an overhaul of our recruiting website, improvement in our use of social media, including making sure that all of our platforms are optimized for mobile.

and use of analytics to refine our advertising.

And again, all of these efforts are really to generate a consistent, concise message about why someone would want to work for SPD, why we are an employer of choice, what differentiates us from other jurisdictions.

On that last strategy, number five, so this is using the SEO function, the search engine.

I can't remember what the O stands for.

optimization or something like that?

Is that accurate?

No.

We're not looking at any search optimization, meaning generating different search results or otherwise.

We're talking about trying to figure out how folks are being driven to our recruiting website.

What advertising is beneficial, in other words?

So it's not optimization.

It's more understanding of how people find us so that we can make sure we're being wise in how we allocate our advertising funds.

Okay, that's helpful, because if it was SEO, I was going to throw up a flag of caution and concern about, you know, where our ads could end up without us knowing that they're ending up in perhaps websites that we're not interested in attracting people.

Thank you for that, and agreed.

So this will be more analyzing how folks found us as opposed to pushing out ads on Google or otherwise.

Okay.

Yeah.

Helpful, thank you.

Sure.

The next slide deals with lateral recruitment.

First, our out-of-state lateral tests, which were planned last fall to encompass four cities, Indianapolis, Honolulu, Atlanta, and Houston, where we're taking our testing process to these cities.

We're looking for large, diverse population centers, locations with large police agencies, and places that our wages would be competitive.

And so all these tests will be completed by the end of March, and we will evaluate their success at that time.

Second is the lateral hiring incentive, which we'll discuss as part of the next agenda item.

The next is a quality of life issue and right now we have a part time officer program that requires three years of service before one would become eligible to participate.

So we're looking to expand that and make entry level officers eligible.

Again, work life balance pieces and trying to increase the funnel on folks who are applying to the department.

And Mike, that's just, that's within the authority of management to be able to make this policy change.

In other words, it doesn't require legislation or any other trigger.

Correct.

We currently have a part-time program.

It would just really be a change in our business rules around how we administer that.

It would likely be a touchstone with SPOG, more of a heads up.

Don't see it as a bargaining issue, but in terms of our ability to do it without legislation, I believe that's right.

Can you let me know if that changes, please?

Absolutely.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

I'm a little curious about this assumption here that we would think that people would want to have more full-time work.

What have you heard from folks about the desire to have part-time work?

Are they working other jobs in maybe Renton or Kent or wherever they're living and this would be a nice way to complement their other employment or are they truly working just part-time?

The folks who currently take advantage of our part-time program are just working for SPD.

And it's typically folks who just had a child and want to do this for three years, for example.

The interest that we've received anecdotally from prospective applicants has been more along that line, like hey, I want to finish my college degree.

Hey, I want to start a family.

So I'd also see this as we try it and see if this is productive and if it's not or if folks are working a second job and it's really not serving the purpose for which it was intended, then we can phase it out.

The part-time program currently, I think it would be important to retain that flexibility.

So basically what you are proposing is that we allow more people to take advantage of a part-time opportunity.

And C, turning over every opportunity we can think of much interest in this, but maybe we will.

And so throw it out there.

And again, we're working on the business rules around this, maybe containing it to the first 20 people who showed interest in case we had an overwhelming response.

But it'd be interesting to see if this opened up another category of applicant that otherwise felt like they just couldn't do this work.

Next slide talks about direct outreach efforts where we build on what has been successful.

We talked a bit about that earlier, and that's our recruiting cadre video vignettes that we've produced that then get plugged into various social media outlets that really are intended to personalize our officers and give folks a sense of why people came to SPD, what the job is really like, that it's a helping profession, and attempt to personalize our officers that way.

And then we're also considering looking at physical aptitude testing boot camps to make sure that folks either are prepared for the physical test when that comes, or perhaps to demystify it, because it can be intimidating in concept, but when you get in there and see what it actually is, maybe it's not as bad as folks thought.

So we're going to be looking at that as well.

And you're going to tell us how much all this stuff is going to cost?

Yes, when that is fleshed out.

Thank you.

Sure.

And then lastly is the staffing summary table.

And I would kick that over to Angela to speak about briefly.

Yeah, so we have historically reported to council and worked collaboratively to do our best to model out staffing, looking back at historical trends and also projecting out two to three years at a time, primarily for budgeting purposes.

But it has also become a useful tool in exercises such as this as we're trying to anticipate what the next couple years are going to hold.

So there's been a lot of confusion around this.

We have tracked our staffing this way as far back as like 1998. Our staffing is, really is cyclical.

Mike touched on it a little bit earlier.

We have seen, I think in each decade, big hiring spikes at one point or another.

And so what we're seeing now, the demographic bubble that he was talking about, generated from a big hiring push in the 80s.

And so looking back here, you can see that it is, at the end of the recession, we were retaining a lot more people.

When the economy was, when people were struggling and their retirement accounts weren't quite as healthy as they wanted them to be.

And so typically what we'll see is a dip down in our attrition then followed by an uptick as those people are are within retirement age, as their retirement accounts start to build up, they then start to depart, sometimes delayed.

We saw that at the end of the tech bubble.

We had a similar departure that was delayed, where you had a lot of people who were eligible for retirement but chose to stay on a little bit longer.

to then depart in the early 2000s.

That was followed by another big hiring push in 2006, 2008. The city made a pretty significant investment in increasing our force at that time.

So happy to answer any questions that you have about the table or the materials that were provided with the slide response.

And I think, Greg, we're going to get into that a little bit more queue up the conversation around the actual ordinance.

So I think we'll hold on some of those questions for now and give Greg an opportunity to sort of walk us through his memo and issues unless you all want to add a little bit more texture before we do that.

As an example of data, we have been and will continue to provide on a regular basis so you can see where we stand and understand the various elements, you know, where we are on separation, so retirements or lateral exits, where we are on the recruitment side, and everything gets here.

So it's a lot of numbers, but once you start watching the trends month to month and, you know, over the course of the year, you get a feel for it.

And, of course, the SLI response.

The document attached to the slide response has a lot more granular detail in terms of the nitty-gritty around hires, both in the new hires versus laterals, and it also breaks it down by precinct.

appreciate that additional granular detail around those particular issues.

Customer Johnson.

Can I just ask a quick question about separation assessments?

You know generally we've been in those you know for the last five or six years in that 50 or 60 range and then all of a sudden we had the big boom in 2018 where we had almost twice as many separations as we had new hires.

Are our projections for 19 and 20 based off of those that are of retirement age and we can anticipate, or is that, you know, based on some other set of HR-related conversations?

Talk to me about the projections for 2019 and 2020 separations.

Yeah, so it's a blend.

We look at separations from the recruit.

The recruit level, the student officer level, and then also the fully trained officers.

For the 2014 to 18, or 2014 to 17, we saw about 4% to 5% of our fully trained officers a TRIT.

and use that as our metric to forecast the separations.

In 2018, we saw a spike in those numbers where we hadn't in the previous few years.

The student officers and recruits, those fluctuate as we've had these big hiring pushes.

It is hard to anticipate how many people aren't going to make it through that process.

But we typically, we base that on historical performance.

The fully trained officers though is, we typically see consistency in that category.

So with the big spike in 2018, for a lot of the reasons that Mike has already touched on, We look at that, the separations, as a percentage of the total number of fully trained officers.

As that number increases, we obviously are going to see more people eligible for retirement.

And so that number does naturally increase over time, but only slightly.

2018 was an anomaly.

What we did for 2019 and 2020 was increase that fully trained separation number projection slightly to account for what we saw in 2018, but stuck with the same method for the other two.

So is it fair to say then this is a pretty conservative assumption about the number of officers that we may lose in 2019 and 2020 due to separation, as well as a pretty conservative estimate of the number of officers we may hire in the same time period?

I would say that it is a pretty conservative forecast just because we use this primarily as a budgeting tool.

We, you know, we're open to, our goal now is to bring on more officers, but historically what we've used this for is to budget and make sure that we're not overfilling our positions or hiring more people than we actually have because we have to anticipate attrition and hire somebody, we have to start the process for hiring somebody or replacing somebody 18 months in advance.

And so we do our best to project or anticipate that attrition.

Because we missed our mark last year, we are now just in a big push to try and fill as many positions as we can.

The 90 and 91, though, that's consistent with the methods that we've used previously.

I mean, I just want to add a slightly differing view here that I, although I may agree that for purposes of crunching the numbers, this might be, from the department's perspective, a conservative.

estimate.

However, I think from the perspective of just setting the realistic goal of hiring targets based on historical data that we have seen in this space from the police department, I think these are overly aggressive numbers in terms of the forecasted new hires for 2019 and 2020. What this is telling me is that the police department is saying that it's going to go from 68 new hires in 2018 to 104. And even at best times at 2016 and 2017, I mean, it is very rare for us to hit that mark above 100. I have ongoing concerns that I expressed last year during the budget process about I don't think that we are signaling to community a particular goal that we then are unable to realistically meet based on evaluation of historical data.

I don't have a high level of confidence in this forecasted number for 2019 and 2020. I appreciate that you all are ambitious in wanting to accomplish that.

I don't want to deter your ambition in that.

But I also think that we need to be honest brokers with the take the issue of recruitment of police officers seriously.

And I think an appropriate response to that is to put up a serious hiring target, and I continue to have concerns around 104 being unrealistic.

My comments about the conservative projections were with regards to the separations only.

You're not wrong that the our hiring targets are aggressive and it is an attempt to make up for lost ground from the last couple years.

And I acknowledge that.

I just I do not want members of the public to walk away with the impression that that 104 is the realistic hiring target and I know that we have engaged in conversations with the executive around the potential need to modify that hiring target to be a more reasonable number that is aligned with what the historical performance of the department has been in this space.

Concerns understood and appreciated and it is this balance between setting a target and I think as you fairly point out communicating to the public If nothing else, this dialogue is highlighted and something that I've become very aware of is the level of uncertainty here in terms of the, if you will, the net change in the police force because you're, we're both trying to project the separations which are uncertain and where we're getting on hiring.

I think we had over time, over the last few years, But anticipating the ultimate SPOG settlement and returning our wage levels to something that was competitive would really help on the recruitment front.

At the same time, what we've run into is this national space where it's really hard to recruit in general.

So I think there are lots of other forces at work, but at least those two countervailing ones are some of the bigger ones that are driving us.

As we move through the course of the year, and we start looking at the budget for 2020, just from my world, there's financial implications to all of this.

We are obviously going to be reviewing both sides of these projections, as well as actually the progress of recruits through the academy and the training process as well, because that's yet another piece of this level of uncertainty in the forecast of a net addition.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

One area that I'm interested in that I haven't heard a ton about is the community service officers.

We know we're scaling up the program.

We have 10 CSOs and two supervisors for 2019 with sustaining that investment in 2020. We also know that CSOs are intended to help us do outreach and education in the community.

One of the areas that we heard from slide seven was that there is a negative perception of policing with the CSOs now ramping up.

Is this number of CSOs factored into this at any point?

Is there a desire to do that?

The fact that CSOs will continue to ramp up on the ground level, Are we seeing that as a positive that could potentially impact your ability to recruit new hires?

How did the CSOs factor into your projections and our overall total policing numbers so that we have a more robust picture of that?

But I would just say that certainly there's a prospect for CSOs as they come online handling issues that otherwise might be had to be handled through patrol and freeing up resources.

At this point, I think it would have been premature for us to build that into the staffing model just with where the CSO program is.

But I think there's some potential for that down the road.

Community service officers, maybe despite their name, are not fully commissioned police officers, so they're not engaged directly in law enforcement in that limited context, or not so limited context.

We could add them here, but I think it's important to recognize that what we're tracking here are commissioned police officers.

The CSOs are designed to work in support of those officers and in support of the work in terms of reaching out to community.

And others here can say more about that.

But just as a technical point, I wanted to make that clear.

So these staffing models, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding.

So the staffing model that we're discussing today and the data that that model has produced is only tracking fully trained officers?

The sworn staffing model covers sworn police officers and then also the recruits who are in the pipeline to become sworn police officers.

There are no civilian positions reflected in the staffing model.

And the CSOs are considered civilian positions.

Correct.

They would be on a different training program.

The police officer training program is much longer.

They go through the academy, then they go through a post-academy training with SPD, and then they're in field training for an extended period of time.

The CSOs may have a similar training program, but it won't be exactly the same.

And so the purpose of tracking them month to month, it wouldn't really fit into the model.

And the implementation of the CSO program is part of my work plan for this year, so we will have an opportunity to have more in-depth conversations about the implementation of that particular program.

Go ahead.

That was our last slide.

The first topic, so we can move into the lateral piece if I can figure out how to get to.

I think Ms. Gomez can help you.

Can we leave up this one, the staffing table?

Sure.

Just for a minute.

This one?

Yeah.

I guess you have a sense.

Thank you, Greg.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff here to talk about the second item, which is Council Bill 119461 that would authorize the Seattle Police Department to offer $15,000 signing bonuses for experienced or lateral hires.

And it is just about the shortest bill ever.

except for some cleanup.

It just simply says that the Seattle Police Department may offer incentives of up to $15,000 for beginning employment with the city of Seattle, and that, of course, is to lateral hires.

I should note that the legislation uses May language, and so, therefore, it's not going to be, it'll be up to the executive to decide whether or not they want to implement this.

I think that we have a good indication that they would.

If the council chose to expand this to recruits, as has been identified as an issue in the paper that I wrote, the title of this particular piece of legislation would prohibit it, so there would need to be a new piece of legislation.

So I'll call that out right now, but that's really a technical matter that staff can deal with.

So before we turn it over to the department to talk about the lateral hire incentive, I want to talk about a few of these numbers here and how that might relate to the lateral hire incentive.

And the first thing I'm going to talk about is the projection of new hires.

And in 2019, Council Member Gonzalez, as you noted, the 104, is a somewhat ambitious target, given the history of the department.

But just to break out that 104, it would consist of 84 recruits that would be hired, and it would consist of 20 laterals that would be hired.

And so what you're looking at there is roughly 25 more recruits that would have to come in the door to reach that 104, and then 11 more laterals that would have to come in the door to reach that goal.

And the department has indicated that they are involved in the lateral hiring trips.

I should also note that they are looking at holding recruiting, new recruit tests, and have already been doing new recruiting at those locations as well.

But as you noted, it is a fairly significant bump.

It's about 42% more recruits that would need to be brought in, and it's over 100% laterals, but the numbers are smaller, 25 recruits versus 11 laterals.

So the next numbers I'm going to talk about are the fully trained officers.

And that is the third column from the end.

And what that number represents is the officers who are sworn and are on the force, I'm not going to say They're sworn officers on the force.

So as a recruit comes through the process, they go to an academy, and then the second thing after the academy they do is a field training where they're deployed with officers that serve as coaches, and they go out and answer those calls in tandem.

At the point that the officer or the recruiter, I should say, is ready to go out on their own, they are counted as a fully trained officer Angela's slide here says fully trained officers are sworn personnel who have successfully completed field training, phase two field training.

And so those are officers that are on the force that are of our fully trained officers.

And that number dipped a little bit between 17 and 18. It went from 1359 to 1344. That is likely a result of the separations rather than the lack of the or the challenges around hiring.

So there was a large degree of separations, the 109, and that would impact almost immediately the fully trained officers.

What is really positive is that the department has been able to maintain the number of 911 responders.

And actually, the number of 911 responders went up a bit.

When we were in council budget session, we were looking at 561 911 responders, and this latest report shows 601 911 responders.

And that is, that's really an effect of Recruits that are coming out of the pipeline that had come in in 2017, they're still coming in.

And so they're still coming into patrol.

And the numbers in patrol are going to continue as long as that pipeline is refreshed and as long as recruits keep coming through.

I should also mention in the past, the department has held a principle when they've had situations like this to maintain 911 responder staffing.

It's also possible that the department has placed a priority on that and is making sure that responders are available.

So I bring these numbers up because they provide a little bit of context for the plan that the department has to hire laterals.

The last page of my staff report, which I apologize is not online, costs out some of the department's efforts or proposals, if you were to offer all of the lateral hires, and again, that would be 20 under this particular plan, $15,000, you'd be looking at roughly $300,000 of cost.

If you were to extend a bonus to recruits at a lesser level, let's say half the amount, $7,500, and you did so with 84 recruits, you'd be looking at an additional $630,000.

And so, of course, if you wanted to do both options, then the costing gets to be a little bit more, well, a lot more actually.

720,000.

Sorry, Ben.

I'm sure it was cringing.

Feel free to join the team.

A lot more.

And so by way of background, I just wanted the council to understand Ben had mentioned the costs that are associated.

They are quite high.

And I wanted to break those down for you by recruits and laterals and also have you understand the difference between those two types of hires in that 104 number.

And so just with that as a high level overview, I'll ask if you have any questions.

Just to provide additional clarity, because you were using the term 9-1-1 responders, and in your memo you actually laid out who the 9-1-1 responders are, which are effectively patrol officers that are responsible for responding to 9-1-1 calls and other interactions with the public.

So this is sort of a contrast as to officers who might be assigned to particular units and engage in much more investigation work as opposed to responding to 911 calls that we get on a daily basis from the general public.

That's true, and I might clarify that the numbers that I threw out were specifically E-911 responders, but when we talk about patrol, when the department does, it's a larger group of people that would include the community police teams, would include other support positions that are, again, dealing with the public, as you mentioned.

But it was the specific numbers I called out are actually 911 responders logged into CAT.

Got it.

So I appreciate that additional information.

Okay.

Any questions for my colleagues before we move into the bill that is a total of two pages, a vast majority of which are recitals?

No?

All right.

We're going to go ahead and launch the second presentation that will walk us through in five short slides the proposed lateral hiring incentive.

Thank you.

So again, this is a discussion of the proposed lateral hiring incentive that would authorize the department to pay up to $15,000 as an incentive for a qualified lateral, just so we're.

using the same language, a qualified lateral is someone who has 24 months or more law enforcement experience.

Let me just notice that the teleprompter said 5, 0,000, 50,000.

The number is 15, 1, 5. I just want to make sure that there wasn't confusion about that.

That was all.

Oh, in terms of the closed captioning?

Yes.

Thank you.

The record reflects.

I was just looking up and I'm like, wait a minute, that's not what we're talking about.

Okay, so we've seen this slide before, but again, this is just showing where our lateral applicants have gone over the last three years based on the factors that we discussed.

The challenges in the lateral market are really driven by competition from other jurisdictions, most of whom are carrying vacancies themselves, both nationally and regionally.

Also driven by some of the benefits that we talked about being offered by other agencies, such as a take-home car or post-retirement medical.

Many jurisdictions locally are currently offering lateral incentives, including those shown ranging from $5,000 to $16,000.

King County offers some leave time and pays for folks to travel from out of state to test.

In terms of the benefits of hiring a lateral, in short, laterals get to be a field deployable resource much more quickly than entry-level.

We're talking about a two-week lateral academy versus a five-month entry-level academy, and then an abbreviated field training.

There's also some savings I'll mention in that lateral folks attend a free academy, whereas entry-level, it costs roughly $3,600 per participant.

is some cost savings there.

So really the concept is to bring us up to sort of the regional market given the challenges that everyone's facing in the greater Puget Sound area and to hopefully stimulate additional lateral hires.

Anything else?

Now, one what I would make is that this is not a request for additional funding.

We're still working through full estimates and Greg is as well and working with us about what our spend on salaries will be.

But given where we stand on officer count expectation is that there'll be some salary savings sufficient to cover this additional amount.

So that is both good news and bad news, if you will.

But this is a request for the authority to pay this lateral incentive, not additional funding request for SPD.

So there are existing resources based on prior budget actions that would allow for this to be implemented?

Correct.

Okay.

Any questions?

Okay.

And do you want to walk, do you feel like you've covered well enough the different options that are up for consideration, Greg?

Well, I had, there were a few other, a few other issues that we noted in a conversation about this.

And thank you.

There is, of course, the estimate of how much it would cost to provide a signing bonus for laterals as well as recruits.

And as the budget director just mentioned, he's looking into that.

You had also brought up some interest in defining a little better the legislation's authorization such that there might be renewal language or a sunset date.

and specific performance measures around whether or not targets were being hit.

And that would be something that the council could look at doing an amendment with.

And finally, I think we also talked a little bit, you and I, about retention and whether or not there might be an interest in doing, in making sure that officers that take the lateral hiring bonus are making a longer term commitment to SPD.

They're not taking the $15,000 and then turning around taking someone else's $15,000.

And as I've already talked a bit about expanding it to recruit.

So I think that's the breadth and scope of the things that we talked about that the council might have interest in.

Great.

Thank you.

And then I don't know, Ben, if you've had an opportunity to talk with the police department about some of these various issues.

I know that we all had an opportunity to meet late last week where I gave you all a preview of these concepts and just wondering if you have had an opportunity to consider some of these different options.

We haven't had a chance to fully evaluate from a financial perspective the new recruit incentive, but that is work that's underway, better handle on whether or not we could handle that within existing resources and whether we think it would make a difference.

I think Mike can speak a little bit more about, again, we're sensitive to the issue that that Greg has raised about making sure that if we're going to pay this lateral incentive, that it's done in a way that creates the right incentives for someone to stay with the force.

So we haven't settled on a specific structure, but we're working on that as well.

Yes, I would just add that we are looking into the business rules that would support this program.

Trying to strike the balance between having it be a meaningful incentive on the one hand and having folks stay with us if we're willing to offer that amount of money.

So that's still a discussion point, trying to determine what was effective or what was not in other jurisdictions.

And we'll report back on that.

Just so we're not talking, just sort of ground this.

We talked about, for instance, housing costs being a challenge here.

If we give money to folks up front, that might help on that front.

But on the other hand, then they have the cash and might be able to move on.

If we didn't award them the cash till they'd completed two or three years, then That's a way to anchor them, if you will, but it doesn't perhaps provide the real incentive that we want.

So that's the balance we're working on, and perhaps it's to stage the payment over some period of time, as an example.

And we want to get a better sense of what others are doing.

And as you can see, we're working on lots of fronts here at the same time, but that's the nature of the work that's underway.

And you mentioned earlier that you don't anticipate requiring additional resources for the lateral incentive because of salary savings.

Do you have a sense of the quantity of salary savings?

That's the number we're working on and it will help inform the response on the question of the slightly smaller, potential smaller incentive for the new recruits as well.

So, and it's tricky.

We're early in the year, so some of this is a question of seeing how we finished out last year and then also taking, again, we look at the numbers we discussed previously, just how conservative or aggressive are we on either side of that calculus, if you will.

I think at this point we'll be inherently making decisions at some level of uncertainty.

I think I highlighted that earlier, that really this is a difficult game, if you will, to understand where we're going to end up.

But I think in the next couple of weeks we'll be in a position to do that.

Okay, and then I think the last thing that didn't make it into Greg's memo is just really ensuring that the lateral hire incentive program And if we decide to pursue a new hire incentive program that we are layering on top of that, the department's commitment to recruiting from diverse communities that is consistent with prior practices and that is also consistent with language in the accountability ordinance, which prioritizes the need to hire from diverse communities in order to ensure that the police department looks like the community it serves.

Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, I'm just on a backup for a second.

What constitutes a trend?

Because if I look at the data, especially in the data outlined in the central staff memo and the chart that you showed us as well, It does seem like last year was an anomaly and you mentioned a number of reasons of why that could be low Unemployment rates the ongoing conversations that we were having about the spog contract what makes us think that this is not just an anomaly last year and that it will continue to be addressed with the status quo and factoring in that we now have a better rates for our officers that more accurately reflect the cost of living here.

You did mention it was the highest rate for Washington State.

However, we want to remind folks that it's the median rate for the seven largest cities across the coast, right?

So we have caught up in many ways.

We've addressed some of the concerns over the last few years.

I don't know exactly that that will have a dramatic and immediate impact, but when I look at the data that you've provided, Greg, I'm wondering what actually constitutes a trend and if there's any indication that this could be a blip, an anomaly.

You also mentioned that there's a number of other jurisdictions across the country that are seeing vacancy rates in the hundreds versus the dozens.

When did they indicate that they had a trend of declining recruitment or lateral moves and how are we comparing in terms And so I think it's really important that we look at this data and understand the length of time that we're giving ourselves to look at this data.

So as to your first question, I see we're just looking at the applicant trend, really.

You're right.

The hires didn't manifest themselves in terms of dropping off until last year.

I think we're seeing now some of the even 2017 decreases in applicants manifesting in reduced hires in 2018. So I do see a consistent downward trend both with entry level and laterals from 2016 to 17 and now to 18 in terms of applicants.

in terms of applicants.

And again, with the lag from time from test to hire, that very well may manifest itself in reduced hiring numbers in 2019 until we can get these applicant numbers back up.

And then compared to other jurisdictions?

In terms of when, I will actually have to go back and look at the literature that we were looking at and be happy to provide you with that for the time frame that they're speaking about.

I'd be happy to do that.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I also really liked your suggestions around deliverables, the timelines, the targets.

The other question that I had was really on the cap.

If we, for example, allocated $15,000 and that applied to 20 lateral moves, so we're looking at $300,000 per year, is that a cap?

And I know it says may you, so the amount may be different determining on whether or not the executive decides to do that.

Are we looking at a cap or would that be something that we would see year to year or is that something that you're suggesting the committee take a look at?

Yeah, the legislation simply authorizes it.

So if the committee was interested in putting any particular standards around measurement of recruits and laterals coming in throughout the year, And caps around funding, that would be something that would have to happen separate and apart from this effort.

And then lastly, we talked about this earlier, the number of recruits being ambitious, I think, aggressively.

Aggressive.

Optimistic.

So at 104 total, we're anticipating 20 of those new folks coming in would be lateral hires.

When we look at the past data, especially for 2015 through 2017, It does look like we're being, we're underestimating the number of folks that would be laterally transitioning with the existing pay structure in place.

So are we underestimating how many folks are going to laterally move over with existing pay and then would we be underestimating if there was an additional incentive for a lateral move?

I'm going to let the department staffing folks take a shot at that answer.

Just point out that there was, over the last three years, 20 laterals, 22 laterals, 25 laterals, and then down to nine last year.

So I'll let the department talk a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I mean, as Greg points out, we were hovering right around the 20 to 25 mark in terms of laterals.

I think as we were putting together our projections for this year, because of the challenges we faced last year in securing lateral hires, we didn't want to be overly ambitious with that number.

in working with Mike and coming up with a target that we thought that we might be able to attain.

We went with the 20. That's not to say if we couldn't hire more than that.

We would certainly be happy to bring on board additional laterals above the 20 mark.

But given what we know from last year, we didn't want to overshoot that.

We do have, and Mike can speak to this a little bit more, I believe it's a 30, do we still have the 30 lateral cap?

or is that?

That was actually, we had a 30 lateral cap in the recent spa contract that was removed.

It's no longer in place.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

And that gets to my last question.

Is any of this bargainable?

I think that that's a conversation that should occur in executive session to the extent that you'd like to pursue that.

Okay.

I think we believe that hiring officers is fundamentally a management right.

Okay.

And there has been some reach out to SPOG, let them know, you know, and this is obviously a public session, there's nothing hidden about this, but there was outreach as we were pursuing it and considering the policy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions?

The one thing that I do want to follow up on, And the first presentation, one of the slides indicated that a mechanism by which, you know, that factors affecting hiring pace.

One of the bullet points, and I think it was on slide seven of the first presentation, talked about starting officer wages remaining flat since January 1st, 2014. And then in parens, it states that the new SPA contract will impact presumably positively, that trend.

And so I still am left wondering how this assumed positive impact is going to be measured.

I mean, how is the department thinking about how to evaluate and analyze and measure the impact of the approval of the new SPA contract and the increase in wages.

You make a very good point and frankly it's a challenge to disaggregate the various factors that cause one to apply for a job.

pay is a factor, the commute time, housing cost, other jurisdictions hiring or not are a factor.

We try to get at this by asking folks when they're being oriented.

Why'd you choose us?

What were your factors?

How'd you learn about us?

Et cetera.

And we'll continue to do that.

And as part of the work with the innovation and performance team, certainly be looking for ways to more quantitatively measure this.

But I just want to get on the table that when you're talking about the human dynamic of applying for a job in an economy that is fluctuating in an environment where other jurisdictions are Either hiring robustly or stopping hiring when our own wages are changing, it's hard to disaggregate one factor as being causal.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's intuitive to think that if you pay more, more people will come.

But I think right now it's just intuition.

And so I think it's important for us to make sure, again, that we're rooting this conversation and how we're going to evaluate whether that there is any sort of causation between the increase in wages and the trends in terms of being able to attract new hires or laterals to join the police department.

And so I'd really like to make sure that we're rooting ongoing conversations in that level of data-driven analysis so that we have a clearer understanding of what the actual connection is there.

And that's specifically among the reasons we brought on the innovation and performance team who are focused around data issues.

Richard is in the audience in particular specialty.

So we can, again, I think Mike has described this well.

There are a lot of confounding factors here.

Now we play it all at the same time.

Depending on what kind of data we can get from other jurisdictions either nearby or further away, we may be able to sort out some of those things.

But, you know, we're not thinking about both increased base pay, if you will, but now also an incentive, a hiring incentive on top of that.

which of those things as a driver will be difficult again to, since they'll be arriving at the same time, very difficult to, nearly the same time, difficult to discern.

But one of the things we need to understand is what's working and what's not and why.

So I think the interviews with folks who are involved, both those who joined, maybe perhaps those who turned us down as well to try to get a sense of what drove them.

either to some other jurisdiction or maybe not to the profession at all ultimately.

Those are all sorts of things we would ideally be able to get information about and then sort through.

Okay.

Helpful.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments, colleagues?

Okay, so we will work with Greg from central staff and the executive to make sure that we have an appropriate evaluation and analysis of some of the options that have been highlighted in Greg's memo with the addition of making sure that we're anchoring some of this work, that we're anchoring this work in our commitment to recruit from diverse communities.

And then we will go ahead and bring forth for consideration some potential amendments for the committee to consider.

All right.

Well, that is our last agenda item for today.

So we are adjourned.