Public Safety Committee 7/23/2024

Good morning, good morning, everyone.

The Public Safety Committee meeting will come to order.

It's 9.33 a.m., July 23rd, 2024. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Thank you very much.

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

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Before we begin today, I just wanted to note that You know, in the public safety community here at City Hall, it's a broad community.

Here in the council, in the committee, we work with our councilmates as well, the staff, the fellow colleagues who are council members, but also the executive, the mayor's office, and in the departments as represented today by SPD and CARE.

But all of the departments that fall under the committee's purview, all nine.

And we also, you know, work with the city attorney's office and other elements, the courts and so forth.

So it's one big family.

So With that said, and we do work closely on all the issues that we're facing, and it's impactful when we lose someone.

And so since our last meeting, we've lost two people.

Jim Hillis from security here passed away on 15 July while at hospital.

It was a sudden and unexpected loss.

He was the security director of Allied Universal here at City Hall, responsible.

And he started here in 2012. BECAME AN ASSISTANT MANAGER IN 2015, AND THEN SECURITY DIRECTOR IN 2019. AND WE WOULD WORK WITH HIM IN ALL THE DIFFERENT ISSUES THAT WOULD COME UP HERE, COUNCIL AND WITH THE COMMITTEES.

HE WAS A CALM, STEADYING INFLUENCE.

HE WAS A PROFESSIONAL THROUGH AND THROUGH.

AND AGAIN, SADLY, HE PASSED ON THE 15TH.

ALSO THIS WEEKEND, WE LOST SOMEONE FROM THE MAYOR'S OFFICE WHO WORKS PUBLIC SAFETY, CHANDLER GATON, IN AN ACCIDENT, AGAIN, SUDDEN AND UNEXPECTED.

He served as a public safety strategic advisor in the mayor's office, serving Deputy Mayor Burgess, who is joining us today.

Previously had served in King County, also in the private sector, but was called back to service to work here in City Hall for the city.

Both will be missed, whether 63 or 33. Both had dreams and plans for the future.

Our condolences go to their families, but also their work families, a lot of them who are represented here, and their colleagues, because they will be missed.

And, you know, it's broader than this, too.

I was reminded as well that this week is the memorial for firefighter Adam Clements, whose memorial will be this Friday in Issaquah.

And so that, too, was a sudden, unexpected loss.

So for each of these individuals, we hold them in our hearts and we say our condolences to their families.

Thank you.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to the items on today's agenda or within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up today?

Currently, we have eight in-person speakers and three remote speakers signed up.

Okay, given that number, we'll go with two minutes.

start with the in-person and then we'll do the remotes.

Can you please read the public statement instructions?

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

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in which they registered.

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 in the next speaker.

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

The first in-person speaker is Sean Jackson slash Pat Callanan.

Hello.

Thank you very much to the Public Safety Committee to give us some time to talk about the issues of safety and security.

We are the company I founded, Urban Renaissance Group, 18 years ago.

Can you speak more in your...

Oh, closer?

Yeah.

Okay.

Sorry, Sarah.

So we're a commercial real estate company that has big, long roots in Seattle.

We oversee about 14 million square feet of the company.

That includes Seattle, Portland, and Denver.

But half of that is all in Seattle.

And so we're heavily invested here, 7 million square feet in Seattle, mainly office space.

Some of our office space is at 4th and Pike, between 3rd and Fourth and Pike and pine and so it's obvious why we're here given what's going on at that location So I guess our kind of main theme and then Sean will go into some examples has really been that the problem there's been improvement and council members and the mayor all Should be recognized for that but the problem has not been solved and really what's happening now is all the fentanyl use has been bringing consistent crime to the areas that it's festering.

And a huge area right where we're talking about is really, in some ways, the center of our city, and it's not in great condition.

So with that note, I'll turn it over to Sean to give some examples of what we've experienced.

Sure.

Thank you.

I also want to echo Pat's comments about the improvements and the hard work you all are doing.

It is greatly appreciated.

But again, you've all seen the heat maps and the heat maps continue to get more and more progressive in these areas with respect to drug use and frankly, the petty crime.

And it's gotten to be somewhat extreme in some cases.

I have a handout for you.

I don't know that you've all seen it, Approximately three weeks ago, we had a garbage truck that was lit on fire between the alley of Ross for less in our building.

The driver was still in the truck and could not get the fire out with a fire extinguisher.

These are the kinds of things that are happening in our alley.

And with respect to this, the fire department obviously had to show up and it scorched the side of our building.

So these are property damage events that happen quite frequently.

In addition to these things, we've had a restaurant, a really terrific national chain restaurant, Bourbon Steak, that closed.

We've been trying very hard to get them to reopen.

Unfortunately, they are not able to hire a chef.

That is the biggest obstacle.

The chefs that they provide a proposal to to work, an offer, they go down and look at the neighborhood and they say, no way.

And so these are the kinds of things that we're up against.

And this is, as Pat mentioned, this is the 50-yard line of the retail core of downtown Seattle.

I mean, this is where we had the Seahawks parade go by, right?

And this is our brand that's being tarnished.

So the level of crime, as we said, is really remarkably high.

But the violence has not improved.

And our employees continue to come to me in the office and say, I'm worried about walking to work.

I'm worried about taking a bus.

In the bus stops, you know, we need to work with King County as well to improve the bus stop situation.

At the end of the day, there has been improvement, but this improvement needs to be sustained and it needs to be meaningful.

It needs to be.

I walked with Council Member Kettle and you saw what we saw.

It speaks for itself.

So again, we appreciate your time.

We can't let a few crummy blocks influence the brand of Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Andrea Suarez, slash WeHeartSeattle.

Good morning, I'm Andrea Suarez with WeHeartSeattle.

Our mission is a more beautiful and safe Seattle for all to enjoy, and we do that through direct civic engagement.

As Seattle grapples with an alarming rise in shootings, it is crucial that we leverage license plate recognition technology like flock safety, which can significantly aid law enforcement in addressing these crimes.

This technology has proven successful in San Francisco and Oakland, showing us the potential benefits for our city.

Mayor Harrell canceled ShotSpotter and wants to deploy CCTV cameras, but we need to think bigger.

By deploying flock safety, we can deter hate crimes, illegal dumping, and address the most shootings we've seen since 2021. We must also address transparency within SPD.

The Seattle Police Department once contracted with Trulio, a company that analyzes 100% of body-worn camera data, ensuring comprehensive oversight while fully redacting civilian personal information.

This partnership promoted transparency and strengthened community trust in law enforcement.

Former Chief Diaz canceled Trulio and it's time to reinstate transparency and accountability in SPD, now he is gone.

Chief Rahr will soon present our critically low SPD staffing numbers, the need for technology and the need for SPD accountability to ensure public trust.

Trulio and flock safety are the solutions we need.

Let's take action now, thank you.

Next up is Rebecca Sayer, Downtown Community Council.

Excuse me, can you say the organization again?

Downtown Community Council.

Hi, I'm Rebecca Sarah, and we're part of the newly forming Downtown Community Council.

So I'm representing several neighbors, business owners, homeowners, and we're trying to bring in new business owners, the employees of buildings, you know, everybody who's working and living downtown and doesn't feel safe.

I am a, like I said, a homeowner.

a homeowner, a business owner, pretty much a lifelong Seattleite, and I love this city.

I happen to live on 3rd between Pike and Pine.

I bought into there a year ago.

I knew it was 3rd, beautiful building, but it has gotten scary.

I'm a real estate agent.

My neighbor, I'm trying to sell her beautiful unit in my building, and nobody will come and look at it because it's located on 3rd between Pike and Pine, and she's tried to sell the unit so she can go to school to become a counselor to help the people on the street.

The other day I had a full can of soda thrown at my head.

The other day this gal was walking from the Walgreens back to her place, one of the most unassuming people I've ever met, and she was followed by three people who literally were saying, cut the rich.

It has become ominous.

It's like they own the street.

So I support this effort and I want to thank you, Councilman Kettle, for taking the swift action just after walking the street with us last week.

I think soda is a great step, but it's a short-term solution and we need those.

We also need midterm solutions and long-term solutions.

I'm new to advocating on this set of issues and I'm, boy, am I drinking from a fire hose and I'm learning.

So I don't have the answers, but we are here to help, to engage and we appreciate this effort and this focus on this really critical problem that as the gentleman before me spoke, not only this, this is the entryway into our city.

There's so much opportunity here.

There's so much opportunity for business and growth and vibrancy.

scary right now.

And so we appreciate your efforts and look forward to finding solutions.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

As a reminder, when you hear that chime, you have 10 seconds left.

You're good.

Next up, we have Reza Marashi with the MIT.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Reza Marashi.

I am director of government affairs for Kilroy Realty Corporation, and I have the good fortune of being the board chair of the Metropolitan Improvement District.

I'm here today to urge you to take immediate, tangible action to address the increasing drug activity and crime that we're seeing downtown, more specifically in the area between 1st and 4th Avenue, between Pine and Union.

This area is littered with people openly using drugs on the street, which in turn has contributed to shuttered storefronts and a growing glut of office space.

Deteriorating public safety is leading the tenants seriously considering moving out of downtown Seattle if they haven't already.

The economic health of downtown is inextricably linked to the overall health of our city, which is responsible for a large share of the city's jobs and tax base.

If downtown is not safe, vibrant, and active, our city is in deep trouble.

There's no combination of economic activity in other neighborhoods that could come within a mile of what is produced by a clean, safe, and vibrant downtown.

As public opinion has consistently shown, this is arguably the biggest issue facing the city, and there are fixes that can be implemented, but the will has to be there.

I'm asking you to demonstrate that you have the will to make sure that our downtown is perceived as safe.

We have to go from talking about it to being about it.

And those of us who are your constituents here today and those of us who couldn't make it will be there to support you every step of the way.

Lastly, on an unrelated note, please appoint Amy Smith so she can continue her important work of building and leading the care team in your jobs.

You don't get to make a lot of easy decisions.

This is the rare occasion when you do.

Amy is great and her leadership is exactly what the city needs.

Thanks for your consideration.

Next up, we have Kathleen Brose.

Hi there, my name's Kathleen Brose.

I live in downtown Ballard, and last Sunday, I was at the Seafair Parade in Chinatown International District, and I was like half a block away when people started screaming and running and we didn't know what was going on.

I thought I heard gunfire, but I'm not sure if that happened, but it was scary.

And I read in the Seattle Times just recently that some 13- and 14-year-old youths were found.

They were able to get ahold of them, and they had three or four weapons on them each, and they were...

what's the word?

Well, they were turned into more powerful weapons than what they were designed to be, but they were stolen.

But I wonder what's gonna happen to these 13, 14 year olds.

Are they going to be let go to go home to where there are the problems?

already and will they then be free even with an ankle monitor to go and disrupt another wonderful seafair or any other event?

And if you could have seen the look on the little kids who didn't get to perform, it was sad and it was scary.

And this is not my city, very upsetting.

Next up we have Jen Oxley.

Hi, I'm Jen Oxley and I wanna thank all of you for the work that you're doing and Council Member Moore for doing work in the north end with several public forums there.

And I live in the Bitter Lake area in what has generally been a quiet neighborhood, but a lot of the activity from Aurora is starting to spill out into our neighborhoods.

A recent incident was, I guess, four elderly people were carjacked on 3rd and 90th a few days ago, last week sometime, around 10 o'clock at night.

And that's absolutely terrifying.

What should be a quiet street, quiet neighborhood, and to have violent...

sudden incident like that.

It's just absolutely terrifying.

And that's just one example.

We're constantly getting reports of activity happening in the neighborhood.

And like the other person said, I don't have the answers, but I'm thankful that you guys are working on it.

And I just wanted to encourage you to keep public safety citywide top of the agenda.

Thank you.

Next up is Kevin Darius.

How are y'all?

I am a resident of Belltown, a business owner, and a property manager, and I was gonna write a speech for today, but I really don't need to write a speech because I live this every day.

And I don't know where y'all live, but I can't imagine it's my neighborhood, because if it was, you'd see the violence that is perpetrated on a near hourly basis, and you would change it.

But nothing ever changes, and people aren't held accountable.

We had an individual sexually assault one of my tenants.

then proceeded to smoke and sell meth on my property.

When he was approached by employees, he assaulted them.

He was subdued.

He was arrested.

Two days later, he was back on our doorstep.

In a document covered by the Seattle Times, one of our local business owners, Josh, was attached with a hatchet, a hatchet.

Three days later, that man was back on his doorstop.

We have had the same group of drug dealers poison the mines and the streets of our community For the past four years, and no one does anything about it, and we can't figure out why, equity, compassion, no one is asking to restart the drug war and arbitrarily persecute minorities on trumped-up marijuana charges And no one is asking to arrest every addict lying on the sidewalk.

We are looking for the city to go after these predators who, in this epidemic, are killing more people on a yearly basis than America lost during World War I, World War II, the Civil War, and now as a whole, the pandemic.

And we're just letting these wolves prey on society and saying, what, it's the citizenry's job to handle this?

Because it's not.

We weren't elected to this.

We didn't choose to do this.

There's a job you are elected for.

We expect these people preying on society and just destroying it to be held accountable.

continuously be released to wreak more havoc, cause people fear.

My elderly tenants won't even go to the corner store without an escort because they don't feel safe walking down the sidewalk.

Please make a change.

Thank you.

Next up is Tom Graf.

Good morning.

I'm Tom Graf, chair of Beltone United.

I live by the Sculpture Park.

I work by the Pike Place Market.

I do commercial real estate throughout the center city.

And let me tell you, as you all know, What is happening right now is not working and it's not sustainable.

The small business owner has to deal with the drug trading and the drug addicts and the drug, the consequences of this drug activity to their businesses.

So they get broken into.

They get disrupted.

They get shoplift.

And then they get to watch the fencing of their product in front of their store.

This is not sustainable, and we're losing our small businesses.

So, you know, national businesses are great, but we're losing the small businesses.

That is the face of this city.

You have to change their ways.

I want to read, if I've got a minute here, this story from The Five Point.

This is a business that has been by Seattle Center for 40 years.

They had a difficult man, his name is Mr. Woodward, come in with his dog on Saturday, May 26th.

They have a pet policy, they discussed the pet policy, and they let the service of animals stay.

But just questioning this man, he went in a tirade, unhinged, yelling at customers, pounding on the counters.

You can imagine what this is like in a restaurant in front of children.

He had to be removed by force by the police.

But he came right back three times over the next few days.

He asked to fight the owner of the business and another employee.

He threatened to shoot us.

He came back a third time on Tuesday, 28th.

He appeared to be with a gun in his hand.

ultimately came back with a gun and the police did arrest him.

This is madness.

We do not have to put up with this.

You cannot run a business this way and it's directly affecting our city.

Please change your ways.

The first remote speaker is Megan Cruz.

Please press star six.

When you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

Megan, please press star six.

Good morning.

I'm Megan Cruz speaking on the crime and drug ecosystem downtown.

I've been a resident in a building on Third Avenue between Pike and Pine for 41 years.

I've seen many cycles in the life of this street, But like others, I've never seen or felt this much despair.

Whether for lack of policy or enforcement, the third Pike and Pine corridor has become the region's largest open-air drug market and home for dealers, fences, carriers, and hundreds of people shooting up in doorways and passed out or riding on sidewalks surrounded by the stench of urine.

According to security briefings we've received, even the low-level members of this system carry guns.

This is the scene thousands of residents, tourists, each day as they weave through from the light rail, catching buses, going to the market, walking their dogs, or leaving for work in the morning.

It seems like we've lost our sense of humanity and suffering and basic accountability.

It's been a year since the council passed a drug enforcement ordinance, yet when my neighbors and I speak to police officers, they say they're not empowered to charge dealers, and if they did, they'd be out on the street, likely within the same day.

Social service workers tell us they know the people on our street willing to accept help, but that it's hard for them to climb out of the system without a home, and they have none to offer them.

We have allowed crime and drugs to take over two square blocks in the center of the city without consequence.

Residents would like to see safe consumption centers and tell people that if they want to use, they need to go there.

Why not lease one of downtown's many vacant properties and create a day shelter for crisis support with services and where people can shower and use the bathroom?

No one has responsibility for Third Avenue and it shows.

We don't need another plan or talk of a plan.

We need action and more than anything, just one person in government to step up and make Third Avenue their priority to coordinate.

Can the leaders here today identify someone willing to do this?

The community will support them fully.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Heather Gustafson.

Heather, please press star six.

Hi, my name is Heather Gustafson.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

I live near 90th and Nesbitt.

There's a homeless encampment that's there that the Unified Care Team hasn't been able to deal with.

It's within 500 feet of Robert Eagle Staff Middle School and about 1,000 feet from Cascadia Elementary School.

I have two small children at home, and on Friday, There was a chainsaw and gun battle at the corner.

We are afraid for my two small children and my husband is afraid to go to the grocery store.

We had a local neighborhood council meeting and like this freeze last week and we were told that city of this size usually has about 25. One police officer for about 2500 people and that the city of Seattle only has one police officer for every 22,000 people.

We need to empower police and provide them resources so that they can deal with chainsaw battles and gunfights near elementary and middle schools and near homes.

Many people in the neighborhood also have, from their ring cameras, the trafficking that's happening on Aurora.

A lot of them are teenage girls.

And we have videos of johns and pimps having sex in front of our houses.

And we also have videos of people shooting and have license plate numbers and we can't give them to the police because they can't do anything.

I'm imploring you to please help our neighborhood and to help our kids because we're scared.

Thank you.

The next remote speaker is Lou Bond.

I want to thank council member cattle and the rest of the public safety committee here for all that you have been doing.

I do appreciate what the mayor has done and all of the different social groups that have been out on the streets.

We have seen that presence as many of the speakers spoke here before us.

We have a problem that has not been corrected.

I love our waterfront.

I love what's happened on the waterfront.

You do not see any drug use.

You don't see any drug dealing.

You don't see any bad behavior on our new waterfront.

I want to implement that same activity base between 1st and 7th Avenue, between Union, Pike, and Pine.

This should be a no-fly zone.

There should not be any tolerance for any kind of drug use.

Any kind of bad behavior should all be gone.

We cannot continue to lose any more businesses No more retailers.

I cannot afford to lose Walgreens at 3rd and Pike here.

We could not afford to lose Ross.

Those empty stores do not get refilled quickly.

We cannot afford to lose any more office tenants.

We're begging them to come and stay here.

We're begging them for their employees to come.

We're currently paying over $800 a day for armed security.

It's unsustainable for a building that's only 100,000 square feet.

I know many of my neighbors are paying that and more, and it's just not sustainable.

We need your help and we need to pass laws and enforce no more drug activity, no more drug use in our area whatsoever.

I greatly appreciate your help in this.

And whatever you might need, all of us neighbors are behind you on this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our last remote speaker is Anya Canmore.

Good morning.

My name is Anya Conmore and I am calling regarding the appointment of the head of the care department.

I feel that confirmation should be delayed for at least six to 10 months.

While the department is a good idea, it is still a fledgling department.

We don't have enough data.

We need more data and we need to observe what the department does for a longer period of time.

I also feel the title for the head of that department should not be chief.

It should be director.

Chief implies that you are a first responder.

And while that is the goal of the department, it is not quite the strong third leg of public safety in Seattle that the mayor wants.

So the title should be director.

It should not be chief.

This is not a fire chief.

or a chief of police that have decades of experience and showing up in the middle of the night at incidents.

If you decide to go ahead and confirm, I believe the title should be changed, as I just stated, and the term should not be four years.

It should be two years.

It is too soon to be giving a four-year time frame to this.

And finally, the 911 call center needs to be brought back under SPD management.

It should have never been assigned to a fledgling department.

Thank you for listening.

Okay.

Okay, there are no additional registered speakers and we'll now proceed to our items of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record.

Appointment 02918, the appointment of Amy Smith as Chief of the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department for a term to August 1, 2028.

Okay, thank you.

We're joined by interim Chief Smith, but also Deputy Mayor Burgess.

We thank you for coming, and thank you for your service thus far.

Deputy Mayor, if you'd like to do an initial statement, then Chief Smith, yours, and then we'll follow that with questions.

So, thank you.

Thank you very much, and good morning, Chair Kettle and council members.

Thank you for letting me join you this morning to introduce Mayor Harrell's nominee for Chief of Seattle's Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department.

Establishing care as our third public safety department has been a foundational priority for Mayor Harrell.

The two primary functions of care are the 911 call center, which receives more than 800,000 calls for police, fire, and emergency medical services each year, and our care crisis response teams, our newest diversified response option, which will soon expand to citywide coverage.

I'm very pleased to introduce Amy Smith as the mayor's nominee for permanent care chief.

I believe each of you has already had the good fortune of engaging with Chief Smith and discussing the future of public safety solutions in our city.

As acting chief, Amy has prioritized her team's well-being, dug into the hundreds of thousands of 911 calls to inform her team's operations, refined dispatch prioritization criteria, and hired, trained, and dispatched our first care crisis responders.

This work is essential to the safety and well-being of the people of Seattle.

Chief Smith has broad and deep community support from her own staff, from the Dispatchers Guild, local neighborhood groups, business associations, and human service nonprofit providers.

Stakeholders could not have been more enthusiastic in endorsing the mayor's decision to nominate Chief Smith.

I believe you share that support for her.

In a recent television interview, one council member said, and I quote, I'm Amy Smith's number one fan, and I know there's much competition for that title, close quote.

Another council member told Mayor Harrell, Amy Smith is your best hiring selection yet.

I try not to take that personally.

In the 15 months that she has been on the job, first as deputy director and then as acting chief, Chief Smith has shown she's eager to engage, listen carefully, and learn.

She's a natural leader who knows how to get things done.

Her work has led to the expansion of compassionate, diversified intervention, assisting our police officers and community members who need specialized support.

She brings creativity, resourcefulness, and a tireless dedication to her team and the people of our great city.

She's well prepared to become the chief of the care department.

She has over 20 years of hands-on leadership experience with education and nonprofit organization.

She has a master of arts degree in ethical leadership and a PhD in education.

Several times this year, I have visited the 911 call center unannounced, including in the middle of the night.

I've listened as 911 calls are received.

I've sat with dispatchers and listened as they direct our public safety resources.

I've asked these dedicated first responders about their morale, their working environment, and their leaders.

And I've heard one consistent message.

Chief Smith is amazing.

Council members, Mayor Harrell appreciates your consideration of his nominee today.

And I can just tell you, she has been a delight to work with.

Chief Smith.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Burgess.

I also wanted to note Council Member Rivera has joined us.

And I also note the 911 call center is the first response, literally.

So hence, first responders.

Thank you.

Chief Smith.

Good morning.

Thank you for your support to this point.

I really appreciate it and I appreciate all you continue to do to promote and to support this work.

Deputy Mayor Burgess, thank you for those remarks.

I appreciate your trust and your confidence and the things you've already taught me.

I know I'm going to carry throughout my career going forward.

I have to acknowledge my mayor, Bruce Harrell, who specifically is the reason I am here with you today.

I'm grateful he had the imagination and the instinct to think of me for this role, which I really would not have imagined for myself, but it turned out to be a perfect fit.

Saying yes to this work changed my life, not just my professional life, but it has changed and enriched my personal life in ways that are astonishing to me.

These days, so many of the people I love best are in my life because of this work, and my days are filled with new heroes and replete with new inspiration.

So I have said a number of times that I may be the person in front of the mic, but the ideas I am expressing echo the hopes and the advocacy for change that community members and leaders have been championing for years, for decades.

I feel true humility around the position I find myself in, and I am absolutely determined that we will not continue to fail our neighbors.

When we say public safety, we are really talking about human suffering.

the suffering of those who are languishing on our streets, the suffering of those who have been poisoned by drugs like fentanyl, the suffering of families who have been devastated by gun violence, the suffering of those who are being bought and sold like inanimate objects.

You have my commitment that I will continue to work with as much urgency and efficiency as possible to drive positive policy change and system change as we transform the way we respond to this suffering.

Now, people who know me know I do not care for meetings, and this is in part because of a lifelong bias toward action.

In part, it is because I know academically we only learn by doing, by trying things, by experimenting.

But it's also because I cannot stand to waste taxpayer dollars.

It is not lost on me that taxes are paying for my words right now to you, and I take that very seriously.

I am a flawed person, as all persons are, but I am worthy of your trust.

And I don't know that I could care more uniformly about every single person in this community, including the people who are causing harm to it.

I firmly believe that every person can change, and I firmly believe that our systems can be changed to be rehabilitative.

I can absolutely see a future state where I can deploy the right configuration of response right from 911 to ensure that the needed expertise is provided at that first moment of contact.

We have people with expertise and personal experience in substance use disorder.

and houselessness and human trafficking and domestic violence.

And we need to move into an intelligent space that contemplates those individual needs and can respond with urgency.

And when we do this, it will change society.

I thank you for sincerely seeking to understand the work you all have.

You've all been on the front lines, and I acknowledge that.

And I very much appreciate your deference to those of us in the work day in and day out.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And as custom here in the community, I always go to my vice chair first.

Vice Chair Saka, do you have any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

A couple quick comments, a few questions.

I have a lot of questions, but...

But good questions.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Burgess.

Thank you, Chief Smith, for appearing before us today.

And really excited to take this next step in our city's journey into doing better for all and have a more holistic approach to public safety in our city.

Chief Smith, appreciate the many engagements and meetings we've had over the past almost year or so now, the collaboration.

I enjoyed reading your written comments here, really exciting stuff, and writing my own questions.

I appreciate seeing High level, when I read your questions and then hearing you now as well, I hear and see a growth mindset.

Someone who doesn't purport to have all the answers, no one does.

but someone who is committed to learning and trying and experimenting and doing better, getting in those reps. And when things don't work out, making necessary adjustments and tweaks and just constant improvement.

That's the essence of life.

And I appreciate your comment just now about you being an imperfect person.

Myself included, everybody here.

Everyone is, at the end of the day, a flawed, nuanced human being.

And all we can do is try to learn from our mistakes and get better every time.

So that was very clear for me, your sort of growth mindset statement.

which is really important to me and my office and how we show up every day.

And so just something that I recognize and, you know, want to say, I appreciate double clicking a little bit into some of the specifics of the, your written comments here.

I, So I'll call out number three.

Question number three.

The question was, what are the obstacles you see in increasing and expanding care services, and how does your background make you uniquely equipped to address those challenges?

I appreciate how you start off.

Quote, the greatest threat to care growth is the politicization of human suffering and how we respond to it.

We have failed to come together across disciplines and ideologies to center the person who is suffering in our conversation and design, instead choosing to endlessly debate body of work issues, and ideal response to the housing, substance use, and escalating violence crises among others, end quote.

Couldn't agree more.

Facts.

And not only that, have some of our discussions devolved into politicizing, you know, human suffering.

It's also devolved into being performative.

Who can generate the most snaps in a room?

We need to end that.

In any event, I appreciate your leadership on this and calling it what it is.

The second thing you note there, the second greatest threat is the bureaucratic predilection toward territorialization and silos.

Just recalling, like, my SAT.

Like, I haven't read those big words in a while since the last case law that I read in law school.

But in any event, facts.

We need to avoid land grabs.

It doesn't matter if it's the corporate world or government right now.

We need to be focused on doing the right thing and whatever that is, not going after headcount and resources.

And, you know, we need to avoid a fiefdom mindset.

And so I think that's what – that's my read of your comments there, which, you know, I appreciate.

Love how you talk about the importance of – and later on in that same – your response to that same question, you talk about the importance of planning, doing, studying, and enacting.

And sort of an analogy I like to use of that is the OODA loop framework from the military, from the Air Force specifically.

Observe, orient, decide, enact.

Great problem-solving framework with broad applicability.

So anyways, I appreciate your leadership and your engagement.

with me in my office on these important issues.

And I think the city is gonna be well served, continue to be well served by your leadership.

Let me say this, let me ask this.

So in your second question or your responses to the second question, which is my question, by the way, what is your vision for care for the next five, 10, 20 years?

Appreciate your responses there.

I wanna ask a little more pointed question.

So that obviously, that question obviously speaks to the vision.

Let's talk a little more near term.

What does success look like for you and the entire care department within the first year, if confirmed?

In the short run, my goal is to get priority one calls dispatched to within seven minutes.

So right now we are far from that with police.

There's no path to staffing up that department fast enough for me to achieve that goal.

So the path forward for me is to be able to deploy swiftly every other resource in the city so that we reserve law enforcement and we reserve fire as well, especially health one for high acuity, high priority calls.

Some of you heard me say in the budget hearing last week that about a third of the calls coming in, and maybe as many as 40%, would be appropriate for care.

They're lower acuity calls that deserve a response, but there's not the same temporal nature.

It also costs half as much.

I care a lot about the budget, and that is a big swing at the bat.

If I can start dispatching a team that costs half as much per call, there's really sweeping financial implications.

I'm anxious for us to have a system to divert to.

I would love to be tracking outcomes, but I'm not going to be able to track outcomes until I have a place that I can take people.

I very much appreciated that public comment section.

I appreciate the pain and the anguish people feel and what they're observing is correct.

I don't have any place to take someone right now who is dependent on fentanyl.

It requires a different level of care.

And people do want help.

So I'm excited about the Orca Center and other things coming online.

I'm very supportive of evergreen treatment.

But we need, we basically need pop-up shelters right now.

I need to get people indoors and I need to get them help.

Thank you.

My second and potentially final question relates to The notion of growth mindset, learning, listening, doing, sharing.

You talk quite a bit about sharing out various information, which is really important.

Talk about open sourcing information.

Full transparency.

Everybody could potentially benefit.

And you talk...

In your response to your question four, which is, what is your approach to collaboration with critical partners across the city, region, state, and country?

How do you directly engage with those partners?

I think another one of my questions.

But in the second paragraph, you state, quote, in this role, people cold call me every day from around the region and throughout the country.

I love it, end quote.

Which is great, because that's part of learning and growing and sharing is sharing out information.

But I think in Seattle, we have a unique opportunity to get away from just sitting on a high perch and dictating and sharing everything with others and acting like we can't learn from others as well.

And we are but a citizen in a broader ecosystem of learning.

of collaboration and partnership with our regional partners, statewide partners, partners across the country and world who are confronting substantially similar challenges.

And so it is incumbent upon us, in my view, to not only share out our learnings, but also take in theirs.

And so my question to you, Chief Smith, is I'm glad you are taking cold calls from people around the country.

But who do you pick up the phone and cold call and learn from and seek guidance from and learning from?

Yeah, I got really fortunate because the second day I was on this job, I was coming in very early.

And primarily I was focused on 911. I've got to stabilize this department.

I've got to get to know a whole bunch of people really fast.

There's furlough lines.

The work is 24-7.

So I wanted to spent a lot of time on the floor.

But then concurrently, I needed to design this pilot.

The money had been allocated months, years before, and nothing happened.

And so I felt great urgency around getting that design stabilized and launched.

I was just fresh.

I just defended.

I finished my doctorate the year before.

And so I still was in this very academic frame of mind.

I still have access to the herd libraries at Vanderbilt.

I dove in and started to see who knows this best, this work, alternative response.

What do we know in the country?

How many pilots are there?

The first email I sent was to someone called Alex Heaton, who's the director of the Policing Project.

I saw him cited and sourced a number of times.

You can sort of see who's most peer reviewed in an academic library.

And I sent him a note and said, hey, I just got to Seattle.

This is what I got.

Can you share any learnings with me?

And he immediately called me.

And it was about 6 in the morning.

I remember he was in Mexico City.

Great, generous spirit.

And he connected me to the next person who connected me to the next person.

Through those relationships with NYU's Policing Project and then Georgetown, their Center for Innovation and Community Safety, I was brought in immediately to this community of practice, the best thinkers, the best designers and practitioners and researchers in the country.

They invited me to Georgetown to sort of a closed convening on the future of alternative response.

And the rest is history.

That was about 15 months ago.

I just read this morning an update from San Francisco.

The professor sourced in that is Jessica Gillooly, who's an important research partner.

So it definitely goes both ways.

And I just, I am an academic.

I just love it.

I love learning from people.

I know that I don't have any original thought.

you know, that our problems are similar, they're shared, and we love working together, all of us.

It's fun on LinkedIn, we're all pushing out and sourcing each other.

When I went to Durham the first time to meet with Ryan Smith and Durham Heart, I had evidence from Kennedy School and Harvard that they basically had the gold standard model of crisis call diversion and alternative response.

And when I went to Durham, I came back with a Google Drive.

everything that they had done, every different furlough line they had designed, all of the different policies.

That is how generous my partners in the field are.

And I am so grateful.

And so then that breeds the generosity in me that anything that I can share, especially about the mistakes we make, to get it out there quickly.

I learned about the financial savings from Albuquerque and also the implication to police staffing and to police morale as you scale up at Third Public Safety Department.

So I appreciate that you drew that out.

It's so important.

And then the final thing I will say is that there were extraordinary programs in Washington state.

I didn't have to go nearly so far.

I met Brooke Bittner right away.

I met Kim Hendrickson right away, who was the president of the Co-Response Outreach Alliance in Washington state.

I know Tacoma, the HOPE team, we have co-response in 14 different counties in the state, extraordinary teams.

And so we all need to learn together so that we can have a shared statewide philosophy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No further questions or comments from my perspective.

Okay, thank you, Vice Chair.

Any other questions from members of the committee?

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

Good morning, Chief Smith.

It's a pleasure to have you here before us, and I thank you for the detailed answers that you gave to our questions, and you and I have had many conversations since my brief time here as well, and I've really appreciated those conversations, and I appreciate that you are working in an area that is complex and nuanced and in some ways groundbreaking.

So I appreciate all of that.

But I am going to give you a tough question, I think, because it's something that's been really niggling at me.

I think it's shared by some of my colleagues.

And I just want to preface this by saying I am a huge supporter of alternative response.

And we absolutely have to move to civilianizing where we can.

We have to expand the circle of care.

It's not about taking away, it's about looking at being strategic and placing responsibilities where they are best done and really utilizing our SPD where they are best utilized.

That said, my question is, I had the pleasure of doing a ride along with a care team and we went down to Third Avenue.

And there was a woman there who was sitting at a bus stop, and she was naked.

And SPD was there, a police officer, and he was having, you know, a very calm and thoughtful conversation with her, trying to get her to get dressed.

Then there were bike police, and then at the same time there was CARE.

There was the mid-ambassadors, and then there was We Deliver CARE.

And frankly, nobody could do anything.

And it was sort of eye-opening.

Everybody was compassionate and trying to talk to her about, well, do you have a place where you live or stay?

Apparently she had some place in the North End, but she wasn't really willing to go there.

There was some talk about, well, maybe...

Should we call the designated crisis responders to see if she should be ITA'd because she's clearly not capable of caring for herself?

And if, you know, the police officer's concern was if she remains here, she's going to be victimized, right?

And so we had all these entities that we are funding with the best of intention and purpose.

And we have SBD there really trying to do their job as well And truly, nothing happened.

And we all went our separate ways and should remain there semi-closed, hopefully not to be victimized.

And my question to you is, how do we deal with that?

How do we do better?

I love this scenario because it illuminates a number of different problems and contradictions in the system.

I shared last week, it's really important we get clear about the difference between first response and then secondary response, case management or prevention.

When I think about the mid-ambassador teams, we deliver care.

That is outreach.

That's supposed to be continual.

Those are often the people who then call the first responder and say, I've got an emergency here.

From 911, I want those to all be first responders who go out, who triage, and then get somebody indoors.

In that scenario, it's very important that care is always a consent-based intervention.

It is a dialogue.

It is collaborative.

If enforcement is required, that must be police.

It can be co-response.

It can be a care responder and a police officer.

But holding the line about enforcement when somebody is remanded or when somebody is moved we must really observe that distinction because otherwise you run the risk of just setting up another enforcement department, right?

And care is not that.

My preference would have been that a DCR was called.

I consider somebody who is that vulnerable to be gravely disabled in that moment.

Cognitively, there is something going on there, and something worse could happen.

So it would have been my preference that somebody get evaluated.

In this county, we have about 30 DCRs.

Pierce County has expanded who can do it, and they have about 400. So that's something we need to look at, because even if you call a DCR sometimes, someone will decompensate, wait for two or three hours.

And so I've learned that police often, they don't even bother.

The same thing was happening with the mobile crisis team.

You know, for law enforcement, why call if it's going to take two hours?

I could solve it better myself.

But we cannot have that many resources concentrated with no effect and impact.

We cannot have that, and I am working on it.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you.

Any further questions?

Council President Nelson.

Well, I was the author of one of those comments that Deputy Mayor recited, so you know how much I appreciate you and how fortunate I feel Seattle is to have you working with us and for us.

So with that out of the way, building on the question before and what you just said, you just said it's something, let me paraphrase you, why do we have all these resources in one place and still not being able to make any progress?

move the ball forward in terms of the misery and the devastation we see on our streets.

And you say that you're working on it.

And I believe that we're lucky to have your analytical and academic brain and also the fact that you have the candor to say what's not working.

And so, not to put you on the spot, but what...

I know you might not have it all figured out, but there has been talk of moving care from dual dispatch to single dispatch.

And in that process, if that happens, what is the thing that would change?

And so is it—and you just talked about more DCRs, et cetera.

But I don't want to hear more of something.

I want to hear what should we be doing differently.

So— Do you have an inkling yet?

Oh, yeah.

No, I have lots of thoughts about this.

Right away, again, we need to get much more concise about who is dispatched to what call type.

And so it is a pretty brilliant design that I have oversight of 911. I initially questioned that.

And my peers in the country make fun of me because it's really two really big jobs.

But it's actually a great design because I can compel dispatch to change protocols and to act.

I have to get buy-in, right?

So for, you know, generations, we've sent police to all the calls.

I've learned we often send police before we send fire to check and advise, and so it's just this muscle memory.

But I want to be able to dispatch the community service officers.

I would prefer that Health 1 be primarily dispatched and Health 99, they're not.

I would prefer that police co-response, police CRT, be primarily dispatched.

They are not.

I would prefer I be able to invoke a peer if I know I need that.

If I know it's an overdose, why can't I just send Health 99 with a peer who has lived experience, who often is the unique person who can get the conversation going, can create the opportunity?

There's no reason I can't do that other than I do need to negotiate with labor.

Right?

I'm talking about several different unions.

The CSOs have different representation than police officers do.

I've got a dispatcher's guild.

So those conversations are important.

But I have full confidence.

You know, the folks who represent labor, they're people.

They're good people.

And I do find that people care.

We're just in the habit right now of treating human suffering like a body of work issue, and it cannot be.

It cannot be.

We need to think differently about it.

Who do I call first?

Who has first right of refusal?

But we don't leave people languishing on the street.

Now, I don't have oversight of the outreach contracts yet.

I know that's something that's being discussed by the executive, but I do think that that would be a good model if I had oversight of who is doing diversion, right?

Late stage diversion.

Who is doing outreach so we can get this organized for the first time?

Follow up, please.

Thank you very much for mentioning Health One and Health 99. I was disappointed to learn that...

Well, Health One used to be the thing, right?

I mean, it was the...

It was an awesome thing.

Yeah, and it was doing really well.

They added a unit, and then the unit, I believe, was moved to Health 99. I'm unclear about the different call types or how they are both designated to go out, but you...

It sounds like you're saying that that is a great model that you would like to use more, yet we've got care.

And so it seems as though we're developing different programs to deal with the same problem, which is human misery, like you said.

So keep on going down that line of inquiry when it comes to...

figuring out who's dispatched to what.

At the same time, you also said that the frontline is working, okay?

It's the referral to service.

And then you mentioned our service providers, who's doing what.

And that's what I wanna know.

I would like to know, and this is a longer conversation, but once the first responders have done their job, then what happens?

And we can't just always say, well, we don't have enough resources.

We gotta make do with what we've got better.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with you there.

Again, I want to be really clear.

Health One and Health 99 are intended to go to high acuity medical nexus calls.

Those are expensive teams.

They're highly skilled teams.

That is a scarce resource, and I must preserve it.

The example that you shared with a woman who's partially dressed, that would be very appropriate for care.

Right?

And arguably, if it had been a smaller conversation with just one person engaging, there may have been a much better outcome than the crowd of people swarming around.

That would be appropriate for care.

That is not a good use of HealthONE.

It's not.

I don't want to dispatch that unit when I have You know, 1,388 overdose deaths last year.

Health 99 needs to be reserved for overdose.

Care is not designed to go to that.

So I just think of it in terms of, is this likely to end up at Harborview?

If it is, that's not for care.

That's not what we're designed to do.

But there's hundreds of thousands of calls that are appropriate for care, and care costs half as much.

And my folks are very skilled.

And if you read through the different call types we dispatch to, it's just fascinating how many scenarios there are where somebody needs help.

but arguably I could do it with my skillset, right?

And so I will continue to try to illuminate the gaps and the overlaps, but it will get better.

And I know that there is urgency at the county level and the state level to treat fentanyl like an emergency and to not overthink.

I love the crisis care centers.

I am very excited about that and supportive of it, but we don't need 50,000 square feet state-of-the-art medical equipment to get someone buprenorphine and case management.

That's not required.

We can do things right now.

Yeah, and you mentioned how do we get fentanyl declared as an emergency.

You heard in the room that there is also an emergency with street crime as well.

And so one of the things that my constituents have shared with me is that sometimes everybody appreciates a non-uniform response, and at the same time, I have to trust your brain in figuring out when a uniformed response is very, to a person down, to a call that's designated as a care call.

When is it, what small business owners tell me is sometimes they really do want somebody who's able to deal with all different kinds of contingencies and you never know what's going to happen at that call.

Yeah, that's right.

I would prefer many more uniformed responses.

I just don't have police to dispatch.

And so I need people to dwell with me in that reality.

We will hear from Chief Rahr, Chief Maxey's here, Chief Barton.

There is no path to appropriate staffing in the next two years that I've been made aware of.

We will try to staff up, but we're still at a net loss year over year.

And so I'm always swift to defend police.

It's just the most scarce resource I have right now, and we broke the homicide record last year, and we have more shots fired this year.

The gun violence is out of control, and so I've got to be very thoughtful about when I dispatch law enforcement, regardless of our preference.

Thanks.

Any other questions?

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

As I've said before, I'm not on this committee, but this is something that's really public safety in general important to the district that I represent and so I sit, or not I sit, I attend these meetings because I wanna be able to listen and also have the opportunity to ask questions.

I'm gonna lend the same comments that my colleague said.

Chief Smith, I super appreciate you being in that seat and what I have found you to be is very responsive and I very much appreciate that and thoughtful.

So I will say that I too support, And I think a lot of folks that I have talked to in the district support alternatives to policing.

Folks want to make sure, though, that the alternatives to policing that we're employing are working, right?

And that we're actually seeing a difference.

And I think that's what many of us are struggling with at the moment.

I will say, following up on the response, in general, You hear you've heard multiple folks up here talking about the differences between care and health one health 99 and then the external partners like the ambassadors and We Deliver Care and others that we also help fund to do services on the ground.

And so I appreciate what you're saying about the coordination of efforts.

I do think it still remains unclear what these different entities are providing in this space.

And I have heard, as Council Member Moore said earlier in her example, that is something that obviously needs to be addressed and I hear it is something that you are looking into keeping in mind that care has been in effect eight to nine months so it hasn't been a full year of care.

I do want to say in terms of the example that council member moore my question is what if health one had responded to that particular call because they do have a social worker.

And this is someone that sounded like they were experiencing perhaps mental health issues.

And so rather than leaving the person there to be victimized or who knows what, what if you had sent HealthONE, could they have, because they have a social worker, who's experienced at talking to folks with mental illness, could they have gotten her some care in a way that you're not able to do at the level that care and some of the external partners are able to provide?

That's what I struggle with.

Yeah, let me address that.

Thank you for the question.

CARE is the most highly skilled behavioral health team that we have in the city.

These are master's level.

There's not a distinction there.

Fire goes out, you've got two firefighters and a social worker.

In police, you have police and a social worker with a ballistic vest.

Again, those are very scarce units.

I don't have them.

Again, the same reason I wouldn't deploy...

police to a priority three call right now because I don't have them.

Health 99, overdose is the number one priority one call.

What we need to understand as a society is for decades, the real threat to life right now is often suicide.

It's suicide.

That's how we're losing people.

And it's overdose.

That's how we're losing people.

And so homicide, yes, 73 last year, and I am horrified by that.

But again, we are the second highest market when it comes to attempts to die by suicide.

Now think, if this is someone you love, who would you want me to send?

You wouldn't want me to send law enforcement, and that's what I'm doing currently, but very often, a highly skilled clinician and social worker, somebody with lived experience, will get a better response.

That is well validated.

Decades of research.

And also, it just makes sense, doesn't it?

And so I love co-response in all different configurations.

Right now, I cannot dispatch Health 1 or Health 99. What I can do in 911 is I can route a call to the fire alarm center, where fire might consider sending their secondary response unit Health 99. And I'm always encouraging higher utilization of that team The main reason you're seeing this saturation downtown is because that's what you designed.

All the contracts are downtown.

CARES pilot area is only downtown.

And so I'm so pleased about the expansion citywide because the neighborhoods are frustrated.

North, frustrated.

Why is everyone downtown?

We need help here.

We need outreach here, and we need care up here.

And so I'm sure that people are saying that because I run care, but that's what I hear uniformly is, thank goodness, can you get here faster?

We need you.

We need more people to respond to these crises that are clearly social work in nature.

And even a lot of the criminal activity, it is co-occurring right now with substance use.

It is.

When you see chaotic behavior, that is often the effects of meth.

When you see people slumped over, that is the effects of fentanyl.

And a lot of the property crime that we're seeing, armed robbery, things like that, sometimes that is the desperation that can occur when you need to use again.

And the medical community tells me it's generally within four to six hours you must dose again with fentanyl.

Thank you for the questions.

Any other?

I have follow-up questions, but we're going to meet and we'll talk.

And I appreciate that question.

I will say that I understand what you're saying.

And I still think sometimes someone needs higher level.

And in my mind, this health one with a medic, also, we don't know they would have checked her out, if you will, and I just think sometimes you need more.

Though I appreciate that, you know, and I had the opportunity to meet with your staff, I will say, and also visit the 911 call center, and I was very impressed with your team.

So this is in no way to suggest your team is not doing great work.

We're all trying to tackle a very hard problem, and we're all grappling with, what is the best solve in each case.

Yeah, we just need more of everything.

I mean, Health One, again, it's such a tiny unit.

Health One Care and Police Co-Response, those are six people, you know what I mean, per unit.

And so I think there's kind of a false narrative out there that we already had tackled this.

We hadn't gone near investment that was appropriate yet when it comes to behavioral health.

So yeah, we'll talk more next week.

A quick one for Council Member Moore.

Yeah, thank you so much.

I think you touched on this in your written remarks and also in what I'm hearing you say now.

We really are in a state of crisis.

I mean, I want to give kudos to the mayor's office for the unified care team and for creating the care team and for all the efforts that are underway.

the fact remains we are in a state of crisis.

And it seems to me that when we are in a state of crisis, that it is incumbent upon us to bring all of the actors together and that perhaps you are the person to bring, with the mayor's blessing, to bring all of those actors together and to talk about these questions that we are asking you You know, why is it that this group responds here, and is that appropriate?

How can we not be duplicative?

How can we best utilize?

I don't think we've had that discussion, and we're sort of trying to do it up here.

And we really need to sit down in a room with everybody and recognize we are in crisis.

We need to put our silos aside and come together.

And I'm hoping that you can be...

I think you're inclined to do that sort of work, and so I'm just putting that out there.

Yeah, thank you.

I do do that.

I just don't do it in City Hall.

You know, I'm part of a number of different roundtables.

We all get together and huddle up all the time.

That's how I understand who is doing what and where the gaps are.

But I absolutely encourage both the executive and the legislative to come to the table so you can better understand it because there is consensus on the front lines of service.

When you talk to supportive housing providers, there is consensus about what the issues are.

Same thing in public safety, same thing in substance use disorder response.

It's broad consensus.

It's just not really making its way back to our budget.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Um, to close, I just wanted, you know, uh, at the end of public comment, obviously we heard the caller and initially I was like, Oh, that's awkward, but you know what?

I'm happy they called, um, because it's, it, it strikes me that I as the chair and based on my experience need to speak to it.

And, um, Like many of us, we've been working public safety in different ways.

I've been working public safety in Seattle for the last decade.

And in October 2020, out of Queen Anne Community Council, we had a police and public safety reform plan presented to City Hall.

Not acted on, mind you.

But we had that.

And it was based on my and our experience in Queen Anne, but also Magnolia, Interbay, Uptown, Westlake, and that general area.

And it really informed our position.

And so while I respect the position and the comment, I do believe that the changes that we've done are needed, and particularly in respect to this.

In my service in the military, both in defense and intelligence communities, I see this all the time.

I see where we were, SPD was like DOD.

Because it had the capabilities, because it had the strength and so forth, and the organization, and all those different pieces, Everything was globbed onto it.

It's mission creep.

Everything can do it.

DOD was the same thing.

Oh, we got a humanitarian disaster somewhere around the world and nearby?

You know, okay, DOD do it.

It wasn't part of DOD's mission.

And it kept being added onto it.

And in the intelligence community, 9-11 was like almost midpoint of my career.

And I saw pre how CIA was relative to other elements of the intelligence community.

And then we shifted and we created the director of national intelligence and then how that changed the dynamics.

And I note, by the way, in that reform letter that we wrote in October 2020, we called for a director of public safety who's sitting in the audience right now, Director Natalie Walton Anderson.

And that is the model that we need to be doing.

And this is where the 911 call center comes in.

We need to have that kind of more strategic first responder.

because they are the first response on the phone, and to take that holistic view across all the different entities, which is really coming out in this discussion, particularly in this third approach.

There's so many different players.

And so that experience really informs my position, so I respectfully disagree with the caller.

We do need a department.

We do need to be driving this third approach, and we need to have the 911 call center you know, in your hands as they've taken that broader look and seeing the contrast and working closely with the director of public safety, of course, with the deputy mayor, but also us.

And the other thing I always say is the idea of pendulum theory.

You know, everything comes out here.

Everybody thinks it's going to stay that way.

But in fact, it comes back.

And we have to be prepared in this space as we're stretching because we're, you know, we're kind of the first along, you know, Albuquerque, Durham and so forth.

that we're just going to be adjustments.

And so I'm prepared to move on the third approach, but we also have to be mindful that we're not going to solve it today.

And oh, by the way, in the next year, two, five years, there's going to definitely be need of adjustments.

You know, Health 99, Health One, CARE.

We deliver care.

We Heart Seattle was here.

All these different entities.

And then it's relationship to your point about when you have to be remanded, when you take somebody, you know, position.

And on that point, with that example, I've talked to outreach providers.

So very different from my background and so forth.

You know what the two words they said to me?

And they would never say it out publicly, so I'll say it here because we need to have this conversation in voluntary commitment.

And so these are the things that we need the state to work on.

These are the tough questions that we need to ask because what is sad is the example that Council Member Moore gave.

And trust me, we've all seen it.

I've seen it so many times.

So I thank the caller for the public comment because I think it's really important to bring it up and address it.

And I think we'll be in good stead.

And I think this is good for SBD.

You note in question six that you were surprised at 88% statistics related to care being requested by SBD.

I think this aids SBD.

This allows SBD, going back to my point, to focus on their mission, which is violent and property crimes.

Often, a number of years ago, people would not say property crime.

And that is a problem, as we see now today with all these comments earlier.

So I really appreciate that point that you highlight because this is about not just CARE doing its third approach, but allowing SPD to do its mission better.

That's right.

Because it can focus on its mission better.

And so I really appreciate that.

And I'm just looking at quickly my notes.

I also noted crawl, walk, run, which goes to my point.

We're going to have adjustments over the years as we move forward And your point about never restricting fire and medics responding independently and all those pieces, that goes back to my point.

You've got two main areas, the 911 call center plus the care responders.

But that 911 is such a key thing in identifying those pieces and making those calls in terms of how to move forward on that space.

So in the interest of time, I'm not going to ask the question, but I think, again, it's important to address the question that came up.

And I think we have, and I think we've identified that there's a lot of unanswered questions.

And so my pledge to you is as chair of this committee, but with my colleagues is to press forward and do it in collaboration with the executive, with the mayor's office, with the director of public safety, with Chief Rohr, her follow on, with labor, everybody that's be participating in this process.

So with that, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 2918. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

It is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

Are there any final comments?

Hearing none, seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm the appointment?

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

There are four yes votes and zero no votes.

The motion carries and the recommendation that appointment 2918 will be confirmed will be sent to the City Council.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Deputy Mayor Burgess.

So we're going to move on.

Apologize to follow on agenda items but we'll now introduce INVITE CHIEF ROHR UP TO THE TABLE.

THANK YOU.

AND I WOULD ASK, IN THE INTEREST OF TIME, TOO, THAT WE HOLD OUR QUESTIONS TO THE END.

ONE OF THE LESSONS LEARNED SITTING IN VARIOUS COMMITTEES IS THAT YOU HAVE TO ASK QUESTIONS ON EVERY SLIDE.

NEXT THING YOU KNOW, WE'RE GOING TO BE BREAKING THE FINANCE COMMITTEE'S RECORD FOR LONGEST COMMITTEE MEETING.

Sorry, Council Member Strauss.

So...

We will now move on to our next item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Seattle Police Department update.

Okay, now we're official with the city clerk's office.

Thank you so much, G4, for joining us today.

Deputy Chief Barden and Chief Operating Officer Mr. Maxey, thank you so much for coming.

And over to you.

We look forward to your update and your first two months on the job.

Well, thank you so much.

I hate to start out following Amy Smith.

I've done it myself, the press conference, trust me.

It almost seems unfair, but I'm glad that I got to be here to hear her sworn in because I could not ask for a better partner to be working with in public safety.

So I'm going to try and go quickly and give you some updates.

I want to start out, let's see, you've got to do the slides.

Okay, let's, there we go.

Ready to go?

Well, as we work through our technical difficulties, again, welcome.

Thank you so much.

And I really appreciate your engagement with, and it's not just with me as chair of the Public Safety Committee.

I know, because my sources have reported reliably in the past, that you've been meeting with a host of number of council members.

So thank you for that engagement because it's It's really important because, as you heard in public comment, the challenges are not just in Belltown, 2nd and Bell, and that's not just 3rd and Pike.

It's not 12th and Jackson and King.

It's Aurora and 90th and other areas and in the U District.

All righty.

With that slight delay, here we go.

No problems.

Okay, next slide.

There we go.

All righty.

I want to just thank everybody for the support I've received from every single one of you up in the dais.

It's been just a very pleasant experience to hear how much support there is and the offer of help.

When I came into the Seattle Police Department as the interim chief, I had 10 days mental preparation to start out, and it was an unexpected opportunity that has turned out so much better than I ever would have expected.

So I'm very, very happy to be here.

I was brought in to do two things, bring some stability, because there was a lot going on in the department, and also begin to implement some changes.

I told my staff right away that this is gonna, normally when a new leader comes in, we talk about this is a marathon and we're gonna be very, very methodical.

I said, this is no marathon, this is a sprint.

So buckle up, get your tennis shoes on, because we've got a lot of work to do.

But then I do have to remind myself that I'm here for a short time.

The staff is here for a long time.

So I'm trying to be a little bit kind to them and recognize they are still running a marathon at the sprint's pace.

The first thing I did coming in the door is I wanted to make sure that I started by focus internally, because we had a lot of turmoil going on when I came in the door.

And we are still dealing with that.

But I do believe it's important that my first focus is internally.

I have met with all of you.

I have met with some community groups.

But I have spent the bulk of my time working around the department, meeting with employees, I've done, I don't know, 15 or 16 roll calls.

I've probably had face-to-face contact with about 500 people.

And it's been very, very enlightening to me.

What I encountered was not what I expected.

I expected anger and resistance because of all of the turmoil in the department.

But what I encountered actually was some broken spirits and people looking for direction.

This department has been through turmoil going back to 2020. And the department is made up of people who came into this profession to serve the community.

And they're trying to serve the community, but they're getting a lot of mixed messages over the last four years.

And I think they were very receptive to the thought that we're going to get back to the business of public safety and law enforcement.

That's what our role is.

We need to get back to fighting crime.

And I think we got off track a little bit over the last couple of years, and I have had a very, very positive response.

The bulk of the people inside of the Seattle Police Department are engaged in first-line engagement with the community, and they really are ready to help.

And again, I want to thank all of you, because your message has been crystal clear to me, and I've been able to convey that message to the frontline officers, that we have the support of this council.

It's a little bit of a new message for them.

They're very, very happy to hear that.

Next slide, please.

I could spend several hours telling you what I've learned since I've come in the door, and I'm going to try and focus on some of the top four issues that I have been assessing since I came in the door.

It's a very complex organization, so I'm probably not going to do it just as I'm hitting the tip of the iceberg.

But the four areas that I need to focus on most quickly are staffing, that's no surprise to any of you, technology, accountability, which goes along with culture, and then talking about our criminal justice partners.

Next slide, please.

We've been talking a lot about staffing.

You all know that we're in a staffing crisis.

We're down 400 officers, and we are doing our level best to try and increase our ability to hire more officers more quickly.

We are behind where we hope to be at this point this year, and we are intensely focusing on making some changes that are going to give us a larger pool because that is the key to getting more officers hired.

We need to have a large pool of candidates so we can meet our diversity goals, so we can get the very best and brightest in the door.

We have to have a shorter processing time.

We are in an extremely competitive market.

Most people who come into policing are testing for multiple agencies.

So it really is a foot race to see who can offer a job more quickly.

So we have got to shorten our hiring process.

And we also need to have a high touch engagement.

When people apply to the police department, we need to reach out and touch them right away.

and we need to engage with them frequently.

There's a great deal of behavioral research that tells us even with a higher salary and great working conditions, you start building that one-on-one human relationship and you're gonna dramatically increase your chances of bringing that candidate into your department.

We have the opportunity to be a pilot site for a program.

It's an application for recruiting.

A person I worked with at the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department has offered this app to us for a pilot.

So I'll tell you more about that down the road, because that's another whole presentation.

But talking about staffing, next slide, please.

I want to just give you a taste of what those numbers mean.

You hear us say we're short officers, we're short staffing.

I want you to see and feel what that means in the field.

This is a snapshot of a recent Saturday night, what our staffing was.

You can see that we were down multiple officers in every single precinct area.

In the box there where it talks about priority calls, you can see the number of priority 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 calls in each precinct area.

And these calls are not small things.

These are not barking dogs or speeding cars.

These are assaults, crisis, domestic violence, and so forth.

Many of these calls require a multiple officer response.

North Precinct has been a special focus for us because of the shootings up in Aurora.

And to just give you a taste of what it's like for those officers, there's 10 officers on duty for that entire precinct, which is as large as most police departments across the state, that one single precinct.

So there's 10 officers to handle all of their call, all of those calls.

Then shortly after midnight, we get a shooting, which requires shutting down Aurora, getting a victim, getting aid to a victim.

That's taking six or seven officers right in that particular moment to deal with that shooting call.

Meanwhile, we have all these other calls coming in.

So when you hear complaints from your constituents about why does it take so long for a police officer to respond, it's a math problem.

They really have to prioritize their calls, and it results in longer wait times for people getting to calls.

What we are doing to deal with this is we're using special emphasis patrols, which are additional officers from outside the precinct to come in and focus on a particular problem area.

Our community response team is made up of 12 officers and a couple of sergeants, and they go around and try to work on our hotspots.

We need a team like that for every single precinct.

We've got one for the entire department.

We're looking at redeploying other resources so that we have more teams like that, or we have the ability to augment what we have at the precinct so they can pull out of call response and do some of these special emphasis.

Some of the things we've already done is we're redeploying our community service officers to the precinct so they respond right out of the precinct rather than centrally located downtown.

We're going to be meeting and talking to the art team this week.

I know it's a sensitive subject, but that's a large group of police officers that I want to look at.

Are we properly prioritizing that very precious commodity that we have?

So those conversations are ongoing.

Next slide, please.

What is ART?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Alternative Response Team.

What they do is assist the uniform...

There's so many acronyms.

Uniform.

the unified care team that's working on the encampments.

I need to have my list of acronyms.

Okay, let's see.

Technology is the other area that we're focused on.

We know that our staffing is going to be below what we need for the next two or three years.

So we need to really, really harness our technology because it can become a force multiplier.

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

There's two things that are going on with technology that I want to bring to your attention.

We are struggling with using a central city IT department because we and the fire department have some very unique needs that we're struggling with.

We need 24-7, 365 support.

That's very difficult to get from a central IT unit, so we're trying to figure out how to make that work more.

We also have to put anybody that's working on our data systems through a backgrounding process, which is something that we're short-staffed on because they are getting into databases that have all kinds of...

controls over them.

So I would really like to dig deeper into the opportunity to either have an internal IT support team or share one with the fire department.

We also are anticipating some issues with the personnel management system.

Most of the city is moving to, is it Workday?

Am I saying that correctly?

And because we have so many complex pay ranges and collective bargaining agreements, It's going to be very tricky to be able to switch over and make sure everyone is properly paid.

We also need to have a system that helps us track where our resources are, where our employees are assigned.

So we're looking at an intermediate system that might help us better utilize Workday.

So just want to get that on your radar.

Next slide, please.

Back to how technology can become a force multiplier.

I'm sure many of you have heard about our plans for a real-time crime center.

We need to get additional funding to operate that crime center.

Couple of things of note that I want you to be aware of is with a real-time crime center we get a better overview of not only what's happening in the city but where we need to move our resources to in response to an emergency we are better able to identify the hot spots i think we all know about the five major hot spots that we're dealing with now but there's also very specific areas just a couple of city blocks that if we have somebody who can perform the analysis and the data, we can really drill down on where we need to assign people.

Again, that gives us a...

We're better using our very scarce resources.

At the end of the day, solving crime comes down to connecting the dots from the data that we have and then getting the information to the right people at the right time.

Our real-time crime center is the way to get that done more quickly.

Next slide, please.

Accountability.

We all know the importance of public trust and the role that civilian oversight plays.

I think civilian oversight is absolutely critical to maintaining public trust.

It creates the transparency that's necessary for the community to have.

One of the challenges we have is how this impacts culture.

Many of you know that I've spent a lot of my career studying and practicing with how do you intentionally create a culture within an organization?

How do you build a healthy culture?

And one of the challenges I'm having is The current operation of our accountability system really goes against the basic tenets of procedural justice.

If I as a leader want to create a new culture or make our culture more healthy, I have to have the trust of the people inside of the organization.

But we are outsourcing so much of our investigations and discipline that creates multiple players in influencing how we are going to enforce rules inside of the organization.

Because the OPA and some of the other partners have so many investigations going, there's a pretty significant time lag between when a complaint is made and when it's resolved.

I'm understanding that the Office of the Inspector General is doing an audit on the timeliness.

I really want to spend more time understanding what is causing the time delays.

We need to have a distinction or a more clear distinction between what constitutes minor misconduct and serious misconduct, because we have a lot of minor misconduct investigations that are going to OPA.

And I have the perception that it's clogging up the system, to be really blunt.

And I would like to see us figure out a way to better distinguish between those two things.

I think I'll leave that for now.

I could spend many more hours talking about that.

It is a significant challenge in updating the culture.

Next slide, please.

I want to get back to I think why most of the community is here is looking at our public safety picture.

And I think that there's a lot of questions about what the proper approach is to that.

Clearly, we need to have healthy partnerships and better coordination.

Again, I couldn't ask for a better partner than Amy Smith when it comes to alternative call response, alternative call handling.

We know that we are not the solution.

We are part of a system.

And being able to work with those other systems is extremely important.

We also have a problem with having enough detention options.

Many of you, I think, have been involved in conversations about a third option.

We have the dilemma where we have people who are too medically fragile to go to jail, but they're too dangerous to go to the ER.

We need to have a third option because we have created a society where we have a lot of people that don't fit those either-or alternatives.

We really need a third alternative.

When we look at how we got here, how did crime get so bad?

How did things get out of control?

I think there are a couple of reasons.

Many of you may have read a couple weeks back, Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed about the folly of creating public policy based on ideological purity.

It was very interesting for me this morning to listen to the public comment about public safety, the focus on we need public safety.

Four years ago, the public comment was very different.

It was defund the police.

all cops are bad, repeal low level statutes about low level crimes.

That momentum had been building for years.

In 2020, there was a pretty significant shift away from focusing on public safety and law enforcement.

And what we're seeing now is the results of some of the shifts that happened four years ago.

As I told you, I'm very grateful that we have a different climate here in the city council right now.

I know the officers are feeling more clarity about what their mission is on the street.

When I look at what's causing crime, that is clearly one of the problems.

We also suffered the pandemic, and I think we're still suffering from what happened during that pandemic.

The things that keep pro-social behavior in line, those things fell apart.

Our social service network was frayed, mental health services weren't available, And when we look at youth crime and what's happening with our young people right now, the most important public institution to promote pro-social behavior in young people is our schools.

And our schools were shut down.

Those schools provide such an important bridge From early teen years to later teen years, I think we're seeing the fallout of that bridge being broken for those young people.

So there's all of these different factors that are coming together in a perfect storm.

You add fentanyl and guns to that, and I think that gives us a lot of insight into what we're seeing out on the street.

Next slide, please.

I think you're all aware of the homicide rate that's happening in Seattle right now.

I think it's just important for us to remember and not let go of the fact that people are dying, and we still are not on top of it.

We're trying, but it's worse than it has been over the last decades.

Next slide, please.

The other thing that I think is more disturbing is the amount of gunfire in our communities.

If any of you have not read the Seattle Times this morning, I encourage you to read the very extensive article by Sarah Jean Greene, where she dives deep into the data about the violence in our communities, not just in Seattle, but all across King County.

We have so much gunfire in the community, it's just astounding.

I wake up every morning and I pick up my cell phone to see all of the bulletins from the night before, and it is very rare for me not to have at least one bulletin.

Usually I have two or three or four of a shooting the night before.

That is just astounding.

That is something that we didn't see 10 years ago, we didn't see five years ago.

Next slide, please.

I do want to reassure you, even though that we are down 400 officers, the officers that we have are working their hearts out, and they are doing a lot of good work.

They're doing amazing things considering the environment that they're working in.

Our homicide detectives, our community violence reduction unit, which focuses on the shootings and the gang-related crime, Those folks are being called out literally every single night, multiple times.

Our community response group, again, that's the 12 officers and two sergeants that move around the city, they are doing amazing work.

They're making arrests.

They're holding people accountable.

I wish I had five times as many people as we do, but the ones that we do have on the job are doing an incredible job.

Next slide, please.

To wrap this up, looking forward, I don't want to end on a super negative note, even though we all know we are in a crisis right now.

Again, I want to reinforce one more time how important the council's support has been.

The mayor's office has been amazingly supportive.

That means so much to our officers to know that the city has their back.

I want to...

Just leave you with my surprise and how pleased I am with we have moved past the idea that we have to pick one thing or the other.

We can't live in the world of either or now.

Either it's a law enforcement problem or it's a social service problem.

It's both.

What is happening in our community can't just be solved by the police and it can't just be solved by social workers.

And I think we have gotten to a place, as you heard with Chief Smith, we have gotten to the place where we recognize the need for both things.

We need to be able to get people connected to services, but some people need to be put in detention.

That's the only way we can keep the community safe I know we're going to be talking in a few minutes about the lack of availability of options for safe detention, so I'm not going to drill into that right now.

I'm going to stop talking and give you an opportunity to ask me some questions.

I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today.

Thank you, Chief Rohrer.

And we do have the follow-up and we are running late.

So if you have like a quick question related to this, it may be, and if you have any others, it may be folded into our next agenda item, Vice Chair, now or later.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Go now.

Hopefully I'll be brief.

But thank you, Chief Rohrer, for this kind of overview and report out, 60-day report out, really helpful.

And I also appreciate your partnership and collaboration on any number of issues impacting my district and the entire city.

And, yeah, it was sort of immediate trial by fire.

I think that within the first week or two we were doing something.

But in any event, thank you for all this.

And thank you for calling out the facts.

Facts are we are currently, the public safety challenges that we're experiencing today are a shameful legacy of the defund the police movement.

And that was wrong then, it's wrong now.

And from my perspective, defund is dead.

It is not the dominant controlling policy narrative dominating our policy discussions here in Seattle.

We are here to create an environment where all views are listened to and heard, but compassion defines our approach and collaboration defines our approach.

So on the issue of police hiring, What...

So let me say this.

I'm also happy to report that one of my neighbors is going through the police hiring process right now, and she is very delighted with how things seem to be progressing and the engagements and touch points that she's now getting, which is great.

You aptly noted that...

One of the things that we need to achieve the staffing levels that we need is we need a much larger pool of candidates.

Makes a lot of sense.

In order for us to hire the best of the best, we need the deepest possible pool of qualified applicants and candidates.

And we've taken a number of actions already this year as a council and collective body to address that.

I'm happy to learn that we're seeing initial results in terms of number of daily applicants up.

I think Director Walton from the mayor's office reported that during one of our last sessions.

What are some other things that the city can do, in your view, to potentially increase the larger pool of candidates?

Well, I've raised this issue before, and I'm reluctant to do it now because it could be a very long discussion, but I would really hope that the Civil Service Commission would reconsider the way that they do candidate testing.

There are different options for doing the initial screening for candidates.

And there is an option that creates many, many more, a larger pool of candidates.

There's a testing process that can be done that produces a much larger pool.

There's a history about why they're using the screening tests that they're using now.

I know that they believe deep in their soul that the test they're using now is extremely important to stick with that test.

My experience in police hiring is the first initial screening test doesn't need to go that deep, because we're literally just trying to make sure people I have the minimum qualifications.

We have a very deep backgrounding process.

And so to have the initial screening go very deep into qualifications, to me, it takes time for that to happen.

And my preference, if I was the queen of the world, my preference would be to bring more people into the pool and allow the backgrounding process to sort out from that pool.

It's highly, highly competitive, and the agency that removes the most barriers to get in the door is going to have a larger pool.

And I'd like to see us use a testing process that is much more low barrier and faster.

Thank you.

Okay, Council President.

I second those comments, of course, because that is what the legislation to improve recruitment and hiring processes that was passed earlier sought to do.

You mentioned we also, that legislation also allocated, it created space for another FTE to enable that touch, that you said that this should be a high touch environment, that we need to contact somebody who applies to SPD right away and beat other agencies to that person.

So do you know whether or not that...

Is that working yet?

That legislation passed a couple months ago, so I don't know.

Maybe that's a follow-up question with HR.

I do know that our recruiting unit has changed some of their procedures to create that.

I'm very interested in bringing in this new app.

Again, we can be a pilot agency.

It doesn't cost money to do this, but it will enable our small number of people in the recruiting unit to maximize using technology.

this outreach and constant contact with candidates in the field.

I can give you a more deep briefing at some future time if you'd like.

I look forward to that.

Thanks.

Okay.

Council, anybody else?

Council Member Moore?

Thank you very much, Chief, for this amazing presentation and so much that you've covered and done in the brief time that you're here.

And I just really feel like we're in good hands.

So thank you for being here.

And also thank you for your collaboration with the gun violence crisis that we are seeing in my district.

I've been very responsive, and I very much appreciate that.

I had a quick question about, you know, are there other resources that we can bring in, like retired?

Have we talked to the state patrol?

Have we looked at King County Sheriff?

Are there retired law enforcement that we could bring in on a temporary basis?

Are there other hiring options in that regard?

I think you were in one of our meetings we had yesterday.

We were talking about that very option of bringing in some temporary employees to help with not only backgrounds, but just general investigations, because we don't have the resources to do follow-up investigations on a lot of cases that come in.

And we're exploring with HR and obviously with our collective bargaining units, can we bring in some retired officers temporarily to help out?

So we are looking at that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Council Member Rivera.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Chief, for being here.

And I very much appreciate the collaboration.

And you've also been very responsive and thoughtful in your approach.

And I really appreciate all that you've done in a short period of time to really address the issues that we're facing.

I will say in Sarah Jean Green's article, it talked a lot about youth.

and gun violence and this upsurge that we've had particular to youth.

And I very much appreciate you bringing up the pandemic because at least anecdotally, I'm not a data scientist, but I'm a mom of two teenagers and I know a lot of teenagers and I see the impact the pandemic had when we closed the schools and we waited so long to reopen schools, the impact it's had on youth.

And I don't doubt that that has had an impact on this recent uptick and I would love to continue conversations and learn more about ways that we can address gun violence with youth in particular because we're not seeing any movement in a positive direction in terms of youth and gun violence in particular.

And when we look at School's out at the moment, but fall is shortly around the corner and I would love to hear what the response will be.

Because I know that, for instance, the mayor has some proposals that I support in terms of mental health, more access to mental health for kids.

But we know that alone is not going to take care of it.

And so how do we keep our kids safe in the schools and guns away from our teenagers and things of that nature?

So I know we're running short on time so we can continue this conversation later.

But I did want to highlight that as part of this committee because it's something that I very much care about.

And I will say that the kids who, you know, most kids, and I said this yesterday, but we are experiencing this gun violence end to end in our city.

And that includes with our youth.

High schools across the city are dealing with this.

And every time it happens, it's now creating a culture where our kids are experiencing PTSD.

and ways that we really haven't seen before because more and more of our kids have now been touched by gun violence than I can recall, and I'm not young.

So I just, as you can tell, I very much care about this and very much care about wanting to be part of a solution.

I don't know what that will be, but looking forward to talking about this more and learning more about what we can do and how we can be a part of that.

Well, I may need your assistance, too.

I'm going to be reaching out to the prosecutor's office to learn the details.

I learned yesterday that it takes multiple convictions of firearms laws before juveniles are held in detention and held accountable.

So the fact that we have so many juveniles carrying firearms, using firearms, this is an area that I need to educate myself in right now.

It's not surprising.

What I've heard is it takes five convictions before they're actually held in detention.

That's astounding to me.

That is absolutely frightening to me.

And I think that's something we need to pay close attention to, but I need to learn more about it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chief Hoare.

Thank you so much.

And we'll add that to the list that we have for OIR to work with Olympia in the upcoming sessions.

Yes.

And the list is growing.

Just as a transition to the next thing, I just wanted to note that, first, thank you for coming and thank you for your update.

Last week, a week ago today, pretty much right now, I came in, went down to 3rd Avenue, started at James and walked all the way to Pine.

And I had some initial residents there meeting me at James.

And then as I walked, people kept adding, you know, residents, small business community members coming in.

We stopped and talked and we just made our way to Pine.

And we ran into the mid, and I just noted DSA's John Scholes has just left.

He was here.

And he's given me insight from what his organization sees.

And he shows the difference between 2023 and 2024. So it's real what's happening downtown and what's impacting all these residents that are contacting my office, contacting all of us in our offices.

And We Deliver Care was there, King County Sheriff, Seattle PD, and we had the opportunity to talk to each of them.

And I just wanted to highlight one thing, and just to be clear, and it's a transition to the next briefing is, Last year, we passed the Public Drug Use and Possession Bill to align the SMC, the Seattle Municipal Code, to the RCW, the Code for Washington State Law.

And in there, and I believe in the first part, diversion, 110%, and I've talked to many people.

I had a conversation yesterday with Lee.

Yes, whatever that number out of 10 that can be diverted, let's divert.

But then those that need to be detained need to be detained.

And that's our challenge.

And then there was an amendment came in.

It was talking about articulable harm.

And what I think created confusion.

It created a lack of clarity and on the light.

So for clarity's sake, using my walk, information like from DSA, your own data sets, 911 data sets, all these data sets is that We have articulable harm happening on our streets across the city and particularly downtown every day.

It is a given that we have articulable harm.

So that should not be a consideration when it pertains to 3rd Avenue, Pike and Pine from 1st to 3rd, 2nd and Bell and the whole area of Belltown.

People don't realize Belltown is sliding in that area, kind of like 12th and Jackson and King.

We cannot have it.

That's articulable harm that's happening to our neighbors that live in Belltown.

It's untickable harm that's happening on 90th and Aurora, which my own family knows from, you know, we don't live up there, but there's things that happen in Cascadia, the elementary school, you know, in all these districts that we have crossed.

So tickable harm is happening.

We need to create this clarity and we need to take action.

And it's, you know, first it's having a place to divert to, but then there's the detention.

And with that, thank you very much.

Excuse me, Chair.

We're going to move to the next item.

Yeah, I was there last year with the drug bill, so can I just make a note?

The drug ordinance that failed five to four in June was simple conforming with state law, making public use a gross misdemeanor.

And that failed.

And then the drug bill that was ultimately adopted was from the executive, and that created, in Section 3, a threat to harm to others standard.

And so that was in the mayor's legislation that was passed down.

And then, yes, council did amend it, but the...

the articulable harm part was part of this section that says that the arrest had to be conditioned on the perception of an officer that the drugs user was harming others in addition to or instead of or in addition to themselves.

So it's impacting and harming Kevin and his neighbors and his fellow business owners in Belltown.

And so absolutely and...

And with that, thank you very much.

And we'll move to next item, business clerk.

Please read item three into the record.

Criminal justice ecosystem discussion.

Chief Rohrer is going to remain.

And welcome to City Attorney Davison for joining us, along with Chief Smith from CARE.

Thank you very much.

Is everything set and ready to go on the briefing?

So we'll quickly go into the briefing, and again, we'll work through the briefing.

We'll hold any questions to the end in the interest of time.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good afternoon.

Morning.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you for having me.

Appreciate the...

input earlier and we'll keep on track for time because you have a lot of business to do.

Thank you for the conversation.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Thank you, Chief Warren, Chief Smith for your previous comments.

I just want to talk about three items so we can go to the three items.

Thank you.

Just that are highlighting some top three issues at the moment that the, in my opinion, the criminal justice system is facing.

So those give you a highlight of what I'll review is the King County jail booking restrictions, the chronic hotspot public safety issues, and the DUI state tox lab backlog.

So those are the three items that I'd like to bring to you today to just kind of give you an overview of where those stand and how those are impediments, in my opinion, in our ability to improve public safety.

So we'll go to the next slide, please.

In 2012, we contracted with King County to have a detention facility for the city of Seattle for misdemeanor defendants.

And that is going until 2030. In 2024, we paid 22 million for that.

But one of the things that you should note is then when the pandemic occurred, understandably there were restrictions on bookings because of the contagious aspect of COVID.

And then when that subsided, we still had those restrictions in place.

named for staffing shortages at the King County Jail.

So with those restrictions, what that does is our Seattle police officers that we've heard about are not able to book on over half of our misdemeanor crimes that are listed in our city's laws.

So I'd like to say that staggering sentence again.

Our officers are not able to book on over half of the misdemeanor crimes that are listed in our city's laws.

And so when you are looking at what can your limited number of officers that we have with the struggles of recruiting that Chief Rauer has identified, we need to be able to provide something for them so they know that they can be responsive in the moment to community that you've heard from public comment that they need help.

Community needs help in the moment.

because we do have repeat victims, and so we do need to have a regaining of that misdemeanor jail capacity, in my opinion.

Some of the items that are eligible for booking at the King County Jail are assault, DUI, sex crimes, firearm cases, and domestic violence.

Things that are not eligible for booking include theft, that's at any amount, so if someone steals $700 worth, that person's not bookable today at King County Jail.

Trespassing, property destruction.

If somebody goes and smashes a plate glass window at one of our storefronts, I can't get that, that person won't be booked.

Seattle police officers will not be able to book that in King County Jail.

Harassment and animal cruelty.

I put in animal cruelty as a highlighter because that is one of the precursors that we do know that is an indicator of domestic violence.

And so Councilmember Rivera, as you talked about so passionately about our youth and the increase in violence, I would add to that conversation not just the school closures, but when everybody was needing to be home, not everybody had a safe home to be at, which included exposure to domestic violence.

And we do know that even exposure to a minor witness of domestic violence actually does increase the likelihood that they become an aggressor or a victim.

And animal cruelty is another one of those indicators.

So I put that on there because it's really one of the early interventions we can do in talking about domestic violence and exposure to young people.

And then, again, the ineligible for booking, dozens of other offenses that are on our city's laws.

Seattle, in my opinion, is, as far as I know, the only major city that is restricted in the arrest and booking policies that its elected city leaders can create.

And it's from those booking restrictions that we are not able to create the policy that we would prefer to have as city leaders on what is arrest.

We set the policy for arrest, we set the policy for booking, and we are unable to do that because of the restrictions that are now in place.

I think we're the only major city who has such restrictions.

I support what the council is doing here and what the mayor's office is doing in helping to restore that and regain some of that misdemeanor booking capacity.

I think that is one of the things that will be needed as we look to improve public safety.

Yes, you can go to the next slide.

Thank you.

The second item I want to talk about, actually I'll stop and give you this one, is give you a big overview.

And I'm really happy to be able to bring you this data because I don't think we had this view of what our city had as far as jail bookings capacity.

And when people want to talk about, yes, the conditions of jail need to be humane.

We do need to have services.

We do need to have reentry planned at that exit time.

All of those pieces need to be in sequence.

but you do need to understand that it has been going down prior to the pandemic.

And now you can see we are at 80 average daily population in the jail.

You can go to the next slide.

It's trying to keep your time condensed.

So we'll move to the second issue that I would speak about, which are chronic hotspot public safety issues, many of which Chief Roar has already talked about.

And one here is for you to see.

You can see the concentration there in the downtown area on the heat map.

This is, again, where we know there's open-air drug markets.

There is criminal activity that is associated with that.

I like to now sadly call it criminal enterprise.

People are looking to profit on the addiction that is known to be there and is known locations.

We make it easy for that market to exist.

We need to be able to bring creative, responsive, current legal strategies that will help disrupt that known criminal enterprise.

in those locations because we know it's happening.

We need to supplement the officers that we do have and how can we be creative with legal strategies that will help to be adaptive and responsive to the current trends of those who wanna come and do bad acts and cause harm in our community in the form of illegal activity.

I'm very happy to be working with council on these items and the mayor, and I think that in the coming future, we will have some of those strategies to talk about on these hotspot issues, but again, to highlight the need for them in order to do that disruption.

You can go to the next slide, please.

A second area that also has been spoken about today passionately by Council Member Moore in the North End and Chief Farrar I've heard as well, again, in the increase in gun violence that is happening around the Aurora Avenue corridor.

We do know it's a known area of prostitution, and we have had a lack of enforcement of that for a number of years.

It is significant.

The sex trafficking is shocking, and it should make us all pause because there are minors that are included in that space.

When we leave things unaddressed, as we've just talked about, at lower, quote unquote, lower levels, what it does, in my opinion, is create an increase in severity and frequency.

And here we have, although we did chronic nuisance civil actions last summer and we closed down some of those motels that were adding to the proliferation of the sex trafficking, we now see a significant increase in gun violence in the North End.

And so to me, that is where we need to be absolutely responsive in that because it is creating community violence that is now...

associated with the sex trafficking that is, again, the criminal enterprise that is up there for people that are looking to profit on sex trafficking, other human beings, and now the gun violence that is there and the competition of that.

We need to disrupt that.

That is not the criminal enterprise.

That is not what we want for our North End neighbors.

That should not be seen as a ripe market to come and make money to do that in our communities.

So I'm very looking forward to working with Councilmember Moore on that in the near future.

The next item is my last one, which I wanna highlight, so do you have time for questions, Councilmembers?

Just to give people awareness of the DUI State Talks Lab backlog.

So the toxicology lab, which is run by the state of Washington, is the one that has to create the accreditation and the evidence upon which my prosecutors must rely upon when we have driving under the influence cases.

The Washington State Patrol toxicology lab is currently facing a significant backlog.

And you may have heard in reports of our fatality crashes, our increase in DUIs that are happening across the state.

So this is not a Seattle specific issue, but I feel like it's really important to highlight.

You can see the numbers increasing over the years, particularly since 2019. And Seattle currently has 800 DUIs that are waiting for the toxicology reports.

That means that I can't do anything until I get that evidence because we are waiting to be able to show that that person was impaired.

We can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

This is what is required when we look to seek prosecution for those cases.

But it is now taking an average over one year to receive the toxicology report from the Washington State Patrol.

We have been working with them as an individual department and trying to find other ways that we can be creative about that.

But to me, this talks about the state level government and the management of executive departments at the state level, because we need to have this resource across our state to make our roadways safer.

Again, pointing to the sad number of fatalities across our state.

And then I'm giving you the view of what I'm contending with here locally in the Seattle level on that.

But this leaves all our municipalities across the state in the same situation.

I just have the opportunity to speak on that, and I want to highlight that, because we all go across our roadways throughout our state.

And this needs to be addressed in an urgent way, because sadly, as we talked about, the crises around fentanyl and meth, people are then also getting behind the wheel.

And so what I am seeing most of is drugs related to that.

So it's a significant topic for me.

Again, just really thank you for the opportunity to bring these three items to you and give you kind of a snapshot of three of the significant obstacles that I think we are facing in order to bring an improvement in public safety for the city.

The jail capacity, the misdemeanor capacity is an issue.

These chronic known hotspot issues where I think we need to bring creative, current, responsive legal strategies and the DUI toxicology backlog at the state toxicology lab.

Thank you, City Attorney Davison, and thank you all for remaining.

Obviously, this is a very important topic related to our criminal justice system and what's working, what's not working, what needs to be improved.

And like you, I've been engaged with multiple areas of the criminal justice system.

And I should say up front, too, this look at it and these questions don't go to the questioning of the professionalism of those entities that are involved.

Like I've been to the King County Jail, very professional.

I talked to the commander, you know, great work, you know, that's being done in these different areas.

But as you highlight, we do have our challenges.

And I just say that out loud just to kind of set kind of like a tenor, is that, you know, this is a question not about the professionalism and the hard work that they're doing and, you know, oftentimes in difficult situations because, Chief Roy, you're not the only one with staffing challenges.

So with that, you know, kind of baseline as practiced, Vice Chair Saka, any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For all three, by the way.

Sure.

Relating to this topic.

Thank you, City Attorney Davidson, Chief Smith, Chief Rohrer.

I really appreciate this overview.

I want to quickly comment on something because it's come up three times now.

It's a profound point, and I want to emphasize it from my perspective, because Chief Rohr mentioned it, my esteemed colleague, Councilmember Rivera, and you as well, City Attorney Davidson, this notion that, at least in part, some of the public safety challenges with respect to youth that we're experiencing today is a direct consequence and outcome of some policy decisions we made during the pandemic.

And I couldn't agree more, also as a parent, also as someone who with personal firsthand lived experiences as someone who you know, from a disadvantaged background and community, someone who went to 13 K through 12 schools growing up, all of them Title I schools for kids like myself at the time, free and reduced lunch, someone who didn't have, someone who overcame the foster care system, as someone who was eventually raised by a single parent, a Nigerian immigrant, who was a frontline warehouse worker, working at all hours, There's no way I would be here at the dais right now if I had to rely on remote learning.

So many kids today go to school, like myself growing up for many years, to receive services first, including meals and other things.

Sadly, some of them receive education or go to school with the purpose of receiving education as a secondary concern.

And so as a policy matter, I think in this city, schools need to be the last to close and first to reopen.

We're gonna be collectively working to solve that for years and decades to come.

But so City Attorney Davidson, thank you for really eye-opening kind of report out here.

One of the things I'll emphasize that you mentioned and you yourself emphasize is that we're not able to book currently for half of the city's mis-a-meter laws, I'm paraphrasing, which really eye-opening, problematic, One of the items not eligible for booking, animal cruelty.

So people can, or trespassing, and you gave the example of smashing a window.

So people can violently smash a business's window without fear of being booked to spend a night in jail to think about that.

That That is highly problematic.

And animal cruelty.

They locked Michael Vick up for years for animal cruelty.

But in the city of Seattle, we can't, someone can't spend a night in jail?

They can freely abuse an animal?

We need to do better.

We are experiencing rampant crime and an opportunity to do better for our residents, our communities, including small businesses, these booking restrictions, amongst other things, that really are a bit of a head scratcher.

It serves no deterrent whatsoever to any crime.

Zero.

And having talked with various members of our public safety apparatus, firefighters, police, leaders, including chiefs, and frontline rank and file folks at SPD during various roll calls that I have attended.

I know that it impacts officer morale as well and ultimately our ability to recruit and retain officers.

And so this is the challenge that we need to do better for as a city.

Great slide here.

I'm pointing to the Seattle misdemeanor jail population graph here.

Would love to see...

And overlay of this against actual sort of underlying crime data, do you have any initial observations of how this booking chart stacks and compares against to like under anyone here, I guess, at the table to the actual underlying crime data?

It would be an inverse line on your graph.

Mm-hmm.

to go exactly the opposite way.

Because the message is, just as you said, we only will step in and do something and give a consequence when you've done something that we think is serious enough.

But we don't want to spend the time or the energy to intervene earlier.

even, you know, this early, right, where I think we're all in agreement, like, that is the time to do it.

That is the closest connected to root cause of why there's criminal activity.

That is the place to invest in, not unless and until there's something that's felonious.

It really is to be at the misdemeanor level.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Mr. Chair.

Council President Nelson.

Yeah, can you put that graph, let's see, slide four back up?

Thank you very much for this because I'm, well, I'll wait until you do that.

Four.

Number four.

This is shocking to me because, and I'm glad that the networks are here to show this because Here we're paying, I think you said, $22 million a year for a contract to fulfill a service to the city of Seattle.

And we're only in that, I think I've heard before, that we pay for about, with that $22 million, we're supposed to get about 195 beds at the jail.

And it looks like our average daily population is hovering around 80, 86, 87. I have heard Executive Constantine refute the fact that they are restricting.

It doesn't really matter whether or not, and I want my money back, basically.

To me, the council's role is to budget our resources wisely, and this has been an issue ever since I've been elected that we do not have, the council does not have the power to alter the contract with the jail.

That is the executive's function, and City Attorney Davison and I have been talking for a long time about this situation.

My question is, what is the status?

Does anybody know the status of those negotiations?

Or what are we doing to recuperate those resources so that we could use that money for things that would make a really big difference in our public safety environment?

I don't know anything about the money.

I would need that in an attorney-client privilege setting, but I have a copy of a memo that was distributed in February of 2022 that lists out those restrictions and the reasons from that from the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention.

Those were the ones that were put in place.

I did have a nice meeting with Council Member Moore and Kettle, so there's some conversation that's occurring.

But I do hear you, Council President Nelson.

Thank you.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you for this presentation.

And I think it makes Lays bear the very stark position that we find ourselves in our public safety environment.

And I appreciate that you have not always been popular in bringing this message forward, but it needs to be brought forward.

And so I appreciate the courage involved in that.

And one thing that I wanted to point out in this slide for which I think is important for all of us to know is that as council president noted we've contracted for a hundred and ninety five beds so my understanding is in 2019 the council the former council took a policy position and for some legitimate reasons right that they wanted to start moving away from incarceration and into other alternatives.

And so they set the amount of beds at 180. I just want to point out that this move to get the beds that we are contracting for would be 15 beds below what we set as a policy goal and where we found it to be acceptable in terms of our desire to not over-incarcerate, but also to provide that as a necessary tool to provide for community safety.

And so when there's pushback about how we are going back to over-incarcerating, I just want it to be clear that we are not, we are well within the range, the policy range that the council that was very much unaligned in their public safety approach took from this council.

So I just, I think that's an important point to make.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Moore, for your really important observations and comments.

And I also want to say that I very much appreciate the transparency because the truth is that we can't get to solutions if we are not transparent about where we are.

And I very much appreciate, you know, the fact that I know in the D4, and I'm not alone in the D4, and having small business owners come to me and tell me that they are getting the smashing grabs and, you know, the theft that is happening.

And there is no recourse for these small business owners that are often, I mean, they are...

small mom and pop shops, that that's what they do for a living and they're just trying to make a living.

And then we can't do anything about that.

It is really, in my mind, egregious that then we can't, if we were to identify the individuals who are conducting this crime.

And oftentimes, my understanding, Chief, is that that is oftentimes the same individuals committing the same crimes and we can't do anything about it.

That is really egregious.

And, you know, I will say in terms of the open-air drug markets, you know, University District is in here.

I hear from small businesses and residents in the U District how they feel overwhelmed by the drug activity that's happening up there.

And of course, we have families and children up there being subjected to this every day.

And then we can't, we have a drug possession law But now we're not able to deliver on that drug possession law because we're not able to book people.

And I want to be clear that we need to be booking drug dealers who are causing the most harm and then diverting the users who actually need services.

But that has proved challenging, my understanding is, from talking to actually human service providers because the folks that are getting...

identified as needing diversion services there's nowhere to hold them till they sober up so that you can actually offer and have them consent to services so this came up a little earlier chair but just we have a need for some kind of facility whether it be at the jail or somewhere else where we can hold people that we're trying to help with services and because we are losing these people back to the streets, back to the hands of the drug dealers that we cannot put away.

And this is a real problem.

And of course, with all of this, we have our youth.

So I know that in the D4, we have Magnuson Park.

We have low-income families living there with children who are susceptible.

We have permanent supportive housing.

We have folks there who are trying to recover.

And then we have drug dealing happening at the park, and we can't seem to do anything about that.

I am super angry about that.

And we need to do something.

So this jail piece needs to get addressed.

We need to figure it out.

I'm super angry that we're paying for a service that we're not getting while we're trying to help folks that are most vulnerable in our communities.

That makes me really angry.

And so I want to thank you for the transparency.

This is real.

This is data.

This is happening.

And we need to do something about this.

And we can't stay silent about this.

And this is not to what many of you and many of us have said.

We need to do all of it.

We need to protect our citizens who are the most vulnerable.

We are not trying to jail folks that have addiction.

We need to help these folks.

But we need to get the people that are causing the most harm, that are taking advantage of our vulnerable populations, and these people need to be in jail.

And I am unapologetic about that, as I know many of us are up here.

We wanna be great partners in this.

I wanna be part of this conversation.

We need to do something.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

I do wanna make sure that you understand, I started the High Utilizer Initiative in March of 2022. So these numbers include what my office's efforts were in making sure I can book people that are matching that criteria.

So those who are included in this are people.

So the repeat frequent offenders that we can see are engaged in repeat criminal activity that meet the High Utilizer Initiative criteria, they are bookable.

But my office has done those efforts since 2022, since we launched that, but that is inclusive in that number there.

So you do understand there, but I appreciate your comments very much.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you, City Attorney Davison.

I do know that up on Aurora, there's some issues, though, that aren't getting addressed.

And I will say there are schools, the last, sorry, Chair, I know I've taken up a lot of time, but I'm so passionate about this because there are schools next to all of that drug and sex trafficking area.

And, you know, there's a high school, there's a an elementary and a middle school, all off of Aurora.

And these kids are getting solicited.

And I know because, again, my two girls go to a school up there.

And so I'm hearing this from students.

And so this is something we really need to do about.

So thank you for clarifying on that piece.

We do need to figure out how we help connect folks to services and not lose them so I do feel strongly we need some kind of holding area where folks can you know sober up and we can offer services they can do consent or even if we pick up the young women and I will also say many of those young women are you know BIPOC underage girls like my girls that we need to help and we need to be able to remove them from that situation and keep them safe from the pimps that are up there and I know council member Moore keeps talking about this so don't mean to steal your thunder down there but I very much agree and like I said I want to be part of HOWEVER I CAN HELP, THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO DO.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, COUNCILMEMBER RIVERA, AND THANK YOU FOR HIGHLIGHTING SOMETHING THAT'S COME UP RELATED TO, LIKE, WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT ON ALTERCALBA HARM IS THE IDEA, I MEAN, I KNOW DAY CENTERS, SOBERING CENTERS, BUT THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT WE NEED TO ADD, AND I WOULD SAY WE CAN'T HAVE THEM AT THIRD PIKE AND PINE.

WE'D RATHER HAVE THEM HERE IN THE GOVERNMENT SECTOR BECAUSE THE RESIDENTS AND THE BUSINESSES SHOULD NOT BE THE ONE WITH THE BURDEN.

We're at time, so I'm just going to close with, you know, articulable harm is widespread, and it's not just solely with drug-related crime.

Not included in your slide deck, City Attorney Davison was one from March that noted that 80% of crime in Seattle is misdemeanor crime, and I suspect that percentage is relatively the same, you know, covering assault, DUI, domestic violence, harassment, trespass, and weapon charges.

And, you know, we need to work this.

We need to allow our police officers to work the violent and property crimes.

We need our care department for that third approach for those sad stories, include the women who are caught on Aurora and other places, by the way, to include Belltown.

You know, we need to be able to do that and we need to have this come together.

And we need to be engaging as a city, and we are.

We are doing it internally as a city in one Seattle way, but we're also engaging with others to include King County.

As mentioned, City Attorney Davison, we did meet with King County.

You know, the Deputy County Executive was there.

Council Member Dembikowski was there.

King County Sheriff, your counterpart, Chief Warr was there.

And it was a very good discussion.

And we're doing this, again, to my original point about the tenor, Recognizing the professionalism of the corrections team and force at King County Jail, but also recognizing the challenges, the restrictions, the constraints that they're under in terms of staffing and other things like that.

And for transparency, too.

Not only King County Jail, I've been to SCORE.

I've talked to SCORE.

And then I recognize the executive's major stakeholding process because they've been down there too.

But they've also been talking to the various elements that are involved in the criminal justice system as of high.

I've met with the Department of Public Defenders.

I got a letter from SEIU 925, their labor side.

I took that letter to SCORE.

I asked verbatim the questions that the union gave to me to the director of SCORE Jail.

And I've also been to Issaquah as well, the Issaquah jail as well.

And so we need to continue this stakeholder process because ultimately your roles, my role, my responsibility is here to the city of Seattle and to my mission of creating a safe base in our city, across our city, not just as all this attention with downtown, but.

horrifically what's happening in terms of Aurora 90th and, you know, around those schools and other areas that we've seen in not just District 7 but across.

So thank you very much.

I really appreciate everyone joining us and highlighting this.

And we're going to continue to work with those entities as we move forward because ultimately, again, The mission is about creating a safe base for our city with constitutional precinct, doing it right in keeping with the points that Council Member Moore made and with the accountability that we so desperately need and we will have.

Thank you very much.

That concludes.

I suspect that there's no other business to come before the committee, so this meeting is adjourned.