Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 2/25/20

Good morning and welcome to the Tuesday, February 25th, 2020 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

It is 9.35 a.m.

I am Lisa Herbold, the chair of the committee and council member representing District 1, West Seattle and South Park.

I am joined by council members Peterson and Morales, thank you both for joining me today.

And if there are no objections, I'm going to approve the agenda.

Hearing no objections, the agenda is approved.

Today's meeting will begin with public comment and followed by the items of business.

The items of business are the appointment and reappointment of a number of members of the Community Police Commission.

We then will hear from SPD on their staffing report.

And then finally, we're going to just spend a little bit of time going over what is right now in draft form, this committee's public safety and human services work plan overview.

Just wanting to sunlight a draft version of the work plan, hear from you, let members of the public know what we're, thinking of focusing on in 2020 before the council's future adoption of all of our work plans via resolution.

Thank you to both council members Sawant and Lewis for joining as well.

And with that, we'll move right into public comment.

I'm going to read names into the record two at a time.

If you could join us at either one of or any of the three mics up there, make sure the green light's on.

You can talk right into it.

It's movable.

Alex will keep time, and he'll let you know when you have a minute, 30 seconds, and then when your time is up.

Total speaking time is two minutes per person.

So we'll start with David Horowitz, followed by Velma Valoria.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I will make three points.

First, thanks to all who finally repaired the online Seattle Crime Dashboard, a resource which promotes informed public conversation about crime in Seattle.

Second, I live in a studio apartment in the U District and have for decades.

Despite my profound mistrust of the Seattle Police Department, I recognize that recent increased patrols, especially police cars driven through alleys, and past known trouble spots reduce the threat of random violence.

Please continue to support these increased patrols.

Third, while I acknowledge personal and societal responsibility to help people living on the streets and in crisis, I want to highlight challenges confronting owners and employees of businesses on or near the Ave.

Many maintain their businesses and do their jobs despite frequent shoplifting, counterfeiting, vandalism, threats of physical violence, nearby physical fights and open air drug dealing, extra security expense, goods damaged by irresponsible browsers.

increased insurance costs, high property taxes, and loss of business when prices consequently rise.

Many U District business people have shown me kindness.

Few fit stereotypical images of unfeeling greed.

Some are women and or people of color and few are rich.

I rue the tendency, especially prevalent in our city's cultural circles, to propagate stereotypes about greed and business.

Try running a business in the U District.

You will routinely endure verbal abuse, threats, and thievery, and you will know daily stress.

Business people also deserve compassion.

No one, including business people and political moderates, exists as a mere stereotype or label.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Velma Valoria will be followed by Isaac Ruiz.

Chair Herbold, members of the committee, thank you for having this hearing today.

My name is Velma Valorium, a former State Representative and representing the Filipino community of Seattle.

I understand that Emma Katage from the Filipino community has been removed from the Commission I'm here in support of having her return to the Commission.

Emma is a passionate person for the struggle for the people.

She knows the issues and she is going to be and will be and has been an asset to the CPC.

So please retain Emma Katage in the Commission.

Thank you.

And Isaac Ruiz will be followed by Ruby Holland.

Good morning, council members.

I'm here to support Emma Kitagi, support the CPC, and to support the future of an independent and robust accountability system.

I had the privilege of serving as co-chair with Reverend Harriet Walden and with Emma for several years.

It is a full-time position and a thankless job to serve as a co-chair.

It's also a volunteer position.

Both Reverend Walden and Emma have put in thousands of hours every year.

I can say without reservation that Emma had been an incredible co-chair.

She's honest.

She's straightforward.

Behind the scenes, she's just the way she is, you know, in front of the scenes.

And she's always faithful to community.

In terms of commitment, Emma has put in the thousands of hours of service.

There's no question that when you look at all of the commissioners from top to bottom, Emma and Reverend Walden put in by far the most time of service.

And, you know, with all due respect, the drop-off after those two commissioners is very steep.

On independence, even before this mayoral administration, there were efforts to change the composition of the CPC, to change the direction of the CPC.

These are conversations that I was a part of, so I know them firsthand.

Those efforts were foremost in mind when the 2017 accountability ordinance was drafted, which is why there are three appointing bodies and not just one as there was before.

I want to read from when I made the decision to finally leave the CPC.

I wrote a message to my co-chairs in which I wanted to address this notion that the CPC is overly confrontational, that the CPC all it does is fight.

And as you can tell, this is something I care a lot about.

And I wrote is, I reject the suggestion that all the CPC does is fight, acting in a way that always agrees with the mayor or that agrees with Spog, may result in harmony with those entities, but it would render the CPC utterly useless and irrelevant.

we should just call it as we see it.

And I believe that with Emma and with Reverend Walden and the current leadership, I think that's the direction it's gonna continue to go in and I thank you for reappointing her.

Thank you so much.

Our last speaker that we have signed up is Ruby Holland.

Yes, my name is Ruby Holland.

I applaud the city council for voting to add more tiny house villages to house Seattle's homeless families with children, working adults, college students and seniors on social security.

These responsible citizens want help and would consider it a blessing to have even a tiny roof over their heads and a door that they could shut at night.

I also applaud the council for approving safe lots for people living in their vehicles.

These people are trying to keep a roof over their heads and they deserve our support.

Forcing them to move regularly was especially cruel in light of Seattle's housing crisis.

It is my hope that all new city-sanctioned sites will be spread throughout the city, including Magnolia, Laurelhurst, and Queen Anne, making all neighborhoods share in Seattle's homeless crisis.

Don't just dump homeless people in the CD and South End like upzoning was in the land grab disguised as the MHA.

I still have a problem with Durkin's drug cartel allowing homeless addicts to live like animals in downtown Seattle.

I also challenged Durkin, Holmes, and Satterberg to explain why there is compassion without accountability now that whites are possessing and dealing drugs, but when it was mainly blacks and people of color doing the same thing, there was no compassion, only hard prison time.

crack, meth, heroin, same illegal activity for which blacks are deemed criminals and need to be locked up while whites are sick and in need of our joint compassion.

This from our elected officials.

Please explain.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And it turns out we do have one additional person signed up to speak, and that's Jules Bosettis.

Hello, thank you so much for accommodating me last minute.

My name is Jules Posadas.

First and foremost, I'm a community member and also a community member of the Filipino Community Center.

And one of the things I'm here for is during the, for Emma Katagi, for, I just recently was aware that she was removed from Seattle Police Commission.

I'm here for her behalf.

of just testifying for her character, testifying for her activism in the community, and testifying for her continuous engagement, and always providing an equity lens in everything that she does, and always putting equity in people of color first.

So I really want to ask the council to consider this and look at the character of Emma Kotagi and reinstate her.

Thank you so much.

All right, thank you all.

We will move into the items of business, and we'll act on items one through six together.

And if you could read all six of those into the record, and if folks could join us at the table, all the individuals who are involved in items one through six.

Thank you.

Item 1, appointment 01555, reappointment of Joseph Seha as member of Community Police Commission for a term December 31, 2021. Item 2, appointment 01557, reappointment of Mark Mullins as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2022. Item number 3, appointment 01554, appointment of Emma Montez-Katage as member of Community Police Commission for a term December 31, 2021. 01553, appointment of Douglas E. Wagner as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2020. Item five, appointment 01552, appointment of Suzette Dickerson as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2020. Item six, appointment 01556, appointment of Bonish R. Harrell as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2022.

Thank you, Alex.

If we could just start with a really quick round of introductions, just so the public can associate a name with an appointment, and then we'll get into the meat of the matter.

I'm Newell Aldrich, Council Member Herboldt's office.

I'm Suzette Dickerson.

Monisha Herold.

Erin Chevron with the Mayor's office.

Brennan Walden with the CPC co-chair for ML.

Jesse Franz, Communication Advisor for the Community Police Commission.

And I'm Douglas Wagner.

Great.

Thank you all.

And so, as mentioned earlier in public comment, the CPC appointments typically cover a number of different responsibilities, representation of different communities, but they also have been brought forward by different appointing authorities.

And so today, we have each the appointments from each the mayor's office, the CPC, and the council.

And some of our appointments are reappointments, and some of them are new appointments.

And I think I will defer if it's okay, Reverend Walton, we didn't talk about this beforehand, so I'm counting on you to be at the ready to maybe quickly do a quick overview since you are one of the co-chairs, a quick overview of the CPC.

All right, thank you.

The CPC was set up on the settlement agreement in 2012 The DOJ came back with a finding of unconstitutional policing for Seattle, and out of that was the Community Police Commission.

Over time, it has become permanent with the legislation that was passed in 2017 for police accountability.

work for police reform and also engage the community.

That's like a quick overview and we do tons and tons of work and that type of stuff, yes.

Thank you.

I think one of the things that is really unique about the CPC is it is not a staff-driven agency.

It is really, the work of the CPC is really the work of the commissioners.

And so that's why I think so many of the responsibilities require such a commitment of time and energy because the expectation is individual CPC members are representing their communities, not, the work product is not a product of staff, it's really a product of what you do and who you represent.

And so the responsibilities include not only producing annual reports, you also have an official role in being able to do filings as part of the consent decree.

And you are also tasked with providing technical assistance on community matters to the OPA and the Office of Intergovernmental, I'm sorry, the Office of the Inspector General.

You're tasked with identifying and advocating for reforms to state laws.

You're tasked with providing SPD, OPA, and the OAG with community feedback relevant to their operations.

In order to do that, you have to go out there and get community feedback.

You're tasked with maintaining connections with representatives of disenfranchised communities and other community groups in all of the city's seven council districts, as well as with SPD demographic and precinct advisory councils.

Another important role is specifically ensuring that we are informed about how the, from a policy perspective, on how the police accountability system, police services, SPD policies and practices of significance to the public are really addressing the needs of our diverse communities throughout the city.

So I really appreciate your willingness to serve in this really important role at, I think, a really important time in the work that we all have to do together, both to enhance constitutional policing while also ensuring that we're addressing the public safety needs of our communities.

With that, I'll turn it over to each of you to talk about why it is that you are interested in serving in this role.

And if you could, each of you, say whether or not you are a reappointment and who is your appointing authority.

Are you being appointed by the CPC, the mayor, or the council?

And we'll start with you, Suzette.

Again, I'm Suzette Dickerson.

I am being appointed by the mayor's office.

I am a new appointee.

The reason why I wanted to join the CPC is because I think that I can bring a different perspective.

I do come from the labor background.

I currently am a staff representative with Council 2 and serve King County, so I have members who are here in Seattle, in the Seattle limits.

Also, I came from, I worked for the county, for King County in the prosecutor's office, so I have a little bit of law background.

and a lot of community ties.

So being with, you know, working with the city of Renton, with the youth over in the city of Renton, and then also doing some church engagements with the black community.

So.

Great, thank you.

Anisha.

My name is Monisha Harrell.

I am a new, I would be a new appointee by the mayor's office and my interest, I have had long interest in law enforcement, especially police accountability.

I have served the city in a couple of different positions.

One was on the hate crimes task force for Capitol Hill a few years ago.

And most recently, I was one of the co-chairs for the De-escalate Washington Initiative 940, requiring all law enforcement officers engage in extended de-escalation training, anti-bias training.

as well as basic first aid to be able to render on scene to save lives.

I'm really proud of that work.

That was a lot of energy and a lot of effort.

And this, I'm very interested in the CBC because given where we are, as a city with the new contracts being negotiated, this seems to be a really good time to ensure that what I've been working on, on a statewide level and on a local level, is able to actually have some roots and grow.

And so this is an exciting opportunity to be able to carry that work through.

I know that, you know, with one initiative or with one effort, there is still a lot more to do.

And so I'm looking forward to being here to continue that for the next few years.

I'm Douglas Wagner.

I'm a new appointment through the City Council.

I grew up in the Seattle area and currently live in West Seattle.

My mom's an immigrant from Haiti who works for the Highline School District, and my dad is an environmentalist who grew up on Capitol Hill.

I first got interested in the criminal justice system when my friends in college were victims of LGBTQ hate crime.

And I discovered the power of restorative justice and its ability to heal and repair harm more effectively than the traditional criminal justice system.

I went on to move to St. Louis, Missouri, where I worked on the city's youth violence prevention plan as a Coro Fellow and as a consultant.

through the city's Department of Health.

And today I serve as a communication staff with the Office of Healthy and Safe Communities at the Washington State Department of Health.

And so in that role, I help increase public outreach for programs that work to prevent injury, violence, and premature death.

And I also serve as a board member at the West Seattle Food Bank, where I chair the advocacy committee and help advocate for public policies that decrease hunger and increase support for nearly 12,000 Seattleites every year in West Seattle.

And so I'm interested in the CPC because I've seen, you know, since the federal consent decree has gone into effect, we've seen through the process of community involvement some really important improvements.

Improvements in de-escalation training, the enhanced role of community in police reform.

but problems still remain.

The disproportionate use of force against people of color in particular, and because of that, lives really remain at stake, particularly black, brown, and LGBTQ lives.

And so I want to join the CPC to be a process of continuing to move the needle on reform, and I'm perhaps most excited about bringing some upstream prevention practices, public health, harm reduction, to the table through the process of getting community input and creating better policing here in the city of Seattle.

Thank you so much, Douglas.

All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to hear from folks representing each of the appointing authorities, just to say, add a few extra words about why you are putting forward the individuals that you are putting forward.

First, Jesse, on behalf of the CPC, you want to speak to the reappointments of Joseph Sella and Mark Mullins.

Definitely, Joseph Seya has been a part of our commission since 2017. He currently works as the Youth and Young Adult Homeless Systems Manager on the Ending Youth Homeless Now campaign with King County.

He has spent two decades championing community and 15 years working with community groups to affect change.

In his role on the Community Police Commission, he has chaired the CPC's Community Engagement Committee, which plays an important role in creating strategies about how we interact with community groups, especially groups most affected by policing in Seattle.

He was nominated by a unanimous vote of the CPC to fill Commission Seat 12, and that term would be through the end of 2021. nomination from the CPC was for the Seattle Police Officers Guild seat.

As many of you know, the 2017 accountability law expanded the commission to 21 seats, seven appointed by the CPC.

Two of those seats represent police officers from each of the police unions.

Mark Mullins is the SPOG representative from the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

He's worked with the department for about 30 years, most of that time in the South Precinct, and he spent a lot of that time working in community engagement.

Specifically for the last five years, he's worked in the Rainier Beach area, working with community groups to talk about their needs and hasn't really done patrols or response to 911 calls, but is specifically focused on that.

He's also been through de-escalation training and crisis intervention training and brings important perspectives to the CPC and he was also unanimously nominated by the CPC and his term would be through 2022.

Thank you so much.

And just a clarification as it relates to reappointments, we do not expect them to join us.

They have already come before us in their original appointments, so that's why they're not here with us today.

We have some other reappointments as well who won't be joining us, but really value their work or else we wouldn't be reappointing them.

Noel, can you speak to the council reappointment, well, the council appointment and reappointment?

The first is Emma Cottergy, in addition to what we've heard from the public.

She was first appointed by the commission in 2017 and has served as a co-chair.

She's the former executive director of the International Housing Alliance, co-founder and longtime former staff of the Asian Pacific Islander Women and Family Safety Center, now known as API CHIA.

an active participant in the Filipino community, and Filipino-American political action group of Washington, and a bilingual immigrant.

She has in the past worked with Seattle Police Department on recruitment efforts for personnel from the broader APA community, and has participated in a community advisory group to SPD.

She has a wealth of experience in culturally competent and linguistically accessible provision of human services for immigrants, refugees, domestic violence victims, victims of human trafficking and low-income residents of the International District and South Seattle.

For Douglas Wagner, in addition to what he has said, he has a broad range of experience in local, state, and federal government.

And in addition to his duties with the state, serves as Chair of Advocacy Committee for the West Seattle Food Bank Board of Directors.

He has served in the past as Communications Director for U.S.

Representative Larson and Deputy Press Secretary and Digital Media Manager for U.S.

Senator Cantwell.

He designed and executed an independent project to evaluate and implement the St. Louis Youth Violence Prevention Planning in coordination with the City of St. Louis Department of Health and the Mayor's Office.

He has fought to implement restorative justice practices as an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara.

and he served as a youth advocate with Seattle's Safer Schools Bureau, training officials in local schools, foster homes, and teen crisis clinics to produce culturally sensitive programming for Seattle's at-risk LGBTQ youth of color.

Thank you, Noel, very much.

And then we have the two mayoral appointments, and if we can hear from Erin about their wealth of experience and commitment to this effort.

Yes, thank you very much.

It's my pleasure to present the mayor's nominees for the Community Police Commission, Suzette Dickerson and Monisha Harrell.

Suzette is an experienced staff representative at Washington State Council of County and City Employees, ASME 21. I'm sorry, Council 2. She has demonstrated history of working in the government relations industry.

She is skilled in team building, management, leadership, and labor relations.

She's also a strong business development professional with a project manager certificate focused in project management from Bellevue College.

Prior to her current role, Suzette worked as a business representative for Teamster Local 117. Suzette has a strong passion for helping others.

She is guided by finding equitable and social justice solutions.

These two components are a driving force for her work day in and day out.

Manisha Harrell was born and raised in Seattle, Washington.

She attended Columbia University for her undergraduate degree and received an MBA from the University of Washington's Foster School of Business.

She owns and operates a small marketing firm, Rule 7, focused on community-driven outreach and engagement.

As a volunteer within the community, Monisha began her board service as a fellow for Lifelong AIDS Alliance.

In 2015, she was appointed to co-chair the Capitol Hill LGBTQ Public Safety Task Force for the city of Seattle.

And in 2017, she was appointed by the city of Seattle to be a member of the search committee for the new director of the Office of Police Accountability.

She served as a co-chair for the De-Escalate Washington, the campaign committee supporting YES on initiative 940 in 2018. Monisha currently serves as the board chair for Equal Rights Washington and chairs the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund.

In addition to board service, Monisha also volunteered with Special Olympics Washington from 2007 to 2009 and co-chaired Special Olympics Washington 2010 and the 2011 Polar Plunge events in Seattle.

In 2013, the stranger named Monisha one of the smartest people in Seattle politics.

And in 2017, the University of Washington Consulting Business and Development Center named her their Alumni of the Year.

Also, she was recently honored as the GSBA's Community Leader of the Year in 2019.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

I'm really excited for what you have to offer the commission.

I'd just like to open it up to questions at this point.

Yeah, Council Member Morales.

I don't have any questions, but I do want to thank all of you.

for your willingness to serve on the CPC.

This is an important part of our efforts to reform our department and to ensure police accountability in the city.

And so I'm sure you all know that you'll be in the spotlight and in the hot seat as much as we will be.

I do wanna have a special comment about Emma.

I understand she couldn't be here today, but I'm excited to see that she is being appointed to a new slot.

I know that Emma's been serving our community for decades.

And I want to personally thank her for the work that she's been doing.

And I want to apologize because I know that she had to be reappointed into a different seat.

So I want to apologize that she had to go through an extra step for this process.

And I want Emma to know that this council has the deepest respect for her and for the Filipino community that she serves.

And I want to say how important it is that What she will bring to this commission, the experience that she has advocating for victims of domestic violence and for victims of human trafficking is really important.

I'm glad to see that we won't lose her experience and her expertise and her passion for this work.

So I'm happy to be supporting her appointment and I look forward to working with her.

Any other questions or thoughts?

Yes, it was my honor to have the opportunity, unfortunate though it was, to when I found out that the mayor was declining to reappoint Emma a couple months ago to say.

Well, I've got openings that I can fill, and I would love to have the opportunity to put her name forward.

So I think that it's really important that we maintain the leadership that she provides and the legitimacy she gives to the CPC because of her strong ties to the community and her infallible ability to represent the needs of the community.

I have just a couple questions I'd love to ask the nominees if that's okay.

I know Reverend Walden also it sounds like had a point that she wanted to make but I just want to get some of these questions on the table.

I'd love to hear what your perspective is on the consent decree.

with the Department of Justice, as well as just real high level, what part of the work of the CPC is most important to you?

Well, I think that for me, the highest level of the consent decree that is really important is the accountability piece.

I think that holding people accountable to what they're supposed to be doing versus what they think that they can do is a little bit different.

And so that is really important to me and having things be equitable across the board.

that all communities be served the same way regardless of your skin color.

Thank you.

So my perspective of the consent decree is it's actually probably one of the best things that ever happened in the city of Seattle.

We are not, the consent decree did not change the way things were done.

Those are the things that, those are the ways things have always been done and put a spotlight on it.

And so the fact that the consent decree forced us to confront those issues, I think in many ways it is one of the best things that could happen to this city.

I hope it actually happens to more cities.

I think it forces us to look at these issues and to actually address them versus thinking that everything is okay.

I think the way we work out of it is really, really important.

I think that it will involve all efforts.

And I do believe earnestly that the majority of the city wants to do that.

But we have to do it in a way that deeply impacts the way things are going forward, doesn't just get us out of it for the moment and then we find ourselves falling back into old patterns.

So addressing it with a sense of sustainability is the thing that's going to be most important.

Yeah, I think the federal consent decree, you know was a really critical first step in addressing broken relationships between SPD and the community towards fixing unconstitutional policing practices towards instituting more community policing and relational policing models.

And there's been some really great progress that's come out of the consent decree.

We now have a really groundbreaking system of police accountability.

here in the city of Seattle, and an opportunity to continue to move that work forward, no matter what happens with the consent decree in the next year or so.

And so, again, what I'm most excited about is continuing the progress that's been made already through the CPC and through the process of community leadership.

here in the city of Seattle, continuing to advance those upstream prevention tactics, including de-escalation training, including implicit bias training, and tools and tactics that can help prevent conflicts between community and police from happening in the first place.

Thank you.

And I think one of the things that is really important to note about this particular consent decree, I believe we were the first in the nation to actually have a citizen oversight body be an actual official party of record.

That's a really big deal.

It's being replicated in other cities.

And so that means your work throughout the process of oversight under the Consent Decree on Accountability is also really important.

You have a role to submit filings along with the city on the different stages of oversight of the Consent Decree and even into the sustainment period.

And so that's not just important in itself, it's important in the big picture of national police reform efforts.

Because if you use your role in a way that we can demonstrate is helpful, to addressing police accountability reform, then we can be sure that that relationship of the community with consent decree oversight is enshrined in other cities throughout the country.

So super important and really appreciate your willingness to serve in this role.

If there are no other questions, I think what I'll do is I will move items one through six all together, and I'll wait for a second.

So I move appointment 01555. I move appointment 01557. I move appointment 01554. I move appointment 01553. I move appointment 01552, and I move appointment 01556. Second.

Thank you.

All those in favor of moving the appointments as listed on items 1 through 6, vote aye.

Aye.

None opposing, none abstaining.

Items one through six will move on to the full council on Monday.

And before we move off of this item, I believe Reverend Walden would like to take us out.

Thank you so much.

Thank you again.

I want to thank your leadership.

and your reappointment to Emma Katage.

She means a lot to the commission, and we really appreciate the fact that she's being reappointed and be able to continue her work and the passion that she brings.

And thank you for the respect and reappointing her to the commission.

I want to thank all of you.

All right.

Well, great.

Thank you so much, all of you, for joining us, and congratulations.

Thank you very much.

All right, item number seven.

Item number seven, police department staffing report.

Fantastic.

Thank you all for joining us.

Greg's going to kick us off, but before we do that, if we could just do a real quick round of introductions.

Good morning.

I'm Mike Fields.

I'm the department's HR director.

Greg Doss, council central staff.

Carrie McNally, recruiter with Seattle Police Department.

All right, fantastic.

Some familiar faces from yesterday.

So Greg will kick us off with a quick overview of why we're here today.

Yeah, thank you council member.

So I am going to start out to talk about the 2019 year-end staffing data that is transmitted to the council monthly The data is transmitted monthly this particular data.

We're looking at is for the end of 2019 And then I'm going to turn it over to the department to talk about their recruiting activities over the last year and what they've got planned for the upcoming year.

And as part of that presentation, they may be touching on the Mayor's Recruitment and Retention Initiative.

I know that was talked about a bit yesterday in the press conference.

So as background, I'm sure most folks are aware that in 2018, the department experienced difficulty hiring new officers while also realizing a higher than normal separation rate.

These challenges led to a net decrease of 41 of the number of officers employed by SPD.

As you can see here in table one, in 2018, there's that negative 41 right there.

So I'll walk you through this table so you understand what you're looking at.

You've got recruits that are hired, laterals that are brought in, and laterals are folks that are hired from other police agencies or rehires, separations, folks that are leaving the department, and then net new hires is obviously the difference between those three columns.

All sworn officers are all officers, all sworn personnel that have taken the oath.

The reason I mention that is because when someone gets hired into the department, they go through a period of five to six months of the academy, and so they don't take the sworn oath immediately.

There's a bit of a delay.

before they become sworn officers.

And then there's a further delay.

Once they graduate the academy, they have to do ride-along training before they become a fully trained officer.

And I point this out so that you understand that as you're moving along this table, you can't add these numbers together.

You can't say 16 net new hires plus 1,388 will equal 1,371 because there's the delay in the training.

So as you can see here, in 2018, there was the net 41. In 2019, and this is good news that the department will be talking about, there was a total of 108 hires, 92 recruits and 16 laterals and rehires.

The target had been 104. So, wait a second, did I get that right?

So yeah, they wound up doing quite a bit better than they thought they were going to do, and wound up with a net of 16 higher.

In 2020, the goals are similar, and if they wind up in the same place, they will have 13 net new hires, although the reports from January are strong, so it may be that they wind up in a better situation there too.

So if there's not any questions on that, I'll move along to the next table.

which is fully trained officers.

I talked a little bit about fully trained officers.

That's important because these are officers that have completed almost a year-long worth of training, including ride-along, and now can be logged into the 911. CAD system and answer 911 calls independently.

So it's at that point that you can say that you have a force multiplier.

And I showed this chart last year, and it looked basically the same, that there was a huge dip here in 2018 due to the negative 41, and the department had been projecting this increase here.

And the good news is it's happening.

Your last statement is the department's projecting that the number of fully trained officers will return to prior highs in the middle of 2020. I think you're pointing to the, yeah, the 1360 number.

Yes.

It looks like we're already there if that projection is real.

Because, right, that, go to that line and it looks like that's the beginning of 2020 where you're hitting 1360.

It's, I think that just might be an artifact of the table.

Right now,

I think it's a...

And that last line there, is that a projected number, or is that where we are right now?

Where we are right now is the 1331. This last line, 1378, is the projected number.

By the end of the year?

Yeah, by the end.

Does the four that's indicated mean like fourth quarter four?

No, that just means that that column is projected staffing.

It is a gray color here, but it's not showing up real well.

So 2020, obviously, we only have one month worth of data, so that data is projected.

All right, so that line is just maybe, things are lining up the way.

Yeah, it's just an artifact of that.

I'll use a bar chart next time.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

I don't know if you already said this, but by separations you mean attrition, like people leaving the force?

Yeah, so that's a combination mostly of folks that are leaving due to retirements or resignation.

In some instances, it's where academy cadets or folks in field training fail out, although those numbers are much lower than the previous two.

But we don't know how many of them are retirement and how many of them are left.

We do, actually.

Mike can talk about that, but I'll address that in my presentation.

Okay, great.

Sorry, I'm just asking some questions in advance because I might have to run soon.

But if you could all just, while I'm here, also give me a sense of what the officers who are leaving but not at retirement, do we have a sense of what they do afterwards?

Like what kind of jobs they take?

I'm just curious.

Yes, we engage in a separation survey with everyone who leaves the department to try to get a sense of what they're doing, the reasons, et cetera.

And perhaps a month ago, we provided the actual exit surveys themselves and a summary of those exit surveys.

Have them in your inbox.

We all have them.

And happy to provide you anything else on that you'd be interested in.

but can you just give me some highlights from that survey?

Sure.

I don't have highlights from the survey.

We're getting them every month.

So we get a monthly staffing report because of the previous requests through the budget process.

And part of the monthly staffing report are the monthly surveys for that period of time.

I don't want the overall survey results.

I'm just curious particularly about what do the officers who leave mainstream, whatever, what jobs, do they go to private security kind of?

The majority are going to other police agencies, primarily.

Like in county?

Yes, yeah, other regional police agencies, and of the 92 separations we had last year, 45 retired for service, and really what you're talking about is the 39 resignations going elsewhere.

And so they're not really clustered.

They sort of all over the Puget Sound region, some further away and for various reasons.

Yeah.

So move along to the next chart.

The next chart is patrol staffing.

And this is sort of where the rubber meets the road in terms of the department's overall staffing.

As you can see in this table, it's divided by precinct, it's divided by officer and sergeant, and divided by job categories.

The largest one is 911. These are folks that are logged into CAD and answer 911 calls.

The anti-crime team, which is a dedicated specialty team that works on specific crime problems.

Beats are a combination of foot beats and bikes.

These are the officers that you see on the street downtown.

The community police team officers and then some support personnel.

And the reason that I show you this is because this is where you can see sort of the downstream effects of the negative 41 officers that you saw from 2018. And the good news is that this number here, the number of 911 responders is relatively the same.

At the end of last year, it was 538. So what that says is the department puts a priority on 9-1-1 responders and has not allowed any of the attrition to affect its 9-1-1 responders and response times.

But your memo does identify what some of the, what we lose, right?

I mean, it's very important that we put a premium on responding to calls for emergency.

But I think the memo identifies the fact that...

I was just going to say, 24 others, 17 admits.

I'm sorry, can you repeat what beats are?

Like, what is an example of the kind of beat that they might be on?

My turn to the detective to...

So the city is broken up geographically into precinct, and then there are districts within each precinct as well.

So oftentimes an officer will be assigned to a very specific geographical boundary.

And so if a call comes out in that area, they're responsible for handling that first, and then we call additional units into that area.

So you're responsible for a geographical space.

within each of the precincts.

So that's what a beat is.

Greg, you mentioned a foot beat, or are there different kinds of, or bike beat, or is that different than what you were talking about?

It's the same concept, is we cover a certain geographical boundary, and in some cases, especially in the West Precinct Patrol, they may be augmented with foot beats, bicycle officers, things like that.

So wherever we can get to the most access for the 911 response, or doing proactive work.

It's still the same coverage, but their response is different.

So a bike officer will respond differently than a patrol car, for example.

I ask because this chart shows that in South Precinct, where I live, there are no beats.

So I'm looking for some clarification.

Correct.

Geographically, it's so spaced out that we wouldn't get maximum coverage for officers being on foot patrol or on a bicycle in those areas just because of the distance for each of those districts.

So a patrol car would be the best served way to reach people at 911. in those particular geographical areas.

That doesn't make sense to me because different precincts are all big, so as a reason why there wouldn't be one.

It also depends on the call load, so the look at the call load in geographical areas.

For example, the university district.

There may be a volume of calls on University Ave, which would mean that a foot beat officer or a bicycle officer could handle more of those calls.

and respond quicker than going from Rainier Beach over to parts of Columbia City, for example.

That response would be hindered by the fact the officers couldn't get there fast enough on a bike or on a foot beat.

So in addition to the impact of having, through necessity, to focus our officers on 9-1-1 staffing, in addition to other patrol categories, there is also a potential impact on investigations and specialty units.

And I just think that's important to highlight because we often hear from folks in the community that there are certain types of usually property crimes that they don't feel from their interactions with the police department that the police have the resources to really investigate some of those lower level crimes.

And again, there's a rationale for that and really appreciate the fact that the majority of police officers' time is really going literally from call to call.

And so a lot of the things that Chief Besk refers to as holistic policing, they simply don't have the staff time to do that work.

One of the things I'd mention, as long as we're on the subject of beats, is that the department has, in response to the recent Pine shooting, has bolstered the West Precinct Patrol.

And I'm looking to see if that's the case, that some of the beats are being bolstered as well.

And that primarily is going to be folks that are precinct-based support that are going to be brought into West Precinct and will augment These folks here either on overtime in the true sense of augmentation or they may be redeployed there temporarily.

I think the department has said that there are about two dozen folks that are doing that on a daily basis.

And so that is the department's effort, one of their efforts to make sure that downtown is receiving the kind of attention that it would need.

So those numbers, those two dozen extra, would it be correct to say shift instead of officers?

Those aren't reflected in those beat numbers on this chart.

No, they're not reflected up there.

So some of them are going to come in on overtime and some of them are going to be deployed from other areas.

Would that also have an impact on the beat numbers in the other precincts that are listed up here or the 9-1-1 response in the other precincts?

So when we have an emphasis patrol like we're having down at 3rd and Pine, that's either redeployed from some patrol resources worked on overtime or as we're doing now, redeployed non-patrol resources.

For example, a detective unit might one day a week go work at 3rd and Pine as part of the emphasis.

So if those folks are coming in on overtime, that wouldn't necessarily result in a decrease of service from some of the other precincts as displayed up on the chart?

Correct.

Okay.

And that's about two dozen?

Yeah, and it's a mix of some of the specialty units and then some investigations, and then some overtime and some regular time.

Great.

And for the Southwest Precinct, can we just take a minute to talk a little bit about the methodology that goes into making deployment decisions?

The Southwest Precinct, the number of officers is significantly lower than the other precincts.

I know it's not just simply a function of population.

But there are other criteria that go into making those decisions.

And I think for the viewing public in my district, I think it would be helpful to just have sort of a brief explanation for why these numbers look like they do.

I mean, almost literally half of what you see in the North Precinct, for instance.

Sure, and we'd be happy to provide you a more detailed breakdown on that.

I'm not sure we have the people at the table to talk about the patrol allocation decisions.

Generally, high-level call count and geography, because geography plays into response time, will drive those numbers.

But a lot of thought goes into patrol staffing in the various precincts and districts, and I'd be happy to provide more information on that.

All right, I'll follow up.

Thank you.

So finally, just to finish up with my part of the report, the chair asked me to research the question of whether police agencies under a consent decree experience greater hiring difficulties than those that don't.

And after a bit of research, I came up a little bit empty.

What I did find after talking with the DOJ staff member is that New consent decrees, such as the one in New Orleans, are now asking police departments to track recruitment activity to see over time, not necessarily if the consent decree is having an impact, I think that will be found, but then also to see how recruitment activities are resulting in high quality officers and diversity.

Yeah, I asked Greg to look into this issue because we hear a lot about police morale and the impact of morale both on recruitment and retention.

And I was just really interested to see whether or not there could be any causation with the fact that we have been under a consent decree since 2012. We may not have been able to identify data that shows that there is a relationship there, but the fact that there are that there is apparently a new requirement to track this very issue in future consent decrees means, I believe, is confirmation that it's an issue worth looking at.

Yeah, it's a related question, and this may actually be part of Mike's presentation, so just let me know if it is, and I'll wait.

But, you know, we have numbers of kind of the number of folks that we've put into new positions.

Do we have a number on how many applicants we've received, and how many people we're accepting, and how many people we're turning away?

Yes, we do, and happy to provide that as well.

It's a lot of data.

There's a lot of fall-off points, number of applicants versus the number of people that sit for a test, number of people that pass the written, pass the oral, pass the background, polygraph, and so be happy to provide you with sort of the fallout rate at each step, but that'd be best presented in a table.

And do you know, even if it's just anecdotally, are we getting a high number of applicants to fill positions, a low number of applicants?

2018 was a historically low number, which drove the 68 folks that we hired.

2019 upticked some.

We're still down from the 2015, 16, 17 applicant rates.

Greg, you have the test numbers for 2018?

The number of folks that sat for the test, and I got this from Mike several months ago, was 837. If you go back to the higher numbers that Mike mentioned back in 2016, the number of folks that sat for the test was 1,204.

Those are new recruits.

Thank you.

All right, should we move to the presentation?

So that's it.

Yeah, I'm going to turn it over.

All right, fantastic.

Thank you.

I'm just going to move to...

Thanks, Greg.

And thank you, council members, for the opportunity to present on our hiring last year and how we're going to move into next year.

Let's see if I can do this.

There we go.

So today we'll be recapping 2019's recruitment efforts and results and describing the plan for 2020. As we continue to compete for officers, as it is nationwide, the market remains tight.

With historically low unemployment and jurisdictions everywhere competing for the same limited number of applicants, this is a nationwide challenge.

So what we did in 2019, based on feedback from the community in 2019, we made adjustments to our recruiting materials, including more prominently featuring our officers of color in recruitment materials and expanding our presence in minority-owned publications, including some of the examples you'll see on the slide, including the Northwest Asian Weekly and the African American Business Directory, among others.

Mike, are you only doing print media or are you also doing online media?

Yeah, thank you for the question.

We have multiple online channels, some of the nationwide stuff, LinkedIn, et cetera.

We're also, we push out content across our internal SPD, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.

We've also done some targeted placements and some police-specific recruiting sites like Police One.

Fantastic.

I'm focused more on the question as it relates to print versus online as it relates to the news publications, the local publications.

You mentioned the International Examiner, Northwest Asian Weekly.

These are all publications that I know have print versions, but there are a lot of news blogs that are geographically focused in neighborhoods that have ethnic focuses that are only in blog formats.

I'm wondering whether or not you're advertising on those too.

I'm not sure that we're utilizing any of those.

So one of the things we did when we first came to the unit was meet with the mayor's office and find out about all of the minority and ethnic papers and organizations in the city of Seattle.

And so it was very important to us that money was going back into our own community and that we were advertising through with the best community options that we had.

So every year we've looked for additional opportunities to connect, whether it be online, print media.

Some have been relationships we've had for 15 or 20 years.

The medium comes to mind right now, and Chris Bennett Radio and things like that.

We're always seeking additional opportunities, and when they come to us, we assess them, see if we can find the budget for that, and then make sure we have an ad that's representative of the organization that is sharing our information.

Thank you.

The next one is you.

All right, well, we were kind of busy last year.

This is actually a fairly typical year.

There are two of us assigned to the recruiting function.

However, we have a recruiting support team of around 50 officers who have indicated that they have an interest in assisting with recruiting events, especially in particular communities.

And so, we do our best to try to bring recruiting support members with us to communities and events that they have an interest in representing the department at.

And so we have also been lucky enough to, we get invitations for high schools, for colleges.

Essentially, if you call us and you ask, we will be there.

We recently did a Know Your Rights Day at South Seattle College, too.

So it's not always about recruiting.

It's also about community engagement.

And that's important to us because we definitely find that the community engagement yields much broader candidates that weren't considering a job other than a career fair.

So we constantly seek additional opportunities.

The thing that we're very proud of is the workshops that we offer.

Whether a candidate is ready to test or not, we offer free workshops to help that candidate prepare.

And as you can see by those numbers, we had 456 attendees at workshops last year.

Those are specifically workshops designed to help people prepare to take the test.

To help you with the testing process.

So we tell you everything.

There's nothing secret about our process.

We want people to feel confident and test at the time that they are most prepared and ready.

And we give them all those opportunities to do that.

And we're their lifeline and we're, you know, that white glove service to help them through this testing process.

Do you have metrics that track how well people who take your workshops do on the test versus folks who do not?

We do, and it's very clear statistically that those who attend workshops do significantly better than those that do not.

And the thing that's great about it is, again, you don't have to sign up for the test or be ready.

We want you to come and take the workshop, and that will help you assess when it's time for you best to take that.

exam, whether it be three months or six months or a year from now, we will give you all the information to help you.

Great.

And just generally speaking, do you have a way of, I mean, last year was a good year, 2019, you are obviously, what you were doing works, but it's helpful for us to understand of all the things that you're doing, which things are producing the most results?

So do you have a way of tracking the outcomes associated with these kinds of outreach events?

We do, just because there's two of us, so we know who it is that we've met.

For example, we were at a career fair at a college about a week ago, and a young woman walked up, and we met her four years ago at that career fair, and she's graduating now, so she's ready to test.

We know that we have these relationships with people that last often for years, especially if they're youth that can't apply until you're 21. We work with those people for many, many years.

Overwhelmingly, again, I go back to the community events are very good for us, but often it takes that candidate a little longer to prepare to test.

Because, again, they weren't looking for a job.

They had an opportunity to talk to an officer that it sparked something like, oh, I didn't know there wasn't an age limit, or I didn't know what this process looked like.

And so us being able to assist them with that information, but I do think that it takes that candidate perhaps a little longer than someone that's at a career fair that's instantly looking for a job, for example.

I think that's a really good point.

Thank you.

If I could just add, Councilmember, we're also on the front end when folks apply, ask some questions about how did you hear about us, what were some of the motivating factors, which can help us then the next year allocate our advertising dollars.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rollins.

Thank you.

I have a couple questions around recruitment.

One is around language preference points as you're bringing folks in.

I've heard sort of anecdotally criteria because what we're getting are people who are speaking languages that aren't necessarily reflected in our most diverse communities, maybe European languages rather than East African, for example.

So I have a question about that.

And then the other question I have is, Given our desire to shift toward restorative justice and more diversion programs, it seems that finding candidates who are eager to learn those kind of trauma-informed approaches and restorative justice practices could help change the narrative, especially in my district, the communities that I'm representing in terms of how we interact with folks who are impacted by the criminal legal system.

And so I'm wondering if there's any consideration given to a recruits, willingness or eagerness to learn about those kinds of practices as your, you know, if there's any criteria included in the scoring of the application processes there.

I'm going to say a little bit more about that later, but in 2019 we had four folks take advantage of the language preference, and they were Russian, German, French, and Spanish were the languages utilized.

And then in terms of your second point, we really go out of our way in detecting penality I think it's important to be able to describe what it means to be a police officer in Seattle and giving a realistic view of what that looks like.

And that the majority of your that we do put a big emphasis on crisis-informed, anti-bias, de-escalation, and just so that people know what the Seattle approach is.

And then in our oral board process, which is our interview, there are questions that draw that out, and it is an important factor.

And sorry, just going back to the language issue then.

Are there particular recruitment efforts happening?

I saw the event you did yesterday, for example, in the CID.

But none of the languages you mentioned are languages that are highly reflected in our community, particularly for communities that have are most impacted by interactions with the legal system.

So is there an effort to target or focus on folks who speak Somali, you know, Vietnamese?

I think that goes all the way to the recruiting efforts and where we place our ads and the community events.

It goes back to the same thing is we never invite ourselves into a community.

It's about building that relationship and that's how we end up with as many events as we do is we ask our officers to tell us if you know of a cultural event or a community event that's coming up.

And that we would be able to come and talk about this job, then please do that.

And they'll make the introduction and then we have that ongoing relationship.

And I think that that's what the important piece of that is.

As for the language, this is offered to every candidate that's taking the test when you list in the job application.

what the process is for getting those language preference points.

So that's self-selected in a lot of cases.

And that's in that job.

And so I know we can work on a better way to make sure that that's highlighted.

It is featured prominently on our website that there are language preference points.

It is part of our recruiting materials.

And it's offered in depth in the testing process.

Like when we put out the application, it describes exactly that we offer those preference points.

And so we could certainly look at doing a better job of making sure that the candidate understands that those preference points are available to them So just to clarify then going into because I do agree with councilmember Morales that the language preference points is an important part of the hiring as well someone who was a prosecutor before coming here and had lots of cases where the police report would be like, and then the person starts speaking Vietnamese, and they were kind of flat-footed in the investigation a little bit.

So just to clarify, Mike, when you mentioned the languages earlier that were Russian, German, French, and Spanish, that was because those were the languages that the applicants listed, right?

Those aren't the only languages that you can get points for?

Okay candidates that asked for the language preference points and tested in those particular languages But anyone who speaks who speaks a language could put that language on it.

I was just clarifying for my own understanding Yeah, it was just out of all the times that we had offered that on the applications there were only four people that took advantage of and those preference points.

And those were the languages that were spoken.

And so that's reflective of the four people that took advantage of that preference point.

And I'll just make one more point about that, which is that the point of having this is really to try to draw folks in from communities of color.

And so it doesn't sound like we're getting those folks in.

So, you know, it's great that they were able to take advantage of it.

But the real point of this is to try to achieve racial equity in the police department and It sounds like we have some work to do.

Greg, can you speak a little bit because Greg was really instrumental to developing the language preference points policy.

The council in the 2017 accountability ordinance requires the department to use preference points and Greg worked a lot on that.

I remember there being some conversation about whether or not to focus on whether or not the individual has a second language at all versus focusing on like the five top second languages spoken by Seattle residents so that people wouldn't get preference points for just any language, but they would get preference points if they represented sort of what the language needs are of the community.

Do you recall that conversation?

I think it may be that that's tied up in some legal analysis that we had done.

So I'd want to get back to you on that.

Yeah, I mean, I think the the point that Councilman Morales is making is I think when we even though It's, we have been told that preference points aren't really making or breaking whether or not we're hiring people that represent those communities.

I think there's a really important message that preference points sends to the communities that we are trying to recruit from.

So if we are specifically saying to the Somali community that we'll give you extra points if you speak this language, that may affect the number of people that actually even show any interest in being police officers.

So there's another, I think, another utility for preference points.

And as long as we're talking about the subject of preference points, the accountability legislation not only identified language preference points, but we also identified preference points related to people's experience working in communities such as experience working with the Peace Corps, other kinds of social work.

That part of the policy has not yet been developed, but I know folks both with the CPC and the mayor's office and SPD are hard at work at doing that as well.

Again, intended to be not just ensuring that who we are hiring is reflecting our community, but also intending to help you do more recruitment within those communities by us broadcasting our interest in people who have certain skill sets and certain cultural competencies.

I'll cover this a little bit.

As a 30-year veteran of the department, it's always been my goal to increase the number of women that we have represented in our organization and highlight public safety as a career for women.

And we continue to focus.

I do a lot of collaboration with other entities who also have a lack of female representation, especially in STEM organizations.

So there's not always a lot of public safety, women's events focus specifically.

But we find that we want to partner up with organizations that have a woman focus.

on their career opportunities.

In the last year and a half, I've had an opportunity to be invited and speak at three different recruiting and retention conferences.

And specifically, I'm asked to come talk about what we're doing around women and persons of color.

So I'm very proud of what we're doing is really getting a lot of Kudos across the country.

I continue to be invited to speak.

I'm speaking at two conferences in April and June.

And specifically, I'm running a woman in public safety track at one of the conferences.

And I was invited to start that last year.

And we're doing that again this year.

So globally, not only locally, but we feel like we have an emphasis on boosting women in public safety and law enforcement.

So we're always reaching out for additional opportunities to meet with women, especially young women to see themselves in this career, you know, down the road.

Correct misperceptions as well.

Yeah.

Okay, and I'll just talk a little bit about hiring results for last year.

Last year was the best year in hiring in over a decade in terms of numbers.

We hired 108 officers, and that included 92 entry-level, 14 lateral, and two officers who left SPD and then chose to return.

And I would point out there are six others who have either returned in 2020 or are in the process of returning to SPD.

In terms of separations, the department had 92 total separations, including the 45 retirements, 39 resignations, and eight others who left for other reasons.

So in terms of net officers, as Greg said, we were plus 16 for the year.

On the lateral hires, I know last year the department made a number of out-of-state trips focused on lateral hires.

Just wondering whether or not that will be occurring again this year.

Focus on lateral hires is an important one because those are folks who aren't going to need the extensive training.

So in some ways, even though their hiring bonus is a little higher than new hires, it's a cost-effective, quicker way to get more officers into the department.

Absolutely.

The lateral academy is two weeks as opposed to about four months for entry level field training is also abbreviated.

We found that we were having more success with kind of our homegrown lateral efforts rather than the trip.

So that's not on the agenda for 2020. We had a lateral test last weekend and the numbers were good.

better than we had seen in some time, so that's a promising sign.

That's super interesting.

Just throwing an idea out, you guys decide, you know what works, but perhaps doing some of that out-of-state work focused on women might be the way to go, and you might find that that produces additional results to the gains that you accomplished this year.

Along those lines Councilmember, I might add that the bonus is the 15,000 for lateral hires and the 7,500 for recruits.

Hopefully that played a part in the 92 entry-level folks and 14 laterals that the department got last year.

The department is doing some work to evaluate that and that bonus will sunset this year about mid-year and so the department will come back with a report that recommends to the council whether or not they should extend that.

We'll be trying to ferret out the causal relationship between the bonus and the numbers.

It's hard to untangle the reasons people choose to take a job.

I think we have some good surveying out that will help with that, and we'll be circling back, as Greg said, with a report on that.

Okay, so this slide gives us a five-year retrospective on hiring demographics.

I would point out that the reason the total hires numbers aren't the same in both tables is that if an applicant didn't indicate race, they weren't included in the racial data counts.

So as you can see, the recruitment of women continues to be a challenge as it is nationally.

While the hiring of people of color has continued an upward trend to the point where our incoming recruits in 2019 were the most diverse in department history, with 39% identifying as people of color.

It's interesting in 2018, even though the total hire numbers were down, the numbers for women hired is, the percentage is up.

Any reflections on why that might be?

It's hard to draw those causal connections.

We had a smaller number in 2018, and so sometimes with the smaller numbers, the percentages can skew.

Okay, so in terms of what we're doing in 2020 on the retention side of the equation, there are several initiatives that are aimed at employee wellness and engagement.

This is important because if you hire 100 officers and 100 leave, obviously you're net zero, so the retention piece is really important.

An example of this is the newly created SPD Wellness Unit, which will be rolling out a variety of offerings aimed at the unique wellness needs of police officers.

We'll also be working to streamline the hiring process and have a more friendly applicant process and really clearly state the department's value proposition as an employer of choice, including being the highest paid in the state, having unique opportunities to work in specialty units, state-of-the-art training, and up to a $15,000 hiring incentive.

And then we mentioned the language preference points.

We will continue to be administering those.

Fully agree that we need to get those just right out in front because they can not only have an effect on the back end with regard to where you sit on the register, but it's messaging from the department that historically underrepresented groups are welcome, so it can have a benefit on the front end.

And then with regard to the community service preference points, we are partnering with CPC, SDHR, PSCSC, and others to make that happen.

We have a meeting on March 3rd with Director Scott and her staff to continue that work.

So this slide talks about the community-focused advertising that we'll be rolling out as of yesterday.

So this effort will involve a series of billboards featuring a different officer each month, accompanied by a video vignette featuring that same officer talking about why policing in Seattle in a particular neighborhood is important to them.

This will run in parallel with our other advertising pieces.

The video itself will be featured on our recruiting website and will be pushed out across those other online channels that we mentioned.

I thought I remember seeing in some of the media coverage of yesterday's event a suggestion that this effort wasn't part of the council's funding of retention and recruitment.

But I see this effort as really being tied into the recruitment.

These folks are recruitment ambassadors, right?

And that is part of the plan that we helped fund, right?

We see it as part and parcel of those efforts.

We may not have a line item for billboards, but this is what we intended to support.

As you know, the line items were pretty general, and so yes, this is part of that effort.

Thank you.

Back to you, Carrie.

Same thing.

We're going to do more of 2019 and 2020. As I mentioned, I'm going to be running the Women in Public Safety track.

We'll continue to focus and highlight women.

We have several events that are coming up.

We participate in Young Women Empowered.

I work with transitioning female service members.

We always seek out additional opportunities.

I see something on LinkedIn, and I'm like, hello, I'm Carrie.

Can we come to your event?

And we find great collaboration through those kinds of partnerships.

And, again, these are long, ongoing relationships that we have.

I'm 100% believer in the pipeline.

We think that it's difficult for hiring across the country right now, and in 5 or 10 years, I think it's going to be considerably worse.

And so that's a great opportunity I have to work with agencies across the country on best practices and also making sure that we are, doing things that maybe no one else is doing.

So I like leading the way up here in the Northwest.

Great.

So in terms of additional strategies we'll be pursuing in 2020, these include implementing an electronic case management solution for our background process, sort of a back of the house issue, but it's important because we need to move people from date of testing to date of hire as quickly as possible so we're not losing folks to other jurisdiction.

We'll also be running a supplemental academy class in the end of March through a partnership with King and Snohomish counties.

currently we have five Academy classes allocated to SPD per class run by the State Academy the March class will allow us to add to that and I just want to highlight this this issue of the

us hearing from the State Academy that they could not take more recruits is something that would come up year after year after year as a roadblock for why Seattle couldn't do more when hiring was good.

And so I really appreciate everybody who was involved in getting the supplemental academy with the other jurisdictions, insistence on finding a way forward on the class size issue, and just not taking no for an answer.

I think it's really important.

And I think there's our gains that we are going to be able to realize from that in future years as well.

And then lastly, building clear pathways for our civilian employees, parking enforcement officers, 9-1-1 dispatchers who might want to consider a sworn career.

And is there funding in the budget that is sufficient for the Supplemental Academy or will there be an additional need for funding associated with that?

There will not be a need for additional funding.

And then what's the, can you just say what the civilian sworn pathway is?

Is that just, is that a general term for what we're talking about or is that something specific?

So that is going to be a specific effort as opposed to just posting our job announcements in the 9-1-1 center, for example, actually do some outreach to our employees who already know the city, already are well equipped on radio, already have been backgrounded, et cetera, to actively solicit folks who might want to participate in the sworn hiring process.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay, in terms of work in progress, this slide describes some of the other things we'll be working on this year, some of which came out of our collaboration with the innovation team last year.

And distinct from pathways for current employees to sworn, we'll also be looking at youth pathways to employment.

And that goes to Detective McNally's reference to building a pipeline and helping folks that may not have thought about being an officer really realize that it's possible for them.

Also, expansion of our recruiting cadre.

As Detective McNally said, we have 50 folks who have volunteered to do that and go back to their communities, connect, and engage in recruitment activities.

And then lastly, as folks are moving through our process, increasing the frequency of communication with applicants to make sure they stay engaged.

And so that last item is the item that I think was referred to in the recruitment and retention plan is the leave no candidate behind.

Is that right?

Just that follow up with folks who apply.

That's correct.

We just want to have we have a lot of applicants.

So we need we need some automation to ensure that we just have a high touch approach and that people don't go a month without hearing from us.

And we end up losing them to other jurisdictions.

So having that high touch approach.

And then How do, I mean, I often ask about whether or not it would make sense for Seattle to have a cadet program, and people remind me, oh, we have an Explorer program.

But I don't really see the Explorer program as a cadet program, because it seems like the age that the Explorer program serves, there needs to be sort of something in between That program ending and an appropriate time to apply to be a police officer, there seems to be a bridge missing there.

And is that something that we think about at all?

So one of the things that we've done in the last few months in particular is we work very closely with our collaborative policing unit.

There's so much overlap.

Many of the officers that work in the collaborative policing unit also assist us with recruiting.

We go to events that are community-based as well.

And one of those areas specifically is our Explorer cadre.

We have the largest, most diverse Explorer cadre in the state, but we do find that not all of those applicants either have an intention of being in law enforcement or that they choose to stay with us.

And so this is something that we're putting a lot more effort into.

not only making sure that the explorers that we have seek clear opportunities to stay with us, but we're also looking at how we bring more students in that do have a focus on becoming a law enforcement officer down the road.

So we're creating more literature, we're adding that to a lot of our recruiting materials especially as we go to high schools and different trade schools across the area to entice more people to come to us.

One of the things that we're exploring is looking at how we potentially could offer college credit.

So if we have explorers perhaps that are involved in a college program, a criminal justice particular, if we can work with those universities to offer that explorer opportunity, the path of explorer as a credit for that.

And we're also looking at how we potentially can get more internships.

I believe that some of our explorers would be excellent augmentations to our CSO unit or community outreach, things like that, if we can find an opportunity to build an internship program over and above what the city is already offering of the 200 plus with a focus on the department.

So these are all areas that we're exploring with our project manager.

with HR and with the Explorer cadre in particular.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm glad to hear that.

I think figuring out a way to sort of formalize the relationship post-Explorer, again, might bear some fruit.

So thank you.

OK.

So in closing, I thought we'd share an example of a video vignette that we will be rolling out in 2020.

Hi, do you want a sticker?

Hi, do you want a sticker?

I've been in this program for about two years now.

I'm out of West Precinct.

I wasn't someone that thought I'd be a police officer from day one, but since I've been on the job, I felt like I found my place.

I like the challenge aspect of it, of kind of being that problem solver, assisting someone in their most critical time.

There isn't a mold to be a police officer.

You don't have to be a certain size, have a certain mentality.

I think it's a job that you want to do and you want to help people.

I would say apply.

to SPD from a career in the retail sector.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

So congratulations on your hiring progress in 2019. Thank you.

You know, in terms of the number of recruits and the diversity.

And, you know, I want to thank Council Member Herbold for her leadership and things that the previous council did to support the mayor in getting additional recruitment efforts off the ground.

I am concerned about the retaining of our experienced officers.

You know, the net numbers are still low.

Just want to hearken back to the 2016 Berkshire study, which said that we needed to hire 175 more officers.

And that was back in 2016. Our cities obviously continued to grow.

Our police force ended in 2014, 1,330 police officers.

Five years later, they were only up to 1,371 officers.

Berkshire's study called for 175 more, so we had only 41 more during that span of time.

And so I think that, you know, I'm proud that our city takes a holistic, comprehensive view to safety and crime prevention.

We talked about other programs in terms of restorative justice, and we're, it's, the city should be supporting this whole menu of programs.

The benefit of having additional officers, I think, is so that they do have that bandwidth and that time to really get to know their community, to do real community policing because as we've seen from the numbers while you're able to maintain the 911 patrol.

what we're drawing from the community policing teams, the bike patrol.

You mentioned the Ave and the University District and District 4. You know, I know that certain officers have been pulled from that to go to other parts of the city to do emphasis patrols away from the North Precinct.

I attended a roll call just a couple of weeks ago, and I was really alarmed by the small number of officers who were there.

The North Precinct is 40% of the city's geography.

That's three council districts.

So when you look at the numbers in the North Precinct, and I know it's not just by geography, but it's only 22%.

So 146 out of the 656 is only 22%.

If you did 40%, North Precinct would have 262 officers there.

Again, I know that's not the only metric you use, but I just want to sort of, flag my concern about the shortage of officers and to I want to be helpful and I'm glad that you mentioned other things that you're trying to do.

I echo Councilmember Herbold's comment about the training academies.

That's great news that you're gonna have an extra training academy because yes historically that was a major bottleneck.

The concern about languages, I don't know if you've talked about using community-based organizations to help you because it's, I know you mentioned the benefit of having two of you involved is that you sort of know all the recruits, but I guess the downside is your own bandwidth.

you know, if you need additional bandwidth.

I know large companies that are recruiting large numbers of people, you know, they've got headhunters and huge teams that help with that.

So, and community-based organizations that are already speaking those diverse languages could help.

So, I just want to signal that I think we need more police officers so we can do that holistic community policing and get to know the communities better.

And then I just stand to, want to support you and your efforts in 2020 and beyond.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other comments or thoughts?

All right.

Well, before we close, I just want to emphasize that I think we all believe that a police department that reflects our city's diversity has to be a primary pillar of any effort to grow the size of our force.

I think it's really also important to recognize that the annual public safety surveys that Seattle University does, the need for more officers both to respond to calls for service as well as to do proactive policing is rated as the top priority.

Those surveys are weighted to be accurate representations of demographics.

And I think that's an important thing to recognize, that low-income communities of color also see police capacity as a primary need.

Indeed, these communities are often the communities that are most victimized by crime.

I appreciate really the laser focus that the mayor's office and the police department have paid on addressing staffing and recruitment.

As mentioned earlier, we are going to be getting a report back from SPD specifically on the 12 recommendations funded as part of the retention and recruitment plan.

I think that's going to be coming to us in late May, so we'll have an opportunity to have you back sometime after that.

And we also, I urge folks to review the monthly reports that we receive on staffing.

We're not going to have you in every month to hear about the last month's staffing accomplishments, but I encourage folks to read those.

One point that I wanted to, And it's not something I need an answer to now, but one of the things that I saw in the last staffing report is that the numbers of officers on disability is increasing over the last couple of years from high 30s to high 40s as the a representation of the numbers of officers that are on disability.

So just wondering whether or not, as it relates to all of the components that go into ensuring that officers are on the streets, it's not just retention, it's not just hiring new officers, it's also looking at the drivers that may be leading to fully trained officers not being able to work.

And just wondering whether or not there's anything that can be done to reverse what might be a trend, for instance, putting officers on light duty when they're showing signs of an injury.

So that's just something I'd like to put a pin in and take a look at later.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks again for joining us.

I really appreciate it.

All right, and the last item on our agenda is a review of our draft Public Safety and Human Services Committee work plan.

Again, this is a draft document at this point, just wanting to highlight it both for committee members as well as members of the public at a later date.

Maybe Greg, as our committee coordinator, can fill us in on this, but the plan is eventually for all committees to adopt the council work plan by resolution.

So I see getting this draft out there as part of that process.

Yes, Councilmember, I believe that all of the council committee work plans are going to be adopted by resolution on Monday.

So this draft work plan is one that is one of many draft work plans that other committees are putting together, and then that'll all be attached to the resolution that you all will see on Monday.

So...

Great.

Quick introductions, and then Greg, kick us off.

Sure.

Hi.

I'm not sure if this is on.

Christina Katsubis with Councilmember Herbold's office.

Noel Aldridge, Councilmember Herbold's office.

Still Greg Doss.

Still Greg Doss.

Lisa Kay, Central Staff.

Amy Gore, Central Staff.

Shivanka Trahman, Central Staff.

Alex Clardy, Council Member Herbold's office.

Great, thank you.

And I've asked my fellow central staffers to join me here because it's a long work plan with a lot of complexity.

And while we are going to be going through it at a very high clip, I don't know many of the issue areas that are not criminal justice related and specifically police related.

So I'm going to look to my colleagues to help describe those.

And so with that, actually, I am going to go ahead and turn it over to Asha to, at a very high level, start capturing some of the criminal justice policy reform items.

And as she's talking, I will move through the items.

So a lot of the items that are listed here under criminal justice policy reform, I just want to zoom out a little bit to the process that my colleague Carlos is currently engaged in around criminal legal system alignment.

And so a lot of the items that you'll see in here as far as bail reform, case conferencing, There are a couple other items around the high barrier probation, prefiling diversion.

A lot of those things are associated with this planning effort to figure out moving forward what it is that council can use as an with the intent that the whole city could be aligned around what kind of principles that everyone should use to figure out what policies should move forward, how investment should move forward.

And so as we're talking about the the pieces that are in this work plan, a lot of them came up during last budget cycle.

So a lot of them are about asking the executive or the courts or the city attorney's office to report back about how they're developing some of the policies that they wanted to move forward during that time.

and what it would look like to implement those.

And so I'll just start on a high level with bail reform.

A couple of years ago, you, Council Member Herbold, had put together a statement of legislative intent asking around what kind of pretrial release strategies we were using.

If cash bail was the thing we were going to continue to do.

And so that effort has been folded into this criminal legal system alignment effort as a broader question around how to do pretrial reform efforts.

The capturing race data piece, I'm not personally staffing, but Greg, if you have thoughts about that.

Yeah, this one was a particular add to the budget that Council Member Gonzalez made that is specifically around SPD.

capturing race data related to Latino, but I think that it is, Latina, sorry.

I still don't think I said that right.

Because they're currently classified under the Caucasian category.

Yes, exactly.

And so that's a particular issue that the committee will be following as the department starts implementing that.

On the case conferencing piece, this is one of the items that came out of the high barrier individuals work group.

And the intent was for the city attorney's office to add a prosecutor to be able to convene case conferencing.

That's something we've asked the city attorney's office to come back to us with in terms of a response to, I believe, a proviso on the funds.

And so they're supposed to be coming back with that, I believe, in April around how they're going to go forward implementing any kind of case fronting.

excuse me, case conferencing, what racial equity analysis looks like, how that effort's going to move forward.

charged by officer program, the SPD has the ability to write criminal citations and for some misdemeanors, send folks directly to the court rather than booking them into jail.

This was simply a slide that got passed so that the council could get a little information about how much that program is being used and to what end it's being used and how those folks are being processed by the court.

For the next time on the criminal legal system, this is following some funding that the council had allocated to the Office for Civil Rights to do outreach both around the criminal legal system alignment piece as well as in response to the reentry recommendations that came out a couple years ago.

There were some slides that asked the executive to report back on how to better increase opportunities for those with criminal history in terms of employment from the city.

And so this funding is intended to go towards the outreach that would cover that piece, as well as the outreach that came out of the slides and provisos on the high barrier work group and the other legal system alignment issues.

And on the top of the next page, you'll see the criminal legal system alignment piece generally just described in terms of how we're working towards creating a strategic plan.

Gun safety.

We are on different lists.

Gun safety.

This is just generally an item to follow.

state legislative activity around gun safety and also the regional domestic violence task force.

There was a law ad that placed an analyst on that task force and so this is something the committee will be following to see what kind of effect that ad is having.

And specifically the gun trace data, is that coming to us in the form of a report this year or?

I don't know, I'll have to check in on that.

on the high barrier probation piece.

This, as I mentioned, was one of the recommendations from the High Barrier Individuals Working Group, and we had asked that the municipal court report back on how it would implement high barrier probation in line with racial equity principles.

as well as a couple other items, and we're hoping for that back, I believe, in April.

And unlike case conferencing, we did not provide the funding for that element, correct?

That's correct.

Whereas case conferencing, we did provide the funding, but still provided it.

That's correct.

The King County Jail, I'll try this with the microphone on.

The slide for the King County Jail was introduced by Council Member, Council President Gonzalez in the last budget session and it's following up on a previous slide in 2019 about the jail services and the usage of beds.

So the city is currently at the minimum floor bed allowed by contract.

I think it's 187 beds right now.

This slide is interested in looking at whether if we are using fewer than 187 beds but we can't adjust our contract amount, is there any flexibility in how the city's funding could be used to support other services within the county jail?

I think this is a question that the budget office I think has had some shared interest with the council on, but there's a question of how do you translate those savings, but I think it's really important to understand the reduction in the use of jail time has a cost benefit.

And how do we capture that cost benefit and plug those dollars into other types of interventions that can then even further reduce jail time?

And so I think trying to get at that, and I think We've been able to do that with other types of investments, more so than we've been able to do with jail time, so I appreciate the emphasis on this work this year.

The next piece around nontraditional approaches to the criminal justice system for youth is more of a tracking item around if there are efforts moving forward to do something other than youth detention.

So something along the lines of communities that would be able to hold those youth and still get to the aims of what is traditionally public safety in a way that doesn't necessarily mean incarceration.

The pre-filing diversion item, so this is, so we currently have a pre-filing diversion program, but it is for up until 24 years old.

And so one of the recommendations that came out of the reentry group's reports was that we look into what diversion looks like for those over the age of 25. And so this asked the city attorney's office to come back with what that might look like.

The piece around probation is a slide that asks the city auditor to look at the, excuse me, to look at SMC's probation program.

And it is, there are a couple other items in here that came from the high barrier work group.

So both around what, high barrier probation looks like, but also this is more specific to what the current probation program looks like.

And do you know if, has that audit been scoped yet by the city auditor?

They're in the process of looking at it.

The intent was for, so the Vera Institute was going to do a report on probation.

And so we're waiting for that to be issued before figuring out specifically what the scope around this piece is going to be.

So depending on what comes out in that report, but I know that the auditor's office has been in conversation with the municipal court about this.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

The next item around reentry for persons formerly incarcerated, as I mentioned, there was a reentry work group that issued a report with a series of recommendations about how to support people that have been previously incarcerated and reentering into society.

This piece is an ask for how those recommendations have been implemented and how the executive plans to move forward on those recommendations.

It also connects to one of the High Barrier Work Group's recommendations about putting a rapid reentry connector into the King County Jail.

The intent there was to connect people that have been detained for under 72 hours with somebody that could help them reenter society.

And so those things are moving forward in the same effort.

Let's see.

Restorative justice.

A few, in the 2020 budget, the council had allocated $1 million towards community-based organizations that were creating restorative justice approaches, alternatives to the criminal legal system, and that is a process that's ongoing.

that is a collaborative grant making process that is currently happening.

But one of the statement of legislative intents that you had sponsored Council Member Herbold in this last budget cycle was to use some of that $1 million to find a community based organization that does restorative approaches to individuals that commit hate crimes.

So instead of just having them go through the regular criminal justice system process, actually getting to trying to get people to understand why hate crimes are so are so, sorry, the word is escaping me, are so harmful in a way that is also restorative, not only to the victim, but to the individual perpetrating the crime.

On the Seattle Police Department implementation of I-940, as most of you are probably aware, the rulemaking process for I-940 is wrapping up in December.

The rule on independent investigations was adopted, and now it will be up to law enforcement jurisdictions to figure out how that's going to come together, if there'll be a regional investigative task force.

This will be something that the committee will be monitoring per the chair's recommendation.

On the next section, moving ahead to the District 1 priorities, I'm wondering whether or not it might be better for my staff to quickly go over those.

I know the first one is something that Alex is tracking.

The next four, Newell's tracking.

The Terminal 5 is Alex.

Can we go that way?

Because I think folks on my staff might have a little bit more detail on these items than y'all.

Alex, you want to start?

Yeah, so district priority, the first one on the list here is copper wire.

So there were a couple of slides that the council member here introduced in budget last year that were included, SPD 9A2 and 10A2.

The first one there required SPD to report on asset loss generally but specific to copper wire and report back to council on kind of creating a more robust and fundamental way of reporting across city departments.

With copper wire specifically, we were seeing city light in parks in particular with significant loss.

The second one, 10A2, is requesting SPD to report on copper wire laws.

They are the only local enforcement agency that is able to request the scrap metal recyclers inspect their sale logs to ensure that we're not seeing any trends in the sale of scrap metal to those recyclers as well.

And trying to really hone in on the black market there to address, as we saw in a recent Seattle Times article, significant outage in City Light infrastructure due to the theft of scrap metal and parks as well has significant outages.

And just yesterday, the city auditor released a report that also highlights this issue and the need to adopt best practices for scrap metal theft.

Newell?

Sure.

The follow-up ferry dock planning is beginning by state ferries to replace the existing dock, but it could entail Anything from replacement of the current dock to expansion, which could have transportation impacts, which are of strong community interest.

Public Safety District 1, this is designed to cover public safety in the district generally and lists some of the areas that were of strongest interest last year.

The RapidRide Delridge H line was funded in the budget last year and implementation is planned for this year and next year, so this is monitoring that project.

Santa Transit 3 is, this is working toward the draft EIS to be released in early 2021 and consideration of third party funding during 2020.

Thank you.

Alex, back to you.

Yeah, Terminal 5 here.

The modernization, as we know, Terminal 5, just over the West Seattle Bridge, is undergoing a modernization project, and our two specific interests here are making sure that shore power will be utilized.

City Light is in putting a new substation there to allow for the shore power to be utilized.

And second is the implementation of the quiet zone when we see further increased traffic, train traffic, in the area there.

Christina?

Sure.

The West Seattle Junction Association is in the process of updating its business improvement area ordinance, and this is work that had previously been carried out under the Creative Committee, and I'm going to, excuse me, forget what the acronym stands for.

but it includes economic development.

And so that was something that Councilmember Herbold had guided during the creative committee last year.

And so they've asked for it to continue, especially given that this is a district one project to continue on this committee this year.

Turning the page over Westwood and South Delridge violence prevention.

This is based on a statement of legislative intent adopted by the council with a report back, I believe requested in April on community-led place-based violence prevention initiative in the Westwood and South Delridge neighborhoods, broadly modeled on the Rainier Beach, a beautiful, safe place for youth model.

I had a fantastic meeting with community yesterday on this effort, as well as inviting SPD, Department of Neighborhoods, and school district reps, including the principals of both Denny and South, and excited about moving forward on this.

I'm going to have to leave, but before I go, I just want to say thank you.

This is going to be a very busy committee.

There are several things in here that I look forward to working with you on, particularly as it relates to restorative justice and the youth violence prevention work.

I look forward to it.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate the opportunity to keep working on some of the legacy issues that I started just last year and recognize that there's going to be a lot of crossover with the work that you do overseeing the Office of Civil Rights.

Thanks, everyone.

And let's see, let's keep talking.

I'm not quite sure if we've lost Council Member Lewis, but if we have, that means we won't have quorum anymore.

Maybe let's go through the emergency management items and see if he comes back.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

You've got about four items that will be coming to Council on emergency management.

This year is one of them for a briefing.

The first one, the All Hazards Mitigation Plan, the Office of Emergency Management will be seeking Council endorsement of this plan this summer, sometime between July and September.

The E911 strategic plan is something that's ongoing.

We don't expect legislation or anything before council this year, but this is a plan to migrate the 9-1-1 plan to next generation technology.

And as you've probably been familiar with, there are questions about how to pay for that.

where you will be hearing about that periodically.

The Emergency Management Strategic Plan will come to council with a briefing or to this committee with a briefing in the next couple of months, according to the office.

The Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network, there will be a new interlocal agreement for a new operating entity that we expect to come from the executive in the next month or two, I think is what Chief Scoggins is anticipating.

You're aware that this is moving forward on getting a program to help find a way to fund retrofits for these unreinforced masonry buildings to provide more safety in the event of an earthquake.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Okay.

In the area of recruitment, we just spent quite a bit of time talking about that.

There will be ongoing SPD reports, as the chair mentioned, on a monthly basis that provide data on SPD's recruitment efforts.

Those will mostly be number of folks in and out the door.

It'll be on more of a quarterly or periodic basis that the department will come in and give the kind of presentation it did today.

The same thing with fire.

Special event fees is something that the committee had been monitoring last year.

The executive has done a study looking at special event fee structures around the nation and may be coming soon with a report that might recommend changes to our special events ordinance.

We have no timeline on that though.

Moving into the human services area, Amy.

Thank you.

As Greg mentioned, the next few items all relate to the human services department.

First, we have the aging and disability services, which would include items related to age-friendly Seattle designation, as well as an RFP that will go out this year for older adult health promotion.

Related to domestic violence and sexual assault, we have the Mayor's Office of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, their programming, particularly related to the firearms forfeiture program.

We will also be monitoring Council Budget Action HSD54B2, which was for Harm Reduction Outreach Program for street-based workers and drug users, which is going through the Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence.

Related to health, we will be monitoring the Board of Health Healthy Foods and Food Deserts programming, as well as the Healthy Youth and Families Initiative and the Medicaid Transformation Waiver Project, which is a multi-year initiative.

The leadership and administration division, we've been working quite a bit at the beginning of the year to track the status of the 2020 HSD council appropriations to HSD budget, which we've been here to talk about already.

We'll also be paying close attention to the department as a whole as HSI goes towards regional governance, understanding the structure and staffing of what is left of HSD.

We also have been, on the work plan we have what we are calling provider issues, which reflect council's intention to make sure that the service providers and their staff are well taken care of.

That includes the transit passes for human service providers, which was a slide that was passed last year, and I think the year before that as well.

We also will be tracking human services wages, which includes the implementation of the automatic inflationary adjustments that council has passed, as well as the countywide nonprofit wage survey, which hopefully will provide a lot more data for us to make those policy choices on.

Youth and Family Empowerment is the department that gets kind of everything that doesn't fit in somewhere else.

So we'll be tracking the food bank services RFP, which will be going out this year.

Potentially the reentry, rerouting of indigenous community healing RFP.

And Amy, if I might interrupt you, I understand that that one's going to be moved to Council Member Juarez's committee.

That's a late breaking.

That's my understanding as well.

Thank you.

Okay, we will continue to track the implementation of the 2019 safety RFP, which Council Member Morales mentioned, which is the outgrowth of the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative and has a new, they've really retooled that entire funding source and the programs that it supports.

So tracking how well those programs are getting up and running.

The supporting youth and young adults for success RFP is scheduled to go out this year.

So we'll be tracking that as well as the use of the sweetened beverage tax funds that are raised.

We'll continue to track the utility discount program.

I know that council members are really interested in getting those numbers up.

We have several reports on how best to do that and making sure that those recommendations are being implemented at the UDP.

On that one, I'm just newly here, even though I chaired SPU, I'm just newly hearing that if we want to get those numbers up, we actually have to, they've met their goals and their goals are what they were funded to do.

And then if we want them to reach deeper into income eligible demographics, I think they're at, 35,000 of like 90,000 potentially eligible.

So in order to reach deeper into that 90,000 number or the balance of the 90,000 number, we actually have to provide funding to do that.

And that is not something I had heard before.

So that's appreciate.

your dogging that issue and providing us with some recommendations.

Absolutely.

Happy to do that.

We'll also be looking at youth diversion, which is another council budget action from last year, which added a total of $522,000 for youth diversion, community building, and education programs.

And also, we'll be making sure that is interacting well with the SOCR funding for similar programming.

Okay, with the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program, the number of issues that will be examined over the year, the LEAD database, there was money in the 2019, added to the 2019 budget that got SPD and Seattle IT to work together to help put up a database for LEAD, and actually that was funded by some Microsoft money as well, so it was a private partner Private-public partnership, everyone came together.

That hopefully will go online soon and will allow for SPD officers to know when they've encountered a LEAD program participant.

LEAD expansion, as you may know, there was $3.5 million added to the LEAD program.

And so as that happens, we will be monitoring how many case managers come on board, how that affects caseloads and services for the LEAD program.

There's a legislative study on LEAD performance outcomes.

This is separate and apart from the Bennett Midland study that the mayor is doing.

This particular study will examine the relationship between the criminal justice system and LEAD here in Seattle, as well as how the LEAD model works nationally in other criminal justice systems.

Finally, studying $100,000 to determine the staff and budget that will be needed as LEAD comes to scale.

So the $3.5 million that got added in the last session was an amount that was a reasonable amount for the growth that is expected in 2020. It's difficult to know what kind of growth is going to come in 2021 or beyond, and so this study, is to try and get a handle on that.

For the city attorney's office, it's just a couple items, keeping a tab on what's happening with the existing pre-filing diversion program, and then just regular legislation that comes through every year that updates the Muny code on traffic and criminal titles.

And it doesn't matter how many times I look at this, I'm always...

Notice I've missed something.

I think we should also flag either under city attorney's office or under Seattle Municipal Court, the re-establishment of community court.

I know that's a priority for the city attorney and the court, I believe for 2020. So would like to make sure that this committee is informed on those efforts.

So in the Seattle Fire Department, a few of the items here are just general items that the committee follows every year.

Fire safety is one of them.

One of the budget ads last year was to expand recruit classes, and there were 600,000 added to augment one of the three recruit classes that SFD has.

And so the committee will be monitoring how that rolls out.

The low acuity program was something that was funded in 2019 in the mid-year, and then again in the 2020 budget.

That is a unit health one that has two firefighters and one mental health worker.

It has now expanded hours beyond just the high caseload hours into other non-high caseload hours, conceivably weekends and evenings.

And we'll be monitoring the effects of that service expansion.

Yeah.

Council Member Lewis.

Would it be warranted to put HealthONE in as a separate item as well for that matter?

I had a long conversation with Chief Scoggins the other day about it and some of their projects and things that they want to do to expand HealthONE.

And it seems like that might in and of itself be an entire separate plank.

So I just wanted to flag that.

Absolutely.

Their low acuity program is obviously much wider, so we'll do that.

Yeah.

And another item I don't see listed related to the fire department is the fire station relocation on the north end.

Okay.

We'll add it.

All right.

Thank you.

On the Seattle Municipal Court, there's a couple basic things that we always do, which is the capital oversight piece.

So just paying attention to where the, where SMC is on putting in their new criminal justice information system, as well as the piece around judicial appointments.

So anytime there's a vacancy, just moving that through committee.

The two items, the two other items under SMC, the bias crime audit relates to a two-phase study that the city auditor's office did around what bias crime looks like in Seattle.

And so looking at potential legislation to improve the city's response and also one of the budget actions taken last year was to proviso $50,000 in the Office for Civil Rights.

to help community-based organizations respond to hate violence.

So things like if that funding could help them track more data better or get to a place where people are more comfortable reporting to SPDs and some of the issues around hate crimes are the actual reporting piece.

And then the other item under client services is associated with the criminal legal system alignment piece.

So how all of these programs that Seattle Municipal Court currently puts out around day reporting, DV court, how those will, how those are moving forward and how they eventually will align with the strategic plan.

Thank you.

Moving into the Seattle Police Department, 911 response times is a legacy item that the committee generally follows.

You'll get more information on that during the budget process.

I generally have an issue paper that rolls out some information on that.

Also on domestic violence disparities and staffing has been an issue that the committee has examined before.

With community service officers, there'll be a report on April 1st as to the rollout of community service officers and what the department expects by way of staffing, having folks on staff in the middle of the year, towards the end of the year, and how they might be deploying and using community service officers.

They're probably not going to have too much information on outcomes or metrics yet, but they'll give us an implementation report.

Police accountability this this item is a legacy item.

This is following ordinance 1 2 5 3 1 5 as the city begins to negotiate with bog and SPMA to ensure that the accountability accountability preferences or the issues articulated by the accountability agencies are being brought to the table in the negotiating of the tentative agreement.

I'll ask the chair if she has anything she wants to say on that.

I don't, beyond the fact that I'm working with the executive and the law department to bring council members more information about that prior to the beginning of negotiations.

I know there's a lot of interest in this in this area and so we're working on trying to schedule a briefing for all council members on that issue.

So police accountability reporting requirements, the police accountability agencies, the CPC, OPA, and OIG all have a number of requirements under the ordinance.

And so as they come forward, the OIG and their audits and OPA, in their various work plans and annual reports.

Those will be brought to committee.

The OIG will bring a number of audits this year.

They're going to likely bring an audit on canine mutual aid, DNA destruction.

They're also going to be looking at issues of discipline, surveillance, and retention.

There is a proviso on sex worker training, the $200,000 proviso, which asks SPD to work with sex workers to better understand sex workers and, yeah, I'm just going to stop there, federal task forces.

I'm going to stop there.

The training is still being determined.

I think the point being is that the council identified a need for officers to receive additional training on their work with individuals engaged in sex work.

And as you say, the training's being developed.

There is an existing training, and I think they're trying to work on making it more relevant for what our values and our expectations are.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Federal task forces, there's some work that's going on right now around federal task forces and sharing of information and consistency with Seattle Police Department policies.

And then finally, staffing and retention is a report that will be coming on May 29th that will be providing the council with an update on the 12 different initiatives or 12 different activities that are under the staffing and retention initiative.

fantastic thank you all and thank you council members for identifying things that we missed so that's super helpful and looking forward to getting this out on my blog this week So if we have any additional late-breaking changes, we'll be sure to get them to y'all well before Monday's vote.

And thanks for coming and joining us with this, doing this overview.

And with that, if there's no further items, it is 1147 p.m.

Thank you for staying late, council members, and we are adjourned.

1148 a.m.