Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 7/12/22

We're ready.

All right, great.

Thank you.

The July 12 2022 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 933 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Present.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

We have four present.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Nelson is excused for the first part of the meeting.

I think she'll be with us in about a half an hour.

On today's agenda, we'll hear four items.

The first item is legislation regarding investigations of the chief of police.

The intent in this committee meeting is to vote the bill out of committee after considering a substitute version that central staff has prepared to make minor textual edits and corrections as described in the central staff memo.

We did vote a more comprehensive and substantive substitute in the last committee meeting and so this one is also a substitute rather than going the amendment route but Again, some very minor changes in this version.

We'll be hearing the Seattle Police Department's Race and Social Justice Initiative Report.

We'll be receiving an overview of the Youth Leadership Intervention and Change Program, otherwise known as LINC.

And then finally, we'll be hearing from King County Public Health a report on the King County Regional Approach to Gun Violence.

We'll now approve our agenda for our committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we'll transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period the following manner.

Speakers will each be given two minutes to speak.

I'll alternate between virtual and in-person commenters, and I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website and the sign-in form.

If you've not yet registered to speak, but would like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public comment session Once I hear, once I call a speaker's name, if you are using the virtual option, you will hear a prompt.

And once you've heard that prompt, you need to hit star sext unmute yourself.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item which you're addressing.

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

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

And 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.

Finally, once you have completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line.

If you plan to continue following the meeting, we welcome you to do so, but do so please via the Seattle channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

We've got two folks signed up for public comment.

And with that, I will begin the public comment period.

Our first speaker is Howard Gale.

Howard Gale will be followed by Alex Zimmerman.

Good morning, Howard Gale with seattlestop.org, commenting on our failed police accountability system.

Six days ago, a King County inquest jury, after nine days of listening to testimony and deliberating in the Charlene Lyles inquest, spoke unambiguously.

The Seattle police did precisely what they were trained to do under SPD policy when they shot Charlene Lyles, the pregnant mother of four, seven times in front of her children.

Let's be clear, the jury did not find the killing correct or morally justified.

The jury found that the SBD officers acted precisely according to their training and policy.

Charlena's murder happened just four weeks after Seattle's police accountability legislation was passed, legislation that allowed the SBD to continue this pattern of killing.

Albert Fredericks Jr., Danny Rodriguez, Ryan Smith, Terry Caver, Dark Hayden, and the person still unnamed on Beacon Hill, killed in January by the SPD.

All people experiencing a behavioral health crisis like Charlena, all deemed lawful and proper by the new accountability system, all done according to policy and training.

Seattle's police accountability system, including the CPC and this council, has revised and approved SPD policies over the last 10 years.

If we follow the jury's findings, the responsibility for Charlena's killing lies with you.

Yet every one of you have been strangely silent over this last week, not a public comment to be found.

Chair Herbold, you said five years ago after Charlene's murder, that quote, we are shamed.

What I am pledging to you is to work on finding a new way of doing things so that we actually get different results.

Unquote.

These last five years have given us worse results.

If you want to pay justice to the memory of Charlene, then embrace the future of police accountability that provides for direct community control of police abuse, investigations, policy, of police discipline and most importantly, police policy.

Look forward to a future of justice and up backwards to a mythical path.

Howard.

Our next and last speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Thank you.

They hire my dirty Nazi Gestapo pig, so never show my face.

And I complained for last three months to everybody.

No one, no one, one doing same what is doing everybody around.

So I once spoke about agenda number one about police.

I come to police commission meeting for last many year in every meeting.

In every meeting I ask very simple question.

Can we speak this for us two minute?

It never happen.

Complain two dozen government employee in Seattle, never happen.

Guys, we have a 12 freaking idiot in this commissioner who never have experience how policemen working.

Nobody will be arrested, nobody in jail, don't know how system working.

I treat I'm prosecutor, I know the system like my five finger.

And nobody care about this.

And nobody give a chance.

Speak for two minute and give us opinion.

Probably different.

This 12 idiot who sit as this commissioner know about this.

This make me sick.

And I speak to you for many year about this.

Zero reaction.

You can understand me, you freaking nine service animal.

Why you acting like a Nazi Gestapo rats?

Can you explain to me Where we start acting like a civilized people, listen to different opinion.

That's not surprised me.

So Seattle corporation dead right now, bring everything into collapse.

It's a bankruptcy, a hundred percentage, because when you don't hear it, don't listen to different opinion, your corporation never will be successful.

I leave this for 35 years in every year condition in Seattle, worse, worse, and worse because you nine freaking Nazi get stopped by rats.

Don't do it.

Nothing.

Thank you.

That concludes our public comment period, and we'll move into the items on today's agenda.

The clerk, please read in agenda item number one.

Committee agenda item number one, Council Bill 120.337, an ordinance relating to civilian community oversight of the police, establishing a process for investigating complaints, naming the chief of police, adding a new chapter five to chapter 3.29, the Seattle Municipal Code, and amending section 49 of ordinance 125.315, to remember the existing subchapter five of chapter 3.29 and sections 3.29.500 and 3.29.510 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you so much.

We are joined by Anne Gorman of Council Central staff.

Again, this is the fourth hearing on the bill.

Anne's memo outlines the cleanup textual edits and corrections that were inadvertently admitted from version D to B.

And before we ask Anne to summarize those edits and work to try to get the new version in front of us, I just want to really thank folks who have been working diligently to get this legislation right, specifically Inspector General Judge and Interim Director interim OPA director Perkins and the Community Police Commission and the mayor's office for their collaboration.

I'll have some more thanks towards the end if all goes well, but just wanted to get that up there first.

With that, we'll turn it over to Anne to describe the edits in the version before us today.

Good morning.

Anne Gorman, Council Central staff.

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members.

This item is version D3 of Council Bill 120337. It is proposed as a substitute for the current base version of the bill and for a subsequent vote out of committee today.

Current base version is D2B.

Changes from D2B to D3 are described in your memo, and they are not substantive, as Chair Herbold noted at the beginning of this meeting.

They are largely for consistency and clarity and they reflect in part hurried work on the part of central staff late in the week of June 20th.

So we are very grateful for the opportunity to set them right.

This bill was introduced and referred on June 7th.

We continue to work with stakeholders to refine it and changes were included in version D2A on June 14th and D2B on June 28th.

It's just a quick summary of the bill.

It establishes a process and a framework for the investigation of complaints to the Office of Police Accountability in which the Chief of Police is named.

This is a specific circumstance regarding which the city's police accountability ordinance is silent.

The bill proposes an oversight role in these cases for the Office of the Inspector General, a role that is consistent with the foundational ordinance, the police accountability ordinance.

Council Bill 120337 also requires notification of police accountability stakeholders.

such as the Council President and the Chair of the Public Safety Committee at investigative milestones.

Bill also makes clear that SPD will not be involved in any investigation of the Chief and that the only time an external law enforcement agency will lead such an investigation is when criminal charges may result.

Thank you so much and really appreciate that.

Any questions about the change in this version of the bill?

Not seeing any.

I'm going to work to get the current version of the bill before us.

So with that, I'd like to move the substitute version.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

The main bill is now before the committee.

I moved, actually, I already said that.

Can the clerk please call the roll on the substitute?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

That's four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and we can move on to the main motion.

Again, we've heard this bill before.

Thank you, Anne, for recapping.

At our last committee meeting, you may recall that central staff Asha Venkataraman did the overview of the substitute.

Subsequent to that, I did share a process map of the process that this bill contemplates.

The bill I see as largely a technical issue, but a really important issue for us to resolve.

The 2017 police accountability ordinance did not address how complaints naming the chief would be handled.

And this has led to a lack of clarity about how to proceed with some previous complaints.

I became aware of this issue early in 2022, reached out to the mayor's office, the inspector general and OPA to chart a path forward to address this.

and to establish clear, fair process with as much consensus as possible.

As noted in the recitals to the legislation itself, there were three complaints against the former chief of police in 2020 that lingered until Mayor Harrell's office forward the complaints to an external agency for investigation.

Moving forward, it's really important for public trust to have a clear process to resolve these types of complaints.

As before, I wanna thank Inspector General Judge, Interim OPA Director Perkins, their staffs.

They've provided invaluable assistance and time in developing the legislation.

Central staff members and my office held a number of meetings with them, worked through several complicated issues.

I wanna also thank, of course, the Community Police Commission, the mayor's office for their collaboration on this legislation.

And in addition to and Greg Doss and Asha Venkataraman of Central Staff, and my staff member, Noel Aldrich, for their work on this bill.

If there are any further questions or comments on the bill, not seeing any, then I would like to move to the main motion I move to adopt, let's see what's the number here, Council Bill 120247, is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

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

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis?

Yes.

Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The committee recommends that the council bill pass and it will be forwarded to the July 19th city council meeting for a final vote.

With that, we'll move on to agenda item number two.

The clerk, please read in agenda item two.

I don't believe we have our panelists here for agenda item number two yet.

Okay.

Well, then, do we have everybody here for agenda item three, our link presentation?

I see some nodding heads.

All right, well, if there are no objections, I'd like to amend the agenda to take the items out of order, and we'll move right down to agenda item number three.

Clerk, would you please read in agenda item three?

Committee agenda item number three, youth leadership intervention and change program.

for briefing and discussion.

Fantastic, thanks.

Before I pass it over to introductions of our panelists, I just wanna thank everybody for being here today.

I've served as a member of the Steering Committee of LINC for the past year or so.

This is a multi-jurisdictional, multidisciplinary coordinated effort to reduce youth gun violence and involvement of young people in gangs.

Really glad to have folks here today to share LINC's work with council members.

and the interested public.

And with that, I'll pass it over.

I believe, William, you're going to get us started.

We'll do some introductions.

Are we up?

I was literally just froze for the last minute.

I'm handing it off to you, William, if you want to facilitate introductions and get us started.

You want me to jump on it, Billy?

Yes.

Good morning, y'all.

Thank you guys so much.

Yeah, I will try to share.

It's like in and out for me.

No worries, Billy, I'll jump on it.

My name is Ted Boe.

I'm chief of police down in Burien, one of the areas served by this this regional project.

And for the last two years, I've been fortunate enough to be co-chair of the steering committee, which really is the guiding committee for this work.

And I co-chair that steering committee with Aaron Fox.

And I will pass over to him to say good morning to you.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Aaron Fox.

services with the YMCA Social Impact Center here in Seattle throughout King County.

One of our program, the Alive and Free program, serves as an outreach component for the work.

And I'll pass it off over to Gina, who was part of our crew today.

Thanks so much, Aaron.

My name is Gina Tirada.

I use she her pronouns and I'm with the Center for Children and Youth Justice as a program coordinator.

Pleasure to be with you all today.

Go ahead, Freddie.

Hi, I'm Frederica Pye, but most call me Freddie Pye.

I use she, her pronouns.

Program manager here at Children's Center of Youth Justice.

And Billy, it looks like you're back live.

Do you want to introduce yourself, sir?

Sorry about that.

Yeah, I'm Billy Harrison.

I am the Director of Impact for Center for Children and Youth Justice.

We oversee kind of the coordinating part of the labor.

Great, thank you for that round of introductions.

I'm making sure that we've got, I don't have any further opening remarks if we want to just jump right in to the presentation.

Is there a PowerPoint or anything that you'd like to share with us that we can assist getting on the screen?

There is a PowerPoint and I believe it was sent over the other day to go in the packet, DM me to send that again.

Alex, are we good?

I will pull it up here.

Okay, we're working on pulling it up.

Thank you.

I can also share screen with you.

If you've got it handy, that's usually what we ask for folks to do is somebody from the presentation team.

Perfect.

Thank you so much, Billy.

All right, we can probably jump right down to the second slide and start talking a little bit about what the comprehensive gang model is.

So a little bit about LINC.

And really, the model that it's based on goes back to the late 80s when there was a surge in gang violence.

And the federal government was trying to come up with a standard model that really helped reduce gang involvement, gang activity, and the associated criminal behaviors and violence.

And in the early 90s, they started working on the comprehensive gang model and implementing it in large and small cities across the country.

It is one of the most tested models out there and has really shown effectiveness and both reducing gang involvement, but also reducing the negative behaviors involved in gangs, both on the individual level, as well as on the community level.

It's one of the programs that really has shown a 30-year track record of being effective when it's implemented.

And we've been lucky enough here in King County to have this program implemented since, I'd have to ask Billy what the date was for Bobby Bridge implementing.

2011.

2011.

And that is the model we have here.

And I'm going to jump off a little bit.

Actually, I'm not because it's the third slide.

I was going to talk a little bit about why I love the program, but I'll wait until the third slide.

And Aaron, you wanna take the next slide about where we're doing our work?

Absolutely.

So we do this throughout all of King County, all of the cities represented on the slide here, Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Faraway, Kent, Renton.

CTAC, Seattle, Tukwila, and any other area of King County that we can serve.

So it's a collaborative approach.

We have representatives from all of those different cities, the school districts in those cities, the community-based organizations in those cities have a wide variety of representation, as well as leaders at the city and county levels as well.

And like Aaron and Shefa mentioned, The model in which the way it approaches is functional for mostly one space, but what's unique about our model is that we have collaboration throughout the whole county, throughout the region, so we all get to work together collectively for our young people instead of just working in one space.

All right, now is the why I love this program part.

One of the things that was most attractive when I became the police chief down here in Berrien was finding a program that brought everybody together and put the young person's needs in the middle.

I think often we think about community response and systems response and school district response and we kind of break them all apart.

And what happens is all that lack of communication results in gaps and then overlaps.

And what I like about this program is it really focuses on how do you bring all of the services that young people really need for getting out of the position they're in, if it's a negative position, and really building them back into a good place.

And it's in that model that I have found success.

both because my philosophy is that public safety is really a team sport.

It's not a police-centric thing, but rather it's all of us coming around together around the mission of what does a safe community look like.

And this program embodies that exact philosophy.

And then they spent 30 years testing it and proved it worked.

So instead of putting police and courts in the center, we put young people in the center.

And then we say, what are all these things that young people need to thrive and really to get back into a healthy space?

That's my philosophy.

This program lines up perfectly with it.

And like I said, it really has shown a long history of success.

Billy and Aaron, you have stuff to follow up on that?

Yeah, I would just follow up that this is this wraparound type service is a true model.

Wraparound is a particular type of service that community-based organizations do to support the youth.

Youth Voices Center and everything that we do, we don't tell support them to do that through a variety of different folks that support that individual from police, from probation, to community-based organizations, to mental health providers, to substance use providers, education, all levels of education from security to counselors to actual teachers.

We work very closely with all of those different individuals to make sure that the client's needs, wants, and goals can be addressed as quickly as possible.

Yeah, it's very much as Chief and Aaron are mentioning and continue to talk about the youth in this center.

And it's really based off the support so they can operate and navigate the systems and spaces that they find themselves in a very high capacity of.

I've lost my words, but we try to focus on the support factors for the young people so that they can operate.

Thank you.

Before we move off of this, I appreciate that this is the model.

It's great to have a graphic representation of the model and the wraparound services, but I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about how you've developed the relationships with the institutions represented by the spokes around the hub of client and families.

I'll jump on a little bit.

A lot of it is really looking at who's at the table and who's working with the young people already and bringing them into one collective space.

I think a lot of this work goes back to, and a lot of these relationships go back to when Justice Bridge was really building the program and leveraging personal capital to bring people into the tables to start with.

And then I think we built off of that and just continued to reach out to partners that are connected to this work.

So we look at this program from a steering committee level, and we say, oh, where's the gap?

Oh, we don't have enough of a connection with the school district, or we don't have enough of a connection with mental health.

And then we go out and just actively recruit in those worlds.

And we go tell our story, and we talk about the program, and we talk about how we're impacting young people.

And generally speaking, that gets people to want to be part of more of a collective service instead of trying to take the whole load on themselves.

And I know we also lean on Billy immensely to go out and do a ton of recruiting for us.

So Billy.

Yeah, no, I think that especially in this space, everything's relationship based.

And so kind of identifying where those holes are for our relationships at the steering committee level, and then and then maneuvering that space to have those those people at the table to be support factors for our young people.

Kind of the way in which that's worked is Aaron and Chief have been very good at the leadership of the steering committee.

We've kind of broken that into components of having like a recruitment and retention subcommittee and having these other subcommittees.

So people can Zoom focus on their specialties and their areas of expertise to to add to the support factors of the young people at the MDIT table, as well as at the steering committee level.

So that way we get buy in from top down.

Did I miss anything Aaron?

I mean, I just think it's just to a certain degree, it's a basic concept of, we know that young people who are between the ages of 14 and 24 are engaged in certain types of supports, especially when those folks are coming from poverty situations or from housing instability or different things like that.

So there's some natural folks that we reach out to that do housing or who do education or who do, you know, probation services or different things like that, that we've mentioned.

So some of it is organic into, even church-based folks, different things like that, but people that are really focused on supporting young people in any way.

So we're always open to whoever those folks are, whoever those entities are, and I think not only does the steering committee help to do that, but we also have our folks that are boots on the ground that really influence who we should go after as well, because there is an ever-changing environment in regards to who's supporting young people and in what way they are.

So we just try to stay in tune with those things as much as possible and continue to always to reach out and to talk about, like as we're doing right now, talk about our services and try to get as many folks involved at any level, including just community members too.

It's just not all about people that are getting paid to do this work.

It's also about volunteers and community members as well.

Thank you.

And if you'll switch to the next slide, I think this is really Aaron's slide.

This is the on the ground work.

This is Aaron's team and what they're doing out there in community.

Yeah, so our street outreach team, the life free program has been around for several years.

You know, started out the street soldiers way long, long, long time ago and has moved into a life free program for the last 11 plus years.

And these are folks that all have lived experience that could better come from the community.

Likely have had some sort of group or gang ties or influence in their life, either directly or through family members.

And they're out on the streets every day meeting one on one with the people on their case loads and then actually doing outreach to other folks too.

that are out there that would like to give these services.

And so we make referrals through that to be able to get them connected directly to our program and start to work with them every day.

We have a group of about 12 outreach workers that are literally out on the streets.

wherever, you know, the parks, wherever young people might be that are, you know, potentially involved in group and gang activity, and we literally go out to them and walk up to them and engage and just try to get them to start working with us and find out what their goals are and take it from there.

So, like I said, we have a Seattle-based team of about six folks, and then we have six folks that holistically.

We do have some case managers in the program as well, so the outreach workers are more focused on the day-to-day needs and day-to-day interactions and mentoring, whereas the case managers provide more of the direct links to or connections.

is really anything, food, housing, whatever that young person identifies as a basic need, the case managers provide, help connect them to those services.

As I say, and on top of the Live and Free program, we also work with Freedom Project Washington as well.

Like with, as Karen mentioned before, kind of with the relationships and the connections and community, you know, we have a number of different folks that we're working with.

And we have the It's great that we have the opportunity to work with two outreach providers instead of just the one, because it gives us more reach.

Like Erin said, they have a team, and then Freedom Project also has a team that sometimes carries folks on their own, and then also sometimes just partners with the Alive and Free team to work with young people as well and have those warm handoffs to services.

Really, next slide.

And actually, Aaron, this is your work as well really on the ground.

Do you mind covering this one as well.

Yeah, so, you know, as it says up here, you know, it takes quite a bit of time to develop relationships with young people, especially when they're when they don't know us a lot.

It does help a lot of times we do get referrals from our current clients to reach out to their friends and families and connect them that way.

But there is a model.

You come in at level one and hopefully graduate through the program to level four.

It could take anywhere from six to nine months, sometimes even over a year.

Sometimes we have people that come in just for three months or so.

But the real meat and potatoes of the work is those relationships, as Billy mentioned.

And so our outreach workers and case managers really just with young people often, you know, three to five times a week through in-person, through text messaging, phone calls, and just really support them in whatever they got going on, and realizing that the more contact that we have with young people, the better they're going to feel supported, and the better that we're going to be able to try to influence more positive decision-making.

from levels two, three, and four, we do less and less contact as those folks are starting to become more stable in whatever their goals are.

But ultimately, the average person that we see is about eight months or so.

And there are some times to where young people do maybe have to go to jail or be incarcerated for a short amount of time or whatnot.

We do work with folks as they come out on the back end as well, as they re-enter into the community, and really work to make sure that they have a solid plan, goal plan.

And I know Freedom Project, they do very similar approaches to the work in regards to really staying with folks for a significant amount of time in their lives to make sure that they met their goals.

Thank you, Aaron.

Can you talk a little bit about how LINC works with diversion programs?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we don't just think that we have all the answers and that everybody at our table is doing the right thing.

to do diversion as well.

So sometimes it is a referral to another agency that connects them there and that does more of the, you know, depending on what their agency is doing.

And then at the same time, both with Freedom Project and the Wise Life Free Program, as folks come into our programs, if they are in some sort of diversion program or court-mandated diversion program, We work with whoever is connected in their lives to help that young person maintain whatever stipulations that they have going on with their diversion program.

Some of it is more directly funded through diversion efforts, and then some of it is depending on what that young person wants.

program compared to another program just because of connections, relationships, and different things like that.

But diversion is a huge piece of what we're doing, what we've been doing.

I think now it's climate.

We're owning it in a different way to where we were doing diversion before without having it officially called diversion to where now we have a lot of other funding and dedicated sources to where diversion work is more highly focused, especially when we're trying to really not house young people when, especially for lower level offenses.

Thank you.

And just to piggyback on the diversion, we've also in the past been kind of the partner for diversion because we're a voluntary program.

So maybe a youth may not quote unquote qualify for a diversionary program, but if they're in LINC, then since they're already in LINC and volunteering to that program, they'll let them go to choose or let them do something else through that route.

So we've also been kind of like

Did we lose Billy again?

I think we might have.

He was saying something brilliant because he always does.

That's what I knew was going to happen there.

And I don't know if he can change slides.

I don't know if he can hear us.

Billy, can you jump next slide?

So the next two slides are really going to be numbers, a little bit about outcomes and how the program is working here in King County.

So this year served approximately 130 kids in the program.

The program constantly has people coming in and going out.

So average clients is right around 100, with about 46 coming in last year, 50 this year, or 50 last year.

And then 33 people successfully completed their program.

So really, young people stay with us for about a year on average.

And there's always young people coming in and moving on from the program.

The next slide's the exciting one, which talks about what does that look like when young people are achieving their goals and moving on.

Before we move to the next, thank you.

So that total youth served this year of 131, that includes folks from 2021 who enrolled in the program, but are continuing their engagement.

I'm going to wait for Gina to shake her head yes or no, because this is her area.

Yes, that's correct.

It includes clients that were in the program at the beginning of 2021 or, I'm sorry, These are the 2021 numbers.

So yes, people who were in the program at the beginning of 2021 or joined sometime during 2021.

Thank you.

And you might be covering this in the next slide, but can you talk a little bit about what a completion is?

Billy, I can take that one there.

Sure, yeah.

For how we define completion is working through those goals, like Erin said earlier, up to a level four, which is how we measure young people's progress through the program.

So a level four client is very stable and able to self-advocate and achieve goals with really minimal intervention or systems support.

And so we look at what their goals are and what remains in need of support when looking at those completions.

I would just add that not all clients go 1, 2, 3, 4. We have clients that come in as a 1 and go very quickly to a 4. You know, it just depends on each individual.

But as Gina was stating, completion does really, when they're completed and exited from a program, that's where they're showing a lot of positive, good choices.

They're engaged in other pro-social activities, structured supports.

and really, quite frankly, have learned how to navigate a system without the assistance of a paid professional.

Next slide, Billy.

I think Billy might be stuck.

Our next slide would be to talk about participant outcomes.

Right now, we're going to show the 2021 numbers from January to December.

There we go.

So intervention plans that were developed and reviewed, looks like we had around 574. Once again, these are all 2021 numbers.

We will be having our monthly, our mid-year, this month's mid-year But 2022 has been about the same amount of numbers as 2021 coming out of COVID restrictions.

It was, you know, a lot harder to serve.

Our numbers had gone down a little bit just because it was just hard to engage with folks virtually that way.

with a lot of positive outcomes.

So 2021, some of those outcomes you can see is 43. We had 18 folks that re-enrolled in school, 43 folks have improved school performance, 36 completed probation or court activity, 12 folks enrolled in mental health or substance use, six completed mental health or substance use, 45 young people gained employment, and then of those 32 consistently maintained those employment.

15 got connected to housing and 65 decreased group or gang involvement, which is our number one outcome right there.

So as you can see, these are all the types of things that our outreach workers help and case managers help to stabilize or complete.

And this is the stuff that they're working with folks on a day-to-day basis.

And I would say also adding that, you know, the relationship building that we do, that is another thing that we don't capture in the same way, but seeing people's pro-social attitudes adjust and change and be a lot more positive is another thing that we see come out of due to the amount of contact we have with young people.

Thank you.

A couple things.

MDIT is- Yes.

That is multidisciplinary intervention team, our regional teams that meet and.

Case plan for youth.

And I've had the pleasure of one of the requirements of the steering committee members that we participate in periodically in an MDIT meeting.

And I have to say they're very useful for understanding the complexity of issues that young people are dealing with and the ways that you all not only hold the young people accountable for meeting their goals, but that you brainstorm support one another as people who are working closely with these young folks and identify and sort of do problem solving around people's needs.

It was a really interesting and illuminative experience to participate in one of those meetings.

And I just wanna also flag that, if you could put that slide back up, if that's possible, The numbers associated with the outcomes, don't reflect, they reflect people's achieving their goals.

They don't reflect, so for instance, the number associated with achieving housing or stabilizing housing is not the universe of people who are housed, it's the number of people who have identified housing as a goal and has achieved it.

Similarly, gaining employment, 45, that does not mean that only 45, of the individuals served are employed, it means that 45 of the folks who have identified employment as a goal have done so.

Is that correct?

Absolutely, yeah.

Not everyone that we work with is ready to necessarily have a job.

We do work with high school students and things like that.

So yes, you're absolutely right to where the goal plans dictate a lot of the outcomes what's on someone's goal plan is what we really work on helping them achieve.

And so I think the real takeaway here is that 78% of the participants served were able to complete one or more of their goals.

The only exception I would say to that, Council Member Herbold, is that almost every single LEND client does have a goal to decrease group and gang involvement, whether that's by replacing that activity with other social activities or decreasing their association with peers that are getting involved.

That goal exists for, I'd say, I think it's like 90% of LINC clients.

Got it.

So that's sort of an overarching goal that everybody, by merit of being in the program, is assumed to have been embracing that as a goal.

And the other goals are goals that are identified that to sort of help the young people to achieve that broader decrease in group or gang violence.

Yeah, and as identified that the goals are young people choose their own goals and kind of what they wanna do moving forward.

And as far as the 78.2%, that's actually like that number is kind of down due to COVID as we're recovering and kind of regaining some of our support factors at the tables, but it's usually around like 82% of participants completed goals.

So we're trying to work that back up, so.

Thank you.

And one last thought on outcomes.

One of the beauty of this, a lot of these are really synergistic goals.

A young person who gets reengaged in school is going to be surrounded by more healthy individuals, healthy influences, and all of that works to help that young person get in a better place.

So I think things like, you know, the mental health, getting housed, those are a lot of the factors that we see that are causing a lot of these behaviors.

And the other big one is just not having good stable structures in place.

So between Aaron's team, mentoring young people, and then connecting to structure like school, you really get a synergistic effect that helps young people deal with a lot of the other criminal justice engagement activities that we're seeing the symptoms.

These are the problems that Aaron and his team are really helping these young people solve.

Next slide, Billy.

I think it's just questions.

Yeah.

So just really wanna, oh, Council Member Nielsen.

Thank you.

Thanks.

I apologize for being late.

So this is an unusual question, but what I would like to know is, What would you change about your model?

What would you like to be able to do that you can't right now besides simply expanding the program and increasing the budget to expand the program?

Because I think that we need a lot more of anything, frankly.

But where are the barriers?

And this is an open-ended question.

I have no agenda.

What do you wish you could do differently?

Erin, do you want to talk on the ground?

level of that?

Yeah, I would love to.

You know, there's a, there's a hard time having direct support to young people, a lot of young people that we see need, you know, a lot of basic needs and a lot of our funding does not allow for those types of services.

So a lot of times we're having to connect donations and different things like that.

So, you know, basic needs from just food, clothes, you know, we have been able to even sometimes even with rent situations, even though there is a lot of support that people can access those things, a lot of times the families are in situations where they need it to be a little bit more immediate.

So basic needs.

I think, you know, one thing that's just ongoing too is our street outreach workers, you know, they're on the ground doing the work.

They're usually, those are usually some of the folks that are paid the lowest in the community.

So figuring out a way to through grant funding and through to increase pay for the folks.

Cause that is one thing that we do see with turnover with, with staff due to being at, you know, making, you know, $24 an hour or so and still trying to maintain and live in the cities of particularly in the city of Seattle, but even throughout King County, rent is high.

So figuring out a way to be able to get a higher wages for our street outreach workers.

And then one thing that I would say that is super important, I think overall, is continuing to have folks that have influence at all levels to be a part of the steering committee, to be able to help influence where funding goes, to help influence you know, even with turnover, you know, a lot of times we see folks on the steering committee who they're personally invested in it and they may work for the city of Seattle or the city of Burien or whatever like that, and if they move into a different position and things like that, we tend to see a certain level of fall off or transition to where we don't have folks in those roles that are needed.

throughout all the cities to make sure that we have dedicated staff that will be able to, dedicated staff roles that will be able to be a server on the steering committee and also the NBIT tables.

Those are two things that are really crucial to the work is having consistent folks or consistent representation at least both on the steering committee and at the NBIT tables.

Chief?

No, I think you hit it on the head, one of the biggest challenges in this work is getting everybody engaged across across all the different partners.

and keeping them engaged there's it's really easy in this work that silos build up and really what our focus is is is to break down those silos and that's what.

Really, the entire steering committee's goal is is to.

get people working collaboratively on the ground with the young person in the center.

So I think that's the one thing that would change if it was a perfect world in response to your question, Council Member Nelson, is really getting people to kind of put their personal egos aside a little bit and their personal disciplines aside a little bit and come to the table with an open heart to putting the young person in the middle.

And I think that's our biggest challenge in any of this work, not just LINC, but if I talk collectively and all of this work around public safety is, really putting the mission in the middle and then figuring out who needs to be there and working together to get there.

So that would be my my biggest challenge.

And the thing I could change would be having people come to the table that are in positions of power and are willing to really put the young person in the middle.

And go ahead, please.

Oh, I was going to say, and kind of the thing that I think that we see from our perspective is where our touch points are with our young people and how and how our young people maneuver through the system.

So like holistically, Like where are the touch points and what are kind of the rungs on the ladder as they elevate to us?

Again, like you see in our program is like a long-term intense intervention program where we have people for months or years.

But a lot of the time when we're receiving our young people, they're in high crisis mode where it's like, there's some other services and other areas that probably could have prevented them from getting to our rung had they been plugged in earlier.

So like how to like holistically, what does the system look like and where are the spaces that we can plug in and connect to our young people?

So that way we can catch them when they're not in full-blown crisis.

And then we're always working to play catch up.

So that's kind of one of the things that we see as well, which I think connects to Erin and Chief's point of having organizational and system buy-in from the top, not individual buy-in at the steering committee level that then trickles down to the MDIT.

So we're all working collaboratively together.

Thank you.

Any other questions from my colleagues?

I really appreciate what you're doing.

And what you just said describes a situation that it's every single situation, every person that you're dealing with is in a different situation and often volatile.

And so, you never really know what supports will be needed when you're trying to deescalate or keep it from escalating.

And so, All I have to say is it looks to me as though you're hitting the interventions that are most important, and I thank you for your work.

Thank you, Council Member.

And I just want to also just publicly recognize that though we have, of course, seen an increase in violence, specifically in gun violence in our region, and we'll talk more about that soon later on in the agenda, what we're hearing anecdotally, though, locally from our own police chief and also from representatives on the steering committee is that gang and street involved gun violence is actually down and I hate to see what what kind of trauma and harm would be done to our communities if it was not for the really important work of organizations like Link pulling together so many different partners to really, again, make sure that these interventions are child and family-centered, and just really, I'm very grateful to the work of LINC and all of your partner organizations for doing this work, and in particular, doing this work at an incredibly challenging time for our city and our region.

If there are no further questions, thanks again for being with us this morning.

Really appreciate it.

And we'll see you at the next steering committee meeting.

Can you go back to item number two?

I believe Chief Diaz is with us.

Yes.

Committee agenda item number two, Seattle Police Department Race and Social Justice Initiative Report for a briefing and discussion.

Very good.

Thank you so much.

Welcome, Chief Diaz.

Well, thank you, Chairman Wilman-Herbold and the Public Safety Committee, and for the opportunity to present on our SBD's 2021 RSGI report.

And my apologies for running a little bit behind.

But since the country's inception, there hasn't been a day in this country that hasn't experienced some level of hate, discrimination or racism.

So there's a lot of work collectively that we all must do.

And I'm thankful for our whole SPD team to include our RSGI team, their dedicated work in each of our bureaus.

And some of that work that I will discuss today is the work that I've actually have brought up in the public safety committees earlier this year.

And with COVID restrictions in place, it could have easily been a very difficult year to accomplish our work plan.

However, we were able to achieve a lot.

In 2021, I wanna highlight these accomplishments.

And I'm not actually, I believe we do have a PowerPoint.

And so some of it will come off the PowerPoint, but some of it will also go off my reading, so.

Do you have somebody on your team who's running the PowerPoint?

I think Jordan might be on the call as well.

I see Jordan Mack.

Yes.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

Let's see here.

Okay.

So in 2021, I want to highlight several accomplishments in regards to our women and minority business consulting goals.

We set out for 25% of our consulting contracts to be done by women and minority businesses.

and we were able to reach 40% of our consulting contracts.

In 2021, and these are just a couple that are in the PowerPoint, but in 2021, the Seattle Police Department goal is to recruit smart, strong leaders who care deeply about their community.

In 2021, we will continue to see our hiring of people of color hit 40% of all hires.

Right now in 2022, we're actually reaching 50% of all hires being people of color.

We haven't seen a big candidate pool, However, we are seeing highly qualified candidates.

This diversity is also reflected in our community service officers that we're hiring.

We've removed unintentional barriers to our application process, administering our testing through using the National Testing Network, and the application fee was also removed.

And we continue to advertise with Seattle Gay News, Vietnamese News, Northwest Asian Weekly, La Rasa, KRIZ, El Rey, and others.

We've implemented a new civilian, One second.

We've implemented a new civilian hiring process to reduce opportunities for bias, which I'll cover a little bit further in a little bit more detail.

We've expanded our women's personal safety classes to include seniors, youth, and conducting also classes specifically in the East African and Spanish languages.

We conducted 42 classes with a total of 1,023 participants.

We've also launched a partnership on missing or indigenous women with Seattle Indian Health Board and Urban Health Institute.

And we did cover that in one of the public safety committees, but that started in 2021 as well.

We were awarded a grant to implement restorative practices training for officers and community members.

We've also started the implementation in 2021 of peace training.

It's a new investigative interviewing skills that is ethical, efficient, and effective.

This is shown to reduce false confessions.

We have over half our detectives that have gone through the training and should have all of the detectives completed in 2022. We've also gone through acknowledging and managing the hidden bias of good people, which have completed the training that begun in 2019. Because of the pandemic, training was converted to an e-learning with 754 employees successfully completing this training in 2021. We've also done 30 seconds to 30 years, which is four training modules, including trauma and relational policing and growth mindset, and tactics for high risk persons in crisis.

So that is also started in 2021. It was 30 seconds to 30 years training.

We conducted an outcome report on stops in detention as part of our consent decree.

We conducted a disparity review that examined stops, searches and seizures, use of force and other law enforcement activities.

We also conducted an outcome report on use of force, which we've actually seen a 49% reduction in use of force from 2015 to 2021. And we've also seen a drastic reduction in overall OPA complaints.

We continue to see disparities in some of these areas.

That is the reason for taking a comprehensive look and development into a real-time system, which we built out the equity accountability and quality system, which we have covered in one of the public safety committee meetings.

We also have community service officers and we're in the process of having a fully staffed CSO team.

We have 13 on board and the rest are currently being backgrounded right now.

So we're excited to have everyone hopefully within the next couple of months to be fully on board and into the deployment phases of their time.

We also launched the SBD before the badge, but it took 2021 for us to plan out.

We've started our second cohort just the last couple of weeks.

The feedback from the first cohort has already exceeded our expectations.

So we are really excited for where some of the things that we've been able to actually accomplish in 2021. However, we do see some challenges and opportunities.

And we will go on to the next slide.

Just the other way.

We do see some challenges in supporting the expansion of CSOs on more non-emergency enforcement services.

So this is a great opportunity for us as we look at alternative responses to be able to utilize CSOs in a different manner as well.

We also must continue our commitment to rebuild community relations and trust, and we continue to conduct restorative circles.

The grant that I mentioned earlier will help us be able to help do some of those restorative circles as well.

And then the third thing is a huge opportunity.

We really have focused on transformative policing, and there is a demand for culture change within policing.

We know that the SBD Before the Badge has incorporated the community voice, cultural history, dialogue, and listening opportunities.

We think that this will create a start for truly transformative and culture change in policing.

Want to go into the next slide?

Right now, as I mentioned, for the alternative response, we expanded up to 20 CSOs and four civilian supervisors, and they've gone through an extensive level of RSGI training, cultural competency, and also they're also participating in the SBD before the badge as well, to give them also a new look at how we cover cultural history, dialogue, and listening opportunities.

We will go on to the next slide.

And one more after that.

And so this is in regards to SB before the badge, which I have covered, but we're going to actually I'm going to cover some of the things we in 2021 we conducted formal racial equity toolkits with a woman's personal safety workshop.

And the change in our civilian hiring process that to eliminate bias and we are going to go we're actually going to go to the maybe two more slides from this one so let's see here.

You might be covering this later.

Oh, looks like you are.

I was just, I was interested to know a little bit more about the change in the hiring process.

Yes.

That's exactly what I wanted to get to.

So for us, it was a goal, and this is really a new hiring process for civilians.

And the goal was to remove bias in our application process.

So what we've done is we remove all identifiers, name, age, race, et cetera, before providing a candidate list to the hiring manager.

This allows us just to focus on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of an applicant.

And this new process currently focuses just on civilian hires at this time.

When it comes to sworn personnel, we're evaluating all aspects of the candidate as well.

But this is implemented with our CSOs hiring process over the last year.

And we've already received positive feedback from applicants who've reported reduced fear of putting information into an application process.

We did complete a racial equity toolkit in this for the new hiring process as well.

The other things that we've also conducted significant outreach in alignment with racial equity toolkits was also conducting our crowd management reform of our policy, stops and detentions, and use of force.

And these have actually helped shape our work on equity, accountability, and equality, and a revamping of our early intervention system as well.

What we have slated for, and if one more slide over, I think maybe.

So in 2022, we are conducting the SPD before the badge racial equity toolkit, the restorative practices community conversations toolkit, the policy to reflect civilian staff to professional staff, and our partnership on a 30 and 30 initiative, which is focused on increasing the amount of women that we hire in the policing profession by 2030. And that is what I have for this presentation.

Any questions?

Yeah.

Could you talk a little bit about what you have planned for the restorative practices community conversations?

Yeah.

So right now we had a lot of the work we had done on the Immigrant Family Institute, which was creating opportunities in a peacemaking circle process to have dialogue and conversation.

We wanted to expand that effort to just really use these as community conversation pieces to just talk about very specific subjects.

We had applied for a grant a couple of years ago.

We didn't initially get it.

We brought that out last year and we were able to actually secure that grant.

And this will help be able to pay for a variety of different things to also have community participate in those conversations.

But that is still gonna also be right now in the planning stages with our collaborative policing bureau.

that is also finalizing and working through that grant.

Thank you.

Also, just be really interested to know about how you, you have informed me that the, before the badge, the pre-BLEA training that council provided some funding for last year is very popular with new recruits and that existing officers are learning about this training and are interested in how they might, even though they're not new recruits, how they might benefit from a similar training.

Can you talk a little bit about your plans in that area?

Yeah, so there's several components that we're actually pushing the whole department through that the actual before the badge recruits are also getting as well.

So growth mindset is by the end of the summer, we should have everybody in the department that have gone through growth mindset.

We are actually having every person in the department, which will take a little bit longer because it's an in-person class, go through outward mindset.

These are two classes that all of our personnel will have gone through.

And we've actually added a component, outward mindset.

So there's growth mindset and an outward mindset.

And then we are actually, as part of 30 seconds to 30 years, we are conducting the relational policing component.

And then we're gonna look at expansion of other different parts of the training that we are doing with Before the Batch.

But right now, there are very specific things that officers I've had noted that it really has helped with just, you know, dealing with all the things that they've gone on more from the wellness side that have helped them.

And they see these classes as really big benefits to being able to do their job.

And so we are expanding some of that into all of our in-service officers as well.

Thank you.

Just want to flag the mention earlier that you believe we're on the track for having the CSO positions fully filled.

I think we're looking for for fully filled positions, we're looking, I think about 24 spots.

You had mentioned that there are sort of a bundle of recruits that are in the hiring process that are being backgrounded.

And I just wanna just, because we've talked about this, the council provided some funding last year to address sort of a backlog in the backgrounding process, which was taking a really long time.

And that was intended not only for officer positions, but for civilian positions.

There has been a bit of a challenge with that, though, that in that given the great resignation, the not so great resignation, that the backgrounding staff that do the backgrounding have a lot of vacancies too.

So it sounds like we're getting close to having that done.

I'm wondering if you could give us an estimate on when that unit will be fully staffed.

So we've actually brought in a company which, would to do some of the backgrounds and assist our background detectives with that.

And right now, that company has also had some staffing challenges.

So we were hoping that that would help offset the amount of backgrounds that we backgrounders that we don't have in our background unit.

But right now, when it comes to actually filling up all of the background detectives, we actually just brought in another temporary for to help with our civilian side.

which is what we call a temporary long-term employee.

And then, but as far as fully staffing it with some of our detectives, that might still be, that might still take some time and that I can't give you a definitive answer right now.

And so I think what I heard you respond to was a question about filling the backgrounding positions, but I'm also wondering when do you think the backgrounding will be completed for the CSO candidates?

I hope to have them in the next two months because they've been starting their background probably about a month and a week into it already.

They're already in the process of their backgrounds.

And so usually backgrounds take about three months with hopefully and part of it is each background is going to vary based on the candidates getting all the information that the background or needs in a timely fashion.

Thank you.

Can you just talk a little bit about what you, the recruitment process for the CSO positions?

What you find as far as the level of interest to become a community service officer when you've opened up the application process?

Yeah.

So, you know, I think the very first time when we had the CSOs, We saw a huge amount of increase of just people applying for the job.

We had over 1,000 applications.

Right now, there's a lot of word of mouth.

People are interested.

They're seeing more of our CSOs out and about in the community.

People continue to express interest, which is always positive.

The more community events that they do, the more participation that they're engaging in community, people see those benefits.

And that actually has helped increase the amount people's interest in applying for the job.

And so it really is becoming twofold, because the first time we didn't have CSOs out in the community.

And so it was literally just, you know, getting people to apply for the job.

But now we're getting a lot more interested applicants because they're seeing the actual work that's being done.

So as far as a recruitment plan, we continue to advertise in a variety of different publications.

um, which is, you know, typically, uh, you know, um, publications like I mentioned Seattle gay news, uh, and Northwest Asian weekly, et cetera.

Um, those that are continuing stuff that we are going to continue to do.

But, um, right now, I think, I think we should be actually filled and then we'll have one off, uh, opportunities, um, as people do leave, uh, to other opportunities.

Thank you.

And, um, It's my understanding that right now CSOs are working out of the West precinct, but once they're fully staffed, they'll be working out of the five separate precincts.

Is that accurate?

So right now we have not worked through that.

We know that we have, they're actually out of headquarters.

And that is one of the things that we are working on in space and the different areas as we get up to a fully trained staff.

So that is still something that we want to make sure that all of our precincts have people deploying out of their areas.

And so that I can't just give you a definitive answer, but that is right now they've grown out of their space out of headquarters.

And so we are trying to make sure that we have all those opportunities in each of the precincts as well.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Yeah.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you, Chief Diaz.

I think, do you track the demographics of your new recruits, like in the last two years or last year?

And can you tell us a little bit about the demographics, please?

Yeah, so in 2021, 40% of our hires were people of color.

That was in 2021. In 2022, Right now we're actually at 50% of people of color.

So we are not experiencing a high number of applicants, but as I mentioned, the quality of applicants, you know, people have typically higher levels of education, you know, not just bachelor's degrees, but master's degrees.

They come from a variety of different experiences.

And so we are getting really, really good candidates that are joining the department.

The demographic information you just quoted, is that, I didn't catch, is it applicants or the percentage of people hired?

Those are percentage of people hired.

It looks in it, I asked because it looks like that's also tracking with.

applicants too.

It looks like in 2021, 50% of folks were applying were people of color.

And so that's your, your hiring is sort of consistent with the demographics of, of the applicant pool.

And that I don't, I don't have those exact numbers of what, how many, you know, the percentage of the applicant pool, but these are the actual hires.

And so I'm glad to hear that they are tracking, but it's a lot of really good targeted work in many of our diverse communities for recruiting efforts.

So I think that that's really helping and paying off on getting the applicants that we're getting.

All right.

Thank you.

Great.

Well, I'm not seeing any other comments or questions.

Let me look at the.

virtual hands here too.

I really appreciate you taking some time in your very busy week to come and present to us your RSGI accomplishments for 2022. Thank you.

Take care.

Thank you.

All right.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number four.

Committee agenda item number four King County regional approach for gun violence reduction for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

We have a number of presenters here today from Public Health Seattle King County.

Can we start with a quick round of introductions and then I just want to make some framing remarks and we'll hand it over to you.

All right, I can start.

Hello, Chair Herbold.

Thank you for the opportunity to come and present.

I know this is a topic near and dear to your heart.

And we've been engaged with you quite a bit on this.

I'm Dennis Worsham.

I'm the interim director for Public Health Seattle King County.

And I'll hand it over to Tia and then to Eleutha.

Hi, good morning, all.

And thank you, Chair Herbold, for having us.

I'm Tia Yarbrough, and I'm one of the strategic advisors and program managers for Zero Youth Detention.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the committee, Aluthra Lish, and Strategic Advisor on Gun Violence for the Region, Public Health Seattle, and King County.

Thank you, Chairwoman, for having us here today.

And Dennis, we'll back to you and then move through our presentation.

All right, I think Council Member Herbold is going to make a few comments and then I will take it from there.

Thanks, I just wanna really thank you for joining us today.

I invited this presentation after seeing a version of it at the Regional Gun Violence Leadership Advisory Group where I serve.

The city of Seattle has contributed $2 million to the Regional Peacekeepers Collective.

I wanna just lift up that is joining $7 million from the county to ramp the program up through 2022 and early 2023. really appreciate that we are continuing to address this issue as a regional effort.

We know that people and violence cross city borders and we must be able to respond holistically and consistently regardless of the individual jurisdiction.

I really appreciate that the work itself is data-driven, it's a public health approach, and it pulls in and coordinates multiple systems that touch the lives of folks impacted by violence to decrease the likelihood of more.

So you're our second violence prevention presentation today.

if I had thought about it, maybe we could have made one big table.

I've seen that at the King County Council presentations you're doing that you're also bringing in community partners as well.

So if there's a follow-up presentation that would be useful for us to have, we can maybe talk about setting an additional table.

But with that, I hand it off to you.

Thank you.

Well, thanks, Madam Chair.

Again, Dennis Worsham, I'm the interim director for Public Health Seattle King County.

You actually hit most of my talking points.

So thank you for the wonderful introduction there.

What I would like to just emphasize a little bit and raise a bit in my own voice as well is, you know, violence is a preventable death and intervention that we can do.

It was actually great to be here and listen in to the YouthLink presentation.

A lot of intersections of working in community and really building what we are really committed to is how do we bring safety and well-being into the residents of King County.

And we're very committed to that from a public health approach gun violence, of course, looking at both downstream and upstream factors of how do we interrupt the violence now, but how do we do more upstream factors don't we don't even get into a situation that we have to interrupt it and we really create a community of well being.

and safety for everyone.

And so the amazing women that I have with me will speak a little bit about the work that's happening.

To your comment, thank you for serving on our regional leadership advisory group that we have formed.

Of course, it is co-chaired by Mayor Harrell and Dow Constantine, our executive.

and Ed Prince from Sound Cities Association.

And we do believe the importance of this regional approach.

The White House has recognized this as the only regional one that was selected because of its uniqueness to do in a regional approach and also that it was rooted and seated in public health and it's a public health approach and how we really do this work.

So I do think it's unique.

We are working with a number of national partners, Cities United being one of them, and others in this work in looking both at upstream and downstream factors that we need to do to interrupt violence in our community.

From an equity perspective, it's becoming a leading cause of death for Black young men in our community, and it's not acceptable.

And we do need to do the work that needs to happen from a public health approach, but also with our community partners and with our lawmakers, such as yourself, and other elected.

So without further ado, I'm going to hand this over to Tia and Luther, who you've met, and they will talk more specifically about the work that we're doing.

And we'd love to come back at any point and keep you informed in the process.

But thank you for your commitment in this work.

Good morning.

So again, my name is Tia Yarbrough, and I'm one of the strategic advisors for zero youth detention, and I oversee community safety and well being.

And so you're able to read this slide, but I wanted to give you a brief overview of our work.

So since early 2021, Public Health Seattle and King County has been leading and inclusive.

Excuse me.

I need to move this over.

I'm sorry.

In early 2000, excuse me early 2021 public health Seattle County has been leading an inclusive community safety and well being planning process that calls for a public health approach to ending gun violence.

It's a two prong strategy that includes groups that link community and system partners to identify solutions and provide recommendations in domains of juvenile justice, education, workforce development, community-led safety and health and human services.

Our Go First strategy was our immediate response to Regional Peacekeepers Collective, an overarching umbrella that supports multi-initiative organizations, networks to provide intervention, prevention and restoration services, including critical incident and hospital-based response, intensive engagement, and wrap around life-affirming care and resources to youth and families most impacted by gun violence and unjust systems.

And so I want to detail a bit, if you can go to the next slide, Aluthra.

And so I wanted to just highlight the fact that the Community Safety and Well-Being Plan, the regional approach to gun violence, lives within the context of the Community Safety and Well-Being Plan.

This is a collaborative, excuse me, a collaborative, coordinated approach with King County and the City of Seattle As you know, in 2020 executive Dow Constantine declared racism, a public health crisis and in 2021 gun violence, a public health emergency, the community safety and well being plan is a response to this urgent matter of this particular slide was created by cities united our partner organization.

at a Louisville, Kentucky that continues to provide us zero youth detention, technical assistance, as well as the framework used to support the planning process for the development of the regional community safety and well-being plan.

I will briefly detail how these four quadrants represent our work with both systems and community partners, but also the community safety well-being plan as a whole.

So I first want to start here to my left, maybe your right, with Zero Youth Detention, our core team.

Zero Youth Detention serves in a variety of capacities, but really our focus is overall community safety and well-being.

We functioned as both a host and a convener, managing relationships to hold space for our regional approach, both for gun violence and the regional community safety and well-being plan.

Again, Cities United provided technical assistance and the framework for creating the plan and the advisement for each phase.

Quadrant 2 is our Regional Violence Prevention Coalition.

ZYD convened 19 partners across city and county collaborate and create a strategic response to the uptick in gun violence.

An initial data walk showed a disproportionate impact on black and brown youth and young adults that highlighted a very clear need for a coordinated response.

We actually meet with the coalition tomorrow to provide an update to our systems and community partners on the progress of phase two document of the community safety and well-being plan.

Many members of the regional violence prevention coalition participated in our workgroups as both workgroup members and facilitators throughout the workgroup process.

I want to go over to our quadrant 3, which is our Leadership Advisory Group.

The Leadership Advisory Group recently met on June 9th.

It was tri-chaired by our Executive Dow Constantine, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and our Council Member Ed Prince, as Dennis shared.

Our very own Dennis Worsham, Interim Director of Public Health, presented the phase 2 documents highlighting the workgroup recommendations elevating the importance of this work, interrupting gun violence, but also for review and feedback to inform our next steps moving forward with budget alignment and identifying already existing funding streams and moving ultimately toward implementation of the recommendations from the workgroups.

Quadrant 4 is our regional advisory group.

Youth voice is essential in this process.

Community safety and well-being, this process began with identifying key partners as a collective.

This approach began with identifying key partners in a collective approach to addressing regional gun violence within the community safety and well-being plan.

As we move toward phase three, which is implementation, we want to ensure we find meaningful ways for youth voice to be captured and considered.

Our hope is to amplify youth voice through possible youth panels, internships, and RFPs, which will allow opportunities for youth and leadership Lastly, I want to highlight our last space, which is the planning groups.

Lastly, is the final visual here that you'll see with this graphic, which is our work group process.

The community safety well-being plan will ultimately exist in three phases.

So phase one, which was reviewing historical data.

and engaging key partners.

Phase two was establishing of the five work groups, so identify key directions which serves as the thematic focus for the work groups.

So the five work groups were community-led safety, education, health and human services, and juvenile justice.

I just wanted to highlight that Billy Harrison and Chief Bowe both participate in our juvenile justice work group, and so we thank them for their participation and investment I'm in this important work, and our final work group was workforce development.

So for just under a year over 45 key partners and 90 meetings were held to engage in policy discussions around these areas of concern, and to strategically identify solutions.

In the spring of 2022, each workgroup submitted five recommendations in which the top three recs from each group were elevated for review.

We are currently in the final stretch of phase two in which we are prioritizing community feedback, centering the voices who will be most impacted by the recommendations.

Our community feedback survey regarding the recommendations went live last Thursday on July 7. We also had a chance to participate on Converge Media where we, myself and my colleague Will Jimerson, who's not here today as a result of a family emergency, had a chance to highlight the work that we're doing with, again, regional gun violence and the community safety and well-being plan.

The live link again went live last Thursday on July 7th and it will be available until July 21st to collect responses on the ZYD webpage.

You've also received the community safety and well-being plan, both versions of the recommendations, the documents, the survey link, and also the social media materials for dissemination at your will.

We're looking forward to reviewing the community feedback with our partners as we move toward phase three, which is implementation of the recommendations We're so thankful and appreciative of all those who invested and participated in this process.

I'll answer any questions you have, but if not, I will pass the floor to my colleague, Aluthra Lish.

Thank you, Tia.

And again, thank you, Madam Chair, for having us here.

And I want to acknowledge that you'll hear quite a bit from me, and it is because my good colleague, Willard Jemerson, is not able to join us today and otherwise would be sharing a bulkhead of this information.

He helps manage the project, serves as community facilitator to organize community around how we implement this plan.

So to your point, Madam Chair, we've had a couple of iterations of this, but all of them are centered in, as you called out in your opening comments, the data-driven approach.

One of the first actions of the convening across all of the city and county groups that came together to start a process of long-term planning identified an immediate need for a go-first strategy, in which case we stood up the regional Peacekeepers Collective, which you'll hear quite a bit more about today.

The genesis, though, of both directions for the plan comes from a data walk that looked at, first of all, data that sometimes can be perceived as harming folks.

And so we took an approach to looking at the data in a clear way, leading with racial equity as we deconstructed the messages we were finding in the data.

but with a clear, indisputable sense of clarity that disproportionately black and brown men are impacted by gun violence, both in our region and throughout the nation.

As the leading charge for calling us to action, you can see both that we tied in Tia's comments, that we have acknowledged that racism is a public health issue, that gun violence is a public health emergency, and that they're intersected through how we manage finding solutions, implementing those solutions, and scaling up.

So here you see just the, I think, very familiar data.

This is a snapshot from the Prosecuting Attorney's Office as a final amalgamation of all of last year's data.

So this ends at the end of 2021. We have new data, and unfortunately, as you mentioned in your opening comments, the uptick in gun violence is still surging.

And in some pocket communities, we meet monthly with Police Chief Bowe and with Chief Padilla and Kent and with Chief Diaz.

you know, while we are seeing a downtrend because of the great efforts of programs like LINC and the efforts of what we will share with you today, there is still surging violence and then we still have our work cut out for us together.

So, you know, not to sort of point out the sad truths, but also to anchor us in the clarity of why we do what we do and how we do it.

So the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, as I mentioned, and what we'll share further is a grouping of providers that have now Grown to 13, as Tia said, it's an overarching umbrella.

The Regional Peacekeepers Collective language overarches several initiatives.

So first and foremost, supporting the work of LINC, but taking also a dynamic approach to centering folks who have been directly impacted and led organizations who are led by directly impacted folks.

We enhance some of the service provision to bring together the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, which includes organizations I'll share in list form at the end of the presentation.

but led by the great work of Community Passageways.

Community Passageways was also serving as a lead organization for the Seattle-based initiative, the Seattle Community Violence Initiative, which is doing incredible work in three hub locations in southeast Seattle, southwest Seattle, and in the central area.

And so taking a partnership approach and recognizing that we needed to scale to follow gentrification out into the areas of South King County where young people had been marginalized and we were wanting to ensure this wide network of umbrella.

We have these shared set of collectives, high-intensity engagement, much like the Link Project and parity with some of the great work they do.

But we also stood up a critical incident response led by a lasting legacy of some of the work that Chief Diaz helped stand up years ago in partnership with community, to create a notification system and a data-driven approach to reviewing that data and ensuring through one-way communication that community had the information they needed to provide crisis response.

Wraparound care, much like the LINC project, expanding on that with a credible messenger approach, support and connection for families.

Again, centering youth and families, we're very proud to see the work of LINC and also to showcase that these are shared methods of practice.

We also took a very strategic approach to looking at younger siblings who are often directly impacted by their elder siblings' involvement in gun violence.

And so we have a referral strategy to catch those young people and help support them so that perhaps we can prevent the next incident of violence.

Decrease negative law enforcement contact, understanding that law enforcement has a work to do.

We're all part of a public safety framework.

But that you are young people were being disproportionately contacted by police, and we believe that this approach allows the centering of programs like link and other programs that will mention later.

to be able to support those young people so that they don't deepen their involvement in the justice system.

Additional community capacity for restorative justice, and then community outreach, public awareness, restorative events, we'll talk a little bit more about as we move forward.

I'll gloss through this, but I think I just want to highlight that we take a place-based approach.

I think one of the great things years ago working with Justice Bridge, and just a small comment, I founded the Alive and Free program.

It's great to see its legacy.

and it to continue today as a part of the link program.

We started that project in 99 as a place-based strategy in the central area of Seattle, and it's incredible to see it growing throughout King County.

But a place-based strategy is, you know, clearly necessary.

And so cities of Auburn, Kent, Renton, Tukwila need their place-based services.

City of Seattle needs place-based services.

And they need to be culturally responsive place based services driven by the community of folks that are closest to the problem and often closest to the solution as what we call a credible messenger approach.

I think one key note here is that we put in quotes the word hotspots, but part of the work we do, though it may mirror law enforcement, is unique and distinctly different.

Yesterday, the president signed a bill into effect that looked at certain targeted approaches, and this is a part of a holistic strategy that are community-led around the country that are aligned with those practices.

Hotspot remediation works to bring community organizations directly into The communities that are identified to us as having high impact of gun violence and building community building strategy together with community.

And you can see some of those pieces listed out here.

And finally, what's imperative, and I think arcs across all programs and projects in our region, and one of the reasons, as Dennis mentioned, that we are selected by the White House for our regional approach to provide part of a peer network learning community, which they're calling CIVIC, which is the Community Violence Interventions Collaborative.

That group is all informed in these same practices and sharing these learnings and practices.

compassion-based care that is trauma-informed and emphasizes solutions is what we believe to be the best in emerging practices across the nation.

Before you move on to this slide, I think I missed the point that you were trying to make about the fact that hotspots is in parentheses or quotation marks.

Thank you.

Simply because it is a law enforcement strategy and while we are aligned, we want to be clear that that is distinctly a law enforcement strategy, and that we are mirroring some of that approach, if that makes sense.

I also want to flag, I recently was inquiring about the strategy of mitigating the environmental conditions around places, hotspots.

You know, I think When talking about these issues and how we can help as elected officials, representatives of government, there aren't often concrete things beyond funding programs that we can hope and look for the data that shows that they work, that we can do.

But when it comes to making physical investments in things that will improve the physical conditions where this activity is happening and reduce the likelihood.

I'm very interested in supporting that work.

So I would be very interested to know more about the assessment of physical conditions in the areas that you're focused in here in Seattle and talking with my colleagues to figure out how we can support making those changes as needed or finding out where it is in the sort of city bureaucracy process of dealing with those things.

And if it would be appropriate Madam Chair, I would love to make sure that we follow up and bring forward some information to you, we have some really great.

Data and some great strategies that have been highly effective and there's also a federal grant through the burn grants right now through office of justice that align with these place based strategies that do environmental.

remediation and partner law enforcement with community to address the strategy.

And I'm also noting an email from you, and please forgive my delay.

We had a couple of emergencies that talk specifically about one of those key locations.

So if it's appropriate, we can either circle back later in the conversation here, or we can bring forward greater information for you in partnership with the City of Seattle partners.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

So here we'll just highlight and, you know, as I mentioned, you're hearing too much from me today and I want to just be clear about that because Willard Jemerson, my colleague, does an incredible job of helping us to understand how it is that we focus on the data we focus on and why, and how we prioritize the population being served.

You'll see here that we've formed what we call our priority population.

As you heard earlier, I think it was Aaron Fox who said that it was 12 or 14 to 24-year-olds.

This is slightly out of date.

We are now serving 12 to 27-year-olds because the data from our partnership with Harvard Medical Center suggested that they were seeing folks in that range directly impacted by gun violence and we just couldn't draw that distinct line at a certain age.

Unfortunately, that's dropped lower than 12 now.

and the investments that could be made in expanding the strategy would ultimately help either the City of Seattle or us in conjunction with the City of Seattle address the other population that between the data showing us between 30, 39-year-olds that are directly impacted by gun violence.

There simply isn't a service provider network that's aligned and coordinated at the moment to address that population's needs.

This could be a model for a change that can be scaled up to support the agencies that are doing the work in the city of Seattle to directly address a different population, which I know has been a priority specifically of the mayor's liaison, Davida Briscoe.

She is the first ever liaison for gun violence and has done a beautiful job of helping us look at that concern.

One of the things we have done, though, in the offset of this almost two years ago now is we were designing the model in partnership with Harborview Medical Center.

is stand up the model to serve within Harborview.

There's a couple of key positions that are centered in the Department of Social Work at Harborview.

They are directly impacted individuals who've had great success meeting bedside with folks.

They connect the folks in the hospital directly to our community provider network, which I'll speak a little to later.

But it was the data from Harborview that helped us start to drill down our focus point of population, between 100 and 150 young people in that Venn age bracket, of course, the numbers have shifted around.

We also get information from the prosecuting attorney's office that identifies and practice that we take, which is a national standard best practice now of social network analysis, that understands that a very small group of young people are often involved in the most amount of harm.

And if we can adequately serve and support the smallest group of young people, we can also prevent larger scale harm, in which case this takes an explicit approach to looking at between 50 to 80 young people who are identified for their proximity gun violence and their need for service and care.

So this priority population is part of what gets referred into the network.

Our shared methods of practice, one thing I want to note that was a great part of the presentation, the link project shared early on and many years ago, working then with the former Obama administration team, we were looking at how the gang intervention model was explicit that names gangs and it has a tremendous body of research behind it and it's highly effective strategy, but young people are evolving and the issues of an emerging violence issues have kind of moved beyond certain labels.

And therefore we were expanding collectively all of us in conversation, including the folks in the link project, talking about what are the needs of young people at a more general state, rather than saying simply gangs, young people may have be affiliated or they may not identify as gang members at all but still be in proximity to gun violence, in which case are credible messenger approach and a community leadership model of folks who are directly closest to all that emerging trends and understand what's going on.

and understand that social network analysis can help us continue to refine the evidence-informed practices and the practice-based evidence that we are collecting with community's input.

So the shared methods of practice here of community leadership, as Tia mentioned, were multi-partner approach, multi-systems, a network of folks that are all come together to try to break down silos and agree across different jurisdictions that we can serve our young people fluidly and together.

without without double serving them, you know there's a really great centralized sort of leadership, as this calls out, and the management and coordination in a centralized way helps sort of prevent the potentially not over serving because I don't believe in that but you know again, double serving unintentionally.

Rigorous training and professional development is one of the benchmarks of the Regional Peacekeepers Collective model, as Dennis mentioned and I did earlier, that we are part of the civic model with the White House.

We were also able to help inform the Biden administration's transition team on recommendations for funding this work and prioritizing community leadership and helping to prioritize and identify some of the national best trainers and practices to lead the work, in which case the Regional Peacekeepers Collective hangs its hat on having curated in relationships to all of those folks who are serving to help us stand up this model and ensure that it's on course to be a standard of excellence.

Coordination and service delivery is really also a sort of signature of the regional approach.

It takes a regional approach and it doesn't, you know, calling out one particular brand or one particular grouping wouldn't be fair.

Everybody's doing remarkable work.

Sometimes what's missing is broad-scale coordination.

One of the great benchmarks of a public health approach is allowing for that lens to provide the resources and guidance on that wide-scale coordination, much like we responded to COVID and other crises and emergencies, we are able to mobilize, rally, and invest in a way that's distinct to the public health models.

This coordinated service delivery model that's giving different organizations the capacity and supporting different organizations to build more capacity for violence interruption, hospital-based intervention, client services, and family restoration is again within the suite of what is happening with the Regional Peacekeepers Collective.

If you can forgive me if I make sure that my screen freezes, I'll be brief here.

As we talked earlier, and Tia mentioned in the description of our Go First strategy, we're slightly disruptive in our cadence of looking at how we put these words together.

Often, the continuum of care starts with early prevention.

So we are actually an intervention strategy that prioritizes secondary prevention.

And then moves to restoration within the suites of services intervention again mentioning like I did critical incident response hospital based intervention that hotspot remediation work in our case that looks like weekly calls and conversations with law enforcement partners who identify those locations that are in need of care.

and then our community practitioners going into those spaces and partnering with community to abate some of the issues of gun violence.

And City of Seattle is doing some remarkable work in that area through the SCSI initiative, specifically in Southeast Seattle and their remarkable safe passage work where they are weekly present in the Safeway parking lot.

And because of their incredible presence, there have been little if not zero shootings in that community since they implemented their strategy.

Regional Peacekeepers Collective is also distributing resources to partners who are able to hold up that strategy in different locations.

And the Renegades for Life Project is doing incredible work at 12th and Jackson and down at 3rd and Pine and Pike.

And so those are just some examples of many that are happening.

And we would love to share, of course, more with you.

Prevention mentioned younger siblings, that's strategic.

We are in support of, though we are not currently funding, and we know that there are proposals to fund more safe passage for schools through the SCSI initiative.

So though you find it here, I don't want to imply that that's fully implemented, but it's something that we believe is a key and critical part of this overall service model.

And then restoration, moving into that care team approach, much like the link project talked about in their graphic, their wraparound care model, very similarly aligned with these best practices of a wraparound care model.

In a second, I will move to this slide.

I'm going to spend a bit of time here and move more quickly through the others.

This is a strategy fully realized in graphic form.

As you mentioned, Chairwoman, this is a data-driven approach and it goes with ongoing analysis.

This wheel unfortunately never stops until we abate gun violence.

We do have weekly shots fired calls and we are reviewing incidents from the previous week and action planning on strategic steps community partners can take through referral and otherwise follow-up care with the individuals impacted.

We are protocol-driven and we take a strident and very proud approach to a protocol that works across partners that starts as initiated by notification from different partners, can be community, is often law enforcement letting us know This sets off a chain of events that includes deployment to incidents to provide violence interruption services like de-escalation and crowd control and mediations as appropriate, and that includes the hospital-based response.

Strategic, it says school-based.

Again, we're looking to support the scaling up of the school-based safe passage work, community engagement, and hotspot work.

Those are all that fall in that category.

Everything with the solid white arrow, indicate how we contact young people that we believe to be in crisis and need of care.

At the bottom of the wheel, you see where that turns into enrollment into, and much like any medical model, this looks at great people who are strategizing what service organization is the best fit for the young person and making referral perhaps into SCSI, perhaps into the link program, or to the provider network within the RPKC model, where they will receive services that are trauma-informed, that are focused on life coaching and affirmation and case management and those services are provided in a team approach that puts an outreach worker, some organizations call them case managers or systems navigators, who partner together to wrap around the young person to walk them towards the attainment of the goals like they shared in the link project, for instance.

And then finally, family and sibling support services and community restoration and healing activities are both ongoing and distinct.

We refer our young people who are eligible for younger sibling support to organizations like Choose 180 who have a specialty in working with that younger population.

Our PowerPoint that we've shared out with you, we're happy to go.

I won't go deeply into this.

This simply lists the function of the job descriptions that live within the model.

And I hope you can excuse the garbage truck that's passing my house and making noise.

But these are the descriptor of the actual staffs that are funded through our various investments to stand up and provide this work.

And there fairly aligned, you will find them somewhat interchangeable in the sense that as we scale up, we hope to see much like the Link Project and the great work of SCSI and all of the emerging work that's happening with the Regional Peacekeepers Collective.

We've also added in Rainier Beach Action Coalition and invested in their work to help scale up into areas of unincorporated South King County, specifically Skyway and White Center, where we've seen an uptick in gun violence and a need for care.

So all of those providers are supporting the function of this kind of workforce to ensure that they are able to coordinate and work together and provide a network of service a web of support for our young people.

Luther, I just wanted to mention your the slide that you're describing, you're on the IPR slide, I wanted them to have a chance to sleep.

I'm going to do my best.

It seems my screen is freezing.

So hopefully it will catch up in a second here and allow me to continue.

Can you verify to that you are seeing the slide now with the Yes, thank you.

So the public health approach service model.

And again, these have been shared out to you the descriptor of job descriptions, I think that Tia, I was frozen on.

Hopefully this is showing.

I'll wave it at you briefly, but I will move on to the slide that defines how the model hangs together.

So the Regional Peacekeepers Collective is supported by the leadership of the ZYD team at Public Health.

And again, that is highly strategic because the public health approach has gained national traction since the 1970s.

World Health Organization has named youth and gun violence a public health concern.

And as we've emerged in our understanding of how to practice that, we are the only public health department in the country right now who's actually holding and leading this work.

So we're very proud to offer that up to all of the service models.

The lead organizations of Community Passageways and the Rainier Beach Action Coalition receive funding both from the city of Seattle, from the county directly in both our general funds and emergency services dollars, emergency dollars made available by the White House.

And we are also turning to conversations where we will hopefully go to philanthropy and collaborate and writing federal grants, those lead organizations subcontract out the service model that you see here, critical incident managers support violence interrupters and outreach workers are supported by client services managers alongside of the case managers.

The hospital-based interventionist, though they stand alone, they fit into this leadership team.

And the restoration service coordinator manages the family support specialists and sibling support specialists' work.

The medium tier here across the middle is the coordination of various funding streams feed into standing up and supporting this group of workforce so that they can work together seamlessly as a team to meet the needs of the folks that they are encountering on the ground.

and at that level, and then referring them into this network that is funded and stood up by different models holding elements of the work.

I think one important piece to note is that I know there's sometimes some confusion about who funds what, and I think an important note is that our combined funding makes possible this wide-based web of support.

The hospital-based interventionist staffs, though they are funded directly by King County, can't stand alone without the city of Seattle's funding that invests in supporting the restoration service coordinator and the sibling support specialists and the folks who receive that referral from the hospital-based interventionist.

So it's fair to say that we are technically all, collectively, we are funding in a successful model.

So I just wanna make sure I highlight that.

And if my slides will allow me, I will finally showcase just the list of the partners who are in each component of the strategy Again, community passageways you see the YMCA logo which is standing for the Alive and Free program that Aaron Fox was sharing about today, led by the mighty Marvin Marshall, Renegades for Life with Brother Salim Robinson and Leadership Choose 180 led by Sean Good, the Freedom Project, David Hepart and his team, Progress Pushers, Eddie Purpose and his incredible team, and then of course, the Harborview-based intervention team.

I would love to call out Paul Carter specifically, and with support of all the doctors and social workers that support his incredible work there.

Then in the community, and I'm sure you know this council, I just want to make sure that you're aware that as we talk about coordination of services and coordination of care, not collapsing models, but standing in alignment with models, So these organizations that make up the work of the SCSI in the city of Seattle proper.

And then finally, the enhanced service provider network that allows for us to service areas of Skyway and White Center and including some new areas in South King County.

So this group of all these providers, you may see the same name.

And you heard two of these same organizations mentioned in the link project, the two that are providing outreach, the Freedom Project, and the Alive and Free program with the YMCA, there is no duplication of services.

There is a widely understood partnership that allows for us to expand to follow our young people and to bust down the silos and walls that prevent them from receiving services if they move, for instance, outside of the city limits of Seattle.

Those providers are contracted and piece together their full contracts with various investments to be able to provide the incredible work that they do.

So that concludes our formal slide presentation, and we'd be thrilled to turn it over to any questions.

Thank you, and I just want to, while I'm thinking about it, be sure to extend my thanks and well wishes to Willard Emerson.

Sorry he couldn't be here with us.

You've done a fantastic job filling in his shoes, but we do miss him with us here today.

A couple questions I had as it relates to the hospital-based program.

I think you know I have a particular interest in that program.

The slide said that every year approximately 100 to 150 young people in the target age population are seen in the emergency room for gun-related injuries.

Can you give us a sense of those 100 to 150 people seen in the emergency room, how many each year we can expect to receive the services of the hospital-based program?

I can do my very best to guess and I can also report back to you all on the data, I failed to mention that the entire project is under evaluation through public health and that evaluation is only one quarter into data capture now because we had to do an analysis on ramping up the service model and ensuring that it was cogent and comprehensive enough to to evaluate so we did some evaluation readiness.

I think I'm happy to report to you, and I prefer to do it if it's all right in the format of getting that information from our evaluator to give you a clear answer.

I think that we are with one With only one up until last month, we only had one hospital-based interventionist in place, and it just simply wasn't humanly possible for them to see everybody.

Of the folks, I think by virtue of attrition, some young people are released from the hospital right away, which doesn't allow for time to make that connection.

And therefore, without what we know to be the most effective best practice to actually meet bedside, where there is a moment of true connection, It's not always likely that folks engage in services if they're followed after the fact.

So of the folks that are being met bedside we are seeing a pretty high engagement rate I think at about 75%, but I don't want to misspeak I'd really be grateful for the grace to be able to bring you the accurate data.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would, I would love that I've been.

trying to get a sense of what the outcomes are for the hospital-based program since it has moved to a bedside intervention.

I think folks have heard me say before, you know, we get here weekly updates on shots fired from SPD in sort of semi in real time.

So both shots fired in gunshot injuries and fatalities.

And every time I get a report, I'm just, I have this real sense that I want the assurances that the folks who are represented by numbers in this report are actually getting these services because I do believe in the data that shows the positive outcomes.

I also wanted to ask also about this particular program, if the age target is increased to, I think I heard you say 34, does that, result in a need to shift some component of the program itself to address what might be a different set of needs for that population?

I think what we believe to be the most effective component is what we would call the inside-outside job, right?

There is the hospital-based interventionist in-house making that referral.

But what is working so beautifully is that there is a network of providers that are coordinated to receive that referral.

And what we have all identified together as a gap is there's not a networked set of providers for an older population.

So we would never want to shift away from the organizations who are primarily youth development organizations who are so effectively receiving those referrals and serving young people.

We would encourage the opportunity for us to come together and consider How do we network, how do we scale up this model and build a service provider network that has the adequate and appropriate services for that older population and Councilwoman it sort of falls between 30 and 39 so I think you know certainly has that median number.

is certainly true, but that is also emerging as, as the impacts of COVID and the economic instability and houseless issues have impacted folks.

It has been, you know, as Chief Diaz reports to us weekly through his team in our Shots Fired review, We are primarily looking at the young people that we can connect with and make impact and refer into this provider network.

We're very aware that the shootings in homeless encampments and in other locations are not, it's not, there's not a construct that's designed at the moment to ensure their referral into a service provider network.

And also we are at least hearing routinely that there are issues of domestic violence that have increased during COVID that have been resulting in some of those statistics around the increased shots fired and suicides as well.

And these organizations are primarily providing services to young people who, like we identified through that data, are disproportionately contacted and in need of care within a certain age range.

So there is truly an opportunity to scale up and grow.

I don't think we would want to change what's working so much as be able to make sure that there is learning from what is working to scale that up.

And you anticipated my next question, which is, given that your interventions are very focused on young people who are involved in gun violence, and that gun violence might be street or gang involved, given the fact that we are seeing victims and perpetrators of gun violence sort of fitting in different categories, whether or not it's suicide or domestic violence, road rage, things that may not be necessarily addressed in the same way with the same construct would be very interested in working to support any efforts to build out a model for those unique unique circumstances that are separate from the model, the model now, and we'd love to just talk to you more about how we can do that so we could, that this model is, can be responsive and organic and flexible.

And I appreciate you saying that and I think we would love to bring in together our partners at the city and folks that are, you know, we're really making this effort to collaborate in a way that allows us to look at the intersections that cross through our young people's lives, and that may lead to incidents of gun violence and how we can be responsive.

I think one of the just unique elements I'd love to cite is that our vision is building a new model of public health worker.

And it's widely understood that when there's protocol and practice, you know, EMS and firefighters and other folks are seen as part of a public safety framework.

And this workforce that's being developed and professionalized hopes to be seen as this first responder, much like any other first responders, and therefore able to be nimble in responding, like you said, to these various issues that come up at these intersections.

I retract my question.

Okay, well, it's fine.

I'm noting the time, but I do have a question which is, do you have does Is there a, do you have a formal or direct relationship with the individual family members who have recently lost a close relative?

Because I, and this is a question specific to the hospital-based program, I'm just becoming aware that there are lots of places for improvements in that area, talking to the medical, examiner and the chief medical officer of Harborview.

There's a lot of healing that can start right at that moment and these families could offer.

direct experience as well.

I appreciate the question.

I would love to ultimately elevate the fact that our grassroots partners are in community and with community and almost sort of pound for pound, if you will, have relationships, not always, but we also have systems to work through that.

And as you cite the chief medical examiner, because Will is not available to meet today, we had a meeting on our books to have that conversation together.

So we are, we invite to have folks directed to conversations that we can collaborate on looking for those healing solutions and also elevate the incredible work that the community providers have built lifelong relationships in community to folks that are impacted and are often the most nimble and rapid in being able to bring together a response.

Sometimes we just don't all know who's doing what and so our goal here is to bring that all to bear that everybody is aware of what's available and how we might improve and grow together.

Thank you.

much.

Okay.

Again, thank you for being with us today.

I want to also thank you for lifting up the work of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative as well.

In your presentation, the City Council championed funding, the tune of $4 million a year for this effort.

And I'm really grateful that You're bringing their work into the fold and grateful to the Safe and Thriving Division of the Human Services Department for their support of that work as well.

I would love to talk about offline after this meeting, but before we go into suspending our committee meetings in favor of council budget discussions, but would love to talk about whether or not there is a sort of a second table that we can set and bring some of these additional partners for a conversation about their work.

So really, again, very, very grateful for all that you're doing and just looking for every opportunity I can to lift up that work.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, members of the committee.

Bye-bye.

Oh, that was the last item on our agenda.

It is 1138 am.

The next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, July 26. Before we adjourn, are there any comments from my colleagues?

No comments.

Fantastic.

Again, it's a 1138 and we are adjourned.

Appreciate it.

you