Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 2/9/21

All right let's go.

We are recording.

Thank you so much.

Good morning.

The February 9th 2021 meeting

of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

all council members present.

Thank you.

So first, I just want to real quickly go over today's agenda.

On today's agenda, we will hear first a presentation from the Seattle Fire Department, the mayor's office, and public health on our plan to vaccinate residents and workers.

We'll then hear a presentation from the Seattle Fire Department on the adoption of the 2018 fire codes.

We'll then move into a continuation of our discussion and deliberations regarding potential recommendations on the less lethal weapons draft bill developed based on our recommendations of our police accountability partners.

But item four, which is Council Bill 119981, concerning the Seattle Police Department's budget will be held on today's agenda while the city communicates with the monitor and the court overseeing the consent decree between the city and the Department of Justice.

Just a little bit more background as to the holding of this agenda item while the city does that communication with the monitor and the court.

Just want to uplift comments from the city in our regular periodic filing with the court from a few days ago regarding the monitor's work plan.

And in that filing, the city said, under the proposed plan, the monitor and DOJ will provide technical assistance to ensure that budget cuts or structural changes to policing are not undertaken in a manner that undermines the city's compliance with the consent decree.

The city goes on to say this past year, city leaders and community groups have called for budget cuts to SPD accompanied by increased funding to policing alternatives.

concurrently, not as a result, but concurrently, SPD lost a number of officers to retirement and transfer, and SPD experienced significant budget cuts due to COVID-19.

The city recognizes that additional major reductions to SPD staffing could threaten to undermine consent to create reforms in areas such as supervision, training, and use of force reporting, investigation, and review.

The city will work with the monitor and the DOJ to prevent that outcome.

So as I said, the city will be in touch with the monitor about potential impacts of this proposed bill.

And I've asked the city attorney to clarify with the court and with the monitor that the council has included 2021 funding sufficient to fully implement SPD's 2021 staffing plan.

Further it's important to note again that though officer staffing went down by 135 officers during 2020 due to separations in the hiring freeze ordered by the mayor, no officers have been laid off as a result of council's SPD budget reductions.

I want to sincerely express my appreciation to the city attorney for noting in the filing, the submittal I quoted from earlier, the important role of community groups calling for budget cuts.

And to be clear, these are predominantly community-led groups of black and brown people.

And I really, again, appreciate the city attorney's efforts to accurately represent the budget cuts coming out of this conversation and resulting from COVID-19 related revenue reductions.

And so my plan is to bring this legislation back to committee after we've had an opportunity to have that conversation with the monitor and aiming to bring us back again in the next committee meeting in two weeks.

As it relates, the last item on the agenda that we will discuss, and that's, of course, the less lethal weapons legislation, I want to remind my colleagues on the committee and the viewing public that any recommendation that the committee makes on less lethal weapons will be submitted to the monitor and the U.S.

Department of Justice and the U.S.

Court before any full council action.

We will do this in order to meet the terms of the consent decree between the City of Seattle and the Department of Justice.

Under the consent decree, the monitor and the Department of Justice must review and the court must approve any proposed changes to use of force in the City of Seattle.

The law that the council adopted in the summer has never gone into effect due to the action of the district court to place a restraining order on the ordinance.

And just wanna, again, and we'll talk about this more once we get into this item, we are not voting on the bill itself in committee, nor are we sending the bill to full council before review by the court.

Instead of voting on the bill itself and committee, we will vote on a motion to send the underlying draft bill.

Again, the draft bill has not been referred through the council's introduction and referral process.

We are going to be voting on a motion, which is just an intent to send the draft legislation to the court for its review.

So, thank you for allowing me those opening remarks.

And we will now proceed to approve our agenda for today's committee meeting.

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

Seeing no objection.

The agenda is adopted and we will now transition into public comment.

I'll moderate the public comment period.

Each speaker will start off by giving folks two minutes to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order which they've registered on the website.

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

This link is also listed on today's agenda.

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

And once you've heard that prompt, you will need to press star six to unmute yourself.

I request that you begin by stating your name in the item which you are addressing.

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

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

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

And once you've completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line.

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

Right now, we've got about 34 people listed here to give public comment today.

As always, we start off with 20 minutes on the agenda for public comment.

And so the number of people that we have signed up to speak, there are some folks that are signed up but not present.

What I'm gonna do is I will, monitor public comment, monitor the time, and after 20 minutes of public comment, we'll look at extending the public comment and potentially limiting the amount of time that people have to speak from two minutes to one minute to potentially, depending on how many are left, to potentially allow for more public comment.

And so, with that, let's start public comment.

And I will start with Howard Gale followed by Daniel Kavanaugh.

Hi, good morning.

Howard Gale speaking on the – hello?

Yep, we got you.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hi, Howard.

Howard Gale speaking on lack of police accountability.

These past months, the intentional infliction of lasting harm and trauma by Seattle police was described in federal court last week by our city attorney as, quote, something happened last summer.

This from city attorney Pete Holmes, the man who chooses to sometimes charge the abused and always let the abusers go free.

It is difficult to imagine words more cold, callous, sterile, and heartless.

This was your representation in court last week, and I have yet to hear any expression of disgust from this council.

The federal consent decree clearly and specifically calls out for changes in police policy, training, and accountability.

Yet this morning, you will debate the tools for inflicting harm, not the policies around the use of whatever tools the police will have and the accountability when those tools are abused.

This is truly putting the cart before the horse and then letting the horse run away.

Of course, any sensible and decent person would be in favor of banning the horrible weapons used on us last spring and summer.

But without fighting first for accountability, a project that the federal court will endorse, this fight over weapons will prove ephemeral and bring the council into endless conflict with the court.

Why does Seattle not deserve the police accountability system that the people of Newark, New Jersey, Nashville, Tennessee, San Diego, Portland, and Chicago have chosen?

a system that even our own washington state legislature is now considering true civilian controlled accountability the way out of this consent decree is to dramatically revise our accountability system which really doesn't exist and then once that ends we can regain control over the police budget and the weapons that they use we are now in our ninth year our ninth year of the consent decree please get us to accountability not to changing the tools for our abuse Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Daniel Kavanaugh, followed by Eva Metz.

Hey, my name's Dan.

I'm a member of Socialist Alternative and I'm a renter in the Central District.

And I'm here to tell the city council members, do not gut the chemical weapons ban today.

This was one of the biggest victories of the Black Lives Matter movement last year.

And, you know, our movement is not going to take it lying down if you try to roll it back.

In particular, I'm incensed by this loophole that's proposed by the Democrats on the council that would leave up to police discretion whether or not a protest is violent, whether or not they are justified in their use of force and their use of these weapons.

When in the history of police reform has it worked to leave the use of force up to the officer's discretion?

The officer last year who pepper sprayed a child in the face used his discretion on what was necessary.

The S.P.D. used their discretion when they kept him on the force after just giving him a slap on the wrist.

The S.P.D. had the largest contingent of officers to the far right Capitol riot on January 6th and were supposed to trust their discretion.

These loopholes would write a blank check to the Seattle Police Department to just declare a protest violent and then use these weapons.

And this is what police departments did all over the country last summer.

So, you know, our movement is not going away, and the chemical weapons ban is not even enough, right?

We're fighting for more.

We're fighting for community control of the police.

And if you vote to gut this chemical weapons ban, there will be a reckoning.

Thank you, Dan.

The next speaker is Eva Metz, followed by Alicia Lewis.

Hi, my name is Eva, and I'm calling to speak against any gutting of the ban on so-called crowd control weapons.

I was one of the 26 million people who came out last summer to protest for justice for George Floyd and for real accountability of the police for defunding by 50% to invest in black and brown community needs.

And I was also one of the many tens of thousands of people here in Seattle who witnessed and experienced the brutal response of the police force using weapons like tear gas, pepper spray, blast balls, flashbang grenades, other militarized so-called crowd control weapons against so many peaceful protesters, including children.

And, you know, this was the same as what happened across the country.

That's why so many people fought last summer alongside Council Member Sawant's office to win this legislation, which was a huge victory for the Black Lives Matter movement, both here in Seattle and also an important example across the country.

And I also remember speaking in city council with hundreds of other people representing the tens of thousands of protesters who were speaking in favor of this legislation and against any loopholes.

So that's why this push to gut this victory is such a slap in the face to all these people, to all these protesters.

As Dan just said, it's even more outrageous that it's coming on the heels of six police officers participating in these right-wing riots, and also at a time when Democratic Party politicians have full control of the city and the state government, not to mention both houses of National Congress and the presidency.

elected representatives should do what the community, the working people, and what communities of color need, not what you believe the courts of capitalism demand.

So yeah, this is not completely shocking though.

It's the same city council, with the exception of council member Sawant, which quickly backtracked on and betrayed pledges made at the height of the movement last summer to defund by 50% and invest in community.

all our victories, the $15 minimum wage, the tax Amazon legislation.

Thank you, Eva.

The next speaker is Alicia Lewis, followed by Jordan Quinn.

Hi, my name's Alicia Lewis.

I'm a member of Socialist Alternative.

I'm also speaking in opposition to any attempts to water down the ban on police use of so-called crowd control weapons that was introduced by council members who want and won by the rank and file of the Black Lives Matter movement last summer.

The right for working people and oppressed communities to peacefully protest injustice without fear of retaliation is a hard-fought democratic right that must be protected.

And it's truly a shame that so-called progressive Democrats on the city council, at the same time that they give lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement, are now attempting to add major loopholes which would remove this crucial legislation of all of its teeth.

And as others have pointed to, this is especially outrageous in light of the revelation that as many as six Seattle police officers, possibly the most in the nation, participated in the violent right-wing riots in D.C.

Clearly, we can't afford to roll back accountability on the SPD.

We need to preserve the ban on so-called crowd control weapons, and we need to extend that victory, our movement won, with genuine community control of the police, including an elected community oversight board that has full powers to hire, fire, and subpoena police officers.

And I want to thank Council Member Sawant, who's using her office to defend this victory, I don't think it's any accident at all that the one council member who has never walked back on her commitment to fight alongside the Black Lives Matter movement is now the council member who's facing a recall attack spearheaded by the right wing.

To defend against further attacks on our movement, it's crucial that we stand in solidarity with Shama against this undemocratic recall.

and that we organize independently of the Democratic establishment, which attempts to undermine our victories time and time again, as they're doing right now.

To the other council members, it's clear that our movement is going to continue fighting for police accountability and racial justice.

We need you to...

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jordan Quinn, followed by Grayson Van Arsdale.

Jordan?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Great.

Yeah, my name is Jordan Quinn.

I'm a renter in District 2. I'm calling to support the crowd control weapons ban that council members want and the Black Lives Matter movement won last year.

I urge the council not to water down or carve out loopholes in this victory, in this First in the Nation victory.

City Council members, Democratic City Council members attempt to gut this Black Lives Matter victory is really all the more outrageous.

Coming on the heels of the violent right wing protests in D.C.

on January 6th, with six or more Seattle Police Department officers reportedly participating, potentially the most of any police force in the nation.

At a time when Democratic Party politicians have full control of city and state government, not to mention both houses of National Congress and the presidency, There's no excuse aside with Mayor Kyrgios Geni and the Trump's Department of Justice, who both sought injunctions against the crowd control ban.

These same crowd control weapons have been used against workers and oppressed people fighting for their rights around the world.

Recently, Modi's right-wing Hindu nationalist regime in India has used weapons on the mass farmers movement, organizing against pro-corporate agriculture laws.

Elected representatives really need to fight for what workers and communities of color need, not what the racist capitalist courts demand.

And along with council members and social alternative members today and the community police commission, there are many who are recommending that maintaining the crowd control weapon ban as it is, does more to help improve community trust in the police, not less.

There's no excuse to roll back these serious measures to protect peaceful protesters and Seattle residents from lung and eye irritants used by the same police that have 19,000 complaints for use of force vial during these protests this summer.

Thank you.

Next, we have Grayson Van Arsdale followed by Karen Guylin.

Grayson?

Hi, my name is Grayson Van Arsdale.

I live in the Central District, and I think after witnessing the despicable police violence last summer, to drive such massive loopholes into the chemical weapons ban is really nothing short of a complete betrayal.

BLM protesters in Seattle, after being subjected to so-called crowd control weapons for weeks, after watching it be deployed on children, won this ban alongside council member Sawant's office.

And I think any council member who is against police violence loopholes.

The chemical weapons ban is fully enforceable as is, and council members shouldn't dishonestly pretend otherwise.

The proposal to water down the chemical weapons ban is bad wholesale, but I think especially egregious is the part that only bans pepper spray in the nonviolent demonstration, when so often we've seen police classify a person or situation as violent, when reality has been entirely different.

And this proposal has no recourse for that.

Pepper spray and other chemical irritants can cause serious and lasting medical damage.

They're weapons of war.

This bill gives police a total get out of jail free card as if they need any more of those.

Lastly, I want to address the false argument that if nonlethal crowd control weapons are not permissible against certain situations, it will lead to lethal force being used unnecessarily, which is essentially saying that if police cannot name protesters, they will kill them, which is if this is a serious argument that is being brought forward, it's a stunning indictment of the Seattle Police Department, which warrants more action, not a weakening of restrictions and points to a need for true community control of police.

It's really clear that this proposal and these loopholes are a concession to the court system that has consistently let cops off scot-free for their abuse, rather than standing with a movement that has endured these chemical weapons to fight for racial justice.

So the Democrats on city council who profess to support the movement for racial justice and against police brutality now supports these loopholes.

I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed.

And thank you, council members for standing with us.

We need more people like you, and we clearly need a new party for racial justice and working people.

Thank you, Grayson.

The next speaker is Karen Guilan, followed by Matthew Wilder.

Karen?

Karen, are you with us?

I believe we lost the caller.

Okay, so let's move on to Matthew Wilder.

Matthew?

You still with us?

All right, not hearing Matthew, we're going to move on to the next.

Sorry.

Thank you, Matthew.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Sorry, the robot was being kind of weird.

Hi, my name is Matt.

I'm a renter in District 3, speaking on the ban on weapons like tear gas, rubber bullets, and blast balls, these so-called crowd control weapons.

Now that the Black Lives Matter movement is ebbing, so-called progressives are trying to undo a major victory that was won by our movement over the summer.

So long as police are allowed to act under their own discretion, determining whether or not a protest is nonviolent, it's inevitable that the movement will reach high tide again.

And the movement will remember where council members stood today on this vote.

The chemical weapons ban was a landmark victory for the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter movement that spread nationally last year.

where the police repeatedly used these weapons against peaceful protesters, most notably in D.C.

when Donald Trump tear gassed Black Lives Matter protesters for a photo op.

We should also remember the other photos that define the movement, young people's eyes who had been shot out by rubber bullets by the police.

Winning this ban was the first gain in, it was an early gain, first gain for community control of the police.

And now so-called progressive Democrats want to give police back discretion over when and where they get to use these weapons by determining themselves whether or not this is a nonviolent protest.

But the police need to act under our discretion, under the discretion of working people and the community, not their own.

We need more control over the police, not less.

We need an elected oversight board with full power to hire, fire, and subpoena police.

But yeah, I'd just like to reiterate that, right, the movement isn't gone.

It will come back and the movement will remember where people stood today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Blythe Serrano, followed by Valerie Schorrett.

Hi, my name is Blythe.

I'm a renter in Mount Baker, and I'm calling in to testify against the gutting of the crowd control weapons ban.

I'm particularly appalled by the fact that under the revised bill, private right of action, which gives ordinary people the right to sue for $10,000 anytime the police use a prohibited crowd control weapon against them, would only apply when the police use banned weapons during a nonviolent demonstration.

But SPD themselves are the ones who get to decide whether they consider a given demonstration to be nonviolent or not.

And as we saw over the summer, they declared peaceful justice for George Floyd protests to be violent and even a riot whenever they wanted to use crowd control weapons to clear the streets.

So this legislation essentially gives SPD the freedom to use crowd control weapons whenever they see fit and eliminates ordinary people's right to sue when crowd control weapons are unjustly and illegally used against them.

The bill also removes all restrictions on the use of weapons such as rubber bullets, which are responsible for at least 115 serious head injuries at BLM protests over the summer.

It also significantly reduces the restrictions on police use of pepper spray, which is banned for use in war under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

I find it, quite frankly, impossible to understand how any Seattle City Council member can advocate for the city's police department to be allowed to use weapons that are banned even in war against their own constituents.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Valerie Schlorett, followed by Madeline Olson.

Valerie?

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Valerie Schlorett.

I live in District 2. I'm asking you to maintain the full ban on so-called less lethal crowd control weapons.

SPD repeatedly used these weapons over the summer in ways that were indiscriminate and very dangerous.

When we give SPD a hammer it sees everything as a nail.

Even obviously nonviolent people exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech.

There are many alternative strategies we can employ for public safety including strategies for crowd control if necessary.

Most urgently for public safety in Seattle we need a fully civilian elected body for police oversight and accountability.

Thank you.

Thank you, Valerie.

Our next speaker is Madeline Olson, followed by Sarah Gunzer.

Hi there.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Yeah.

I'm Madeline.

I'm a renter in Green Lake.

I just want to speak about chemical weapons ban.

You know, throughout the summer, across the country, we saw that peaceful protest by justifiably enraged communities were met with police brutality and violence, which was the very thing that set off the George Floyd protest.

Here in Seattle, the movement was able to win a landmark chemical weapons ban.

And this has been a first step in real accountability of the police, accountability that's been absent when we talk about the six police officers that participated in the DC violence.

But now there's talk of creating loopholes in the ban, putting us right back where we started.

If the council is committed to taking responsibility for the damage done to all the people who stood up for the serious and real injustice they saw within their community, They need to uphold the ban with no lethal.

No pepper spray, no rubber bullets, no tear gas.

Leaving the use of these less lethal weapons up to police officers' discretion is clearly not working, which is why we need real police accountability, a real community oversight board over the police.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sarah Gonser, followed by Margo Stewart.

Sarah.

Hi, yes, my name's Sarah, and I'm a renter in District 3. I'm also calling about the chemical weapons and so-called crowd control bill, and to talk about why it's so incredibly exciting, actually, that Seattle was the first in the country to put a ban on these violent so-called crowd control weapons, and yet now we're discussing a bill that will roll out and got out this incredible victory.

And I think it's really unfortunate that Democrats on city council are even discussing this and that this victory came out of the long and hard fought BLM movement this past summer.

And yeah, we absolutely need to protect what we've won and It's, as other people have spoken about, this is a slap in the face in the movement.

And yeah, we absolutely need to keep it.

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Margo Stewart, followed by Joe Gruber.

Hi, yeah, my name is Margo.

I'm a renter and software worker in District 2, and I'm here to echo what a lot of other folks have said, speaking out against any watering down of the ban on so-called, the use of so-called crowd control weapons by the police, which was won last summer by the grassroots efforts of the BLM movement, with the help of Council Member Salant.

This was a movement for real police accountability, the kind of which we've seen barely any with next to no disciplinary action in response to 1900 complaints of misuse of force over that summer.

And I think there can be no real accountability if we leave these decisions up to what an individual officer deems as necessary.

We've seen countless cases of officers brutalizing unarmed victims under the completely bogus and retroactive defense of fearing for their lives.

If we insert such loopholes, we would essentially have no ban at all.

And it's not surprising to me, but it's deeply disappointing that Democratic council members who have claimed to support Black Lives Matter would push such loopholes after what we saw last summer with weapons that are unfit for even open warfare.

If we're going to have police in our communities, then we need them to be democratically accountable to us, the ordinary working people who live there.

And I think this is crucial to build trust, especially knowing that at least six officers were involved in the far-right violence at the Capitol on January 6th.

More broadly, though, ordinary people need a real recourse against any sort of police misconduct, as well as the Democratic power to hire, fire, subpoena, and oversee budget decisions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, next we have, um, Oh, Gruber followed by, uh, Barbara Finney.

Good morning council members.

My name is Joe Gruber and I'm executive director of the university district food bank and a resident of Longford.

My comments this morning are related to your discussion about the plan to vaccinate our residents and workers.

First, I urge you to ensure that mass vaccination sites are accessible.

At least three quarters of our food bank customers arrive by walk, bike, or bus, so considering transit accessibility when siting these locations is critical.

Also consider how you leverage nonprofit partners to improve your distribution effectiveness.

Like many of my food bank peers, we have hosted flu vaccine clinics and public health nurses.

And for the food bank participants of these clinics, if we didn't host the clinic or the nurse, our customers wouldn't seek that help.

Accessibility plus familiarity and trust was critical to them in services.

So in site planning, please leverage the connections that your nonprofit partners like your district food bank provide.

Second, I want to urge council and public health to use your position and relationships with Washington Department of Health to help food bank and meal program staff and volunteers all receive vaccine access during phase one tier B2.

Even before COVID, food bank work was physically and emotionally challenging.

We are trying to meet and support some of our most vulnerable neighbors at some of the most difficult and challenging times in their lives.

With the additional necessary precautions needed to remain safe during COVID, our work is just that much more challenging and exhausting.

The city has generously helped us source PPEs for our staff, volunteers, and customers, but PPEs are not enough.

Even with these protections, we regularly endure and manage COVID exposure.

Food bank staff and volunteers have been exposed to the virus, at times requiring agencies to temporarily shut down their services.

The thousands of food bank staff and volunteers in Seattle are critical frontline workers.

The emotional toll on staff and volunteers the last 10 months cannot be understated.

As our community still faces heightened levels of hunger, please work to protect our food bank staff and volunteers.

Please make the vaccine available to all these essential workers as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This time I would like to extend public comment for another 15 minutes and to reduce the public comment speaking time for each speaker from two minutes to one minute.

the agenda.

The agenda is amended to add an additional 15 minutes of public comment.

Hi, my name is Barbara.

I'm a retired healthcare worker and homeowner in district five, speaking in favor of keeping the full ban on tear gas, blast balls, flashbang grenades, and other so-called crowd control weapons by SPD.

Don't weaken enforcement mechanisms, don't create loopholes that allow SPD to choose if and when they can use these weapons as their judgment is untrustworthy.

Also, Seattle Council is trying to exempt itself from police accountability measures currently considered in state legislature.

Why?

As a result of Governor Inslee's task force on investigating police use of force, there's work on progressive police accountability legislation for Washington State, such as a fully civilianized police accountability system under true community control, as long advocated by Council Member Shama Sawant.

Thank you.

Thank you, Barbara.

Next speaker is Alvin Maragori, followed by Sonia Panas.

Hi, my name is Alvin.

I'd like to voice my strong opposition to the gutting of the chemical weapons ban.

It's absolutely shameful what the city council is trying to do.

Last summer, we saw the largest protest movement in this country's history, a movement that fought for economic and social justice.

and in this city, the Seattle police force stood against the working people and oppressed this country by using tear gas, pepper spray, and blast balls against thousands of innocent civilians.

In the wake of this state violence, led by Councilwoman Shama Sawant, our movement passed the first in the nation chemical weapons ban.

And I'm not surprised, but honestly disappointed that the progressive, democratic, council members are attempting to get this landmark bill.

The Seattle City, the Seattle Police Department should be banned from using chemical weapons and crowd control measures with no loopholes.

And furthermore, that the police department should be placed under community control with full hiring and firing.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Sonia Panath, followed by Megan Murphy.

Sonia?

Good morning.

Yeah, I'm just calling.

I'm a working mom of two teenagers, and right now I'm just completely shocked and disappointed that you're trying to get this ban on weapons that are too dangerous, even in war.

After we saw these incredible protests last summer, people were fighting for economic and social justice.

But here in Seattle, like in major cities throughout the country, we saw a police force led entirely by Democratic Party politicians brutally attacking this peaceful, multiracial Black Lives Matter protest night after night.

They even pepper sprayed a child.

So hundreds fought alongside council members to want to force the Democratic establishment to pass the first in the nation legislation banning Seattle police from owning and purchasing these weapons.

Elected representatives need to do what's right for the community, working people, and communities of color, not what you believe the courts of capitalism demand.

You must preserve this full ban on crowd-controlled weapons.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Megan Murphy, followed by Mindy Lee.

Megan.

Hi, thanks for letting me talk.

I think the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the capitalist system.

So the Democrats make us feel like we're appeased.

While the Republicans totally enforce capitalism, the Democrats get pieces of capital for making a tiny reform.

So as a socialist, I'm asking for a complete revolution of this economic system, which trains its police officers to use a racial eye to enforce prison sentences and fines.

And if you see a police officer and your skin is a certain color, to feel a certain anxiety because it does a lot more capital.

It's a racist, sexist system.

And so I think what Black Lives Matter was about, you know, more socialist type thinking.

And that's why the ban on chemical weapons needs to be enforced.

If you look at other countries like Egypt, where Egypt to comic Ashraf Hamdi was arrested just for, it's just for his card.

We lost you, Megan.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Mindy Lee, followed by Marsha Wright-Soyka.

Marsha, I'm sorry, Mindy?

Yes, Mindy Lee.

I live in the 6th District, and I've been listening to the people talk, and I think the idea behind using these lethal, and they are lethal weapons, is to de-escalate a situation that's become volatile.

But if you introduce more weapons into a situation like that, that is not going to calm it down.

I mean, if somebody comes at me with some type of weapon, I'm going to react.

I'm going to fight back.

So if you continue to use these weapons, you're not going to get the situation that you want, which is to calm things down.

It will make it worse, and more people will be harmed.

Thank you.

Next speaker we have here is Marcia Wright-Soyka will be followed by Donna Bitton.

Marcia?

Yes, hi.

My name is Marcia Wright-Soyka.

I live in District 7 and I'm the Executive Director of Family Works Food Banks in Wallingford and Greenwood.

I'm here to speak on the plan to vaccinate.

We did write a letter on behalf of the Seattle Food Committee, which represents 27 food banks throughout the city, to Director Hayes on January 15th.

We have not yet received a response, but we're really asking for your advocacy with the State Department of Health for vaccine prioritization for frontline food bank workers, and that includes volunteers.

Family Works alone had over 6,000 hours of volunteerism in the last year during the pandemic, and it is crucial that we prioritize the frontline workers and volunteers who keep food banks open and serve the most marginalized in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Joanna Bitten followed by Emily MacArthur.

Joanna?

Hi, I'm Joanna.

I'm a constituent of District 7 and I'm calling today to express my support for further defunding the police by an additional $5.4 million and maintaining the ban on less equal the country.

Additionally, FPD has had a significant participant rate in the horrible Capitol Hill insurrection.

This is not a police department that keeps their city safe.

This is not a police department that is held accountable.

Choose the right side of history.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Emily MacArthur, followed by Matthew Smith.

Emily?

Hi, I'm a renter in District 2 and I'm speaking today to demand no loopholes be added to the chemical weapons ban the Black Lives Matter movement won this summer after the violent occupation of Capitol Hill by Seattle Police Department that resulted in children being tear gassed in their beds.

Yesterday, the South Seattle Emerald published an article showing SPD violated their own protocols, arresting protesters over the last six months.

Just like we saw that water bottles and candles were used over the summer to deem a peaceful protest a riot, In November and December, when the COVID spike here and internationally was at its highest, SPD put peaceful protesters in jails.

How did they justify this?

Under the banner of destruction of property.

What were the protesters actually doing?

Riding on the sidewalk with chalk.

With this well documented and publicly discussed abuse of power by SPD, with the story still unfolding of at least six, we don't actually know how many, officers who went to Washington, D.C.

to participate and the racist, anti-democratic right-wing coup attempt, how can you, in any good faith, ask the public to trust the STD?

Thank you.

The next speaker is Matthew Smith, followed by Jeff Fernandez.

Matthew?

Hi, I'm speaking against the attempt to gut the ban on so-called crowd control weapons.

One of the loopholes that the council Democrats are proposing would only ban police use of chemical weapons against protests that they deem nonviolent.

How many peaceful protests have we seen that have been deemed violent riots by the police and the right wing media?

How many unarmed black men have we seen killed by police who then cover up their crime by saying that they were acting in self-defense?

It's ridiculous that this is being proposed, and these loopholes will make the law completely inoperable.

And it's really shameful that the Democrats on the council are even thinking about watering down this victory that was won by the Black Lives Matter movement, by socialists, and introduced by council member Sawant.

It's been six months, and you're already trying to walk back even the minimum reforms that you made under pressure of the movement.

And elected representatives need to do what working people and communities of color need, not what you believe the capitalist courts are demanding.

Courts, by the way, that have repeatedly failed to bring justice to victims of police brutality.

So vote no on these loopholes and watering down of the

Thank you.

The next speaker is Jeff Fernandez, followed by eternally 12 tree hugger Mariah Carey, reincarnated butterfly, helmetless cyclist, compassing for brother husbands.

Jeff Fernandez, please.

What a name.

Good morning, D5.

I'm going to talk about the weapons ban.

I'm appalled that as Democratic lawmakers, you conspire to write and pass legislation that would rearm SPD against unarmed civilian protesters fighting for black lives, equality, and justice.

It is our laws, our rules, our procedures, our judges, our courts, our attorney generals, and our mayor bending towards violence and racism.

It is your job to tear down the barriers to justice in our corrupted legal and political institutions, not to bend the knee to them.

This makes you accountable for the harm SPD will continue to mete out You should be pissing on the consent degree and the judge using it as an excuse to endanger human life.

How overwhelming that the law meant to rein in police brutality and racism is used to buttress police violence and racism.

It is very frustrating that we as citizens have to take out our time to call in for you, for you to do your job to protect us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Eternally 12 Treehugger, Mariah Carey, Reincarnated Butterfly, Album Helmetless, Cyclist, Compassionate for Other Husbands, followed by Julie McKay.

Hi.

Happy Black Struggle reparation so I could get money.

I am a polyamorous.

Land Back, Build Hammer City, Revolutionaries, struggling for my fellow queer people to actually get this housing, as well as other colonized people.

And I'm here to comment about the police terrorism that is still funded by, you know, you know who.

Children are still, you know, oppressed by the indoctrination in the school system.

Despite it being a Black History Month, they're not taught about the Children's Crusade, which was led by children, that marched for hundreds of children marched out of their schools against the wishes of their teachers, their parents, and the police, got arrested, booted, tear gassed, watered down by water hoses, et cetera.

And this still continues today.

The police are still in the schools, teaching the lies of war.

My comment is we need to defend the police still.

And lower that voting age.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Julie McKay.

followed by Shamir Tana.

Julie?

Julie, are you there?

All right, not hearing or seeing.

Good morning.

There you go.

All right.

Go ahead.

Good morning.

My name is Julie McKay.

I'm a renter in District 3, live across from Cal Anderson Park.

Do not gut the ban on so-called crowd control weapons.

No loopholes.

SPD continues to demonstrate they are not able.

Brutality by SPD is displayed to this day.

Our deepest concerns regard the SPOG contract, but do not gut the ban on crowd control methods.

Stand in solidarity with Council Member Sawant.

Shout out to King County Equity Now.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our last speaker that we have signed up and present is Shamir Khanna.

Shamir, are you with us?

Hello, Shamir?

All right.

Shamir, hello.

Hey, sorry about that.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm calling as a resident in Kepsel and Berlusa's district.

I'm a tech worker at a big tech company.

I'm calling to strongly defend and ask to defend and enforce a ban on police use of crowd control weapons and introduce absolutely no loopholes.

I've been to multiple and continue to go to multiple peaceful rallies led by BIPOC organizers and organizations.

I've been to multiple rallies, peaceful rallies, where the SPD has employed many of these crowd control weapons.

including on myself, where I couldn't even breathe, and I fell down and twisted my ankle, pulling me out of work for a couple of days.

But this is nothing, not even my ears, compared to what BIPOC individuals, leaders, and organizers are facing and have faced.

I just went to a rally a couple of weeks ago where there was 30 or 40 of us fighting for indigenous rights, and there was over 100 police officers tracking us, trying to intimidate us,

Thank you.

And our final speaker that we have present is Karen Guillen.

Karen?

Are you still with us?

Hello?

Hi, Karen.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

We can hear you.

I'm sorry.

I got cut off before.

That's okay.

Okay.

My name is Karen Guillen, and I'm addressing Council Bill 119981, looking to cut police budgets.

I'm a senior who lives downtown and gardens at the Inner Bay Pea Patch.

One of our gardeners, Tracy Roberts, was trying to beautify our city by planting flowers in the street in Belltown in mid-January.

She was randomly kicked in the face by one of the many violent individuals who roam our parks in the downtown area, suffering 10 fractures in her face, including her cheekbone, nose, sinus, and eye socket.

Seattle City Government's paramount duty is to ensure public health and safety.

I appeal to you as the Public Safety and Human Resources Committee only take actions which enhance the public safety.

It is unclear how putting lives such as Tracy's at risk will improve the lives of people of color or curtail racist behavior in the police department.

In 2020, 911 call responses had to be restricted to only the highest priority calls on 266 days of the year.

Chief Diaz has pulled officers from crime prevention and investigation units to help mitigate the problem, but budget cuts made late last year will

Thank you, Karen.

And that concludes public comment.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today.

And thank you, council members, for allowing me to extend the public comment period so we could get everybody in to speak.

So with that, we'll move on to the items on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read the first agenda item?

Agenda item number one, Seattle's plan to vaccinate our residents and workers.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

I just want to first start off with a quick round of introductions, and if it's okay, after a quick round of introductions, your name, your affiliation, I'm going to open it up with some brief points, and I'll hand it over to our presenters.

That's the word.

Thank you.

Let's do introductions.

All right, I'll start.

This is Patty Hayes with Public Health Seattle in King County.

I'm the director.

Thank you.

Good to be with you.

Hi, good morning.

Sorry, Stephanie.

Harold Scoggins, Seattle Fire.

I'll pass it to Stephanie.

How about that?

Great.

Thanks, Chief.

Stephanie Formos with the mayor's office, and I'll pass it to Leah Tivoli.

Hi, Leah Tivoli.

I'm Project Managing the Vaccine Distribution.

I'll pass it to Julie.

Hello, Julie Klein, Mayor's Office Public Safety Advisor.

Great.

Thank you all for being with us this morning.

Really appreciate you taking time out today.

And I know you'll be joining, some of you will be joining Council President Gonzalez's committee meeting in the afternoon.

And I think you're spending some time with us while we share this information with the public, underscores the shared appreciation for the importance of making sure that the general public is receiving clear and accurate information, not just about what we're able to do, but about what the barriers are that we need to work together to solve.

Just, again, some opening background comments before I hand it over to you.

This item is a presentation on Seattle's plan to vaccinate residents and workers.

against COVID-19.

So many of us have experienced frustration and confusion of trying to secure an appointment for a vaccination right now.

And even if people are eligible, it's extremely difficult for many to secure appointments.

There's a structural problem here.

Our federal government has been unable to secure enough vaccine for everyone who is now eligible.

And just a way to sort of scale what the size of the problem is.

And an estimated 470,000 residents of King County are now eligible to be vaccinated, but King County providers have received fewer than 200,000 first doses for that 470,000 eligible residents.

On top of the scarcity, we're hearing widespread reports of inequities in the vaccine distribution system and significant barriers baked into the process of making an appointment.

Here are just a few examples of what we've heard.

The state's tool for determining eligibility is only available online and it's only available in English and Spanish.

An alternative phone line is so overwhelmed with calls, it is often unavailable entirely.

The State Department Health's website on vaccine is only provided in English and Spanish.

Early distribution of the state's vaccine went to large healthcare providers, systemically leaving out people who receive healthcare at small community health clinics or those who don't have healthcare providers at all.

And I'm sure most of you know that several of those health care providers in the Seattle metro area use that previous vaccine to offer perks to their wealthy donors and board members.

The outcome of this has been predictable and it's been disheartening.

Significant inequities in who is receiving vaccines compared to who is most impacted by COVID.

The King County public health data shows that Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders represent 2.7 of COVID-19 cases, but only 0.5% of vaccinations.

Black and African Americans make up 12% of the COVID-19 cases.

in King County but have received only 3.5% of vaccinations.

In this context, it's important to understand that the city of Seattle receives a separate um, weekly allocation of doses.

It's only 1000 doses a week that we're receiving right now.

Um, and, um, we're going to hear representatives from the mayor's office, um, to discuss their plans for those vaccine doses moving forward.

Um, and we again have Director Hayes of Public Health, um, and Chief Scoggins to discuss their efforts to roll out vaccines to residents.

The methods that we have been using for the dispersal of our own 1,000 doses a week have been efforts that have been led by the Seattle Fire Department, and they have been primarily home visits to adult family homes, home visits to permanent supportive housing locations.

We're also doing home visits to SHA buildings.

And then there have been some pop-up clinics as well.

So with that, I'd love to hand it off to our presenters.

And again, to my heartfelt and sincere appreciation for you spending some time with us this morning.

Well, thank you so much.

This is Patty Hayes, Director of Public Health Seattle King County.

Again, thank you, Council Member Herbold, for the time and also for your overview of what we've all heard.

Really appreciate the opportunity to speak and answer questions.

And I also want to start by thanking all the council and all the folks who are listening in today.

because we have been as successful as we have been in King County because of everybody's unified efforts.

And this has been so traumatic as I look back on the past year and our work just continues.

But I know in my heart, it's because all of us have been focused on doing the best we can for our community, listening to the science.

I am grateful to live in Seattle and here in King County when I look at my colleagues and what they're facing in other areas of the country.

So I just wanted to start with that appreciation to everyone as we continue down this hard road.

I also wanna thank the city for their great partnership here.

You're going to hear about that.

I'm going to start and if we go to slide two, please.

I'm going to start with a broad overview of our focus and our multimodal strategies.

So our goal right now is obviously to suppress the spread of COVID-19 and get this pandemic under control.

In order to do that, Dr. Duchin, our health officer, has set the goal of reaching 1.26 million adults.

Those are the folks who are able to receive the vaccine right now, as the vaccine has not finished its testing in youth and children under the age of 16. So we need a plan to vaccinate 1.26 million folks, and we need to do it through a multimodal strategy.

But as you said, Council Member, the number one problem, and I'll get more to that later on, is the limited number of doses.

But I do want to show this, particularly with a couple of the folks who testified during your public hearing time.

We really have these six strategies for our vaccine plan here in King County.

It does rely on the healthcare system, not just to vaccinate their own, but to actually partner with us to vaccinate the population and to literally sign on to some equity work and align with us.

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

Pharmacies are going to be a key partner.

They have helped with the long-term care and are currently a focus federally to be expanded so that when the vaccines are more and more available in April and May, there will be local access to folks through their pharmacies and through their grocery stores that have pharmacies.

There's a lot of discussion and preparation.

Oh, don't.

Thanks, Leah.

A lot of discussion on employer-based vaccination clinics and planning for that.

We're going to talk about the high volume sites and the mobile teams.

But the other important thing that came up in a question from the folks testifying is about pop-up vaccination.

opportunities.

As we get more and more vaccines, our partners and community-based organizations are going to be a key partner on pop-up vaccines.

And even though right now with the limited doses and with the limitation on who qualifies for vaccines, we have this in mind, and we are really taking all the interest from the community to participate in that.

Next slide.

Thank you.

and you can move beyond this one and go to the next one.

So here is the Washington State vaccine phases.

And as you see right now, we are continuing to vaccinate the folks who are in 1A.

Those were our high-risk healthcare workers, our first responders, long-term care, As you mentioned, the work that Chief Scoggins and the fire department has been doing has really been helping out in this area.

You'll hear more about that.

It's been fantastic to reach folks who would have a problem.

We are also in 1B, and much of our population is interested in when will this 1B Tier 2 open up.

I don't have a prediction for that right now.

I know with the limited doses, we will be in this 1B1, which is folks over the age of 65 or 50 years older who are in multi-generational households.

But when the vaccine flow is increased and we get to 1B, I believe depending upon the level of availability of vaccine, we're gonna see either further definition of who falls into each of these tiers, or more flexibility to move between the tiers.

And right now, I don't know which way that will go because we don't know the vaccine supply.

Next slide, please.

So one of the very important things we've been working on are equity principles in order to make sure that we are transparent in how we are working in King County and how we are asking our partners, whether or not those be the hospitals or the fire departments to work with us and to focus on the highest risk and most impacted.

So as you noted with the data, we know that our communities of color have had the highest impact by this virus.

And so we have been working with our community in multiple structures and building a plan to address those access points as we move through these different phases.

And next slide.

So the turning over to Stephanie now.

And Leah, could you go back for just a minute to let Patty really talk through the role and public health?

Thank you, Stephanie.

So I wanted to just quickly talk about the federal to state role and then the role of the county.

And then Stephanie will talk about the city.

So obviously, you have heard the federal government is really in charge of the doses, getting the doses and setting the guidance for that the Washington State Department of Health enrolls providers.

They set the prioritization within the federal guidance and that leads to how they allocate.

If I can stop there just to say Public Health Seattle King County every single week gives our recommendation which has included a request for stable dose allocation to the city of Seattle, to our community health centers.

It has been a challenge around the whole state on how the vaccine allocation works has worked because of the limited number of doses.

The state does ship the vaccines and they are responsible for the state system, as you've mentioned.

So we've been working in our role to develop the partnerships and the plans to reach our priority populations and to address gaps of which, Council Member, you mentioned a number of them that we are working hard to figure out how in King County to address some of these gaps when they relate to state system issues.

And obviously, our priority with the community and our relationships with our BIPOC community organizations and to really get transparent information out.

Stephanie.

Great, thanks Patty and thanks for your partnership.

So while the federal government, state and public health have lead roles to play in vaccine distribution, we really believe that the city has a key role to play to ensure our community is vaccinated with both an equitable distribution approach and really prepared to scale equitably too.

And so we at the city have been working to identify and fill gaps in the vaccine delivery system.

So what that means for us is really launching our mobile teams and community pop-up teams.

And it's why we've advocated so strongly for our community health centers to also receive doses.

SFD has launched four of our mobile teams over the last month, and we believe these teams are absolutely key to addressing these inequities and disparities that we're already seeing, not just in the region, but state and nationwide too.

And Chief Scoggins will go into a bit more detail about what our mobile teams have been doing and really appreciate council support of that and public health support of our mobile teams.

We have launched a lot of initial discussions about how do we work with community partners and agree Patty about elevating the work of community partners like our food banks.

How do we really work with them to overcome barriers to access and address vaccine hesitancy and really appreciate Council President Gonzalez allowing us to really deeply dive into that conversation later today.

Another key role that we will play is prioritizing high-risk BIPOC communities and immigrants and refugees.

While we have the lowest cases and hospitalizations of every major city in America because of the work that we have done together, COVID-19 has disproportionately impact our BIPOC communities right here.

Our Native, Black, and Asian communities have the highest rate of death here in Seattle.

and our Native Black and Latinx communities have the highest rates of hospitalizations here in Seattle.

So we must keep our focus on these disparities.

A lot of what we're doing right now is focused on partnerships and coordination, too.

I really appreciate all of us really having a unified message of the additional resources and doses and funding that we need for the city to meet our goals.

And at a time that doses are extremely limited, We are working closely with public health to ensure coordination across the city.

And we're going to further detail in this presentation today of how our efforts are really working in tandem with our health care providers, with public health, with our pharmacies.

Another key component is clear and accessible communication to our community members.

And we really appreciate how closely we have to be coordinated with council and all elected officials in the region on this.

And a key part of our strategy will be really accelerating and growing both mobile and high volume strategies like mass sites.

And the city goals, just to really put a finer point of, we have a huge effort to embark upon together.

We're going to be vaccinated 500,000 residents with two doses.

And really our goal is to be the first city to equitably vaccinate 70% of our residents and workers, really focusing on reducing hospitalizations and deaths to those most disproportionately impacted so that we can really reopen and start to recover.

And so the way that we do this is really with an infrastructure.

And we have a very bold plan to really scale our infrastructure to more than 18,000 doses a day through mass sites and a huge infrastructure on our mobile teams that we think are so important to equity.

So I wanted to highlighting that on our dashboards, you can find reports such as this.

that we are working to refine and upload every day so that the city can actually, as well as other cities in the county, drill down and look at their data as Stephanie just outlined.

So this is our current data.

And now I want to really point out that our supply in King County of vaccine, the demand far outseeds the supply.

So this gives you a week by week the incoming doses, then the doses that came to King County.

And then, as you can see in the far right column, the doses that were allocated for dose one, because when we received doses on a weekly basis, we get them split between what is the expectation that's the need for dose two, and then dose one.

And of course, Right now, we have on the horizon the J&J vaccine, which is up for FDA review and hopefully approval.

That will be a one-dose vaccine, which will really change the landscape.

But that is not right now.

We're not expecting that.

I hope the approval will come within a week, and we might be able to see a shift in this in two weeks.

The allocation for week nine, which is the week we were in, The Department of Health, because of some federal shortfalls in the Moderna vaccine, they have not even been able to totally allocate what vaccine they have down to the counties.

What we do understand is King County is getting possibly 28,000 doses this week in dose one.

And again, we're The biggest problem is the Department of Health only finds out from the federal government on a weekly basis how many doses they're going to get.

So there's no continuity to say one week you get this amount, the next week you can plan for this amount.

It's been happening week by week.

I was on the call with the Secretary of Health this morning.

He says that the federal government is trying to now, starting this week, give the State Department of Health a three-week estimated outlook into vaccine supply.

And they are going to try to give the counties a two-week guess at the vaccine supply.

But still, this creates a lot of disruption, and especially when so many of our vaccine providers are balancing how many sites to open, can they keep appointments, et cetera, et cetera.

It leads to some real frustration on the part of the whole system.

Next slide, please.

And as Patty mentioned, and as Council Member Verbal, you mentioned, we're all feeling how limited and constrained the doses are.

And if you really model this out of the county receiving 160K doses a month, it means that we won't have the vaccinations we need in the supply chain until early next year.

And so while that's not what the federal government is predicting, that's the reality of the situation of where we're at right now.

However, we are planning for many different scenarios with the currently available vaccines and also tracking the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as well, because we need to prepare for all of these different scenarios.

And I do believe that we are prepared to quickly ramp up with significant expansion this spring and summer, assuming that the supply will be really increasing in March, April, and May.

So, good morning, council member herbal and members of the council.

So I want to talk to you a little bit about how we got here today with our with our mobile teams.

And, you know, they're titled us at the mobile teams, but they're really city of Seattle mobile teams doing the work for the community.

You know, it was a weekend after Thanksgiving when the people you see on that picture right there with our medical director, Dr. Sayer.

in the middle, Brian Wallace and Sarah Smith on the far right.

We jumped on the call on November 27th and decided to fill out the survey application to actually be able to receive the vaccines.

It took a while.

On January 9th, we actually got the approval.

On January 13th, Seattle-King County Public Health gave our firefighter EMTs and paramedics the authority to go out in community and start doing vaccines.

And one day later, We actually started down that road.

And since that point in time, our team has done over 3,200 vaccinations in the community at over 115 different locations.

That's the flexibility and the ability to be mobile.

So, you know, we can be flexible in where we're going.

We can try to meet the people.

that actually need the vaccines the most.

You see that map on the right right there.

If you lay overlaid that map on the maps that Dr. Sayre produces each day, you would actually see those are the areas on the map with the highest positivity rates.

So our team is very surgical in our approach And we've really been working hard over just the last three weeks.

We have about three dozen Seattle firefighters trained right now to deliver the vaccine, working on a number of different teams.

We're working on a two to one ratio, two to two registration texts to one firefighter EMT or paramedic delivering the vaccines.

And that's working very well for us.

These are a number of the different locations that we've already been to, and we're working hard to actually do more.

And, you know, we're limited by the number of vaccines that we get each week.

This week, we actually started delivering the second dose to the places we visited during the first week of the distribution.

So one of the important partners we have in all this work who will be more important as our doses increase and as we move into other phases are community health centers.

ICHS in particular has been doing some pop-up and mobile work that can also focus on the 1B1 over 65 populations.

And you can see here that there's each, these CHEs have various locations that will be able to work.

Seattle Indian Health Board, of course, is part of the tribal allocation, has been getting their own doses as well and been working really hard.

So we have opportunity to work with these clinics as we move forward.

and have asked on a consistent basis that the Department of Health consistently allocate those that are ready to do the work right now in the phase we're in.

I saw that the federal government just announced a focus with community health centers.

I'll be getting more information on that soon.

I assume it's really a focus to show that the community health centers need to not only serve their own patients, But in this public response that Seattle is putting together as a partner with Seattle or the county, depending upon where these sites are, we're very lucky because our community health centers are already stepping into that space and have already been talking with us.

So I look forward to talking with them and moving forward as we get more doses.

And I'll jump in on equitable outreach and engagement and distribution.

I appreciate the council president creating a really important discussion this afternoon.

So I'll quickly move through the next few slides, but I really want to reiterate that we have three key goals on engagement that will be discussed later today.

Partnership for distribution with community-based organizations, clear communication between the city, public health, the state and community-based organizations and language access.

And I'll now turn it over to Julie to really walk through a lot of our mass site efforts and strategy.

Hi, so mass sites are necessary for fast, large-scale vaccine delivery and administration, but I think everyone recognizes that they inherently leave people behind.

So while I start talking about the mass vaccination sites, I want to reiterate that the Seattle Fire Department pop-ups and mobile teams are going to continue to play a major role, as will our relationships and partnerships with community health clinics.

Even as we open up these large sites, it's going to be necessary to keep those operating on full tilt so that we're not leaving folks behind.

Our strategy for mass sites is to essentially ramp up as supply allows.

This is going to require very close coordination with our partners.

That's going to be our key to success and to continue to try to ensure as much equity as we can, even at these large-scale sites.

The Seattle Fire Department will be operating at least two smaller sites and more community hub models targeted to reach our most vulnerable residents who may not be connected to health care systems or may not have internet access or the ability to sign up or get to one of these larger scale mass sites.

We'll be working closely with Public Health Seattle King County.

and under our shared equity principles to schedule appointments according to those principles using the data we have on community viral rates and vulnerability indexes and working closely with community-based organizations to help shunt people towards these smaller, more accessible sites.

We're also closely partnering with healthcare providers in the area to sponsor sites open to the public.

And again, they've agreed to operate under our sort of shared equity principles.

These true sort of mass sites or larger scale sites are necessary, as I indicated, to vaccinate the population at large as quickly as supply allows.

I just want to remind folks that this is all, again, to supplement the existing health care providers' sites at hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies that already exist.

So our current supply, this is kind of where we're at now, what we would consider the initial phase of vaccine distribution.

We've got health care providers playing a major role in vaccinating their employees.

And a lot of them have also set up clinics to begin to serve their patients and also members of the public at large.

We can see the Swedish clinic at Seattle University is represented there in orange.

And you can see the size of the circle sort of represents what the approximate throughput is of each of these sites.

So we've got that site operating up on First Hill.

Virginia Mason is having a biweekly pop-up clinic up in the north end of downtown.

Kaiser's operating clinics in Northgate and Capitol Hill.

University of Washington Medicine is operating clinics at their Mount Lake location, their Northwest Hospital location, and at Harborview.

And then community health clinics around the area are also getting doses right now.

That includes ICHS, Seattle Indian Health Board, and CMAR.

There are other providers and pharmacies that are also providing limited doses around the city.

So we're hoping that we can start moving into this increased supply phase soon.

As I indicated, we're partnering with health care providers to begin to build capacity.

That includes additional doses for community health clinics first and foremost.

I think everyone can agree that we're prioritizing those.

to help reach their existing clientele base.

And that includes also city-operated sites in both West Seattle and South Seattle, and partnership sites in downtown and North Seattle as well.

Again, there are ongoing providers and pharmacies that are providing doses in various places around the city as well.

Ultimately, our goal is full capacity.

And again, as doses allow, we are gonna have at least one very large scale site, one that can operate to really have a high throughput, and then scale up a couple of different sites, including one in partnership potentially with the University of Washington, one downtown, and again, this is all supply permitting.

And ultimately, go ahead.

Thank you.

Ultimately, that's going to allow us to build a really significant capacity.

We're essentially trying to build the infrastructure to be able to vaccinate enough people in the Seattle area to achieve herd immunity in a month's time.

So if we had the supply of doses to be able to operate at full capacity, we could reach herd immunity in the city of Seattle within a month.

We're obviously, that's not the reality of the situation that we're facing, but we will have the capacity to do it once we get the doses.

You can see here we're estimating that the mass sites we're working with partners to set up will be able to do 7,000 to 18,000 doses a day.

Our Seattle Fire Department mobile teams will be doing between 400 and 2,500 a day.

And the existing health care systems, including the community health clinics, will be doing from 5,000 to 10,000 a day or have the capacity to do 5 to 10,000 a day.

And that gets us to a place where the top end is over 30,000 doses a day, having the capacity to administer over 30,000 doses a day once the supply catches up.

Thanks, Julie.

And I will conclude with we have been very thoughtful about budget considerations in this approach to And beginning back during the transition time with the Biden-Harris transition team, and now the current administration, we have been advocating for 100% FEMA reimbursement for many of our vaccine-related activities.

And so we'll continue to work with the state and FEMA on these costs.

And now I wanna turn it back to you, Council Member Herbold, of how we can best do Q&A, and also happy to have our team here to answer, or also, as you would like, do written follow-up questions or anything that council may need.

Thank you so much.

Really, really appreciate it.

Again, I'm happy to take some questions from council members.

We will have an opportunity, as has been said, to take a deeper dive on specifically focus on the equity issues in Council President Gonzalez's committee later on this afternoon if other council members are attending.

I do have a couple of follow-up questions, but I'm going to hold them to see whether or not other council members are in the queue.

Councilmember Lewis.

I just have a brief comment since Chief Scoggins is here.

I just want to thank Chief Scoggins for being very responsive to my office when we reached out with some inquiries about the team doing vaccinations due to some Request from constituents around prioritization for Seattle Housing Authority buildings and particularly subsidized senior living and the chief was very responsive reaffirmed that that is a goal and of the team and the constituent was very I'm pleased to learn about the overall strategy and I know my office is very impressed and very proud of the work the fire department has been doing throughout the pandemic, not just the current vaccination strategies, but also all of the work on testing and tracing.

Um, and I just want to take a moment to, um, to recognize that, but also to recognize, um, Chief Scoggins diligence and getting back to our office and getting us a briefing and an update on that.

So thank you so much.

Good morning, Council Member Lewis.

You're welcome.

And I must say it's not just me.

We have a big team working on this.

Everyone you see on this call and so many people behind the scenes that are really working hard to accomplish this, just as we're doing with testing.

And just to note, over 617,000 people tested since June 5th at our testing site.

So we're still doing a lot of work on that front too.

Thank you.

Let's see, any other council members wanting, Council Member Morales, yes.

Thank you.

I do also want to thank our fire department.

First off, you know, we've had a lot of success in the Rainier Beach area with the with the vaccinations, with the testing over the summer.

So I'm really, really pleased that that has that infrastructure is in place.

So thank you for that.

I wonder if we could go back to the slide that showed the the.

timeline for when we might actually get supply.

I'm sorry, I didn't.

I didn't mark down the slide number, but, um, was indicating that we won't actually get to vaccinating as much as we'd like until early next year, Stephanie said.

I'm wondering if you could just walk us through that a little bit more is

Thanks.

And Leah, can you bring that up that slide again?

So council member, I think it's a great question and it's one we've wrestled with with scenarios.

I would say the note on this is how many we're currently receiving a month is the when we might not vaccinate until early next year.

Understanding we are have such a constrained supply right now of 160 monthly doses, 160 K monthly doses.

And so that really is modeling out that gray time.

of when it what the current supply is on what our best guess is that with the commitments that the federal government has made.

So they have made a commitment to buy 600 million vaccines by the end of summer.

End of summer.

Let's just assume that's the end of September.

That is enough vaccines for 300 million Americans.

And so I do think as we've wrestled with what is the exact timeline, we are prepared for that scenario, assuming every single dose comes to King County, that would vaccinate at least 90% of our population.

I think as we've seen though, and I think we wanna be really honest with the public that the supply constraints right now are very real.

And that ramp up period will take time.

And it's really, it's all of our best hope that it ramps up in spring and summer, but it could take more time.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez, please.

Excuse me.

Thank you so much.

I also want to echo thanks to everyone who's been working on this issue.

Good example of how we can work together collaboratively, both in the executive and on that council, but also with our county partners.

I have a Quick what I think is a quick question.

It might not be, but on that same slide of the scenario planning and modeling, my question is really wanting to focus on the the variant strains of COVID.

So how does the arrival and spread of the variant in King County impact the scenario planning and modeling that we are seeing on slide 12?

That's such a great question.

I'll start with a little bit of background on the variant and what we know and what Dr. Duchin has been saying about it.

So right now there is a lot of work with each of these vaccines and indeed the ones that are coming in the pipeline to test them against the variant.

Dr. Duchin and actually our federal partners have been pretty clear that they are confident that the UK variant that they believe will become a predominant variant here, possibly by the end of March, that the vaccines are very effective against the UK variant.

The South African variant they're studying, and I know that the AstraZeneca vaccine that is not approved here in the United States but has been being used down there seems to not be as effective of that.

So I know that the CDC and the FDA are going to be very careful about that.

Stephanie, I'll let you talk a little more about that.

Thanks, Council President.

Um, actually, Dr did this great graphic that he tweeted out from San Diego.

And I know we've asked some of our partners that you dub to model this and I'll follow up with you after the call on this model, but it really does show.

how important it is that we are able to scale and get as many doses out quickly.

Because I think as we have all embarked upon this work together, the vaccine will literally save lives.

And if we don't have the infrastructure and we have an increase of vaccines, we need to get it to the communities and the communities who have been disproportionately impacted by it most.

And so the variants and if we make any backwards progress, we will still see a surge cases of deaths, of hospitalizations, even though more and more individuals are being vaccinated.

But I'll shoot along the San Diego modeling because it was a really helpful visual for us to compress the urgency of the situation.

Yeah, that's really helpful.

I've been following the variant conversation and I appreciate Dr. Hayes talking about the AstraZeneca vaccination, which is not approved here.

and is showing to be ineffective as it relates to the South African variant.

Obviously that comes with a big caveat.

I think the sample size was 40 people or less, so it was very small sample size, but it did show only a 10% effective rate in that context.

So it doesn't look very promising, but I guess time will tell in terms of whether that sample size can be increased to give us a better sense of whether or not it's going to be effective or not.

I think that the issues related to the variant makes it that much more important to continue to focus on equity and on community outreach and engagement.

And it's part of the reason why I really appreciate Mayor Durkin's advocacy around better utilizing and more intentionally utilizing our community health clinics and partners to do this work.

I'll tell you, as someone who comes from an immigrant population, as someone who who comes from the Latinx community in particular, I'm hearing a lot of really concerning sentiments being expressed within my own community about whether it's worth taking the vaccination when there is a lot of misinformation being spread around about the effectiveness of the vaccine against the variant.

So there's a lot of confusion about about how prevalent the variant is, what strain is actually present in King County and in Seattle, and a lot of misunderstanding about whether the vaccines that are currently being offered are actually effective.

for prevention of or mitigating the risk of contraction and serious symptoms of COVID.

So I really think we need to double down on this equity issue and also on the community outreach and engagement to make sure that people are very well informed.

And in my perspective as somebody who grew up in the community health clinic system, I am a product of the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Public Health System in Central Washington.

Those healthcare infrastructures are so critically important to building trust and getting accurate information out into communities who are already skeptical about these interventions and these medical opportunities that are available to them.

Not really a question in there, but I felt like it was important for us to just call out the fact that we have this issue with the variant, a lot of misinformation about prevalence of the variant and a lot of misunderstanding about whether it is worth taking this vaccine or not.

And when we're talking about equity and how to center equity in our conversations here, I think it's important for us to acknowledge that this is a significant problem and would be interested in hearing from you, Dr. Hayes, or from the mayor's office or anyone else how we are going to be prepared to sort of modify our approach here to meet those particular concerns and issues within community.

Well, thank you.

And sorry, I had a scratch on my throat there for a minute.

What you are raising is really front and center right now in all the conversations.

Dr. Tuchin would also say that he really thinks we need to also double down on just the messaging of protecting our community and each other with mask wearing.

And so I think those messages continue to be essential.

Appreciate everyone in the council helping continue that.

Our work and in partnership with the city has been to really emphasize, having been with a history of the community health centers myself, I know their power for really being with the community and able to really offer with us some real opportunities.

And I also believe that we have our Latinx community group that has been advising us.

We're working on ways to have our local outlets in the community to get the information out from our community partners.

I think that's really important, using those media outlets that are trusted sources within the different communities.

That's been also a focus.

And I know that we're going to continue to work on both messaging and overcoming the issue of misinformation out in so many places is a constant vigilance, I guess I would say, on a weekly basis that we all need to do.

questions that I wanted to throw into the mix here.

When we were talking about the roles of the state versus the county public health versus the city, this question of moving into the next tier and whether or not we should move into another tier of priority individuals before meeting the needs of the highest tier.

That's one issue.

I'm interested to know whether or not concerns about that are concerns that are best directed to the state.

And then secondly, this question of the proportion of doses received by a jurisdiction that go to the large medical institutions versus those that go to smaller community clinics.

Are those both questions that need to be directed to the state if we as a city have preferences for those two particular issues?

As you know, we're working on, under the leadership of Council President Gonzalez, a resolution.

And I think those are two really important issues that we might want to consider teeing up in that resolution as well.

Yeah, well, thank you for those questions.

Those are two ongoing, almost weekly conversations that I'm having with the State Department of Health.

These are under the jurisdiction of the State Department of Health.

And I was just on the phone with Dr. Shah this morning, and there is a statewide conversation about with the governor.

And again the governor opens up those phases.

That's that he does that about when we will have enough doses to actually think about going into phase 1 B 2 and that some of the smaller jurisdictions are actually probably going to be ready first before large.

And of course public health Seattle King County is always saying You've got to get us enough doses to get us further enough.

We haven't even finished 1A.

I mean, we're doing really well, but we have not finished 1A.

And the pressure for the doses opening up 1B and the frustrations it's caused to our older adults has been, I mean, you hear it every day.

So I mean, the- And they're not arbitrary tiers.

They're tiers that are focused on the greatest vulnerability.

Correct.

Absolutely correct.

So, and then the dose allocation as it goes to what piece, I've got to say the state doesn't even have total control over that.

For example, the pharmacy partnerships are actually a federal pharmacy partnership.

And those doses have not been transparent even to the State Department of Health that have been going directly to pharmacies to serve the long-term care facilities.

So we have continued to stand with the State Department of Health to tell the federal government, you've got to make this more transparent because I can't tell you how many total doses are going into those and neither can the state.

So the dose allocation, Dr. Shah this morning admitted to local public health that it has been, he acknowledges it's been really rough.

One of the reasons why I think that the partnership with the city has been just really incredibly important to map out with you all is that we are setting a stage so that if doses go to these hospitals, they are in alignment with the city's plan.

They're agreeing to the county equity principles.

So we're still aligned on the highest need and we hopefully will avoid this moving ahead in line and the problems that perked up right away because we're all committed to that and we want to use our influence to push that even if it's just here in King County.

Thank you.

And then the other question I wanted to ask relates to verification.

And I want to make a distinction between verification and enforcement, because I think there is a difference in changing people's behavior without necessarily changing some people's behavior without necessarily taking on the burden of what to do if the behavior doesn't change.

We are increasingly hearing from residents who are angered that people who are not eligible for the vaccination according to the state's eligibility plan are still receiving back state vaccinations.

There seems to be little emphasis on verifying the eligibility of persons who show up to receive vaccination.

And given the tenuous trust in the vaccination rollout so far, again, I think there's a difference between telling members of the public that they can expect to be asked to verify their eligibility is about setting expectations.

And in doing so, you're not necessarily committing providers or folks who are delivering the vaccine to act if somebody does not demonstrate that they are eligible.

And I'm just wondering whether or not there's been any conversation about that.

And I'll pass this off to Stephanie for what the work the city's been doing.

From the state perspective, it is, as the governor said, an honor system when people go on Face Finder.

And in addition, the very fact we're still doing 1A and people can be in 1A and show up at a vaccine site and rightly receive a vaccine, but they're not elderly.

And the appearance of this can, I think, confuse the public when they're expecting that all the vaccines right now, because of the information that's been coming out in the media, that it's like we're only focused on over 65 and older.

So I think that there is a challenge here in communication.

I know this isn't your question, There's a challenge here in communication just because of what the public sees.

And then also I know in the sites we've been working on, we are trying to ask those questions.

And indeed in multi-generational households, we are asking, but we're expecting people to give us their own right information.

Stephanie, do you wanna add?

Yeah, I just want to say, I mean, I know somebody personally who has a health care, a license in health care, but isn't a health care worker, right?

I mean, and who has gotten their first and second vaccine and is is under 50. So I don't think it's just the matter of everybody thinking that everybody getting vaccine should be of a certain age.

I think there's some other game playing that folks are doing.

And I'll just jump in.

I think that this is acknowledgement that we know that the system is going to be inequitable.

And so I think that the question for us and the question we've we've tried to then move forward on is why we need more doses for our mobile, which are completely targeted populations, why we need more doses for our community pop-ups, because we then can work with trusted community partners who are serving those communities.

And so as we really think about our plan and why right now, while I think there is a need for mass sites or a need for a conversation on mass sites.

As a city, we think the best approach to make sure the vaccine's getting in the right arms right now is to really pursue this robust mobile and community pop-up model.

And then really in the next few weeks, as we're ramping up infrastructure, prepare on what are different ways that we could operate a mass site that builds equity on the front end, like working with our community health centers.

So those reserve spots go to CHCs, not to first come first serve in the public.

And so I know we're talking through what do those actual strategies look like on the front end for mass sites, because right now anyone, I mean, it really feels like anyone can walk in and go get a dose.

And we feel that too.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, and I appreciate that you're focusing our efforts and our planning around equity on the mass sites.

That's a difficult thing to conceptualize doing if we don't know how many weeks it's going to be before we have a sufficient number of vaccines to open up a mass site.

And in the meantime, weeks and weeks go by that are perpetuating and the inequities that we all recognize are inherent in a system.

Council President Morales, I see your hand is up.

Is that a holdover from before or do you have another question?

No, I'm sorry.

That's all right.

It's all good.

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you so much.

A couple more questions that have been jogged in my mind after Chair Herbold's line of questioning.

One is around the phases, and the other one is more specific about multigenerational households.

So in the area of phases, my understanding, and Director Hayes, you can disavow me of this understanding or correct my understanding if it is wrong, is that Seattle King County Public Health, in terms of its mass vaccination site, My understanding is that in South King County, some of those sites have, even though the phases say that 65 and older are eligible, there are some sites in South King County run by King County Public Health that are actually more restrictive and only allowing those who are 75 and older.

And so I would like to understand why that policy choice was made and what kind of equity analysis was done before adopting that kind of fine-tuning restriction to that mass vaccination site.

Yes, that is true for the South King County sites right now with the limited number of doses that Dr. Duchin directed.

for those sites right now.

And it is true that for the communities of color, the lifespan data shows that this can create inequities just by that policy.

So what we have done, because Dr. Duchin, in terms of the data, we know that people 75 and older are 200% higher morbidity mortality from COVID.

And with a limited number, we wanted to make sure that we were following the guidance on the highest risk at the first of the line.

And what we did down there is we are working with our community partners so that we are actually filling reserve spots from the communities and making sure that we are reaching our BIPOC community down there.

The data from the first week shows that we are vaccinating 50% or more of communities of color in that.

We've got more to do, particularly in the Hispanic Latinx was not to wear a mask.

I was expecting to see our appointments are much higher in that community for the next week.

So again, we're taking a very targeted approach.

It's not a open kind of you just sign yourself up.

We're actually working with community partners to make sure that those communities in the south end are actually achieving success in getting appointments.

Okay, that's helpful.

On multi, excuse me, on multi-generational households, particularly as it relates to immigrant communities, and I think this is also true for a lot of our African American communities, is our family structures tend to be very fluid.

So I don't live with my mother, who is part of phase one, but she lives alone and doesn't have anyone else in her home.

If she were to get sick, someone like me would be required to effectively move in with her, but in order to move in with her, I would want to be vaccinated first to allow for that multi-generational household to be constructed safely.

And that's not a sort of gaming the system kind of approach to try to shoehorn yourself into getting a vaccination.

But I've heard from constituents directly of examples of their 80-year-old father having suddenly a heart attack and needing to get care from an adult child who can't actually get to their parents' home without the fear of exposing them to COVID.

And so I just am wondering if there's any study or thought being put into place to take into account how fluid multi-generational families can be, particularly within immigrant communities and other communities who really do, you know, evolve in how they live with each other and in community for caretaking purposes.

Yeah, that's an excellent question, and it leads to the complexity of these phases in trying to set a statewide standard And then you know right from the beginning that it can't apply equitably because it's a broad standard.

So the definition of multigenerational was intended to really be an equity approach within phase 1B1.

And we've gotten lots of questions and it's very confusing to people.

who has to have care and had a case where a disabled son was being cared for by a 74-year-old mom, and yet she could access the vaccine, couldn't get it for her son because it didn't meet the definition.

And I think we just need to continue to give input to the governor's office from the community.

I heard from Dr. Shaw this morning that they are establishing what they're calling a vaccine collaborative for equity.

I'll be interested to see how that evolves, because I think they're trying to build a table at the state to have community-based organizations advise the department and the governor more dynamically around exactly what you're talking about.

And I will say that when it really speaks again to the mobile strategy that Stephanie talked about that the city is emphasizing because what we really want is those isolated seniors to get the vaccine so that you knew that person who needed help because they had a heart attack now was vaccinated and was protected.

So that strategy again is just really important right now while we work out these other pieces.

you're on mute.

I really appreciate everybody being with us here today.

We do need to move on if that's okay.

Um, we, we will have some more time, um, with some of the folks who are represented here, um, at council president Gonzalez afternoon meeting.

Um, but again, thank you.

And, uh, really looking forward to ongoing work, um, to make sure that we meet the goals that we have set for ourselves as a city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, please read the next item in agenda.

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 11996, an ordinance relating to Seattle's construction codes adopting the 2018 International Fire Code by reference as the Seattle Fire Code, amending certain chapters of and adding new chapters to the Seattle Fire Code, amending sections 3.02.125 22.600.020 and 22.602.090 of the Seattle Municipal Code repealing Sections 1 and 3 through 35 of Ordinance 125.138, Section 1 of Ordinance 125.92 and Section 1 through 9 of Ordinance 125.948 and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you, Alex.

We still have Chief Scoggins here with us as a presenter.

If the item could introduce themselves, please.

Sure, I'll have my team introduce themselves.

I'll start with our fire marshal, Assistant Chief Tim Muniz.

Are you still on, Tim?

I am.

I'm here.

Good afternoon, council members.

I am Tim Muniz and I'm the fire marshal here in Seattle.

and then I'll pass it to Ken Brouillet, our Fire Code Coordinator.

Hi, Ken Brouillet, Technical Code Program Manager for Seattle Fire Department, Fire Prevention Division.

Great.

And from Central Staff?

Good morning, Council Members.

Carlos Lugo from your Central Staff.

fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate everybody being with us.

And really appreciate receiving from the chief of preview of this presentation a couple weeks ago at our monthly meeting.

Just for some quick background, as council members are aware, we passed legislation updating our building codes last week.

And the fire codes are typically updated along with building codes so the development community has consistency.

between the two sets of regulations.

The codes were last updated in 2016 and are updated every three years, but doing so was delayed due to the public health emergency.

And with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Chief Scoggins for the presentation that the fire department has prepared for us.

Sure, good morning once again, Council Member Herbold and members of the council.

Just a couple of words and then I'll pass it over to Ken for the presentation.

You know, I can't tell you how proud I am of our team on how hard they work, ensuring the public safety of those who live, visit, and work here in Seattle.

There's a lot of work that goes into these fire codes and updating and enforcements and inspections and things like that.

So this morning, Ken's going to give you a high-level overview of the six fire code changes that we're putting forward for you today.

So I'll pass it to Ken.

Thank you, Chief.

Let me share my screen here.

Can somebody tell me everything's looking good?

All right, thanks.

So the first fire code ordinance was actually enacted back in 1870. So a lot of things have changed over the last 150 years.

And we've gone from a very, very small ordinance to a large ordinance now with many different changes that affect the different hazards that are out in our community.

And also look back to the great fire of 1889, which was a big turning point in Seattle's history.

That fire was created by somebody actually heating up glue over a gasoline fire, where then it boiled over and went onto a floor that was covered with wood chips and turpentine.

So it was a complete disaster, but we have definitely had a turning point over the years with creating our new codes and standards.

So like what was mentioned is the Seattle Fire Code is just one code in all of the 2018 Seattle Construction Codes and we're the last one to be adopted just because we're in a different committee right now.

So the Seattle Fire Code, similar to the other codes like the Seattle Building Code, it's based on the model code, which is the International Fire Code.

The international fire code is developed through different committees.

It's then presented and voted on by authority having jurisdictions and other voting members.

Once it's passed, then the Washington state We'll take a look at it, and they'll also propose further amendments to it to make it more Washington State specific.

That is a process that's developed through the State Building Code Council.

And then there's multiple groups, including the Fire Code Tag, which is a technical advisory group, that we review the proposed changes to make sure that they're consistent and listen to the public comment and vote on appropriate changes.

The work was completed back in 2020 and the Washington state fire could just affect February 1st of this year.

So, and there's additional local amendments that are appropriate for Seattle and that's being or was done by the Seattle fire code advisory board.

The Seattle Fire Code Advisory Board is made up of representatives of our stakeholders, which includes architects and chemical engineers and representatives of the marine industries and the ports.

They were established by resolution back in 1957. They are extremely heavily relied on by the Fire Department for guidance.

with the development of these codes.

So we review all the proposed changes with them and go through the process of reviewing any of the proposed changes, getting public comment from them or other members of the public, and then having them vote, approve them or not approve them or modify them.

So I'm going to go over a couple of the significant changes to the 2018 Seattle Fire Code, the first is a format of single column.

This was also done with the building code.

As before, it was in this two-column format, and it was difficult to look at while you're reviewing a PDF.

And many of our stakeholders and our own staff are looking at the Fire Code online versus the actual physical book form.

So this just makes it more of a user-friendly and easy-reading document.

The other thing I'll discuss is vehicle displays in buildings, integrated testing, energy systems, mobile fueling operations, and a new townhouse automatic fire sprinklers, which actually is not in the fire code.

It's in the residential code, which was already approved.

So the first thing I want to talk about, one of the changes that we were involved with was indoor vehicle displays.

So in the past, indoor vehicles were displayed in, like this scenario here is a mall, and there were gasoline powered vehicles.

And one of the safety measures that the fire code had in the past was to disconnect the battery.

The problem with that is newer vehicles came in with alternate types of fuels, like gas-used fuels such as hydrogen or LNG or CNG.

And those batteries needed to be connected to continue the safety provisions of that vehicle that might have had a leak detection in it.

So what we proposed nationally, and then also worked with the Washington State Legislature locally, is that now we have it so the fire code officials allow to determine what is the best method to make these vehicles safe when they're on display.

And that can be either disconnecting the battery if it's not necessary, or disabling the ignition source.

So there's a way to disable the ignition source so it doesn't make those vehicles hazardous.

Another change was sealing clearances for indoor storage.

So everybody's always looking for more storage within their office spaces.

And the prior codes always had this restriction that the storage had to be below 18 inches below the sprinkler heads or two feet below the ceiling and non-sprinkler buildings.

And the reason for that was that they want to make sure the sprinklers could operate and the water could flow all the way to the ground.

And the other reasoning was if you had storage up to the ceiling and a firefighter came in on a hose line, they wouldn't be able to get to the fire if it was on the other side of a pile of storage because it wouldn't have any clearance to shoot a water stream from the ground to the ceiling over the pile and down.

But what they found out is if we allow the storage to be along the walls of their perimeter of a room and it's still not directly below a sprinkler head, that that's okay.

So what that has allowed now is some businesses to be able to store all the way up to the ceiling where it still won't obstruct the sprinkler flow and it won't be a disadvantage to the firefighters because it will be up against a wall and not in the middle of a room.

Integrated testing.

We have a lot of high-rise buildings in the city of Seattle, and they have several different types of safety systems inside these buildings.

They have pressurized stairways, pressurized elevator hoistways, fire alarm systems, different smoke control systems, and once a building is built, Normally all of these systems are tested together before somebody can occupy the building.

But then after the building gets occupied, each individual fire and life safety device will get tested on an annual basis.

But it was never set up for all of them to be tested together again to make sure they all function properly again.

So there was this new code change that was done called integrated testing.

That will start for a building, you know, 10 years from now to 10 year program so we can get the message out to everybody, which they already are aware of.

We have met with Boma and discuss this with them with some of the high rise buildings within the city that in they need to come up with a plan.

to allow these integrating testing to occur.

And hopefully, with this integrating testing, it will just accomplish the buildings and the occupants will just be protected in the future, even though they are probably still protected now, but it's just an additional test that was never created before of putting everything together again on the same timeframe.

Energy systems.

Energy Systems is a new chapter in the International Fire Code.

Previously, the Fire Code did not address these types of systems.

These are your large battery type storage systems that are in buildings that didn't have any regulations previously.

So the 2018 edition of the International Fire Code created some additional safety factors into the design of these systems, which would include some additional signage that wasn't there before to warn firefighters and occupants that there are some hazards inside the rooms.

And it also creates a fire separation room.

So these these storage systems might be built in a one hour rated room where they weren't initially required to be.

So it's just an additional safety feature that weren't in there before.

And this is again, just the fire code trying to catch up with technology out in the field.

And speaking of changes, mobile fueling operations.

So this is a new industry that's been popping up throughout the United States and also here in Washington State.

In the 2015 code, in the Seattle Code, there wasn't provisions to allow mobile fueling to occur.

So the 2018 Seattle Fire Code now addresses this industry.

And it doesn't allow the mobile fueling to occur on public streets.

But if somebody wanted to conduct it on their private properties, such as a parking lot, there is several different code requirements for separation for preventing spills and many other items that are listed in the code that were previously not there before to make this industry viable for the people that want to use this type of service that is being operated by several different mobile fueling operations companies.

And then the last thing was the townhouse automatic fire sprinklers.

This was already approved under the residential code.

So and the difference is that the Washington State required fire sprinklers in townhouses with five units or more.

But in Seattle, that you probably all might be aware that they'll require an all new townhouse unit.

So Seattle Fire Department definitely is in support of fire sprinklers.

And we're glad that this amendment went through.

It will definitely make our residential community much safer.

For the Seattle Fire Department, this will cause some additional plan review and inspections for our prevention staff, but we're ready and willing and able to do it.

So this was already mentioned due to the COVID-19, the Washington State adoption of the fire code was delayed.

It was supposed to be July of 2020, and it was pushed out to February 2021. And because of that delay, it's actually changed our Seattle fire code effective date to probably be more towards the end of March in 2021. We do have Micah Chappelle who is also the technical code program manager who's on the call today If you do have any additional questions regarding the Seattle residential code and the townhouse sprinklers, but other than that Anybody is willing to accept any questions if you have any for our 2018 Seattle fire code ordinance.

Thanks

And so basically there's always going to be a lag between when we vote and the reflection in the document that describes the year of the code.

So even even if we had not been.

delayed in acting on these updates because of COVID, we would still be acting on a 2018 fire code.

It would still say 2018, but we would have acted last year because there's always going to be a lag.

Is that basically what you're saying?

You are exactly correct.

There's always a lag between the actually printed code and by the time it gets through the state process and then also the local process.

We would have adopted this sooner if the state would have adopted it sooner.

But yes, there will always be a year difference between the codes.

OK.

And then so the main changes, quoting from Carlos, summary for us in his central staff memo.

The main changes relate to alternative fuel vehicles that are on display inside of buildings to allow them to keep their batteries connected, allowing for exemptions for flexibility in storing combustible materials within buildings that are otherwise protected by a fire sprinkler system and integrating new testing requirements for high-rise buildings, again, that assure that fire protection and life safety systems are working together as intended.

And there's a testing, an every-10-year testing requirement associated with that.

Are those the primary changes that we're looking at here?

I believe so.

I really think that the most important is that integrated testing, especially in the city of Seattle, with all of our high-rise structures, all of the life safety systems, it's so important to make sure that they're all functioning as intended.

Great.

Carlos, do you have anything to add before I see whether or not council members have questions?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I actually don't.

I think pretty much everything that I'd put in the memo is address by Ken and yourself, Madam Chair, so thank you.

Thank you.

And a conversation that I had with Council Member Strauss suggests that we might be seeing some amendments at full council.

Is that still the case?

I don't have any additional amendments proposed, no.

Okay.

Yeah, I had a conversation with Councilmember Strauss last week, and he suggested that he may have some additional changes that he's recommending at full council.

So I will certainly loop back around with him and find out if that's the case.

let you know, let everybody know what I hear.

We will have time to consider that.

Chair Herbold, I actually have an update from his staff who emailed me.

Oh, you do?

Yeah.

Noah had reached out.

Council Member Strauss had learned the issues that he was interested in potentially addressing are actually governed by King County Public Health and not through Seattle on this ordinance, and so he won't be bringing an amendment forward.

Great update.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

So aside from three substantive amendments that I mentioned, much of this is technical in nature and ensuring consistency with the state code.

My intention is, unless there is an objection, is to vote in this committee meeting, but want to check first to see whether or not council members have questions.

All right, seeing no questions, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

All in favor, thank you.

All right, thank you so much.

Clerk, can you please read agenda item three into the record?

Agenda item number three, discussion of less lethal weapons draft bill and recommendations on draft bill.

Thank you so much.

So, again, I'm going to turn this over to Lisa Kay to help us pick up where we left off, or maybe not quite where we left off the last committee meeting, but let's maybe refresh us of where we were before we left off.

She will update the committee, introduce the legislation.

She's got a PowerPoint presentation that the revised base bill and the proposed amendments.

Again, the intent today is for the committee to recommend a less lethal weapon bill be sent to a draft bill be sent to the court appointed monitor and the DOJ for their review in line with the process described in the consent decree for any changes to the use of force.

If the motion passes today, the monitor and the DOJ will have 45 days to review the legislation.

In the event of objections from the monitor or the DOJ, there's a 14-day period to meet and confer.

And after that, any party may petition the court to resolve the objections.

I've consulted with both legal counsel and the city clerk about how best to describe the action that the committee is taking in order to reflect that the city is under the consent decree.

And that's why the agenda itself describes the action as discussion of less lethal weapons draft bill recommendations.

on draft bill rather than discussion and vote.

When committees vote, the legislation typically goes to full council.

That is not happening here because under the consent decree, the normal process in the charter does not apply to legislation related to the use of force.

The draft bill has been reviewed by the city attorney's office per usual procedures and any formal introduction through the introduction and referral calendar will happen after completing review by the DOJ and the monitor as required by the consent decree.

want to make sure everyone who is watching knows that the law earlier adopted by the council has never gone into effect.

A restraining order was put in place on the law so it cannot go into effect by the U.S.

District Court.

There's been a lot of advocacy on this that's not either the consent decree or the restraining order or the subsequent preliminary injunction.

And so I want to be really clear about where we're at now.

Current restrictions on the use of less lethal weapons in demonstrations are from a lawsuit against the city enacted or sued by Black Lives Matter and the ACLU.

There are no restrictions.

on the Seattle Police Department resulting from the legislation passed by the council.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Lisa for walking us through the discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Is my screen sharing working?

Excellent.

Okay, so what you have before you is substantively the same bill that was described at the last committee meeting.

I have incorporated a number of formatting edits and clearer wording as to the effective date as recommended during a legal review.

So I'm just going to quickly go over the prohibited uses of less lethal weapons, then describe some conditions that are set on some of the other weapons, and finish with some other key provisions.

Then I will walk through the amendments that are before you.

If I'm going too fast, slow me down.

I'm assuming time is a little bit of the essence today, this afternoon, this morning.

I'm sorry.

Okay, so slide, this slide here, slide one will show that the revised base bill would prohibit specific uses of several less lethal weapons and specifically 40 millimeter launchers may not be used to deploy chemical irritants for crowd control in any demonstration or rally.

Noise flash diversionary devices could not be used for crowd control.

Any use of tear gas and chemical irritants other than pepper spray would be prohibited.

And each of the following may not be used for any purpose.

Acoustic weapons, directed energy weapons, water cannons, disorientation devices, including blast balls, ultrasonic cannons, and any other device primarily designed to be used on multiple individuals for crowd control and to cause pain or discomfort.

The revised Bayes Bill would impose specific conditions on the use of pepper spray.

Specifically, pepper spray could not be used for crowd control in a non violent demonstration or rally.

And only SWAT officers could deploy pepper spray products using a 40 millimeter launcher and then only for non crowd control purposes.

And finally, pepper spray could only be deployed when the risk of serious injury from violent actions outweighs the risk of harm to bystanders.

Conditions imposed on the use or on the deployment of noise flash diversionary devices would require that only SWAT officers could deploy them and then SWAT could only use them for purposes other than crowd control.

There are conditions imposed on mutual aid partners requiring them to abide by the same policies as the police department.

This language is carried over from Ordinance 126-102 that was passed last June.

So this revised bill would also establish a right of action against the city for injuries caused by the use of less lethal weapons in a nonviolent demonstration or rally.

But the right of action would not be available to a person who in the judgment of a reasonable person commits a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of less lethal force.

You'll also see that we've worded the effective date a little bit more clearly to note that this bill would become effective the later of 30 days after it's been reviewed and approved by the court or 30 days after it's been approved by the mayor.

Madam Chair, would you like me to go ahead and walk through the amendments?

Plus there are questions about the base bill.

Yes, please do move forward to talk about the amendments.

Okay, amendment one is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

It's been reformatted since you saw it at the last meeting as suggested during legal review.

So this amendment would add an exemption for the use of tear gas for crowd control during a violent public disturbance.

And it defines violent public disturbance as any gathering where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten to use unlawful violence toward another person or group of people and the conduct of them taken together would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their personal safety.

The amendment would then incorporate this terminology into the exemption for the use of pepper spray and for a right of action.

The tear gas and pepper spray exemptions would not be authorized until the police department completes its annual use of force policy review as required by the consent decree.

There are also three potential right of action amendments sponsored by council member Sawant.

Now only one of these three amendments could be adopted.

There are variations on a base.

So amendment 4A, is the same language as was adopted in Ordinance 126-102.

It would provide a private right of action for injuries caused by the use of less legal weapons in violation of the provisions of the Municipal Code.

Amendment 4B1 is the same as 4A, but adds an exception for criminal offense.

So the right of action wouldn't be available to a person who, in the judgment of a reasonable person, commits a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of less legal force.

Lisa, can you say how that is different than what the base bill says about a private right of action?

Because I know the language was intended to address the sort of dirty hand scenario.

So the bill as drafted includes both protections of, would include both the provision of the criminal offense exception and the restrict the right of action only to injuries caused in a violent demonstration.

So Amendment A does neither of those things.

Amendment B provides only the criminal offense exception.

And Amendment B2 doesn't provide the criminal offense exception, but does limit it to weapons only, the use of weapons only in a nonviolent demonstration.

Thank you.

Okay.

Finally, then the last two amendments of which I'm aware, Amendment 5, sponsored by Council Member Sawant, would prohibit the use of pepper spray for crowd control in any demonstration or rally.

And Amendment 6, also sponsored by Council Member Sawant, would prohibit the use of kinetic impact projectiles for crowd control in a demonstration or rally.

And it would also limit deployment of these projectiles to SWAT officers and then only for purposes other than crowd control.

I would note that Council Member Sawant's amendments are drafted against the draft base bill and don't assume passage of Amendment 1. So for purposes of just to kind of simplify today's discussion, if you wish, if Amendment 1 passes, I would suggest that motions to approve Council Member Sawant's amendments could include direction to staff to harmonize the amendments with Amendment 1, and then we could take care of that instead of trying to do that a little bit on the fly.

And again, just a clarification for understanding the amendments that, of course, will allow for time for each of us to speak to the merits of our amendments.

pepper spray prohibition for crowd control and demonstration or rally.

My recollection is that the base bill was modeled on Councilmember Sawant's bill that passed in June that allows for, under certain circumstances, the use of pepper spray for those instances.

we are using sort of slightly different triggering language for when pepper spray is allowed.

But my recollection is that the bill that the council passed in June allows for some use of pepper spray in these circumstances.

So are you asking me what the bill said, what the June bill said?

Yeah, what the June bill said about allowing use of pepper spray, because it seems like, you know, One of the things that we've heard from the court is, one, we should check in with our accountability partners and get their input.

And also that he was concerned that overly restricting the use of these weapons, it might not lead to greater safety.

And so it was my recollection that the original bill did allow for some restricted use of pepper spray in crowd control situations.

And so I guess really, really high level, I'm trying to understand, are we moving from an approach where we had some allowance to a situation where with this amendment we would have no allowance, it would be completely prohibited?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

don't believe that that's accurate.

I don't believe the original bill allowed pepper spray to be used in protests at all.

Can we can we just verify that?

I don't believe that that's accurate.

Yeah, that was the intent of my question.

So, um, okay.

And I'm sorry, Council member so on.

So I'm can is my screen now showing the bill?

Yes.

Oh, good.

Okay.

So, uh, So it is prohibited in the use of any demonstration or First Amendment protected event.

It is allowed to be used outside of those circumstances, but only if it can be assured that it would not land on any other individual.

Okay, so it is allowed to be used in these events if they could assure that it doesn't land on other individuals.

No, it's not allowed to be used in any group, in any gathering.

Okay, so the restriction in the bill about not landing on other individuals is a restriction on use outside of First Amendment events?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Sorry about that.

Very appreciated.

And thank you, Council Member Sawant, for the request for additional clarification.

I don't have any further report.

All right, that's all the amendments?

Yes.

All right, great.

So I'm just going to take a pause here and see what questions folks might have as far as clarification of the amendments.

And then I think we'll just begin to speak to the merits of our amendments and move them.

Again, at the end of this, we are not voting on the bill.

We are voting on a motion to send the bill to the monitor to follow the consent decree process.

So, just pausing to see if there are any hands up, screens on.

And with that, I think we'll just move right into amendment one.

I think what we'll do is, I think that's a good point.

Normally we'll get a motion and we'll do a second and then we'll speak to the merits of the motion.

Just because I feel like we haven't had an opportunity to discuss the thinking behind the amendments.

Maybe we could just very quickly go through and talk about, and the sponsors talk about the two sets of amendments and then we'll go through the amendments if that's okay with everybody.

Councilmember, do you want me to share the amendments on the screen, or is that just too much?

It'd be great.

Thank you.

That way people can hear and read, and people learn and retain information differently.

I know I'm a reader.

So as it relates for the first amendment, as Lisa described, it creates an exemption to the ban on the use of tear gas in crowd control situations under specifically narrow circumstances and it also creates a new definition for violent public disturbance.

It delays authorization of the exceptions to the ban until after SPD's 2020 annual use of force policy review is completed.

So even assuming that the court agrees with this version of the bill, assuming that the court agrees with the exception as we've described it, it would not go into effect until after the completion of the annual use of force policy that the police department is working on now.

The CPC has provided its input to that, and also that use of fourth policy also has to go through the current decree.

As it relates specifically to the definition of violent public disturbance, central staff researched other jurisdictions in developing this particular language.

The challenge is that the state defines riots so narrowly to three or more people, and this definition is intended to include violence toward another person or a group of people.

Again, it allows tear gas use in very narrow circumstances with three limitations.

Section F3 includes language used in the New Orleans law limiting the use of tear gas and states, it is reasonably necessary to prevent threat of imminent loss of life or serious bodily injury.

And it is deployed under the direction of officers who have received training for its use within the previous 12 months.

This particular element regarding training is an example of the kind of input that we did receive from our accountability partners, specifically the Office of Intergovernmental – I'm sorry, the Office of the Inspector General specifically recommended that we work to ensure that deployment of tear gas be restricted to those officers who have received training.

I believe the current standard for training is within the previous 24 months.

That seems to be inadequate, and so that is how we came to the 12-month training guideline.

And then also, again, consistent with the input of each, the OIG and the Office of Police Accountability, this deployment is limited to instances where there is a detailed tactical plan developed prior to deployment.

Again, the court stated in the temporary restraining order that was followed with a preliminary injunction that the legislation, as it was drafted, did not public safety.

I'd like the legislation that the council adopts to be authorized by the court.

Again, currently we have no restrictions on, in law, on the use of less lethal weapons.

And unless the court authorizes council bill, we will not.

As the chart shows in previous meeting notes, the OIG recommended allowing clear gas only in life safety circumstances.

The language of this bill is in line with this intent.

this bill makes clear that tear gas should not be used only to protect property.

Moving on, Council Member Sawant, do you wanna speak additionally to the different options under amendment 4A, B1 and B2?

Yes, I would, Council Member Herbold.

But just a clarification, when do you want us to speak to Amendment 1, for example, which is from you?

But I do want to speak to that as well.

I think once we get a motion on the floor, I'll open it up for other council members to speak to the amendment.

Okay.

Just wanting to give you an opportunity to say why you proposed the amendment that you proposed before getting the motion on the floor, because we haven't had the opportunity to discuss the amendments before.

Yes, and just to make sure the amendment as it's listed there is 4A, right?

Yes.

Thank you, Lisa.

So before motivating this amendment, I just want to clarify that there are three versions of this amendment, as Lisa mentioned, where I'm going to speak to Amendment 4A now.

And as was mentioned, my office has also prepared alternate and what I would consider lesser versions of this amendment, which have been listed as 4B1 and 4B2, which I will which I will speak to only briefly.

Lisa has already done that.

My main points are about 4A.

This amendment 4A will restore the private right of action, which is the only substantive enforcement of the ban on the so-called crowd control weapons.

The legislation that the council passed last summer holds the city establishment accountable.

If the police fill the streets with tear gas and explosives, the impacted protesters can sue for $10,000 each.

That is a real consequence for the political establishment, and it forces them to take the ban on chemical and other militarized crowd control weapons seriously.

This private right of action that was in the original bill that was sponsored by my office and was passed by the council was literally the only thing enforcing the ban, as we saw when the Seattle Police Department blatantly violated the federal court injunction against abusing BLM protests with tear gas and flashbang grenades.

Unfortunately, the loophole in The draft bill as presented by Council Member Horvold makes it far, far more difficult for people to sue even when the police flagrantly break this law.

If this amendment does not pass, if Amendment 4A does not pass, then Council Members will be building into the law the exact same kind of lack of police accountability that they all claim to be so worried about.

The loophole that this amendment from my office closes is twofold.

First, the loophole in the base bill says that in the base bill that has been presented by Council Member Herbold, I'm just clarifying because I'm not talking about the bill that was passed last year.

The loophole says that the private right of action only applies when the police use banned weapons during a, quote, gathering that is not a violent public disturbance, end quote.

We know that violence is the word violence is conveniently defined by the police to be whatever they want it to be.

During the justice for George Floyd protests, the Seattle Police Department declared peaceful protests to be violent and even a riot whenever they wanted to clear the streets.

I saw this with my own eyes when I was at the protest.

Now this draft bill defines violence using a similar legal definition to the legal definition of riot.

And we've just seen how that can be abused.

Also, I would notice that this loophole prevents enforcement regardless of whether you were personally involved in the violence.

Under this wording, if, for example, if 12 Proud Boys started assaulting people in a Black Lives Matter protest of thousands, and that is not a hypothetical, it actually happened in Seattle, then the police use illegal blast balls on the entire crowd.

No one would be eligible to claim damages.

It doesn't matter that the law prohibits the police from using those blast balls.

It still will not be able to be enforced.

And remember, these are the same officers that went to DC to join the far right white supremacist violence at the Capitol building.

Are we honestly supposed to believe that that would never happen again?

And we should not forget that throughout history, police forces have used small groups of agent provocateurs to do just enough violence to justify the police attacking a crowd of peaceful protesters.

And it would be naive for the movement to believe that it could never happen here.

Second, the loophole says that the private right of action does not apply to, quote, a person who, in the judgment of a reasonable person, commits a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of less lethal force, end quote.

In my view, police brutality is never OK.

Beyond that, this does not even require that the person be convicted of a crime just that a reasonable person would think they did.

But most dangerously, we have all seen how police regularly charge protesters with a quote unquote criminal offense just to justify brutality.

People are charged with offenses like parading without a permit, failure to disperse, resisting arrest, and fictitious charges of assaulting.

an officer.

This happens a lot.

This loophole would create an even greater incentive for the police to trump up charges against protesters anytime that the police use a banned weapon.

This is not a hypothetical.

Again, it happens every time police wish to brutalize progressive movements.

Compare the over 14,000 people who were arrested during BLM protests nationally this summer to the 82 people arrested as a result of the far more of the violent far-right assault on the Capitol.

If the police abuse you with an illegal crowd control weapon under this loophole, you have to decide if you have the courage to sue over it.

The minute you sue, the police will start investigating you to see if they can pin a criminal offense on you.

Not only are these loopholes subjective and unjust, but they also have no reason except to protect the city from lawsuits when the police flaunt the law.

And there's this sort of unspoken expectation that the police will flout the law.

The enforcement should happen any time the police break the law, not just sometimes or occasionally.

What message would it send to say that blast balls are totally banned, but if the police use them at a protest they have labeled as violent, then there is no enforcement?

Are they banned or not?

In practice, this loophole renders every other part of the ordinance moot effectively because it says that it is almost never possible to get justice if the police break the ban and anyone who seeks justice will be stuck in endless court cases trying to prove that the event they were at was not violent and that they were not guilty of anything, like even jaywalking.

This loophole was not required by the consent decree.

It was not required by the Federal Monitor or Judge Robart.

It was not recommended by the accountability partners.

This amendment 4A that I'm moving removes this loophole.

If the amendment passes, the private right of action would read, quote, a person shall have a right of action against the city for physical or emotional injuries proximately caused by the use of less lethal weapons prohibited by the section that occur after this ordinance takes effect," end quote. In other words, if the police do something prohibited by this ordinance, police can sue to defend their rights, sorry, people can sue to defend their rights, period. If the police actually follow the law, then there will be no lawsuits and that should be the expectation that the police follow the law. And I do not think that there is any excuse for the city council parsing who is and who is not worthy of having their rights defended after the police break the law. I urge council members to vote yes on this amendment. So enforcement is possible every time the police break the law. And as I mentioned, if this amendment does not pass, I also have separately 4B1 and 4B2 addressing each part of this loophole separately. Did you want me to speak to Amendment 5 and 6 as well, or should I stop? I do.

I do.

Thank you.

OK.

I'm speaking to Amendment 5 now.

This amendment restores the tighter restrictions on pepper spray, also known as mace and OC spray.

The loophole in the current draft bill allows the police to use pepper spray against protests if they label the protest to be violent, which, as I've said, is extremely subjective and regardless of whether the individual people sprayed are doing anything violent.

And a lot of people in today's and previous public comment have talked about the seven-year-old who was maced by a Seattle officer on the first day of the Justice for George Floyd protests in May of last year.

The OPA dismissed all the complaints against that officer.

If this loophole is allowed to stand, then that travesty could be repeated again and again without consequence.

This amendment would include pepper spray in the list of less lethal weapons that may not be used against protests or demonstrations, as was recommended by the Community Police Commission.

If this amendment fails, I have no doubt that the Seattle police will begin using drugs that spray mace over a whole crowd from a high-power house on the roof.

And remember, this is something we saw the Iranian regime use against the democracy movement there.

And it might seem like such things won't happen in the United States, but we have already seen many things happen that have completely violated the democratic rights of ordinary people.

And we need to make sure that we hold the line against that kind of attack on ordinary people and their democratic rights to protest peacefully.

Amendment six is something that I will be speaking to now.

Councilmember Herbold's draft bill removes all restrictions on what are called kinetic weapons or kinetic weapons that includes beanbags, rubber bullets, wooden bullets, plastic bullets.

This amendment six, if passed, will restore some restrictions on kinetic weapons, prohibiting their use against protests.

This is also consistent with the recommendation from the Community Police Commission.

The purpose of the legislation prepared by my office last summer was to ban police from abusing progressive movements like the Black Lives Matter movement with militarized crowd control weapons by taking away those weapons from the police.

Some have argued that if the police do not have rubber bullets, they will use real bullets.

First of all, I think that is an important argument to make, but that is not how it works in reality.

In reality, the police use whatever force they feel like they can get away with.

In a reasonable world, it would be absolutely shocking to suggest that the only reason the police are not gunning down Black Lives Matter protesters en masse is because they have rubber bullets.

The fact that that idea is even discussed shows how essential it is that we have an elected community oversight board over the police with real powers to hold officers accountable, including hiring and firing powers and the powers to set policies and procedures.

I want to be clear.

If police start using live ammunition on protesters in Seattle, then obviously that would be the scandal of quite another proportion and that would need to be dealt with with strongest possible laws as well.

But at this moment, I urge council members to vote yes on restoring restrictions on kinetic weapons.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

I appreciate everybody's indulgence in going through these items a little differently than we normally would.

And my hope is as we move forward on making motions, seconding, and hearing from Councilmembers that the sponsors of of the amendments, myself included.

I will hold myself to the standard.

I will not just repeat all the same comments that they made in their opening remark for the sake of brevity.

So I'm just checking to make sure there are no questions from anybody yet.

And I do not see any, so I'm going to start moving forward with these amendments.

And with that, I will move.

Amendment 1, and Amendment 1 is the amendment related to creating a new definition for violent public disturbances, as well as limiting the ability of the use of tear gas when there is an advance developed detailed deployment plan when there is training of officers who are to use it who have received training in the previous 12 months.

And the, I moved that item and I'm seeking a second.

second pardon thank you councilmember Gonzales is there any additional description or discussion sure well would it be okay if if Lisa displayed the amendment language as we consider each amendment it would just great be a little easier for it would be a little easier for me to follow, and I think it might be easier for the viewing public.

Absolutely.

Lisa, do you mind displaying on the screen as well?

And again, in my description, I did not mention the requirement that the use of tear gas is limited to protecting life and is not to be used for protecting property alone.

Is that showing now?

Is the screen share working?

It is indeed.

Thank you.

So we have a motion and a second.

Is there any discussion?

I'm sorry, I'm looking both for raised hands in real life as well as on the chat function.

Any raised hands?

not seeing any.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

I oppose this amendment to reauthorize the Seattle Police Department's use of tear gas.

Tear gas banned in war by the Geneva Convention is used overwhelmingly by the police against peaceful progressive movements of protest.

Compare the clouds of tear gas that wafted through the streets of Seattle for weeks last summer to dissuade people from joining Black Lives Matter protests to the police welcome that the violent far right received when they broke into the Capitol building in D.C.

They were welcomed by the police, taking selfies with them, and now we know six Seattle police officers flew to D.C.

to show their support to the far right.

By banning tear gas, the council will make it more difficult for the police to brutalize progressive movements, which is exactly what the council should do.

This amendment is a loophole that would reverse many of those protections.

Council members have claimed that this only applies to violent gatherings, but as I've said before, and I'll repeat again, The definition of the violent gathering in this amendment is similar to the legal definition of riot, and we have seen again and again that the police redefined violent and riot to mean whatever they wanted to specifically in order to be able to subdue peaceful protests.

We saw that happen in Seattle over the summer again and again, police labeling totally peaceful protests as riots anytime they wanted to clear the streets.

Even if this definition was less subjective, we have seen again and again throughout history that this sort of exception puts the decision over whether a protest counts as violent into the hands of the police.

And we don't want to do that because we've seen again and again that they use that discretion, if we give it to them, to abuse left-wing and progressive protests like Black Lives Matter.

One final example, the qualifiers in this amendment limiting how much tear gas is reauthorized is very similar to qualifiers that were included in the federal court injunction against tear gas in Seattle.

After that injunction was put in place, the police promptly used their discretion to continue using tear gas in total violation of the injunction.

The court agreed that the police violated the law and broke the injunction, but the damage had been done.

You cannot un-tear gas a protest that has already been tear gassed.

This discretion should not be in the hands of the police department that sent more officers to join the pro-Trump far-right assault on the Capitol on January 6th than any other police force in the country.

It should not be in the hands of the police force that has killed 28 people since 2011, black and brown community members, many of them unarmed.

It should not be in the hands of the police force that accumulated 18,000 OPA complaints for its violence during the BLM movement last summer.

If this amendment fails, As it should, if council members want to do the right thing, the Seattle Police Department will be banned from even owning tear gas and they will not have the power to decide to use it.

That is how it should be.

The Community Police Commission opposed reauthorizing tear gas and all council members have received at least 450 emails this week opposing any watering down of the ban on crowd control weapons.

And I urge council members to vote no on this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other council members?

We can speak to amendment one.

I'll say a few words here.

Thank you.

I was going to reserve my comments until voting on the ultimate motion at the conclusion, but I think that most of my comments pertain to this amendment.

So I think I'll just do my comments in full now if that's okay.

Though I do want to say some of the things I plan on saying touch on other elements of the bill.

But I think that this is where most of it is.

And I think it's mostly because we need to establish, and Madam Chair, you kind of covered this a little at the beginning of your remarks, the state of what is and what is not in effect in the city currently.

And the ordinance we unanimously passed over the summer, which I want to be clear, I think is a good ordinance, and is in keeping with my values and what I would like to see, is not in effect.

And it's never been in effect.

And what has been in effect is the crowd control temporary restraining order that's been issued by Judge Jones.

On June 12th, Judge Jones made the following findings, and these are findings I concur with, and I'm sure most of us on the council do.

To quote Judge Jones's findings, SPD's actions would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to protest.

SPD's use of less lethal crowd control weapons have surely chilled speech.

SPD's exerted excessive force without provocation throughout the summer.

And the plaintiffs, in this case, Black Lives Matter, Seattle, King County, have established a threat of immediate irreparable harm in the absence of a temporary restraining order.

and the balance of those hardships favored an injunction.

Most notably and most concerning, Judge Jones found that the plaintiffs, Black Lives Matter, Seattle, King County, had shown that the protests were a substantial or motivating factor in SPD's conduct.

I mean, essentially saying that there were judgments made based on who the speaker was and what they were speaking for that led to certain tactical considerations.

And this is not just the observation of this progressive city council.

I want to be clear.

This is a matter of federal judicial record that SPD used crowd control tactics in a way that was not in keeping with the Constitution towards largely peaceful demonstrations throughout last year.

In the restraining order that Judge Jones ordered, he ordered that the police department was enjoined from employing chemical irritants or projectiles of any kind against persons peacefully engaging in protest or demonstrations.

He made it clear that the injunction included, one, any chemical irritant such as and including CS gas, also known as tear gas, and OC spray, also known as pepper spray, and two, any projectiles such as and including flashbang grenades, pepper balls, glass balls, rubber bullets, and foam tip projectiles.

But it's important to note that judge jones continued and incorporated certain exceptions to that order writing this order does not preclude individual officers from taking necessary reasonable proportional and targeted action to protect against a specific imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or identifying or identifiable others, or to respond to specific acts of violence or destruction of property.

Further, tear gas may be used only if A, efforts to subdue a threat by using alternative crowd measures, including pepper spray, as permitted by this paragraph, have been exhausted and ineffective.

And B, the chief of police has determined that use of tear gas is the only reasonable alternative available.

The chief of police may only authorize limited and targeted use in that scenario of tear gas, and must direct it to those causing violent or potentially life-threatening activity.

To the extent that chemical irritants or projectiles are used in accordance with this paragraph, they shall not be deployed indiscriminately into a crowd, and to the extent reasonably possible, they should be targeted at the specific imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or identifiable others, or to respond to specific acts of violence or destruction of property.

And I want to be clear, that is what has been in effect.

That's what's been in effect from the summer until now, from June 12th, when the judge put that in order.

And that is really when we are talking about the possibility of rolling things back or watering things down or changing things.

To be clear, the ordinance that we put in place is not the thing that has been, to an extent, limiting police conduct.

It's been that injunction put down by the federal court.

And we know for the record that SPD officers have willfully and flagrantly violated the terms of that injunction, resulting in the city.

So the taxpayers of the city being found in contempt of the court by Judge Jones on December 7th, 2020, we're the ones that are gonna be paying for the result of that contempt proceeding based on how the appeals and the court goes.

And those violations included indiscriminate use of blast balls and OC spray.

The protections Judge Jones' injunction put forward need to remain in place and built upon, and they need to be codified.

This is a temporary restraining order.

And that is essentially what this base bill with the amendments that Madam Chair has put forward will do, is extend a similar level of protection that the TRO has extended, which as I said before, included certain exemptions that were crafted by the federal court that would be compliant with the law and constitutional policing.

So what has the status been of the council's ban and crowd control weapons that we passed?

It was never in effect.

And I proudly voted for it because I thought we should start with the strongest possible bill.

and we should go to the court and seek to have that bill imposed and be the law of the city.

Tear gas has no place on the streets of our city.

The use of tear gas over last summer was indiscriminate, ineffective, and caused great harm to the public.

And I continue to believe that.

But it's become clear from our litigation on that base bill that unless certain changes are put in place, this bill will not survive the consent decree process and will never go into effect.

On July 24th, 2020, Judge Robart issued a temporary restraining order against enacting the council's weapon ban.

In so doing, Judge Robart wrote, quote, by removing all forms of less lethal crowd control weapons from virtually all police encounters, the directive and the CCW ordinance will not increase public safety, end quote.

This past week on February 4th of 2021, Judge Robart further commented at a status conference on the consent decree directly addressing this council the following, quote, I have some rather harsh words for the city council.

I think they have lost sight of the fact that the 100 paragraphs in the consent decree are not 100 paragraphs.

They are not even commitments.

They are obligations.

Orders from this court of things that will be done and when they decide to take matters into their own hands in contravention of the consent decree, then they drag me into a situation I don't want to be in, which is telling them, no, you can't do that.

I have no doubt in my mind that Judge Robart will continue to say no to this ordinance if it is unaltered.

One thing people on the left and right seem to agree on in regards to the city council is that the Seattle City Council somehow has supreme constitutional power to pass any law impacting any problem that we want to.

The multitude of things this council is now held responsible for have taken on a thanks Obama level of absurdity, given our limited scope within a complicated federal system of state, county, federal, and judicial officials.

All of us have our role to play in that system that's defined by tiered responsibilities and countervailing powers.

Judge Robart's authority and role within the consent decree needs to be acknowledged and respected.

And indeed, if it isn't, he will acknowledge it for us.

It is the unanimous opinion of our legal advisors that this bill, in its current form, will never go into effect unless certain changes are made.

Changes, I would add, that are consistent with Judge Jones's injunction, which has been in effect.

So the choice that is really before this council is not whether we are watering down the protections that have never been in place to begin with.

It is whether we effectively create any protections at all.

Over the course of this year, we can work to strengthen this ordinance further by petitioning the court with crowd control strategies successful in other countries as alternatives to weapon use, which I've become convinced is going to be essential to get these policy changes through the consent decree process.

In Stockholm, professional dialogue officers negotiate with protesters and explain police actions.

In Spain, third-party negotiators, unaffiliated with the police entirely, fill that role.

These processes designed to facilitate communication can avoid the escalation that often leads to the deployment of tear gas against peaceful demonstrators.

Without additional changes to personnel, practices and tactics, the court will not allow our categorical ban to go into effect and more work needs to be done.

For those reasons, I'm voting for the chair's amendment today and ultimately intend to vote on the motion to send this to the consent degree process.

And I think increasingly in this modern era, it's very critical for us as leaders at all levels of government to be honest about our processes and their outcomes.

And we need to be honest about the choice in front of us today.

And the reality is that the ordinance from last summer has never been in effect and will never go into effect unless certain changes are made.

And while it would certainly make me feel good to reaffirm our ordinance from the summer and allow the court to strike it down, that path leads to zero protections for the people of this city, for the people of my district from police violence from these weapons.

And we need to be honest that that is the real choice before us.

So Madam Chair, I don't have any additional comments.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Morales.

I see your hand is up.

Internet trouble again today.

I will be very brief.

I want to say that while I agree completely with Council Member Sawant and supported her original bill this summer, I still do not support having tear gas as part of our standard issue.

I think that's deeply problematic for our department.

And I don't want our efforts here to make some important changes to be rejected by the judge and to leave us with nothing, as Council Member Lewis was saying.

which is what's very likely if the judge's concerns aren't addressed.

So I will be supporting this amendment, and my hope is that we can actually move through the process and see the kind of changes that we are trying to make here so that we can protect our neighbors better.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Let's see, Council Member Sawant, is your hand still up from before, or did you want to address the amendment again?

I do want to speak.

Go ahead.

I find it extremely unfortunate that councilmembers are presenting their yes vote on this terrible amendment as something good, something principled.

Councilmember Lewis said, let's be honest.

I agree, let's be honest.

It's not about feel good.

It's about actually making material shifts in people's lives.

And this particular issue is about ensuring actual safety of peaceful protesters engaging in left-wing and progressive movements.

There is nothing reasonable, absolutely nothing reasonable about using tear gas on peaceful protesters.

The fact is, again, if you want to be honest, the city council, other than voting yes on the original bill under pressure from the street protests at that time, which is the only reason why we won that vote, the only reason why the movement won that vote is because we fought so hard.

Other than that, the City Council has done nothing to help uphold the bill.

The City Attorney has never asked Judge Robart to allow the original ban that was passed in the summer to go into effect.

In fact, they asked for an injunction against the bill.

There has been no comment about tear gas from Judge Robart and If we actually tried, if the council actually tried to uphold the bill from last summer and the judge actually rejected the bill, then we could have that conversation about amending the bill.

But there has been no I think it is important to understand that there is no statement from the judge at all about tear gas, but the bottom line is this is not about making judge Robart happy.

Yes, there is a consent decree.

We are not in an imaginary universe.

Absolutely we understand that.

But at the end of the day, it is about the city council doing the right thing.

to either stand with movements and communities of color or throwing up your hands and saying, well, this is what we have under the consent decree.

Since the consent decree was put in place, 28 black and brown people have been killed at the hands of the police and not one police officer has been held accountable.

So while understanding that there is a legal framework in place, it is still the obligation, the moral and political obligation of the city council to fight to defend as strong of a law as possible, as long as it is possible.

There's nothing that the judge has said at this moment to make you do this, make you pass this amendment right now.

But at the end of the day, what this is also showing is the sort of the upside down logic that the city council is using.

I mean, many of you have said the ban that I had put forward and that you voted yes on spoke to your values.

If that spoke to your values, then it is mind-boggling to me and completely counter-logic for you to say that because that bill wasn't, that ban wasn't enforceable given the legal framework, that you are not going to water it down and hope that that is going to hold the police accountable.

If the injunction that was placed at the behest of BLM wasn't able to hold the police accountable, why do you believe that watering this down will hold them accountable.

What all of this reveals is that the police are not being held accountable.

But as long as the city's establishment, the political establishment, kowtows to them by watering down what we have passed rather than fighting every inch of the way to defend it, That message the message to the police is you can still do what you want, you can send five of your officers to a horrendous far right violent protest, and a few weeks after that the city council will water down the band that existed since last summer instead of fighting to enforce it.

My message.

ultimately is not to the city council unfortunately it is to ordinary people who are watching this we have to understand this is again yet another example of how we cannot rely on political establishment however progressive their words might be we will need a resurgence of street protests of black lives matter this year and we will need a real grassroots mass movement and class struggle based fight back to really ensure what we need, that we get what we need, and all of history shows that laws in the courts follow fighting mass movements on the streets, not vice versa.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Just looking to see whether or not there are any other speakers here before I call the vote.

And if not, I just want to say that we are unified in our desire to have a regulation on the books as it relates to the use of less lethal weapons.

I prefer to focus on our shared goal.

We have a difference of opinion of what the path is for that shared goal.

I think ultimately we have an obligation to listen to the public take their input and develop policy and to do everything we can to govern.

And if we just send back a bill that looks very much like the bill that we sent the judge in June, if we send another version of it, I think we are failing to govern and that is ultimately our responsibility here as it relates to our shared goal of getting a regulation on the books related to the limitation of less lethal weapons.

And with that, Alex, do you mind calling for the vote, please?

On Amendment 1. Yes.

Voting on Amendment 1. Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

No.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Four in favor, one opposed.

Thank you, Alex.

Now moving to amendment A.

Lisa, before I invite council members to make a motion, can you remind us, my understanding is that not all of these can pass.

Only one of them can.

I'm just given that we just voted for Amendment one, does that put any limitations on what version of Amendment A, B1 or B2 are in play right now?

No, it doesn't.

I would just recommend that the motion include language directing staff to harmonize this with Amendment one.

It would make some technical changes so that the language that says in a nonviolent demonstration or rally would be consistent with the violent public disturbance language wherever that is used, which I believe comes up in B1 and possibly B2.

Thank you, Lisa.

Yes, it comes up in B2.

Much appreciated.

So Council Member Swann, I hand it to you to make your motion.

Thanks, I'll just say that this is, just to clarify, this amendment is about enforcement of the ban and has nothing to do with any statement made by Judge Robart and the consent decree.

I move amendment 4A.

Is there a second?

Hearing no second, we'd like to move the next version.

The same thing applies here.

This is about the enforcement, nothing to do with the consent decree.

So I move amendment 4B2.

Sorry, 4B, I'm sorry.

4B1?

4B1.

Thank you.

Yeah, sorry.

Okay, is there a second for 4B1?

Hearing no second.

We'll move on to the last version of Amendment 4, please.

I move Amendment 4B-2.

Thank you.

Is there a second for Amendment 4B-2?

Okay, hearing no second for 4B2, let's move on to the next amendment, please.

The next amendment is the Amendment 5. We have two more to go.

Amendment 5 relates to additional restrictions on pepper spray.

I move Amendment 5.

Is there a second for Amendment 5?

Hearing no second for Amendment 5, let's move on to Amendment 6, please.

I move Amendment 6. Thank you.

Is there a second for Amendment 6?

All right.

Hearing no second on Amendment 6. I want to close out discussion of the amendments themselves.

And we will move over to the motion that we're going to work on here.

I've just got to get out of my full screen and try and get into my small screen.

And bear with me here.

Okay, so now what we're going to do, as mentioned before, with no additional amendments, we are going to close out consideration of the draft bill and move forward as it relates to specifically the motion that we recommend this draft bill to be sent to the court-appointed monitor.

Again, as we've heard from the attorney that is advising us on this matter, if the council were to take no action, the preliminary injunction would stay in place and it would eventually become a permanent injunction.

And, you know, in the fact that we have unanimously supported an ordinance to ban crowd control weapons in June, it's really important to us that we do not allow a permanent injunction to go into place because of our failure to submit a new version of the bill to the court.

for their consideration.

So, with that, I move that the committee recommend this draft less lethal weapon bill as amended to be sent to the court-appointed monitor and the U.S.

Department of Justice for their review in line with the process described in the consent decree.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Will the court please call the roll?

Sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, closing out debate.

I wanted to have an opportunity to speak to the school bill.

Okay.

Council President Gonzalez.

Uh, thank you so much.

Council Member Herbold.

I'm sorry.

Um, I didn't want to, um, make general comments about the effort here until we were at this point.

So I appreciate an opportunity to take a pause here before we call the roll on, um, the motion before us.

So I appreciate that opportunity.

I want to thank you all for your thoughts and comments on this really important but complex issue related to the regulation of Seattle Police Department's use of less lethal weapons for crowd control management purposes.

The facts that led up to the consideration of this bill, which purports to regulate the Seattle Police Department's use of less lethal weapons to control crowds, are widely available to the public.

And in some instances, members of this council, county council members, and state legislators personally witnessed or experienced the use of less lethal weapons during otherwise peaceful protests.

Seattle Police Department's use of force during last summer's Black Lives Matter protests, in some instances, appeared to me to be excessive, indiscriminate, and an inappropriate escalation of an otherwise peaceful protest.

Indeed, recently completed investigations by the Office of Police Accountability delivered several sustained findings for excessive force for excessive use of force stemming from the department's inability to regulate the use of less lethal weapons during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Collectively, our community and elected leaders witnessed a tremendous failure in the development and implementation of the Seattle Police Department's policies, training, and officer behavior regarding the use of less lethal weapons during last summer's protests.

All this led me to believe that it was necessary for the council to intervene by passing legislation addressing the use of less lethal weapons for controlling protests during the summer of 2020 and beyond.

The motivation was never to be unreasonable here in our policy approaches or to negatively impact public safety as some have speculated.

So I wanted to take the opportunity to be clear about the why from my perspective of pursuing this important policy goal that would reduce the indiscriminate and inappropriate use of less lethal weapons on the people of our city.

My motivation as a civil rights attorney and as a policymaker has always been focused on mitigating against the indiscriminate and inappropriate use of less lethal weapons by police officers during ongoing or future peaceful protests.

It was necessary, I felt, that the council take legislative action to develop and maintain satisfactory policies and protocols in this critical area of policing that has a clear intersection with the civil rights and general safety of our residents who might participate in or be in the area of demonstrations.

We have heard from subject matter experts, including the Seattle Police Department, that in some cases, less lethal weapons while causing harm can be an important de-escalation tactic.

Those same subject matter experts have opined that less lethal weapons were invented so that officers do not use deadly or more serious types of force that would inflict more significant harm.

Again, those same experts have opined that a blanket ban on all less lethal weapons could result in greater uses of force.

So what does that mean for us?

It means that for us, we need to strike as policymakers a balance And we must strike the balance within the newly known information that has come to light via the various civil rights cases that are being litigated right now against the city of Seattle.

And I'm not gonna spend any time highlighting those facts here since Council Member Lewis did a very fine job of thoroughly summarizing and highlighting the developments that have come to light since the consideration and passage of the base ordinance that we are now discussing in this committee.

Unfortunately, the federal court overseeing the consent decree has and will likely continue to question the council's legal authority to pass laws related to how, when, and whether the Seattle Police Department can use force.

That means that the city council is likely going to be hamstrung in our efforts to legislatively regulate use of force when Judge Robar has openly indicated a preference that issues related to use of force be done via the Seattle Police Department's policy development process consistent with past practice as opposed to in these council chambers.

In an ideal world, we could entrust that subject matter experts in the police department would develop satisfactory policies around less lethal weapons.

And we would also have confidence that officers would be well-trained in and adhere to those policies, all while upholding the confidence of the general public in their ability to do so.

But we do not live in an ideal world.

And I continue to hear broad concerns and expressions of loss of trust in the Seattle Police Department's ability to protect the First Amendment rights of the people expressing their views via demonstrations.

Especially when the police itself is the subject of those First Amendment expressions.

I strongly share in those concerns and continue to believe that tear gas does not fit the values of the people of our city.

This perspective is in stark contrast to those that have stated opposition to any restrictions on the police department's use of less lethal weapons or any other kind of force.

I disagree with that perspective.

And as recent as February 3rd, 2021, even the Seattle Police Department acknowledges that these crowd control issues must and should be addressed.

Specifically, Interim Chief Adrian Diaz recently acknowledged this dynamic intention in his blog post of February 3rd, 2021, in which he wrote, quote, summer 2020 presented unimagined challenges.

SPD and the communities we serve must rethink how to work together to ensure the expression of First Amendment rights in a safe and equitable way.

The evolving nature of demonstrations and protest must be accompanied by modulated police responses.

While the council developed this legislation, I understand that the Seattle Police Department promulgated revised use of force policies for the use of less lethal weapons.

Those revised use of force policies will be subject to the same consent decree review that this draft ordinance will be subjected to if this motion passes.

The federal court, Department of Justice, and police monitoring team will review this legislation in the context of those SPD policies, Voting in favor of the motion for review is not, in this instance, a vote on the substance of the policy issues as a final product, but a vote in favor of complying with the consent decree process with the best version of the ordinance that we could advance.

And again, this is an effort to comply with the legal obligations of the consent decree.

In doing so, I want to be clear with the viewing public that I believe that the federal court, Department of Justice, and the police monitoring team will have a strong proclivity to give deference to the Seattle Police Department's promulgated revised policies when doing a side-by-side comparison of the proposals presented by the Seattle Police Department and the council.

And while I support the ongoing development of this legislation, I also acknowledge that based on Judge Robar's comments during last week's status conference hearing, The court is likely to restrict how much the council can put controls on the use of less lethal weapons outside of the consent decree process.

This is consistent with the comments made by Chair Herbold in which she has repeatedly reminded us that because of the consent decree and ongoing monitoring of the city and our police department, the ordinary charter provisions that provides this council complete legislative authority just simply don't apply here.

So after consultation with the Inspector General, the Director of Police Accountability, and considering the CPC's input and input of various use of force subject matter experts, I believe that this legislation is still imperfect and that thorny issues remain unresolved.

That being said, I know there's still much more work to be done on these policies, which will continue to evolve following additional interactions with the court, the accountability entities, and the community at large.

And so as a result, I do intend to support this motion to allow for this version of the legislation to be reviewed within the consent decree process.

and look forward to continuing to work with the chair, with the federal police monitor, with the city attorney's office, and with others on accomplishing ultimately our policy goals, although it may be through the consent decree process and not necessarily through the ordinary legislative process.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Council Member Sawant, I see your hand is raised.

Thank you.

I'll just briefly speak to the final vote here.

This legislation punches massive loopholes into the protections against militarized crowd control weapons being used by the police against peaceful protest movements.

It even removes the ability to enforce the ban on militarized The Council should fight to enact the crowd control weapon ban our movement won last summer, not water it down.

In fact, the Council could just wait for the consent decree to end so the legislation that our movement won, which is currently part of the Seattle Municipal Code, and is only under a temporary injunction can go into effect.

Ultimately, though, the message is, as I said before, for ordinary people to mobilize on the streets in their workplaces and build mass movements independent of the political establishment and the legal system, because these systems are organs of the capitalist state and are not meant to be fighting for ordinary people.

And that's what we have to do.

And for now, I will be voting no on these loopholes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I don't feel the need to close out debate with additional remarks, feel that all the issues have been fully, fully covered.

And again, my interest in moving this draft.

bill forward is not out of belief that it's the perfect bill, the perfect regulation, but I strongly believe that we have a shared interest on this council and with the public, and we have a responsibility to govern and govern under the constraints that we're under and recognize that many of us joined together in asking that the city attorney last summer withdraw the motion to come out from under the consent decree.

And we do not know.

It is an unknowable thing for how long we will be under the consent decree at this point.

So with that, clerk, you please call the roll.

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Sawant.

No.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Four in favor, one opposed.

Thank you, Alex.

The last item on our agenda, again, as I mentioned at the start of the meeting, is being held.

I realize item number three on our agenda.

After the vote on the Seattle Fire Code update, I realized that I did not make a motion or receive a second before I'm asking the clerk to call for the roll call vote.

So Alex, can you again read the short title of Council Bill 119996?

Council Bill 119996, an ordinance related to Seattle's construction codes adopting the 2018 International Fire Code by reference as the Seattle Fire Code, amending certain chapters of and adding new chapters to the Seattle Fire Code, amending sections 3.02.125, 22.600.020, and 22.602.090 of the Seattle Municipal Code, repealing sections one, and 3 through 35 of Ordinance 125138, Section 1 of Ordinance 125392, and Section 1 through 9 of Ordinance 125948, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you, Alex.

I move Council Bill 119996. Can I have a second, please?

Second.

Thank you.

Alex, please call the roll.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you so much.

And with that, if there are no additional comments from my colleagues, the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting is scheduled for February 23rd.

With that, seeing no further comments, we are adjourned.

Thank you so much.