District 1 Community Safety Town Hall

I WANT TO WELCOME ALL OF YOU.

THANK YOU FOR COMING TONIGHT.

THIS MEETING IS REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT TO COUNCILMEMBER SACA, OUR TEAM, THE PANELISTS HERE.

YOU'VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME TO COME HERE, AND WE REALLY APPRECIATE IT.

SO MY NAME IS ELANE IKOMAKO.

I'M THE CHIEF OF STAFF FOR COUNCILMEMBER SACA'S OFFICE.

I'D LIKE TO ALSO INTRODUCE ERIC SCHMIDT.

Some of you know him.

He's our district affairs director.

Spends a lot of time working with you all.

And in the back, we have Logan Dooling.

He is our newest legislative assistant.

He's our office scheduler.

So this is the team.

I'd like to first start thanking Thanking Verica with Neighborhood House, Ella McCray with Seattle Housing Authority.

You all really helped to make this event happen last minute.

It was very late breaking, as you all know, pulling this off together.

I want to also thank the Seattle Channel.

It's our media partner.

They're here tonight.

Now I want to also say it's really important that that will be shown on Seattle channel.

So anyone who has missed this will get to also see and we'll make sure we have the link on our newsletter as well.

OK, so given the lateness in planning this event, I want you all to know that we really tried hard to get some translation in interpreters tonight and we wanted to use the professional ones that are the city vendors and we were just not able to line it up tonight.

So we're very regretful about that.

It does take time to line it up.

So that's one thing I do want to mention.

And also, I'd like to start really clearly what we want to accomplish tonight.

We are focused on three neighborhoods, and you know those neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods have really been experiencing a spate of gun violence.

Now, I want to say a couple things about that.

We know that this is not the first time.

It's been going for a long time in a lot of these neighborhoods, so we acknowledge that.

We just thought that this is the time when it's really hit a point where we really need to bring the community together to discuss this.

Now, the second thing I want to say is that there are other people.

I see some of you from other neighborhoods, which is great.

We are all one big community.

Just know that tonight we're going to focus on the three neighborhoods and the gun violence in particular.

that you might have some similar concerns in your neighborhoods.

We know that.

It's going on throughout the city.

So we're happy to take your questions afterwards, talk to you one-on-one.

Eric and I, we have our cards out front.

You know how to reach us.

We'll continue to connect with you all.

And just tonight, know that that's the focus of our meeting tonight.

For example, you know, some people have said in the online survey that they want to talk more about encampments.

That's great.

We know that those are issues.

But again, we're going to be focusing on a very specific topic affecting the three neighborhoods.

Now our agenda.

Save me some paper here.

This is the agenda lined up on the whiteboard.

A council member has spent a lot of time getting input from constituents.

We spend a lot of time, I know that because I'm in the office every day, we spend all day long getting and trying to respond and doing our best to respond to constituent concerns.

Last week, there was a North Delridge neighborhood meeting, and I want to just commend, I don't know if Doug is here, but a lot of you attended.

Thank you, Doug.

Really pulled off a great meeting.

We got a lot of good information.

I took tons of notes.

We also did an online survey.

Granted, the survey was done pretty quickly.

We've got some really good input from that.

So with that, we have tonight also some of you didn't have a chance to really provide input.

So we have note cards out there.

Please put questions down.

We're going to do our best to call through them, Eric and I, tonight.

We're going to allow us to be able to ask the panelists questions.

Now, the format, if you can see, is that we have the executives here, and thank you very much, and I'll have Council Member talk in a minute.

I don't want to take up too much time here.

They have pre-prepared questions that we got from you all.

So they are going to be prepared to give you the best, most responsive.

And we felt that is the best way to really answer, because we heard it all.

We know what some of the top questions are.

Now, I also want to say that there were a lot of specific, location-specific, really good questions that came through to our office.

I want you all to know this is not a one-off.

We have taken down those questions.

Fortunately, we don't have all the emails, but if you put down a question for us and have the email, we will be looking at those and doing our best to do follow-up.

And finally, I hope I don't have to say this, but I do want to recommend the North Delridge residents group and Doug and the people who pulled that together.

I have to say that that meeting was not only very informative, it was very constructive and it was very respectful.

And I was very, very impressed with Captain Bear and the response.

And why I'm saying that tonight is that that's what we are asking for tonight.

We're asking for just respectful interaction, not interrupting.

We know there's a lot of emotions there.

We just ask for your cooperation.

And I actually am expecting that.

So tonight, this is the format.

We're going to follow it.

And again, like I say, this is not going to be a one off.

And finally, is that just a little bit of housekeeping is that the restrooms are outside and around the corner.

and i think that's all i have to say and let's turn it over to our sponsor who has really led this effort is councilmember rob sacca good evening good evening i am rob sacca and i am your seattle city council member i work for you in city hall

I'm representing District 1, which includes West Seattle, South Park, Soto, Pioneer Square, and Georgetown.

And it is an honor to serve you and represent you.

It's also an honor for me to be able to organize and host this event here tonight.

I want to thank each and every one of you for carving out the time to be here.

You could have been anywhere in the world.

but you chose to be here with us tonight.

For that, I thank you.

Some special acknowledgements and thanks to the Mayor's Office, Chief Public Safety Officer Natalie Walton Anderson, Seattle Police Department Chief Barnes, we have Seattle City Light CEO Don Lindell, and our Seattle Parks Department Superintendent, AP Diaz.

And last but not least, one of my peer elected officials, Councilmember Sarah Nelson, who is our Council President.

You all have me as your sort of primary representative in City Hall on the legislative side.

You also have two city-wides.

One of them is here tonight.

So I want to thank and acknowledge, and in a moment we'll hear from Council President Nelson as well.

So just want to quickly level set on a few quick things.

I think we all understand the basic Civics 101 of government.

But recall earlier, I said, I mentioned, I am your elected representative in City Hall, working in the legislative branch of government.

I am your legislator.

And as your legislator, I have three principal powers, three of them.

The first two are expressed, contained in the charter and our laws.

I write laws and I write checks.

That is my principal authority in representing you.

Now, there's a third implied power.

Right here, we're seeing a tangible embodiment of that.

It's the power of advocacy.

I advocate, me and my office work hard every day, advocating on your behalf, whether you realize it or not.

And I see a few serial emailers in our office.

We work hard.

working to build a responsive, effective government that represents everyone.

So why are we here?

We're here because of a troubling rise in gun violence in three specific neighborhoods.

North Delridge, Snake Hill, and High Point.

Those three neighborhoods.

To be honest, Yes, there is a notable increase in gun violence this year.

I think the data supports that based off of what I've seen.

But if we're being honest, we know that those neighborhoods have experienced gun violence at a rate disproportionately higher than any other neighborhood.

I know that for a fact because I happen to coincidentally live in the neighborhood.

I still remember vividly in 2020, 2021, After the RV encampment was closed on Andover by the pool, some migrated to North Delridge.

And I remember one of my own neighbors describing to me how she heard a man scream out for help after being fatally, immortally wounded, struck by gunfire.

Shootings in these areas are not new, sadly.

And I've received my briefings from the police department and they'll share here today some of the reasons why.

High level gangs and the surrounding neighborhood and environment lends itself to, particularly the greenbelt space, lends itself well to people taking pop shots and shots of opportunity.

And I know the pain that that has caused.

Some of the more recent high-profile incidents in 2025 alone, we had 130 gunshots, 130 gunshots near Cottage Grove Park and Greg Davis Park where children play.

We've had a young child's car seat stricken with gunfire.

And among the other higher profile incidents, we had a child's room where they sleep and rest their heads at night, hit with a bullet.

And I've had the chance to meet many of you all and shake a few hands, give a few fist bumps to some of the youth in our room.

But the youth in our room are exactly why we are here today.

People are fed up.

because when that 130 gunshots incident happened, I seen it.

Again, I'm a neighbor.

My 10-year-old daughter was not yet asleep and came running down the stairs, scared, traumatized.

I honestly had a good faith belief at the time.

I thought it was just fireworks, a lot of them.

And I told her and I assured her, Sweetheart, you are safe, you are okay.

Don't worry, it's just some knuckleheads lighting off fireworks.

And I consoled her.

She eventually went back to sleep.

Then I checked the reports online and learned that it was actually gunfire.

So I went immediately to my son's room, two young boys, woke them up, ages five and six.

and woke them up, excuse me, six and seven, a lot going on.

And they were sleeping peaceably, slept through all the gunfire, and I woke them up for the sole purpose of checking to see if they were safe.

And that is a very specific set of pain and anguish that no parent No member of the community, no grandparent, auntie, uncle, neighbor should ever have to experience.

I want to thank Phil Brandt, I think.

He's right here.

He's the father of the child who had a bullet struck through his car seat.

Again, SPD will share why.

Those are some of the reasons.

But as your council member, I'll tell you the candid truth.

I think what we're seeing in these three neighborhoods in particular are the direct results of historical underinvestment in these neighborhoods.

We have a 27% missing sidewalk gap across the city.

Some of these neighborhoods, especially in Delridge, some of the worst off compared to other parts of my district, street lights don't work.

Broken, they're dim, they're not as good quality compared to other parts of the city, compared to other parts of my own district.

We saw outage maps of the streetlights in High Point in particular.

High concentration of broken streetlights in High Point in particular.

Just want to name that.

These are the facts.

But I want you to know that as your council member, since I've been in office in a year, almost a year and a half now, we've been hard at work trying to right some of those historical wrongs.

For example, just a year and a half, I led the funding and investment to allow, to double the number of sidewalks, of new sidewalks constructed in our city, double the amount the mayor originally proposed, double!

Why?

Because it's the right thing to do.

Securing a guarantee as part of that investment for the city to build at least 350 new sidewalks over the course of the next eight years.

And guaranteeing, guaranteeing at least 22% of those new sidewalks are gonna be constructed right here in District 1. And by the way, because of the, and that, I wrote that into the voter approved transportation levy.

So thank you all for the generous voters for approving that.

And by the way, because of the equity framework that we approved in our recent Seattle transportation plan, District One can expect more than 22%.

That's a floor.

Since I've been in office, also secured a commitment, working collaboratively with our Seattle Department of Transportation, specifically for this neighborhood to ensure 10 blocks of new sidewalks go to these neighborhoods, these three neighborhoods.

10 blocks of new sidewalks in these neighborhoods totaling at least $8 million, including two sidewalks in front of disabled American veterans on Del Ridge, on Hudson Street.

We've done some work, but when we're reminded by When we have kids' car seats getting hit by gunfire, we're humbly reminded that there's plenty more work to do.

Tonight, we're going to announce three things that our executive department leaders are going to expound upon and provide a little more detail, but three new investments that essentially build upon and align with some of the things that I announced in my newsletter from two weeks ago.

Number one, We're gonna deliver, our city is gonna deliver some much needed street light upgrades.

And we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment.

Our Seattle City Light Department in partnership with SDOT gonna make some upgrades and trim some trees around these core areas.

The second thing is our Seattle Police Department team of expert crime prevention experts, they're gonna conduct an analysis of specific hotspots in these three neighborhoods.

They already did Snake Hill last week, I'm told, and gonna come up with a set of recommendations of additional steps.

What more can we do?

Advancing crime prevention through environmental design principles.

SEPTED, if you're curious, I got a briefing, I'll geek out about that stuff.

That's coming.

The third and final thing, parks.

Parks Department.

So the mayor has a, I don't want to spoil the mayor's announcement, but they're hard at work and have a great plan and they're working in partnership with me and other council offices to advance a summer action safety plan for our parks and strategy.

Details will be announced later, but because of the advocacy of me and my office, we're able to add two parks to that list.

Greg Davis and Cottage Grove Park.

And I want to thank the mayor's office for accommodating my request.

I spoke with the mayor just yesterday about this, and we are fully aligned on these issues.

I want you all to know there's a lot of people hard at work to do better as a city for you.

We have $3.1 billion in this room, guys, believe it or not.

Rough math before I arrived.

At least $3.1 billion in this room.

as reflected by the various department heads.

Now, these department heads have direct decision-making responsibility and authority to determine where, when, and how our council investments are spent.

$3.1 billion of decision-making authority in this room at least.

That's 40% of our city budget.

Folks, I want you all from these historically marginalized and historically disadvantaged neighborhoods to normalize that kind of response and that kind of shepherding and marshaling of resources and advocacy because you all deserve it.

And my commitment to you all is no different than my commitment to any other parts of the district or any other parts of the city.

Here to help keep people safe because everyone deserves to feel safe in their own neighborhoods and their own communities.

So thank you all for being here today.

I wanna take a moment to allow my colleague, Council President Nelson, to say a few words and thank you for being here as well.

A little toasty in here.

Hello, everybody.

Thank you so much for being here.

So my name is Sarah Nelson, and I am a citywide council member.

There are two citywide council members, and I'm in position nine.

I was elected, well, I took office in 2022. And I got to admit, it was a little rough the first couple of years coming in as someone who ran to really focus on recovering our city from the pandemic, but also from some years of failed policies.

And so I was elected, was able to do some cool things my first couple of years.

But man, what a difference a new council makes.

Well, first of all, they made me president, so that was pretty cool.

But I have to say that having this new council, we have got a council that is coming to work every single day fully staffed.

They answer the phone.

I brought the legislative department back four days a week.

And this is a supermajority, I would say supermajority or majority pro public safety council.

We have passed, the number gets, you know, it's either 15 or 16 or 17, but let me just say a record number of public safety related bills in our first year, year and a half.

And you might think, well, what good is that?

Well, it only matters if you're feeling a difference in your daily lives.

And I will say that, you know, we've got a ways to go, but we did reverse for the first time since 2019, the trend of losing more officers than we can hire.

And that's significant.

That was a net positive of one last year.

But still, we'll take it, right?

And you might have read the news that we're hiring even more, 500% increase up to this year.

So our efforts are bearing fruit, like I said.

But it only matters if you feel a difference in your daily lives.

Public safety isn't just about, though, guns and a badge.

You have a badge, badged up and guns and stuff like that, but I'm going to need a stretcher pretty soon.

It's also about, in my opinion, it's also about the drug crisis, the fentanyl epidemic.

It's about addiction.

Now, I have a bias towards seeing that all the time in policy and focusing on it because I myself am in recovery, but you don't need to be in recovery to have a sense that the that drugs and addiction is inextricably linked to both our chronic homelessness crisis and our public safety crisis.

So that's what we've been focused on a lot, or at least I have getting more access to different kinds of treatment.

That's complicated in itself, but I love this more simple things.

It's things like what you have done, Councilmember Saka.

really focusing on street racing in the city attorney's office and the mayor's office.

Focusing on street racing, that doesn't just harm people potentially in the roadway, but it also creates an environment where troublemaking can happen.

It's also lighting.

Things that are so simple that can discourage bad behavior, let's just say.

And so what I want to say is that you got the sort of the schoolhouse rock version of how government works, you know, council passes the laws, the mayor implements, et cetera.

Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back at all.

Far from it.

We're just getting started.

I know that you could go home and see that something was stolen out of your front yard.

It's everybody's individual experience.

So we are not patting ourselves on the back.

This is a moment for humility.

And it's also a moment of working together with the other side of the schoolhouse.

And I have to say that this is an opportunity now that there is an alignment.

And I go way back because I worked for Councilmember Richard Conlon starting in 2002 to 2013 with the small gap there to start my family business.

It is rare that the council and the executive get along so well and that we are aligned so well.

For years, over Murray's administration, Jenny Durkin's administration, There wasn't a great alliance between council and the executive.

So I am trying to say that we have an opportunity and it only works if we are told what to do because we represent you, council does, and make the most of it.

Be heard.

You cannot write off council anymore as really not paying attention or focused on public safety.

We are focused on public safety in every form of public safety we're talking about.

traditional community crisis response and everything having to do with how we deliver basic services.

It all comes down to creating a safer, more livable city for everybody.

So I just want to say that that's my focus, which is everything.

But in any case, your voice gives our action legitimacy.

That's what we're supposed to do is follow what you say.

So be heard and we'll work with you.

Thank you, Council President.

And at this moment, I want to take the opportunity to pass the baton, the mic, so to speak, to my distinguished guests.

I think, I hope one of the takeaways from all this is like we are here in lockstep.

There are so many dependencies and partnerships.

We're here to solve these issues on your behalf for the benefit of everyone.

So this is Chief Public Safety Officer Natalie Walton Anderson.

Please pass the mic down the line when you're done.

Natalie Walton Anderson Good evening, everyone.

Can you hear me?

Would it be better for me to stand?

Okay, I can stand.

I think first of all, thank you Councilmember Saka for convening this group.

The first thing I wanna say just briefly is that this is my district.

I've lived in West Seattle for approximately 20 years and this area in particular, in terms of High Point, Del Ridge, I have three boys and they play basketball.

And so safety in every neighborhood is incredibly important.

But this neighborhood, this area of West Seattle is deeply personable to me.

And I'm struck again by the demonstrative demonstrative car seat that has a bullet here.

And so I just, I want you all to know that this work is deeply personal.

And when we're talking about violence in our community and our neighborhood, it affects all of us, including our children.

And so I just wanted to start with that.

I am the mayor's chief public safety officer, and I, like Councilmember Saka said, I am here to serve all of you, and I have been in public service in some realm in terms of the criminal legal field for the last 28 years.

This is not easy work or challenging work, but I am happy to be here in this work because my job is to work, my goal is to work myself out of a job where we have crime eradicated, and we are obviously, as Council President Nelson said, we are not there yet, and this is not the time to step off the gas.

the mayor's top priority is public safety he wants every single neighborhood in Seattle to be safe for the residents that are there for the people that visit for the people that go to and from work and so that is his top priority and I want to make sure that that is known because there are short-term and long-term actions that we can do and we are in the process of doing and you'll hear a little bit about that tonight, that we can do to improve public safety.

The mayor has said that public safety is every single department's responsibility, and I think I say that almost on a daily basis.

The One Seattle approach is not just a punchline, it is truly how we are all working together.

We take council member feedback, constituent feedback, and turn that into some action plan to say, what can we do to address that now and with urgency?

So I just wanted to share a little bit about some of the things that we're doing together to work together to really push and provide what we can do in the moment now urgently as we continue to rebuild and work on long-term strategies to address public safety.

I think first of all, and you're going to hear from many of our department heads and leads soon, but the first thing I want to say is The one thing I'm very much proud of in this role that I've been in for 10 months is the ability to recruit and hire our new police chief, Chief Sean Barnes, who you'll be hearing from lately.

And there are many members of the Seattle Police Department that are here, and there are many members of other departments that are here.

And we truly are working in the same direction and rowing in the same direction, as the council said, to ensure that public safety is all of our focus and we are working with urgency.

um the mayor released in october his uh one seattle restoration framework and it laid out six strategies of what is the priority here the first one and i know that this is one of the reasons why we are all here is to reduce gun violence and we're going to be hearing specifically from chief barnes and some key members of the seattle police department that do this work tirelessly sometimes 24 hours a day straight for weeks on an end to really address and figure out how we can solve cases and address gun violence shortly.

But that is one of the mayor's top priorities in this one Seattle restoration framework.

The other one is to prevent and reduce high impact crime and the other one is to respond to 911 calls effectively.

I want to call out when we have things that we can work on.

I've heard from many of you in this room and in other parts of Seattle where they say I call 911 or the non-emergency line and I am on hold or I don't have a response and that is something that we are tirelessly working on currently.

I just went to visit the 911 center where I went to all three roll calls at 7, 3, and 11 p.m., and there is a new class of call takers.

For almost the last year, the 911 care center has been working on hiring.

Hiring was key.

We lost a lot of people, not just officers in 2020, but we also lost a lot of call takers and dispatchers.

More than half of the call takers have been and working for less than two years.

So we are constantly looking at data and we are constantly looking at call times and working to improve that.

Our care chief is not here tonight, but that is something that we are looking at.

I look at the data every week to what comes to make sure that we are actually making improvements.

We have this class to hire and there are a few more positions before we are fully staffed up for 911. So I'm just going to say on behalf of all of us here, please call 911. If you are unclear if it's an emergency, please call 911. The call takers and dispatchers are trained to identify what is a true emergency and what is not a non-emergency.

So if you have doubt, please call 911. You can text 911. But we need you to report and we need that data and that follow through.

So that's one thing I can just say.

The other piece, of course, is confronting the opioid crisis.

A lot of the activity that is in this area, and we've been with Councilmember Saka in this district addressing, trying to address the RV issue.

And there's a lot of behavior that comes from those RVs.

Drug trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation trafficking, visual disorder, theft, property crime, We are working diligently to come up with a short-term and long-term solution, and we are joined by that by, again, all of the departments and SPD to come up with some short-term and long-term solutions to address some of our problematic RVs there.

But one of the biggest issues is obviously the opioid crisis that has hit our city and hit our region and hit our country.

And so we have to get to the underlying issues of that while we still try to address things in the short-term and long-term.

Tackling the root cause of violence and also trying to activate and enhance our neighborhoods is key.

Councilmember Saka mentioned CPTED, crime prevention through design.

There are ways that we can address environments right now.

And some of you have talked about that.

The lighting is one.

And I know that Don, our CEO of City Light, is going to talk about that.

Tree trimming.

We have our SDOT representatives here.

How can we address the parking issues?

All of those things we are doing together.

So when you raise those concerns, those are things that we can actually do to address the environment, to make it less inviting to those that would engage in crime.

And it is something that does work.

So we're working on that as well.

The other thing is that our police force, as Chief Barnes will say, we are a thousand strong.

And as Councilmember Nelson said, it is the alignment of both the mayor's office, city council, the city attorney's office, all of our departments that the new contract that was signed, where we have seen And we are on trend to hire more than we've budgeted for, but please do not worry.

The mayor has said we will pay and we will find the budget to hire all the officers that we need and what the chief needs and SPD needs.

What I want to say there is that is one of many strategies that we need to address crime because we cannot rely on SPD alone.

In terms of hiring, we also need to retain our officers, and I thank many of the people here in this community that reach out to specifically our Southwest Precinct on a regular basis to thank them.

So I just want to share with you some of the things that we are working on there.

In terms of technology, we have our real-time crime center, and we are currently hiring up for that.

We have our automatic license plate readers on a lot of our patrol cars.

And that has led to the apprehension of a homicide suspect, hit and run.

Those are technologies that are really going to help, especially as we continue to staff up, to address crime, including our gun violence.

So there are many things that we are working on in terms of the mayor's office, and I really want to just kind of highlight a few of those before I pass this on to Chief Barnes.

I also want to thank all of you that have come out from the community.

Seeing you out here means that you care about our community.

you have there are challenges that we urgently need to address and we don't want to stop hearing from you and we don't want to stop hearing the feedback so please share that that's why we're here if everything was okay we wouldn't be here but please please continue to share that i know it's frustrating we are rebuilding we are revitalizing and we are moving forward and there is hope And it's difficult when we have setbacks, such as has been demonstrated with some of the recent gun violence that has been in this community.

But just know that we are working tirelessly to try and address that.

And we know that more is needed.

So thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and pass that on to Chief Barnes.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

Thank you for being here.

My name is Sean Barnes and I have the pleasure of being a public servant.

I have the pleasure of working for one of the finest police departments in the country, the Seattle Police Department.

I want to thank you all for taking time to be here, to be concerned citizens, to be concerned community members, to be a part of what one of our priorities that we set, which is community engagement, community partnerships.

I certainly want to thank Councilmember Saka for putting this together and for that great civics lesson.

I appreciate that.

As someone who's a former history teacher, see I taught high school, I was checking you.

He was on point, so I think he's good.

So I wanted to say thank you for being here and to my distinguished panel.

I also want to thank the men and women of the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you for being here at Southwest Precinct.

It does an amazing job.

Thank you.

I know that you care about this community.

I know you care about the people that you serve.

I know that I get on your nerves from time to time, Captain, but you're so gracious whenever I call and we have Zooms or Teams.

But I know you can handle it, and I have full faith and confidence in you, and I want to let you know that in front of everybody right now.

No one deserves to live in a community and feel unsafe or be unsafe.

I got into policing because I truly believe that.

But once I got into policing and started learning actually how to do that, I found that the answer is quite simple.

We have to work together in partnerships.

I found out early on in my career that the police are the tip of the spear when it comes to public safety, but we're not the entire sphere.

The most important part is the community and how we support each other.

I learned through 25 years of policing that there are a lot of things that have gone and come when it comes to public safety, but one thing that has held constant is that we have to be committed to working together to solve our problems.

We see each other as allies and as part of the solution and not part of the problem.

So let's talk about ongoing challenges that we're seeing not only in the Southwest Precinct, but in Seattle and in our country.

That is young people with guns, indiscriminately firing guns, making victims out of people, and making people feel unsafe.

Now, me and Phil talked before this, and he gave me permission I told you I was going to do this, and I was going to say that I'm sorry for what happened to you.

You joined a group that you should not be a part of, and that's someone who has experienced or been affected by gun violence.

And we agreed that we're going to work together, we're going to listen to each other, and we're going to talk about what we can do to make sure that no one else has to go through that.

So I wanted to acknowledge you because we said we're going to do that.

Immediately after we saw this increase in gun violence, there are some things that we changed, and I want to talk about those, because I'm going to talk about action.

The first thing, obviously, is that we increased patrols.

And not just increased patrols randomly, but specifically.

We call them directed patrols.

And what we're aiming for, what we're aiming for is 20 minutes of every hour of directed patrol in the areas that we mentioned earlier.

We call those KOPER patrols because what we know is if we can do that, we normally get about an hour to an hour and a half of efficacy and then we have to return.

So not only are we doing directed patrols, but we're trying to measure the effects of those so that the resources that we have can be properly distributed.

Usually, it's been my experience that some communities, they say, you have a problem, we're gonna increase patrols.

What does that mean?

What does that mean for anyone?

We're not going to do that here.

We're going to be very specific and strategic and laser focused in how we deploy our officers who are being proactive.

Because there's a difference between officers who are riding through your neighborhood on the way to something else, and that's important too, and those officers that are specifically assigned to ensure that crime and disorder does not happen in your neighborhood.

And that was the first thing that we did.

We're trying to measure for that.

The second thing that we did was I authorized some overtime so officers can come together with the supervisor and do what we call gun violence reduction units.

In the spirit of transparency, that's voluntary, and we haven't seen the number of officers that we would like to, but we're not going to give up on that.

There's a lot of competition for our resources, but we're not going to give up on that.

We authorize that, and that is an option.

And so the captain can solicit volunteers from her group to come in on overtime and proactively police your areas or patrol your areas to prevent people who may be looking to do damage to other people in their property.

So that's very important.

The second thing or the third thing that we did was we increased the number of gun violence meetings we had from one to two.

We're having one meeting on a Thursday to talk about what we may see on the weekend.

We increased that to two.

So we have a meeting now.

on monday to talk about what we may have seen over the weekend we need information we have to figure out why this is happening we have to figure out if there is intended targets or it's just indiscriminately firing off weapons what is going on we can't do that if we're not communicating so one of the things that i'm very proud of with this police department is that we are sharing information and there are no silos We come together as one.

We have partners from across the criminal justice spectrum, from the district attorney's office, from our federal folks, from our crime scene investigators.

We're looking at shell casings, trying to match those to other shootings to see if we can find a connection, because we have to be able to connect the dots.

And we're doing that on a daily basis, but with two strategic meetings every week.

And I'm very proud of that.

The second thing that was mentioned is we do have a real-time crime center that's coming up now.

I think the official grand opening is on the 20th.

That's a big part of our strategy because at some point we do want to have cameras in your areas, but we also have a program where you can register your cameras with us.

So if you have a ring camera or surveillance camera on your home or your business, We will know where that is.

So if there is an incident of shots being fired or someone sees something that doesn't look right, we can ask for your permission to see if we can narrow it down to determine who may be responsible.

Because the truth of the matter is we want to prevent people from gun violence, but we also want to hold people accountable who want to hurt other people.

And we can't do that without information.

And so that's one of the things that we're certainly looking forward to doing.

One of the things that we're also looking at is noise detection, which is some software and some equipment that we can deploy as a pilot to determine noise levels to see if that is indicative of when we're going to see violence, see if it's indicative of we can predict if there is parties or people are hanging out with their cars or whatever it may be, to see what comes next.

And so what we're trying to do is use every tool available to us to, number one, to see if it's a good fit for Southwest, if it's a good fit for Seattle, and to see if we can do something to prevent gun violence.

The next thing that we're doing is we are implementing our crime reduction plan.

It's called Seattle-centric policing, and I'll give you probably the 30,000-foot overview of that.

But we're going to be looking at how crime behaves in each precinct we're going to be identifying things that are significant to you your captain will be doing that we're going to be looking at things that are repeat calls repeat places so we know where to put our officers and be more strategic about preventing things and then we're going to look at things that may be a pattern And so the idea is if you can figure out when do patterns start, you can also figure out when to stop patterns.

And that's what we're going to be doing on a daily, daily basis.

Crime analysis will come in, and when the captain gets in, she'll have information about what has happened, and we'll look at that as it collects to see if we're seeing a pattern.

We have to get better, we will be better at understanding how crime operates in each of our precincts.

I think we have the captains that are certainly willing and they have all the tools.

My job is to give them the tools that they need in order to be successful and to hold them accountable.

Lastly, what can you do?

We need you to be to help us be our eyes and our ears.

If you see something that looks suspicious, we need you to call 911 first, right?

We need you to call 911 first.

I know that you all have relationships with our officers, with our precincts, but the phones are not always manned, and that's something that we can certainly do a better job of.

But some of you have relationships with officers, and I love that, but I can't make them work all the time.

And sometimes they take off and you're calling them and you want to tell them what you saw and they can't answer.

And I know that's frustrating because you want to be a good partner and I appreciate that.

But if you would just call 911 first so we can start tracking when and where we're seeing problems, it helps us be more proactive at that.

And that's what we're encouraging.

So just in summary, we will be increasing directed patrols.

These are proactive directed patrols where officers are not subject to leaving because there is a call for service.

We're going to make sure that our real-time crime center can work for you just like it works for every other part of the city.

We're going to be tracking with data things that may be a pattern that may be indicative of other things.

We're talking to each other now.

We're having meetings, trying to understand why this has happened.

And then the last thing that I will say before I pass the mic is we know that some of the people involved are young people.

And I really mean it when I say it takes a village to raise a child.

Most of you have heard me say that before.

But you've also heard me say that it takes a village to raise a child, but the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down just to fill its warmth.

It's the second part of that.

And what I mean by that is if you have an opportunity to embrace someone that's younger than you, if you have an opportunity to embrace one of these young folks, if you have an opportunity to give someone a part-time job or to be a mentor, please do that.

Please do that because you could be changing someone's life just like someone changed mine a long time ago.

Thank you.

Thank you Chief and good evening.

I'm Dawn Lindell and I am the CEO for Seattle City Light.

And I'm always inspired when I come to these just by the people that I get to listen to that help remind me how proud I am to work for this city and to try to make a difference here.

I wanna thank you for inviting me here into your home and I welcome the feedback and appreciate the opportunity to share some information with you.

So I'm really passionate about electricity.

And so I'm in the right job.

And I think it's really, really vital to almost everything that we do.

We literally keep the lights on.

I know not all the time.

And I know not as well as you would like.

But we do work very hard to keep the lights on.

But to keep that power flowing that really underlies everything we do at home and at work, almost everything.

If you have a phone, it doesn't work if you don't charge it.

If you want to watch a show, you can't do that if you don't have electricity.

And for most of us, with the work that we do, that requires that as well.

It's really, really a critical role, even if it's generally a quiet role.

And I want to acknowledge my team members who are here.

These folks, when we are, when it's bitterly cold and storming, these folks are out in it to help restore that power.

So if you work for City Light, can you give me, raise your hand here and so we can just say thank you.

So let's talk a little bit more about street lights, which is key to public safety.

City Light maintains about 90,000 street lights and at any one time, I'm embarrassed to tell you, we have thousands out and they're all over the city.

We work very hard to restore those as quickly as we can and sometimes that works and sometimes somebody steals the wire right out of them within a few days and they're right back out.

So I wanna talk a little bit about what we see here on this side of town.

In terms of total District 1 Streetlight stats, we have repaired since January of 2024, so in the last, what is that, five and 12, 17 months, 501 different instances of a Streetlight being out.

We've got 179 that are out right now.

The neighborhoods with the highest amount of street lights that have gone out are High Point, Alki, and North Admiral.

The neighborhoods that have the most currently out are North Delridge and Highland Park.

So I just, I wanted you to get a feel for what that looks like because again, it is something that happens all over.

But I have some good news.

One of the asks by Council Member Saka, who I think is just great, he asked, can we do something in terms of helping to brighten up the street lights and provide more light with the street lights that we have and the answer to that is yes so right now we are preparing to upgrade existing residential grade street lights on southwest brandon street between 26th avenue southwest and 30th avenue southwest So what does that look like?

Well, we're going to put in 10 longer bracket arms with higher output arterial grade luminaires.

So what does that mean?

It means that it's going to be 135 watt LEDs instead of the 52 watt LEDs that are in there now.

AND THEY'LL BE DESIGNED TO SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE NIGHTTIME VISIBILITY IN THE IN THAT PARTICULAR RESIDENTIAL STRETCH.

SO COUNCIL MEMBER SOCKA BEING THE ACCOUNTABILITY GUY THAT HE IS ASKED ME FOR DATES AND SO WE HAVE THOSE DATES.

THE WORK ORDER WILL BE ISSUED BY MAY 30TH.

Beginning June 2nd through June 6th, we are going to trim trees along Brandon Street to provide clearance for the street light improvement work.

And then by June 13th, oops, wrong page.

By June 13th, we will have the extended bracket arms in, which will broaden the light coverage, and we will have those luminaires replaced.

So those are the dates that we've got that work planned for.

With the installation of the brighter luminaires and the vegetation management, we achieve the lighting goal without having to raise the streetlight height.

And that's important.

I will tell you, Mike Haynes, who is my number one, he's the chief operating officer right here, when we got the ask from Councilmember Saka, he was in his vehicle driving over in the night to see what it looked like.

And in the day to take a look at, Is it possible for us to raise those lights?

Because we wanted to see about the suggestion.

But knowing the ultimate goal, I believe we found a way to meet it without causing an engineering issue.

When there's overhead wiring, it becomes very dangerous to have anything that comes close to that wiring, especially metal, conductive metal.

The power is contained in those lines, but only loosely contained.

And it can leap out of those lines and go to another source to ground.

And so we want to keep everything as safe as we can.

Also, we want to keep the tree canopy.

It's beautiful and it provides the shade and the cooling in the summer.

And so that also provides some challenges with lifting those.

But again, I think we found a solution.

Awesome work engineering and we've got no engineering quietly sitting here Andy behind Mike who leads the group working on that we had a couple of other questions come in and that I wanted to address those and one is how is Seattle City light prioritizing areas for improved lighting especially in neighborhoods with high crime rates So what we do is we triage the street, the streetlight outages based on public safety impact, geographic concentration and the ability of crews to take actions.

So we work with our partners at SDOT and at parks.

um to identify the areas where more attention and evaluation is needed and that's because nothing is ever simple and at seattle city light we take care of a lot of street lights but we don't take care of all of them those that are in the parks are managed by the parks those that are on more main arterials are managed by s dot those that are on the really big arterials are managed by wash dot So if you have a street light issue, we can help you find the right group to solve that if it isn't us.

And we're working really hard to partner well.

I think that's important to all of us to make sure we get these taken care of.

So this targeted approach with the triaging ensures that the most critical and ready-to-complete work is addressed first.

while longer or non-actionable tickets may wait.

So let me explain that.

When we get a request in for a street light that's out, it's marked as green.

We use green, yellow, red.

So green means go out, check on it, and replace the bulb if you can.

And most of them, that takes care of most of them.

We go to yellow when we have parts missing, there's an engineering problem with them, and we've gotta do a longer fix.

We go to red when we've gotta completely rewire.

And unfortunately, that is our biggest issue is the theft of the wire.

So we have gone out and we have worked with recycling, yeah, recycling owners to say, don't take the wire.

Like you paid for the wire.

That's in sending them to steal it.

So we'd like you not to do that, call us.

And so we've got some that are doing that and we've got others that we haven't had as good of luck with in getting them to stop buying that.

But that's one approach that we're taking to do that.

Also, by the way, those lights that we are replacing, I want to let you know we are going to have to rewire because of age in some of that area.

We will do our best to let you know and take an outage that you're aware of to do that, and that will be coming up.

The second question of two, so not very much longer here.

The second question of two is?

All right, I've lost the second question.

Oh, here it is, sorry.

Can you provide a timeline for the most critical improvements in High Point, Snake Hill, and North Delridge?

And that's that piece I talked about first, so you've got the timeline as well.

And with that, I think I'll stop talking just to give people some more time, so.

Thank you so much, Chief Lindell and Chief Barnes and Chief Anderson.

I'm following three chiefs here in a row, but I am your parks superintendent.

I'm blessed to lead a cadre and a department that is so community facing and so integral to the life of Seattleites.

People in Seattle love their parks, and I think you all adore and love your parks.

And the challenge that comes in the provision of public space comes to light in public parks.

It is a blessing and a challenge to have 500 parks in the city of Seattle.

That's tremendous.

That says a lot about our initial founding and our dedication, our love of open space in the environment that we have provided and thought and dedicated 500 spots and places to be dedicated parkland, which means they can never be developed for any other purpose than a park purpose.

And that's wonderful.

And we use our parks.

Some of us in this room and some of our community members use their parks as their front yards and their backyards.

The sites of children's parties, weddings, engagement proposals, children's events.

In fact, one of our biggest markers in our park department occurred this last Sunday.

So Mother's Day is one of our sort of park countdowns where we know that by Mother's Day we're going to have hopefully a little bit of better weather, although Seattle likes to surprise us with the fake springs.

But we know people will be generally filling our parks at Mother's Day, and so we prepare for that milestone each year, surge cleaning, preparation, maintenance, getting ready so that you can enjoy your parks.

And it dawned on me when we were talking about all of these other things, and you heard about the summer safety plan, which I'll talk a little bit as it relates to parks, that we use a lot of milestones in the city as it relates to parks.

And we'll push out on social media.

Oh, 31 more days until 9 o'clock?

sunsets or, right?

Two more weeks till Mother's Day, parks are going to be filled.

Summer solstice at 0 o'clock PM, right?

We know these things.

Yet I know you and community think, hmm, 31 more days till loud parties.

31 more days to more vandalism, shootings, loud music.

Rowdiness, parks being overrun with good behavior and not so great behavior.

So when the sun comes out, we know that people are gonna recreate in positive ways, but also, unfortunately, in negative ways.

But it shouldn't take us year after year to realize that these markers are gonna come.

So what can we do about it?

When I first got here, we were doing a lot of pilot programs.

Let's pilot these new hours at this one boat ramp.

Let's maybe go out and have a meeting about should we change the hours.

Okay, well, let's make it temporary because some people might.

Okay, well, let's go back in a couple of months.

We went through about.

four iterations of pilots and meetings in true Seattle fashion, right?

Let's not make a decision, even when common sense is sometimes staring us right in the face.

And so I think the things that Council President Nelson were talking about and the other members here is that we have to come together with common sense approach to government.

That's what you expect of us, especially in Seattle.

We're known for being innovative and smart and talented and resourcefulness, but why cannot we make, cannot we make?

Why can't we make sometimes these simple choices to improve the quality of life?

And when it's happening in your backyard, we all know at this table what that means to you.

We have big departments and portfolios and we're focused on every part of the city trying to do our very best.

But at the end of the day, what matters to you are the neighborhoods that we're talking about.

So we'll focus on that right now because that's your backyard and that's your living room.

And also in the spirit of one Seattle, you know, when I look around this room and I look at the people in the room, I work with some great colleagues in this room and they all have titles and names.

But to me, They're Dawn and Catherine and Jennifer, Eric, Natalie, Sarah, Jasmine, Mike, because they're colleagues.

Rodney I can call them when I need collaboration they can call me and we can strategize and figure out together how we're going to solve things and come together and do common sense approach so in the spirit of common sense approach and we were talking about and Chief Anderson has been stewarding this for the mayor in partnership with the council and other people at this table to come together with a summer safety plan We know things are going to happen, so let's prepare and act on it.

So some of the things that we're doing, we're coming together to enforce some new strategies to law enforcement.

You heard about CPTED.

There's many different things that we can do.

Lighting is so key.

Keeping even your own home lit up at night is so important, right?

Because the broken windows theory, as Chief Barnes knows, tells us that if you let one thing go, other things will follow.

One light is broken on a street, sends a message.

Graffiti shows up, it's not painted over, eradicated, sends another message.

Pretty soon places and spaces become, oh, it's that street, don't go there.

For you and I, we say don't go there, so we don't go there.

But other people say, great, let's go there, because people won't be there and we can do things that we shouldn't be doing, right?

So it's really important to illuminate and come together and patrol and do some law enforcement with our community partners.

It's OK to say law enforcement, too.

I was told when I first came here, oh, you shouldn't say that word in Seattle.

It's not a bad word.

Law is not a bad word.

Enforcement is not a bad word if they're done right and correctly.

We have very smart, talented leadership in this room who have been doing this work for a long time.

We may not always get it right.

But we're committed to do the things that are right, because that's the expectation.

So it's OK to be have public safety partners, law enforcement partners, and to come up with common sense approach.

OK, what are they, Superintendent?

One of the things that we're going to be doing is adjusting our hours.

That's something that I can do under my authority as the park superintendent.

And so I can scale back in some of our most problematic areas, reduce the hours.

There's very generous hours in Seattle because sometimes it is light until late.

People like to be in the park doing good things, being with family, running, exercising, having picnics, all the fun things we want to do in parks.

So we like to allow citizens to do that.

But in our most problematic areas, that's informed by crime and calls for service, which is why it's so important.

Almost everybody up here has said, please call in those calls for service.

Even if you think in your mind, well, no one's going to come, or no one's going to answer the phone right now, or what's the point, there is a point.

We use that data.

so that when I call the captain or I call the chief or I call the mayor's office, we can pull the numbers and say, You're right, we need to put attention here.

So we need that information and data.

And because of that, We know at certain locations, particularly in West Seattle, around the water, boat ramps, viewpoint areas, we know those are gonna be problematic.

So we're rolling back the hours and closing the parks from 10.30 until four in the morning, allowing early morning for boats and other things that need to take place.

We're also installed gates at certain locations, as you know.

Just like copper wire theft, people also love to break our gates RAM our gates, break the locks, steal the stuff, doesn't mean it's going to deter us.

It means it's just going to take some time and more resources.

So know that if you think and see, well, why isn't there a gate there?

They said there was going to be a gate there.

Chances are that gate might have been broken, busted, torn out, ripped out.

So we're coming up with new strategies, but we're going to keep on it because there are parks.

Clearly, we can't be at every location 24 hours in the park.

but where we can focus together we will do that so that's one strategy to then allow our police department to come in we have revised coordination agreements with them to do extra enforcement patrol and work with our park rangers to get data and information so that they can respond in the manner that Chief Barnes was talking about and do directed patrols and get to areas where needed informed by data from community.

That's really key and it's really important.

So new agreements, new directed patrols, collaboration with our park rangers, reduced parked hours, increased gates at locations where feasible are some of the strategies of our summer safety plan that we're putting in place.

We're putting them in place in other parts of the city, too, though, but I know we're focused on West Seattle, Best Seattle, and so to be Best Seattle, we really need to come together, and that's what we're doing.

And so, and I just want to, again, I want to thank all of the hardworking folks at Parks and Recreation.

They work all the time.

Day and night, early hours, late hours, rainy days, cold days, they're out there.

And it's no loss to me that you as community entrust us with your most precious cargo, and I remind our staff of that every single time.

You entrust us with your children every single day.

That's an awesome responsibility.

But you also have an expectation that you're peers yourself are going to be safe in parks that your elders are going to be safe in parks right so we get that all of those people that I just named by their first name we get that we're committed to making this better and I just want to end on one note we talked about this at the last town hall where we were unfortunately called together with gun violence and I would be remiss if I did not say again we're going to keep trying but here's where we need community voice and action to keep pressure on your representatives in Olympia.

It is still legal.

It is not illegal to bring a gun into a community center, into a teen life center, into a park site.

every year it gets up there and every year it's pulled and so we with fanfare we applaud yes now you cannot bring a gun into an aquarium cannot bring a gun into a library cannot bring a gun of course into a hospital or a school all make sense common sense right but parks community centers teen life centers as we know in this community Right?

There's been a shooting.

So please, please help us in that effort to make this community safer.

Thank you, thank you for loving your parts.

Oh, man.

Old man syndrome.

I think I stood up too soon.

So first off, let me just quickly talk about gun violence and some solutions.

I want to just make clear that the comments you just heard, those were directly responsive to some community questions that we pulled together, curated, and provided them directly.

A few of them, including CEO Lindell, were very express about the questions that they addressed.

But every last person up here, whether you understood it or not, was responding, sharing out their work of their respective organizations.

that were directly in line and responsive to the community questions we received.

Gun violence, I want to acknowledge Seattle's first homicide in 2024 when I first took office.

We're in High Point right now.

High Point has a lot of thriving mixed income community.

Proud to be a neighbor down Snake Hill and Delridge.

Vibrant immigrant and refugee community, particularly Folks from Africa, in East Africa.

And as the son of a Nigerian immigrant, I know firsthand the immigrant struggle.

The most difficult time and experience for me since being in office in a year and a half as your council member, Seattle's first homicide victim in 2024 was 15-year-old Mubarak Adam.

Lived right here in the neighborhood.

Went to Chief Sealth International High School.

And he was murdered, tragically lost his life at the Teen Life Center right across the street from Chief Self.

And the most difficult moment that I've had so far was joining the mayor and a few others and visit the grieving mother and family of the late Mubarak in their home.

and explaining to them what we're doing as a city, how we're committed to doing better, the status of the investigation, et cetera.

These issues keep me up at night, just like this.

Keeps me up at night, I experience it too.

Anyways, I wanna pivot, allow our Department of Neighborhoods, these are three neighborhoods, they're all connected.

Snake Hill connects High Point and Delridge And so I wanna quickly introduce Director Chow to allow her to talk a little bit about their department's efforts and how they can best serve you.

We are all here at the end of the day to serve you.

Director Chow.

Thank you so much.

I'm gonna try to do this without my reading glasses.

As we all get older, our body fights it.

So, oh, I would try, but thank you, Elaine.

So I just first wanna just say thank you, Councilmember Saka, for the opportunity to be in community.

This is what we live and breathe for as public servants, right, is to serve you.

And we know for sure the Department of Neighborhoods does not exist without community because that is why the Department of Neighborhoods was created.

It was for community engagement, for civic engagement.

It was created to make sure that people were connected to government for access and resources and that neighbors would be connected to each other because we know that thriving communities create and result in safe neighborhoods.

So that's how it starts and I just want to thank you again for this opportunity and Councilmember, Council President Nelson for supporting collaboration through the One Seattle approach.

As Chief Barnes mentioned, it does take a village and this village requires a large ecosystem and that includes our community-based organizations, our neighbors, our small businesses, our families, our government, right?

That includes the city, the state, and the county.

So with that, I got a question.

And before I get that, it actually goes right along with what is Department of Neighborhoods doing in connection and partnering with community-based organizations to make sure that there is longevity and sustainability in supporting the community for young children and for young people because that is the generation to come.

So before I go there, I just want to share that This work is really close to my heart and this calling for this role is really purposeful for me.

I also worked at Neighborhood House at the Green Bridge site before I joined the city in 2009. Gun violence is also personal because I've lost family members to gun violence at White Center when my family lived there.

And that is a neighboring community to West Seattle and to South Park in this area.

So with that said, I just wanna share that again, the department neighborhoods value relationships.

We don't know how to move without it.

We rely on community.

We have to co-create with community because community-forged solutions are the ones that know.

But we also have to resource you enough, and we're not just talking about financially, we're talking about our time, we're talking about relationships, we're talking about trust.

And that has to be sustained.

And that also means an honest conversation about what we can and cannot do.

so that you know then the power of community, right, of gathering together and knowing that if we need to gather resources, how we can support one another, what the government can provide, and that what you all can do if that is the case that the government can't provide the resources that you may all need, but that the solutions is right here in this room.

Right, when we say it takes a village, we took care of each other.

In my community, when I was born in Thailand and came here as an immigrant, my auntie and uncles were not my blood relatives, they were my neighbors.

Right, so that means all of us.

So it's not just positionality, right, it means relationship.

So Department of Neighborhoods has a large and active presence in D1.

Our works intersects with a lot of city departments.

Again, as I mentioned, we were created for civic engagement to support our department partners and our community.

With that, we have granting programs called the Neighborhood Matching Fund and Food Equity Fund.

I think folks are familiar.

These are some of the community-based organizations that the question asked about how are we partnering, so I'll name a few.

And I know this is not, it's a limited list.

There's many more.

But I know that we have supported the West Seattle Junction Association, the Highland Park Improvement Club, Duwamish Tribal Services, and forgive me if I misread this, Alimentando al Pueblo.

African Community Housing and Development, South Park Senior Citizens, Southwest Teen Life Center, White Center Food Bank, and Via Cominitaria.

They have led, community led work that we have supported through grants.

And I think the most powerful is our community engagement coordinators.

I don't know if Rosa Garcia is in this room.

You may have worked with her, but we have community, thank you.

We have four community engagement coordinators across the city.

We need more.

We know we have a tight budget, but I'll still say we need more.

But we have four, and they are in community, and they serve the South Park.

So for Rosa, she serves South Park.

And she attends your meetings.

She is the voice and the conduit.

And she is the one who relays and makes a connection and bridges to city departments to make sure that your voices are heard, your concerns are addressed, and if it's not working and you need more, then we convene community meetings.

I'll end with this.

Some of the community meetings that we have supported with the Department of Neighborhoods around safety is through the SPD Crime Prevention Coordinator that Rosa works with, South Park Public Safety Coordinator, and the SPD Southwest Community Liaison's Office.

The Department of Neighborhoods has also hosted a series of community safety meetings in South Park to empower community-led neighborhood watch groups.

So again, community asks for this, and our role is to respond.

DUN also partners with the SPD community service officers, and I see them around the room.

Can we give them some love and some, because, right?

Because they are from community, they were selected, and they also add to the village.

We also work with them for community safety outreach and neighborhood events.

And we also work with SPD on issues of community safety in our Pea Patch Community Gardens.

As you know, there are 12 community gardens across this neighborhood.

And it is not just about growing food, but it is about breaking bread and harvesting together.

That is what builds community.

And when I get to come out, when I'm invited in the summer and people are harvesting, that's my favorite time of the year, and I get to enjoy and be in community, I see people breaking bread together, and I see communities connecting.

So that's where community organizing and place-based strategies really happen also is in our pea patch gardens.

So it's not just about gardening.

It is about the connection that's being built.

And last but not least, the Southwest Precinct Advisory Council for Community Updates.

Rosa is also a part of that.

And she works very closely with the Mayor's Office External Engagement Team and Public Safety Team.

So I'll end with, it is critical that the Department of Neighborhoods maintain a rooted presence in D1 through all of our services.

This allows us to continue bridging resources, elevating concerns, and minimizing gaps.

We thank you, community, for your trust in co-creating with us.

We look forward to continuing to deepen our relationships in D1.

Please stay connected with Rosa.

Thank you, Council Member Sacco.

Thank you, Director Chow.

How do they contact Rosa?

Rosa's great.

I've worked with her.

She's awesome.

I would just give you her phone number right now.

No, there is a website, and I can share if I can do that through you, Elaine.

I don't know if the constituents here, if there's an email, but it's on our website at the Department of Neighborhoods.

It will list all the community engagement coordinators.

That's what you would look up, is just community engagement coordinators, and it will say the Southwest.

So we have southwest, southeast, the north, and all of central area.

And it will break it down for you.

So if you are from communities in those neighborhoods as well, please look on our website.

Thank you so much.

Okay, very aware of the time.

We do have some questions we really wanna get to before the closing.

I know Council Member Sokka would like to close for us some action steps.

So I'm gonna ask a couple questions that we got from the audience and please, I don't think they're that complicated, maybe keep it brief.

This came up at the Dalridge meeting numerous times.

The community wants to get involved.

They have evidence.

They have videos, and you talked about that.

How can they share information and evidence in particular?

Because they're boots on the ground.

They're the eyes and ears.

How can they do that more specifically?

That would be there.

Sure, I think number one, obviously you can call 9-1-1.

They can get you connected to an officer that can come to you with that information.

A lot of times people may not want to share it that way.

I would suggest calling a precinct or one of the community service officers.

Do you have anything to add to that?

Yes, hi.

Good evening.

I'm Captain Barrow with Southwest Precinct.

What Chief Barnes is saying as far as reaching out to us, we are working on better communications, better avenues of communications.

As you know, the lobby sometimes is not always open.

It just depends on our staffing.

We try really hard to ensure that we have somebody in the front that can answer those questions.

And if not, there is ways of going about it on the website of how to also make these reports.

But we also have our crime prevention coordinator.

now is able to receive this information as far as something called Axon Link, or it's a database that is evidence.com.

But we have, you'll have officers and you'll have the community service officers are also able to give out this link.

which is basically uh for instance if uh officer barretto german here this is his name if he were to give me something saying hey i have a video and i want to be able to give it to you based on this incident that just occurred um i give him a case number and he basically this link he can upload his video footage for that it'll end up going to the central database of evidence.com And the detectives follow up on this.

Officers, patrol officers in that area also follow up on seeing additional information that they might not have had at the initial time of the report.

So these are also really great ways of getting that evidence.

Because I know it's not always something that you discover at the time.

Sometimes you'll get home, you'll look at your main camera, and you'll be able to see something there that might be of value.

And you'll be able to follow up at that point as well.

But it is not just patrol officers.

community service officers who we have several of them at the South and Southwest Precinct.

And I think that's something that we can follow up on.

We can do a very nice succinct postcard that the council member can put on his blog so that everyone can see this is a question that people want to know.

How can I give that information with the links?

I know that's a lot to remember, but there is an avenue and a way to do that.

And I think we can do that by creating a nice blog post that you can push out to your constituents.

Okay, along those lines, a couple questions were community-based public safety initiatives.

Are there ideas of how the community can get more involved in public safety or community-based public safety initiatives, projects?

Yeah, I think...

Coming to meetings like this is certainly a start, making sure that there's advisory councils.

I know that Southwest, in fact, one of my very first meetings with the community was in Southwest.

So making sure you're getting involved there with the captains, that who's involved with the neighborhoods, I think is very important.

And, you know, we want to do more out in the community.

So please invite us.

We don't want you to always have to come to the police department.

You know, that's great.

We do have space, but I do think it's also important that as a police department, we come to the community and that we meet you where you are.

And so invite us.

We will do our best to be there.

If I can be there, I'll be there.

But I can assure you that someone from Southwest will be there in your community.

One other.

May I add to that?

I think there's a couple of other things.

One thing that I know in many communities, but in particular here, is your neighborhood crime watch groups.

That is a great way to be involved.

And typically in a lot of those groups, there's usually one spokesperson that can also help to connect with SPD.

But I think that would be one of them.

The other thing is, and this has been done, I think it really helps, is just neighborhood walks.

together as a group I will join I'm gonna commit right now I will join Southwest I walk a lot at night so I will come anywhere and join you all maybe not every night but I'll commit to at least once or twice a month but I think that's another thing we forget about the power of us and groups and the the ability to walk as a group and walk the neighborhood and You know, we always have every summer, I think it's the second Tuesday of August, where we have our, you know, our night out.

And if we could do that on a regular basis, especially in the areas to the extent of our parks and things like that, and to see the pro-social and proactive pro-social behaviors of us coming together in terms of our neighbors and take a break from our phones and screens and walk with each other.

But I'm going to commit right now that I would be happy to walk anywhere in the Southwest precinct at least twice a month.

You can hold me to that.

And I think that would be another way that we can get involved and just try and do something more positive to connect with each other.

Okay, great.

Only two more questions and I think we can get this done.

This has come up numerous times in the various meetings and from constituents we hear a lot.

The non-emergency lines are not being picked up.

This one person said they've called all of 20-plus times with no answer.

I know you've spoken to that with staffing and how to, but what would you say to that?

I mean, how, should they just keep doing it?

What's your thought on that?

So just twice in the last week, we have been addressing, I think, some of the, I'll stand up, I'm sorry.

Okay, so that's perfect.

So I think it's not actually perfect, it's horrific, so I'm sorry.

So again, I'm going to say this again, and You know, I'll say this again.

Call 911. The same call takers that call 911 are also answering the 911 emergency line are also answering the non-emergent line.

And like I said, there is a class right now that is training as we continue to staff up.

There are hold times, like you said.

That is happening.

I'm going to acknowledge that right now.

So call 911. If you suspect a crime, something suspicious, Do that, that's what I'm telling you.

We are staffing up, trying to staff up to be able to staff the non-emergency line better, but the priority, as it should be, in my opinion, is for the call takers to answer 911. So if you are experiencing those delays, it is because they are answering 911. Yes, sir.

By posting numbers online that citizens are supposed to call, and then not answering discourages people from calling.

This is communication 101. You want data, you want the community's help, give us an option.

Right now you're not giving us an option.

And just for that, I'll just say a couple things.

You can also text 911, but your frustration is absolutely warranted and right.

It is not that they are not answering.

It is that they are answering something else at that point, the 911 emergency line.

And as we continue to staff up, here's the other thing.

Anybody who, I'm always recruiting.

I will always be recruiting.

We need call takers, so please apply.

just like we need, still continue to need SPD officers, but I hear you.

We post that non-emergency number.

It is not that it's not being answered, but when you are calling, and I will take back that frustration directly to our chief and our deputy chief of 911, I will do that immediately after this meeting, but it is incredibly frustrating, I know, because I've heard this not only from you, but from others within the last week, that non-emergency line is being staffed, but not as consistently to be able to pick up with that.

Thank you.

Okay, so we...

And I'm accepting applications as well.

Okay, hold on.

We're gonna close.

Okay, now, it's eight o'clock.

I've got one more question.

Council Member's gonna close out with a summary of action steps.

Please stay around.

I wanna say a couple things because this might be the only time for me to say this.

This is not a one-off.

You know, we brought the community together.

You spent a lot of time.

A lot of you were out in the back there standing up the whole time.

we want your input we're going to keep the online survey open we've gotten some very very good information information that we didn't have before in terms of your concerns and some of them are very specific to a particular area we want to hear that please leave your email if you can so we can follow up as necessary i just want to say that now we will talk okay now this Okay.

Stay around afterwards.

We have a whole half hour to talk more one-on-one.

We do have one question.

We do have one question.

Maybe, council member, you could answer this as part of your closing.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

There has been questions as, can you explain a little bit more about the $2 million funding that you've set aside for the Delridge Road changes that come up a lot?

Maybe you can do that as far as your closing, but this has come up, so.

Sure.

Gosh, not that.

Well, we're here to talk about gun violence in these specific neighborhoods, but since it was asked, I'll quickly address.

First off, As your council member, I have failed to provide you with sufficient clarity and transparency around that investment and what's going on.

And in the absence of my clarity and direction, there's been a lot of myths, very egregious myths, by the way, swirling, primarily on the internet.

And the internet is undefeated.

But at the end, and it's easy to make things about inanimate objects, curbs, politicians, we're easy punching bags.

But at the end of the day, that investment is designed to protect immigrants and families, keep all users of our roads safe.

So fail to provide appropriate clarity.

Stay tuned, more information will come.

And also just share been working very collaboratively with the mayor's office To to find a a more truly compromised solution on on that investment, but we're here to talk about Gun violence, so I will close this out.

That's that's all okay So close this out.

I want to thank everyone again for Taking the time to be here tonight sharing your concerns sharing your feedback I What I heard tonight was a desire for more urgent action on these issues.

What I heard tonight was a deep concern, a shared one, for the troubling rise in gun violence in these neighborhoods.

What I heard tonight that people are fed up of the persistent outages in our streetlights.

primarily in High Point.

District 1, I'm told, has the worst outages across the city in terms of street lights.

Who's here is worried about this like...

Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am.

Ma'am, we're closing out.

But I also heard a commitment from each one of these department heads, these leaders, to make better progress, to make more urgent progress on these issues.

We heard the importance of calling 911. On the non-emergency line, by the way, you should know, remember, I write laws and write checks.

Little known item that we passed during last year's budget in the fall was an investment to hire more and increase the capacity of more 911 call operators.

Because we know the wait times for the non-emergency line are long.

we funded an investment to do that it takes time of course to hire people that's where that's why we're hiring but i understand that frustration firsthand but call 9-1-1 if you see something say something that's another thing i heard don't worry about like is it reportable not reportable firsthand experience when those 130 gunshots were fired and about an hour before that that incident happened me and my neighbors were like oh a lot of lot of cars here abnormally at night in this in these neighborhoods not normal not normal should we call no no no no we don't know i wish i wish i wish i wish i could go back in time and just call 9-1-1 call 9-1-1 don't worry about being a karen or ken or none of that let someone figure it out and we need to collect that data a kid's Bedroom was struck by gunfire that night.

Just call 911. And on the copper wire theft, I heard that.

It's a rampant issue just as an FYI legislatively.

I've been working with the city attorney's office, asked them to do an analysis to see if there's a there there, so to speak.

From a local code perspective, the state legislature took action on this same issue on the retail sales component of stolen copper wire theft very recently.

There is express preemption in state law that limits local municipalities like Seattle, our ability to take further action.

But we're forewarned that right now.

In any event, shared responsibility is the final thing I heard.

It is all of us, all of us, our individual responsibility to do more.

can elevate these concerns to me, my office, especially the executive departments.

We just reach out to them anyway about these issues.

It is a shared responsibility to provide mentorship, as the chief mentioned.

If you see something, say something.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be to the city.

Stand up for members of this community, of our community.

It is all of our responsibility.

And I also heard reaffirming of commitments for the neighborhoods, for the city to do more to invest in our neighborhoods.

You all deserve it.

We've done a lot.

My office has done a lot in a year and a half.

Clearly more to do.

And by the way, if you think some of those, like the, The 10 blocks of new sidewalk construction, $8 million of new sidewalks, 350 blocks of new sidewalks across eight years.

If that happened by happenstance or just coincidence, I've seen Snake Hill.

I've seen the city's 30-year commitment.

Oh, we'll fund more sidewalks here along Brandon when we get some more funding and And it just always magically falls below the cut line.

So if you think all that happened by accident or just pure happenstance, talk to me offline.

I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you at fire sale prices.

It's because of you all and the advocacy that you all provided to me and my office that we were able to secure those investments.

In any event, thank you all for joining us.

I want to keep on time here.

Really appreciate you all for being here today.

Thank you.