Public Safety Committee 3/26/2024

Chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Thank you.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

I'd like to thank everyone for coming this morning, for the Seattle Municipal Court, presiding Judge Chess, and also the City Attorney's Office, City Attorney Davison.

Thank you very much for coming.

The law and oversight of the Seattle Municipal Court and the City Attorney's Office is a foundational mission of the Public Safety Committee.

And it's important to provide an opportunity to each to present their organizations and to highlight various elements of which to include budget.

It's also important to note that both are part of nine departments, offices, and commission overseen by this committee.

And also important to note is that both here today are part of the public safety ecosystem.

In one ecosystem, one band.

Clerk note, Council President Rye, thank you.

And now time for the public comment.

Clerk.

Currently, we have one in-person speaker signed up and there are zero remote speakers.

Okay.

There'll be two minutes for the speaker, please.

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they are registered.

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

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comment within the allotted time to allow us to call in the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first in-person speaker is Chris Woodward.

Okay.

Hey, good morning, council members.

My name is Chris Woodward.

I'm the Community Development Director with the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

We're a 501 nonprofit.

We do community and economic development work in Pioneer Square.

Our office is in D1.

First of all, thank you for all the work you're doing to support public safety across Seattle.

I'm just here to provide a general awareness comment about the impacts to small businesses of the real and perceived public safety impacts within Pioneer Square.

So really, I'm just here to read kind of a short statement we received from Access Pioneer Square, which is an event space in Pioneer Square.

They host art walk events, weddings, private events, all kinds of different stuff.

They activate the alley on 1st and Main in Pioneer Square.

I'm just going to read essentially a quote.

Just this morning, I received an email from yet another event planner letting me know their clients have chosen another venue out of safety concerns.

The event planner is asking for advice on how to alleviate her clients' fears.

Good question.

Well, I tirelessly play up the good things about Pioneer Square and try to ease worries with, it's not as bad as the media says, but that is simply not enough.

Unless something can be done to switch the narrative both short-term and long-term, access Pioneer Square, and our fellow Pioneer Square businesses will continue to see a decline.

Declining sales cause closures, which is the last thing we need in this neighborhood.

I don't have the answers to this public safety problem, but I do know that Pioneer Square is a Seattle neighborhood that deserves to be cherished, nurtured, and supported.

That's the end of the quote.

The Alliance offers several public safety resources to our neighborhood businesses, such as de-escalation trainings and one-on-one technical assistance and work with Barb Biondo and the West Precinct and all the SPD programs.

However, there continues to be a lack of impactful solutions for true public safety in Pioneer Square.

So we look forward to working with this committee, the other committees and the full council and other city leaders to ensure a sense of safety for the Pioneer Square community.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

And clerk, please write a note so we can take a trip to Pioneer Square, robert.kettle at seattle.gov.

And I invite the members of the Public Safety Committee to join me if they're able.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I had the pleasure of joining the Alliance for Pioneer Square in a dedicated small business tour about a month ago.

Learned, saw some of these issues firsthand.

So if you go, I would love to join you again and check in.

Okay, so we'll have the chair and vice chair at a minimum.

I already went to.

Sorry, it's very much worth the trip.

Maybe I can get the council president to come back again.

So yes, I'll cross district borders and I'll head into D1.

and visit Pioneer Square with Vice Chair, thank you.

Okay, we'll now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item number one into the record.

Seattle Municipal Court Briefing and Discussion with Presiding Judge Fay R. Chess and Court Administrator Josh Sattler.

Thank you.

Thank you and welcome.

I'm presiding judge chess and thank you for being here and providing this briefing.

Thank you.

Presentation questions.

Thank you Committee Chair Kettle for inviting us here to provide an overview of Seattle Municipal Court.

With Court Administrator Josh Sadler, we will provide you with an overview of the court's budget, staffing, programs, data and performance, and highlight our 2023 accomplishments and 2024 priorities.

As a judicial branch of Seattle's city government, SMC provides the community with a forum to resolve alleged violations of law in a respectful and independent and impartial manner.

We are the people's court and a leader in implementing innovative court programs and services to ensure equitable delivery of justice.

We must ensure access to the court and its processes, efficient management of the business of the court, and fair and timely dispositions of cases.

SMC has adapted to significant changes during and post pandemic in order to continue to serve our community, meet systemic changes, and adapt to the city's policies and strategies.

Advance SMC is a framework we use to speak about the change happening at the court.

Through the change, we will build capacity, evolve our services to center those we serve, model a culture rooted in equity, streamline decision making, and engage staff to develop future leaders today.

Our court adjudicates misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor offenses like assault, theft, and driving under the influence under Seattle Municipal Code and the Revised Code of Washington.

We also process all infractions issued in Seattle like parking, traffic, and camera violations.

We have seven elected judges, five appointed magistrates, and four service areas, operations, technology, and administrative services, and strategy.

As the presiding judge, or as people call me, PJ, I am responsible for leading the management and administration of the court, serve as a spokesperson for the court, and have authority for judicial assignments, calendars, and some personnel decisions.

I have delegated all administrative decisions, policy, and signatory authority to the court administrator, Mr. Sadler, including daily operations of the court, administrative policies and procedures, and personnel decisions for the court staff, including working conditions, hiring, discipline, and termination.

At this time, I will hand it over to Josh, who will speak more about the operations of the court.

Thank you, Judge Chess.

In 2022, the court embraced the opportunity of a new case management system replacement and several leadership changes at the court in an effort to reorganize ourselves.

So what you see here, we used to be a court comprised of 11 different service areas with 11 executive leaders.

We took a significant budget hit in 2022, which also fueled this reorganization effort, and we used this as an opportunity to rebuild ourselves from the ground up and reimagine the way we delivered services to the public.

So what you see here is implemented, though still in progress, as many reorgs, but we centered ourselves around four different service areas.

operations, which is all public-facing courtroom operations, service of the public, administrative services, which is our security, our marshals, our human resources team, finance, budget, and accounting, and then facilities and emergency management.

Our strategy department is comprised of communications, public information, public disclosure, our RPEG team, research, planning, and evaluation, who provides all of our stats and research into our court programs.

And then our community engagement, equity and engagement team with RSJ and DEI.

And then we have our technology shop.

We are an in-house technology department.

We do partner with Seattle IT on major initiatives, but we do have our own in-house technology team.

As you see there, we all report up to residing Judge Chess.

As I alluded to in our budget, our 2024 budget is roughly $43 million.

We have 201.85 full-time employees.

Our recent budget history, as I detailed, for 2023, we took a 3.2% cut.

In 2021, a 5% cut.

In 2020, a 3% cut.

Over these years, these mounting cuts have left us at a point where the court If we were to face future budget cuts, and we know that upcoming there's a massive projected deficit, we are starting to now eat at core services.

It will significantly impair our ability to deliver many key services that are not essential functions of the court, so our probation department, our pretrial services department, our therapeutic court programs, our programs that support defendants making it into the courthouse.

These will all be things that would be targeted with future budget cuts.

As I mentioned before, the 2021 very significant budget cut was primarily targeted at our probation department.

We lost roughly 25% of our probation department.

That also fueled a lot of this reorganization effort.

We had to look at our probation department, the services being offered, and I'll touch on that a little bit here on the next slide.

So our court programs, I mentioned therapeutic courts earlier.

We have a mental health court, veterans treatment court, domestic violence court, along with our DVIP, domestic violence intervention program, our ticket debt reduction program, and youth traffic court.

Pretrial services is something we created.

We used to have just our probation department.

We realized that these are two different disciplines.

There's a post-adjudication probation department, and we have now created as part of this a pretrial services unit.

This pretrial services unit assists individuals navigating the court system, helps them follow through with their case, complete court obligations by reducing barriers, and helps refer them to community supports and services through our Community Resource Center, located on the second floor of the courthouse.

The court also has programs focusing on alternatives to incarceration, including electronic home monitoring, GPS, drug and alcohol screening, and then our probation counseling department.

We're very proud of our interpreter services department, a mighty three-person shop that provides access for limited English proficiency, deaf and hearing impaired individuals.

We are a large urban court that utilizes a lot of interpreters in a variety of different languages.

And then something we're particularly proud of, The court embraces a priority, our community outreach, bringing court services and programs into neighborhood centers.

We've brought debt reduction, warrants in the community events out into the community, and we're trying to partner more with community organizations when we look at court programming.

Data and performance, like I noted earlier, our RPEG unit, our research planning and evaluation group, we publish data on criminal case filings, hearing volume, vehicle infractions, criminal charges, the effectiveness of our probation department, therapeutic courts, electronic home monitoring.

We post these all on our website and update them quarterly.

We think it's very important to consistently evaluate the effectiveness of our programs and also share those with the public in an accessible manner.

Our 2023 accomplishments, probation evolution was a massive undertaking by the court.

On the heels of that budget reduction I discussed earlier, we turned the microscope on ourselves.

We brought in outside agency called the Vier Agency to give us best practices.

We made the decision to move away from traditional reactive approaches to supervision toward an approach that's more hopeful, equitable, and supportive of client success and growth.

This was also because we were facing a reduction.

We had to reprioritize the cases in which we were going to devote our limited resources to, and those now are more on DUI cases and then domestic violence cases.

Our MSIS 2.0 technology replacement.

We went live on March 6th.

This was a successful implementation.

We are still deep in the construction phase and will be for the next probably six to 12 months.

This was a massive undertaking, eight-year undertaking.

collaborative project between our court, Seattle IT, city budget office.

We are very proud of this.

This was a 30 year homegrown legacy case management system the court has been operating on.

I believe the last one in use by the city.

This was a massive project for us.

It still is.

It's occupying a lot of resources.

We are a little bit slower.

We do have to take the system down from time to time.

We are still migrating over 7 million documents.

We have launched.

We're proud of that, but we are now in a stabilization phase, doing our best, getting through calendars, serving the public.

I mentioned earlier the reorganization.

This had a big impact on staff.

Reorganizing a court of 200 folks from 11 executive leaders to four was a big change for the court.

We've successfully put that in place.

Equity engagement was a big accomplishment.

We appointed our first director of equity engagement, rolled out our new court logo, as you can see on my lapel here.

Branded with our RSJI Change Team.

We had community input, staff input on this logo branding.

Really proud to show who we are in the community.

Several members of the court won awards.

Our probation department won the Innovating Justice Award for their work on probation evolution.

Judge Andrea Chin won the was recognized as the Asian Bar Association Judge of the Year, and the Seattle Management Association presented the RSJ Award to Malaika White.

We also onboarded a lot of new leaders in 2023. Myself, Presiding Judge Chess, Assistant Presiding Judge Andrea Chin, Judge Vedati took the bench in 2023, and Magistrate Noah Weil was appointed.

2023 was a year of a lot of change at the court, and we're really happy with the progress we've made over the last 12 months.

Looking into 2024, our priorities, as I mentioned, the next six to 12 months are really around system stabilization for our case management system project.

We are continuing to redesign pretrial services.

I mentioned we made the decision to separate that from post-adjudication probation, but we're still building this up.

What does this look like?

We no longer have a community court.

We're now taking drug charges.

We're continuously kind of looking at the cases coming into the court And what do the defendants need to be successful as they navigate the court system?

We have text reminders.

We provide cell phones at the CRC.

What do defendants need to successfully navigate the criminal justice system?

Because they are sitting in the queue longer.

How can we help them be successful making it to court?

We are still looking at different ideas, trying to bring that in.

Honestly, a big piece of it is we don't know what our staffing and budget is going to look like into the future.

This might be an area of the court that no longer exists if we are facing significant budget reductions for 2025. That puts us on our other 2024 priority, ensuring adequate funding.

We...

are very proud of the services that we provide that are not deemed essential adjudication of cases.

It would be not something that we want to look forward to, to have to cut these different programs that we feel are essential to the public.

We want to continue to be a good partner with other city agencies, ensuring timely and effective communication with system partners.

We appreciate the invite to be here today to continue that.

I believe we've met with every council member in the last three to four months.

We really appreciate those partnerships as well as with our other partners, the city attorney's office, Department of Public Defense where we're really trying to be out there and in the conversation more We are part of the public safety conversation.

We are part of the ecosystem as you put it chair We want to be part of the conversation There's pieces of the conversation that judges can't be a part of but we can tell you the impact on the court And we appreciate the opportunities to be invited We are continuing to advance equity engagement both in the community and inside our court This was something we partnered with the community on.

We also did a focus group inside the court with a culture survey.

So we're continuing to work there.

And then our other work groups that we've launched in the past year to implement different programs across the court.

That's about all we have today.

Happy to field any questions.

Well, thank you very much for the both of you coming and giving this presentation.

I think it's, again, very important to do so in getting into the public record.

I will turn to my colleagues on the committee for any questions.

I can always trust on the Vice Chair to have a question.

So, Vice Chair, any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You know I have questions.

No, thank you, Presiding Judge Chess, for this very insightful presentation.

I appreciate the early collaboration and partnership outside of Council Chambers as well, and I couldn't agree more on the importance of the job and the function that you and your colleagues do in the judicial branch at the Seattle level, and especially on the issue of public safety, it's important to share information, stay engaged, and as much as possible, stay aligned.

So, thank you.

I'm just curious to better understand a couple things.

One, it's sort of been well documented in the press on, and maybe we can ask City Attorney Davidson a little bit about this as well, just kind of from her perspective, but can you just talk, and share the disposition of Judge Pooja Baddadi and what's going on there today, what is her current caseload.

We'll start there.

Thank you.

Okay, so I think I have spoken to all of you about what has happened, because it was in the media.

I have to say, at some point, I was quoted.

So I think we need to have, because this is being archived for time, kind of an explanation about affidavit of prejudice.

And so, years and years ago, parties would have to give long and detailed reasons why they were affidaviting a judge.

In most recent years, if a party feels that a judge will not be fair to them, that's kind of the simple language, they can affidavit.

Ms. Davidson, as well as her staff, informed us that they planned to affidavit Judge Vedati.

Since I am not her supervisor, I did not inquire as to the basis, like as one would say, give me evidence as to why you feel that way.

Whenever I receive an affidavit for a judge or even myself, I just sign it, acknowledge it, and we move on and another judge hears the case.

The blanket affidavits has impacted us because the city is the party on all of our cases.

They are the prosecuting authority.

If they are blanking affidaviting her, that means essentially she can hear no criminal cases.

Unlike King County District Court, where they have courts across the system and have different prosecutorial authority, different prosecutors, they can move a judge.

I can't move a judge to another criminal calendar.

So at this point, Judge Vedati can't effectively hear any criminal cases.

There may be one or two, three, maybe four cases on a calendar that she still can hear because she made discretionary rulings.

But that's not an efficient way.

We can't pop a judge in and out, particularly with our new system.

So I've recently...

I reassigned her, as I have the authority to do under GR 29, to hearing traffic infractions.

Basically, our parking tickets and moving violations.

She will be there until something changes, but that change will not occur because of me.

That will be from some outside entity.

And also, she will be going on family leave, so she will be out of the court for, I think, at least three months, as we project right now.

But, you know, this is the thing when you're part of a chain.

I've said this to Ms. Davis.

I've said this to everybody.

We are linked in chain.

Each of us are a different link, and we're in that chain.

So we have to do what we need to do so this system can still run efficiently.

So when that decision was made, we reacted accordingly.

I take no position on it.

It's just the kind of, it's like part of doing business.

And so it still revolves.

I do want to speak about the comments that I did make that were quoted in the paper.

I think everybody will tell you is it's never about me.

It's about my staff.

And when I see things that are eroding, are adversely affecting our staff, then I speak up.

In turn, because of the affidavit, several defense attorneys decided that they were going to have Judge Vedati sign subpoenas.

I will say for the record, those levels of subpoenas we had never seen in that short amount of time.

Those subpoenas were going to cases that were not assigned to Judge Vedati.

I told the defense attorneys they were playing a game, and that was not appropriate.

Justice is not a game.

You may not like the decision someone makes, but there's many times you have to accept it.

And if you don't want to accept it, then go through the proper venues in order to address it.

So that did cause havoc on us because we do not file subpoenas.

So I had clerks going, Judge Chess, what is this?

What is this?

We're trying to learn this new system where we're being inundated with documents.

My understanding is that those activities have ceased.

Um, so just wanted to make the record clear on that because my first priority is always to staff.

Um, and that I think I've answered your questions as well as many questions you might have had that are tangential.

On that point, yes, thank you, Your Honor.

Appreciate the clarity there.

And look, we are all separately elected.

The city attorney, the seven members of the court, everyone at this body, and the mayor's office.

There's a lot of separately elected officials, and we all need to work together to solve the city's pressing, urgent challenges.

So in any event, thank you for sharing there.

Curious to better understand, did I hear this correctly?

I heard that we are prioritizing at the core DUIs and DV cases.

And as I understand it, at the misdemeanor level, those are the most probably severe types of misdemeanor cases that the city would handle.

First off, did I hear that correctly?

When I was talking about the assignment of our probation resources to post-adjudication supervision, we're dedicating the time and focus on that case.

For purposes of assigning probation resources.

Okay, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Can you share just a little bit about what types of cases that don't rise to that level that would not receive those type of probationary resources?

I would say once community court left, that's where we kind of really focused on your lower level thefts, low level property destructions, those kind of cases.

So now those cases are just mixed in with all the regular cases and judges will assign probation services, if required, are available at this point.

That's where we really emphasize those cases.

And what is the...

Just so I'm clear, I'm a lawyer, but not a criminal lawyer at all.

What is the dollar threshold amount?

I would actually say, like...

it might be considered low level by misdemeanor standards, but property crime is a huge challenge in the city.

And that doesn't mean we shouldn't focus and address that.

But what is the dollar amount that renders something a misdemeanor versus a felony when we're talking property crime?

Dollar amount?

Well, I can tell you a dollar amount, but let me tell you what the real thing is.

So crime can be considered a felony, but if the county chooses not to prosecute it, it comes down to us.

So to be honest, I don't look at the amount.

I look at the charge.

Does the behavior fit the charge?

In other words, can they prove it beyond a reasonable doubt?

And so that's why it used to be when I started practicing 35 years ago, you focused on the dollar amount, $500.

But now with the county and their limited resources, we are getting quite a few cases where you're going, shouldn't this really be a felony?

Hmm.

So I don't want us to get tangled up in the dollar amount.

It's more of the what's the behavior.

And unfortunately, a lot of our individuals who engage in this are not able to pay restitution.

And so people are not made hold, no matter what the dollar amount is.

And that's something, you know, as a community, we have to, you know, wrangle with.

Thank you.

Council President?

I wanted to know more about probation evolution, what instigated it, or whose initiative was it?

What was the rationale behind it?

And when you say that the pretrial services are now taking the place of the post-adjudication work, that as a result of this change in probation, I don't understand the relationship there.

And I am asking because clearly the line on this graph in the handout, and I'm here online as well, looking at the volume of work, if number of hearings is any indication of the hours that people spend and at the expense of something else, I would like to understand all that better.

So, you know, I'm very truthful in my speak about it.

The community drove it.

Josh can kind of give you the details, but the community a couple of years ago felt that probation officers were akin to parole officers, and they were not.

But the community was not receptive to having...

Could you please explain the difference for our listening public who might not know?

Okay, so parole officers are people who deal with...

those who've been charged and convicted of felonies.

They are much more intrusive, if you use that word, into the lives of those on probation, on parole.

They make sure they're home every night, they're getting to their jobs, they may have regular UAs, and most of the time, it's post-sentencing.

Our probation counselors were more in a therapeutic and continued to be more of a therapeutic role.

it is sort of like, we don't want you back here, so what can we do?

Is it housing needs that you have?

Is it medical needs that you have?

Is it family, I guess, has there been a fallout in the family?

What are the things that are causing you to participate in these type of activities?

And so, we always saw our probation counselors as more of social workers who had an expertise in criminal justice.

Now, we don't have tons of money, never have, but we were able to provide things like cell phones, Sometimes housing vouchers, if they were provided to us, we could direct them to different agencies where they could get support.

But because the community felt strongly that probation was just another nail in the coffin, of these individuals, and we knew that city council at that time saw probation and parole officers kind of the same way, and we had been targeted, our budget, our money had been targeted for, let's do away with probation.

We then reexamined who we were, and we then came up with the evolution.

And I think it even has served us better because if our goal is being equitable, fair, and accessible, we can't just say, hey, you just come in here and we just prosecute cases.

We're the people's court.

What that means is we step up and we try to offer, I tell defendants all the time is, put me out of business.

Don't come back here.

Put me out of business.

And so, with surveys, Josh talked a little bit about the surveys, but we did the work.

We met with people, we did the survey, we surveyed not only outside, but we surveyed inside to our own staff to say, how can we do this work better?

And that's how we came up with Probation Evolution.

Then we looked at ourselves again and said, why are we tracking it all at post?

We gotta do, because people who come in pre-conviction versus post-convictions, needs are not necessarily the same at all.

You know, unfortunately, when somebody has a conviction, it affects them in so many ways, whether it's a housing application, an employment application.

Does it limit where they can go because there's a no-contact order?

So their needs may be different once they are post-adjudication.

And I think we're coming up.

We're not perfect yet.

We're hoping to keep the resources we need to keep this work going.

But we're getting there.

Again, never perfect, but we want to be close to being perfect.

But I'll let Josh kind of give you the kind of the details of what that work looked like.

So before this project and before the budget cuts, our probation department was a large department.

One day, a probation counselor might be asked to cover community court.

Another day, they might be assigned to a post-conviction DUI defendant.

These are different disciplines.

We recognize that through the project.

So we carved away a portion of staff from the probation department and have them centered on pretrial services, looking more at pre-adjudication.

How do we help assist defendants through the process?

Our probation department is solely post-adjudication and some of our therapeutic courts.

And that's the distinction we made.

Isn't probation only given when one has been found guilty?

Why do you make that distinction?

Correct.

We were using those resources to try to supplement these other areas of the court that we don't have the resources to dedicate to them.

When community court was dissolved, we were told, well, how much money will that save the city?

Zero dollars.

That was us reappropriating resources and moving them over to cover this program.

When that went away, the resources went to a different area.

Probation Evolution, as Jess just said, our probation department was under attack for several years in this space.

There were a lot of calls from the community and from previous city council to defund probation.

At that same time, we also turned the lens on ourselves and looked at is probation having the outcomes that we want?

And we pivoted to a more goals-based.

Instead of having disproportionate impacts for different people entering probation with different cases and different backgrounds, we've now standardized it.

Everyone enters probation at the same level, and then it's outcome-based.

If you start by reporting in person, if you keep that up, you can move to remote.

If you keep that up, you can move to less frequent check-ins.

Our goal is to help you graduate probation early and get off.

That is not how we attacked probation five years ago.

It's much different.

But so you reallocated the...

the resources both in terms of staff time and other resources, I'm not really sure, but to pre-trial.

And so what would a probation person be doing in the pre-trial work instead if the trial has not occurred yet?

So the pretrial services department has a lot of different areas.

One is our personal risk cognizance release program.

So jail screeners, defendants who are booked at night are run through a release category.

That's one component of it.

So some people, if they meet, certain eligibility requirements are released before they even see court the following morning.

If their case category meets different levels established by the judges, they can be released without an appearance in front of a judge.

That's one aspect.

They also do public defense screening.

They meet with defendants to determine public defense eligibility.

Then they also assist defendants with...

There are a lot of...

conditions that are placed upon a defendant as they're waiting for trial.

They help defendants stay in compliance with those conditions.

There are certain post-conviction requirements that will need to be done that defendants will try to get done before they're actually sentenced.

They assist defendants with that process.

They also assist them with reminders to come to court.

We talked about earlier cell phones, basic basic needs, we hand out socks and clothing at our CRC, whatever defendants need to navigate through our system.

I think if you talk about our DUIs, you see a lot of that.

Most people who are on DUIs are being served by pretrial services.

One is UAs, or electronic home monitoring, SCRAM, things like that.

And so they will monitor to make sure that they're in compliance.

If they're not in compliance, then the judge is notified.

Let's say they had a random UA that came up positive.

So then the person comes back in the court, the probation, pretrial services explains, and then there's a discussion, should conditions of release change or should they remain the same?

You also see it a lot in, we haven't talked about this, but our DVIP program, which is Domestic Violence Intervention Program.

they have a lot of pre-trial services.

Because these are individuals who said, I have agreed to go into a program, and then they have a lot of post.

So the pre is, you're going to treatment, we're monitoring you, we're making sure you're doing what you say you're gonna do.

you're staying off of drugs if that was one of the conditions, you're going to this or that.

So it can look a couple of different ways as to what pre-trial services does and, again, post-adjudication.

Okay, Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Judge Chess and Mr. Sadler for your presentation.

And I wanna echo what my colleague, Council Member Saka said, just like the outreach and the connection that you've all made to the council to have that working relationship.

One question I had is we've talked about this often regarding, and you said it, Mr. Sadler, in your presentation, how the court really wants to be involved in the public safety conversation.

Are there one or two things where you're like, hey, these are things that we need to be involved in when you all are addressing public safety, when our city's addressing public safety?

We often think of our first responders, our police department, our fire department, I think we've missed the mark in not thinking about our city attorney's office or our municipal court.

Can you tell us one or two things where you're like, hey, these are things that you all have to consider when thinking about public safety?

I'll share a couple examples.

I'm sure Judge Chess would love to speak on this topic, but I'll say we were involved in the mayor's fentanyl task force this summer, and there were just a lot of questions.

What would a drug court look like?

What would...

you know, how would different programs, how would community court potentially serve this client base?

We did a lot of explaining and a lot of, you know, informing of this is how the system works.

This is what we could offer.

This is how we could be part of the conversation.

We don't have a position on the passing of drug legislation, but we can tell you what the impact is on the court.

One piece of being involved in that conversation that I think city attorney's office is going to highlight is we've talked about embedding a substance abuse disorder navigator or assessor inside pretrial services.

This is and can be a barrier for folks.

These cost money.

They're hard to get appointments.

When we let someone, we assign someone something from court and they leave, they're likelihood of not complying with that escalates.

So if instead of having them leave the courthouse to go get a substance abuse diagnosis, they went down to the second floor to our community resource center and got it done right away, we can help them navigate the system better.

That's just one piece.

You know, this is a large conversation about how to address this inside the city, but us being a part of that conversation, we can say, actually, we could move that in-house.

That's something we could partner with.

We have room on the second floor.

We'd be happy to help collaborate on that.

If we hadn't been involved in the conversation, I think it'd be one of those things where three people are trying to solve it all at the same time.

We can partner on these things.

I think that's just a recent impact of us being really happy to even be in the conversation so that we can help say what we can provide.

And also to help clarify, you know, drug courts aren't really implemented at the misdemeanor level.

This is why.

This is why they haven't been implemented.

Judge Jess?

Since you all have come on board, it has been very refreshing to be able to say we sit at the table and have conversations.

So at first I was like, well, no, you're doing it.

I feel like there's a great understanding of who we are.

Last year at this time, I would say we'd come into a room and walk away saying they absolutely have no idea how the courts function and what we can or cannot do.

But I will say from my perspective now is we have got to have all our community partners in conversation.

I can engage in conversation like say, for example, with the city attorney's office in creating another community program.

I won't say community court, there's a lot of things like a DUI court.

However, we need the participation of defense counsel.

And so many times things don't go forward is because we don't have buy-in from everybody.

So it would be really nice to start seeing more involvement for all the stakeholders and why certain programs would be beneficial at the court for the good of the whole.

I'm hoping that many of our stakeholders don't see us as the adversaries, the man, would rather as another place that we can help someone And that's a whole different way of thinking about a court system, right?

It's always been historically seen as punitive, but I think we understand that punitive doesn't work.

It does not address the ills of society.

So we really want to be a partner in this.

Yes, there's things we can or cannot say, but there's a whole lot of stuff we can do, but we can only do it with these stakeholders, the defense and the city.

I will say is that since Ms. Davidson's tenure, she and I have had good conversations as well as her formal criminal chief.

And then what's happened is then we run a buzz of defense that says that's a no go.

and it's not moving us forward.

What did you say about defense?

I said they'll say it's a no-go.

But we pay them to represent people who can't afford their own attorney, so...

They have a different position.

We're their client, but not...

Yeah.

Yeah.

They'll say it's a no-go.

And I think we're all in this together.

And this may be controversial because I'm saying it, but it's true.

is we're all partners in this and we need everybody.

Because if they don't recommend the programs to their clients that we have available, then it's not effective.

And so, like I said, I'm hoping in the next few years that they will come to the table and have some real honest discussions about what can we do to improve the lives of everyone.

We're not here to take away people's rights.

We're here to make it a fair and equitable tribunal.

So.

Well, with all due respect, they're not a policymaking body.

We're not.

And so that's why I said is if we don't get all people to the table.

No, I wasn't talking about you.

I was talking about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

I believe Council Member Hollingsworth is complete.

I have two questions to conclude.

One is, Regarding the case management system, obviously, I've been reading.

I had a pre-brief a bit about it a month or two ago, and then I've obviously been reading it.

But I also have my background of seeing rollouts in the military intelligence community, whether at the unclassified, secret, top secret level.

So multiple opportunities to work these kinds of things.

And they never go completely smoothly, and there's always challenges.

There's the piece that's in the press about it.

How would you describe it today in terms of the case management, I guess, Mr. Sattler, the case management system and where we are today?

I mean, we call it a successful implementation.

We did take the system down for five days.

That was planned.

That's been in the plan.

We had manual paper processes over a weekend.

The case management system is much more, I believe the Times article really centered on the public portal, which is public-facing information.

piece of our case management system.

That's not the entire piece.

We did have to take down the public portal, and we'll continue to have to take down the public portal at times to do work on the system as we continue to stabilize.

The case management system wasn't affected during that time.

Court was still running.

Cases were still being processed.

It was a little bit slower moving our way through.

This last week, we were fully stabilized all five days.

We're going to have to take the case management system and portal down to continue to work on things.

We prioritized our go-live date because this project was extremely expensive.

Any delay to that go-live date would have continued to accumulate.

more money.

That meant we went live without key pieces of functionality.

We still don't have our data connection with the city attorney's office.

We have other pieces of functionality that aren't implemented yet.

They'll be implemented in the next six months.

When we make those changes, we probably need to pull our system down.

We're trying to do it at nights and weekends.

to not cause instability to the system, but this is a massive construction project, as we're all aware in this city.

Sometimes we have to take a lane of the road down, but traffic is still flowing through.

The court is still open.

We're still here serving the public.

Sometimes it's a little bit slower and we have to work through this.

We replaced a 30-year-old system.

This is a once in a career opportunity at courts.

Courts aren't in the practice of upgrading their case management systems every couple of years.

This is why this took eight years to get to this point.

So where we are right now, we're calling this a successful implementation.

We're trying to stabilize the best we can and learning every single day, getting faster.

Okay, I understand, and I understand you're not alone since the city attorney's office also has their version of this, which I forget exactly where we are with that, but that will come up soon, I guess.

Judge Chess, I was going to ask this question, and I will still ask it.

You touched to it, and it's the big picture criminal justice system.

You sit in a very unique role, have that...

you know, bigger picture look.

And there's a lot of things in the press lately and which are of concern to me.

And one of them was being addressed in the last session, Olympia.

It's related to public defenders, the overall system.

Is there anything along those lines in the bigger criminal justice system that you see in terms of having impacts on public safety and things that we should be keeping an eye out from our purview as the, you know, the Public Safety Committee of the Seattle City Council?

I think we're at a crisis with our staffing, attorneys who want to do criminal defense work, as well as prosecutors.

We need people on both sides of the aisle.

As you all know, I started out as a public defender, and I value that work.

It's critical.

But we're just not having individuals' desires to enter the field.

It's a lot of work.

and not a lot of pay.

I remember when I said, I don't think I'll be able to buy a new car if I stay in public defense.

Now I was able to, but the cost of living is so much different than when I got here 35 years ago.

So in order for the system to work, we need some good people on both sides.

And I don't know what that will take.

But I know that the Supreme Court is looking at that.

I'm part of the Minority Justice Commission.

We're taking a look at it.

So there are a lot of different organizations taking a look at it.

But I think we fall in the same place as educators.

As you all know, I worked as a human resource employment lawyer for two school districts.

And we were constantly trying to figure out how to get educators of color to come, and I think those same factors play here.

How do you get people to be interested in this work when you can't pay bonuses and you don't have these beautiful, splashy lunches and dinners and free pop in the employee's lounge?

It's a big question, but to me, that's what's pressing, because we are the starter court for a lot of attorneys.

And sometimes I wonder how long will they stay in criminal work?

So just my few thoughts.

But other than that is, as long as we continue to talk as partners, I think we move forward in a better position.

But when we start getting dug down and going, I'm not gonna play, get into the situation of response, then I think we lose out all of us, whether it's the public defense, city attorney's office or the courts.

Well, thank you very much, Chief Jess.

Mr. Sattler, thank you very much.

This briefing highlights what an essential element the Seattle Municipal Court is within public safety.

To this point that you were saying, the criminal justice system is vital.

It's vital to our mission to create a safe base in this city, our city, and it's vital for each part of it.

to your point, to be functional, because as you said, we're all links in the same chain, or as I would say, all in the same band.

And this is important because if the criminal justice system is not functional or part of it is not functional, this in turn can contribute to the permissive environment that our committee is looking to work because it underlines our public safety challenges.

And so to your point, the lack of public defenders, for example, can be as troubling as the lack of police officers or prosecutors or judges.

And so it's vitally important that we push forward on this.

So your presence today is very helpful.

So thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you all for inviting us.

We appreciate it.

Okay, and we will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

City Attorney's Office briefing and discussion with City Attorney Ann Davison and Assistant City Attorney Scott Lindsley.

Thank you, City Attorney Davison and Deputy Mr. Lindsay.

Appreciate having you here today.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you.

I'm not sure, do you want to, are we going to wait for Council President Nelson or just people kind of need to go and come as they are?

Yes, we can start.

Maybe start a little bit slow on your introduction, but yes, you can start.

I'll use my morning voice and we can go slowly on that.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for the invitation, Chair Kettle.

Happy to be here to see colleagues across the city, our policymakers on this important topic, public safety.

We have a short slide presentation for you.

We'll go through kind of big picture.

similar to what you were just talking with presiding Judge Chess, and then happy to answer questions thereafter.

I've been in office just over two years.

I'm sure you are well aware.

And these are some of my main priorities.

I just wanted to start with kind of a big picture for me, what I feel I've been tasked with from the voters here and why I was put here by our public.

And it really does first start with the reason why I can provide that look and that mirror reflection about what we are doing, which is data transparency.

There was not that prior to my arrival.

We did not have a big picture ongoing look as to data from the city attorney's office and the criminal division and what we were doing there on behalf of the city in regards to misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor criminal activity that was going in the city of Seattle.

And so I built a first of its kind data team here so we can provide that information for the public and so that I can make well-informed decisions understanding what we are doing.

Part of that, after we did the initial look of our data when I started, was to create a close in time filing.

What that regards is when we get a referral from Seattle Police Department, I have self-imposed a five business day goal to make a charging decision, whether we are declining that, whether we are sending that to an alternative to mainstream prosecution, or whether we are charging that.

Sometimes we make that goal, sometimes we're off, but that is our self-imposed goal is to make that charging decision time.

One of the main priorities for me is Victims First, which maybe I should have had that at the top of the list.

It is recentering victims' voices in the public safety conversation.

so that we understand that no victim ever asked to be a part of the criminal legal system, and we are here to talk about that.

If we decide to make a charge, it is in regards to understanding what has occurred to that victim.

It is also about improving accountability.

When we believe someone has committed the alleged criminal activity and we make that charge, we wanna make sure we are seeing improved accountability.

I kind of call it, we're trying to put back real-time accountability into the criminal justice system so that we can more closely connect the alleged criminal activity with what we think the evidence supports and the response that we give to that.

That includes, from that data, a high-utilizer focus, which many of you may be familiar with what I've called the high-utilizer initiative, and we'll go through that further in the next slides.

Just to give you a landscape about crime in the city of Seattle, sadly if someone is likely to be a victim of crime in the city of Seattle, they are likely to be the victim of a misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor crime instead of a felony because it makes up 80% of our criminal activity in the city.

And as you spoke earlier with presiding judge Chess, those include DUI, domestic violence.

It also includes assault, harassment, trespass, weapons charges, and a variety of other criminal activity.

But these are some of the ones that are more serious and why I wanted to highlight those.

I don't like to use the term low level because to that crime victim, it was probably never low level.

And it's important to understand that.

Again, when we're talking about the data that we've been able to provide for the public and for me to make decisions upon, this is to give you kind of a look back.

And as noted earlier with the criminal case management system that we have, it is also what is termed a legacy system.

It is over 30 years old, but thankfully we have some smart people who are able to data mine and give us this look back to 2017. so that I can look back pre-pandemic because I need to make decisions based upon what was functioning prior to COVID and what I can do from a process improvement.

So this was again, instrumental in making my decision about close in time filing, wanting to be responsive to crime victims and where we can improve what we can control in the system so that we are giving better accountability and more responsiveness to victims.

So we are on track.

In 2022, we did some great progress in the close in time.

You can see over the end of the year of 22 to 23, when we had some staffing, people go on leave.

Even one prosecutor being out impacts my ability to be close in time.

We don't have a bench, so to speak, so crime doesn't take a break.

But we have a good policy where employees can take breaks as they should.

But when that happens, I actually lose on some of my responsiveness.

So that's what that backlog is there, the N24, 22, Q4, and Q1.

And then we get back down because we are able to be responsive again.

This is for if you are unfamiliar with what I walked into in the start of 22, which was a 5,000 criminal case backlog.

And again, looking back to pre-pandemic, I wanted to make sure we understood what was, as a result of COVID, lots of systems were unable to function because of what we all had to deal figure out how to navigate through.

But it's important to see that the backlog existed prior to that.

So in 2019, you can see there was a significant backlog.

And that was to look at what can we do from a process improvement standpoint, just internal to the criminal division.

And that was where I instituted the close in time filing policy.

Cases were left to make a charging decision, sometimes past the statute of limitations.

so that that case is not prosecutable, or it was close to that statute of limitations time, the evidence would be stale, victims and witnesses wouldn't want to participate, it was not a good use of resources to proceed on that, and those cases were just milling around within the criminal division and not having a charging decision.

That is what that backlog was.

And so that's why I made that decision early in my term to change that, not adding to the back of that 5,000 criminal case backlog at the end of that queue, but to start to make those charging decisions in more real time so we could be responsive to crime victims and to the public as to what our role is in helping be a positive impact to public safety.

Again, with the priority of recentering victims' voices in the public safety conversation, this was an important data point for me to understand when we had victim participation.

Many of them were unable to be contacted simply because, again, the internal process was not to make a charting decision.

If you're not contacting a victim until 12 months after the event occurred, you may not have the correct contact information.

So this was an ability, you can see the green line talks about they were unable to contact the victim.

We've dramatically reduced that because of the close and time filing policy.

And again, increasing the victim participation because now they hear that what happened to them mattered.

Somebody is listening to them and being responsive to that criminal activity that they sadly had to endure.

And this is just to give you an overview in case you weren't familiar with the High Utilizer Initiative.

This was a program I started also in 2022, which is still going on.

It is, just as Presiding Judge Chess talked about, it is talking about collaborative work.

I can't make the positive impact on public safety alone.

It is with the system working as a whole and understanding each role within the system.

And what we did here was, again, using data by understanding who are the people that are committing frequent repeat criminal activity in our city.

It is not a large population.

We need to understand what's happening for them and what we can build out, as she talked about in her probation services there, what we can do to help intervene in that, but also we were having repeat criminal victims.

And that is not what we want for our city and people that live and work here.

And so we used a criteria of 12 referrals from Seattle Police in the past five years, and at least one in the past eight months.

And within that criteria, excluding domestic violence and DUI, we were able to come up with the High Utilizer Initiative so that we can understand who is using a disproportionate amount of our resources because of frequent repeat criminal activity.

And so here we've forecasted out a reduction of those referrals from law enforcement because we are understanding those repeat patterns from those few individuals.

When we launched the program, it was 118 individuals responsible for over 3,500 police referrals.

And a referral is a police report upon which there may be one or any number of crimes on that report.

So we don't measure in crimes.

We measure in referrals for that.

And here, just to highlight for you, some projects that are community-focused, where we have collaborative work across the system, across the elected leaders, as you were speaking, Councilmember Saka, that we've all been put here to do, and public safety's been at the forefront for almost all of us.

Graffiti is one, where we're partnering with the mayor and his team.

in regards to how that can impact economic activity.

I know that Council President Nelson is in charge of making sure with our economic development that is focused on.

And with you, Chair Kettle, graffiti I know adds to that visual blight and adds to the look of a place being neglected and not cared for.

And that does not invite, as we heard from the Pioneer Alliance, people to come for events or for visiting or for business.

And so it is really a key important aspect there.

So we got that injunction removed from the civil side of my office, but now we are able to prosecute referrals on graffiti.

Also on human trafficking, where we were able to be instrumental in making sure some problem hotels up on Aurora had to comply with some requirements in order to stay in operation, because really it was a lot of prostitution and human trafficking that was going on.

up in that neighborhood.

And I know Council Member Moore, as a resident of the North and along with you, I understand the situation there.

And then also on vacant buildings, working with our fire department and our SDCI to address vacant buildings that really are becoming problematic from a first responder standpoint and also can add to criminal activity into the similar to the graffiti and the kind of the overlay that that has.

So we are there in the center of that with many of you and also some of your colleagues who are not on this committee, but who are also concerned about that topic and how those are impactful in their districts.

Now I just wanted to highlight on the last couple of slides for you some of the impediments that we have to being a positive impact for public safety in my role.

And so I was very thankful to be here in attendance to listen to Presiding Judge Chess and appreciate her view greatly.

For us, one thing that is difficult is you can get, again, this is from our data shop where we are able to give a very long look back for the city.

And I don't think that this is a data that's been provided in a visual, but this is the average daily population for King County Jail, which is where...

most of our law enforcement are looking to book somebody if that is necessary.

And you can see that dramatic decline over decades and where we are currently.

And then obviously during the COVID time, you can understand where that fell, but in the policy view of that was going from the longer term.

And that is difficult when we do have a lot of people unable to, or choosing not to be responsive to showing up.

And so that's an important piece to just understand for your policy and appropriating.

The last slide is to talk just again about staffing.

We do have a few prosecutors to cover when someone is on leave.

We did have, thankfully, from your prior counsel, a 20% increase of the prosecutor's union.

That was long overdue, in my opinion.

And so that was a dramatic increase, and it was helpful for people, as President Judge Chess noted, we do need lawyers to go into the public safety realm on all sides, public defense, criminal defense, and prosecutorial work, because this is where the operations, where it becomes public safety.

It's at the individual safety level, which is an individual criminal case, and is the building of those individual safety cases that then culminates into what we all are calling on the regular of public safety as a whole.

And so we do need lawyers to serve in that role, but staffing for me is at an area where we do need to be mindful of it, that it is necessary because we don't create the crime, but we are there to be responsive to it in real time.

Another item that needs to be understood, and happy to go into more questions on that, is restoration.

And I'll just, I heard you yesterday, Council Member Osaka, to unpack terms that maybe you and Chair Kettle sometimes use that maybe aren't in the regular vernacular for people.

But restoration is where we look to stabilize someone mentally so they can participate in their defense.

And that is not available very rarely at the misdemeanor level.

The focus from the legislature is at the felony level.

That means that I'm not able to stabilize someone and not just to have them to participate in their defense, but to also maybe stabilize them so they can participate in their own choices better and understand what they would like to participate in and have.

And also as Mr. Sattler and Presiding Judge Chess noted, the substance use disorder, that is a treatment options that we are needing those, we need them in custody, and we do need them at the court so that we can do that diagnosis earlier and onsite.

And also it's just the system capacity, Chair Kettle, as you noted in the last question for Presiding Judge Chess, many of your predecessors, I guess it would be all of your predecessors, the defunding of probation and what that means.

And when I talk about reentry and that reentry needs to be built out at the misdemeanor level, because we are at that time most closely connected and understanding the root causes of criminal activity, that is what we need to be funding.

We need to have that available so we don't see someone back.

I highly believe that that is something that can be instrumental in that intervention and disruption of criminal activity.

And then still is just that the system does take a long time, so the capacity within that, so that we are doing it in a shorter amount of time if possible.

That's what I have for you, but happy to go into any other questions anyone has.

Thank you very much, State Attorney Davison.

And as usual, I'll go to my Vice Chair first.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I actually, and thank you for yielding to your Vice Chair and the opportunity to speak first.

I do have one question, but I do want to give my colleagues here at the dais the opportunity to ask questions first this time around, just in case they happen to ask my questions.

They all wish that you'd go first, Vice Chair.

All right.

Okay.

So thank you, City Attorney Davidson.

Really appreciate this presentation.

And similar to Judge Chess, the terrific initial partnership and collaboration with you and your whole office.

And I appreciate the SAGE legal guidance and counsel that me and my office have been getting.

directly from you and your team.

Also, same thing, shout out to Lauren, our own council's central staff lawyer, who I know works with you all on many things.

But just wanna say thank you for the great early partnership and collaboration.

It's going to take all of us to solve these challenges in the public safety space.

And we can all sit up here and say, oh, I can do it all on my own.

Great, egregious myth.

Not possible.

It's going to take all of us at this particular dais working together, our colleagues who don't sit on this committee, in close collaboration and partnership with the mayor's office, you all at the city attorney's office, our colleagues at the municipal court, and social services providers, and all of us.

Our respective, our individual success is dependent on the efforts and focus of others.

And again, it's a partnership.

There are so many dependencies here.

And so I appreciate the great initial collaboration and I look forward to continuing to partnering together, all of us on a going forward basis.

So my question is, On the vacant buildings challenge that you raised, we'd love to learn more about, and you called out some specific challenges related to squatting activity and fire risks.

Could you describe a little more about the specific scope and breadth of that challenge across this city?

What kind of...

danger or impacts, how big is that challenge exactly?

I may defer to my deputy for some of the detail, but I know from a big picture view, and as I'm sure all of you have, because I appreciate that you do go and speak with partners and understand what's happening, but we do hear from the Fire Chief Scoggins that it is dire.

There are lots of situations that they are asked to go and respond to, and that is a safety issue for them.

because the buildings are unknown, if they've been altered on the inside, et cetera.

And then we also know they are often the place where police are called because there's criminal activity inside.

Or there could be a sad situation where somebody is needing medical help because they have chosen to be inside there where they are not supposed to be.

So it is a large item.

I hear it all over.

I know it's from the north end to the south end.

It's significant.

So to me, it is one of those, again, when you look at the data and you cross-check who's getting called and how many times are they getting called, you can see from a public safety standpoint, it is something that we can focus on as a city as a whole and then be instrumental in delivering in different neighborhoods of our city.

Is there anything additional for that you'd have to add?

Just numbers-wise, it's absolutely a huge problem with dozens of high-priority vacant buildings right now and hundreds of buildings that are being regularly illegally entered and have squatter activity with consequent both fire, health, and safety hazards.

Thank you.

Where to start?

So I have Two main questions.

Going back to the graph where you have the hatched green line, which is a...

I believe you said that that's the estimated...

Yeah, but it doesn't have the number.

The victim or HUI?

HUI.

Highly utilized...

Okay.

So that is the reduction...

That's the estimated reduction...

Yes.

Of crimes, I suppose.

Yep.

But here's my...

What happened to the original 118 high utilizers and is...

Have they stopped committing crimes and that's why you have this, you are estimating this reduction?

And then I have a question about the open use law.

Sure.

So the forecast is based upon, again, that criteria we do a quarterly review as to who matches that criteria.

Again, because I don't like to label people.

I'm not going to say it's an offender program, right?

Because someone has used to not be an offender and we want to get to the day where they're not.

right so i use this term high utilizer because they're currently utilizing a lot of our system resources and the hope is that that that stops or at least it's not within the criminal legal system that's the goal so when i'm talking about that forecast it's because we've used that criteria who's matching that criteria currently and then we are able to forecast if they stay at the pace that they are and i do have my data person here we can get back on further on it but If we look at what the pattern has been and forecast that out, this is the number of referrals we would have been getting had we not been doing this type of data analysis and application work to get, with the resources that we have, a better outcome for community.

You mentioned resources just now.

What is your criminal division budget?

It's right around 10 million for just the criminal division.

Okay, I'm looking at a budget item from 2022 and we did increase the defender's budget by I think it was 31% over the 2019 ILA.

So I just wanted to make sure that both the lawyers on both sides are being kept in parity.

So anyway, you mentioned having staffing issues and I do know that we did bump some salaries and that was positive for your division.

How many cases have you filed in response to adopting the open public use law?

We have gotten around 200 referrals, and I'll look to Scott if you know the actual data on the details for this one.

Approximately 30 to 40 cases have been filed.

Additional cases are in review.

And when we say in review, many of those we've requested drug testing from the state drug lab.

Has that been a real burden on your in your department, I imagine?

Well, it's not been online, so to speak, for very long, but it will become, right?

Because it is a new area, as the court has presented.

It was not at the misdemeanor level prior, so the build out was all at the felony level, including drug court, including the felony reentry programs for people.

And as well, as I said earlier, that restoration is more accessible at the felony level.

So when things are declined or when now it's built as a system at the misdemeanor level, we are having to put that together.

That's why I think it's important to look at what we need to have available from a prosecutor standpoint, which is not just prosecution, but it is understanding what connections are we needing to know is needed for that type of activity.

and then partner with, as the presiding judge just said, with SMC and defense so that, again, it's the system as a whole.

It's a three-legged stool.

It has to be well-funded on all fronts.

Well, just one follow-up, if I may.

You brought forward the original legislation to conform to state law.

I was a sponsor, so I will say that that was important not just for the people involved, dealing with the impacts of public drug use, but also especially for the people that were engaged in public drug use.

And so I just wanted to ask, make sure to note that many of those cases are not filed because they are being diverted.

So can you please Talk a little bit about how your office works with our diversion partners and how many of those people you have online to help with that work, please.

So if it is at the law enforcement diversion, which is a lot, that's why I give you the comment that we have about 200 referrals.

I'll keep checking on it.

on my partner here and um and so those we don't see if they go directly to law enforcement diversion like those don't come to my office and so we are not part of that sequence and so if people are looking for me to be instrumental on a whole i can i only touch the things that are referred to me from seattle police department and so unless and until i get that referral i'm not a part of it So then when we get it, we review what is appropriate.

And I do have a lot of programs available at the pre-filing diversion.

I've broadened the number of programs available.

It was only two and now I have five.

available for that, if that's one.

We have mental health court again, but we're trying to look at, can we broaden that to be also something that someone can participate in that?

But you have to opt in.

So you have to choose to participate in that alternative.

I can't make somebody participate in that alternative.

And so we will see that that is something we're needing to build up because some people will not participate that way and we'll have to look at mainstream prosecution if need be.

Is there any data points that you want to bring?

Just from a process perspective, so for a typical Seattle police arrest for public drug use, and as you know, Council President, those arrests are diminishing because officers are saying that they're a little bit fed up with the process, but the process is an arrest a typically a direct referral to the law enforcement diversion program.

And at that point, the person typically has 30 days to go through the initial intake.

If they fail to go through the intake at that point, the case is referred to us.

Unfortunately, just as a procedural matter, the reality is that those out of custody cases, it's fairly difficult to get a meaningful impact, deterrent impact, for folks who are out of custody at that juncture.

And so some people are accepting and going through the intake process.

Many are not and are not going through the intake process.

And then those cases are coming to us.

But they are coming, basically, our decision point.

30-plus days after the initial arrest.

That's the process and procedure that was ultimately passed by the council and proposed by the mayor.

Thank you.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair Kettle.

I'll be quick.

I had a quick question.

A lot of us, I've spoken to a lot of small businesses, a lot of retail stores, and I know retail theft can be a hot subject, but I know that there's a ton of grocery stores that are struggling right now, and they're spending a lot of money to...

to do their own, like, security.

But then when you apply that to a small business, that has been broken in seven, ten times.

And the amount of damage that's done to that store, like a car through the front door, or, you know, they...

hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to take $500 worth of things, and then the shutdown of their business for so long, and we've seen it in different neighborhoods, and now I've talked to a bunch of small business owners in the Central District who have been...

targets as well.

And, you know, they can't afford to shut down for one or two days.

But then when they're talking about they've been targeted seven, 10 times, are these the same people?

Like, would you categorize like a large amount of potentially some of the retail theft that's going on in our cities from a small group of people that are doing like the same things?

Because I can't imagine seven different you know, folks targeting one store.

You know, it sounds like it's something that's, like, happens often.

It is sad, Councilmember Hollingsworth, and I appreciate your description of it.

I do want to say I often use your term that I appreciate a lot, where you talk about the front porch of the public safety system.

And so, along with the courts, we are like the rest of the house.

So I appreciate your term, and I borrow it frequently when I speak.

But that is what you're talking about is the everyday, the repeat crime victims, and that's in the form of a small business who's trying to provide access to services and goods in a neighborhood as well as maybe some jobs.

But it's particularly access, and we don't want those places closing down because then we have neighborhoods who are in deserts and do not have access to goods.

when we're wanting to encourage walkability in neighborhoods.

And if you don't have a place to walk to because it's closed down because of crime, then everybody's moving to a drive in their car or what to go get their goods.

And so I do think that a lot of the high-utilizer initiative that we are focusing on does have intersection with that.

And so that's why, for example, when we launched the high-utilizer initiative, it was because a person was daily, several times a day, going into a large retailer in the north end multiple times a day threatening employees and customers with increasing violence every time they stole things.

And we're going out just completely unchecked and knew that they could.

And so that's why we need to be saying to individuals who think that's the thing to do, we do have laws and they do matter and we do have coordination now across the city and so we can be responsive to those small business owners.

So they don't have that.

Do we have all of it?

No, because you're still hearing it.

And so that's where the connection point of our officers being able to investigate so that they can do the referral, so that then we can cross check, have we already seen these people?

Again, I can't get involved unless and until I get that referral from Seattle police.

And so if they are not able to investigate, is it the same person those seven times?

Then I'm not able to be instrumental with my High Utilizer Initiative to say, that person is engaged in repeat criminal activity.

We need to understand as a society, why is that person doing that?

That's one conversation.

But the first conversation is that that business should not be a repeat victim.

because our laws are there to say it's not okay to go in and take something without an exchange and an agreement.

And so, we are here to say that.

And so, I think yes, and that's why I appreciate all of you on here, and that's your bigger picture of how you delegate your budgetary authority and do that.

Well, I have to say, I'm sorry to interrupt, Chair, but I appreciate your approach to minding the needs of the victim that you started your talk out with, because as Economic Development Chair, and thank you very much, Councilmember Hollingsworth, for bringing that up because that is what kept me up at night and still does, is hearing from small businesses over and over and over again.

And then there are the residents themselves.

So I am...

My commitment is to be a partner in making sure that you have the resources to continue to focus on doing the job of redressing the crimes that are impacting our small businesses.

And just in general, the victim-centered approach that you're taking, I think that is important.

And I hear the...

the emotion in your voice when you talk about it, because I think that is very important that we keep in mind.

That's our responsibility is, you know, ensuring public safety.

If I can piggyback briefly, I just want to add in the city attorney's presentation, she talked about one of the barriers being the booking restrictions at the King County Jail.

So, Councilmember Hollingsworth, in your district, if somebody's repeatedly stealing from Safeway, and the Seattle police are called and they respond and they make an arrest, typically, in 90% of those cases, they're not gonna be able to book that person into the jail, even if they've been, again, a repeat problem person.

This is one of the reasons why we created the High Utilizer Initiative, because if you're on the High Utilizer list, which is limited in number, but those folks can be booked into the jail.

But most of the...

even repeat criminal activity, misdemeanor criminal activity in Seattle, those folks won't yet qualify for the High Utilizer Initiative.

And so Seattle police face that barrier, that restriction.

So they'll file that, they'll send us that case, but out of custody.

And Judge Chess and the Seattle Municipal Court will file that.

The Seattle Municipal Court will get that case, but those folks never show up.

So there's just not accountability in the system.

There's not, nobody's ever, somebody going to that Safeway in the Central District knows they're very unlikely to face consequences.

And that's really what we're all here to fix.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you for that.

And I will say first, yes, the piece about small business is so important.

And it's not just small businesses.

It's the entire system on the business front.

And on that point, I would like our committee to work with the Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee, because there is a report on retail theft that's out.

You know, we know the different pieces to the shoplifting.

I've been working with crime prevention officers, you know, with business watches and, you know, chambers and the like.

And we really need a tiger team.

And this kind of goes to what was brought up earlier in the previous thing about being at the table.

And, you know, so I would like to have a you know, coordination between the committees to have some meeting on that and essentially kind of create a tiger team effort to really attack this, you know, including the precincts and the like and all elements of the public safety because we are all in that same public safety band.

And so I really appreciate that.

I also appreciate the victim's first point.

And I bring this up because oftentimes, you know, there's violent crime and there's property crime.

And I remember working public safety reform from a community level in 2020. And so often, those that were calling for reform would always not talk about property crime.

And that was a mistake and it created a lot of problems and it ignored the impacts about property crime, which you spoke to.

And we need to be mindful of that because when it hits that person, it is not minor.

It is a big issue.

And it often has mental health impacts that we're not considering.

You know, the mental health challenges explode if you have a huge increase in property crime.

And that's something that's not factored in.

I also like your graphs, too, because, you know, about the function of the city attorney's office.

And, you know, one thing I like to say is that, you know, the pandemic, you know, oftentimes it's used as an excuse, but the pandemic was a period of adversity and adversity reveals.

And so I think a lot of things were revealed.

And so I appreciate the, you know, the efforts that you're doing to basically create the function that we need So that leads into my question that kind of, as I mentioned, asked Chief Jess, and is the, you know, the bigger picture criminal justice, you know, what do you see in terms of the challenges out there?

You know, earlier we mentioned DPD, the public defenders, and, you know, Why is that a county function?

Why isn't it a city function?

Should we invite them to the committee?

I'm working with our clerk to create our 2020 work plan.

It's already quite full as we go through our committee meetings, but I'm wondering if it would be great to have the King County Superior Court, the King County prosecutor, the public defender side here to work through the issues, because the county plays into this.

And by the way, this is pillar six of the strategic framework, the county and the state and their impacts on our public safety system.

But what do you see in terms of kind of like a bigger picture criminal justice issues that are out there that impacting our public safety?

Well, they are significant, as we all know.

And I do think there needs to be a focus on reinvestment in the system and each part of the system.

And if there's an overcompensation in one part of the system, that's not going to be the way forward.

And so balance, to me, is the first and foremost pillar.

I would add to your, if that's not one, I don't have your six memorized, but I think that's a...

I'm working on it.

Well, it has to be part of it, because if we overcompensate because of past years under compensation, like in my role, then we're headed in a different problem, right?

And so we want to have balance throughout the system.

And when I talk so passionately about why things should not be just called low-level crime, it's similar to what President Judge Chess said.

Things are statutorily a felony, but they are not always charged as a felony.

They roll downhill as we speak.

to the misdemeanor level.

And then I have misdemeanor consequences for what lawmakers have defined to be felony level activity.

And so you start to feel the disconnect in society, which is there's a serious act, but our consequences have been at the misdemeanor level.

So when we want to understand root cause connectivity to criminal activity, it is at the misdemeanor level.

And so funding and reinvesting in the misdemeanor criminal legal system is so important because we then can understand more likely why did somebody think that this was the choice to go and be involved in.

And we can hopefully then get them off into a different trajectory for their life.

At the same time, we are reducing then the number of crime victims and the trauma that you said creates hurt people hurt people.

If you're hurt as a crime victim, particularly like if you're exposed to domestic violence, you are even just exposed, you're more likely to either be a victim or an aggressor later on.

And so we do need to talk about investment in the system and at the misdemeanor level and the reentry that needs to be built out so that there is disruption of criminal activity needs to occur and not just talk about it like a slow level and inconsequential and we don't have to be bothered.

Why bother putting the resources in it?

Well, it's exactly the place to put them in so that we don't say that felony activity is allowed and only then do we participate and pay attention.

Well on that point, if we're talking about a shortage of public defenders, are there any cities that contract with private public defenders?

to make it through that gap?

There are, yes.

And so, you know, we need to have public defense, and you as appropriators and not me as the contract holder, we do need to have them.

And we do need lawyers to go into that work.

It is very, very critical, important work.

And a lot of, particularly around our state, it is not easy because there's very few of them.

Here, though, we do have a different type of a...

working relationship.

There's some policy work that is done by the Department of Public Defense down in Olympia, which I have to be responsive to.

I'm the only elected city attorney, so the only elected misdemeanor prosecutor in the state.

So to be responsive to that is a part of the system that we're talking about.

What are we building?

And who are we giving a platform to?

We're talking about on the individual cases what is happening for that defendant so we know what we need to provide for the reentry so there's not negative impacts in other social sectors.

And what do we do for the victim and how do we start to put us all, as Judge Chess said, all out of business.

Our laws are there so we can all live in close proximity of one another.

They need to mean something.

Thank you.

Before I go to the Vice Chair, I have one more question.

On your special project slide, slide seven, I really appreciate this, particularly graffiti, which is pillar four, vacant buildings, which is pillar three.

It is important to look at what new ordinances we need or modify those in the past.

And I look at human trafficking.

It's the concept.

which may be just a military concept.

I don't know the terms, second and third order effects.

So we've had changes in ordinances, which in some ways has made situations worse, you know, inadvertently, or, you know, not through malice or anything like that, but have created bigger problems like with human trafficking, for example.

And so is there anything out there, you may not be able to answer this, but on the ordinance front, which is pillar two, in terms of what can we do better, what needs to be modified, any new ordinances that can help you do your job better and create a safer public safety posture?

Well, I will distinguish that I'm not speaking in an advice role and only in a policy from my role as a prosecutor in this space.

So obviously, I can't speak on anything other than that.

But again, when we're talking about what constraints you have from a budgetary standpoint and your prioritization that you hear from your constituents as to where you should be allocating dollars.

It is on public safety is what I would expect is what you're hearing.

It's certainly what I hear.

And so my role is to, on the advice side for everybody who makes those decisions, but on the policy side, just to again highlight what I receive as a prosecutor.

And if I can give some statistical information that starts to show you from a geographical standpoint where things are happening so that you can be better stewards of the dollars that you've been provided to allocate and address those situations because our first responders are going there multiple times, multiple times, multiple times.

That's where I will help in providing that data from me.

But from an ordinance standpoint, probably best if I just leave it at that.

Okay.

With that, Vice Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So I also want to just say that I do appreciate the victim-centered approach and how impactful that is, and I'll comment on the theft whether it's, like, organized retail theft or just other property crime incidents that happen to Safeways, grocery stores, small businesses across the city.

Like, obviously, the small business owner in that case is the primary victim, but it's not just the small business that is the victim.

It is their customers.

It is the, you know, neighbors in the surrounding community.

And it impacts not only their bottom line, because, you know, when you suffer a certain amount of loss, like, your insurance premiums go up and, you know, you're going to have to raise the cost somewhere.

And that's typically, you know, in the cost of the goods or services sold.

And so, you know, the customers suffer and they're traumatized by this as well.

So anyways, I appreciate that.

I want to just quickly double click on something that I heard you mention a moment ago, Deputy City Attorney Lindsey, with respect to the jail booking.

And that's probably its own briefing or topic or focus.

But I think at least it is worth mentioning expounding upon a little bit here in this context.

So it was a little trouble to learn that there are incidents where someone would ordinarily be booked, and under our current system of state and local laws, someone would ordinarily be booked, but for whatever reason, not able to.

What is the underlying challenge?

Can you speak a little bit more about that from your perspective?

That is the determination of the county executive as to the booking, what is allowed to be booked.

And so that is a function of whether at COVID times, it was a COVID policy to reduce population size.

Now it is said that and my understanding is a staffing numbers situation, but that is where, again, when officers are called to community, to the store that Council Member Hollingsworth noted that seven times it's happened, The community's looking for a break.

We just need a break of that repeat activity, and officers are needing to be, in the moment, responsive, and what can they do?

And one thing is to give somebody some space to be, other than doing that.

So to me, it really is significant because we don't want our people who choose an occupation in law enforcement to feel helpless, that they can't provide even a short respite to community.

And that is one of the huge obstacles I think that we are having in putting the system together.

Thank you.

That was something that came up over and over again.

You probably heard that too.

at the police award ceremony is that was a statement that I heard from officers as a source of frustration that they're doing their job.

And this one guy had 86 arrests or something like that and got an award.

But nowhere to go after that.

So thank you for highlighting that.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you for the presentation.

It's been very interesting and thought-provoking.

I was wondering if you could expand a little bit on weapons charges.

So, what are the weapons charges that you're bringing?

We've had just such a proliferation of gun violence, and just wondering what you're bringing, what sort of collaboration, if any, with King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office?

Thank you for that question, Council Member Moore, because you highlighted something I did not state but was on the slide, which is through the High Utilizer Initiative Program, I did build out those working relationships with those partners, which was non-existent prior to my arrival.

So there was not an ongoing working relationship from the City Attorney's Office to the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office prior to my arrival.

So the former King County Prosecutor agreed to work with me through that High Utilizer Initiative.

and the current one continues to do so.

So our staff has weekly meetings around the HUI because it's some of the same people that they see.

So again, if we aren't talking, which costs us nothing, but costs us all a great deal if we don't talk, they were seeing people at the felony level, we were seeing at the misdemeanor level.

We are one of 39 municipalities in King County.

So that means that they might also be in other municipalities, right?

So that working relationship, in addition to working relationship with Seattle Police Department, again, it's like the handoff, we get it from them, we make a recommendation to the court.

And so with that, we also have a regional firearms unit with King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office so that we can understand where we can be instrumental in of removing firearms from people.

And so there's a unit that works on that specifically.

I also highlight and look at it through domestic violence because I think that is one of the most indicative of future violence, whether that be community violence or with family violence is exposure to domestic violence.

And when a firearm is involved in that, it's a significant one.

But if you're looking for specific numbers or charges, I'm happy, I'm not sure if Scott has those ready at the go, but those are some of the ones we are working with King County Prosecutor's Office because of numerous programs where we are in sync on and working on a regular basis with them.

Because again, crime does not stay in a neat and tidy, as you would know from your time on the bench, in a neat and tidy jurisdiction.

And neither is it a neat and tidy misdemeanor crime here and a neat and tidy felony crime here.

It is just all over the place and blends together.

And so those communicative partnerships and understanding what's happening in real time is so invaluable.

And again, doesn't cost anything, but just costs us some time.

Thank you.

Okay, well, thank you, City Attorney Davison, Deputy Lindsey, and your data team behind you.

Like before, this briefing does highlight what an essential element the City Attorney's Office, in this case, is within public safety.

And as I said, the criminal justice system is vital in order to create our safe base, our mission.

here on the dais.

And it's important for each part to be functional.

And my new thing now is we're all links in the same chain.

And so we're going to be using that in terms of trying to illustrate this point.

And in re-highlighting again that the criminal justice system is not functional if parts of it are not functional.

And that contributes to the permissive environment that underlines our public safety challenges.

And so the lack of prosecutors in this case, just like the public defenders, the judges and the police officers, really have an impact in terms of our public safety posture.

I just want to say clearly here, too, that we need credible plans at the state level, at the county level, to address these challenges, pillar six.

And here's the thing.

We need to inspire our junior attorneys, young attorneys, I aspire to service, public service, whether it's public defender, I know many, particularly early on, but we need to inspire these young attorneys and junior attorneys to service, whether it is a public defender or on your team as a prosecutor.

We need that so much, and just like I called on, you know, those police officers looking to retire or transfer to another jurisdiction to give us a year, or to all the other elements of the SBD staffing challenges, and called them to particularly our young people for public service and policing, I also call for those that are about to graduate law school, have recently graduated law school, to look to serve in public service because it is such a rewarding piece, and you get that base.

I'm sure Chief Chess would say this too.

You get that base, that base understanding of the legal system by working in the trenches like that, and that experience will lead to such great, you know, positive, you know, moving forward in terms of a legal career.

And this is the kind of thing that I think we as a body too, we should be, you know, making this call, not just for the police officers and for our firefighters and for those working within the care department or our accountability partners, but also those that are working in criminal justice system.

And I think this is an important thing that we need to do.

And oh, by the way, we need it done at the county and state level too.

And because we cannot let these challenges contribute to what essentially becomes a de facto decrim environment or situation.

And a de facto decrim is just as troubling as a du jour version that may happen in Oregon, which they're trying to unwind from.

Because it has the same effect.

It creates and perpetuates the permissive environment that we're facing right now.

and that our plan, our strategic framework plan, is looking to address in our way here on the dais of the Public Safety Committee.

So thank you very much for your work in terms of addressing those points, and I really appreciate it.

And since, you know, the Seattle Municipal Court is still here, you know, I really appreciate your work here as well.

And you can take that midnight train across the street to the Seattle Municipal Court, and I really appreciate it.

One last question.

We're at the end of today's meeting agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.