Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 12/17/20

The December 17, 2020 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.33 AM.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Here.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Thank you, everybody, for joining me today.

The council rules are silent on allowing remote meetings and electronic participation at committee meetings.

To allow this committee to conduct business remotely, the council rules will need to be suspended.

On today's agenda, hearing no objections, the council rules are suspended.

On today's agenda, we will hear a presentation from COLEAD.

We will also hear a follow-up discussion on the subpoena legislation that we discussed last week in committee.

And we'll vote today on that subpoena legislation.

And finally, we'll have a discussion concerning options to amend the council's crowd control weapons ordinance developed by, the options developed by our police accountability partners consistent with our request in June contained in the ordinance itself.

We will now approve our agenda for our committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

So at this time, we will transition into public comment.

Before we open the public comment period, I ask that everyone be patient as I continue to learn to moderate the system.

public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they have registered on the council's website.

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

This link is also listed on today's agenda.

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

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

Please begin by.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item on the agenda which you are addressing.

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

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

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

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

And if you plan to continue following this meeting please do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

And with that I am going to move into public comment and I will call the first speaker to give public comment.

Our first speaker is Andy Gerald.

I'm sorry, that is Angie Gerard.

Hi, I just tried unmuting again.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Angie.

I'm from Ballard and I'm commenting on the LEAD program.

I look forward to hearing in today's presentation about how they've adapted their services during such a challenging period.

I appreciate the frontline workers doing this difficult and nuanced work.

LEAD expanded to Ballard over two years ago in summer 2018. As stated in the essential principles on their website LEAD is not a human services program but a public safety and order program that uses human services tools with a clearly articulated goal of working in strong partnership with community.

They also state that community members should receive regular information about the program its successes and obstacles to effective implementation and that operations should be highly transparent.

This isn't happening in Ballard and there's no public transparency to learn if it's happening in other neighborhoods.

Please raise this as a priority in your discussion today and moving forward.

What public safety framework and accountability does Seattle have for involving effective community representation in LEAD and other forms of alternative policing and justice.

Who is involved in the workgroups and what decisions are being made regarding offenses in our neighborhood.

Based on City Council actions we no longer have a community police team or a navigation team who in the past were accessible to community tips and questions and to follow up on chronic issues of suffering and harm.

LEAD does not have a track record of doing this in Ballard and no clear framework for it moving forward.

The role and accountability metrics that Council has overseen for LEAD do not prioritize public transparency effective communication channels nor any community safety metrics or outcomes.

LEAD is consistently presented as a nationally successful and evidence-based model.

Please be cognizant of how local communities are not being represented and change this trajectory so that we can develop scalable models of public safety with best practices that work citywide.

Thank you.

Thank you, Angie.

Our next speaker is Eric Salinger.

Hi, hopefully I'm unmuted.

Can you guys hear me?

We can.

Hi, Eric Salinger, District 7. I'm calling about the legislation to give OPA subpoena power.

I have a couple of concerns about this legislation, although I think overall it's going in a good direction.

The first concern is that from what I was able to read, you are going to allow OPA to subpoena officers, but only sort of in line with union contract negotiations.

So I, a private citizen, can be subpoenaed by OPA, but if I were a police officer, I might not be able to.

uh...

if i leave the department on that i guess i can be subpoenaed but like frankly you could do that by going after officers pensions and saying look if you want a pension mistake you have to be subpoenaed uh...

if need be uh...

the second reason i'm calling about this and i'm concerned is specifically related to an opiate investigation twenty twenty opiate double-oh seventy In that investigation, a Seattle police officer hit a parked car and lied about it.

There was a video which contradicted this, but the sergeant investigating the case, to borrow a Mike Solon term, held the line.

He reviewed the evidence with the officer ahead of the meeting.

He showed it to them.

They had an off-the-record conversation.

Then he interviewed a meeting which the OPA report found was filled with leading questions, like, you didn't hit that car, did you?

The OPA had a lot of problems with this, and they disciplined the officer involved, but they didn't discipline the sergeant who went to bat for the officer, and they didn't discipline the detective who asked the leading questions in the interview.

This is kind of a pattern here.

The OPA has recommended firing the same number of officers this year in line with last year, despite, frankly, much more blatantly public police misconduct.

13,000 people filed OPA complaints about a kid getting maced and no one's been fired.

So I think we need to do more here.

Thanks.

Thank you, Eric.

Our next speaker is David Haynes.

David, are you with us?

It shows that you are present.

Great.

David, you're the next speaker.

you could press star six.

Hello, City Council, David Haynes.

We have road rage drunk drivers and no traffic cops enforcing the speed limit in Upper Queen Anne and elsewhere because cops are either at Metropolitan Market or Whole Foods making overtime, moonlighting as security guards in cop uniforms paid by taxpayers, biasly profiling me as a criminal every time I go to the grocery store, proving we still have unqualified to fight real crime cops, wasting taxpayer dollars, training cops to work for private and publicly traded Wall Street corporations who are picking on me and others, and once assaulted me, and I have a video.

Now, when I leave the grocery store and come back to Upper Queen Inn, there's all this road rage that doesn't even stop at the stop sign where the farmers market is in the summer.

Public safety has been undermined by the mayor and the city council, sabotaging police reform, putting unqualified interim chief in charge who should be fired for undermining specialty units while keeping two-thirds of the cops who can't, won't, or don't have qualification to respond to 911 crime.

Yet cops always seem to have plenty of resource and deployment during peaceful protest, mishandled repeatedly.

Public safety and human services are a joke, and the council chair should resign for running interference for evil criminals prioritized for motels while council created a racist policy that discriminates against innocent homeless people such as myself.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Haynes.

That concludes public comment and we will move on into the items on our agenda today.

Alex, can you please read item one into the agenda?

Alex, you're on mute.

Thank you.

Item number one, co-lead presentation.

Fantastic.

So I'm thinking that first, before we launch into it, I have a few opening remarks.

Maybe we could just go around and do a real quick introduction, just your name and your affiliation.

And then I have a few opening remarks, and we'll dive into the presentation.

Who would like to start?

Jesse, if that's you, you're on mute.

Oh, yeah.

I was muted.

You're right.

Sorry about that.

Good morning, everybody.

Jesse Benet here, Public Defender Association, Deputy Director and our Just Care and Co-Lead Project lead.

And I'll hand it off to my colleague, Tabitha.

Morning, everyone.

My name is Tabitha Davis, and I'm the Operations Manager for Co-Lead.

Ramon, and then SJ, and then Victor, and then Tiara.

Let's see here.

Sorry.

Good morning.

My name is Ramon Hernandez.

I work with CoLEAD as a shift lead outreach responder.

Thank you, Ramon.

Good morning.

My name is SJ Purser.

I'm an outreach responder for CoLEAD.

Morning.

Morning.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Victor Lu.

I'm the Director of Practice Innovation from ACRS.

For this work context, I use he, him, his pronouns.

We are one of the organizations that partner with PDA for self-care program, which is kind of a co-lead, which you will hear more about.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Tiara Dearborn, and I'm a project manager with PDA for the LEAD program in West and South precincts.

Thanks, Tiara.

And then we do have Dr. Catherine Beckett from UW, our researcher.

I'm not sure if she's quite on the call yet.

I'm here, Jessica.

I'll just go ahead and introduce her.

Oh, great.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Catherine.

You want to introduce yourself, Catherine?

Sure.

Yes.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Catherine Beckett.

I'm at the University of Washington on the faculty in the Law Societies and Justice Department, as well as sociology.

And I'm doing research with and on just care, which I'll be speaking about in a few minutes.

Great, thank you so much.

Great to have everybody with us today.

And just want to recognize that you are very generous with your time, considering that we had originally planned this presentation in September, but were unable to hold it.

I want to also note how happy I am that LEAD has at last expanded to West Seattle and is taking an active role in conversations with community members in my district.

And just as some background on recent actions the council has taken regarding LEAD, back in November 2019, the council passed Resolution 31916, statement from the city's chief financial officer stating that the city intends that LEED operate at scale by 2023, with scale meaning appropriate funding to accept all priority qualifying arrest and social contact referrals citywide.

that LEAD will accept community referrals in addition to referrals from and formally approved by law enforcement, and that those community referrals do not have to be processed by law enforcement.

During the 2021 budget process, the council passed a statement of legislative intent requesting a report by August 20, the city's budget for 2021 on the demand for and costs associated with taking a citywide diversion program to scale by 2023 with the intent that that report would help inform our next year's budget decisions.

Our presenters are here today to talk about how they have adapted the lead model for the These are new models of care paired with hotel-based temporary housing.

Because we did hear some of this material recently in a select committee on homelessness, I'm hoping that we will have our focus today be new material, maybe focusing on the evaluations of the work done underway and lessons learned thus far.

I know our presenters have a lot to share in their 20 minutes.

So I'd request that if possible, council members hold their questions till to the end of the presentation.

And we're going to hold 10 minutes at the end for your Q&A.

If that's OK with everybody.

Thank you.

And Jesse, kick us off.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Again, thanks for having us.

Better late than never.

We're happy to be here.

And I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen.

Hopefully everybody sees the slide up.

Get the audience back to my camera.

It says Just Care on it.

Okay.

Can someone just give me like a thumbs up that you guys see the PowerPoint that has the Just Care logo?

Oh, wonderful.

Thank you so much.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about Just Care, and then we're going to spend a small amount of time talking about the COLEAD model of care that we've implemented in the Just Care framework.

And then after we do that, we'll talk about a couple of lessons learned.

We'll talk about community response.

And then Dr. Beckett will take over and talk a little bit some of our learnings to date.

Obviously, there's not enough time for a full evaluation, but we do have some things to share out.

So, Just Care is the name of providing just care, just care, in terms of a new model of justice and just care.

We are not enforcement, we are not disbursement, and we are not abandonment.

And those three themes will come up throughout our talk today.

The Just Care framework right now involves the Evergreen Treatment Services REACH program playing a very key role at the front end to the sites that we go out to.

You'll hear me use the word site, and that's our shorthand for the specific encampments that we've worked at in the Chinatown International District and Pioneer Square, the two neighborhoods right now that Just Care has been funded to work in.

REACH handles that front-end assessment based on a lot of relationships they have with people living outside and building more relationships with people as they go out there.

Our operational partners in bringing folks inside for the purposes of today, we are using a hotelling response.

That's not necessarily the only response that would work.

That's the one we've implemented in this framework.

We're working with Asian Counseling and Referral Services.

who are staffing one hotel, Chief Seattle Club, who are staffing another, and Co-Lead here at PDA, and we have four hotels that we're working with throughout the county.

The kind of target population, which is just essentially folks living outside that have more significant mental health issues versus less significant mental health is sort of how we decide which organization folks will go to.

And Keep Seattle Club is doing a specific target on native and indigenous individuals living at the sites we're working with in those two neighborhoods.

We're gonna do a quick overview because it's important for you all to understand what we call the Co-Lead Model of Care.

We've been implementing that here since April.

That is an adaptation and COVID response and an adaptation of the lead model.

And that has lended itself to both Chief Seattle Club and ACRS, Asian Counseling and Referral Services, for their hotel-based model.

So I'm gonna hand it over to my wonderful colleagues, Ramon Hernandez and SJ Purser, to talk a little bit about what the co-lead model of care is, and then after that, our operations manager, Tabitha Davis, will talk about some of our early lessons learned.

So over to you, SJ, or sorry, over to you, Ramon.

Thank you, good morning.

Yeah, so COLEAD is basically, for us, it's a community care-based response to problematic and low-level behaviors.

So essentially, we're dealing with a lot of populations from the encampments.

We're encountering them where they're at.

A lot of folks have experienced a significant history with substance abuse disorder or mental health.

We're housing these, we're lodging folks.

So basically, folks are out there, just to be frank, are living in urine, feces, and blood.

And this is really important to understand, like folks are experiencing, it's pretty chaotic out in that environment.

So we place them in hotels, in lodging, and we are giving them a chance to stabilize.

We're connecting them to supports that they're not able to support for a lot of reasons, whether it's to mental health care or whether it's to medical care, providing them with primary care providers.

so that they can begin to stabilize.

A lot of these issues are not addressed.

And so some of the immediate things that results we're finding is that folks that have had issues with shoplifting to support their substance abuse disorder are now getting put in a place where they can have MAT, which is medical alternative treatment, which allows them to be kind of like counseled or coached and like talked to.

We use evidence-based training, which is a motivational interviewing, harm reduction approach.

so that our participants can begin to process things, begin to stabilize, and that they're able to have their grounded in these hotels or the lodgings that we have for them.

And with that, I'll pass it over to SJ.

All right, thank you, Ramon.

Council, colleagues, and guests, every single day I meet participants where they're at, co-lead in the way that The way that we operate is an acceptance of an individual as a whole person.

This doesn't happen by putting people in jail.

I don't even think we would have a presentation here if all we did was put people in jail and they would come back out with the same problem.

This is, every single day we go to work, we deal with, I mean, I approach it with what LEAD really means to me is let everybody advance with dignity.

We meet clients where they're at.

We use motivational interviewing.

We supply with whatever the need is at that time.

And we're a report building also.

And what we found out what happens is when we focus on why we do what we do, like why do I go meet somebody who, here's a little story, a participant, who got caught with like a needle in their room and they were so judgmental.

They were so afraid of getting kicked out of housing.

This person said, I'm a diabetic.

That's why I have needles in there.

But that's not true.

So criminalizing this, criminalizing people in their mode of whether it's addiction, whether it's homelessness or whatever, is what they've been used to.

They've been disconnected, disheveled, disenfranchised, which leads to a lot of disappointment.

So when they first come into the program, what happens is it takes a while.

We think we're just going to, you know, that's the normal approach.

We're just going to tackle their problem and everything is going to be okay.

But that's not.

That's not it.

This motivational interviewing, navigating through systems, sitting down with them, it's like a peer-to-peer model where everybody is on the same playing field.

And I just want to end it with this.

We're so used to putting people, we're so used to criminalizing their behavior that's based off economic levels and survival skills.

But just imagine this presentation wouldn't even be happening.

if all we did was put him in jail and let them back out to the same model.

So we apply a bunch of different techniques throughout the day and throughout the week and throughout the month.

And we stay consistent with doing it with dignity.

Thank you, SJ.

Tabitha Davis is going to talk a little bit about some of our early lessons learned.

I know we're probably already short on time.

And then after Tabitha, we'll hand it to Victor Liu from ACRS to talk a little bit about their Just Care program.

Over to you, Tab.

All right.

Fantastic.

So with some of our early lessons learned, the lodging liaison is pretty key and instrumental.

We have four hotels that Khalid is working in right now.

And that hotel liaison role is really about responding to and resolving issues that come up and doing that in a way that's mutually beneficial and supports really kind of three key groups, right?

So that's the co-lead staff that might be there, that's the participants as well.

And then that's also our hotel staff and partners.

And one of the ways that we're able to do that is because of our temporary lodging agreement.

It's an agreement that is signed by all of our participants before they receive, you know, keys to their new room.

But it really kind of lays out our expectations of them, but also mirrors some of the language in there.

Also mirrors, you know, kind of some of the rules and that kind of thing, compliance related things from the hotels as well.

And so that's really important.

You've heard a lot about some of the techniques that we use, harm reduction and things of that nature, but it's also important to note that while those techniques are used for daily engagement, it doesn't mean that there aren't boundaries, right?

And so the temporary lodging agreement allows for us to maintain boundaries and compliance and adherence to those things where needed.

We also found, and Dr. Beckett may talk a little bit more about this, but we also found that providing meals and supporting food insecurities in that way was super helpful.

It's really, really difficult to help people to stabilize when they don't have enough food.

And so in some of our hotels, there are full kitchens and in some there aren't.

Our hotel partners have been great, allowing us to use microwaves and a variety of other things.

Another thing that I really want to make sure that I hit on is the diversity of our staff.

And so we are very intentional in the makeup of our staff so we really took the time to value academic experience along with deep lived experience as well.

And so many of our staff members have a combination of degrees and certificates.

They also have experience with homelessness, being connected to the criminal justice system.

And quite honestly, many of the systems and programs that we now are connecting our participants to.

And that's helped us, you know, really a lot because when you're able to create a deep connection because you really understand what your participant is going through, It creates mutual respect and you're able to engage really, really quickly.

And the effectiveness of trying to set goals and get people stabilized and that sort of thing starts to really happen much deeper and much faster.

It's really, really cool.

But there's so many other things on here.

Jessie, I don't want to run out of time.

Yeah, we probably need to wrap up.

I know it's so hard to do this in the amount of time you guys give us.

You're doing great.

OK, thank you.

Thank you, council member.

So we have an amazing medical provider, Dr. Sin.

She's on our staff.

She's also on call.

She's the one that checks in with all of our participants.

Um, as, as they're coming COVID test them.

Um, they So she manages all of that wound care.

Imagine a lot of these folks have not seen a medical provider in months to even years.

And so she walks with them through that process of getting connected to a primary care physician.

We've also called her to counsel with her when different things come up.

So just having her on staff has just been a game changer.

We've talked about harm reduction techniques.

I think we're good.

Okay.

I'm going to hand it.

I want to make sure we have time for Victor too.

I'm sorry.

So I think we'll go next to Tiara to talk a little bit about Just Care Community Reception and then we'll top that off with Victor.

We'll give a quick update around the ACRS services and then we'll hand it to Dr. Beckett.

So I'm going to hand it to Tiara now.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

A lot of what I've been doing is spending time communicating with community members, business owners, property managers.

And as we already know, there's been an overwhelming amount of concern and desire to address the conditions related to encampments and unsheltered people that are living outside businesses, organizations, parks, and other public and private spaces.

I've been documenting the experiences of these organizations in order to identify and prioritize our responses.

When communicating with people and organizations, there's been overwhelming support for this approach.

Community members do want some sort of response once they learn that there is an effective and compassionate approach.

They not only have expressed support, but have suggested ways in which they can volunteer, share information with others, and advocate for expansion of this work.

As we all know, there is great need out there.

Some of the organizations that have expressed their support are the Downtown Seattle Association, Alliance for Pioneer Square, Pioneer Square Residence Council, Interim CDA, who is experiencing the effects of the 8th and Jackson encampment, Nitsi Stegen Property Management, and a number of businesses in Pioneer Square and Chinatown International District, as well as others across the city who have a desire for such a response in their areas that we're not yet addressing because we are geographically focused.

So far, we have done 112 hotel placements That's 23 from Courthouse Park, 21 from Second Avenue Extension, two from Occidental Park, 57 from 8th and Jackson Encampment, and nine from Denny Park.

There are at least four more scheduled to be moved in from Courthouse Park by the end of this week.

And that's all for me, thank you.

Okay, I'm gonna give it to Victor really quick to just talk briefly about the ACRS approach, and then we'll hand it off to Dr. Beckett.

Yeah, good morning, everyone.

Again, my name is Victor Lu.

I'm the Director of Practice Innovation from Asian Counseling Referral Service, ACRS.

And ACRS is just very honored and happy to be part of this process along with PDA and our partners that you see on this slide right now.

For those of you that are not familiar, ACRS is a multi-social services organization.

For the work that we do with Just Care, we are a licensed behavioral health providers that can provide both mental health and substance use disorder services.

And the model of care that we actually provide right now is through a multidisciplinary team.

And almost every one of us that is on part of the Just Care program at ACRS either has lived experience or a licensed, dually licensed clinician.

I'm gonna take, do a very quick walkthrough of the model of care that we provide at a hotel-based program.

When we receive referrer to the Evergreen Treatment Services REACH program, from the encampments, the clients are being then transported to our sites and through usually an Uber or Lyft.

And when the clients get to the hotel, the first thing that they receive is they will get a welcome gift bags with a toothbrush, toothpaste, non-alcoholic, mouthwash, essential items for sexual health, such as condoms and tampons if they need it.

Why did I describe that gift bag?

I just want to describe that the model of care starts with a caring approach.

The critical part is to really treat an individual, whether it's an unsheltered individual or not, with dignity, respect, and compassion.

And to me, that is the formula to address social determinants of health and holistic health.

An unsheltered individual, like everyone else, if we think about it, it can be our brother, sister, parent, or significant others, which is why it's so critical to do that.

And beyond that, the behavioral health and social determinants of health services that I described We also have a psychiatric nurse practitioner on site that provides services.

And we also have ability to link them for medication assisted treatment.

I neglect to mention that all clients who arrive at a site, they will be required to have a COVID-19 testing within 24 hours as a safety measures and precaution.

And if the clients have the ability to work, we will link them to supported employment and employment.

And all this happened on site.

We ACRs also have our own pharmacy.

And so we will also be able to arrange for medications when they need that.

We also partner with King County Public Health to assist with need exchange program as well.

And the COVID-19 testing is arranged with public health as well.

So it's a very quick snapshot of the services that we provide.

And I will try to end this with two examples of the clients that we serve, which inspired me to do this work.

an administrator of ACRS for many, many years, and I haven't done clinical services for many, many years, as Jesse know, but I am so happy that I'm able to do the overnight shift, probably twice a week to provide clinical services.

And why do I choose to do that?

So I'm gonna give you two example.

So there was a Vietnamese individual, a woman that was actually staying at the bus stop because the encampment at Adrian Jackson is still, she has no place to go.

And when I learned that, I just feel that it's something that we have to act very rapidly to assist this individual.

Another example that I will give you is when ACS was only providing the accepting referral every other day because we started on November 1, essentially, the rapid implementation as on today, We have 39 clients on site and that's how fast we are working.

We were only receiving referral every other day at the beginning, just to ease our way and understand the workflow.

I got a call in the middle of the night.

An individual's tent was completely burned down at the encampment.

And it makes me think and pause for a second that if it's me, it will be me losing everything I own overnight.

On that night, I make a decision that we are going to receive referral on every weekday.

And since then, it just has been a wonderful partnership to continue to support the clients that we can provide care for.

And so I just want to share that there are multiple stories that I can tell you, but those are stories that really inspire ACRS and our staff to continue to do this work with our partners.

Thank you.

Thank you, Victor.

OK, quickly handing it off to Dr. Beckett.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks, Jessie.

So my name again is Catherine Beckett.

I'm at the University of Washington.

And just quickly mentioning that I'm working with a team of folks that includes four PhD students in sociology and a research scientist to do this work.

Just wanted to talk a little bit about how we're conceptualizing what Just Care is and how it fits into the broader criminal justice reform landscape We see Just Care as an alternative community-based care response model that's aimed at addressing unlawful behavior committed by people who are contending with behavioral health issues and extreme poverty.

So the goal is not only to reduce their contact with police and the criminal legal system, but also to improve public safety.

And as you've heard, Just Care is also trauma-informed and provides medium to long-term care in a non-coercive manner and is consistent with a housing-first model.

So that's how we're kind of conceptualizing what Just Care is.

Jessie, if you could advance to the next slide, that would be great.

We have not been able to set up a kind of conventional evaluation approach here in the sense that we don't have a comparison group we can compare outcomes with.

But what we are doing is what we're calling a developmental evaluation.

And this is a type of evaluation that's appropriate when one is studying an innovation that's novel, has never been tried before.

And the goal is to provide feedback and information to stakeholders in real time in ways that allow them to make adjustments where appropriate to the model.

So that's how we're approaching this work.

And we're very much in the middle of data collection.

We began with CoLEAD.

You can go ahead and advance again, Jesse.

We began with CoLEAD back in the spring.

And then since Just Care has emerged, we decided to continue on and make sure that we also collect data about the Just Care model and the partners that comprise it.

I won't go say all of these things, but this gives you a sense of sort of where we are with the data collection process.

I would say we have a deeper understanding of CoLEAD at this point and its work.

And we're in the midst of arranging to do interviews with ACRS and Chief Seattle participants and staff and stakeholders as well.

And we also plan to do interviews with community partners, the people that Tiara mentioned that they've been working with, to understand their experience with the program and how things have changed in their neighborhoods.

We're very much midstream.

We don't have findings to present yet.

I will say, and if you advance one more slide, Jesse, I think, or maybe it's two, if you go one more.

I think what I would say to summarize the qualitative findings to date, and again, these are preliminary, which is that we are very much impacted by what we're hearing from participants that for them, this is entirely novel.

Many of them have been in and out of jail all of their lives, have tried other kinds of post-booking diversion programs, But for them, what's amazing and unique and so transformative about the Just Care model is that they've the non-compliant emphasis on compliance and sanctions and punishments.

And they also really emphasize that the co-lead outreach responders that have been hired as part of this very diverse team are uniquely situated to understand what they're going through.

They have shared lived experience in many cases.

they experience the care that's being provided to them in a very different way, and it's extremely motivating to many of them.

Not to say, I mean, of course, there are still very significant challenges that many of them will have to address, but I think it's clear from the, at this point in the data collection process, that this is not something they've encountered before, and that they really value the experience of the care that they're being provided, and they've never quite felt quite this supported to date.

I'm happy to say more in the Q&A.

I know we're probably vastly outstripping our time allotment, but thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Really, really appreciate, again, your generosity in taking time with us today and want to recognize and honor the work that you are doing collectively and with a special emphasis on folks who are directly engaging with people in crisis.

And I recognize how difficult that is in this particular time, how trauma-inducing it is. to be living outdoors in this time for the folks outside, but trauma-inducing it is for the folks who are working with them.

And I really, again, I want to honor and appreciate the strength and the commitment that you all bring to your work.

And thank you for not just doing the work, but having a really grounded understanding of why you're doing it, because I think your understanding of why you're doing this work is a big part of what is making a difference to the people you're helping.

So it's great stuff.

Before I invite questions from my colleagues, I was wondering if somebody could is as simply as possible, tell us how is CoLEAD different than LEAD?

And then how is Just Cares different than CoLEAD?

I appreciated that there was a diagram early on to try to graphically explain what Just Cares is.

But I think because we've been so familiar with LEAD, it would be helpful if there's just like one or two things that makes CoLEAD different than LEAD.

And then similarly, a couple things that makes Just Cares different than CoLEAD.

Sure, I can try to take a try at that and maybe some of my colleagues can help.

The traditional LEAD case management model is based on street-based outreach case management.

Historically, this has been provided by the REACH program, excellent high quality case management, low caseload, but not tied to a dedicated housing resource.

And so the REACH caseworkers are amazing and wonderful, but also just trying to navigate the existing social services landscape, which prior to COVID was already challenged.

I come from 12 years in the behavioral health system.

We don't have adequate behavioral health or housing resources for this population that lives at the intersection of extreme poverty, low-level law violations, and behavioral health conditions.

So COLEAD is an adaptation of that model that is hotel-based, and so still taking the same low caseload, harm reduction, honoring agency, and self-determination approach, but the services are very short-term on the street.

It's just a couple weeks that we're doing relationship building on the street, our entry, Program Manager Kelsey Brennan does a wonderful job at that.

But the real work in COLEAD actually starts once people come inside and are at the hotel.

We see people every day, sometimes multiple times per day.

So it really is a pairing of extremely intensive case management with more of a residential type of framing.

And that's where there is a pretty stark departure from the classic LEAD program.

The other pieces to this are a dedicated medical provider, that comes to the hotels, does COVID testing and a lot of other healthcare kind of connection upon placement.

And then the other big piece that's different from traditional case management is our schedule.

So we are seven days a week and we have staff on site at the hotels from eight in the morning until 7.30 in the night.

And then somebody is on call and a supervisor is on call overnight.

We've also just entered into a wonderful partnership.

We're about two weeks in with the Wheeler Davis conglomerate.

This is Dom Davis from Community Passageways and Stephanie Wheeler have set up a community safety team and they are providing on site sort of rounds throughout the evening to support our participants overnight.

So that is very different from the traditional case management model.

And I would just say the The dedicated housing interim housing component is probably the that and the schedule the shift the shift based program or the two most important.

Differences, but I do want to give a big head nod to the reach program they've taught us everything about harm reduction and their particular case management approach that you don't you don't tend to see across the traditional.

Medicaid funded behavioral health treatment system.

It's very different.

And we owe a lot to them in terms of what we've been able to build off of in this model.

And it's because of their relationships on the street with folks that we've even been able to pull off Just Care.

Just Care takes this model and does it across multiple providers into a neighborhood high impact response.

So Just Care is about the framework and targeting actual neighborhoods and actual sites within the neighborhoods.

So Just Care is about the way people come in and working across multiple providers.

So the opportunity that Just Care gave us was to engage with ACRS and Victor and Chief Seattle Club to do more beyond what we just did in CoLEADS.

So it's sort of like it's more than the sum of its parts, I guess.

is where I'll land with.

Because you're able to leverage community stakeholders and partners who also have community relevant engagement and their own resources that they're able to bring to the partnership.

Thank you.

All right.

So do any council members have any questions or comments that they would like to make?

I am looking for folks off of mute.

Council Member Lewis, looks like you're off mute.

Did you have something to say?

No, I think I was muted, but now that you've called on me, I think I will just briefly say something.

And I really appreciate the presentation today, because in the context of the work of the Select Committee on Homelessness, My office has been doing a lot of work since the spring with the Defender Association and all of the initiatives that were discussed today.

You know, I really appreciate the innovation, creativity, and adaptability of this team and this group, because this pandemic has forced us into that space to be creative and adaptive, and that hasn't been the case across all of the operations of government that we've seen around the country.

But, you know, your ability to be innovators and to really roll up your sleeves and work backwards from the problem and help us as policymakers try to figure out the best intervention has been one of the inspiring parts of our local civic response.

And I just really appreciate your work Every time I'm meeting with stakeholders, I lift up this work and try to facilitate connections between community members and you guys doing this work so we can spread the model around as much as possible and continue to build.

So I just really appreciate everything you're doing and I look forward to continuing to get updates as we continue our pandemic response next year.

Thank you, Council Member.

Anybody else?

I realized I talked about it and didn't put the slide back up, but your staff has the slide, Council Member Herbold.

Sorry about that.

Council President Gonzalez?

Thank you.

I was taking advantage of the raise the hand feature there.

I also wanted to echo thanks and gratitude for the work that you all have been doing and for the innovation in this space.

I'm really excited to see more in terms of the evaluation and sort of how do we continue to, you know, sort of from a more holistic perspective, see how some of these lessons learned are really playing out, because I always think that that's helpful to continuing to support, innovate, and adapt the model in a way that is truly going to meet the needs.

So my question was actually for Catherine, hoping that she'd be able to speak a little bit more about, and I may have missed this if you said it, I apologize, but I was wondering if you can give a little bit more details about when sort of the timeline related to your research work and sort of maybe explain to us if this is an iterative process, meaning that this is sort of like a phase one approach and there'll be ongoing continuing evaluation for purposes of continuous improvement of the model, particularly since it is so innovative and we're all learning how to adapt and figuring out how to structure models and programs in this COVID period of time.

Yeah, so I'm happy to answer that.

Right now, we're planning to continue this work through March, at least.

But I will say that we've had sort of four or five deadlines so far that have come and gone.

So I think it's quite likely to continue on.

It's quite possible that it will continue on past that point.

And I agree with you.

I think it is a very innovative and unique model.

One of the things that we're doing as a research team is looking at all the other models that are emerging around the country.

CAHOOTS has been around for a long time.

kind of newer approaches to this set of issues that are emerging in San Francisco and Atlanta and other places.

And so one of the things we're going to be trying to do is situating Just Care in the context of that landscape.

And again, this is ongoing research, so I don't have conclusions yet.

But preliminarily, what seems to set Just Care apart are kind of the the entirely community-based nature of it, and also the length of care that is provided.

So many of these are set up more as like crisis responses where people are handed off to someone else.

And what's amazing about the work that Just Care is doing is that they're the ones bringing people in from encampments and other places, and then also providing that long-term care.

So those are my preliminary thoughts.

But so March, maybe, and then maybe longer.

We'll see.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Right, well again.

my sincere thanks to the work that you guys are doing every day and look forward to continuing to work with you as you develop this model, as you make an effort to adequately resource this model, these models, I should say both, all three.

And yeah, just let's do keep in close contact moving forward.

Um, I know there are some work products related to lead that will be receiving soon related to the community referral protocols.

I think it will be helpful to understand how those community referral protocols for LEAD have relevance or don't have relevance to CoLEAD and Just Cares as people become more aware of CoLEAD and Just Cares and have interest in accessing the services that you provide for folks in those programs.

So again, that's looking forward.

Right now here in the present, I just want to really again extend my thanks and gratitude.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

Alex, can you please read item two into the agenda?

Item number two, Council Bill 119974, an ordinance relating to civilian and community oversight of the police, creating a subpoena process for the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety while ensuring due process for individuals who are the subject of the subpoena, and adding new sections 3.29.126 and 3.29.245 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

This item is listed for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you, Alex.

So we had a conversation about this bill in our last committee meeting.

So this is the second discussion for this item.

In our last committee meeting, we let folks know that we would have an amendment one, which is a substitute shown in red line on the agenda.

I will, in a moment, turn it over to Greg to describe the substitute, but just a few words about the base bill as a recap for the viewing public.

The ordinance itself permits subpoena enforcement by both the OPA and the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of the Inspector General in a court of competent jurisdiction.

by the city attorney.

The subpoena authority for SPOG and SPMA is still subject to the collective bargaining requirements, but this bill and the appeal process issues are broader than that.

As part of the process, notice will accompany the subpoena both for the direct recipient as well as the subject whose records are being sought.

And the bill itself notices, recognizes the legal rights afforded to people being subpoenaed under the law.

And then finally, the notice is required to recognize search warrant requirements need to be separately met.

This is legislation that has been drafted collaboratively between myself, the mayor's office, the inspector general, and the police accountability and the city attorney's office.

It's been reviewed by the CPC.

And really want to thank everybody for working together to move this forward.

And then just as a bit of I just want to give a little background for how we got here.

I just want to recognize that the 2017 accountability legislation sponsored by Council President Gonzalez included subpoena authority.

This bill builds on that legislation to provide clarity on the procedures and due process protections So with that, there are no questions about how we got here and what the contents of the current bill is.

I'm gonna hand it over to Greg to describe the substitute.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee, Greg Dawes, Council Central staff.

Madam Chair, you make my job very easy.

You've done a very detailed description of the bill, so I have very little to add and not much to talk about with the substitute.

Before the committee today is the substitute that pretty much clarifies language in the recitals.

It makes some technical changes and changes the effective date of the legislation so that it becomes effective on the later of either court approval as part of the consent degree policy review process or 30 days after its approval by the mayor.

Members received last week a red line version of this amendment and the red line version is also attached to this week's published agenda.

The amendment was prepared by the Law Department, Mayor's Office, and the Office of the Inspector General.

As you know, these parties are all here today and available to answer any questions.

And that's all I have on the substitute.

Thank you, Greg.

So if there are no objections, I would love to get the substitute in front of us.

And then we can see if there are any additional questions or discussions of the bill before voting on it.

Seeing none.

Okay, let's just, I move to substitute amendment one.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

All of you voting in favor to move amendment one, vote aye.

I think you got to do a roll call.

That's right.

You're right.

You're right.

Thank you.

That's all right.

This is the first time for me voting in committee since September.

One of the annoyances of being virtual, unfortunately.

All right.

Alex, do you want to do the roll call, please, for Amendment 1?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Aye.

And Council Member Herbold.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you.

And now the substitute is in front of us.

If there are other questions or discussion by either council members or our accountability partners at the table, would be happy to hear it.

I am both looking for hand raising in the participants panel and looking for folks who might be off mute.

If I am missing anything, don't hesitate to just speak up.

All right, seeing none, again, I'm really pleased that we've had the opportunity to work collaboratively with the executive as well as our accountability partners in the law department in bringing this forward.

I think that this bill will help us move forward both in securing subpoena power in all necessary circumstances and will help guide us in our negotiations with the two police unions.

And I think this strong legislation serves as a foundation for us to do that, while also making sure that we have an appeals process for folks who might be subjects of subpoenas in the future, whether or not they are police department officers or other parties.

So with that, I move to approve Council Bill 119974. Second.

Thank you.

Alex, can I have a roll call, please?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Aye.

Council Member Herbold?

Aye.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you.

And so, Council Bill 119974 will be heard at the full council meeting on January 4th, 2021, the first council meeting of the year.

All right, item three, Alex, can you please read that into the record for us?

Item number three, agenda item number three, decision agenda on less lethal weapons recommendations of the Community Police Commission, Office of Inspector General, and Office of Police Accountability.

Thank you, Alex.

I have some opening remarks, but before we get to those opening remarks, I'm hoping we could do a quick round of introductions for folks who will be joining us in this discussion.

Okay, so I'll go ahead and start.

Greg Doss, Council Central Staff.

Thank you, Greg.

Andrew Meyerberg, Director of OPA.

Jaylene Morris, Policy Director for CPC.

Good morning, Lisa Judge, Office of Inspector General.

And Lisa Kay on central staff.

Great.

Thank you so much, everybody.

So our objective for today is in recognition that in September, this committee heard recommendations of the three accountability bodies for changes to the council's crowd control weapons ordinance as requested back when we passed that ordinance in June or July.

and today's discussion is intended to ensure that committee members are clear on the positions of the three accountability bodies on their recommendations, have an opportunity to discuss those recommendations with them, and ask any questions that council members might have about those recommendations.

The central staff produced a chart included in the recommendation to cover many of the recommendations related to less lethal weapons.

But it doesn't cover every item addressed in the ordinance.

So for instance, The ordinance mentioned acoustic weapons, directed energy weapons, water cannons, disorientation devices, and ultrasonic devices.

But for today's meeting, we're focused on a subset of the less lethal devices covered in the council's ordinance.

The accountability bodies have made recommendations regarding use of less lethal weapons in the context of crowd dispersal.

use in patrol and use in instances that are tactical or SWAT use.

And the chart which we'll get to summarizes their positions in each of those different types of uses.

Again, today's discussion is intended to set the stage for decision agenda votes at the committee meeting scheduled for January 12th, where we will use the decision of the committee as it relates to each of the options and the recommendations associated with the options.

to develop legislation.

Then the legislation will follow the consent decree process.

We'll send that legislation that has been adopted in committee prior to full council vote to the monitor and the Department of Justice.

And again, we'll get that input from the monitor and the Department of Justice before full council takes action.

Just a little bit about the background and legal landscape.

We will have a chance to delve more deeply into the legal landscape more fully with our attorneys.

in an upcoming executive session.

But I just want to, as it relates to that legal landscape, I want to touch on some of the timeline and process issues.

Again, back in June, the council adopted Council Bill 119805, prohibiting the use of some less lethal weapons.

Crowd control weapons is what it was called in the ordinance.

And requested recommendations from the three accountability bodies.

In late July, before the ordinance went into effect, the U.S.

Department of Justice sought and the court granted a temporary restraining order stopping the ordinance from going into effect.

This temporary restraining order was later converted in October into a preliminary injunction, quote, in order to facilitate review under the process set forth in the consent decree.

The preliminary injunction itself does not require the council or SPD to take any actions.

Neither the council nor the police department have obligations from the court to propose revised policies, amend the city code, or take any other steps regarding the crowd control weapons ordinance.

But if we want changes to policy, and I think we do, then as Judge Robart's July ruling noted, the consent decree requires that the city submit policies related to the use of force, including the use of crowd control management weapons to the monitor and the government before the policies are implemented.

And so that's why if the council is interested in using our ordinance and amending our ordinance as a way to express our policy preferences related to less lethal weapons, we do need to consider the recommendations of the accountability partners, and then again, resubmit the amended ordinance to the court.

The court recently noted in this decision that it agrees that by removing all forms of lethal crowd control weapons from virtually all police encounters, the directive and the crowd control weapons ordinance will not increase public safety.

This is particularly so because, and I'm quoting from the court, this is particularly so because neither the crowd control weapons ordinance nor the directive provide time for police training in alternative mechanisms to deescalate and resolve dangerous situations if the crowd control implements with which the officers have been trained are abruptly removed.

So I think it's important to keep in mind the opining from the court about the council's ordinance in the form that it was in June.

when it reviewed it because we are going to be bringing under this current plan, we'll be bringing an amended ordinance.

So important to keep the court's perspective on the concept of banning all forms of less lethal crowd control weapons from all police encounters.

Judge Robard also directed the three accountability bodies to share their recommendations with the court as well.

So that, again, is the environment that we're navigating as Judge Robard will have the ultimate say on the legislation since the city is under a consent decree.

uh...

and then separately how we don't need to discuss this now but it's important to also be aware that in june u s district court ordered restrictions on the use of crowd control weapons uh...

completely separately from that counsels legislation uh...

because uh...

uh...

of uh...

us suit filed by black lives matter and he still you uh...

in August, the court added to the order.

And then last week, the court found the city in contempt of the order.

So that is another element that is a part of the legal framework in which we're operating.

So unless there are questions about my opening remarks, I'm going to hand it over to Greg and Lisa to proceed with the presentations on the recommendations of the Community Police Commission, the Office of Police Accountability, and the Office of the Inspector General.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Again, Greg Doss, Council Central Staff, and I'm joined by my colleague Lisa Kay from Central Staff.

And we're going to facilitate this discussion with a PowerPoint that we have prepared.

I'll ask Alex if he can pull that up for everyone to see to start.

Does that look OK?

Yeah, great thanks and if you would advance that to slide number three, I think, well, actually go back to slide number two.

So just to reiterate what we're doing here.

Councilmember her bold, the chair gave some opening remarks a very thorough background of.

of the issue and the legal landscape.

Lisa and I are going to, we're going to talk a bit about the Oversight Agency's position on continuing a ban on less than lethal weapons.

As the chair pointed out, this is not designed to be a discussion that gets into the details of every single kind of weapon, but rather a high-level discussion about how the council might want to approach the issue of reauthorization.

So then number three on this agenda is really your discussion.

And then finally, Council Member Herbold will close it off with some discussion of how she envisions the next committee meeting going and how members would move ahead on a vote on specific decision items placed before them.

And so, Alex, I'd ask you to move to slide number three, if you wouldn't mind.

Thanks, so before I jump into slide number 3, I want to reiterate some an important point that the chair made council bill 119805 now ordinance 126102 effectively ban the purchase use purchase and use of all less lethal weapons.

The ordinance prohibited the use of these devices under First Amendment rights when folks are demonstrating, but also left the police department without the ability to use less lethal weapons when either crowd dispersal is necessary for life safety reason or to use less lethal weapons for the purposes of other than crowd dispersal.

One exception to this is that OC spray was still allowed to be used or still allowed to be used to SPD officers as long as they are not using it against citizens that are participating in First Amendment demonstrations or if it lands on individuals other than those that are targeted, individuals that are committing law enforcement or public safety risky actions or crimes.

So I'll go ahead and jump into this slide.

When the accountability agencies presented their recommendations on reauthorizing less lethal weapons, they talked about the appropriateness of less lethal weapons in specific kinds of circumstances.

The table before you is designed to facilitate today's discussion by capturing the agency's positions on reauthorizing less lethal weapons and specifically where a ban should continue to remain in place.

The categories here haven't been defined.

So if the committee wanted to move forward with legislation that authorized some less lethal weapons under certain kinds of conditions or categories, then these categories would need to be pretty well defined.

In the committee's last meeting on this topic, the accountability agency said that they could provide some guidance, especially in the area of using less lethal weapons for crowd dispersal purposes.

So I'm just going to go over at a high level the categories that are shown here.

The first one is patrol use, and an example of this might be where an officer would use, say, a 40 millimeter launcher against a suspect that is holding a knife.

This example would assume that an officer is qualified to use the launcher and allowed to do so under SPD policy.

An example of the second category, tactical use, might be where a SWAT officer fires tear gas into an unoccupied building that is currently only occupied by a barricaded subject who refuses to come out.

The crowd dispersal category obviously represents times when SPD would need to end a demonstration because there are threats to life safety of the participants or property destruction.

So as you can see in the table, there is really only one use category that all agencies agree should remain banned and only for one type of less lethal weapon.

That is tiered gas for patrol use.

That is a situation that would not normally happen under SPD's policies.

And in fact, if you go to the end of the table, you will see that there is an NA NA under flash bang diversionary devices, and that's because those are prohibited by SPD policy to be used by officers who don't have specific training in those devices and that would not fall under patrol use.

And so that's generally the only place where there is total agreement, I would note that the CPC has indicated that tear gas and blast balls should be banned for every kind of use in every kind of circumstance.

And they have in the past issued recommendations and guidelines and requests asking that SPD follow that direction.

Finally, I'd note that the OPA and the OIG generally agree on reauthorization for nearly every kind of less lethal weapon and in nearly every kind of circumstance.

With the exception of tear gas being used for crowd dispersal purposes, as you can see in the table, the OPA would not allow that or would want to continue a ban there.

And the OIG would want to keep that as a tool available to SPD, but only under specific kinds of purposes or specific kinds of policies.

Can you restate that last point, Greg?

Yeah.

And so when using tear gas again, well, the CPC and the OPA would continue a ban on tear gas against or for use of crowd dispersal purposes in any way or in any manner.

The OIG would not continue a ban on tear gas.

but would allow or, um, believes that SPD should only use tear gas against a crowd in in very specific circumstances.

And I believe what I heard Inspector General Judge say in the last meeting only where there was a riot, something was an absolute riot mayhem where life safety was at risk and the particular demonstration was happening where there was no risk of the tear gas reaching other people.

I'll let let her elaborate on on that and other points in our presentation as we as we move along further.

Does that answer your question?

Thank you.

Yes.

Okay, so before I move any further, I wanna note some important points.

First, Madam Chair, as you noted, this is not an inclusive list of all less lethal weapons.

Rather, these are the less lethal weapons that are most used by SPD and were the most discussed in the last committee meeting.

So I think that they're good for the purpose of guiding today's discussion.

But when we get to the end of this presentation, we'll have to talk a bit about how the committee would approach other less lethal weapons that aren't listed here.

And while the accountability agencies agree that less lethal weapons should not continue to be banned in many of these circumstances, this in no way discounts the danger of less lethal weapons and should not be seen as an endorsement for SPD to return to its prior practices for the use of these weapons.

And in fact, the agencies have already provided to SBDE cautions about the use of these weapons in various forms.

And with that, I'd ask Alex to flip to the next slide, please.

So in the past, the accountability agencies have noted and sent in various forms, either by letter or management action or findings, that less lethal weapons can obviously cause injury or death, and that agencies or that SPD should guard against specifically indiscriminate use where They're turning weapons on a crowd, some of which may not be, some of the participants may not be committing crimes.

They've talked about tear gas, potentially infiltrating buildings and hurting folks that are not in protests.

Pepper spray being used against folks who are not putting up resistance.

blast balls.

There have been a number of recommendations about how blast balls should be deployed, that it's not appropriate to send them into crowds, above crowds, or near people.

Alex, if you could keep going and flip one more side, please, that the 40 millimeter launcher should not be, has a danger to strike non-targeted individuals or miss a target altogether.

All of these things that the risk level is worth using these devices, which are dangerous.

And as I said before, it could cause injury or death.

And then the noise flash diversionary devices, much like the blast balls, deploying them at people.

So because I'm saying that the agencies would not, for the most part, particularly the OPA and the OIG, would not continue a ban on these devices.

It should not be interpreted in any way that their recommendation would be to return to prior use policies, rather that SPD follow these cautions and the direction that had been provided by management action letters and other letters.

And then also follow the specific policies that were proposed in the recommendations that came before the committee the last time it met.

And with that, I think I'm going to turn it over to Lisa Kay, who's going to summarize at a very high level the recommendations that the accountability agencies made.

There were a lot of recommendations.

They were very detailed, some in specific circumstances, some that addressed specific circumstances and specific weapons.

And so what central staff is attempting to do here is just give the committee a high level flavor of recommendations that were made before the last meeting.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Lisa.

Thanks, Greg.

And Madam Chair, Lisa Kay here from central staff.

Alex, can we go ahead to slide six, please?

Thank you.

So these next two slides that I'll talk about identify some of the common themes that we saw in the Oversight Agency's recommendations.

As Greg said, these are at a very high level and they don't attempt to capture all of the nuance and detail provided in the reports, some of which were very extensive.

So as the slide before you shows, all three agencies agree that for the most part, tear gas should be banned.

And also that the city needs defined policies and protocols for the use of less lethal weapons.

As Greg noted, OIG found that tear gas may be warranted during what their report called a full-scale riot.

Additional themes speak to the need for detailed tactical plans for crowd control in advance of deployment, and also a prohibition against using less lethal weapons solely to prevent property destruction during a demonstration.

I would note here that the CPC did recommend against using less lethal weapons during any First Amendment protected activity.

Let's turn to slide seven, please, Alex.

So other themes that we found are the need for improved communication, both in content and delivery, and in having the right technology available and on hand when you need it.

In addition, we saw themes calling for more thorough training in the use of the less lethal weapons with hands on practice where feasible and for stronger accountability measures when less lethal weapons have been used.

Finally, both OPA and OIG advised against requiring executive authorization prior to the use of less lethal weapons.

And this advice was on the grounds that the executive isn't likely to have field knowledge or what's called situational awareness from an impartial observer during a demonstration.

So they may not have the full picture before they make a decision.

and that many active decisions and situations require quick decisions to protect life safety.

I do want to note that agency staff did advise us that they interpreted this question about executive authorization that was posed in the ordinance the council adopted.

They interpreted this question somewhat narrowly and haven't taken a position as to whether, when, and how the executive should declare a riot.

which is in fact a different question than whether the executive should authorize a specific use of less lethal weapons in an active situation.

So Lisa, for instance, if we wanted to do an outright ban on tear gas consistent with accountability partners' recommendations, with a very narrow exception, as recommended by the OIG, that allows for the use only in cases of the declaration of a riot, we could, in that instance, ask for some sort of an executive authorization Or we could have a discussion.

We don't have a recommendation saying it's a bad idea to ask for or have some sort of an executive authorization of a full-scale riot.

Exactly.

And I think Greg and I have talked about that.

Then in that instance, you'd probably want to include a definition of riot in your ordinance so that everybody knew what the thresholds were before that kind of declaration would be enabled.

So that really wraps up sort of the high level themes.

But Madam Chair, given that this is very high level, the oversight agencies may have some specific areas of emphasis.

that I haven't covered or that they would like to flag and give more, raise up a little bit more.

So I would turn that over to your discretion, Madam Chair, if that's the direction you'd like to go.

Yeah, I think this is a good opportunity to hear more from our accountability partners.

We did have them in September to talk about their recommendations, but now that we're getting more, I think, in the weeds and becoming more I'm not sure that I would be more familiar with some of these concepts.

I would definitely feel that there would be value added if councilmembers have specific questions about recommendations, and even if not, if the representatives here have feedback that they would like to offer that we haven't

Well, I think from OPA's perspective, one thing I would note is that, and I think everyone's aware of this, when these recommendations were issued, it was fairly early on in the process.

So I think we issued them in July.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was in July.

At that point, we really had not been able to dig through the vast majority of the cases that involve the use of blast balls and other illicit tools in the early days of the protest.

We have since issued several findings, including two sustained findings for the use of blast balls, and we have identified other concerns with blast ball usage, and I think our thought is that we will be supplementing our report and maybe not a formal report, but certainly supplementing our recommendations to now have lessons learned from the actual investigations that we've concluded.

So, and I think Lisa Judge is probably in much the same boat with the Sentinel event review coming up, where trends, specific examples, policy recommendations will flow.

So that will all kind of weigh into the consent decree process, which I think is now in late January, February to formulate and create this new policy.

So I just want to give that caveat.

So, for example, for blast balls, we, I wouldn't say that we would reauthorize without any caveats the use of blast balls in demonstration.

So we really pushed for limiting blast balls only to threat of harm to people and not necessarily directed towards property.

So that would be a pretty significant departure from the current usage of blast balls where it can be used for people or property and officers of a lot of discretion as to when to use blast balls under those circumstances.

So we would want to limit some of that discretion and to put more onus on the chain of command and to limit it again to those situations where there really is a risk of harm to people.

So those are the type of recommendations that are going to flow.

Overhand deployments, we're seeing those which are problematic.

Blind deployments where people are throwing blast balls where they don't really know what they're throwing it at, like there's not really an articulable threat.

So there are things that we are seeing that we're going to want to supplement our report on.

We just don't have those recommendations completed right now.

Thank you, Director Meyerberg.

And I see Inspector General Judge has her hand up as well.

Before we move on to Inspector General Judge, and I would ask her to answer this question too, specifically as it relates to blast balls, can you speak briefly, given the fact that the CPC has had a longstanding recommendation to ban blast balls, can you speak to your differing perspective on this?

Sure.

Sorry, Lisa.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

One of our recommendations in the report was that SPD should go back to the previous recommendations that have been made by others highlighting CPC's recommendations and, you know, take them strongly into account and that potentially includes to prohibit their use.

I think here the distinction I would make is that having a legislative ban is much different than having SPD by policy prohibit their use in certain circumstances.

So I don't think, you know, with many of the lines on this chart, I think it's great for simplification of the discussion, but it's perhaps an oversimplification of how far apart we are from our accountability partners.

So with regard to blast walls, I echo the same concerns that Director Meyerberg just did and the concerns that CPC has that if they are continued to be permitted and they're not banned by ordinance, there needs to be significant clarifications in policy that just really specify when they can be used, how they can be used.

adequate training opportunities provided to SPD officers so that when they are deployed in appropriate circumstances, it's done so by somebody who's had the ability to practice and knows what they're doing.

Let me just try to restate or reframe the question I'm asking.

Given that the CPP has recommended their banning, why do the OPA and the OIG think that they should not be banned?

Yeah, I think the distinction, and perhaps it's a distinction without a difference, I'm not saying that SPD shouldn't consider prohibiting them, especially in certain protest contexts.

The questions that we were asked is, should they be banned by ordinance?

So not allowing SPD to have any latitude in perhaps a full-scale riot situation to authorize them in a general protest context, even a protest that is, you know, has some persons committing violence in it, I don't necessarily know that we think that use of glass balls is appropriate.

So I don't know if that distinction helps you or not.

But the question before OIG here when we made these recommendations is, should there be legislation to outright prohibit them.

And that's, in my mind, a different question than whether SPD should, by policy, prohibit them or significantly restrict them.

And I think that's the same distinction I would make with tear gas.

On the chart, it looks like we're an outlier with our partners, but I don't think we really are.

I think we were trying to leave open, without legislation, the possibility that there could be a full-scale dangerous situation And I think we use the context of a protest where protesters are angry and protesting the government or police.

But I can envision a scenario where there are protesters and counter protesters, issue may have nothing to do with policing or government that becomes violent.

And allowing SPD to have tools to disperse those kinds of things, I think is important just for planning for the future.

That said, the nature of tear gas and how the impacts that it has and the potential to impact people who are not even near the protest, I think we would add so many caveats that it's really a very limited circumstance that we would think it should be available potentially for SPD.

But all of this gets back to having clear policies, clear criteria for when these things are used.

And I think most importantly, when decisions are made to deploy these that are not good decisions, that are improper decisions, that there's actually some accountability on the back end.

I mean, the deployment of tear gas is generally a command-level decision, but I don't see many mechanisms for going back and assessing whether those decisions were appropriate, and if not, having some accountability for those.

So I think there's work to be done in that area.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, hi.

Jamie Morris from the CPC.

One of the issues here that we, the CPC, bring up is officer discretion and the way in which it is used inappropriately.

And when we're talking about tear gas, when we're talking about blast balls, we have across the board since 2016-2017 have urged the city and the department to ban both of these items, with no exception for patrol or SWAT operations.

Based on what my partners have pointed to is one, tear gas can affect people that are not even within demonstrations, but blast balls can have an immediate individual harm.

I have sat in conversations virtually throughout these past few months where I have listened to community members who were seriously injured because of blast balls.

who have witnessed the horror of what that can do.

The community has been very clear, those who are demonstrating and those who do not participate in demonstrations, that they are not interested in having their First Amendment rights suppressed during this time, nor do we want this at the hands and offer discretion.

We're talking about patrol and SWAT.

So that is really the crux of the issue, is whether we have them say the department will re-envision their policies of the community in mind, which we have yet to do as a city, is really listen to the community for these use of force policies and crowd control policies.

But more importantly, as we're moving forward, How do we build trust with the community if we are going to say we're going to give them discretion in this particular area where there may or may not be violence and who decides that?

When we're talking about a riot, the bar is very low.

We're talking about three people in the current definition, three people out of potential crowds of hundreds.

That is not a policy that we would stand by whatsoever.

The legislation that was passed earlier this summer was not passed lightly.

We know that you all thought about it, the community has thought about it, and it was done because of gross abuses by SPD.

We still and maintain support, complete ban of those crowd control weapons of tear gas and blast walls, period.

But I hope that can talk about community trust and the discretion that we have not seen use over these past months.

Madam Chair, if I could, I think Ms. Morris's comments are really well made with regard to the definition of a riot and the lack of clarity around you know, just the level of seriousness that that needs to reach.

And so I think if there were the potential for some legislation to more carefully define that and provide criteria, that would be a helpful thing.

And my recollection is that I don't know if this is an area that's preempted, but there's a state definition of a riot that is what restricts it to a group of not restricts it, but defines it as small as a group of three people.

And so I don't know if that is an area that the city is preempted in of having a different definition until such time state law is changed.

But if that's the case, then that definitely limits our ability to create that very narrow exception with a high bar as suggested.

At least it limits our ability to do that until you know, after a successful effort in the state legislature around that issue.

I don't know if anybody with us today has looked into whether or not the city of Seattle is preempted in this area.

Staff have not, Madam Chair.

That's something we can do.

All right.

Thank you.

Would you like to go to the last slide, which I think will, you know, throw out a few topics for discussion?

Um, so I'll go ahead and hit the first bullet point here, which is relevant to, um, what we've just been discussing.

Um, the chart, the table that was on slide three.

Um, I'm glad that Inspector General Judge spoke to that.

Um, it is really a very simplistic way of showing where a ban should continue.

We as staff, Lisa and I, have tried very hard to show that the accountability agencies have serious recommendations and a lot of them And serious cautions and also caveats for how weapons could be used.

But the question that I think is before the committee or would be before the committee would be.

should the ban be changed?

Because right now, if the council bill and the ordinance cleared the legal hurdles, there would be an absolute ban of all less lethal weapons in all circumstances, except for that one exception that I noted about pepper spray.

So I think the question before the committee, the first threshold question is what should remain banned, if anything?

And you've obviously heard from the CPC that they have their views about where a ban should continue.

As I noted during, in the table, the OPA and the OIG have different views on that.

But I think that's the first threshold question for the committee is, does a ban continue?

And if so, where?

Greg, before you move on?

Yeah.

I'm wondering, and maybe you've thought this through, and I'm suggesting something that is not useful, but there is a significant amount of agreement on circumstances in which different tools should not be banned.

So that's, I'm wondering if that's another way to work as a sort of as a starting point on the ordinance itself is to, if, if the committee agrees, or if I is. chair of the committee want to bring back something to committee for their consideration, sort of starting at a point where we clarify the instances in which things aren't banned in a way that is consistent with the unanimity in those instances in the chart where there is unanimity.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that, you know, that that seems like a very good approach.

I just, you know, from a purely technical perspective and saying that the first thing you would need to do before before you even got to that point would be to reverse the statutory ban on those items that you're raising.

Merely technical.

And so that's sort of the first question is, would you reverse the ban?

And then reaching the questions that you're bringing up, how would you do that and under what circumstances?

That sort of gets to the second and third bullets.

Would you address specific less lethal weapons in the legislation and the specific use categories?

And those could be any use categories.

Those don't have to be the three that are in the table.

Um, and under the specific policies that that the accountability agencies are putting forth the ones that are much more detailed than our simplified version in this in this presentation.

And then, um, should those should those policies be codified?

Or would the committee want to, um, would the committee want to set some principles out about how less lethal weapons might be, um, uh, used really at a high level.

Things like, as SPD is developing policies for the use of less lethal weapons, they should prioritize life safety or human safety over that of property destruction.

Setting out some high-level principles and then leaving it to the agency, SPD themselves, to develop the specific details, really consistent with what Inspector Judge was saying.

specific operational procedures about how each weapon might be used and under each condition.

So there's various ways that the committee could do it.

They could, you know, as I said, adopt specific policies, adopt high level principles, authorize certain weapons.

These are all questions I think that you all will want to think about as you're thinking about the topic of reauthorizing less lethal weapons.

Thank you.

And so I think I just want to signal my interest in considering the areas in which there is unanimity from the accountability partners of things that should not be banned in certain circumstances.

I think, Greg, you're encouraging us to grapple with the hard issues first.

I have a tendency to.

I want to start where there's agreement, but I think we can do both, and we have time to do both.

If there is interest from my colleagues in signaling policy preferences in any of these areas, Now, I'm happy to hear that.

I'm happy to take additional questions.

I do want to recognize, I just learned that we have SPD represented here.

Rebecca Boatwright's here, and I'm sorry, I think the introductions went too quickly to get her in, and I just found out from my staff that she has joined us.

Rebecca, you wanna say hi?

And if you have any thoughts so far, happy to hear them.

Yeah, good morning, council members.

Thanks for the opportunity to be here.

I have been sitting here listening quietly, and I am happy to answer specific questions and raise specific points.

One of the things, though, that I wanna just couch this conversation in is We have had protests in this city of varying levels of peacefulness since almost nightly since May 29th.

And in the majority of those instances, no force has been used.

We have not had a blast ball deployment since I believe it was September 29th.

despite ongoing daily protests.

And certainly we've been in communication with accountability partners, and we've been looking to modify tactics along the way.

The concern that I want to raise on behalf of SPD is we are completely open to hearing alternatives for how to police these events.

We completely understand the concerns around blast balls.

At the same time, There are instances where creating separation and space either within the crowd or between the crowd and officers or between the crowd and counter protesters is critical to maintaining as minimal threat to life and property as possible.

And to our knowledge, there is no tool that allows for this separation that is more viable than a blast fall.

And if there are alternatives, we have been looking for those and we remain more than willing to engage in that.

But at the end of the day, I think largely what this comes down to is, you know, the city needs to make a determination as to how much property damage, how much disruption the city is willing to accept in the name of a First Amendment activity.

And we do a pretty good job of looking at the case law and looking at the analyses that are set by law.

But I think we do need some direction on that.

To put into context the issue of blast balls for property damage, At what point is something that is property damage, at what point does that become, in fact, a life safety issue?

If people are breaking windows and intending to throw Molotov cocktails inside and set businesses on fire when there's residential housing above, is intervening prior to somebody breaking a window, is that just a property threat or is that a life safety threat?

So I think that the conversation, outstanding conversation to have.

I'm really hopeful that through the Sentinel event review process, we'll be able to digest these issues with community.

But I do want to caution that it's a very, very nuanced.

discussion.

And my concern is that by talking about this in the context of specific tools, we may be creating the choice where there is no viable option to intervene against crowds that are becoming unruly and disruptive in the form of damage.

And so, Rebecca, your specifying the use of blast balls as important in instances specifically where you need to separate people.

Is that correct?

And for instance, in a situation where you have two groups of counter protesters, I'm trying to understand why a blast ball is a better intervention than the police personnel physically separating folks and creating lines, as we've seen before, where people have to stand behind when there's opposing sides.

Well, I mean, it's operationally, first of all, we only have so many personnel.

And we also know that in many instances where the government is the target on both sides, that increasing the police presence, as we've heard, can lead to greater escalation.

We always seek to minimize the need to go hands-on with somebody.

The more you go hands-on, the less you lose control of a situation.

Yeah, I'm just I'm I the police department has engaged in separating groups of protesters.

and i i don't i haven't seen every protest our film from every protest but i don't recall uh...

i what i recall happening is that people are s physically separated i'd rather than blast balls being using uh...

and instances where i have then watching on video blast balls being used it's uh...

i i i am not operationally seeing how they have functioned to separate people.

I have seen that they have been used to scatter people, but that's different than moving a group of people away from a particular location.

So just I think room for more conversation and greater understanding about the operational use and need for their use from the perspective of the police department and as well as the understanding that we have learned from the CPC's many years of advocating for their banning, as well as what we're hearing from various reviews associated with recent protests, including, as was mentioned in the Sentinel review.

And I do want to just caution that we're still very early on in the review phases of these events.

There's litigation through which facts will be fleshed out.

There's information that has been relayed to SPD that we're not at liberty to share because it comes from outside entities.

There's a whole host of factual context that will ultimately bear on the final reviews.

Some of the events, for example, which elicited tremendous public outcry were found by OPA to be unsustained.

The Sentinel event review process will provide fuller context around all of these issues.

As a department, we haven't had opportunity to fully digest each of these incidents because of the ongoing nature of them.

So I mean, I just expressed that as SPD's perspective.

And while we have you here, Becca, can you talk a little bit about...

what you've been doing parallel to the council's review of its June ordinance as it relates to policy, draft policy changes that have been circulating with the CPC and the other oversight bodies a couple months ago now, or maybe a little bit more than a month ago, The police department put out a blotter post stating that there were changes to use of force and crowd control policies.

Those weren't out publicly, although there was a blotter post announcing them.

And I subsequently followed up with the police department to receive copies.

I think they're they're out in in in the public now because of media reports.

But, um, given that we are, the council is, uh, deliberating on, uh, legislation, um, amendments to our existing legislation that will then have to go to the court for their review and their input.

And the police department is developing new policies that they are also working with our accountability partners in reviewing, and that there's overlap on some of these issues.

How do you see that moving forward?

Sure.

And that's a great question.

So the policies that we're putting out are not new policies.

All of our policies are online and publicly accessible.

Every year, we do a review of some of our core policies, specifically around use of force.

And that's on an annual review cycle.

We accept recommendations throughout the year, whether it's through an OIG audit, an OPA management action, or a force review board recommendation.

We compile the feedback.

And we edit policy, we revise policy accordingly as part of just a regular iterative review of policies and learning from incidents over the prior year.

Around this time each year, we put out draft revisions to these policies.

And, you know, increasingly over time, they become just, it becomes essentially tweaks to policy because you've reached this iterative point of reform.

Those policies then go to the DOJ and the monitoring team, the OIG, OPA, and the CPC for their review, their red lines, their comments to those policies.

This year, we're expecting that feedback in mid-January, I believe.

Following that, we generally sit down with the accountability partners and with OPA, or I'm sorry, with the DOJ and the monitoring team, and we flesh through these policy changes.

And we then submit them to the court for the court's approval.

And then the same thing starts all over again.

We start collecting recommendations, and those will inform the next year's iteration.

With respect to crowd management, I think what we learned this summer is that we need to do a better job of articulating our crowd management policy and there were substantial lessons learned over the summer and that we continue to learn from OPA and the OIG.

and some of the litigation that's ensuing that is informing the revisions to those policies.

And so the crowd management policy you'll see is quite a bit more revised this year and updated and substantive than in prior years, less so with the use of force policies.

But the crowd management policy as well will go through the same review cycle with our accountability partners and with the federal monitor and the DOJ.

And we put these, you know, there's been a lot of discussion over the past few years as to how do we get community input into SPD policy and SPD training.

And I believe part of the purpose of the, you know, codifying the CPC was to create that body as the forum for engaging with community and seeking community engagement with SPD.

OPA and OIG as well also have their community outreach specialists.

At the same time, we hear a lot from community.

We receive emails, we receive letters, really across the whole range of opinion, and we try to balance those as well.

Some other departments have had a past practice of putting out policies for review by the community, and given where we are in the consent decree process and the clear interest of the community in reviewing these policies, we made the decision to give that a try and put the policies out publicly for community feedback as well.

Thank you so much, Becca.

Shailene, I see your hand is up.

Do you want to add something?

Yeah, just a couple things if I may.

To the first piece that Rebecca was speaking to, where we talk about the ways in which officers show up at a demonstration.

We mentioned a report that Seattle has over 300 demonstrations in a year.

And so one of our recommendations was the city needs to take a really hard look at how they show up, at what particular demonstrations and who's demonstrating.

The ones that have happened in these recent months have been, yes, we talk about against the government, but specifically the police department.

And then the police show up in order to ensure we consider safety within those peaceful demonstrations.

And then sometimes you have counter protesters.

What we hear from community and what we also see is sometimes the Wayne officers show up not just in riot gear, but if counter protesters are present, Who are they facing?

I think we are all in this virtual space are very aware about who they are facing, says a lot about who they're watching and who they think is the threat.

And so I would urge everyone to pay attention to the videos, the people that have spoken out about this and the pictures that have been taken on what that looks like.

And then let's have an honest conversation with community and get their thoughts and their feelings and their experiences on what that was like for them instead of us just talking about it.

Because I can talk about videos, I can talk about those things, but I wasn't present for those demonstrations.

So I'd like for those voices to be uplifted and talk about that.

On the second piece I'd like to mention, and I think Becca does a really good job of mentioning that, yes, we are the CPC.

We were put together in order to uplift and the community to gather voices and to make sure they had a stage and a platform to be heard.

I would say that in the spirit of that partnership and the spirit and the way we were formed, we would love to continue to have the opportunity to decide how that works.

If that is in fact our purpose and that's also something that we agree on, then we should be able to set those objectives and the way in which that works instead of potentially being told, this is the way we'd like to engage with community.

Let us decide that.

We talk to community, the community speaks through us, they speak for themselves.

Let them decide how they would like to engage the department, how they would like to engage the accountability partners, the CPC included, and council.

As I've seen it thus far, I think we all could be doing a better job partnering with each other, listening to each other to ensure that the community, even during a time where we have Zoom meetings and it's virtual because of COVID, we could still be in the communities lifting it up.

We heard from Coley, the previous conversation and all of the organizations that were listed that were coming together to do great work.

As a CPC, we have these relationships.

So does OPA, so does IG, so does the council.

We have organizations that can go into their particular communities, have these conversations, report back.

In addition to, when we have these conversations, how do we know which things will be implemented and which ones are not and the justifications for those?

We should be reporting out to our community and to those community partners We heard you.

This is what you said.

We will put this out publicly and then we will let you know what the department has decided to do in partnership during the consent decree process, the DOJ, and why we need to be telling people why and how.

And I don't think we're doing that all the way.

And I would love for CPC to continue to have the chance to really and fully step into our role and make sure that community is heard and seen.

I think that was it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Shailene.

I really appreciate those words.

And I also want to, even though I understand that there is a lot of discomfort from the police department as it relates to out-and-out bans on some of these lethal weapons, I just want to be clear that we are, Seattle is not an outlier in having these discussions about legislative bans.

Earlier this summer, some cities did so.

Most recently, Philadelphia, on October 29th, banned the use of tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray on protesters.

Boston, this week, passed an ordinance prohibiting the use of kinetic impact projectiles and chemical crowd control weapons.

with a couple of exceptions in their bill.

So I appreciate that SPD is with us here today.

I appreciate their engagement with the community.

I want to note that in their draft revisions on the policies I mentioned earlier, and I'm sorry, I did not mean to suggest that they were new policies.

They're changes to existing policies.

They do have a link to a survey to provide feedback, which they're accepting through January 8th.

So they're not just reaching out to accountability partners, they're also reaching out to members of the public and receiving input from members of the public.

And that information is contained in the announcement about the draft provisions.

I don't have the, the web address now, but it's pretty easily found.

And we'd love to hear if there are thoughts or comments or questions from any of my colleagues on this committee.

And...

Just really quickly.

Yes, Council President Gonzales, thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Verbal, you had asked a bit ago whether we wanted to signal sort of a preference in terms of direction.

And I just wanted to signal my interest in looking at what I think you're describing, which would be a potential substitute bill that would replace the previously passed ordinance that is the subject of current litigation.

And I would be interested in exploring legislation, as you've described, one that sort of allows us to memorialize some of the accountability partners, subject matter experts in this space to memorialize in areas of where there is current agreement.

I think that's a good place for us to start.

And of course, it still means that we will have to wrestle with some of some of the areas in which there is not universal agreement and would be interested in continuing to have a conversation about how to how to reconcile the differences and sort of what criteria or what information we should be considering as policymakers to make a determination about how to reconcile those areas in which there isn't agreement.

And I'm not sure if in those areas it would be wise to, for example, submit proposals to, through the consent decree process or do additional community engagement.

I'm just not quite sure what that process would look like, but wanted to signal my interest in moving in that direction.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

We, so we have some, I think some time to consider how we want to, to, get more assistance to decision makers on the council about the areas where there's not 100% agreement on the part of our accountability partners.

So look forward to talking to central staff and talking with each of you about your ideas.

Appreciate knowing that you agree that starting with, in some ways low-hanging fruit, but in other ways, signaling that we are moving away from a total ban with amending the legislation in those areas where there is unified agreement that there should not be a ban in particular uses.

So I appreciate your concurrence with that as a first step.

I hope my colleagues, our colleagues also agree.

I actually feel like that is a significant accomplishment to make in this initial meeting.

And, you know, we have a lot more to do.

I want to also just highlight that central staff has reminded us that we should also consider whether or not there are high-level principles that we should consider codifying.

I don't want to, to the extent that there's agreement, I don't want to go down the path of codifying operational practices, but in some cases, codifying high-level principles for use of less lethal weapons in those instances in which we are allowing their continued use is something that we need to consider which instances we want to do that.

On that point, I would find it helpful, and I was trying to do a little bit of research during the discussion here, if Council Central staff could spend some time compiling how other jurisdictions, whether here in the states or abroad, because this is an issue that exists across the world, not just in the U.S., I think it would be really helpful to have just a sense of how other jurisdictions are addressing the use, you know, the potential regulation of less lethal weapons.

And I just think that that would be a really helpful exercise as we continue to think about both the sort of principles point that you're highlighting, but also just dealing with with potentially the substantive issues of how, you know, whether certain things should be completely banned, whether other things should be just regulated.

And so I just think that would be a helpful exercise both for us as policymakers, but also for just members of the public in general to get a better understanding of what the lay of the land is now post many, many incidents across the world.

Yeah, I think that's an important piece of research that the OIG, I think, laid a groundwork for back in probably August, they did some research on other jurisdictions, but as you note, much has changed.

So would like to return to that body of work that the OIG did and look at how we might consider other jurisdictions that may have updated laws and policies in the interim.

Yeah.

And I think in some instances, some jurisdictions proposed legislation that may have not passed.

And so just because it didn't pass doesn't mean that I still think it would be helpful to look at it, even if it wasn't ultimately passed.

I think Assembly Bill 6 was floated in California.

I don't think it ultimately passed.

But I think both laws that were successfully passed and those that were initially proposed but may have not made it through into law would still be helpful to see that as well.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, again, I'm sorry if you aren't on mute.

On my screen, it looks like you are on mute, and that is a sign that you might want to speak.

No, I have no questions at this time.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Any other council members?

I'm not seeing any.

Any other of our partners want to speak before I wrap things up?

Great, all right, well, we have our work cut out for us, definitely.

Really appreciate the partnership of each, the OPA, the OIG, and the CPC, as well as the Seattle Police Department, and my colleagues on the council, and the work done thus far by central staff.

If there is no further business before the committee, just letting folks know that the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee will be scheduled in the new year for January 12th.

And again, there are not any further remarks.

Happy holidays.

Thank you.

And we are adjourned.