Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee of 2/22/2022

Thank you so much.

The February 22nd, 2022 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

We have three currently present.

Thank you so much.

On today's agenda, we will be hearing a report from central staff and the Seattle Police Department on their 2021 year-end staffing report and year-end crime report.

We'll also have a presentation from SPD on their retail staff program.

If there are no questions, we'll 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 will transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following way.

To the number of speakers today, each speaker will be given minutes to speak.

We'll call on each speaker by name and in order which they're registered on the council's website.

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

The link is also listed on today's agenda.

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

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

You can begin by stating your name and the item which you're addressing.

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

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

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

you've completed your public comment, we ask that you disconnect from the line.

But if you want to continue following the meeting, we encourage you to do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

Okay, we have 12 people signed up for public comment.

And again, I will read the names into the record.

We have Howard Gale followed by Peter Condit, Howard.

Good morning, Howard Gale.

One year ago this month, the SPD murdered Derek Hayden, a man in crisis.

Last month, our accountability system announced that this murder was, quote, lawful and proper, unquote.

48 days ago, the SPD murdered another man in crisis, a man who still, 48 days later, remains unnamed and unremarked upon by a failed and heartless police accountability system.

Not quite the 85 days that a heartless system with Harry Caver unnamed and unremarked upon in 2020, just six days before George Floyd's murder.

This week marks nine years, nine years since the SPD killed Jack's son, Kiewitinowin, another person in crisis.

Yesterday marked six years since the murder of Che Taylor.

Each time a failed and heartless police accountability system that has police policing police has determined these murders, along with all of the 32 killings since the murder of John T. Williams to be quote, lawful and proper.

What deep disrespect to the memory of John T. Williams that the person whose murder started us on this nearly 12-year journey, where we now find ourselves lost on a path of justification, getting us ever further from the path of justice.

On January 25th, this committee asked monitor off Kelly three times if people in crisis who were killed by the SPD had been left out of the SPD crisis data.

Three times, Afteli unequivocally stated that, quote, it was documented, unquote.

On that same day, I tweeted to Afteli the nine names and dates of the people missing from the database.

Yet two weeks later at a public meeting, Afteli feigns ignorance and requests that people send him this information.

This is not an isolated case.

At that same meeting, Afteli absurdly claimed that information provided to him months ago about Seattle officers sexually abusing homeless youth was forwarded to the FBI, not to the council, not to the CPC, not to the OIG, not to the federal court, but to the FBI.

Systems of injustice, while created and run by people we see as ill-intentioned, only persist and can be perpetuated by well-meaning people such as yourselves.

Being a facade for justice is itself an injustice.

Thank you.

Let's see here.

Our next speaker is Peter Condit, followed by Michael Malini.

Peter?

Peter, are you with us?

I am not seeing Peter in the queue here.

So I do see him marked as present, but I do not see him listed on the screen.

Let's move on down to Peter Mellini.

Peter Mellini will be followed by BJ Last.

Hello, my name is Michael Mullaney.

I'm a renter in District 3, and I'm calling for the entirety of SPD's 2022 salary savings of $1.4 million be transferred to the community for investment in true public safety.

Policing and criminalization does not address the underlying issues of inequity that force people into unstable living situations and acts of survival.

And we are still living through a pandemic that has caused widespread emotional and physical trauma and economic despair that remains unaddressed by our current system.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is BJ Last, and BJ will be followed by Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

BJ?

Hello, my name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard resident and a small business owner.

So after months of SPD and Chambers of Commerce making breathless hyperbolic claims about a crime wave of organized shoplifting, SPD launched Operation New Day.

Arrests from the program have been people shoplifting things like a shirt and a belt, or baby formula.

Not the massive, mythical organizing shoplifting rings that SPD and the business groups have been claiming.

This shows that the organizing and shoplifting is wildly overblown.

Council needs to remember this when evaluating additional claims by business groups about supposed crime waves.

Arresting, prosecuting, and jailing people is incredibly expensive.

The annual cost to incarcerate someone in King County is $154,778.

That doesn't include the cost, the thousands of dollars spent on arresting.

Why is the city paying such a massive premium to prosecute poor people instead of using those funds to address the underlying issues of poverty?

Why is the city prioritizing the interests of big corporations like Target over the struggles of poor and unhoused community members?

This lack of concern for our unhoused community was evident on Sunday when the city tried to do a sweep with only SPD and Parks Department present.

No hope team, no outreach workers, no offers of shelter, just SPD and parks.

All SPD salary savings should be transferred to community-led investments in public safety.

SPD clearly has more money and officers than it needs if it can act as Target's loss prevention department.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Next, we have Trevona Thompson-Wiley followed by Penny O'Grady.

Hello, my name is Trayvonna.

I'm a resident of District 2. I'm a black woman who's invested in community care.

I'm a third generation from Seattle, and I truly do care about this city, especially the BIPOC community members that are a part of the city.

I'm calling today to demand to stop criminalizing property and transfer the $1.42 million of STD salary savings to the community.

We demand the entirety of STD 2022 salary savings be transferred to the community for investment in true public safety.

We need to put our resources in BIPOC communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and actively targeted and harmed by policing and divestment.

Criminalizing the poor is wrong.

The folks who are stealing are poor and they suffer from mental health and substance abuse issues.

Why are we not addressing those issues?

Why would we give a police department with an already devoted budget more money to arrest poor people?

Policing and criminalizing folks does not address the underlying issues of inequities that force people into their unstable living conditions, and acts of survival like stealing baby formula.

Since the topic of STDs retails death programs, let's discuss how the retail death program targets and criminalizes poor people, provides no services, and further destabilizes people, decreasing public safety for everyone.

Why is an extreme amount of bail being placed on poor people who can't afford a sandwich, clothing, or toothpaste?

For example, a person who allegedly stole items from Target that were valued at $44.70, their bill was set at $2,000.

Why are we going to continue putting more money into the system when people like Target have billions of dollars in flushing insurance?

This must stop criminalizing the poor and transfer all of the salary savings to the community.

If you truly care about the community, put the money into community hands.

I'll be here the rest of my time.

Thank you, Trevona.

Our next speaker is Penny O'Grady, followed by Jessica Avendar.

Penny?

Hello, my name is Penny.

I'm a Seattle resident for more than 30 years.

The retail theft program targets poor people.

It further destabilizes folks who are already suffering, decreasing public safety for everyone.

It consumes significant resources and provides no services to people who need help, not more harm.

We need to increase investments in true public safety, not increase.

Recently, a person was arrested for stealing a shirt, a belt, and three drinks from Target, all of which cost $43.54.

The court found they were suffering from extreme poverty.

Bail, $1,000.

Another person was charged with stealing goods worth $6.99 from Target.

SPD arrested and booked them into jail on $1,000 bail.

Someone else was charged with stealing items totaling $44.70 from Target for a bail of $2,000.

The CEO of Target made $77 million in 2020. This program is a pipeline from SPD to Poor People's Court to jail, a trauma factory.

What about this program is data-driven?

Why haven't homeless service providers and the Department of Public Defense been consulted about the impact of it on the people being targeted?

Why have pandemic-related jail booking restrictions been lifted for shoplifting charges?

This is not a public safety issue.

And why are we using city resources on this program rather than addressing the underlying issues of poverty?

Protecting those raking in millions does not lead to public safety.

Thank you.

I cede my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jessica Avendar.

And Jessica's not being on screen as present.

So we'll move down to Latanya Sevier.

And Latanya will be followed by Julia Bach.

Latanya?

Hi, my name is Latanya Sevier.

I'm a 39-year-old black, queer, non-binary person renting in District 2. We demand the entirety of SPD's 2022 salary savings be transferred to community for investments in true public safety.

Things like housing and helping our unhoused folks transition from where they are currently to more stable housing.

We demand The policing and criminalization do not address the underlying issues of inequality that force people into unstable living situations and acts of survival, such as stealing baby formula, hygiene products, or food.

Experts suggest homicides are increasing due to the pandemic and economic stress, increased gun sales, and closures of community institutions.

This is why we demand salary savings go to community-led programs who provide services that address root causes and make our communities safer for everyone.

The retail theft program targets and criminalizes poor people, provides no services, and further destabilizes people, decreasing public safety for everyone.

As previous callers have stated, folks have been arrested for stealing from Target, a big box store that has billions of dollars of income, and given bails at $1,000 and in one case $2,000 for theft under $100.

Even one day in jail is very destabilizing to a person and only further exacerbates poverty and puts people's health at risk.

Why are we using city resources on this program rather than addressing the underlying issues of poverty?

Why haven't homeless service providers and the Department of Public Defense been consulted to talk about the impact of this program?

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Julia Bach, and Julia will be followed by David Haynes.

My name is Julia Buck.

I'm a resident in Omaha District 6. I am also calling to ask why the City of Seattle has decided to put our public money toward being Target's loss prevention program.

Not only that, but as another caller mentioned, an attempt to steal goods valued at $6.99.

Okay.

less than seven dollars uh...

fpd arrested this person sent this person to jail it cost us about four hundred dollars a day to incarcerate somebody they'll be fed a thousand dollars we don't have a thousand dollars so we are paying hundreds of dollars to prevent the loss of seven dollars worth of uh...

and and on top of that I can't imagine that there's anything particularly fancy or superfluous that you can get for $6.99.

So, you know, what are we doing?

Why haven't we had service providers or interventions that are not carceral for this kind of theft.

I mean, did, did city council mistake, you know, the message of Les Miserables as being the story of the heroic inspector who's frustrated by this terrible person who stole bread.

I, I, this program is terrible.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is David Haynes and Dave be followed by Katie Dichter.

David Haynes?

Yes.

Thank you.

I got a problem with my phone here.

Thank you.

David Haynes, District 7. Considering the actions of city council writing laws to keep criminals out of jail to manipulate the state, Is the Seattle Police Department lying to the people about crimes against humanity, not being even listed as a crime?

They seem to not acknowledge the root causes of our societal implosion originate with City Hall and cops exempting crack, meth, heroin pushers from jail, destroying lives daily, listed non-violent misdemeanor.

Why are you allowing an unqualified racist police chief to continue to sabotage every crime-fighting specialty unit while making up his own training program?

It's obvious the police chief is the worst we've ever had, unless you're a drug dealer.

Secondly, is the Human Services Department director going to bother making improvements to their half-hearted efforts to shelter homeless during another emergency weather situation?

Or is this going to be another failure they can learn from at the expense of innocent houses people denied access to shelter services?

Because no nonprofits want to step up or bother showing up.

After all, it is snowing and freezing right now.

No homeless should be denied help because nonprofits want to keep it a secret till you find a service navigator only looking to help certain skin color repeat offenders resulting in unnecessary suffering of innocent homeless all while creating racist data points.

The city council keeping tabs on human services department or city council running up the tab in the bar, failing to keep human service.

homeless providers, and cops honest.

The public safety and human service oversight should resign out of principle.

You have failed to solve any problems other than for drug coachers allowed to continue getting away with imploding society.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Katie Victor and Katie will be followed by Jane Saunders.

Katie?

Hi this is Katie Dictor.

I am a resident in Ballard District 6. I'm calling about the retail theft program.

I just want to lift up a question that a previous caller asked.

What are we doing.

What are we doing.

You are the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

You have one issue to solve.

It's economic inequality.

I live near Safeway at 15th and Market.

If you walk in you can see a section behind the counter where things are locked up.

There's baby formula back there.

Baby formula.

Do you understand that that is so messed up and you all are the public safety and human services committee and we live in one of the richest cities in the world and you look at this problem and think, oh yeah, we should support Safeway in a decision to lock up baby formula because there's a mother trying to feed her baby and she asked the steel formula.

So we live in Seattle and instead of using city resources to figure out how to meet people's basic needs you're supporting corporations who lock up baby formula.

So I hope you understand how backwards and twisted that is and I hope you listen to the people calling in today as we tell you That's not what we want our city resources to be used for.

We don't want SPD involved in these situations.

Please stop criminalizing poverty and get to work doing the real job of this committee, which is public safety and human services.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jane Saunders, and Jane is showing as not present, so we'll go down to Leah Montong.

Leah remember to press star six to unmute yourself.

Hi I'm Leah Monting and I live in District 9 and I'm also calling about the retail theft program like many others today and specifically about the concerning reports that there have been a recent wave of arrests at Target downtown.

I'm aware of examples of a person allegedly stealing $6.99 worth of goods and then being booked in jail on $1,000 bail.

Someone arrested for allegedly stealing $43.54 in goods and being booked on $1,000 bail.

And then someone arrested for allegedly stealing $44.70 of goods from Target and bail being set for $2,000.

You know, we've heard all the important arguments so far today already.

The program is targeting poor people, as others have already said.

It is obvious that economic inequality and poverty are huge, huge issues in our city, and these are not problems that we're going to solve by criminalizing poverty.

And one thing I not sure has been mentioned yet is that King County Jail has been going through an ongoing crisis with COVID-19 circulating in the jail, and that's inhibited access to showers, phone calls, attorney meetings, laundry, and more.

So it's ridiculous to me that we would be putting people in the jail and then setting prohibitively high bails at this time.

in addition to everything else that's been said.

Why are we using city resources on this program rather than addressing the underlying issue of poverty.

The demand or the suggestion or the demand that we transfer one point four million in SPD salary savings to the community is a good one.

Take care.

Bye.

Our last speaker signed up is Chloe Huber.

Chloe is not showing us present.

One of our earlier speakers who was not present now shows present.

So we're going to try to go back to Peter Condit.

Peter?

Good morning, Chair Herbold.

Thank you for coming back to me.

This is Peter Conant in District 6. I'm calling about both items on today's agenda.

First, I'm glad to see that officers have continued the trend of leaving SPD faster than new ones are joining.

We know from decades of evidence, SPD contains violent, structural, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous racism.

We know from two years of lies, cover-ups, and departing leadership that SPD will not change unless they are held financially accountable.

The SPD can and should be smaller and have a smaller budget.

Their salary savings must be removed entirely from the department and transferred to the community for non-police approaches to public safety that center people's basic needs.

The second thing I'm calling about is the SPD's retail theft program, which deputizes private security to further criminalize poverty.

This is a blatant capitulation to the interests of corporate profits over the struggles of poor and unhoused people.

You're supposed to address the causes of city problems, not the effects of them.

There's no part of SPD's program that addresses the causes of shoplifting.

Consider the impact of this program on the people being targeted.

SPD recently booked at least five people accused of shoplifting at the downtown Target store into the county jail.

One person allegedly stole $6.99 worth of merchandise.

Another took vitamins and baby formula.

These actions are not threats to public safety.

It is immoral and financially illogical to respond to these actions by spending over $300 per night to jail people.

Even a short time in jail is destabilizing, exacerbates poverty, and puts people's lives at risk.

Please do not lift pandemic-related jail booking restrictions with COVID still rampant.

I'll end with a reminder that the NICJR report last year showed that unarmed community-based responders could handle more than half of the calls that SBD currently receives.

please defund SPD, especially the $1.4 million that they are not presently using.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Peter.

And going back to the public comment, see if anybody else has returned.

We've got Chloe Huber, who's now with us.

Chloe.

Hi, am I unmuted?

You are.

Hi.

We can hear you.

Oh, great.

Well, today I was also calling about the Retail Steps program.

I understand that we'll be using community funds to, you know, further criminalize poor folks who are taking basic survival needs from stores.

And I was really, you know, disturbed to learn that we would be maybe expanding this program when I feel like You know, often those needs could be met another way.

I'm concerned that by continuing to fund the police so heavily that we won't invest in alternative, more creative and more compassionate programs.

I would really like to see more maybe like outdoor temporary day centers, more distribution of items.

And I see that a lot of community groups are already doing this work, I feel like for a much lower cost than jailing someone, employing an officer.

or saving money to employ more officers.

So I really like folks to consider an alternative to this if possible.

But that's all for me.

Thank you so much.

That was our last public speaker who is present.

So we'll So with that, we will close the public comment period.

And move into.

Please read into the agenda item number two.

Committee agenda item number one.

I'm reading my instruction.

Thank you so much.

So we are going to start with agenda item number one.

Thank you, Alex.

And this item, we're going to first hear from Greg Doss of Council Central Staff with the Year End 2021 Staffing Report.

And after that, Chief Diaz will speak to the 2021 Year End Crime Report.

And so that will turn it over to Greg Doss of Council Central Staff.

Introduce yourself.

get us going.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Greg Doss, Council Center staff.

Good morning, members of the committee and Chief Diaz.

Go ahead and start this morning, as the chair mentioned, with the brief presentation of the SPD staffing report.

And so I'm going to start by sharing my screen and putting up the presentation that I have prepared.

One moment.

Can everyone see that?

Someone give me a nod or a scrape?

All right.

Great.

Thanks.

So I'm going to go ahead and jump right in.

What I did was I took data that was transmitted by the department for the entire year of 2021, print some numbers and going to present those to you this morning.

For some context for today's presentation, it's sort of a one-off, just a presentation that the chair has asked me to do on the 2021 staffing situation.

a recap of last year, but there will be regular staffing presentations and finance presentations that will be done throughout this year, 2022. So I wanted to call your attention to that.

There was a slide passed in the 2022 budget that mandates that there will be quarterly presentations, SPD-001A-001.

mandates presentations on April 15, July 15, and October 5. I'm sorry, that's when the data comes in.

The presentations will be a little later.

On staffing, it will be the same as today.

And then also planned and actual expenditures.

for SPD and then there will also be performance measures 9-1-1 stats and the number of days that the department has to go into limited 9-1-1 response priority call handling metrics.

And then various other metrics, overtime, response, et cetera.

So just for some context, today is a bit of a one-off, just doing the staffing, but there will be regular presentations quarterly that will do staffing and finance metrics.

Just one real quick thing to add, Greg.

The reason why it's a one-off is because the regular reporting cadence that we have identified has the last report in October, and then we don't start again until the end of the first quarter.

So we do not give ourselves the benefit in our regular reporting cadence of having a year-end report.

And so that's the reason why I asked Greg to present the information that SPD has provided.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So jumping right into staffing, this is a chart that I think many of you have seen before.

And what I want to talk a little bit about is the staffing data that I'm bringing before you today.

It is data that is provided by SPD in terms of the actuals that were measured last year.

So we have actual separations and actual hires that were provided by SPD.

And then we have projections for hires that were also provided by SPD for 2022. However, SPD did not provide separation projections for 2022 in the sense that SPD only believes that 94 officers will separate in 2022, and that is the staffing plan that they submitted to the council during the budget.

During the budget period, the council asserted its own hiring and separation projections, and the council's hiring and separation projections were the same on the hiring side as the department, that there would be 125 hires, but there would actually be more separations, that there would be 125 separations.

So what I've done here today for the sworn staffing update that I'm presenting to you is create sort of a hybrid presentation.

It uses the SPD actuals for what happened in 2021, uses the SPD projections for hires, and it uses the council projections for separations at 125. And how I did that was I simply took the department's 94 separations and then I layered in some additional separations per the council's assumptions back in the budget.

And so what you can see here is that in 2021 there were 171 actual separations and that there were 81 hires.

And so to tell you how those break out from a demographic standpoint, there were About on the hiring side, 67 men, 14 women, people of color were 41% represented and white people were 57% represented on the separation side.

There were people of color were 25% represented.

White people were 69% represented men.

There were 142 and women there were 29. And so that's how the demographics break out on the actual hires and separations there with last year.

So going ahead and moving into the chart, what you see is that fully trained officers and officers in service over the last couple of years.

It's a quarterly measure starting in 2020, quarter one, and then moving all the way through the end of this year, quarter four of 2022. And the top line being fully trained officers, officers that have completed at least through the first phase of field training and can be deployed on their own.

And then what you see the second line, officers in service, often called deployable officers.

Those are the folks that show up to work every day and can be put out in the field.

It doesn't necessarily count folks that are on short-term leave, like individual sick days or individual vacation days.

It does count folks that are out on long-term disability.

And so that number is, again, what we would sort of call the deployable number.

And what you see here is obviously consistent with the story that I think everybody's pretty familiar with, that the number of officers in service and the number of trained officers has been declining since the first quarter of 2020. And when we reach quarter four of 2021, we reached a total of 1139 fully trained officers in the department and 958 deployable officers in the department.

And those are the end of the solid lines, the actuals.

And then what you see is the dotted lines, which are the projections throughout the rest of this year.

And where we will end up, according to the departments and the central staff and council's projections, are at 1137 fully trained officers and 1039 deployable officers.

The reason that we see the increase in deployable officers is because the department is making an assumption that the number of folks that are currently out on extended leave that some of those folks will start to return to service.

Um, if you go back to quarter for 2021, you'll see that there are 958 officers that are are deployable right now.

That number reflects roughly about well, in January, it reflects 170 officers that are currently out on long term leave.

And there's a number of different kinds of leaves that officers are out on right now.

But the hope is that over the next four quarters, some of the officers will start to return from those longer term leaves and that deployable number will go back up to 1039 from the 958. And if that happens, that will obviously increase the department's street strength and 9-1-1 response strength.

Also would point out that if the Council's projections of 125 hires and 125 separations is realized, then you would have a situation where there's relatively little or no growth.

Actually, a slight decline from 1139 fully trained officers to 1137 fully trained officers in in 2022. So that's how the year would play out if the assumptions by the council and by the department are realized.

So with that, I'll stop and ask if there's any questions so far.

Real quick question, Greg, before I check with my colleagues.

And I also want to recognize that Council Members Mosqueda and Lewis have joined us.

Thank you for joining us.

Can you restate what you said about the officers who are on leave and the assumptions about their return?

Sure.

So the difference between the blue line and the gray line is the number of officers that are out on extended leave.

And in the month of January, that is 170. And I'll go ahead and break out a little bit the kinds of leaves that our officers are on.

There were 170 officers that were out on extended leave in the month of January.

You had 30 officers that were out on workers comp, this workers comp claims.

There were 85 officers that were out on sick leave or various other kinds of accrued leave.

So like sick leave, maybe comp time.

There were 41 officers that were out on family medical leave or parental leave.

And then there were 12 officers that were out on administrative leave.

So when you add all those numbers up, you've got 170 officers that are not deployable.

And that's the difference between the two lines.

The hope is that some of those officers, the 85 that are out on sick leave or out on uh, comp time or other kinds of accrued benefits will come back into service and will be deployable and join the folks in the blue line.

And, um, eventually we will.

We will have more officers out on the street.

Is that getting your getting it?

I just there is a category of of leave that I understand that many of the officers who are resisting the vaccine mandate mandate are in and that that they are there in that they're taking that leave.

while either their efforts to get some sort of an exemption, a medical or religious exemption is accommodated, or they may decide to leave the department altogether.

Which category of leave is that?

That's the sick leave or accrued benefits.

And accrued benefits is just a way of saying benefits that you, you know, you accrue over time, I think of compensatory time in lieu of overtime.

Sick leave, you accrue overtime.

Those are the hours that are available to an officer to take on a discretionary basis.

Sick leave probably being the easiest one to access if you're not able to show up for work for medical reasons.

Right now there are 85 officers that are out in that category, and that is the category that the Department has confirmed vaccine holdouts would be in that category.

They've not been able to tell me how many of that 85 are vaccine holdouts compared with folks that are out on, you know, other medical conditions or other accrued leave conditions.

And are we making assumptions about the percentage of that 80 85 officers that will return?

And are those do those are those?

What are those assumptions based on?

So the department is making assumptions about, uh, overall, the category of extended leave the number of officers that are going to return, and those assumptions are reflected in this chart.

Um, I do not have the detail on category by category where they see those officers returning from, whether they're returning from workers comp or whether returning from parental leave or or any other category.

Um, it's just that the department believes that that that category is a whole 170 is going to reduce be reduced down to.

I think it's somewhere around 98 if I remember.

Thank you.

And I'm sorry, I did see Council Member Nelson's hand earlier, and yes, excellent.

Council Member Nelson.

I'll wait until the end of the presentation, thank you.

Okay, any other questions on this slide before we move on?

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thanks to central staff for putting together this presentation on staffing levels.

I continue to be alarmed by the lower staffing levels at our police department.

Also, we have the year-end crime report showing increases in both violent crime and property crime.

That data is consistent with what we hear from constituents who are concerned about what they see as a rise in crime.

Is there anything, I guess this question might be for the chief, in terms of what we can do to increase incentives for hiring more officers and also the council projection for separations of 125 and

Councilmember Peterson, I don't know if it's me, but you cut out there.

Again, I'm not sure if it's just me, but I'm not hearing your audio.

That's correct, Councilmember.

I'm not hearing it either.

I think there was a tech problem, so let me start over.

We got the first part of your question for the teams to talk about incentives.

And then you cut off when you were asking about the projected separations.

Yes, thank you, Chair Herbold.

A question for the chief is on this slide, it shows city council projecting separations in 2022 of 125. Just wanted to know if the chief had any sort of updated views on whether it would be 125 or whether it'd be fewer or more than 125 separations this year.

Thank you.

Chief Diaz, did you want to take questions now or did you want to wait until your presentation?

It's really up to you.

Let me wait and I'll gobble it all up into the presentation.

That sounds great.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Mosqueda.

If the Chief is going to take questions at the end, Madam Chair, I'll just hold my questions as well.

Sure, just to clarify what we're doing here, Greg is giving the staffing report and then we're going to hand it over to Chief Diaz to go through the 2021 crime report.

So to the extent that you have questions for Greg or for the chief on the staffing report, it's appropriate to ask them.

But if you are wanting to talk more about information that's contained within the crime report, if you could hold those questions until Chief Diaz goes through his presentation.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Chair.

So I have a question for Greg on the staffing report that I think might go to the crux of what Councilmember Peterson was asking.

I want to kind of reconcile some of the assumptions you just detailed, Greg, about the department anticipating that a certain number of these fully trained officers who are currently on longer term leave, and this is sort of a variation on Councilmember Herbold's previous question, the department stating that more of these officers will return to active service rather than potentially leave the department.

And I guess I'm wondering if this 1039 number, like how does that reconcile with the council's 125 projected separations, and looking at this like 1137 number and this 1039 number, like is that 1039 number achievable, projected 125 separations?

I just want to clarify that.

If you did in your presentation, I didn't quite catch.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Both both the hiring projections of 125 and the separation projections of 125 are baked into this chart, so this chart assumes that that both of those assumptions happen that both the 125 hires happen and the 125 separations happen.

And if both of those things happen, then at the end of the year will wind up with 1137. fully trained and 10 39 deployable.

Okay, thank you for clarifying Mosquito.

Thank you very much, and thanks for the clarification, Madam Chair.

I will ask these questions of Greg then.

Greg, good to see you.

Sorry, folks, I'm not on camera yet.

We'll be there in a moment, but to confirm, within the last two years, the council has fully funded the hiring plan for Seattle Police Department, but Seattle Police Department still has been unable to hire the level that they have repeatedly asked for.

Do we know the last time that Seattle Police Department was unable to hire the number of officers they projected to hire or requested to hire?

Last time that the SPD had a good hiring year, I want to say, is 2019. Last year, the assumption was that they were going to hire, I believe, 105. And the actual hires, as you can see here, were 81. Chief, if I'm wrong about that, correct me.

A quick follow-up, Madam Chair.

Greg, I know I should have asked this of you earlier, but what I understand is that this is similar to trends that have been experienced by large cities across the country as well in terms of hiring rates, and especially in the last few years.

Can you comment on how we compare to other jurisdictions?

I can only, the chief can probably comment on it when he gets on, but it's my understanding that hiring police officers has been a struggle for agencies throughout the region and nationally too, but I'll have him comment on that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

That's my questions.

Okay, let's move on.

And I'd like to get back to the committee with the projected hires for last year.

I said 105. I'm not entirely certain of that.

I'll get back to you with that number.

Thanks, Greg.

OK, so I want to talk a little bit about how this will play out if this forecast comes true.

So this table compares the forecast that I just showed you with what is in the 2022 adopted budget.

And so what you can see here is the first column, the 2022 adopted budget.

showing the average annual FTE that were funded at 1,200.

And what you see in the next column, the new estimates for 2022, you'll see that the average annual FTE are now 1,190.

and that the difference is 10. And so what's reflected there is that in the time between the time that the budget was adopted and there were 1200 FTE that were funded, the department lost eight more fully trained officers and failed to hire two recruits that they thought or had planned to hire, projected that they would hire.

And so that's a difference of 10 FTE.

And so when that trickles through the hiring plan for the entire year of 2022, what that means is that it that the number of fully trained officers goes goes down by eight at the end of the year.

And we wind up the department will wind up with about one point four two million in savings in 2022 because the they had planned on paying an extra 10 FTE and those extra 10 FTE that are funded are not going to need salaries.

So again, funded for $1,200 and they'll only need salaries for $1,190.

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

So it's a similar situation to to what we've seen in the last couple years.

Officers are leaving faster than the hiring plan can project and keep up with, and so there is more funding in SPD salary budget than SPD needs.

So right now it's 100. It's 1.42 million overfunded.

The difference between.

the 2022 budget and subsequent budgets, last year's budget, is that this year there is a proviso SPD-003B-001 that prohibits SPD from spending any of that $1.42 million until the council authorizes future spending.

So what that proviso does is it locks in specifically the funding for $1,200 annual average FTE and says that SPD can spend no more salary funding beyond 1,200, 1,200 annual average FTE and that any spending, any spending beyond, it can only spend that on actual needs and any spending beyond actual needs has to get permission of the council.

So that's an important thing to clarify this year, that the $1.42 million of salary savings cannot be committed by SPD without the council's authorization.

Whereas last year, that was not the case, and SPD did commit some of their salary savings to technology projects and some hiring that the chief had interest in moving ahead with, with CSOs and some civilian hires that were considered essential by SPD and the executive.

So, um, talking a little bit about the, um, talking a little bit about the projections, uh, Councilmember Peterson had a question about the projections.

Uh, SPD's hiring projections reflect 105 recruit hires, 20 lateral hires, and zero rehires.

Um, their, uh, projections reflect that they're going to have their own academy class in June.

And should that hold, there would be a large, hopefully, influx of officers after the academy class and that would be, and after the initial training of those officers.

So it would be more like early 2023. SPD's Council Central Staff's separation projections were based on two things.

And this is to Council Member Peterson's question.

What I did was I took the 94 separation projections that SPD had originally provided throughout the year, and I added in the month of January 12 separation projections that the council had said would happen due to vaccine mandates.

And so that made the month of January a projected separation month that would have 20 separations.

And as it turns out, that's exactly how many people left in January.

So there were, the council had projected 20 separations, I think, you know, 12 vaccine mandate plus SPD separations, plus a few more that I added in there, and 20 was the projection, 20 is what happened.

As it turns out, there were five hires in the month of January, so there were a couple, there were two fewer hires than SPD had thought would happen.

So in terms of what's supposed to happen for the rest of the year, SPD had thought that there would be, you know, somewhere around seven or so separations per month thereafter and to make the 125 separations.

central staff bumped that up to about nine, roughly 8.7 separations per month.

So, um, the majority of the 100 or big piece of the 125 council forecasted separations have already happened in the month of January with that big hit of 20. Um, hopefully that that helps with Councilmember Peterson's question, but I'll stop and ask if he has any follow ups.

It's Mayor Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Greg, the question I have is the 10 that you're assuming for 2022, that difference of 10, does that take into account your 8.7 separations per month estimate?

Is that what that's based on?

Yeah.

So if SPD beats that estimate, then we won't have, and we potentially might not have as many as 10. That's correct.

OK.

Thank you.

Yeah.

If SPD beats the estimate, either hires more than 125 or has fewer than 125 separations, then it is possible that they will need more salary funding than 1190 FTE.

Well, it's not possible.

It would be the case that they would need more salary funding than 1190 FTE, so that's an important qualification.

I'm I'm I'm glad I'm glad you brought that up.

Spending the 1.42 million at this early juncture in in at this time of year.

Might be unwise because it's possible that that that the staffing projections could go one way or another, either on separations or hires later in the year.

I agree.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So moving one more.

We are getting into the precinct staffing and what you are seeing here is that the precinct staffing has gone down, and in a minute I'm going to show you how it compares to prior reports.

What I really want to highlight here, though, is that the beats have gone down.

There were nine folks on beats the last time around.

Um, and now it's down to, uh, can't quite see here, but I believe it's four.

And just for some perspective in the past, um, uh, at the end of 2019, there were 54 officers on beats.

And so that gives you a little bit of perspective on, um, on, on how that has changed.

And just to give you the overall, um, context for staffing changes on 9-1-1 response and patrol overall.

You can see here over the last couple of years the changes that have occurred on patrol and 9-1-1 response.

Patrol is sort of its own category because It had included the beats.

It had included the bike patrols.

It had included CPT and ACT, those specialty sort of units that were out on the street and doing specialty work.

Those units now, as I showed you in the prior slide, I'll just jump right back.

are primarily gone.

Now all you have is the BEATS that are the four folks that are on the BEATS.

The Seattle Center folks are primarily, a lot of their work is reimbursed.

So now you pretty much just have the 911 response left in patrol and that's just about all that's left.

And then in terms of 911 response, you can see that if you compare, say, with the, I guess, in this particular chart, the high watermark is probably the September 2020 row where Chief Diaz had reinforced patrol by bringing in 100 officers into patrol.

If you look at that line, and you compare 9-1-1 staff between there and December of 2021, what you'll see is that 9-1-1 responders are down by about 134. So that gives you some perspective for how that has changed over time.

And that basically concludes my report.

So I'll ask if there's any other questions and then I'm done.

All right, Greg, not seeing any additional hands raising, we'll hand it over to Chief Diaz, who is going to share with us the 2021 crime report.

Chief Diaz.

Good morning, Madam Chair, and to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

Thank you for allowing me the time to cover our overall crime statistics for 2021. Overall crime, as you're aware of, increased by 10%, but violent crime increased by 20%.

And this is in large part by aggravated assaults.

Our homicide in 2020 reached a 25-year high.

We did see homicides drop in 2021. However, we saw more victims of gun violence than we've ever had since we started tracking these numbers.

174 incidents of a victim shot or killed.

And this is compared to 2020, where we had 122 incidents of a victim shot or killed.

And this puts some of the context prior to COVID.

In 2019, we just had 97 incidences of a victim shot or killed.

So this year, our trend is already not in a good place.

95% shot of, we've had 95% shots fired this year with 31 victims shot or killed.

This is a third of the total incidences in 2019. In 2019, we just had 35 total shots fired at this time with five instances of a victim shot or killed.

So we are not in a good place as we kind of enter into 2022. We experienced 22 shots fired in one week this year alone and 19 shots fired within the CID and downtown core.

We have seen a significant uptick in shots fired related to homeless encampments in 2021, 62 more incidents with an increase by 122%.

An analysis since January of 2020, we were hovering around 6.5% a month of shots fired in and around homeless encampments.

And now we are averaging about 25% a month.

This month in January of 2022, we actually are seeing a drastically higher number, but we don't have exactly the full number as we go through each and every report for analysis.

DV and road rage shots fired are up.

And in a documented case involving gang or juvenile shots fired, there's a higher number of shots actually fired.

We were covering over 2,100 cell casings in 2021. However, along with evidence, and right now we estimate that there was probably closer to 3,200 total rounds fired in 2021. The reason why there's a difference of the amount of casings is some rounds are being fired from revolvers, or we actually have rounds where they're fired at a building, so we have a mark of a gunshot, but don't have necessarily a casing or an actual round that we've located.

52% of our victims shot were African-American, and 23% of the total were white.

34% of all victims were under the age of 25. And we are in our fifth year of recovering 1,000 guns a year.

We've seen a reduction in rape cases in 2020 and 2021. This drop might be due to two things.

Nightlife has not been open and seen little to no reporting in homeless communities.

With the victimization and guns in homeless communities, we can only assume there's a high level of unreported crime.

Our priority one response time has continued to rise with the drop in staffing.

We continue to see 911 generated calls lower than 2019 prior to COVID.

A majority of our response to 911 dispatch is around 74%.

This year, we're seeing this continued increase in violent crime and property crime.

Robberies are up 28% with a large amount of robberies affecting cannabis locations.

Property crime is at 11% increase with a large increase in larceny thefts and motor vehicle thefts.

I've focused our efforts on violent crime due to the reduction in staffing.

We went from, and five years ago, we went from our deployable resources around 1,316 officers to this year, as Mr. Das had alluded or identified, to 958. It's a 27% reduction in our overall staffing.

And so, as some of the questions that did come up in regards to We are seeing other cities, other major cities have seen a difficulty in recruiting for officers in their cities.

We saw an unprecedented amount of people leaving our department in the last two years, 186 and 171 over the last two years.

We had not seen that many people leave in the previous years.

And so when we started to look at our historical attrition, Right now, there is no data model that can forecast those separations, and no one could have forecasted what occurred in 2020. We normally use these historic numbers to project attrition.

So for 2022 and budget planning, we're using a three-year average for 2017 and 2019 in the staffing model.

So that's how we got to a total of 94 separations.

And typically when you see two years of high levels of attrition, you would actually see a reduction in the amount of people leaving.

We still don't know fully of what people could potentially leave in this year.

Right now we are paying attention to a House bill that has been moved out of the House and into the Senate and it's in committee that would allow left two officers and firefighters, both left law enforcement and firefighters It would increase that any officer from between the year 15 to year 25 can get a half a percent more on their pension.

So at 25 years, they would generate two and a half years more in their pension.

And so we could potentially see people leaving where they were projected out, say I had 25 years on.

I was going to leave within the next two and a half years.

I can leave today instead of waiting two and a half years.

And so that is something that we're paying attention to.

It's one of the things that reason why I've pushed for retention and recruiting and hiring centers, because the market that we are experiencing right now, almost any place is also any place out there, Amazon, Microsoft, our tech industry, even, you know, people looking for bus drivers.

Right now, a lot of those industries are all offering incentives, trying to recruit people.

And we are in that same boat trying to also maintain a level playing field so we could, you know, bring people on in the job.

And I will open up for questions.

you so much Chief Diaz.

I just wanted to say a couple words on the retention and incentive issue.

I just want to say again as I've been saying since probably October of last year, I am supportive of a a bonus incentive program for to recruit officers.

I need to see that within the context of the other city departments and the needs of those departments.

And I have expressed both to you and to the mayor's office that I'm ready to We will continue to act on those recommendations once we receive a report on the need for a bonus program for other departments as well in addition to the one that the Council let go in effect with Mayor Durkan's emergency order in 2021 through the end of 2021 for both SPD and the Community Safety and Communication Center.

And as it relates to retention programs, we have discussed the idea of a retention program focused on the officers that may be induced to retire early because of action that the state is contemplating.

I look forward to talking to you more.

I'm not interested in approving a budget for a program that is not flushed out, though, and so would really look forward to working with you in the mayor's office on what those programs might look like and the specifics of them rather than just putting a dollar amount on a bucket of money and sending it to the department without having a good sense of how those programs are expected to work and what return we are expecting to get from it.

So really appreciate all the thought that you've been putting into this.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you Madam Chair and Chief, thank you for joining us at this committee today.

I appreciate in your remarks, you mentioning the high volume of shootings that we've experienced with a homeless nexus in the last couple of years.

And I want to contextualize that at the front of my remarks by stating that in many of those cases, I would posit a majority, overwhelming majority of those cases, the victim is homeless in a lot of those cases.

And I just appreciate you raising it because Often when we have these conversations around public safety and the intersections of homelessness and policing, it's in an assumption that our neighbors experiencing homelessness are committing crimes, but we know that our neighbors experiencing homelessness are victimized at an incredibly high rate in the city.

So I appreciate you flagging that.

I want to delve into it a little bit more with you, and maybe we can follow up offline if you don't have the answers immediately at your fingertips.

But one of my concerns has been that we aren't doing more analysis as a city, and I guess I mean more as a city council.

because I know the department is focused on this and maybe you could speak to it, in terms of really drilling down into some of the things that are the source of a lot of the gun violence that's occurring in the city right now.

And one of those things that is sort of something where we've seen a big correlation is a lot of the big encampments in the city do become Focus points and I'm not trying to speculate on what the causation is.

I'm just kind of noting a correlation that the encampments tend to correlate with a higher concentration of shootings that are occurring.

And I guess my question would just be, in terms of looking at the data right now, where would our city shots fired statistics be if the encampment crisis was not as big as it currently is?

Like if there were fewer shootings with the homelessness nexus, what would our shooting stats be in terms of the overall number?

Yeah, so and I can get the exact number of the shots fired in the homeless, but I believe it was around of the 612 shots fired last year.

It was around 122 and I that might be not the exact number, but it's around that number of 122 of the of the whole total of 612. Now, some of those shootings, so I put a caveat because there are some shootings that are where we're encountering somebody that's uncooperative, whether a victim or subject, or we might not have any leads.

When you look at both of those no leads and you look at uncooperative victims and subjects, you're looking at almost 48% of that total shots fired.

So of the 612, So almost 48 percent we can't put into maybe a specific bucket, whether it's a robbery or maybe it's homelessness or DV or road rage.

And so when you start to distribute that out, it could actually be much higher than the 18 and a half percent that we that we talk about.

But when I kind of gave you the numbers that in twenty twenty.

So January twenty twenty, this was prior to covid.

that we were experiencing COVID and things were locked down, we were averaging around that six and a half percent of shots fired in and around homeless encampments, and now we're at 25%.

And we've seen the amount of shots fired go up.

So it is, this is that growing concern that is that that is occurring the victimization, and it doesn't matter what what encampment that we look at, you know, last year we had a large increase in around the north end from Lake City way in around it initially at the very beginning.

Downtown was a little bit more clear, but now downtown is picking up in around the CID in around First Hill.

So every area has been impacted by some level of shots fired.

But when it looks at the homeless side where we read through every single report to identify what are, is there, is this something that's different related than that?

It's not related to homeless encampment, or if this could be a road rage or something else with a different nexus on it.

So we're tracking it literally by, by reading every single report to actually give us a better analysis of it.

Thank you so much, chief.

And, you know, I, I think it's also important to contextualize that, you know, we've never had a, shooting in any of the city's tiny house villages, haven't had a shooting in any of the Just Care shelters that have been operating over the last couple of years.

So it's clear that when people are getting the help they need, the assistance they need, and getting inside, it is mitigating that impact of gun violence that has the nexus.

and that it's it's something with the unsanctioned encampments and i mean we could speculate here on on what those things are but i'm began i'm just noting a correlation and and not not making any causation arguments but it's just you know you go from a twenty five percent increase in shootings a hundred and twenty two shootings of the homelessness nexus none of them are in tiny house villages none of them are in just care shelters clearly there's something we can do here to mitigate a significant chunk of the shootings that we're seeing and make life easier for the officers that are out there patrolling the city every night who are responding to these shooting incidents.

So I just wanted to raise that, that it's really critical that we continue that work of getting folks inside, of working with Partnership for Zero and working on navigating people off the street, because it is gonna have an impact As we've seen, those places just don't present with gun violence when you get them into shelters or in a place with wraparound services.

So I appreciate you breaking down the statistics, Chief, because I think that's an important part of the equation to make sure there's fewer calls that you guys need to respond to.

And thank you for that.

You know, we are paying attention to, you know, you're right.

We haven't seen shots fired in around the actual tiny home villages.

We do.

We do are seeing because of the amount of behavioral health and mental health.

That is something that's just a drastic and growing need for levels of service.

I know you've been really working and trying to provide some level of resources to it, but we have seen a couple of shootings where we've actually seen a social worker that was shot and killed.

And we had one at Catholic Community Health Services where somebody came in and tried to shoot at their case manager.

Luckily, the case manager was not shot.

However, we have seen an uptick of people that are being assaulted with a gun that are case management as well.

So, and part of that is being driven behind the behavioral health issue that is affecting many of our people.

Thank you for that line of questioning and thank you Chief Justice.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

Um, so I just don't want to lose the forest for the trees here because, um, and I.

I don't understand exactly how it came to be that the projected losses are 125 separations is equal to 125. that seems.

I don't know if that's realistic to hire back on those, the losses.

I wasn't around when those projections were being made.

So yes, it could, we are, I guess, but per those numbers, fully funding our hiring plan.

But what jumps out at me is 27% reduction in overall staffing in SPD.

And The number 357 officers have left the force, that's combined 2020 and 2021. So to me, we've got a problem in staffing.

And sort of following on Council Member Peterson's, what he started to say around recruitment and retention, I agree, we should be focusing on that.

I hear Council Member Herbold that you have said before that you want to study the giving hiring incentives for all or retention bonuses for all frontline workers.

I don't really know what the frontline workers are that you're talking about.

However, public safety is primary responsibility of local government and so I would raise bringing our staffing levels up to getting you know to getting the job done that needs done that is the metric that I'm looking at for for for budget questions etc so and and so I don't know I mean it seems like what I'm hearing is Well, I'll skip that.

Let me just read to you.

So Reverend Harriet Walden, who is head of Mothers for Police Accountability, recently sent a letter to all council members urgently raising the issue of gun violence, the increases that we've just heard recited.

And basically, she does point to the removal of investigators into patrol as part of the problem, because just moving people around isn't really going to help get it to really mitigate, as Council Member Lewis said, the reasons for shooting if we don't have investigators to look at what's really going on.

But my point is, in her letter, she notes When patrol officer counts are too low, SPD is forced to resort to emergency mobilizations requiring sworn trained investigators such as homicide detectives to respond to 911 calls.

This means that even more homicide cases will remain unsolved, a category that includes far more black victims than any other racial group.

That translates into less healing and less justice for the many families of black victims whose cases remain unsolved.

We need more trained police investigators on the job full time, not less.

And so basically, I'm just trying to get what I am doing is pointing out what seems obvious to many people is that we've got a huge problem here and.

And that is the issue that we need to address.

Now we can talk about how many officers are on extended leave because of COVID, because they don't want to get vaccinated.

I've heard also that people are on extended leave because they're getting ready to retire and they have accrued.

time and one way to get around to get it that precise number might be to ask how many officers are approaching retirement and get in so we can sort of find out, you know, get a better number for that.

But all this seems kind of irrelevant or superlative to the public safety crisis that we've got now.

And this is just violent crime.

Obviously, there's a lot of other crime going on in the city that that we've noted in my committee.

So that is the point that I would like to make and just ask when we might bring up again the idea of, I know that we're getting a report back on March 1st, I think, on the slide indicating bonuses for all frontline workers and when is a time that we might be able to really dig down into what we're gonna do next.

for all frontline workers and also for SPD.

And just to clarify Council Member Nelson, the idea isn't that we would necessarily do a bonus program for all frontline workers.

We're asking the executive to give us an analysis of which departments have vacancy problems and make a recommendation.

for of those other departments that have vacancy problems that they're having trouble hiring for, what do they recommend?

Are the departments that are high priority departments for bonuses in addition to the department and CSCC?

As mentioned, I have since pretty much since I guess the second week of the new administration said, you know, you don't need to wait until March 1st to get a set report.

And so really looking forward to receiving that and delving into that more.

The point that you're making about retirees I think is the same point that Chief Diaz made around the state changes to the pension program, which is incenting people who are of retirement age but could choose to stay on longer, incenting them to retire early.

And so that's another area around retention that we, I agree wholeheartedly with you, we do need to look at.

But we need a fleshed out program for supporting these efforts.

And I think the council really wants to see the details before approving funding.

The slide report that I mentioned was fully supported by the council as it relates to bonus programs.

So I know we've got a new member of the council and we have a new urgency on public safety, but I still do believe that we want to see the details before we fund these programs.

And as it relates specifically to incentive programs, we are legally required to see the details of a program before the department can move forward on it.

We are required to authorize it.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, all.

Thanks so much for the opportunity to ask a few questions.

Chief Diaz, good to see you.

chair.

Herbold, it's great to see your face.

Wonderful to have...

Going back off camera, my apologies.

Well, I can only imagine, but it is great to see you and appreciate the conversation that you're leading here today.

Chief, I'll be brief here and some of my questions, but I do feel like there's a few pieces that I'd like to lift up if possible.

First, I think the question was asked just a minute ago about how the projections come together and questioning sort of the validity of those questions that were used in last year's budget.

And I would just suggest that if a council member has questions about how projections for hiring come together, based on historical data and the analysis that central staff use, I know that information is at the ready.

In fact, Mr. Doss from central staff noted that the January projections were 100% spot on.

And I know that we are all in this city and across the country looking at how to look at the data from previous years and compare it to what many large jurisdictions are going through.

But I think it is important to note the validity of those projections, especially the good work that went into trying to assess how much the COVID resistance to the vaccine mandate would affect current hiring, current officers on staff.

So just want to thank central staff and also SPD for the engagement that you did with us as we came up with some of those projections in last year's budget.

Second, I want to lean into what Councilmember Lewis noted.

Appreciate the chair who has homeless services in his committee, really leaning into the questions around how we support getting folks off of the street and into shelters, notably into Just Care shelter models and to tiny house villages, in large part led by Low Income Housing Institute, Lehigh.

And Chief, as you noted, appreciation for the work that council has done in leading into those investments.

So I just want to lift a few of those up because I know that for some who might just read one or two of the headlines that may sound like Council has not been investing in that area, but Council and the City of Seattle have invested 68% of the funding that's currently going into the Regional Homelessness Authority, a regional solution with Council investing 68% of the funding currently.

That's $115 million going into supporting standing up and making successful the Regional Homelessness Authority.

Notably, council built back that Just Cares program, which is helping to identify folks who might be eligible for the LEAD assistance programs and other appropriate housing solutions and working with folks to get them into a trusted and proven housing solution.

And importantly, we invested $194 million into housing so that there's truly a stability and folks get out of shelter.

I know, Chief Diaz, you mentioned in your presentation the importance of really looking at how unsanctioned encampments or encampments generally are creating a area for those who are committing crime to hide behind.

And we've been really teasing that out in the conversations that you've been a part of with community members and business owners about how there is a criminal element that's hiding behind truly vulnerable folks who are outside.

And I think today's conversation, both from what the chief and the chair and what Council Member Lewis have noted, is the importance of getting people inside in this moment.

And that can really help reduce the chances that someone is either a victim of crime or that there's the opportunity to hide behind those who are truly vulnerable and just needing housing and shelter.

I look forward to continuing to work with this council in the next administration to continue to invest in programs like Just Cares.

Would hate to see that program actually sunset.

Council built that back after it was eliminated in last year's budget and we funded it through June, but I think it just underscores the importance of programs like that.

And lastly, Chief Diaz, I did want to just ask a few questions because I think that those comments really underscore that it's not just about the amount of funding going into Seattle Police Department's budget.

It's about the overall investments as a city and to other programs.

And we, through the 2022 budget, directly invested into gun alternative programs.

I know that some of these programs go to the Human Services Department.

We're all looking forward to the new administration really staffing up HSD.

and having that department have greater stability.

But I'm wondering if you've been engaged in conversations with HSD or know the status of the $4 million that we invested to restore the community safety hubs in the Central District, West Seattle, Southeast precincts operated by the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

Do you have any updates on that community safety hubs and the implementation of the Seattle Community Safety Initiatives that really address gun violence, $4 million?

So we have been in conversation with HSD.

I think it'd be better for them to be able to acknowledge where they're at as far as building that up.

But we have been in conversations and communication regarding the gun safety plans that they are investing in.

And we have been also in conversations with a lot of the people on the ground that are doing a lot of the retaliatory gun violence reduction work as well.

But I would leave it up to the HSD to confirm where they're at as far as the contracts and who they've set up that work.

But they have been pushing on discussions with a variety of different stakeholders.

Okay, great.

And then a similar question on the regional Peacekeeper Collective.

That's the gun violence prevention program with the Alive and Free folks, Choose 180, Community Passageways, Freedom Project, Progress Pushers, Renegades for Life, Youth Outreach, and the UW Harbor Medical Center.

That's funding that we also put forward to addressing gun violence in our city.

Any update on that and coordination with SPD?

Yeah.

So, you know, we are always working through a variety of different partners and in redoing, reducing that level of retaliation, retaliatory actions.

We have seen a drop in shots fired in and around that we would put a nexus to either gang or juvenile type work.

So that is a good start.

We've I don't want to say we've We've had a reduction percentage-wise in the amount of shots fired that's reduced.

But however, shots fired went up from 421 to 612. So when you look at the actual number, that still has had a little bit of uptick.

But percentage-wise, when it comes to that nexus, that has reduced.

So it's a good mark knowing that that is potentially some potential lives that are being saved.

But overall, I think it's Just the amount of guns that are on the streets is becoming a huge issue because even with the short amount of staffing that we've had, we're still recovering almost the same amount of guns that we had recovered when we've had, you know, five years ago when we when we had 13, 16 deployable staff.

So that that's been becoming more of a concerning effort that we're seeing more and more guns on the street on everyday calls than we've seen before.

Thank you so much.

And just to offer for the public, that was $2 million that went to the Regional Peacekeepers Collective.

Thank you so much.

I may have one more question before we conclude, but I'll stop there and just appreciate the holistic look at the various departments that are receiving funding to really address the root of where violence is occurring and how we can go upstream to prevent that.

Yes, just a follow-up on Councilmember Monsqueda's question about the Regional Peacekeepers Collective before we move over to Councilmember Lewis.

The 2021 numbers of shooting non-fatal injuries are 143 individuals.

As I understand the work with Harborview to be focused on working with the victims of gun violence, with the understanding that without engagement with those victims and wraparound services, that they are likely to become victims again or to become perpetrators of gun violence.

Can you sort of give us a sense of To the extent that you know, the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, though, we provide the funding to HSD.

It's a pass-through to King County.

So if you don't have the answers to this question, I can certainly work to get them directly through King County.

But do you have a sense of the 143 non-fatal shootings 2021, how many of those individuals are being worked with through this public health lens with the Harborview program and the Peacekeepers Collaborative?

Yeah, so I can't answer that.

Actually, before I was on their committee with Harborview and knew the answers because we were working with them directly.

We do have people on our staff that are working with them, but I just don't have that number to give you right now.

Thank you.

We'll follow up.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just a clarifying question here.

Is Chief Diaz sticking around for the next agenda item?

Madam Chair, I do not have him agenda to be a presenter, but he is always welcome.

I want to ask a question that that is sort of germane to the next presentation, but I want to get the chief's response.

I just want to flag that or ask chief because.

You know, organized retail theft downtown obviously has been a really, really big problem over the last several years.

It's not a problem unique to Seattle.

It's something a lot of major cities are facing.

You know, I've appreciated that the Retailers Association has gotten more nuanced in how they communicate about this issue in terms of uh...

bifurcating what we think of typically a shoplifting you know stealing like a low amount of stuff that might be necessity-based survival-based something for your your own personal use baby formula toothpaste or something to that effect versus people that are going in and and getting like ten handles of bacardi and like you know a bunch of higher end items that or they're intending to uh...

resell and uh...

as part of a broader criminal syndicate, as organized retail theft.

And I just wanted to maybe ask your view of what some of the department's strategies might be to try to focus enforcement actions to go after the guys that are the ringleaders, the organizers, the people that have the list of the high demand items for resale in a fencing market.

versus people that are engaged in necessity level theft who pose less of a systemic issue and could be susceptible to other programmatic ways to get them off the street.

I also just want to give a shout out that in some of this preliminary work, your new ops lieutenant in the West Precinct, Lieutenant Brown, has been an excellent partner in working with Just Care and some of those groups in the downtown core to figure out some innovative strategies on 3rd Avenue to get a lot of those lower-level survival folks into a Just Care you know, shelter or something like that so that they're not continuing to be in that position.

But obviously we need a different strategy for like the felony ringleaders who are, you know, who are just ripping the city off for their own personal criminal gain.

And just wanted to kind of see what some of your ideas around that might be, or that might be an elegant segue to our next agenda item.

But as long as you were here, I thought I'd ask that.

I don't know if I categorize it an elegant segue, Council Member Lewis.

That was going to be my opening remarks for the next item.

It's my hope that that's how you would think about the retail theft program.

But that's okay.

We're all here.

Yeah.

And I think Chief Mahaffey could cover some of this stuff, but for some of the organized retail theft at the very end of last year, many cities were experiencing these kind of mob organized retail theft where they were, you know, rushing in.

into many of the establishments, grabbing a bunch of stuff.

We didn't experience that kind of level of the mob kind of organized retail theft that other cities were experiencing.

And a part of that is we had done several different things.

We had had our community response group work with a lot of the different security departments in some of the local retailers.

We also had different undercover operations just to have a visible presence of being able to have more eyes within those areas so during the the holidays we saw less of that work or we saw less of the you know big type of mob work being done but we still end up conducting ourselves with a variety of different organized retail theft operations.

Some of those operations where we would arrest somebody, but we released them so they didn't get booked in the county jail.

We identified whether they were part of a bigger ring or maybe they were just, you know, stealing stuff and then moving it on to another location to try and sell.

Some of that work has translated over into 12th and Jackson, where we were seeing large amounts of, you know, booze and large amounts of clothing being sold on the streets.

We did, you know, an operation there.

over the last month and a half or so, working to address some of that issue.

And we'll probably have more details in the coming days or weeks with that.

But that is some of that product on the organized retail theft component where people are constantly working to victimize different shop owners and then uh selling them off whether it's off or up or whether it's on the streets um and we're trying to review and look at that now we do uh for us it's really important that we partner with the prosecutor's office the city attorney's office and a lot of the other outside agencies very similar to how we addressed a motor vehicle theft uh task force and so working with a variety of different agencies because we know when somebody steals a downtown they're more likely to go down to South Center and they're more likely to go down to Kent and they're more likely down to hit the shopping districts in those locations as well.

And so we have to make sure that we're communicating between all the different agencies to see which offender is actually focused on on hitting a lot of the different areas and not just South County, but also north of us in the Snohomish County and Linwood, et cetera.

So hopefully that'll help you give you some idea about some of the stuff that we're working on.

I'm being a little bit vague only because there are certain things that we're still working through as well.

All right.

I look forward to hearing more about those updates.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

And let's use that segue into the next item.

Thank you so much, Chief Diaz, for being with us to present this report.

Before proceeding, I do want to just highlight the purpose of my requesting.

This particular briefing is twofold.

I see that the number of businesses participating in the retail theft program is a relatively small number of businesses.

I understand that there aren't a lot of businesses that have the ability to hire private security, and that is sort of part of this program.

But I also am really interested in not only increasing the number of businesses that participate, but also working with SPD and the City Attorney's Office and the County Prosecutor's Office to really make a distinction using this program, really make a distinction between the retail theft for necessities or retail theft that is part of a more organized trafficking operation.

The reason why I'm speculating that more businesses participating in this program might lead to the ability to identify operations, organized operations, is really based on my understanding of how the department uses data.

And that by using data, the department can identify patterns and trends.

of people who are engaged in organized theft and more reporting can help identify these patterns and trends.

It's similar to my understanding of how major crimes task forces have worked in the past.

Often those are regional in their organization.

And I know Chief Diaz has informed me that he has the department participating in a regional effort around retail theft.

But the idea of using the retail theft program that has existed for many years now, I think it's been around for at least 10 years.

This is not a new program.

is less focused on that use of the program resulting in an arrest for any individual retail theft, but more interest in our ability to use this program, again, to identify individuals who are responsible for dozens and dozens of thefts.

So I'm just really interested to know whether or not this program has the capacity to function that way.

And I'm interested to know from discussing this program with the neighborhood business districts, whether or not they have ideas as well for increasing participation in the program.

With that, I will pass it off.

And really pleased to have you with us here today.

Assistant Chief Mahaffey.

Thank you, and I'm actually gonna head out, but Chief Mahaffey and Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey, you'll be in good hands to get more on the plan.

So thank you everyone, I really appreciate your time, and I will sign off.

Thank you.

And my apologies, in addition to Assistant Chief Mahaffey, we have Brian Maxey here as well.

Thank you.

And I'm just gonna read this item into the record very quickly.

Committee agenda item number two, SPD Retail Theft Program.

All right, good morning, council members.

Having a mouse issue there.

Yeah, I'm Tom Mahaffey.

I oversee the Patrol Operations Bureau.

I'll just give you kind of a brief retail theft program and how it kind of stands at the agency currently, I think is a council member.

Herbal related, it's actually, it is a program that's been around a while.

It was started in 1989. It's a voluntary program.

If you want to go to the first slide, Brian, that's fine.

It allows a security officer working for a participating store to file misdemeanor theft cases without patrol officer involvement.

I think maybe twofold efficiency there is why the reason the program was started.

Um, allows patrol officer time not to be taken up with going to the, um, process.

The theft shoplift takes report, um, determined if the person's appropriate for booking screen their rest.

Everything has to go in with that, and then also allows the retailer not to have to wait for patrol officer to respond as well.

Currently, stores report online.

They use our cop logic system to submit the report, and they're also able to submit a supporting evidence electronically as well, too.

And then we have one police officer detective who manages the program.

Their responsibility is to review cases, conduct any follow up that's needed, and then refer the case to the city attorney's office for charging.

What's not mentioned on the slide, their responsibilities are also to look at who are the people that are being seen most often, so potential prolific offenders, and also to participate in regional meetings with other law enforcement agencies and retail stores to see who is potentially operating in multiple locations, not just Seattle, but where are they committing crimes within the region as well.

And on the next slide.

So right now we have 63 store chains who are signed up for the program and Just 158 officers who have written at least one report in the last two months.

There's more store security officers that are able to write the reports.

We've just had 158 who have been active participants in the last two months.

And since 2019, over 2,500 cases referred via the retail theft program.

And 783 of those cases, now all misdemeanor cases, suspect wasn't identified, but also gives us a data point so we can look at one of the stores that are being impacted the most.

So we do allow reports to be submitted even if we don't have a person identified.

And then the next slide, please.

We've seen a decline in the amount of cases referred over the last couple years.

Um, speaking with the detective who runs a program currently attributed to, there's been a trend in throughout retail establishments to go hands off, um, to not, um, physically contact people regarding a shop shoplifting offense many more.

And this is done, uh, out of safety concerns for employees and also liability concerns as well.

I think Chief Chuck's briefly on some of our efforts outside the retail theft program.

Um, to try and impact raisins shoplifting.

If it's part of organized efforts or if it's targeted at a particular store, that kind of is data we can use from retail theft program to structure our operations around maybe retailers that are, or areas that are being impacted the most.

And over the last two years with COVID related booking restrictions at the jail, we haven't been able to book misdemeanor level theft case either.

And that would also include prolific offenders.

It's a restriction we've been under for the last couple of years.

So I know there's probably more questions kind of about the program, but that's kind of where it stands right now.

Just I think generally is really put in as an efficiency type program.

And now it does allow us to provide some data and then do some connection with partners regionally to determine who are either prolific people or groups that are operating and then what are the stores that they are targeting.

I hope to take any questions.

Thank you so much, Assistant Chief Mahaffey.

Really appreciate you sharing the outlines of this program with us.

I'm wondering, have any retailers sort of mined on whether or not may feel that the system is user-friendly or is the reason for less report, less use and participation of the reach out that program really primarily a result of direction, safety-related direction to their staff to take a hands-on approach.

And on that second point, is that because Is that because of the direction of...

of retailers to their own security staff.

Is that related to their insurance policies or liability policies?

What can you tell us about that?

And I'm just looking to see if there's a way to sort of, that we can work together to overcome some of the barriers that exist to participation in the program.

And, you know, again, I am sort of interested in testing a hypothesis of whether or not if we both find ways to increase participation in the program while also making sure that the department's follow-up work on reports is really focused on, you know, I think I'd like to make a distinction between prolific offenders and maybe offenders who are who are, you know, again, part of an organized, um, uh, theft ring.

Um, and whether or not this is this is, you know, worth the energy spent to try to increase the use of this program.

Um, to your first question, just in talking to the detective that currently runs the program, um, especially downtown, his information and talking with the retailers is they just have made the business decision not to hire in-store security and they've either left it to their employees or given their employees direction that we're just, we're not going to have you address this right now, which ends up generally a lot of times with more calls for us for a 911 service that they don't have that person on site who's able to, address the shoplifting, which, of course, we don't have the capacity to respond to these calls.

There'll be a lower priority call for us just with our reduced staffing.

And I think to your point about targeting those that are either exploiting people to go in and steal as part of their theft ring, that's definitely something we're interested in doing.

We have done it.

Council Member Lewis mentioned Lieutenant Brown.

He worked for me when I was a West Precinct commander.

intensive operation that he ran for four or five months is requires a lot, um, resources for us to look at that.

Um, just be investigative piece and then really, Chief Diaz direction right now.

What we are willing to focus on.

That's really the violent crime.

I think it's alluded to his comments really has to take president precedents of our limited sources.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold and thank you, Assistant Chief Mahaffrey.

We appreciate SPD creating this work around using technology and partners at the stores to help during the pandemic.

I had a question about one of the bullet points in the PowerPoint presentation about the booking restrictions at King County Jail.

Could you tell us more about those booking restrictions, especially as it relates to prolific offenders?

Yeah, I mean, in effort to reduce the jail population during COVID, the jail restricted misdemeanor bookings.

Except a handful of offenses, assaults, domestic violent offenses, DUI, and a couple of others.

And that was it for misdemeanor crimes.

Everything else could still be referred, potentially, but we weren't able to do the booking.

Those have started to ease a bit.

I think specifically look at prolific offenders.

If we can make the case to the jail and pre-book as to why we feel it's a necessity to do that.

What I ask all my commanders on the street um, to push down their sergeants.

We're always looking at the person's capacity, their competency, other issues that we could potentially address before booking the jail.

But if their behavior is such that it's creating a significant, um, dangerous community, they won't cease their behavior.

We don't have any other options.

Um, that we look to, um, the jail potentially is at least a way to, um, less of the amount of times that we're having to deal with this person in the short term, and hopefully look out for community safety.

So we have had a little more traction with the jail recently, but we still have a certain amount of restrictions placed on us by them due to COVID.

And just to clarify, that's King County making that decision?

That's correct.

These are restrictions.

It's one of the things that the city attorney's office is doing along with the King County prosecutor's office is to look at bundling cases that they have, that both the city attorney's office has and the county prosecutors have for the most problematic suspects.

And by with the bundling of these cases, they can bring felony cases against some of the most frequent and problematic suspects.

And so that is one way, one of really targeting the charging efforts towards those individuals, but it's also one way of of being able to meet the King County booking restrictions as well because in the bundling they become felony cases and thus more likely to be considered warranted for booking in the jail.

That's my understanding of the effort.

I have reached out to King County Prosecutor's Office to learn more and have a pending meeting with Lisa Manion to learn about that.

And I have been reached out by the city attorney's office as well to talk more about that and forward to providing more information about how those prosecutorial decisions are appropriately targeted towards the retail theft perpetrators that are doing harm to the community rather than folks who are doing thefts for survival and necessities.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and this is sort of in keeping with Councilmember Peterson's line of questioning, and Assistant Chief Mahaffey may have the answers here.

If he doesn't, we can see him offline, but my understanding going to this core issue about the jail bookings situation and some of the the recent reporting that i think was alluded to in public comments is uh...

i'm just kind of curious how many of the folks that are currently getting arrested in some of the retail theft emphasis that that's been reported on are actually getting held because i i know that the the jail has been accepting some bookings but it sounds first appearance those books are getting released uh...

which is why i do think that's a customer her bolts point the the aggregation of uh...

the totality of of someone's recent you know retail theft uh...

uh...

referrals into a felony referral seems to increase the chances that the person will get books but some of these one-off things don't seem to be working um, folks from the street in a sustained way.

Uh, so, but I was just kind of curious, uh, what the department has been seeing because I've been seeing that the jail has been lifting some of the restrictions to take an initial booking.

But then at first appearance, like a day later, two days later, um, the judges is, uh, still releasing folks given the, um, capacity issues at the jail.

Uh, so I just wonder if that's been the experience so far and, and, and how that's been going.

I've heard certainly reports of that, Council Member, and I know anybody that we booked for a Seattle Municipal Court violation would be seen by a SMC PR screener there, and then they would make the determination for a misdemeanor case.

And I also, some of the cases that are mentioned in public comment, I guess I would just speak to that.

Those, at least ones I'm aware of, we always have an aggregating factor along that too, so somebody being booked for the one-off shoplift, that wouldn't be accurate based on the information I'm getting.

There would be some other circumstances there.

Summer Nelson.

Sorry, I can't hear you.

Can I mute?

I appreciate this presentation, because I didn't know very much about this program.

So your presentation says 63 store chains.

So I'm wondering, are we talking mostly grocery, or is this also retail?

So that is one question, and the answer feeds into my next, which is, and you've alluded to it, but are we, you know, Do we track the dollar amount of the things stolen per incident or any data on the stuff that's stolen?

I'm just trying to get a sense of the degree to which most of these incidents are, you know, thefts of survival versus something else.

Those are my two specific questions.

But I also just wanted, when we start talking about the participation and it going down, I read up on how this works.

And from your website, it says the RTP, Retail Theft Participants, will do the following.

Detain the suspected shoplifter per store policies, obtain or attempt to identify the subject.

Call SPD communications to obtain an SPD case number and determine warrant status.

Prepare a security incident report clearly describing the incident.

Issue a written trespass warning to subject.

Photograph the subject for future ID purposes.

Release the subject to staff or the police department.

mail the security incident report to the Seattle Police Department data center.

So those are a lot of steps and a lot of work.

And so that might have something to do with the amount of participation or reporting from these kinds of things, because it seems like there has to be a dedicated loss prevention person or security officer.

But go ahead and try to take a stab at my first two questions, thanks.

I really appreciate you going into the weeds.

We're assuming a business has a security officer because that is sort of a prerequisite of being in this program, but when I was asking whether or not there had been any feedback from businesses about the participation.

It was to sort of go beyond the question of, yes, the reason we don't participate is because we can't afford a security officer.

Let's assume somebody does have a security officer.

What is everything else after that?

What are all the steps after?

And are those steps too onerous?

Too time-consuming.

So thank you for fleshing that out a little bit more.

We'll get going into all the different steps.

Really appreciate that And just to that point I saw the link to the manual you have that's actually old manual there's there's a Paper reports are using more.

It's all electronic submissions now, too.

So there has been some tweaks to the program on that end that Brings things up to date and hopefully remove some of those onerous process in there, but I think we'd always look to make it more efficient Um, and yes, all the data is tracked.

That's, I think, where the electronic forms come easily for prosecution.

The, um, law security officer would have to delineate what was taken and what the value is, how much it was.

So, you know, we know the appropriate value for prosecution purposes.

And then, as far as participation, I think it runs the gamut of retailers.

Yes, grocery stores, um, drugstores and, uh, other retail establishments, too, are all able to join into the program.

Thank you.

I see Council Member Mosqueda has a question.

One thing I want to address, because I did hear it in public comment, relates to whether or not Organizations like the PDA have been involved in reviewing this program.

One of the outcomes of the retail theft program could be a trespass warning.

And I do want to just highlight the fact that in 2013, the trespass warning program was revamped by the city attorney's office and the Seattle Police Department in conjunction with racial disparity project.

as we all know, is a project of the PDA, and they developed new protocols to address past issues facing the community and made sure with many of the changes that they made that the rights of people suspected of retail theft and subsequently subject to being trespassed off the property that those individuals had notification of their rights, both about what their expectations are and their ability to appeal the trespass.

Just wanted to flag that.

That was a comment that I heard during public comment and didn't know if I had another opportunity to do so.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Just a few quick questions, and I guess you mentioned that this program has been around since 1989, is that correct?

Okay.

I think that some of the response to public safety concerns from the 80s concern me, so I wondered if you have Any knowledge of a recent race and social justice initiative report or analysis toolkit being done on this program itself?

I don't, Councilmember.

I'd have to look into that.

Okay, thanks so much.

And I think that Councilmember or Madam Chair's questions also were alluding to how we can maybe grab some additional information around the impacts on our race and social justice priorities.

I'd be very interested in that, especially since we know both through data and anecdotes that folks who are often shoppers of color are more likely to be followed around by security guards just prior to COVID.

And we also understand that there is a real, you know, experienced issue from the retailers about concerns around shoplifting, but I just want to have a better understanding about how this program ties into potential targeting or our racial and social justice priorities.

Speaking of experience, you know, I'm not doubting the number of incidents that we see both in the city and across the country, but I think it's important to lift up an article from the LA Times in December 15th of 2021. where they noted the national conversation around retail theft had been getting a lot of national attention.

And in the December 15th article from the LA Times, they say that although some retail and law enforcement lobbyists cite eye-popping figures, there is a reason to doubt the problem is anywhere near as large or as widespread as they say.

The best estimates available put losses around $0.07 per $100 of sales on average.

and asked how the organizations are at the figures that they've received.

The answer was there is no way of knowing exactly how much organized retail crime affects the bottom line of businesses.

In fact, at a Senate congressional hearing, again, congressional members asked about the data that was used and staffers acknowledged that there was estimates based on the back of napkins.

Questions were raised about the data provided by the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the National Retail Federation, The State's Retail Association, that was from California.

The National Coalition for Law Enforcement and Retail, or CLEAR.

And folks within the LA Times in this article looked into the data and how the analysis was created in terms of the bottom line numbers that were being shared throughout last year.

And the LA Times concludes, the discrepancy between figures touted by the industry group suggests difficulty in quantifying any specific problems in the industries given how splintered retail is.

When it comes to organized retail crimes specifically, the best estimates appear much smaller.

With the 55 member companies that responded to the latest annual survey representing about 25% of all U.S. retail sales, the National Retail Federation has the clearest window into the broader trends.

Its report found that the total numbers of retail trends is shrinking in terms of all inventory losses from theft and fraud, internal and external, as well as paperwork errors.

It grew from 1.4% to 1.6% between 2015 and 2020, and the estimated portion of the losses coming from organized retail crime grew from 0.045% to 0.07% in the same time frame.

But I just wanted to lift that up to sort of put into context the conversation and the type of crime that we're talking about.

And I want to note, as the LA Times article noted as well, that especially for the smallest businesses that lack record profit making during this time of COVID, they aren't able to compete with these national chains that are selling on the internet.

There is obviously additional pressures on the small businesses for hiring, staffing shortages, and the issues around um, you know, crimes of s of that.

Some of it can b companies, but it's defi a heavy toll on our small in this time of last sale to lift up the impact fo versus some of the larger were at question in the congressional hearing, like CBS and others.

I just wondered if you had a thought about their concluding comment was that that said that even in even though there's dueling retail association numbers, they did agree on one principle, and that is organized crime.

Retail organized crime is better dealt with away from the stores at the level of the fences, meaning the people reselling the stolen goods.

When I had the chance to visit with folks in Belltown the other day, they talked about kind of an open market situation where stolen goods were being sold.

Can you talk a little bit about going to the point like upstream and trying to get at those who are selling those stolen goods and what the emphasis is there instead of in the stores?

Yeah, we've run a couple operations.

We did one in Belltown later last year to address some of the selling at street level.

I mentioned the one that West Precinct did a few years ago, targeted five or six people that were exploiting vulnerable people to steal for them, and they would go and sell it either online or elsewhere.

That's been the case of the 12 in Jackson recently.

So we always want to take that look before we do any type of retail theft operation away from this program that is more directed at a certain area.

I think that's always something that we're looking at is where are these goods going and then who's making money off of that at the higher end upstream, right?

Not, how are the people being exploited to steal?

And then who is taking fans up to do that?

And how do we address that?

That's more labor intensive, or we're committed to doing that.

But I think that helps, there's often other crimes associated with that too, that can have significant impacts on community safety.

So I think there's definitely a value for us to continue that approach.

That's a fantastic segue.

And honest to goodness, I promise everybody that it was not set up that way.

But that finding, Council Member Mosqueda, that you highlighted, that the organized retail theft, addressing it away from the where the theft occurs to where the selling of the goods is occurring is something that Council Member Lewis seized upon a bit ago.

And I just wanted to allow for a little bit of time for him to talk about an audit that is kind of comes out of that finding that he and I are proposing that the audit office work on.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I don't have like a, you know, a presentation or anything, but I'm happy to speak to this audit concept for just a moment.

And as Council Member Herbold just indicated, my office and her office have been working on an audit project with David Jones, the city auditor, looking more broadly at organized retail thefts over the last several months.

I think we began this discussion in September or sometime thereabout.

And we're happy to share the scoping document with council colleagues.

But essentially, it's to look at this holistically.

Council Member Muscata, just as you kind of indicated now, actually in a couple of respects, one of the components would be looking at, you know, you know doing it some kind of analysis to to look at some of the underlying assumptions from when the retail program was created in the eighties but it's also designed to look or broadly at the overall ecosystem of the organized retail theft including the the reselling and on public right of way the reselling through online platforms, which is really common and happens quite extensively.

And it's the subject of some legislation in Olympia right now in Washington, D.C., that the Washington Retail Association is seeking or that the retailers are seeking to address the online reselling.

But, you know, this really came came around, Keltner and Ruscata, due to a lot of the same concerns you were just articulating, and actually that Assistant Chief Mahaffey just articulated around professional organized retail thieves kind of finding, for lack of a better term, a hack in our current system and how we do this.

Uh, you know, like a, like a list is given to low level folks who are trying to survive on the street to go and get things that the folks fencing the goods need to resell in, you know, either through an online platform or, uh, in some kind of open air organized retail theft market, uh, that the most of the risk is born.

Um, with potential misdemeanor exposure for the people that are going into the store to steal.

And the people fencing the goods have a plentiful supply of being able to find new people that they can just churn through the system to go in and steal things for them.

So our current enforcement mechanisms in terms of how we're kind of gathering the data, pursuing the cases, aggregating the referrals for prosecution, could maybe use a little bit of a look at from the city auditor, and they're up to the task of taking a look to sort of look at some national best practices.

There's some examples in some states of statewide task forces that track organized retail theft in an interjurisdictional way.

uh...

california and illinois in particular have system set up like that that the auditor's office is interested in looking at uh...

but it's clear that this is presenting itself as a regional issue meet frequently people will steal goods uh...

or or a organized retail thefts folks will you know aggregate stolen goods in one jurisdiction and then sell them somewhere else uh...

in order to to further obscure uh...

the activity of what they're doing.

So that's the general premise of what we're looking into.

And the hope is that when the audit comes back, we can have a hearing here, obviously, with the committee and get some kind of scrutiny of some recommendations that pertain to the city.

But hopefully that will also uncover some interesting practices that some regional partners could do, could look into to model as well, because it's not just going to be things that Seattle can do, there's going to be things that we're going to want the King County Prosecuting Attorney or the Attorney General or the legislature to look into.

So, that is just kind of the overview of what Councilmember Herbold was queuing up.

And, you know, I'm happy to share that scoping document with community members and look forward to more discussion because clearly there's more that we should be doing in this area to make sure that we're treating this with the seriousness and the urgency it requires and focusing our efforts in the right area.

And thank you so much, Council Member Lewis, for your leadership in this area.

I also want to lift up that the city auditor has agreed to, as part of their work, to engage with small business stakeholders and to learn directly from their experience.

And want to just highlight that many of our small business districts have a very large of BIPOC business owners that are represented in the neighborhood business districts.

We think of the CID often and some of the Rainier Valley and Central District neighborhoods.

We recently received a really helpful report from the University District.

Business Owners Association, which is another business owners association of small businesses that are majority BIPOC owned businesses.

So including their voices and making sure that they are giving input as into sort of their experience, experiences with retail theft and the impacts that it's had on their ability to stay open is really, really critical and important.

So not seeing anything further on this topic.

Assistant Hoove McAfee, thank you for being with us.

Brian Maxey, did you have anything that you wanted to add before we close out this item?

I appreciate the opportunity, Council Member.

No, I was just here to run the slideshow and take notes and answer any questions that were unanswered, but I don't think there are any.

So thank you.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

If there are any other comments from colleagues, I'm not seeing any.

The next Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for today, March 8th, 2022, and the time is now 11.52 a.m., and we are adjourned.

Thank you.

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