Seattle City Council 2/11/2025

Good afternoon, everyone.

The February 11, 2025 meeting of the Seattle City Council will come to order.

It is 2.03 PM.

I'm Sarah Nelson, Council President.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle.

Sorry, excuse me, Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council Member Rink.

Present.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Sacca.

Here.

Council Member Solomon.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Here.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

And Council President Nelson.

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you.

Okay, there are no presentations today, so colleagues at this time will open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comment is limited to items on today's agenda, the introduction and referral calendar, and the council work program.

Clerk, how many people are signed up today?

We have about 11 remote and 12 in person.

Okay, we'll give everybody one minute each and start with the in person, please.

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they register.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

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

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

With one minute per person, we will start with Donald Cassell, and then Gabriel Jones, and then Philip D. I believe it's Carboway.

Donald, you're first.

I'm not here for today's agenda, so I won't waste your time.

The case that I had before you concerning me and Bruce Howell and all those cases against Diaz that you guys choose not to acknowledge, case 2022, I wish all of you write it down.

Case 2022 OPA 0321. And I noticed your pen's not moving.

So what I'm saying to you is, those cases against Diaz, don't forget.

And I'm upset because I'm tired of giving you parking fees to come tell you something that you already know.

Get Bruce to pick up the phone.

You tell OPA it's a bunch of liars because they lie.

They lie to OGA.

They put it on OGA.

OGA put it on Bruce.

They own his desk.

Get my file off his desk.

Give me my file back so I can sue you.

And I mean it.

I'm not gonna give up.

I'm not gonna let you belittle me or make me sit in your meetings till 10.30 at night just to have you say nothing to me.

I demand my respect.

Thank you very much, sir.

Next, we have Gabriel Jones and the following Gabriel will be Phillip.

Howdy, folks.

My name is Gabriel Jones.

I'm here today to speak on less lethal ordinance.

Been here a few times, talked about the absolute awful effect you've seen as a protest medic who's been to a lot of protests whose jobs to make sure people get home safe at the end of the night.

I've seen some pretty awful injuries.

I myself have injuries from these.

But I want to take it a little different route today.

I want you to ask, what protests and what events would blast balls have been used at?

When would the SPD have used blast balls?

And what you'll see in those instances where they would have been used is civilians who were nonviolently protesting, surrounded by so many other people who they would not be intended to be used against, but would still be harmed.

You hear the stories all the time of people who got pepper-balled in their apartments where they were not even out of protest.

Over and over again, this is not the solution.

We need more care for our community now more than ever.

After all the awful things coming from this administration, we need more care not to unleash a further arsenal against our civilians.

So I'm going to ask you vote no. and do not add an arsenal.

And I'm going to remind everyone to return their ballots and vote yes for 1A.

Thank you.

We have Philip.

Philip Carvoway, I believe.

And then it'll be Vic Amol.

I'm almost 70. And when I was 69, I had police coming to my apartment because my wife had gone crazy.

Some of the things that happened were incorrect.

I filed OPA reports, and that's when they started to take me away.

I wasn't drunk.

I wasn't beating.

I wasn't bloody.

But I got taken away because I put in an OPA request for why the police acted the way they did and took my wife to jail instead of to a hospital where she needed to go.

When I get the over-reports back, they haven't talked to anybody, they haven't listened to the video, or looked at the video, or listened to the tapes, they said they find nothing wrong.

You wanna hire me?

I'll come down and write that stuff down for you.

It takes them six months to tell me they haven't discovered anything when they haven't talked to anybody.

And to give them more power without actually having some control over them is this definition of .

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

We now have Vic Amol, and then following Vic will be Henry Keane.

Hello.

My name is Vic Amel.

I'm here today to represent the Seattle Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

Originally, I just came here to speak out in shock and disgust against the possibility of the return of the less lethal weapons, which anyone in 2020 saw the grievous harm caused to protesters and bystanders, resulting in $10 million of lawsuits paid for, of course, by Seattle taxpayers.

But in the two weeks since this vote has been delayed, I have been witness to horror stories of innocent people getting raided by ICE at their homes, at their businesses, at their schools, and I felt compelled to come here to remind us that Seattle is a sanctuary city.

There is no need to bend the knee to the whims of the absurd demands of this new administration.

I don't know what else to say.

We need to stand up.

We have no need to bend the knee to do what's demanded.

Thank you.

We have Henry Keene and then Howard Gale.

Hello.

My name is Henry Keene.

I am a local physician.

I also do some overseas relief work in addition to my local work.

I also worked as a volunteer medical provider during the protests in 2020. The thing I wanted to focus on today, I know you've heard all the stories of what these blast balls can do.

The biggest thing I want to focus on is that when I was there, there were very few people after the first day or two my age.

I had a good several decades on everyone else there.

The families, the children were gone.

That was because in those very first days, it was the munitions that made people feel that they could not feel safe protesting in that space.

As we're going into an era where people are going to feel more of a need to find routes to peacefully protest and be active to protect the most vulnerable populations, If the only lesson we learned from 2020 is to make a wide swath of people feel that they simply cannot be safe in a protest space, then the blast balls will have done their job.

And that's the only job I see them doing.

Thank you.

Following Howard will be, I believe it's Flora.

Howard Gale, D7.

The legislation before you today is simply the rewording of existing rules and policies that have been in effect for 25 years.

Why do people think it's going to make anything different?

Just Saturday, 72 hours ago, at a demonstration in Alki, Seattle Times, officers threatened to use crowd control weapons, including tear gas.

This is what you are enabling.

I want to point out the irony and the hypocrisy in this legislation.

The newest revised legislation has a whereas where it says less lethal tools or use of force devices, devices, not weapons, not intended or likely to cause death or subject of great bodily harm.

We know that's a factual argument.

Okay.

And yet one of the amendments you have on offer today is to say that these devices have demonstrated a track record of past policy, inflicting injury, including serious injury.

And the amendment even ends with saying past policy intended to reduce the risk of such injury, but unable to achieve the outcome.

Again, I ask why, is it just a question of four and a half years so people would forget what happened in 2020?

This is- Next speaker, please.

Please have your seat.

I want you to explain your position now.

I believe it's Flora or Slora.

My apologies for mispronouncing.

And then after that will be Annika and then Matt Offenbacher.

and I demand that the City Council votes against re-implementing the use of non-lethal weapons by the Seattle Police Department.

This decision immediately affects my community's safety.

During protests in 2020 and thereafter, it was clear how harmful the use of pepper spray and rubber bullets are and the way it hurt and maimed countless citizens during a public outcry against police brutality.

We spoke then of the dangers of non-lethal weapons, and we speak once again.

Do not bring back non-lethal tools used to suppress our voices.

Do not weaponize the Seattle Police Department.

We have Annika, and then Matt Offenbacher, and then MJ.

Is there Annika?

Hello.

I represent myself.

This is my first time speaking before the city council.

And I've been in quite a few protests when these weapons were being used against the crowd.

And why do y'all want to pepper spray us?

Why do y'all want to tear gas us?

Why do you want to harm the people that just have important things to say to you?

You won't listen to us if we don't protest.

We need to be able to do that safely.

I didn't prepare anything to say.

I just want y'all to look me in the eye and say, you seriously want people to get tear gassed?

That's what you want?

You want people to get hurt?

Inexcusable.

We now have Matt Offenbacher and then MJ Juggerson.

Hi, council members.

Matt Offenbacher, a Capitol Hill resident and small business owner in Soto.

I wanted to bring to your attention that a few weeks ago, the OPA reprimanded a West Precinct captain named Steve Strand for violating crowd control policies this past summer.

Among other things, he drove his unmarked police car into a group of nonviolent climate protesters.

I was one of those protesters, so I can tell you firsthand how shockingly unhinged Captain Strand's behavior seemed.

From the moment he arrived on the scene, his rage led him to escalate his response, greatly increasing the potential for harm and injury.

This is not just my own personal observation.

This is the official findings of the OPA.

And I bring Captain Strand to your attention today as a warning that no matter what policies and safeguards you write, council members, if you reauthorize SPD's use of less lethal weapons, they will use them, and there will be a certain number of officers who, in the heat of the moment, will let their own feelings, their politics, their rage dictate their actions.

This is what happened in 2020, and this is what will happen again.

People will get

Thank you, sir.

Your time is up.

...to deny SPD access to these weapons.

Thank you very much.

Next we have MJ.

MJ and then following MJ would be Garrett Pulasko-Moore and then Alex Darmament and Sage Eady.

Good afternoon.

My name is MJ Jergensen.

My pronouns are they, them, theirs.

I am an activist.

I'm also the director of a prominent local senior center in our community.

I know some of you.

What some of you may not know about me is that in the summer of 2020, I was also kicked by a police officer and targeted with a blast ball that exploded against my left thigh.

I've been a plaintiff, an interviewee, an article writer, and will be an eternal advocate on this issue.

Ahead of four years of what is proven to be flagrant attacks on civil rights in our country, the city of Seattle has a unique opportunity to stand at the forefront of civil justice and reform and to be a leader on this topic.

I urge you, protect your citizens.

Do not rearm our cops with what we have learned is potentially lethal weapons.

Thank you.

Garrett, and following Garrett would be Alex Zimmerman.

Good afternoon, Council President Nelson, council members.

My name is Garrett Plesko-Moore.

I am a resident of CD3, but in 2020, I was a resident of Capitol Hill, and I have incredible stories to share from that year that I wish I could tell you all about.

But I want to take you back to one day in particular in which I had finally convinced a dear friend of mine, a senior and an elderly woman who had just survived cancer, to finally come out and join these wonderful demonstrations that we were all a part of.

And for about an hour is fantastic.

We finally got to the East Precinct, and unfortunately, within about five minutes, she turns to me and yells, Garrett, run, run, run.

I'm like, what is going on?

And so we start running, and all of a sudden, the blast balls start going off.

I've never heard such deep screams of fear in my entire life.

Please do not support these so-called less lethal weapons.

Alex Zimmerman, then Sage Eady.

Thank you.

Yeah, my name Alex Zimmerman, and I'm very honest with you.

I like the Nazi Gestapo fascist police.

I like this, and I explain to you why.

They prosecute me five times for two years, five times.

So I'm a best than Donald Trump because they prosecute him only four times.

It's make me bigger than Donald Trump.

What is you want more from old men like me?

Yeah, you are the best of the best.

But one situation what is make me totally sick is white, you.

Sarah Nelson, always give one minute.

Are you probably so stupid so President Trump, two weeks ago, make a freedom of speech order?

You know what it means?

Yeah.

By this order, everybody possibly have right for speech.

You don't give us right for speech.

But 700,000 cockroaches who live in the city are sepsis.

And no protest.

So I talk about this for many years.

Stand up, Donald Trump.

Sage is our last in-person speaker.

During 2020 protests, SPD used these weapons and their judgment on when to escalate indiscriminately and cruelly.

suggested for repeal concretely defines violent public disturbance in a way that actually protects people from their indiscriminately cruel and excessive tactics against citizens who are threatening no individual or group's actual safety.

Fascist oligarchical regime in our federal government is here plain as day.

SPD had the largest attendance of any police department in the insurrection Trump incited in 2021. Do not Make it easy for them.

Do not arm SPD with these cruel, less lethal weapons.

Do not let them decide what counts as a violent public disturbance.

They have proven that they will cost innocent citizens their health and use excessive force to violently rebuke our constitutional right to free speech and cost the city of Seattle millions more in lawsuits from injuries.

Go ahead.

We can move on to remote speakers.

Okay, we'll now begin remote public comments.

And commenters, please press star six when you hear the prompt that you have been unmuted.

Our first speaker will be Esther Jane, followed by Oliver Miska.

Go ahead, Esther.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, you can.

Okay, I'm here at the University of Washington in a group of 16 researchers.

including students, postdocs, and professors.

Can you say hi real quick?

Hi.

Hi.

Good to see you.

Hi.

I cannot describe how upset, disrupted, and dismayed we are right here.

We had spent two classes talking about the political situation in the White House instead of doing our normal work.

And today we talked about all the banned words we have to censor out of our research project.

And we're waiting for ICE to come in and raid our classrooms.

We will not stand by in this political climate And we have to defend ourselves, our universities, our livelihood, and the truth itself.

So we're all planning to fully exercise our civil rights through peaceful demonstration.

But if you repeal this ban on the weapons and let them be used on us, you will be complicit in the tyranny.

And we of Seattle will all know about it.

There was a killing effect because of the fear of encountering these weapons.

I do not want to be blast balled.

I don't want to be tear gassed.

And I don't want to be pepper sprayed.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Oliver Misca.

After Oliver will be Tim Merriman.

Go ahead, Oliver.

Good afternoon, Chair Nelson and city council members.

For the record, my name is Oliver Misca.

I'm a Seattle public school teacher and LGBTQ small business owner of solidarity policy and a victim of police violence.

I'm not here representing any of my clients today.

I'm testifying in strong opposition to CB 120916, which would end our city's ban on what are labeled less lethal weapons, such as blast balls and pepper spray, and deem items such as umbrellas as weapons.

The new legal definition of violent public disturbance is a dangerous breach of our basic rights, conflating freedom of speech with violence.

As an educator, I find it deeply troubling that on the one hand, we encourage students to be civically engaged, voice their opinions, take direct action.

But at the same time, we have a city council that is willing to put these youth at risk of real violence, the violence perpetrated by police on our communities at the direction of our electives.

As you vote on this piece of legislation today, consider how needed protest is today.

Imagine your child or family was in the crowd of protesters.

Would you want these police armed to the nines?

As some have mentioned.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tim Marinant.

After 10 will be David Haynes.

Go ahead, Tim.

Hi, my name is Tim Mernon.

I'm from District 3. I am speaking today to oppose allowing the police to use the crowd control weapons that have been proposed.

I think that the legislation that allows the police to use violence against people to prevent significant property damage is explicitly discriminatory.

It means that the police serve different people in our community differently.

and it means that people with more money and more expensive property are protected and their voice means more than people who have less because it gives the police an opportunity to use weapons against people when their property is threatened.

I also think that this legislation is pushed forward too quickly because there was no analysis done on the disproportionate effects of crowd control devices on the different marginalized communities in Seattle.

that wasn't included in the legislation.

And I think that we need to find new solutions for these problems instead of trying to recycle old solutions.

And I think that...

Thank you.

Next is David Haynes.

After David will be Robert Engel.

Thank you, David Haynes.

Why did the city council leadership elect a so-called public safety expert during the special election?

who does not even have a voting seat on the public safety committee.

Is it because the council was purposely sabotaging the land use committee, backstabbing the working class, putting restrictions on levels of livable amenity space to make it easier for unqualified nonprofits to build low quality projects, guaranteeing that black lives matter and George Floyd white pod protesters, devil's advocates who are hiding behind this housing consortium stakeholders, and their unqualified, racist, woke slum developers of a so-called affordable and low-income housing non-profits.

They're shaking down the city council another year in a row, pocketing millions and billions, creating modern third-world, low-level quality, restricted warehouse, eco-slum real estate for black affordable housing spread throughout every neighborhood except Maple Leaf.

How much money is paid in overtime for the Seattle Department to facilitate a protest versus how much money is spent to combat a crime.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Robert Engel.

After Robert is Mike Asai.

Hi, I'm Robert Engel.

I'm here representing the Seattle Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression.

You can't pass these less legal weapons.

We've already seen how much damage it's caused.

We've seen brain injuries, Um, I know people who have been like seriously, seriously hurt by this stuff.

And honest to God, if you want to pass this thing and incur, you know, 10 more million and put more blood on your hands, be my guest.

Honestly, honestly, be my guest.

If that's what you guys want, you want ice coming into our city.

You want ice coming in and raiding people's homes.

I don't want to see that.

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say we want to keep immigrants safe, we don't want to be hit with these blast balls, and you guys are miserable.

I don't want to see this pass, and I don't think anyone does.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mike Asai, after Michael B. Leslie Mathis.

Plus, good afternoon.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi.

Good afternoon, City Council.

My name is Mike Asai, founder of Emerald City Collective and vice president of Black Excellence in Cannabis.

In 2015, Bruce Harrell and Tim Burgess stood with the system that has always worked against us.

They voted to shut down black medical cannabis businesses, businesses that have state licenses, city licenses, and paid taxes.

We follow state laws, but they still treated us like criminals, forced us to close July 1, 2016. Now, nearly a decade later, City of Seattle comes to us talking about social equity.

But I ask you, where is it?

Where are the black and brown cannabis businesses the city promised to support?

Where is the justice for those who were unjustly shut down?

Mayor Harold, you signed an executive order for downtown revitalization.

You signed an executive order for public safety.

So I ask you, where is the executive order for social equity and cannabis?

Where is the real commitment to repair the harm done to the black and brown communities?

They call this one Seattle, but is it one Seattle for the people or just for their friends?

The ones who go along to get along because we don't see justice.

We see black and brown people still locked out and left behind.

And to the black gatekeepers, we know who you are.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Leslie Mathis.

After Leslie will be Valerie Schlort.

this is leslie mathis i'm in district six and there's all this public comment regarding the real authorization of what i can tell is the 2023 spd's interim policy which includes the real authorization of less lethal weapons in looking at all these sources i see there are a number of other positions provisions that need to be changed one Other police departments from outside of the city that come to support SPD if something does go wrong would not have to comply with SPD's guidelines for use of less lethal weapons.

Two, it would eliminate the public option to sue SPD if we are injured during...

some kind of crowd management.

And then three, in the SPD's own matrix, regarding crowd management, moving from phase four, which is isolated, unlawful behavior, to phase five, only requires a threshold of four violent people.

I have a lot more to say, so I'll be submitting.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Valerie Slorek.

After Valerie will be Michael Malini.

Hi, this is Valerie from District 2 speaking on the crowd control weapons legislation.

Less lethal weapons like tear gas and blast balls have a long history of badly harming people who demonstrate for justice and human rights.

During the summer of 2020, SPD pepper sprayed a young child, tear gassed an entire neighborhood, and volleyed scores of blast balls that injured bystanders, bystanders, press, and protesters.

The then city council passed a ban on less lethal weapons for a reason.

SPD injuries to civilians that year included damage to vision and hearing, concussions, seizures, burns, broken bones, trauma, and at least one near-fatal heart attack.

One civil lawsuit for these injuries cost Seattle taxpayers 10 million dollars and a million more, millions more in legal fees.

You know, we need a public process before you pass this legislation.

We should...

Thank you.

The next remote speaker will be Michael Malini.

After Michael will be Skylar Malk.

Hello, my name is Hello, my name is Michael Molini.

I'm a renter in District 3 and I'm calling on the Council to vote against reinstating less lethal weapons.

It's incredibly disheartening that these past weeks, as we watch in real time the gutting of federal agencies and attacks on marginalized communities, instead of dedicating its time and resources to find ways to protect and support those who will be harmed and push back against authoritarianism, The Council is instead debating ways to attack its public citizens who will urgently need to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest these unjust initiatives.

I live blocks away from Cal Anderson during the 2020 demonstrations, and just from leaving my window open on a nice spring evening, had my apartment flooded with tear gas, causing me to evacuate and flee.

And this is really something I don't think would be permitted in many of the other districts.

The Council frames this as a public safety issue, But during that time, the only thing that made me feel unsafe was the unnecessarily militarized presence and actions of SPD, not my neighbors peacefully protesting.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is Skylar Moth.

Hello, I'm Skylar Moth.

I'm calling in to speak about Leslie, the weapons bill, and to ask you to retain a ban against their usage.

In 2020, we saw the reckless use that resulted in millions of taxpayer money used for settlement.

And then the SPD's policy is to use, quote, objectively reasonable, necessary, and proportional force, end quote.

What's changed since then?

The SPD doesn't have the public's trust and meaningless additions about responsibility won't change anything about how they intend to use them instead of learning to de-escalate why are they so eager eager to stifle protests and free speech especially as we go into the next four years we're fighting authoritarianism is going to be all the more important i need you to recognize how less lethal weapons facilitate collective punishment often for non-existent reasons for citizens simply using their right to free speech if you plan to vote yes look at the people in front of you tell them that you would be okay with their lives

And there are no additional registered remote public commenters.

We have one more in-person public commenter, and that is gonna be Brett.

Is it on?

All right.

So I wanna talk about the Blast Balls Ordinance.

I was here on the morning when Assistant Chief Nelson was talking about the different categorizations of protests from peaceful to maximally violent and when they would try you know, introduce weapons only in certain circumstances.

There is, I think, a cognitive fallacy when you're listening to a presentation like that, that if you can follow the logic of what he's saying, it makes you think it's true and that's what's going to happen.

Yes, I could follow the logic of what he was saying too, you know, peaceful protest, nothing, fully violent protest, then we bring in the blast balls.

That does not mean that it's true or that that's how it's going to happen.

And that is the mistake people make, I think, just because you can follow someone's reasoning means you believe them.

Remember I played you guys a video once of a kid at a protest who was dangling a donut on the end of a string in front of some police officers, and one of them lunged forward and shoved the kid to the ground and ended up handcuffing him.

They were holding him in jail overnight, and they ended up having to pay him $20,000.

And if you think that's expensive, you could do that 499 times.

That's still less than SBD had to pay out for violence against protesters.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

My name's Juan Cherie, and I'm a resident of District 7. On the last week of May in 2020, we all stood in horror as we watched an officer kill George Floyd on camera.

Like so many others, the pain and sadness in me to witness another person killed at the hands of the police was too heavy to contain.

I left my home, my arms filled with nothing but dozens of flowers to create vigils to honor the dead.

I, along with the people of the city, were met with tear gas, lash bangs, and pepper spray by the people who were sworn to protect us.

Over and over, the Seattle police met us with violence, and over and over, I saw the people of the city abused by the cops, and I haven't been the same since.

I've lived with this for years, and last year I was finally diagnosed with an extreme case of post-traumatic stress syndrome based on what I experienced that year.

And I stand here to show you an example of what can happen when you give the police the power to hurt the people of this city.

Please don't let this happen to anyone else, because I'm not the same person anymore.

Our last two speakers will be Nick Larson and then I believe it's Andra.

Larson and I live in South Seattle.

I don't have a whole minute's worth of talking to do.

My main question to you is if we decide to allow this to happen moving forward, not only with the regime that we currently have, but also all of the individuals who you've already heard from, who you see on a regular basis, if we let these police officers have these as options, what is the next escalatory step that happens afterwards?

This is a pivotal moment where we get to turn back towards each other and care for each other or we get to turn towards each other with harm and aggression.

We all know that if there's a gun brought in Act 1, it has to get used in Act 3. Let's make sure it doesn't show up in Act 1 so we can change what Act 3 happens.

I believe in you guys.

I know these are really hard decisions, and you're individuals, and I see that.

Please recognize that we're all doing our best to show up for you within the lines that you've created for us, these infrastructures where we can talk to you.

Please don't make it so violence has to happen.

You can do something about this now.

Thank you.

Sandra is our last speaker.

My apologies if I mispronounce your name.

I left you a message about the shelter wheel.

Did you get that message?

Use the microphone.

Meet me up there at 1040 on the 6th of February.

Meet me at 4-4 down speaking to you.

I'm sure she can.

Oh, my time's being used up and she could.

Sarah, thanks for showing up about a year ago.

You were the only one.

I public shame people.

You were supposed to show up and meet me at that shelter, which is so decrepit and horrible.

It is condemned.

There's black mold.

And you know how many have died in the Stop County?

341. Let's see.

So I publicly shame like I did Metro.

I go online.

It goes to Azure.

It goes to Cloud Technology and then that's Russian, Cuba, and all them.

And Vladimir Putin is my hero.

Let's see.

You are part of the problem and not the solution.

I was assaulted and raped.

Is that okay with you?

Because that's what's happening to men and women on the streets.

They're freezing and assaulted in rapes.

How do you live with yourselves?

That's our last speaker.

Thank you very much, and thank everybody for coming with your comments and those who have joined us remotely.

We've reached the end of our registered speakers, so the public comment period is now closed.

So if there's no objection, the introduction and referral calendar will be adopted.

Hearing none, the introduction and referral calendar is adopted.

And if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing none, the agenda is adopted.

We'll now consider the proposed consent calendar and the items on the consent calendar include the minutes of February 4th, 2025 and Council Bill 120940, which is the payment of the bills.

Are there any items that the council members would like to remove from the consent calendar?

All right, hearing none, I move to adopt the consent calendar.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt the consent calendar Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the consent calendar?

Council Member Moore?

Present.

Oh, sorry.

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Solomon?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

All right, the consent calendar items are adopted.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes in legislation on the consent calendar on my behalf?

And will the clerk please read the title of item one into the record?

Agenda item one, Council Bill 120937 relating to taxes, creating new sales and use tax deferral for the conversion of underutilized commercial property to housing and adding a new chapter 5.75 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

I move to pass Council Bill 120937. Is there a second?

Second.

All right, it's been moved and seconded.

Okay, so Councilmember Salomon, as a sponsor and the land use chair, you're recognized to address the bill.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you, Madam President.

This bill is intended to implement a program in Seattle that would defer sales and use tax for projects converting commercial uses to residential uses containing an affordable housing component.

The intent of this tax deferral, which would be created through this bill, is to encourage the production of affordable housing and employment opportunities in targeted urban areas.

As we know, Seattle has an acute shortage of affordable housing.

Moreover, many commercial buildings downtown continue to experience high vacancy due to changing work patterns.

This in turn creates drag on Seattle's economic recovery.

Conversion of these buildings into residential unit further furthers the city's goals to increase housing supply and support economic development, revitalization, and downtown activation.

These goals align closely with priorities outlined in the mayor's downtown activation plan and the comprehensive plan update.

This legislation enacts the authority granted to the city by the state of Washington through Senate Bill 6175, which became effective June 1st, 2024. To activate the tax deferral locally, a city must pass a resolution of intention, provide draft program documents for public review, and hold a public hearing.

The Council Land Use Committee voted to approve Resolution 32156 on December 4th, 2024, and the full City Council approved the resolution on December 17th, 2024. A public hearing on Council Bill 120937 was held during last week's City Council meeting on February 4th, 2025, after publication of appropriate notice as required.

I urge your support on this bill today.

Thank you very much.

Are there any questions or comments from my colleagues?

All right, I'm not seeing any questions or comments.

I will simply say that we need more housing and in fact there are underutilized buildings and it's quite expensive to convert commercial space to So I am in full support of this bill, and I do appreciate you stepping up and taking over a piece of legislation that began before you took office.

So thank you very much for handling this, and I will be voting in favor as well.

Thank you.

All right, I don't see any other comments.

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

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Saka?

Aye.

Councilmember Solomon?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Yes.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

And will the clerk please read the title of item two into the record.

Agenda item, the report of the Public Safety Committee, agenda item two, Council Bill 120916 related to the Seattle Police Department mandating that the police department adopt and maintain crowd management policies that prohibit the use of less lethal tools in crowd management settings unless specific facts and circumstances are occurring or about to occur that create an imminent risk of physical injury to a person or a significant person.

The committee recommends the bill passes amended with Council Members Kettle, Saka, and Nelson in favor.

Council Member Moore opposed with an abstention.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle is chair of the committee.

I will have you provide the committee report, and then after you're finished, I'll talk about the procedural steps going forward.

So please go ahead.

Thank you, Council President.

I really appreciate that.

To start, I just wanted to note, in a lot of ways, this bill has been a dozen plus years in the making.

This current legislative process started in September with discussions and then more broadly in December to include community work and outreach.

And we're here today in mid-February.

Admittedly, a couple of weeks addition, which relates to the the due diligence that we've been conducting, particularly from legal review.

This bill, as noted in committee, is key to protect the rights to free speech and assembly, and the idea that they need to be protected.

And I hear the public commentary, and I'm also mindful that there's counter-protests, there's malign actors and the like, and there's a lot of different pieces that come to that, but in the end of the day, This is about protecting the rights for those to gather in assembly and to have their protests heard, their free speech.

One thing also noted in the committee was that we cannot legislate to a perfect scenario.

A gentleman spoke to the six different areas within police policy.

We need to have the flexibility as it relates to the legislation and to, in turn, avoid future challenges.

Also noted in committee was that it's best to respond, how to best respond practically really goes to the organizations that are charged with this mission and in order to do the goal and the mission that is before us.

And that is understanding particularly the Seattle Police Department, the chief, the deputy chief, assistant chiefs, their roles with incident commanders, the precinct captains and the precinct lieutenants.

And this comes up in a lot of questions as it relates to the mayor and then also the chief of police.

It's also important to note here too, mutual aid is an important area here that we're looking at and to understand how that plays out in terms of whether or if that mutual aid would be offered.

Also noted in committee was that legislation and policies are important, but crucial is training, training, training.

We cannot emphasize this enough.

Training, training, training.

And this goes to the oversight that we have in terms of the city council over the executive to include the police department because this goes to another public comment that was made in terms of the heat of the moment.

The biggest guard against that is the training and that oversight that we do is so important in that area.

The next point that came out of committee that relates to this as well was our accountability partners.

Our accountability partners are so important.

You know, we have the Community Police Commission.

We have the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General.

We need to be involving them, supporting them, and basically, you know, empowering them to do their mission as it relates to Seattle Police Department and their oversight particularly relates to policies, but then also reviewing any instances in terms of less lethal force.

I note too that this bill is a piece that aligns the Seattle Municipal Code to the revised code of Washington.

This is respect to tear gas and CS.

And that's what this bill does.

Oftentimes, we can get away from that clear requirement of aligning city law with state law.

And in this case, I think we did a good job on that.

And as you know, On CS, on tear gas, the state law requires marital proclamation before the use of tear gas.

And as you'll see in this legislation, that has been extended to blast balls.

So these are the pieces that are in this legislation.

But ultimately, this is about the consent decree as well.

Again, a dozen years in the making.

This is the last piece, as Judd Robarts noted, in terms of capstoning the reforms that have been completed over the last dozen years.

I've been to each precinct and each time I brought up the consent decree and I acknowledge why we need a consent decree.

But I also acknowledge all the reform and hard work that's occurred over the last dozen years and that puts us in a better place now in terms of the policies and the like for the Seattle Police Department.

And the last piece, as Judge Robart said, was crowd management less lethal weapons.

And so we've been working to include the federal monitor and the Department of Justice to work on this, and this also goes to my point earlier about legal review, to ensure that our legislation is in a good spot related to this consent decree process, and I think it is.

And this is crucial to cement the reforms that we've been doing under the consent decree to show Judge Robarts that we're in this position.

And so with that, colleagues, as a quick introduction and speaking in terms of coming out of committee, this is the bill and some of the considerations that we have to think about the bill as we move forward.

And I ask for your support in its passage.

Thank you.

Hey.

No.

Public comment period is finished.

Please be quiet in the house.

I appreciate it.

Okay, the bill has 10 proposed amendments, amendments A through I, and it's been recommended that central staff be invited to the table to provide an overview of the amendments where there are competing amendments, which are amendments A through D.

And central staff will also be here to answer questions throughout the amendment process if there are policy related questions to those following D.

So if there's no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow central staff to address the council.

Hearing no objection, the council rules are suspended and Greg Doss of central staff is here at the table to speak about the procedural steps for voting on amendments A through D.

So go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President and council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to help today close out this very important issue, Council Bill 120916. As the council president said, I, Greg Doss, staff will be here for you to answer any questions you have on the next several amendments.

The way this is going to work, We're going to start out by bringing in front of the Council Amendment A. And Amendment A is a striker amendment that will replace the current bill and it will make certain additions that Councilmember Kettle has requested.

I'll go through all those with you.

But then you're not going to vote on it just yet.

You're going to hold it.

And then we're going to go on to amendments B, C, and D, and those amendments are going to change amendment A.

And then when we've gotten through B, C, and D, A will come back to the floor, potentially changed, and then you will vote on A.

So I'll stop and ask if there's any questions there.

Questions?

Do I have a question?

Council Member Moore.

Okay.

Thank you.

I do have a question about voting on sequentially for B and C, and I'm going to be making a request, and I don't know if this is the time to make that request, that we take them out of order and we vote on C before B because C, as you'll be able to explain, is more restrictive and potentially protective than B.

So anyway, I'm just putting that out there for your direction and perhaps clerk's direction.

Yeah, I think that'll, I check with the clerk, but I think it's up to the council president to determine whether or not those should be switched.

I have, is there any,

It's a recommendation as far as how they are ordered right now.

And it's up to when a member is recognized, then they're able to provide their motion to amend.

So through that process would be up to the body as well, if they would prefer to rearrange that order as well.

Okay.

Council member Kettle, do you have any objection to that?

I have no objection.

Of course, my recommendation would remain the same, but I have no objection.

As long as it doesn't violate any.

No, the clerk is making sure we're doing everything right.

And then once A has been brought and amended through B through D, then it will come to the floor for a vote.

You all will vote on it and then we'll move on to E through I.

Okay, in the spirit of collaboration, because I'm not hearing a hard no or any concerns about this order change, I am going to grant that request.

Thank you.

All right.

Council Member Kettle, you're recognized to, are there any other questions about the procedure here?

Okay.

Council Member Kettle, you're recognized to move Amendment A. Thank you, Council President.

I move Amendment A to Council Bill 120916. Second.

Second.

All right, it's been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on Amendment A. And Council Member Kettle, you'll be recognized to speak after Central Staff Analyst Greg Doss just basically says what it does, and then you'll speak to its merits if you're amenable to that.

Okay, go ahead and please let us know what this does.

Thank you, Madam President.

The amendment incorporates line item suggestions from the Community Police Commission that were noted in a letter to the council and the mayor on January 8th.

It would amend current recitals and add a new recital to better articulate SPD's role in crowd management settings.

Specifically, it would recognize SPD's role in observing free speech and assembly rights of Seattle residents and to ensure that crowd management activities take place consistent with those rights.

The amendment would also change blast ball deployment guidelines to ensure that blast balls are thrown away from people.

And that language, away from people, comes from that Community Police Commission letter on Jan 8. There were a number of different deployment guidelines that were suggested by the CPC on blast balls, and you all will get into that a little bit further.

But I just want to note that away from people was one of those recommendations, and it's part of this amendment.

And then finally, this amendment would clarify the roles of the accountability agencies when it comes to evaluating and reporting on SPD's crowd control policies and tactics.

Thank you very much.

All right, Council Member Kettle, go ahead, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Mr. Doss.

I believe this amendment's really important.

I believe it's important because this is about, beyond Less Lethal Weapon's crowd management bill, this is about supporting our accountability partners.

This is a, you know, A goal of the Public Safety Committee in 2025 is to look to support our accountability partners, the Office of Inspector General, the Office of Police Accountability, and the Community Policing Commission.

This is about recognizing their roles and what they're doing in this And this updated legislation does that, particularly with respect to OIG and CPC.

But it also highlights that CPC has the role of engaging with Seattle Police Department on policy.

And I believe that the legislation overall supports the CPC's mission set because it doesn't crowd it out.

We can get more detailed in terms of in the policy direction, but we need to create space for the CPC to do its job.

And I think this bill overall does that.

And by having this amendment that really highlights the input that we got from the CPC, shows our commitment to the CPC to have their voice heard and acknowledge their outreach to community and that it can have an input into this bill.

So that's the first thing I wanted to highlight, is the more broader context.

But it also has many helpful call-outs in terms of the context of less lethal weapons, as Mr. Doss noted, to throw blast balls, for example, away from people into an open space.

It has basically the clarification, as I noted, regarding our accountability partners.

And for all those reasons, I ask for your support to Amendment A. Thank you.

Okay, are there any questions about Amendment A?

Okay.

Can you please not talk during the meeting?

All right, moving on.

So we will return to this.

Go ahead, please continue with the plan presentations.

Thank you, sure.

So would the clerk please put up the table that we prepared on the next amendments, the next three amendments.

This is to help guide you through it.

Thank you.

And so, uh, what you will see in this table is amendments along the rows, uh, B, C and D.

And, uh, Again, where we are in space is these three amendments, B, C, and D, are going to change the amendment, the underlying amendment A.

And so you're going to go through these, B, C, and D, and then depending on what your choices are, that underlying amendment A will be changed, and then it will be back before you again.

And so how we proceed now is up to the body, whether you would like to start with C or B.

Let's go ahead with C.

So let me scroll down here.

Let's see.

Council Member Moore, as sponsor, you're recognized to address Amendment C.

Thank you.

So I move to amend Amendment A as presented on Amendment C. Do I have a second?

Second.

Second.

Okay.

Thank you.

So I'll quickly describe the amendment.

This amendment would prohibit the use of blast balls to move or disperse.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I got the wrong one.

This amendment would require police department policy to reflect that when used for crowd movement or dispersal, blast balls shall not be deployed directly into a crowd.

Glass ball shall only be deployed underhanded using a bowling style motion and away from people.

In the case of individual interdiction, this is an officer choosing to interdict for life safety purpose against one other person.

We're in the wrong one.

Yes, I'm sorry.

It looks like you are speaking to amendment D.

Yes, the out of order thing has gotten me to go out of order.

Charlie.

Oh, I've got it.

I got it here.

Thanks.

Okay.

Try this again.

Sorry about that.

This amendment would require the mayor to provide authorization for the use of blast balls.

If there is a president pro tem acting as mayor, then authorization for blast balls shall come from the chief of police.

Once authorized by the mayor and the mayor's office has issued a proclamation of civil emergency, then any SPD commander ranked lieutenant or above may authorize the use of blast balls to move or disperse a crowd, and that is the current standard in SPD's crowd management policies.

And so how this will work is if you look at language under Amendment A, the top left box, that is the language that is in the Amendment A, and you would be potentially replacing it with, if you look at the second row down, Amendment C, the language that is to the right.

So it would amend it so that authorization was provided by the mayor.

And if there's a president pro tem acting as mayor, then authorization shall come from the chief of police.

And that is after there has already been a proclamation of emergency.

Thank you for that.

Okay.

Council member Moore, would you like to, um, to go ahead and add your comments about why you are putting this forward.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I don't have a lot to add.

Greg's done a great job of describing what this amendment does.

This is an amendment.

I altered the amendment that I brought in committee to address the issue about what happens if the mayor is unavailable and the concern about wanting to keep that decision-making within the executive.

And so that's why it provides for the chief of police rather than it being...

whoever's serving as pro tem.

Again, this would require, this does not change the requirement that there be a mayoral proclamation of a civil emergency.

This adds yet a second piece to that, which is that the mayor has to make a general authorization for the use of blast balls.

Again, I think given all that we have experienced in the city going back to WTO, it's very clear that blast balls are a very, very dangerous sort of weapon of last resort before we get to tear gas, obviously.

And because we are using it against people who are extensively exercising their constitutional rights.

I think it's important that the highest level of authority be the one to give that authorization and so that's why I'm requesting that I'm moving that it be the mayor because again I think we as residents, as citizens, we need to be able to hold whoever made that decision absolutely accountable at the ballot box not necessarily having the mayor hold that individual accountable.

So for those reasons, I would request your support.

Are there any comments?

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Council President, and also thank you, Councilmember Moore.

The point here that I would like to raise is that The amended bill speaks to a mayoral proclamation being in place, and this is done before the standard operation with incident commanders happens within the police department.

This goes to the point of understanding the operations and the structure of the police department.

It does not have a mayoral authorization piece in the baseline legislation.

So here, the way it's written, it doesn't make that clear.

But I would also argue that, again, operationally, we needed to pull it up from a basic incident commander up to the chief of police, which, given the fact that we have a mayoral proclamation, there's no doubt chief of police would be involved.

But we need to be explicit about the role of the chief of police, which goes to charter and everything else.

and just authorization for the use of the blast balls.

So that's the two-step process in like Amendment B. But here in C, I would argue that it's not clear because there is no need for authorization from the mayor in the baseline legislation and that the authorization would again, normally come through the incident commander, but because of blast balls and its uniqueness, kind of like tear gas has been elevated up and to the chief of police.

And so for, for clarity sake, I believe that amendment B is clear on that than amendment C.

Council president.

Council member Rink.

Thank you, Council President.

The city charter is clear when it states that the council shall have power by ordinance to make all local police regulations and that, quote, the mayor shall see that the laws in the city are enforced and shall maintain peace and order in the city, end quote.

And at the heart of both amendments B and C is the council's desire to have accountability for authorization of less lethal weapons elevated to the highest possible level.

While amendment B would elevate that responsibility to chief of police, amendment C would put the responsibility and accountability squarely in the hands of the highest elected official, the mayor, who is accountable to every voter in the city.

The people have given us, Councilmembers and the mayor, our police powers to call support amendment C to ensure maximum accountability to the people.

Are there additional questions or comments?

Go ahead, Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

I also want to have a comment, and then I want to confirm that we'll be able to, at the end, give an overall before we pass the full-on.

As to this particular point, I very much, first of all, I thank my colleagues who sit on the Public Safety Committee for all the work that they did in reviewing and putting together this legislation.

I know this was hard work.

and I do not take it for granted.

In terms of this particular piece, I will say that the chief of police is the highest person at the department and who answers directly to the mayor.

And so that person is under the purview of the mayor and has to act on behest of the mayor.

So I would say that having the chief of police be the person who is in charge of this decision once the mayor is issuing an executive order or proclamation is appropriate in the structure of the city of Seattle.

And that is to say, if the chief of police makes a decision that is not one that the mayor would support, the mayor is within his right, to take action against that chief of police and there is a number of actions that the mayor can take so I would say that in this instance while I am you know compelled by all the comments of my colleagues and I understand where it's coming from I also know that the way that the city is set up the chief of police needs to be able to be held accountable and they are accountable to the mayor so I don't see giving the chief of police the decision at that moment in time as the mayor not being, as the mayor not overseeing this.

So I think I, for this particular amendment, won't be supporting this, but I do appreciate the work that council member Moore, you did in bringing this forward.

And for the reasons I stated, I think that I still feel that the chief of police as the highest officer at SPD is appropriate to give them the decision, and then they answer to the mayor.

Thank you.

I will let you have the last word, Council Member Moore, but I want to just note that, and this applies to other amendments as well, that it's important to note that we're talking about less lethal tools here, or less lethal weapons, whatever nomenclature one wishes to use, In the event that SPD is faced with a situation where people's lives are at risk, if they don't act, then not doing anything is not an option.

And so my point is that if we tie SPD's hands too much or complicate things so much in the moment, and this is just in general, and they're not able to use less lethal weapons or tools in certain situations, we risk the likelihood of them having to turn to other tools that are not less lethal or are even more dangerous or could produce other negative effects on people who are present.

So that is just an observation that I don't want to repeat.

over and over again, but I'll just say that I do understand the desire to add checks and balances on this, but I also have to consider the practicality of the issue when something is happening in the moment, as so often these situations do arise.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Go ahead, Council Member Moore, I will let you please...

Anyway, yeah.

Yeah, thank you for that.

I just want to be clear that nothing in this prohibits SPD from being able to act individually like in Mardi Gras where there is an immediate threat to life safety.

Officers are absolutely empowered to deploy whatever weapon they need, less lethal or lethal, to address the situation.

So this does not change that authority.

What it does though say is that if we are going to be engaged in crowd control management and dispersal that the ultimate decision and this isn't a specific like the mayor reaches out to a particular incident captain and says yes you and yes you and this is like when you come to the mayor and request a proclamation of civil emergency at the same time you submit, you make your case that facts and circumstances on the ground raise to the level that you are probably going to need to use blast balls and at that point you make the request of the mayor and the mayor gives broad authorization to use blast balls then it falls through the chain of command either a chief of police or the incident commander who now has that broad authorization to make the decision about whether to actually execute on the ground.

So we are not interfering in the line of chain of command decision making.

We're simply saying that the mayor needs to give the overall approval and then those decisions on the ground can be made.

And again, if there's an immediate threat to life safety, an officer can act at that time as they should be able to.

But given the actually life-threatening consequences that can come from this, again, I do believe that this authority should rest, this authorization should rest with the mayor because it can take time.

for a mayor to make a decision about whether to remove a chief of police, and there can be decisions that choose to not remove a chief of police for various reasons.

So, anyway, I've said enough.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

I'm not seeing any other hands raised, so will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment C?

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Councilmember Rivera?

No.

Councilmember Saka?

No.

Councilmember Solomon?

No.

Councilmember Solomon?

No.

Councilmember Strauss?

No.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Councilmember Kettle?

No.

Council President Nelson?

No.

We have three in favor, six opposed.

Thank you very much.

The amendment fails.

Let's go on to Amendment B, please.

Thank you, Madam President.

Amendment B, working backwards now on this chart, is entirely capsulated on the first row.

There is the language in the underlying amendments, and the language in the underlying amendment, as you are aware, requires a mayoral proclamation before blast balls may be authorized.

And then, as you see to the right, the proposed language adds that blast balls are only authorized by the chief of police after that proclamation has happened.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle, would you like to move your amendment?

Yes, thank you, Council President.

And yes, I move Amendment B to Council Bill 120916. Second.

to amend as presented on amendment B.

I will ask, so we've already had an explanation from central staff.

I will let you go ahead and continue your presentation, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

And I've already spoken to Amendment B, and to be frank, I don't think I can give a better justification for Amendment B than say thank you, Council Member Rivera, because I think the points that you made related to this topic really goes to Amendment B. So, you know, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Any other questions or comments?

Go ahead, Council Member Saka.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

Just want to thank Public Safety Chair Kettle for bringing this forward.

It's very hard for members of the public, anyone, to effectively track the chronology of how this legislation has evolved over time in the last few months.

I just note that I am in strong support of this particular amendment because it's substantially similar to my own amendment to the underlying bill before us.

And in fact, every single word is identical with the exception of that last subpart two.

So I thank you, Chair Kettle, for bringing it forward.

Great minds think alike, so to speak.

All right.

Is that a new hand?

Go ahead, Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

I just want to thank Councilmember Kettle.

I know we had conversations about this, and so thank you for taking my comments that I not just made today, but prior.

I like to work with my colleagues when they're working on legislation, and so I appreciate you bringing this forward after we have that conversation.

about really the importance of making sure that it's the highest person in the department who is responsible ultimately for making decisions since they are the ones who are directly under the supervision of the mayor.

So thank you for bringing this forward.

Okay, anything else?

Seeing none, let's see.

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of amendment B.

Council member Rink?

Yes.

Council member Rivera?

Aye.

Council member Salka?

Aye.

Council member Solomon?

Aye.

Council member Strauss?

Yes.

Council member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council member Kettle?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

All right, the motion carries and amendment B is adopted.

And we will proceed to amendment D.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Madam President.

This amendment would require the police department policy to reflect that when used for crowd movement or dispersal purposes, blast balls are not deployed directly into a crowd.

Blast balls shall only be deployed underhanded using a bowling style motion and away from people.

In the cases of individual interdiction, when reasonable, necessary and proportional to address immediate threats to life safety, officers may deploy blast balls overhand and near a person.

The underhand deployment tactic comes at the request of the CPC and an OPA management action recommendation that was made one year after the 2020 BLM protests.

Moving to the table overhead, what this amendment would do is it would replace language in the underlying amendment, A, that you can see on the last row there when used for crowd management or dispersal purposes, and it would replace the left box with the language in the right box.

What I would note, the main difference between the two is that the underlying Amendment A captures the away from people language that the CPC recommended.

The proposed language by Council Member Moore's amendment, would add that blast balls must be deployed underhanded using a bowling style motion and that they also be thrown away from people and it does allow individual interdiction to allow for overhand deployment and that's all i have okay go ahead all right will the sponsor please

Please, it is very difficult to hear with your speaking during the meeting.

Please, it must be the way that sound carries in this room, but it is difficult for me to hear.

Go ahead, please address the amendment.

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

Okay, again, this has been, what this does has been set forth very clearly.

This has been recommended by CPC.

It was also recommended by OPA.

It also is in, alliance with SPD policy in terms of saying the preferred method of deployment is underhand and so I also note that in the materials that were submitted to us by Karen Kohler which went through the OPA sustained findings that most of the injuries were sustained in relation to deployment of blast balls when they were thrown overhand and because of the nature of blast balls themselves being rubber, being the fact that they separate, there is just a greater chance of them not hitting where they, not landing where they should when they are thrown overhand.

And so given that there had been so much recommendation and that this is in keeping in general with SPD policy, I believe it's appropriate to add this additional provision.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

And again, thank you, Council Member Moore for engaging with this amendment, a few things I wanted to note.

Looking again, Amendment A brings in CPC, but there were some adjustments made due to the coordination and the collaboration on this bill.

to include legal, and legal had made recommendations, as you see on the left side.

And this also goes to the level of detail.

This goes, as I said at the beginning, regarding the operational aspects of it.

And this is also an area where CPC can be engaging as part of its duties with the SPD on this.

And one last thing I wanted to know too is, and this came up early on in its early drafts of the legislation, is that this is less lethal weapons, of crowd management.

And life safety is specifically a very different piece that falls under different policy rules and the like.

And so we purposely avoided any reference to life safety to avoid the confusion of having two policies speaking or two pieces of legislation alike speaking to this.

And so my recommendation is for, again, for the simplicity and the clarity piece is not to include life safety in a crowd management bill.

That, and I would say, too, that training away from people, open space, gets to the crux of the matter and gets us to an improved piece of legislation that has also been checked out by legal.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

I just want to thank Council Member Moore for bringing this forward.

Very much appreciate all the work that was done with OIG and also CPC when crafting this legislation.

I have also talked to the department.

I know this is pretty much in line with their practice.

And so given that that is all true, it is something that it is less lethal weapon, but it is a weapon.

And so we need to make sure we put as many parameters in place where we're giving the department the ability to use it if needed, at the same time putting as many protections as we can.

And so thank you for bringing this forward and I'll be supporting this.

Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

So when this originally came forward, so at the committee level, recall there were 10 or so amendments, and here at the full council level, there are another 10 or so amendments.

And a previous Frankenstein-ish version of this, at the council level, or excuse me, the Public Safety Committee level, sponsored again by Council Member Moore, I did not support, did not make it into the final bill, It has been resurrected and I think improved.

And so I did not support that earlier version.

I will be supporting today's amendment and effectively reversing myself because originally at the time I thought there were I had concerns around how prescriptive it was and what kind of limitations and impact that could have on people's lives, literally people's lives.

But having done some due diligence, talking to a number of stakeholders and I do think the extra couple weeks that we got in this process really helped me and my own journey as we consider this is a very complex piece of legislation.

But after doing all that due diligence and hearing various concerns, my original concerns are satisfied in large part because it is effectively how the department operates today and there are appropriate mechanisms in place or exceptions, if you will, to allow variance.

So for those reasons, I will be supporting this amendment today and I wanna thank Council Member Moore for bringing it forward.

Thank you for your leadership.

Okay, I don't see any other hands up now, so hearing once, hearing twice.

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on amendment D as an amendment to amendment A.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Solomon?

No.

Councilmember Strauss?

Yes.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Councilmember Kettle?

No.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Seven in favor, two opposed.

The amendment D is adopted, so now we will move on to Continuing with Amendment A. So, is there any other discussion that one would like to make on Amendment A?

Have we moved?

I forget now.

We've already moved it, okay.

All right, let's return to Amendment A as amended by Amendment D. And B. Correct.

Yes, go ahead.

Quick description.

Amendment A, as I said before, it makes some changes that were recommended by the CPC in a Jan 8 letter.

It changes some recitals.

It adds a new recital.

It adds language about how blast balls shall be deployed.

That language is expanded on now that you have voted on Amendment D. And that language also requires now the chief of police to authorize blast balls as you voted on amendment B.

So that is the amended, amended A that is now before you.

Thank you very much.

Would you like to...

I am going to have to ask that you be seated and be quiet, please.

What the fuck are you doing for anybody?

Call the police.

Go ahead.

I am asking you to please leave so that we can continue with our business.

Council Member Moore, you're recognized to speak.

Thank you, Council President.

I'm sorry.

I just have a question.

So we're voting on Amendment A, which is amending Version 2. Is that correct?

And then we'll vote on other amendments to Version 2 and vote on the entirety?

More or less, yes.

You're going to vote on Amendment A as it's been changed now by the body.

Once Amendment A passes, then we'll go through Amendments E through I.

And those all amend the underlying bill because there's no conflict there like there were with these.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Okay.

Council President, thank you.

Can I ask a quick clarification piece?

So it seems like when amendments A and B were drafted, they were independent of each other.

But amendment C created that conflict, so then we had the B and C decision to be made.

But in effect, B, because it was passed, is not really in conflict with amendment A.

because it was two separate and they were built that way since I'm the author of both.

But then we have D, which then definitely amends Amendment A. And then obviously C has not been approved.

So I just want to make that statement.

I know it's kind of complicated.

just to say that for the record.

And so I could, so yes, let's just proceed with the vote on Amendment A. Clearly, I wasn't in opposition to Amendment D, partly because of the conflation of life safety with crowd management, which are two different things and should not have been conflated.

And I would also have made, and I did make that argument about getting too operationally detailed in terms of the legislation, which goes to my point of a little bit of trying to legislate to the perfect scenario.

But key to this is to get both Amendment B, which is essentially passed, and Amendment A. So because of the circumstances, I will be voting for Amendment A.

Will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment A?

As amended.

As amended.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Solomon?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and Amendment A as amended is adopted.

All right, moving on to Amendment E.

So moving on to Amendment E, this would add a new recital to the bill, to the underlying bill that was recommended by the Community Police Commission in that Jan 8 letter to the Mayor and City Council.

And read that recital to you now.

It says that the CPC in the Jan 8 letter to the City Council notes that blast balls, as used in Seattle over the last decade, have a demonstrated track record.

When used according to past policy, of inflicting injury, including serious injury, to individuals, including bystanders, journalists, lawful demonstrators, and at least one instance, a police officer, when past policy intended to reduce risk of such injury but was unable to achieve that outcome.

Okay.

Council Member Moore, you're welcome to move Amendment E. Thank you, Council President.

I move to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on Amendment E. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on Amendment E. Council Member Moore's sponsor, you're recognized to go into further detail on Amendment E.

Thank you, Council President.

Again, Greg's done a great job of presenting what this does.

I had brought this as two wareases together in committee and that did not pass.

Chair Kettle adopted one in his new amendment and thank you for that.

And then I decided to bring the second one at the request of CPC.

Given that we are Talking about blast balls and we all acknowledge they are less lethal, I think it's important to have the grounding that's provided and I would note to the concerns that were raised in our legal memorandum that this is directly tying it to the comments that CPC made in a letter.

So, in some extent, it's their recitation of their position on this, rather than us saying, ipso facto, this is the case.

So, anyway, I do think it's important to have this whereas.

So, thank you.

Okay, are there any comments on Amendment E?

Council Member Kettle.

Yes, thank you, Council President.

And I got used to having the text up on the screen, so we don't have that with this one.

But I do have the CPC's original letter and their suggested edits to the legislation.

And I would say, again, you know...

This one has many concerns, legal concerns, and my recommendation is, again for the point of clarity, is to not support this recital in the bill.

We have included a CPC recital that was included in Amendment A, but my recommendation is to not include this one in the legislation.

Thank you.

I don't see any other hands up, so will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment E. Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Solomon?

No.

Council Member Strauss?

No.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

No.

Council President Nelson?

That's six in favor, three opposed.

It's four opposed.

So five and four?

It's five in favor, four opposed.

Got it.

Okay, the motion carries, and Amendment E is adopted.

Amendment F. Council Member Moore, you're welcome to proceed and move your Amendment F, and then we can go through the explanation.

I move to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on Amendment F. We need a second.

I do need a second.

Second.

Thank you, Madam President.

This amendment would prohibit SPD incident commanders from assigning to any crowd management role any mutual aid officer who is unwilling or unable to comply with SPD's crowd management policies.

SPD may deploy mutual aid officers to other roles.

As was discussed in Public Safety Committee, this requirement is one that was recommended by some best-practicing organizations, policing organizations, and was highlighted in the OIG Sentinel Event Review, although also notable is that the department, the mayor's office, and OIG have all indicated that mutual aid organizations may choose not to come to the assistance of Seattle if they are required to follow policies that they are not trained on.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

May I speak to the bill?

Oh, I'm sorry.

That was in old hands, I apologize.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Okay, thanks.

Again, I just want to note that this amendment has been revised for clarity compared to what was heard in committee.

Again, the updated language clarifies that the first sentence is about deploying to a crowd management role, and the second sentence clarifies that SPD may deploy mutual aid officers for other purposes.

When SPD presented they made it very clear that that was something that they wanted the ability to do was to be able to deploy and that they would actually consider deploying to other purposes if they were not able to utilize for crowd control even outside of this restriction.

So I don't believe that we're doing anything that SPD wouldn't already do.

I just want to note that there have been a number of comments made about legal concerns raised.

I would note that there were legal concerns raised about every single one of these amendments.

And so there's nothing unique to this particular amendment or some of the others.

They all shared similar legal concerns.

And again, I think as I said in committee, We have the law department to give us advice, to give us a risk assessment from high to low, and ultimately it's up to us to decide what level of risk we are comfortable with, really based on what kind of policy objectives we are trying to achieve.

So I think it's important to keep that in mind.

Additionally, there's been presentation or concern raised that if we only allow mutual aid officers to if we restrict their ability to use less lethal weapons based on their policies versus Seattle policies, that they won't show up.

Again, I think that's speculation to some extent.

To some extent, that's a little bit of It's speculation.

And additionally, I don't think that we should be having, inviting people to manage our crowds if they are unwilling to fully comply with SPD policy.

I don't believe we should be providing any sort of intentional or unintentional loophole to the utilization of less lethal weapons that are in clear violation of what the City of Seattle, through its elected representatives, have chosen to set up.

And I don't think that we want officers coming to the city who are not aligned, who are not willing to comply with our specific policies, particularly now when we are looking at a different landscape in terms of law enforcement.

We are now looking at deployment of the military on the border.

We are now looking at National Guard deployment.

And we had deployment of Washington State Patrol in 2020, and there was a finding that they didn't violate policy.

So I think that we need to set the standards.

We need to...

train on those standards.

We are told that training happens.

We can provide with the training manuals.

And this does provide the opportunity to deploy mutual aid in all other capacities if they are unwilling to simply agree to not deploy blast balls or other less lethal weapons as directed by the policies that have been adopted by the elected representatives of this city.

So I feel very strongly that this is important.

If it turns out to truly be a problem, we can always revisit it as we often revisit issues.

This is a time when we are asking for mutual aid from other jurisdictions with whom we are not entirely sure where they line on the spectrum of law enforcement issues.

So I think there's even more compelling reason to make it very clear, you come, you abide by our rules.

And if you're unwilling to do that, we'll put you in some other helpful role.

And the specter of not having people for FIFA, again, I find it hard to believe that they would be unwilling to agree to come and participate.

in a non-crowd management role in something like that, a sporting event or something where we are concerned about needing additional manpower.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Council President, and again, thank you, Councilmember Moore.

I strongly disagree on this one.

This has already been addressed in the bill.

Mutual aid, you know, any mutual aid that comes to Seattle has to follow the, you know, the command and control of the incident commander and you know, follow the direction of the incident commanders.

And so, therefore, this covers the policy piece.

Because SPD, from the chief of police on down, they follow SPD policies.

And so, and then they give direction as it relates to SPD policies.

And so, therefore, any mutual aid will follow the, those directions.

And obviously, if there's an officer who refuses to follow the direction of the incident commander, that person, the incident commander, will address that issue.

And so, and we also know too, to the point about neighboring jurisdictions, we all fall under state of Washington and there's ever increasing rules and the standardization across the state related to policies and that will continue.

But bottom line is it's not speculation.

Jurisdictions will not come to our aid.

If we get too precise in terms of policies, in terms of we have to, you know, follow their policies, their policies need to be followed by us and the like, that will basically mean that nobody will show up.

Nobody will show up.

And if we're in a dire situation and our officers are on the street and they don't feel nobody's going to show up, that's problematic.

That creates even more danger.

More danger.

We should not put ourselves in that position.

We've got this covered.

Mutual aid is covered in the legislation now already.

And to go further would actually create more problems and create more danger and more concern when we face a crowd management situation and the use of less lethal weapons.

So my recommendation is to definitely say no to this amendment.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Council President, and I'll keep this brief.

It's really quite simple.

Seattle residents should be able to trust that when they go to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights within city limits, that the law enforcement officers who are on the scene are abiding by City of Seattle policy.

So I have concerns about the kind of conduct we may see if we allow law enforcement agencies that are coming onto the scene and playing by different rules.

We already have work to do to address the accountability challenges within our own police department.

I have concerns about introducing a whole new category of accountability challenges, bringing in law enforcement agencies abiding by their own policies, not ours, into the equation.

So thank you, Council Member Moore, for introducing this amendment.

I will be supporting it, and I encourage my colleagues to support it as well.

Council Member Solomon.

Thank you, Madam President.

For almost 35 years, I've worked with the men and women who have been out of line in these circumstances, who have dealt with crowd management issues, who have dealt with unrest and protest.

So my thoughts, my votes are formed by that lens, and I just want to say that It's not a personal slight that I'm voting against an amendment that some of my colleagues are in favor of.

But it is informed by my knowledge, my experience, and being with those men and women, and having heard their experiences when they've been out there.

With the issue regarding mutual aid, any time we have mutual aid coming into the city, their senior leaders are connecting with our senior leaders, the incident commanders, on scene.

There is coordination between them.

So there's not going to be an ask of Bellevue or Kirkland to do something that they're not equipped or trained to do.

So I just wanted to make that point that there already is that coordination.

There is that interaction to prevent some of the issues that this amendment is seeking to address.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle.

And I just wanted to know, thank you, Council Member Solomon.

I really appreciate your comments.

I really appreciate the experience that you bring to this.

And I understand the thoughts, but to Council Member Ring's point, they will not be playing by different rules as noted by Council Member Solomon.

They will be following Seattle rules as it falls under the chief of police and then the direction to the incident commanders and the incident commander's direction to any mutual aid officers.

And that's under the command and control as spelled out in the bill and the direction of the incident commander.

So I just wanted to, again, make that point.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Are there any other questions?

That's an old hand.

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on adoption of Amendment F?

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

No.

Council Member Saka?

No.

Council Member Solomon?

No.

Council Member Strauss?

No.

Council member Hollingsworth?

No.

Council member Kettle?

No.

Council President Nelson?

No.

That is two in favor, seven opposed.

The motion fails and amendment F is not adopted.

All right, going on to amendment G.

Why don't you go ahead and explain it.

Thank you.

Yes, this amendment would better enable council review of policies that govern crowd management.

I draw your attention back to Amendment A. Amendment A allows or requires the Public Safety Committee to be notified when SPD wishes to start using a new, less lethal weapon type for crowd management.

Once notification has occurred, the policy will be enacted.

This amendment goes a little bit further.

What this amendment does is it says that SPD must report on proposed policy changes both for new, less lethal weapons, but also for any change that it might make to the threshold that they use to determine when a crowd has become unlawful.

As the Council will recall, that current threshold is that SPD commanders have to be able to articulate the specific facts and circumstances that establish an imminent threat of violence against persons or significant property damage.

Under this amendment, SPD would need to notify not just the Public Safety Committee but the entire council of any change to this standard or, again, any new less lethal weapon.

Once the council is notified, SPD would need to wait 120 days before implementing that change into their policy.

During that 120-day waiting period, the council has the option of passing a resolution of disapproval.

This is a term that is originates in the federal government, whereby the Congress can generally oversee major rulemaking.

And in the same concept or in the same way here, if SPD changed its policies, the council would have the option to pass a resolution that would make those policies null and void.

Any there's any questions?

Council Member Moore, you're welcome to move and speak to your amendment.

All right.

Thank you.

This is my final amendment.

I move to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on Amendment G. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the legislation through Amendment G as presented.

Go ahead, please.

Okay, thank you.

So I meant to have talked about this in concept and committee, but now actually have the actual legislation or proposed legislation.

I want to note that this was drafted in consultation with Kerala Cowart, who is our Consent Decree Counsel.

because I wanted to make sure that we got it right and that we didn't do anything that could potentially jeopardize our request to be removed from the consent decree.

And so this is why it is written this way in utilizing this federal structure.

It was her opinion that utilizing this structure the sort of federal language and structure would be more comprehensible to the federal district court judge.

It's language that they use.

And the other important piece to this is, so this is basically a default.

So the policies would become effective unless counsel takes action so within 120 days.

So the default is they go into effect unless in 120 days council makes this resolution of disapproval.

Again I think This is a policy question about trying not to be too prescriptive.

I have certainly heard that and I've tried to be respectful of that.

That's why it's limited to simply reviewing the introduction of changes to policy that would introduce the use of new, less lethal weapons that have not been incorporated or covered in the current policy as well as changing the definition of what constitutes a riot which is what is the trigger for civil emergency proclamation.

So to me, those are policy decisions that the Council should be engaged in.

I appreciate that Amendment A has a lot of requests for feedback from our accountability partners, and I think that that's important.

But at the end of the day, it is our decision to make to decide what we do with that feedback and our decision to make about what is the policy that we're going to develop around do we get new lethal weapons and do we change the definition of riot, which then allows a higher level of use of a higher type of weapon.

And again, I'll just repeat, if council doesn't take action in 120 days, the new policy would automatically go into effect.

Thank you.

I have one question.

You, um, you distributed this revision.

Can you speak to that?

Oh, that was only if there was concern about 120 days versus a less number of days, but there hasn't, I haven't heard a concern, so I'm not, I'm not broaching that topic.

Okay.

Council member Kettle.

Uh, thank you, council president and council member Moore.

Um, again, uh, with this amendment, um, A couple of things.

One of the things is, as noted before, in terms of the responsibilities of the mayor and the chief of police, all those arguments are germane here and apply.

And their responsibilities as it relates to this are in effect.

And also, as I noted, and I understand the point, But again, we should not be crowding out our accountability partners.

This is the reason why we have the CPC.

We should be working to empower the CPC and to set it up for success as opposed to failure.

And I think one way to set up for success is to grant that space and that engagement for them to work, because that's their role in this.

And I believe that we should be Basically supporting that and separately we do get the notification and the committee and then the full council can Take action if needed, but I think at this point the legislation is written captures all that's required and it also in terms of those broader points in terms of our accountability partners also is positive in terms of how it's written.

And so my recommendation is to say no to this amendment.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any, Council Member Moore, is that one?

Oh, Council Member Solomon, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

I want to echo the comments of Council Member Kettle.

I know our accountability partners, I trust our accountability partners, and I trust that they will do their jobs.

And therefore, I will not be supporting this amendment.

Okay, final comments?

Go ahead, please.

Yes, thank you.

So I too know and trust our accountability partners.

There's nothing in this amendment that precludes or crowds them out.

It simply treats them as they should be treated, which is advisory bodies.

They are advisory bodies to this council.

Their job is to go out and talk to the community, CPC, OIG.

Their job is to talk to the community as well as to law enforcement and other national actors, local actors, right?

But they exist at our pleasure to provide us with the kind of information that we need.

I will also note that not everybody in the community has been terribly happy with how CPC has been doing its job.

And so to say that we are going to abdicate our responsibility for the most important issues about how we define a riot and what weapons we allow to be used against our residents to a group that is not accountable to anybody other than us through whether they're reappointed and with whom the community does not necessarily have a lot of trust or high regard for, I think is a mistake.

It's not to say that we are crowding them out.

Absolutely not.

We want to hear from them.

The fact that Councilmember Kettle, that you have included so much of their feedback in your amendment, the fact that I have directly presented amendments based on their recommendation and language shows that this Council is very respectful.

and receptive to their feedback.

And I think we should continue to be so.

But at the end of the day, it's this body that makes that decision based on good counsel that we have received from all the people out there.

And this is very narrow.

This is about, again, it's not all of the policy.

It's about new weapons and how you define riot, which is the trigger for being able to utilize more weapons with a higher risk of lethality.

So this is not an either or, this is about creating, utilizing that feedback, but being the ultimate judge.

And so thank you.

I hope that you will support this amendment.

Council Member Solomon, is that a new hand?

If so, you're welcome to speak.

No, I was lowering my hand from last time.

All right, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, council president.

I just wanted to note, um, as chair of the public safety committee and as a member of this council that, um, I do not abrogate, um, My responsibilities, and I don't believe that we abrogate our responsibilities as it relates to this, we exercise that responsibility, that accountability, that oversight in so many ways through committee, multiple committees, and the overall council.

And we will continue to do that.

And so I do not believe that there's any concern about abrogating responsibilities.

I meet on a regular basis with our accountability partners, some who are represented in the chamber today.

I meet monthly regularly with the chief of police.

In fact, I'll be meeting with him again soon this week.

And these are the opportunities that engage in addition to what we do through the public safety committee.

So I just wanted to note that I and I don't think we abrogate our responsibilities even as this is written currently in the legislation.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Moore.

All right, thank you.

And if I may have the final word on this as the author of this amendment, I would just note that if you look at Section 7 in Amendment A, it said prior to authorizing the use of any less lethal weapon, blah, blah, blah, that's not currently authorized in policy, the police department shall notify the Council Public Safety Committee or a successor and report on.

There's nothing in there that then says the Public Safety Committee then brings this forth to the rest of the council.

And I certainly am not impugning anyone's desire to hold people accountable or do the work.

I know the work's being done.

That's not the point.

The point is that it shouldn't just be advising the council in one particular position.

Committee of the Council it should be coming before it we should have the opportunity to have all that information which we would we would have all that information and then if we were to have concerns about some new novel weapon or Changing a riot from four to two that we then have the opportunity, if we're concerned about that, to bring legislation.

If we don't have concerns, then nothing happens.

It just goes into effect.

So this is just an additional safeguard.

It's an additional opportunity for us to continue to exercise our oversight authority.

And that is incredibly important.

Thank you.

Okay, not seeing any other hands, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment G?

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

No.

Council Member Saka?

No.

Council Member Solomon?

No.

Council Member Strauss?

No.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Kettle?

No.

Council President Nelson?

No.

There's three in favor and six opposed.

The motion fails and amendment G is not adopted.

I move to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented in amendment H.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on amendment H.

Go ahead please and give us the rundown.

This amendment would require SPD to amend or change its purpose statement for its crowd management intervention and control policy.

Under this amendment, the purpose statement must say that a fundamental function of the role of police in all crowd management settings is to, whenever necessary, safe and feasible, identify and clearly communicate safe entry and exit points for individuals assembled in crowds as well as individuals passing by, living in the area or working in the area.

The language around this safe exit points is already in SPD policy.

So the effect of this amendment would be to highlight or raise up the function of ensuring that clearly communicating entry and exit points is a high priority for the department so that it's such such a high priority that it is now included in the purpose statement.

The purpose statement is about five paragraphs long and reflects a lot of different subjects.

As I just said, this would add a priority for the council to that statement.

All right, Councilman Brink, you're welcome to address your amendment.

Thank you, Council President.

As was stated, language directing SPD to identify safe dispersal routes is already in the CMIC policy for phases five and six.

This amendment would elevate that already agreed upon standard to the purpose statement of the city's crowd control policy.

This is to ensure that the safety of all in the vicinity of police response to any crowd management situation are provided safe options of egress whenever possible.

As we saw on Capitol Hill in downtown in 2020, SPD crowd control repose impacts not just those in the crowd being managed, but all of the residents, business owners, and workers nearby.

It is the fundamental job and role of police officers to protect the public and increase public safety in times of crisis and chaos.

It is reasonable to ask police officers to increase crowd management public safety for both community members exercising their First Amendment rights and the residents, business owners, and other folks in the immediate vicinity.

So colleagues, I encourage your support for this amendment.

Thank you.

Are there any comments on this amendment?

All right, go ahead, Council Member.

I'll go ahead with you, Council Member Saka.

I don't know who raised their hand first, but go ahead, please.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

So generally I'm against amendments that are overly prescriptive, but I believe this amendment strikes an appropriate balance between communicating safe entry points and exit points, but doing so when it is necessary, safe and feasible.

Again, we learned that it's already consistent with current policy of the department.

And so what this would effectively do is elevate that to ordinance.

And I think there are valid reasons at times to elevate the prolixity and detail of a department policy to the legislation level, including because it's more difficult to change.

once it's an ordinance, because the whim of whoever the next police chief is, who ultimately reports to the mayor, so effectively the mayor, the department policies can change.

So I think this enshrines and codifies current best practice and don't love it, but I am going to support it and I wanna thank Council Member Rank for bringing it.

Council Member Kittle.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, Council Member Rink.

You know, one of the things that this amendment highlights is the reform that has occurred over the last dozen years as part of the consent decree process, but also specifically in the last five years since the the protests of 2020. And it shows, you know, often time in Public Safety Committee, the arguments against whatever piece of legislation that we were hearing were as if they're from yesteryear.

With no accounting for all the changes, the dramatic change in SPD, the massive turnover in its staffing, the massive change in policies.

And basically what it shows is the system working.

And to include, again, my point about accountability partners and those reforms that we brought into the Seattle way, which is different from other jurisdictions around the state and country.

And again, this shows that the system is working and that Seattle Way will be driving what we're doing.

Now again, the points, a lot of these have similar pieces to them and then again, my point regarding the responsibilities of the mayor and the chief of police, but then again, the accountability partners in this specific case, the Community Police Commission.

And so my recommendation is to not get into the weeds as a council, but to keep that bigger picture responsibility in terms of what we're doing in our oversight and the exercise of that responsibility.

So my recommendation would be to vote no on this amendment.

Thank you.

Additional comments?

Okay.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you.

I just want to thank my colleague, Council Member Rink, for bringing this forward.

Given that this is something that the department already does, I won't be supporting this, but always appreciate the thoughtfulness of my colleagues.

Thank you.

All right.

Seeing no others, will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment H.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rank?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

No.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Solomon?

No.

Council Member Strauss?

No.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

No.

Council Member Kettle?

No.

Council President Nelson?

No.

That is three in favor, six opposed.

The motion fails and Amendment H is not adopted.

I move to amend.

Hold on.

Would you like to please tell us about this amendment, aye, and then we'll get to moving and then you speaking to it.

Go ahead, please.

Okay.

Amendment, aye, sponsored by Council Member Rink.

This amendment would create a private right of action against the city when persons who incur physical injuries approximately caused by the use of less lethal weapons in violation of SPD's crowd management policy A person who, in the judgment of a reasonable person, commits a criminal offense immediately at or prior to the use of that less lethal force may not recover under that private right of action.

Absent evidence establishing a greater amount of damages, the damages that would be payable to persons for injuries approximately caused in violation of the section is $10,000.

I would note that the difference between this amendment and the one that was at the Public Safety Committee is that while this one establishes, both establish a private right of action, this one would not allow for recovery of court and attorney fees.

That is the different component here than the one that was at the Public Safety Committee.

Okay.

Go ahead.

I move to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on Amendment I. Second.

And seconded to amend Council Bill 120916 as presented on Amendment I. We've already had an explanation.

Council Member Rink is sponsored.

You're recognized to address it.

Wonderful, thank you so much, Council President.

To that end, as explained, this amendment would create a private right of action against the city when a person incurs physical injuries approximately caused by the use of less lethal weapons in violation of SPD's crowd management intervention and control policy.

It's important to note that this was included in previous legislation that the current interim policy 14.090 supplanted.

This would only apply if less lethal weapons are used in violation of SPD policy again.

We've taken steps in between the Public Safety Committee meeting and today to address some of the issues raised by legal counsel to try and remedy this.

But to that end, this is a matter of creating known risk for the city.

Some may argue that there is financial risk to the city being potentially liable for the $10,000 that will be owed to folks under this.

However, we know based in, in fact, the millions of dollars the city has already paid out to many who have been harmed by less lethal weapons during crowd control incidents.

This is a measure where we can be able to create some more accountability in our system while also this addresses use of force violations even if a person has been perceived of committing a crime And to that end, also creates a reduction of barriers of entry within the court of law for folks who are seeking legal recourse.

And so with that, I encourage you colleagues to support this amendment today to be able to create a pathway to justice for those who have been harmed by less lethal weapons.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettelt.

Thank you, Council President and Council Member Rink.

You know, one of the things on this is that there's already processes available to individuals who felt that they've been injured by anybody in the city, never mind the Seattle Police Department.

And so those processes get the job done, and we should not add to that with this private right of action.

You know, I've noted, as noted, you know, there are two previous versions which I have right here in terms of the ordinances for less lethal weapons crowd management.

And they were roundly struck down, opposed, I should say, by Mayor Durkin.

And in her letter of June 29, 2020, she noted that the private right of action could result in significant financial and legal liability for the city because legislation allows anyone, even with this noted, who participated in mass demonstrations to seek compensation from the city for emotional and or physical, in this case, regardless of whether they actually sustained an injury directly caused by a cryo-controlled device.

It also provides that even when police are using pepper spray as lawfully allowed by policy, the city is liable.

I think it's important to...

to note the challenges and the concerns and the liabilities that the city is incurring when we already have a system in place to deal with those situations that may occur with individuals.

And to be frank, too, what is the impact of this private right of action in terms of the actions of individuals?

Could it influence the individuals?

I think that's something that needs to be taken in consideration and understood.

And again, given the fact that we have processes to address, there's already these avenues to seek redress, that they should be how we go forward and not add in this piece of legislation a private right of action.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I agree with those comments.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Council President.

I want to thank my colleague, Council Rink, for bringing this and making the changes.

I know I think I abstained in committee on this, but I appreciate the changes to, removing court and attorney fees and costs and also clarifying that this is limited to physical injuries approximately caused by the use of less lethal weapons that isn't related to emotional damage.

Even though we had testimony here today of somebody who was engaged in the protests and had less lethal weapon used against them and now suffer from TTS, post-traumatic stress.

And that's not the first person that I actually was at a dinner and the person sitting next to me, we began talking about, I don't know how we got on that topic, but it was a photographer who was at 2020 covered in press.

insignia stating that he was press, took photos, had a gun placed to his head by a police officer taking photos, then had blast balls deployed near him and severely injured him.

He was one of the many plaintiffs in which we settled for $10 million.

And he told me, as today, he still has post-traumatic stress.

He still responds to loud noises, to bright lights, to cars backfiring.

He doesn't really like to be out in crowds.

You know, one of the things, his livelihood is taking photographs outside.

So my point being that this doesn't even cover the emotional damage that so many people have documented that occurred to them just in the chaos and the weapons that were used in 2020. So yeah we have a state and federal remedies but they're really hard to utilize and I don't think there's anything, normally I would not be supportive of creating additional private right of action but I think that it's important that we provide that additional remedy and that it's limited.

And I don't think we can argue that people are going to make a false claim about being injured, particularly because this is limited to physical injuries approximately caused by the use of less lethal weapons.

So I think it's important that we acknowledge There needs to be additional remedy, there needs to be additional thought given to utilizing this level of weaponry for people when they are exercising their constitutional rights.

So, thank you Council Member Rink for bringing this, and obviously I'll be supporting it.

Anybody else?

I did not vote for this amendment earlier and I'm going to oppose it right now because a new cause of action would sit beside a plethora of existing remedies available already under state and federal law and setting damages at a minimum of of 10,000 plus attorney fees or in costs or whatever the amount is, exposes the city to risk based on minimum proof for minor physical injuries.

And so effectively there are some, the questions for how, how these, how these cases would play out in going forward is another layer of some of the risk that I am interested in avoiding as well.

So that's what I will be voting no on this one.

Are there other comments or questions?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of amendment, aye.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Council Member Bravetta?

No.

Council Member Saka?

No.

Council Member Solomon?

No.

Council Member Strauss?

No.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

No.

Council Member Kettle?

No.

Council President Nelson?

No.

Do you favor seven opposed?

The motion fails and amendment aye is not adopted.

All right, we've gotten through all of our amendments.

Are there any final comments on the bill as amended?

Okay, is that a new hand?

Go ahead, Council Member Rink.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Council President.

And I want to thank every member of the public who has reached out to my office on this and for the thoughtful conversation with my colleagues on this really important public safety matter.

I thought about this vote deeply over the past several weeks, especially given my own experiences.

And to that end, I ask that this council continue to think deeply about the impact of the decisions we make on this dais and how they will impact our community, especially in this rapidly changing political climate.

For example, just this past weekend, there were peaceful demonstrations in District 1 at Alki Beach protesting the Trump administration, ICE, and family separation policies.

As these community members were exercising their legal First Amendment rights, an SPD officer pointed the barrel of what looked like a paintball or pepper ball gun in the face of a young demonstrator.

All of our offices were emailed this video, and it's unacceptable.

Actions from officers like this can escalate chaos and violence in an instant.

And this is where we are before passing a less lethal weapons policy.

An SPD officer pointing a gun in the face of a young person protesting a government trying to destroy families.

It's 2025, year one of Trump 2.0.

Protests are going to keep happening in this city.

And we need to ensure that SPD is held to the absolute highest possible standard for incidents like this or far worse.

So incidents like this or far worse don't keep happening.

If and when city employees that this council empowers to protect and serve our constituents act outside of the policies we are charged to legislate, we need to have strong protections in place for accountability.

The accountability of any officers involved and our accountability as elected representatives of the people.

So to that end, I understand my colleagues desire today to try and find the balance between accountability and working through the consent decree.

However, this policy on less lethal weapons does not ensure the accountability and advance it to the extent that our neighbors deserve.

And for that reason, I can't vote yes on this bill and its current version.

Thank you.

Councilmember Moore.

Thank you, Council President.

So first I just want to say thank you to all, to Council, to Chair Kettle for allowing for the thoughtful discussion about this bill in committee and giving us some additional time to bring a series of amendments and also to taking the feedback that was heard at committee and bringing your amendment A.

I think it is clearly better than what was originally proposed.

And so I appreciate that willingness to consider and actually incorporate feedback.

So thank you for that.

And thank you to my colleagues for your...

thoughtful comments and consideration of the amendments that I brought and also thank you to Councilmember Rink for your collaboration on this bill.

And I appreciate that the deployment amendment was approved and the CPC whereas was approved, but I'm afraid for me that's not enough.

You know, in 2020, we were almost out of the consent decree because SPD had done great work and everybody was feeling positive.

And then George, the racial justice protest of George Floyd happened.

We saw how far we had yet to go with crowd control and the court decided not to release us from the consent decree and required us to come up with a crowd control policy as a basis to end the consent decree.

And so now we're here.

And I do have to say that I have to wonder why this process has been so rushed.

We didn't really have a lot of time.

CPC only got involved really after the first committee meeting, and they were approached.

They didn't sort of independently come to us about this.

And I think a lot of people feel that there just really hasn't been enough time for the community to be engaged.

I would have loved to have brought Karen Kohler to the table to have her talk about what happened with the lawsuit and the numerous, numerous plaintiffs that were in that case and what happened to them and what her thoughts were about how we could have improved this policy.

But we didn't have an opportunity to do that.

We didn't really have an opportunity to hear from a lot of people.

I tried to reach out to some people who were plaintiffs and they didn't really have the time to come.

So I understand the need to move us out of the consent decree.

I absolutely support the need to get out of the consent decree.

But as I said at the first time, I don't necessarily think that this, we have to get it right.

And I don't know that the court is necessarily going to believe or find that this is an adequate policy.

It's deeply flawed.

And to my point, the council doesn't get to make the ultimate decision about whether the next policy is a good one.

We've given up our ability to review, advise and consent, review, make policy decisions.

Why would the court decide that the CPC and OIG is a sufficient monitor?

And then we had the event that happened at Alki.

I was really kind of shocked to see how poorly those protesters were dealt with.

We had people being...

physically pushed by officers.

We had the poet team there, and I don't know why, the poet team's been presented to us as a great advancement, and they are a great advancement, and they've done great work, but where were they?

They were there, but boy, things were getting really out of hand quickly, and this was a minor event.

There were just, what, maybe 30 or 40 people there, and they were just a little bit awkward.

off the sidewalk in the road, and tempers were hot.

People being pushed, some sort of pepper gun or whatever, I don't know, blast ball gun being pointed point blank at the young person because they didn't get back from the sidewalk fast enough.

So now we want to just turn it all over and say it's all great.

Well, clearly it's not all great.

We haven't really come that far from 2020. We're about to embark on another experiment on our residents at an incredibly volatile time in our nation.

So I cannot in good conscience, even though two of my amendments were approved, and thank you for that, but the really important ones about who makes the decision and who gets to make the ultimate review of this and mutual aid were not approved.

And I just really, really, really hope that we are not back here, that we are not in executive session at the end of the year, hearing how much money we're going to have to pay out because of poor management of a crowd, when we had the opportunity to get it right.

And for a variety of reasons, we didn't.

So I will not be voting for this, although I, again, do appreciate the comments of my colleagues.

Thank you.

I realize that there are a couple of council members that had their hands up first, but I would like to call on Council Member Hollingsworth, who has not yet spoken.

Oh, thank you, Council President.

I wasn't, I can go last or whatever, but thank you.

So first I want to thank council member Kettle.

Your outreach and intentionality behind this bill and connecting with council members and all the work that you did behind the scenes was exactly how I think we need to go about the way that we're thinking about legislation and you listening.

And I really, really, I really, really sincerely appreciate your effort because I know you tried hard, you know, just crafting it, taking everyone's input.

It's a lot.

We've had plenty of conversations about it.

So I just wanted to start by thanking you for that.

So I appreciate that.

Also want to thank Council Member Moore for bringing a lot of your amendments.

We've had a lot of conversations and I had three non-negotiables for this.

And I expressed that to Councilmember Kettle and also to Councilmember Moore, which was mayor's approval, underhand throw, and not throwing at people, which I just thought were the bare minimum for me personally.

And I know some of the amendments passed, but when it comes down to the final piece for me, something like this should just have the highest level of authority for non-lethal weapons that can cause harm and all these things.

And I know that they use it.

Our Seattle Police Department, who's phenomenal, and have had the opportunity to really see a lot of change within the organizations and the officers and the men and women who serve our city.

I know that when...

authorizing these, that they just do not take it lightly.

And that it's a decision that's made, you know, not at just the drop of a dime, but that there are processes and procedures when that's happening.

for me to get to a yes was the mayor's approval.

So for this, everyone answers to someone.

And I just wanted that we have three bodies.

We have our legislative branch, we have our executive branch, and we have our judicial branch.

And just thinking about this particular use of non-lethal weapons that this just need to have the highest level of authority to be able to do this.

For that, I will be voting no on this today, but that does not mean that I do not support efforts in which we are trying to get better for non-lethal legislation, accountability, strong accountability methods and so forth.

So I wanna thank my colleagues for their thoughtful amendments and also for all of the work that the chair did on the committee.

Very, very grateful for you, Council Member Kettle and all the work that you did.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Sacco.

Oh, Council Member Sacco, please go ahead.

Okay, thank you.

I'll hopefully try to make this brief, but I am in support of this amended legislation today.

Thank you to the Public Safety Chair, Council Member Kettle, for your leadership, colleagues, the Mayor's Office, Accountability Partners, the Seattle Police Department, and everyone who testified for their direct engagement and feedback and collaboration on this vital piece of legislation for our city.

Today's crowd management policies will ensure that everyone seeking to exercise their First Amendment rights may do so in a way where they can feel safe.

If we do this right, and this is an area where I do respectfully disagree with my colleague, if we do this right, and I think we've done that here, we could potentially help lift the longstanding federal consent decree.

Today's legislation also reflects how this new council operates thoughtfully and collaboratively.

When this bill was in committee, I provided an amendment that elevated the standard for potential blast ball deployment, requiring that a state of emergency, a proclamation from the highest elected officer in our city, the mayor, before any deployment could potentially be made.

It is an exacting standard, the practical impact of which will undoubtedly limit the use and deployment of these blast balls.

I only wish that it was enough to earn the support of a few of my colleagues and This is an area where I think reasonable minds differ.

I appreciate, I don't question your motives or intents, and I appreciate the partnership throughout.

Some of my other amendments also help make clear that we must specifically seek input and feedback from our accountability of partners.

This is a better bill because of that and all the amendments that were passed today, even though I don't love some of them.

That's legislative sausage-making at its finest.

It's the essence of what we do here at this dais and this esteemed chamber.

So today's legislation is about balance, and together I believe we have achieved it.

Our actions today provide strong constitutional protections for those seeking to lawfully demonstrate and exercise their First Amendment rights.

while also putting into place clear and compelling rules and procedures to keep people safe and disperse situations that do get dangerous and unruly and rapidly devolve.

This is the most, in all my limited experience, 13, 14 months on council, I'll say this is the most complex, legislative work stream that arose out of the Public Safety Committee, potentially out of any committee since most of us colleagues newly took office last year.

So I don't envy the task and order of Public Safety Chair Kettle had to, this is a delicate needle to thread, working with eight separately elected independent individuals in the council, closely partnering with the mayor, mayor's office, our accountability partners, the department, impacted stakeholders to try to find that right balance.

But Mr. Chair, I think because of your leadership, we're able to achieve that.

Again, I wanna thank my colleagues and all the city departments and members of the public for their collaborative efforts and feedback.

I'll be supporting this legislation today, and I ask my colleagues to do the same.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

Okay, thank you, and Councilmember Rivera.

Just so you know, it's difficult for me to see the order.

Go ahead, Council Member Solomon, excuse me.

She was actually first.

I will go then.

Thank you, Council Member Solomon.

You know, I just want to say as someone who has worked and been supportive of the work of the ACLU, as someone who has a law degree, I fully support the constitutional right to free speech.

as granted to all of us by the First Amendment of our country's Constitution.

I myself have exercised this right, as have my children, and I don't take these votes lightly.

So I didn't want to take a vote without having that be said.

I very much appreciate my colleagues who sit on the Public Safety Committee.

for all the thoughtful work that you did together to bring forward this legislation and to put parameters in place around a crowd management tool that law enforcement can use in cases where, sadly, I think, a few individuals come, perhaps with the intent, I don't think, to peacefully protest, but to cause trouble, thereby creating a situation where you would even need to use such a tool.

Everyone has the right to protest safely and we need to have some tools in place to be able to address situations that become unsafe for the people that are protesting.

I really want to thank OIG and the CPC for weighing into this legislation and for my colleagues who incorporated important feedback from the CPC via your thoughtful amendments.

So these are not decisions that we take lightly.

This is a difficult piece of legislation, but I do think everybody worked together to bring something forward that we could pass, to give more tools, but in a thoughtful way that, as I said earlier, has important parameters around it.

So I will be supporting this legislation today, and I wanna thank you, Council Member Kettle, I know you did work with all of us individually as you were crafting this.

I don't sit on the public safety committee, but I do attend meetings.

As everyone knows, I very much care about the public safety issues in the city.

And I know that you took time to meet with me and take me through the legislation.

So very much appreciate that.

And to everyone who brought amendments today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

I just want to offer a couple of comments.

The legislation before us addresses the community concerns that we've heard.

It incorporates recommendations from our accountability partners in the Office of the Inspector General, Community Police Commission, as well as probably the Office of Police Accountability.

As I mentioned before, I trust our accountability partners to do their jobs and to hold the department accountable.

I also feel this legislation recognizes that dynamic decisions regarding the deployment of blast balls or CS are last resorts.

You know, talking to officers, they don't want to use this stuff unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

And it's only going to be used when other methods of crowd management have been exhausted.

And whether or how they're deployed is really going to depend on the dynamics on the ground in that particular situation.

And the decision to or the authorization to use is not the authorization to deploy.

And I think there's a distinction there that may be a little subtle.

But just because whoever decides that, OK, you may use these methods, doesn't mean that they will be used.

That decision as to whether or not really should be left up to the incident commander on the ground dealing with a dynamic situation as it is unfolding.

For these reasons, I will be supporting the legislation.

And I did want to bring up a point about what happened on Al-Qaeda this past weekend because I did look at the significant incident report regarding that.

There was police action because there was a person who assaulted somebody else in the crowd, so police action took that person into custody.

There was another young person who was blocking a vehicle from moving forward, so that person was briefly taken in custody and then released to their parents later on.

So again, looking at the specifics of what happened in that particular incident, I think is important because there's what we're told by folks in the community.

And then there's what actually is reported and what actually happened.

I think that needs to be something we are mindful of.

And while it doesn't have anything to do with crowd management, Early Saturday morning, there were 100 shots fired at an after-hour clubs in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

One person hit, sustained three gunshot wounds in Harborview with critical condition.

We hear about the protest.

We hear about the action that was taken on Alki, but we don't hear about the young man who was shot in Rainier Beach, and over 100 shell casings were covered at 6 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday.

that is something that we also need to be mindful of and that this body should also look at how can we address that.

So thank you very much.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle in particular, thank you for the extra time that we've had regarding this policy and hearing my concerns that I had about the policy introduced and passed out of committee.

We absolutely need stricter limit on SPD's use of crowd control weapons, but let's be clear.

Right now, there are no legal restrictions on how SPD uses crowd control weapons in the Seattle Municipal Code, including blast balls.

A good policy never implemented doesn't work.

This is the largest problem with the previously passed policies.

The 2020 legislation was blocked and the subsequent 2021 legislation was never implemented.

To put a clearer point on it, right now, there are no municipal code restrictions on the use of blast balls.

With this legislation, blast balls along with tear gas are subject to the highest approval processes, an approval process involving first the mayor and then the chief of police, not the incident commander as past practice has allowed.

I will be voting in favor of this bill today despite concerns because this is an improvement on the current policies in place and for the first time we will actually restrict SPD's use of these weapons.

This bill, Council Member Kettle was improved in committee since being transmitted and has been further refined and improved in this council meeting.

Council Member Moore, you hit on one of the three important pieces that I needed to see to support this bill today.

It is important to me that if these weapons are used in our city, This use is authorized by first the mayor issuing the proclamation of civil emergency and then the chief of police.

That they are thrown away from people towards an open space and are only thrown under hand.

And we do have more work to do to improve police accountability to ensure this and other policies are followed in practice.

If this policy is only in writing and not in practice, and without the accountability that works, then we will be right back here again, further restricting the use of these weapons.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, would you like the last word?

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you very much to my colleagues for all the comments.

voting for or against.

I really appreciate the engagement, as many of you noted.

And I would say after 11 major public safety pieces of legislation passed last year, this is by far the most difficult one to work.

And that's reflecting the importance of it.

and to some of the comments to my colleagues to my left, to do that due diligence, and to my right by the way, to do that due diligence and to work to get a piece of legislation that serves the city.

I just wanted to note the legislation, the recitals, the whereas clauses, reflect what it is in terms of Seattle's values.

And section one actually was to Councilmember Strauss's point, those old two being replaced.

But section two then goes again to really state, you know, Seattle's values and expectations for the Seattle Police Department.

And I think the Seattle Police Department is better for it.

And I think the Seattle Police Department should be recognized for all the reforms over the past dozen years.

and the work that's been done on this and other areas to really be setting the example for police forces across the country, not just our state or our local area.

I also wanted to note, it's not really discussed, but this legislation also brings Seattle Municipal Code in line with the Revised Code of Washington as it relates to CS tear gas.

And I think this process has shown that, you know, The clean connection between the state law and city law is really the way to go.

And I note that sometimes that always hasn't happened.

And then we had additional pieces as noted with the blast balls.

We've elevated that.

And due to, in response to feedback, not just here in the council or other areas, but also the people of the city.

And I think that's important and it reflects what's happening with respect to lost lethal weapons.

And I know there's been some talk about in this closing remarks regarding our accountability partners.

I really appreciate that because this is something that's important to me. and OIG is obviously really important here.

But I really appreciate the Community Police Commission and the leadership of co-chair Merkel on this and the team that he oversees, which has been doing great work.

And I note that in his letter, he noted that we support the overall approach of the mayor's proposed legislation.

which focuses on overarching values that guide SPD deployment and intervention in crowd management situations, including but not limited to speech and assembly events, and which does not place outright prohibitions on the use of specific tools.

We agree that absolute prohibitions can have unintended consequences, not only leaving SPD in a position to use less appropriate tools, but also by removing the tools necessary for SPD to assure the freedom of speech and assembly to members of the public.

when counter-protesters threaten their fundamental rights.

The CPC letter goes further saying there are some concerns on different pieces related to mutual aid agencies.

And I believe that we've addressed this in our legislation.

And I also think that, and he noted that, to urge that CPC, not solely the OIG, be included in this legislation.

And we have taken that on.

quite strongly, I believe, in terms of their involvement and having that explicit language in the in the legislation.

And it concludes that we also believe that more explicit language in emphasizing the role of SPD specifically in protecting the free exercise of speech and assembly when these are under threat from other members of the public to include the more recent challenges that we may be facing moving forward is important, particularly in light of growing political tensions in civil society.

And so at the end of the day, I think we have a piece of legislation that serves the people of Seattle.

I recognize clearly from all the public commentary that we've received, either here in chambers or through email or through conversations, and all the like that has been incorporated, and I want to appreciate and thank you for doing that.

And to close, I ask for your support for this piece of legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Kettle, for your leadership on this piece of legislation.

You took a very careful look, and you did a good job of making sure that we were heard, so thank you.

All right, seeing no further comments, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the bill as amended.

Council Member Moore.

No.

Council Member Rink.

No.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Council Member Solomon.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

No.

Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Six in favor, three opposed.

The bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

There we go.

There were no items removed from today's consent calendar.

There is not a resolution for introduction or an adoption today.

Looking to my sides to see if there is any further business to come before council today.

Council President.

Go ahead.

Council Member Sock.

I mean, Council Member Solomon.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Due to honor commitments that I made prior to joining this body, I request to be excused from the March 4th council meeting.

Okay.

Any objection?

No, no, no.

There is no objection to your excused absence from the meeting on that day.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you.

Council President, just one last piece of committee business.

I think the committee should wish you, as they say, happy birthday.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, seeing no further business.

It is 4.51 and we are adjourned.