Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 7/13/21

We're going to stay ready to go.

My apologies.

Good morning.

It is July 13th, 2021, and the meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

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?

Council Member Schwan?

Present.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

For President.

Thank you so much.

So for today's committee agenda, we will be hearing the 2021 Mid-Year Accountability Report from the Community Police Commission and the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Police Accountability.

We'll also be hearing a presentation on the development or the process for the development thus far of the pay-up proposal for minimum compensation for app gig workers and an overview of those stakeholder conversations to date.

We'll be hearing the less lethal weapons bill listed for discussion.

Vote amendments are listed on the agenda regarding the right of action and a clarification regarding the use of pepper bowls.

We will now approve our agenda for our committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

This time we'll transition into public comment.

I'll moderate the public comment.

Each speaker will be given one and a half minutes to speak.

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

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

The link is also listed on today's agenda.

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

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

Please begin by speaking.

and stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left, and that chime will indicate that there is, again, 10 seconds left in the allotted time.

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

If you do not end your comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, we encourage you to do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options that are listed on the agenda.

We've got 24 people signed up for public comment today.

That's one of the reasons why we've adjusted the time for speaking to one and a half minutes.

I will also adjust the amount of time allotted on the agenda to speak to allow as many speakers as possible.

And if there are no objections, I will suspend the rules to allow an additional 25 minutes to speak for a total of 45 minutes of public comment.

Hearing no objections, the public comment period has been extended.

So with that, I'm going to just move right into calling on speakers.

I'll call on folks, again, two at a time.

And we'll start with Kimberly Wolf followed by Howard Gale.

Kimberly.

Remember to press star six.

There you go.

Sorry, I had to mute on the phone too.

Okay.

Okay, my name is Kimberly Wolf.

I'm a pay up leader and I've been in gig worker since 2012 on delivery and rideshare apps.

I'd like to thank you for discussing our pay up policies today because it's time for every worker in the city to get a fair shake and a minimum pay for that so that we can We can thrive instead of just barely survive.

I started doing gig work because I have a physical condition where I can only work for a few hours at a time because I need to break up my work hours over the day.

So apps are the best way for me to make a decent income without the rigid schedule of 95 work.

I want to run my own business.

Gig work allows me to do that.

But in the nine years I've worked in this gig economy, I've seen that flexibility undermined.

The pay gets lower and lower every single year.

while the expenses, especially cost of my mileage, get higher.

The result for me was a car that had been hit, I had to get rid of and get a new car immediately, and all I could get was this Buick that did 18 miles a gallon.

So I went from a Focus doing 30 some odd to a Buick doing 18. My expenses skyrocketed.

And at the same time, they were lowering the pay.

kind of between a rock and a hard spot there, I basically went homeless.

I couldn't afford the rent.

And I, we had pay up policies in place.

I wouldn't be homeless today.

We want the flexibility of being contractors, but in order for that to be real, we need pay that accounts for our overhead costs.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Howard Gale followed by Carmen Segura.

Howard?

Good morning.

Howard Gale, District 7. Our ninth year of police reform has given us the farcical, such as when the OPA expends resources on surveys to improve the methods by which the OPA explains to people that their beatings and abuse were justified.

We have also seen the infuriating, such as OPA Director Meyerberg rationalizing the failure to discipline all six SBD officers who were at the D.C.

insurrection by proclaiming their First Amendment rights well at the same time margaret justifies police behavior that is quashed those rights for thousands of seattleites then there is the morally unconscionable behavior director by a bird refusing to investigate the s pb murder of terry caver last year until he is embarrassed into initiating an investigation three months after the fact and now 14 months later has still not released his findings in the hope that we will forget.

And then there is the failure of the CPC to hold public forums for over six years.

And then when they do in February and the community unanimously tells them they do not want police investigating police, the CPC promptly votes unanimously to do the exact opposite.

After eight years of failed accountability, it is time to do what Newark, Nashville, Portland, Oregon, Oakland, and so many other U.S. cities are doing, develop a police accountability system with actual community control over police policy, police misconduct, investigations, and police discipline.

Instead of having the council debate when, where, and with what weapons police can beat us, we need to take back control of public safety.

Please visit seattlestop.org, that's seattlestop.org, to find out how we can have an initiative to regain.

Thank you, Howard.

Our next speaker is Carmen Figueroa, followed by Peter Condit.

Carmen?

Hello.

Hi, my name is Carmen Figueroa, and I would just like to thank you today to allow me to briefly explain why on-demand gig workers need lawmakers to set pay standards by passing the payout policy this year.

Large companies often tout the merits of trickle-down economics.

If workers work hard at Making the company successful and profitable, the company will trickle down excess profits back down to the worker in the form of pay raises and benefits.

But this is simply not true.

These app companies have made millions off my labor and have no intention of investing in me or any of their workers.

They are actively lobbying for the ability to force workers to work more with less pay.

I would like us to switch to the philosophy of dignity of work, where all work is respected, equally and all workers are paid a fair and decent wage.

The pay up pay standards policy takes the first few steps to recognize and respect workers' humanity by demanding workers be paid a living wage.

Lawmakers need to pass the pay up pay standards policies for gig workers in 2021 because we are not disposable and we should not be exploited.

Thank you for your time and your support.

Thank you, Carmen.

Our next speaker is Peter Condit, followed by Jeannie Tan.

Peter?

Hello, my name is Peter Condit, and I'm an abolitionist living in District 6. I'm calling to ask Council to amend Council Bill 120105 to remove all restrictions on the right of action and to stipulate that all settlements come out of SPD's budget.

The right of action is the bill's accountability mechanism.

So it must be accompanied with real financial consequences if SPD violates it.

As currently written, the right of action excludes everyone who is unable to prove three things.

One, that the person's injuries occurred in the gathering.

Two, that SPD falsely designated the gathering as a violent public disturbance.

And three, that the person was not committing a criminal offense.

Even with the two proposed amendments, the right of action is still subject to SPD's explanation of why it used the weapon.

That means everyone injured by SPD's use of OC spray during the Labor Day protest at SPOG headquarters would be excluded, since SPD claimed it used the weapon for a targeted arrest and not for crowd control.

It also means that the child that SPD pepper sprayed would be excluded, since SPD again claimed it was attempting a targeted arrest.

A right of action that bars people based on how SPD writes up its reports after the fact is unjust.

Please amend the right of action to remove all restrictions and stipulate that payments come directly out of SPD's budget.

Black Lives Matter defund SPD.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jeannie Tuan, followed by BJ Last.

Jeannie?

Good morning, council members.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you for taking the time to hold this hearing, which would impact 4,000 gig workers in Seattle.

My name is Jeannie Chan.

I'm the executive director of Seattle Restaurants United, a grassroots organization with 250 member businesses in Seattle.

SRU members are progressive business owners who want to see our city and our economy reflect our values of community hospitality.

We believe that when the most marginalized in our communities are truly cared for, it's good for our businesses, it's good for our customers, and it's good for our city.

We are here because we support the principle that every worker should be paid enough to pay their bills and nourish their family, especially hospitality workers.

This is true whether they work for a small restaurant, a big chain, or a delivery driver for an app.

Delivery apps have been an important part of keeping the restaurant industry alive over the past year.

However, that is largely due to the legislation created by this council, capping delivery fees at 50%.

Because of that cap, restaurant owners were actually able to afford these services, which historically have been up to an astronomical 35%.

During the last year, DoorDash's sales tripled, and their CEO was paid $400 million.

Yet frontline drivers, without whom the system simply would not function, do not see a financial return that reflected their increased workload and risk.

A recent survey found half of gig workers reported that they had less than $100 in their bank account at some point during the past year, and 36% said they are sometimes unable to afford groceries and other basic items.

This workforce made up of immigrants, people of color, and single parents have helped restaurants survive.

They have brought food to the community when we're afraid or unable to leave our homes.

There are hardworking people in our community who are doing that delivery for delivery apps.

get door dash scrub hub.

Thank you, Jamie.

Our next speaker is BJ Last, followed by Lada Ahmed.

BJ?

Hello.

My name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard resident.

I'm calling to ask council to amend CB120105 to remove all restrictions on the right of action and to stipulate that all settlements come out of SPD's budget.

The right of action is the bill's accountability mechanism, so it must be accompanied with real financial consequences when SPD violates it.

The right of action should be available to everyone injured by SPD, regardless of how SPD writes up its report.

As currently written, the right of action excludes everyone who is unable to prove in-person injuries occurred in a gathering, which would exclude people who were tear gassing their own homes last year and bystanders, and that SPD falsely designated the gathering as a violent public disturbance.

This would exclude everyone injured in the Pink Umbrella incident unless they could prove there weren't 12 people anywhere in a crowd of thousands threatening violence.

Proposed Amendment 1, and to a lesser extent Amendment 2, remedies many of these issues, but both amendments restrict the right of action to injuries caused by uses of less lethal weapons that violate the bill.

So people would still need to prove that SPD's use of OC spray, tear gas, and 40 millimeter launchers They'd have to disprove SPD's explanation of why it used those weapons.

This would exclude everyone injured in the Spog Labor Day protest, since SPD claimed it was using OCD spray for a targeted arrest and not for crowd control.

Proposed amendment number two would also exclude anyone who could not prove that they were not committing a criminal offense, which would exclude all protesters arrested last year who have not been charged.

A right of action that bars people based on how SPD writes up its reports after the fact is unjust.

Next speaker is Lada Ahmed followed by Debra Kaheles Booker.

Lada?

Good morning, council member.

My name is Lada Ahmed.

I'm Uber and Lyft driver and driver's union member.

And I do delivery sometimes.

The pay on the delivery side is really poor.

Thank you for your time.

Our next speaker, Debra Cahillis Booker, is showing is not present, so we'll move down to Jason Austin, followed by Ben Sircombe.

Jason?

Jason, I see you're still on mute.

Can you hit star six, please?

again, star six.

There you go.

Thank you.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Certainly can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, members of the Council.

My name is Jason Austin.

I am a renter living in District 2 and here as a member of the Seattle Transit Riders Union.

I'm here to speak in favor of the additional protections for gig delivery workers proposed by Pay Up Seattle.

I want to thank Council Member Herbold for her leadership on this issue.

and encourage the full council to extend the same protections to gig delivery workers that rideshare app workers currently enjoy thanks to your efforts.

I used to work as a Lyft driver prior to the council extending these protections.

So I have some idea what my brothers and sisters at gig delivery app companies are experiencing.

I remember days where the fare I collected didn't cover the gas that I used.

I would work 80 plus hour weeks where I earned far less than the minimum wage at the time.

I know there are thousands of others in this city struggling with the same need to live on less than the minimum wage.

The record profit and growth of these gig delivery companies comes at the expense of providing their drivers with decent wages and benefits.

It is shameful that DoorDash, a company that has enjoyed explosive growth during the pandemic, ranks among the 50 companies with the most workers in Washington receiving food stamps.

Gig delivery workers deserve the same protections that you sought to extend to rideshare workers.

I encourage you to build on the good work that you started and use this as an opportunity to ensure all gig workers can live and thrive in the city they help maintain.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

Our next speaker is Ben Thurcombe followed by Paul Veggers.

Ben?

Hi, City Council.

Psychedelics have played a pivotal role in shaping my ability to eliminate my depression and anxiety.

The medicine allowed me to look at my issues through an outside perspective and find the quickest way to overcome my illness.

I was able to forgive myself and others because I was given that perspective.

It does not make sense to make it illegal for people to get the same help that I received.

Psychedelics have allowed me to thrive and love myself.

Don't you think other folks should have that opportunity as well?

Psychedelics have benefits beyond the medical sphere.

I've been able to enjoy relationships, music, colors, and life in general after use of small and large amounts of the substance.

It has made me laugh, sing, dance, love, and be a true version of myself.

Seattle, we're behind here.

Oregon and California have already decriminalized psychedelics.

The science is out there and the stories are in front of you.

We can't wait any longer.

I urge you to pass an ordinance by the end of September.

Let's end this war on drugs and be on the right side of history.

Visit decriminalizeseattle.org for more info.

We are meeting today if you're interested.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ben.

Our next speaker, Paul Vegors, is not listed or is listed as not present.

So we'll move down to Tony Rousmanier, followed by Shamir Tana.

Tony?

Hello.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Tony Rousmanier.

I'm a licensed psychologist with a private practice here in Seattle.

I'm also clinical faculty at the University of Washington.

I'm speaking today in support of the resolution to decriminalize ethnogens and psychedelic medicines in Seattle.

As a psychologist, I'm very aware there's a great need for new treatments for many psychological diagnoses.

Many clients suffer from these diagnoses for years or decades despite trying talk therapy or traditional pharmaceutical treatments.

A rapidly growing body of empirical research suggests that psychedelic medicines can be used safely and are highly effective for some of the hardest to treat diagnoses.

including PTSD, addiction, and severe depression.

Johns Hopkins alone has published over 60 studies showing the efficacy of psychedelic medicines, and studies have been done or underway by University of Wisconsin, NYU, Mount Sinai, Mass General, Harvard, and Yale.

Many clients in these studies had previously tried traditional talk therapies without success, but they showed benefit from psychedelic medicines.

Our country is experiencing a severe mental health crisis, maybe even more acute by COVID, and it does not make sense to outlaw medicines that have such a strong research support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Paul.

I'm sorry, Tony, thank you.

Our next speaker, Shamir Tana, is showing as not present, so we'll move down to Ryan Burt, followed by Paige Converse.

Ryan?

Ryan, you're showing us on mute.

Can you hit star six, please?

Okay.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Ryan Burt.

I live in District 4, and I'm here to speak about the pay-up policy, a little bit about my experience and why this policy should go forward.

I've worked in the service industry and hospitality industry in Seattle for about six years now.

During the pandemic, When I was serving at a restaurant and then I was unemployed, I resorted to gig work to try to make up income.

And it wasn't enough.

I wasn't able to make enough money.

I went from an industry as a server where traditionally people have this idea about how, you know, most of my wage was made up by tips and people have this idea.

that a server's going to make 20% if they do a good job, 18% or 20 to 18%.

People don't have that idea when it comes to gig workers.

If you're delivering food to somebody, you have an option to tip, but most people didn't.

There's no cultural impetus to be like, oh, I should tip this person for doing a good job.

People don't feel bad if they don't tip.

I went from gig work to working at Amazon as delivery driver, and I'm back to serving now thanks to COVID restrictions being lifted, and people are very generous right now, but I don't think people have that idea when it comes to gig workers that they need to help people.

And so I'm just urging the council to push this policy forward so that people can be supported, that people can make the wage that they need to make to build a

Thank you, Ryan.

I noticed that Paul Vegars, who we called earlier, is now present.

So we're going to go back up to Paul and then go to Page Converse.

Paul?

Paul, if you could hit star six, please, so you can be unmuted.

Paul, we're still seeing you muted.

Can you hit – there you go.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So my name is Paul Vigars and I'm calling in with the Pay Up campaign for gig workers rights.

Last year I called in with a number of number of my friends to secure sick pay and the Seattle premium pay.

And I really really thank the city council for taking the bold action for signing that.

But it wasn't enough.

I mean, for about two weeks, I saw that my pay was ballooning above minimum wage in terms of my take-home pay before tips.

But within a couple weeks, Uber started slashing back at our mileage, slashing back at the pay per job for hours.

And it used to be that I would actually be able to go into my app and see for a given job that I worked, say, 20 minutes delivering that job.

And I got a certain rate for that hourly time.

And I would also be able to see how much I got for mileage.

And neither of those are visible anymore.

But what I do know is that on any given job, Uber takes home between 30 and 40% of what is being paid.

So in that meantime, while I'm making usually around $10 an hour before tips, Uber is taking home 30 to 40% of that pay.

and I would like to see City Council move to establish a uniform pay floor and establish that transparency.

Thank you, Paul.

Our next speaker is Paige Converse.

She'll be followed by Sage Wilson.

Paige?

Hello, my name is Paige.

I work at an Amazon Fulfillment Center I came here from Atlanta last year to live a better life.

And I do.

But I've worked as a delivery driver before.

And the place I worked at, there were no safety rules in place for drivers for one thing.

And I was told, watch your back when you go into.

There's no limit now with DoorDash and Uber and the other monopolies.

There's no limit on how late drivers can work.

If the restaurant's open 24 hours, you drive 24 hours.

When you go into an apartment complex, they're never numbered in a standard way.

You often can't find where you're going.

So in addition to things other people have said, from a safety standpoint, these powerful companies need to do better for the people that are, you know, potentially putting themselves in danger to deliver food.

And of course, Amazon has been notorious for using and underpaying gig labor, and companies like Amazon need to be held accountable.

Payup is not, I'm with, I represent Payup, and Payup is not asking for anything extraordinary, just equitable treatment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sage Wilson, and Sage will be followed by Des Chalfant.

Sage.

Hi, I'm Sage Wilson with Working Washington here to comment in support of the payout policies.

And I wanted to underscore really that what we're talking about today is tens of thousands of people working here in Seattle, delivering food, walking dogs, stocking shelves, washing dishes who do not benefit from our basic labor standards.

Or gig workers being paid far below minimum wage just because of the companies that hire them and the work that they do.

And it's no coincidence, of course, that these gig workers excluded from Seattle's basic protections are especially likely to be immigrants, workers of color, LGBTQ workers, and from other historically excluded groups.

Right now, what we have allowed is a system to arise in Seattle where if you deliver food for a restaurant, you could be protected by minimum wage because you're an employee, or you could be a gig worker doing the same work for $1.45 an hour after expenses.

If you deliver groceries, you could be a union member getting a living wage, or you could be a gig worker doing the same work for $7.66 an hour after expenses.

We know what direction this will go in if we don't act.

We need to reset these incentives by making the gig economy pay up.

Raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide transparency to gig workers to ensure everyone is making at least minimum wage after expenses for every job they do in the city of Seattle.

Thank you, Sage.

Our next speaker is Des Chalfant, followed by Valerie Schloret.

Des?

Hello, my name is Dez Jelfant from the Hilltop District of Tacoma, Washington.

My pronouns are he, they, and I am a non-binary person.

This world can often be hostile towards people part of the LGBTQIA2 spirit community, especially when they are black, indigenous, or people of color.

There's a high number of people within the community with PTSD, anxiety, and a myriad of other mental health issues caused by bullying and rejection from family, peers, and cis-heteronormative religious institutions.

As I have consumed psychedelics, they help cement my self-esteem in a world that often makes me feel anxious for being out and proud.

I'm often misgendered and dead named because of my outward appearance or ignorance from family and peers.

It is ingrained often in a world that the gender binary, male and female, are the default.

Our world is more complex than that.

Gender identity and expression is just as much as a variance in the human experience of height and hair color.

With the decriminalization of psychedelic safe spaces in which queer people can take psychedelics and opening doors to once hostile medical institutions could help to heal the decades-long trauma of these communities decriminalize infusions, and I have no doubt we can help shape the future in which psychedelics help us explore our common...

Thank you, Des.

Our next speaker is Valerie Schleret, followed by Jared Porter.

Valerie?

Good morning.

Valerie Schleret, District 2. An article in the South Seattle Emerald on June 30th ran under the headline, OIG memo reveals serious deficiencies in OPA protest investigation that cannot be remedied.

That corrupted investigation was of a violent police response to a protest of SPOG in September 2020. The reporting from the Emerald is significant.

It's proof of what city residents have seen for a long time.

The OPA is not a reliable body for police accountability.

Last week, OPA concluded that some of the SPD officers who attended the insurrection in D.C.

were protected by their right to free speech.

Yet OPA's findings and other investigations did not defend the free speech rights of protesters who were beaten up on video by SPD, including attacks with tear gas and blast balls.

We're in a vicious circle where we discuss harmful police actions when they happen, do nothing substantive about them, then turn away and let the cycle repeat.

Let's replace the OPA with 100 percent civilian accountability with real power including to disciplined officers.

For more information see seattlestop.org.

Thank you Valerie.

Our next speaker is Jared Porter followed by Tatiana Quintana.

Jared.

Good morning City Council members.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Jared Porter.

I'm a senior citizen and a part-time driver with Uber and also food delivery.

I am also a member of the Drive Forward organization and many of the members feel like our agenda is often not contemplated seriously by the City Council.

Our management or our leaders take a lot of time to put forward things like a very good driver's bill of rights and moderate proposals in general.

I question the city to not take too drastic actions that would adversely affect the gig economy companies because already Seattle is probably the highest cost city in the nation for them to operate under.

We take for granted that they will always be here, but if things get too tough, they might leave, and that would lessen competition and drive up prices.

So thank you for taking my call.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tatiana Quintana, followed by Cody Zalewski.

Tatiana?

Hello, council members.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Great.

All right.

So I'm in District 2 and I am part of decriminalized nature Seattle.

I have a question to ask a few questions actually.

You know what if we took a public health and evidence based harm reduction approach to drug policy that centered on helping our most marginalized traumatized and oppressed members of society.

Instead of punitive measures what if our policies were proactive.

What if we focus on addressing the often unmet needs of housing inadequate income and health care access.

I believe that these basic steps would help mitigate many of the circumstances that contribute to the rising numbers in overdoses, depression, anxiety, and other health issues that affect us and our loved ones daily.

Our systems and policies are excruciatingly slow to change, and I believe that decriminalizing psychedelics in the way outlined in our ordinance is a crucial alternative that will help many folks on their healing journey sooner than later.

The psychedelic experience has a wide variety of benefits including but not limited to helping people heal depression PTSD anxiety substance use disorder cluster headaches and more.

Our proposed ordinance focuses on equitable access as a key cornerstone and therapeutic uses via personal and group healing modalities as an alternative path to support the health and wellness of all residents in our community.

We're aiming to have this legislation passed this year ideally well before the start of the budget season this fall.

Thank you Tatiana.

Our next speaker is Cody Zaleski followed by Miriam.

Miriam.

Hello.

Hello Seattle City Council members.

My name is Cody Zaleski District 4 and I'm part of Decriminalize Nature Seattle.

Psychedelics has shown remarkable promise for treating many ailments such as PTSD MDD and substance abuse amongst others.

There is no reason the City of Seattle shouldn't have these medicines listed as the lowest law enforcement priority which is a very small and modest step in the direction of drug law reform.

The recent inclusion of psychedelic decriminalization on the agenda of the Overdose Emergency and Innovative Recovery Task Force is a welcome step on behalf of the council.

Psychedelic therapy offers promising treatment to the opioid abuse which has been plaguing our city.

We look forward to the upcoming report from the OEIR and appreciate council members for the willingness to put this issue on the referral calendar for a vote before budget deliberation begins.

Our organization also expresses solidarity with the gig workers at Public Common today.

Thank you again for taking the time to consider the issue of entheogenic decriminalization and I see the rest of my time.

Thank you Cody.

Our next speaker is Miriam Miriam.

Miriam if you can.

There you go.

Hi, my name is Miriam, and I'm a resident of District 2. While not on the agenda for today, I would like to first address the city's absolute lack of preparedness for a recent heat wave.

While you provided a single shuttle driver to accommodate thousands of residents, both housed and unhoused, into last minute and unadvertised shelters, fellow activists and I were able to coordinate a complete shuttle system to get at-risk people access to resources.

We spent four days distributing over 5,000 gallons of water to underserved communities, because you couldn't even be bothered to turn on the water fountain.

Well, I'm proud of our community for once again proving that we're the ones who take care of each other.

I'm disgusted that you can even call that an attempt to look out for your constituents.

We lost over a hundred lives with countless more hospitalized because you couldn't get your act together in time.

What are you going to do about the upcoming smoke?

Because you better have a plan in place sooner than you did for this heat wave.

Next, we know all of the officers who were in DC on January 6th even the couple who decided to quite literally storm the Capitol for their honeymoon.

We've known these names for weeks, thanks to public information, even though Mike Solon is shaking in his little booties at the thought of there being a leak.

Do something about it.

The OPA needs to be civilian-led and focused.

Police cannot and will not police themselves.

Next, the right of action that is barring people from taking legal action when their rights are violated is unethical and unjust.

Time and time again, We are leaving the use of force up to the discretion of officers when they're proven that they lack the critical thinking to make those decisions.

Amend that right of action.

Black Lives Matter.

We're on stolen land.

Thank you, Miriam.

That is our last public speaker that we have showing as present.

We do have a few people here who did not make it back in order to give public comment, but seeing that all the other speakers have spoken, I'm going to close public comment now and move on to the items in our agenda for today.

Before we move on to the first item on the agenda, I want to recognize first that Councilmember Morales has joined us.

Good morning, councilmember.

And I also want to just give a quick update about the results of the community safety and capacity building request for proposals from HSD funded by $12 million that the council appropriated to build capacity in community safety organizations that provide alternatives to policing and the traditional criminal legal system for both violent and nonviolent crime.

I know people are eager to hear the outcome of this particular request for proposal.

This is a significant increase in funding for organizations that do this really important work at this really important time where we need crime prevention and violence disruption work being done in our community.

So just a little bit of quick background.

We provided, we being the council, $10 million in this funding for work during last summer's budget rebalancing process, and then added another $2 million because it had not, the $10 million, even though we approved it in 2020 for 2020. The dollars did not get out the door.

We increased it, added another $2 million in 2021. This funding was a really high priority and key request of decriminalize Seattle and the King County Equity Now Coalition.

So far, we've received, this committee has received a briefing from the Human Services Department on the RFP process in January.

Following that presentation, Assistant Director Howell responded more fully to questions in a memo distributed to committee members in February.

Those are the questions coming out of the committee discussion in January.

HSD released the RFP on March 1st, which was available on HSD's funding opportunities page.

And then in March, my office reached out to committee members with a new memo from Director Howe with more details about their work leading up to creating the RFP.

At the March committee meeting, we received a presentation from the mayor's office and the Human Services Department about the Human Services Department's community engagement process for the RFP, the learnings of that process, their spend plan, and RFP itself.

Following that presentation, committee members and full council approved legislation that lifted the proviso on these funds.

I have invited the Human Services Department to present on the results of the RFP process.

For today's meeting, they declined and instead provided a memo back on June 16th in lieu of their participation today.

My office circulated that memo to committee members yesterday.

Briefly, the key points contained in the memo are that the RFP had over 70 applications requesting more than three times the available We also have a $10.4 million in funding.

At the request of applicants, the Human Services Department pivoted from recorded interviews during the application process to live interviews to allow applicants to share thoughts and strategies more freely.

We are seeing a little bit of a delay from what was the intended awards time, awards notification period.

The large number of applicants, Raiders and Raider meetings presented logistical I'm going to go ahead and close out the meeting.

is July 15th.

NHSD has confirmed that they will attend our August 10th meeting of this committee in order to provide a comprehensive update on this really important investment.

I just wanted folks I have been reporting out on the process, not just in this committee, but doing a little bit in full council as well.

Again, we had planned to have awards announced yesterday.

I just wanted folks to know that they're still coming.

So with that, will the clerk please read in the first agenda item?

Agenda item number 1, 2021 Mid-Year Accountability Report.

for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Alex.

Can we start with a quick round of introductions before we get started?

Somebody start off and we can just do the popcorn approach and hand it off to somebody else.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Amy Tsai, Deputy Inspector General, and I'll pass it off to Shailene Morris.

Good morning, everyone.

Shanley Morris, Policy Director for the Community Police Commission.

And should I hand it off to someone else, Becca Boatwright?

Please.

Good morning, Becca Boatwright, SPD Legal.

I'll hand it off to Mark Baird.

Thank you.

Good morning, Mark Baird, Chief Operating Officer for SPD.

I will hand it over to Angela.

Good morning.

Angela Stosi, Executive Director of Budget and Finance for SPD.

Thank you.

I will pass it over to Lauren.

Hi.

Lauren Caputo, Data and Policy Analyst at OPA.

All right.

Is that everybody?

Great.

Thank you.

So this is a...

This is an update from the three accountability bodies that is required in the 2017 Accountability Ordinance.

It calls for SPD to be at the presentation, so folks from SPD, I really appreciate you joining us today.

And I'm not sure who is going to kick us off, but I open the floor for whomever is going to do that.

Thank you.

Council Member Shaleen is going to start us off.

I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and start the presentation.

Thank you, Shaleen.

I definitely am.

Just give me one moment and I will make this work as it did this morning.

This is just the way it always is.

Perfect.

And now, Shailene, you're on mute.

Sorry.

There we go.

Okay.

All right.

Now we're getting started.

I will kick us off.

I have this started.

Amy, do you want to start?

I apologize.

Sure, just general context, although Chair Herbold laid it out nicely.

This is a mid-year report that's required by the accountability ordinance.

The purpose is to check in mid-year, if you will, on the status of any moving parts, the recommendations the partners are issuing, and our work in progress.

I think for our presentation this year, just due to the nature of the timing, that it is largely a status report on the work in progress.

So with that, I will pass it off to Shailene, and then I will cover OIG, and OPA will round it out.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you, Amy.

Like I said, this is an overview of mid-year, more of an update of what's going on from CPC, OIG, and OPA, and SPD is also present.

Good morning, everyone.

This mid-year in review, we're going to talk about a little tiny bit of the results of the 2021 legislative session.

That is a really small portion.

Primarily, since everyone was following that, we're going to talk about the accountability work and progress for each agency.

So like I said, when I just cover briefly, we had largely successful legislative session, and these just want to list very quickly all the bills.

that were successful within the policing legislation.

All of these were passed and have been signed into law.

Then also just a good plug for CPC, we actively engaged in Olympia through various methods on 75 percent of these bills.

All the agencies are very pleased with the outcome of this legislative session.

I'm moving on to specifically CPC work.

Some of the publications that we have are public facing work, included our letter to community on the police accountability tracker recommendations tracker, we call it part lovingly.

And as people know, that is a forward facing public interactive dashboard that allows folks to see all the recommendations that the partners have made.

And the letter that we published publicly want to talk about, hey, how did this actually come into existence?

How did CPC staff the dashboard, what kind of partnership did we have with the partners, so that way people can kind of walk through the process with us as we started building this back in September of 2020. We also had a letter to the Seattle Police Monitor.

This was just to address their draft assessment and methodology and plan, just so we had a hand in that and a voice at the table on things we think they could do differently or things that we appreciated.

We also spoke to via letter to the Labor Relations Committee about collective bargaining.

We hosted a series of community conversations that some of you attended, so we're over that.

And then also we hosted a town hall in February and produced a letter based on that feedback on the updates and changes to SPD's proposed changes to use of force and their crowd management policies.

And all those things, of course, are housed on our website.

So I want to talk a little bit about challenges and opportunities that we had.

So one of the challenges, of course, that everyone was facing and we're continuing to face is COVID-19 restrictions.

So COVID is, as we know, not over.

Some of us will be returning to work in a couple of months.

But as a CPC, as embedded in the community, one of the challenges that has persisted, and I think we've done pretty well, is how do we continue to engage with the community in a meaningful way to receive feedback, to hear their concerns, to hear their fears, hear the things that they like, hey, this went really well for us.

And so continuing to have our zoom platform meetings, reaching out folks in a virtual way.

And then as we move forward from this challenge arises opportunities to still maintain those virtual platforms, we noticed some accessibility increased, and also eventually returning face to face.

So it's a challenge, but also an opportunity.

Another challenge that's also presented itself an opportunity.

So we largely have brand new staff.

We have a new executive director and we have recently appointed seven new commissioners.

So with that, always with, you know, when you have new staff, new commission, there's always a challenge of onboarding folks, getting them up to speed, and then building those relationships.

But I say building relationships, because it also presents as an opportunity to reform, rebrand those relationships, and to have something new in terms of a rebirth, and how partnership and collaboration can really come together when you have new people at the table.

So as a challenge, we're also very excited to see those opportunity areas and grow.

I talked about this a little bit earlier, but I definitely warranted its own slide.

We are very pleased and very happy to have had.

the police accountability recommendations tracker part.

This was published in April, went live on our website.

Again, it is a public facing interactive dashboard that's powered by Tableau.

So folks can go in and see what recommendations were made by whom, to what agency, what was the response, what was the recommendation that was made, what did it say?

It also links to the original report where that recommendation originated.

And if there was a response from the recipient agency, the agency that received the recommendation, we also have that available for folks on the website and they can get to it.

So they can kind of we can back up and show, hey, this is where this came from.

What this also does is allow people to see the status of that recommendation?

Has it been implemented?

Is it still in progress?

What does that look like to the best that recipient agencies are able to?

So the next steps with this process that we are currently in with our partners in the accountability system is making sure that we have the accuracy of the information that was received, that we're updating that, and that our internal reporting processes to each other that we're all on the same page, we're doing this in a consistent manner, that one that everyone agrees to, so that we aren't reporting out anything that mischaracterizes a recommendation or a status update, implementation.

So, we are giving everyone the most up-to-date and accurate information.

So, that work is still ongoing, but it's up and running and we're very pleased.

Okay, another piece that CPC has always had, but recently we have started to relaunch, are our CPC workgroups.

So these workgroups are housed by CPC, staffed by commissioners, and we just talked about state legislative agenda.

That is one of the workgroups that will be coming back online next month as a senior policy advisor, Nia Franco, starts to do that work once again to help the strategies move forward.

So right now, what's up and running are our police practices work group, which is largely focused on demonstration management, and kind of reviewing and tracking some of that work.

We are coming online with behavioral health, and we're really excited to have two particular commissioners, Catherine Seibel and Dr. David Pinto, who are leading the charge in this work.

And so our behavioral health will focus largely on SPD's responses to crisis, but also officer wellness.

a balance there.

So we're really thrilled to have that up and running.

Our community engagement work group is ongoing and continuing.

We are going to have some new commissioners lead that charge.

We have a meeting coming up on July 20. And we're going to have some exciting input from community as we start to build and craft our communication strategy.

So I encourage everyone to attend.

And then lastly, our complainant appeals process.

We're right now still working to launch that, but is one that was charged by city council resolution.

So we're working to see how we can start that work.

Oh, and we have a nice picture here of one of our commissioners, just to say, so our community engagement and events.

So as we talked about a little bit earlier, our two largest events of this year that happened earlier in February, we had a town hall to receive community feedback and do a little bit of education around the policies updates from SPD about the use of force and crowd management.

So that was one heavily attended, largely successful that resulted in recommendations.

And then secondly, we had two separate community conversations about collective bargaining agreements.

One was also in most of our work as an education offer information, and then also receive feedback from the community on the ways in which they felt that we should move the recommendations that we should make and then we also had resulting recommendations via a letter.

We also have had an uptake in a collaboration with the Seattle Police Monitor.

So now the CPC has been included within the BMAP sessions, which is vision, mapping, analysis, and planning.

These meetings are for the partners and the monitor to come together and continue the strategy around police oversight reform and the ways in which they do their work as it aligns with the consent decree.

The CPC also has standing monthly meetings or monitor check-ins with our senior leadership.

Then also we helped along with the other partners to craft information for their semi-annual report that goes to the court, just updating the work that we've done thus far and where the CPC intends to move for the remainder of the year.

Lastly, we want to talk about some priorities and accomplishments here at the CPC.

With community engagement, We are actually working towards how we can better engage with youth and young people within Seattle.

I think we all understand that young people are leading the charge within police reform, police oversight, and really speaking up, which is awesome.

And we want to make sure that we are engaging with them in the best way for them and in partnership.

We want to continue the virtual community engagement throughout the pandemic.

And some of that is we hired a new community engagement director, so you may know her, Felicia Cross.

She started a couple months ago, so she will be the biggest part of that community engagement push and charge as we move forward.

In collaboration efforts, we need to talk about the police contract negotiations.

We have an advisor at the table that we've talked about before.

We have the recommendation tracking database part.

and then the engagement with the Seattle Police Monitor.

So these are just some of the ways that we are collaborating within the space.

Some of our internal business, we did have successful and permanent appointment of our new executive director, Brandy Grant, seven new commissioners, and have created a more robust onboarding protocols and process so that we can get people up to speed quick.

We have launched our strategic planning with Connected Realities, LLC, a dynamic group of folks that are gonna help us to craft a new strategic plan as we move forward so we can continue to be successful and ensure that we are representing and uplifting the voices of the community in the best manner for them in which they've requested from us.

We now have a CPC newsletter that goes out to the community and for the commission.

So everyone can kind of stay in tune with what the commission is doing, what the city is doing, but also what's happening in the news and what's going on.

We have a podcast in production, super excited about that.

And that will have so far a series of about six episodes that will talk about issues from broadly to policing nationally, to collective bargaining agreements, demonstration management.

and it'll be an opportunity for folks to kind of tune in and hear from experts and from CPC of what's going on.

So we're really excited about that and there'll be more to come.

So as that happens, we will absolutely put that out in the community.

And then lastly, we also have a monthly newsletter that goes out to community and it will just be very robust conversation with commission or executive director and just what everything is going on.

So that way the community has all the information in their hands as they move forward advocating for what they want in this space.

And I will turn this over to Amy Tsai from OIG.

Thank you, Shailene.

Before we turn over to the OIG, I just really want to thank you for all the incredible work that everybody at the CPC has done to get the organization fully staffed and operating after a period of transition, both in leadership and a very traumatic time after the murder of George Floyd for our community.

The workload has increased, but you guys have really shown yourselves to be up for the challenge.

I appreciate that the workgroups are all operating and that the recommendation tracker is a tool that is up and running for I want to make a point of appreciating the work that you've done to, in advance of the legislative session, identify what your priorities are.

That's allowed me to advocate for including your priorities in the city's annual legislative agenda.

So, really impressed by the amount of work you've done, strength that has been imbued in the organization.

at a very, very difficult time.

Very, very impressive.

Thank you.

Those are very kind words, Council Member Herbold, but we will take them.

Thank you so much.

That's a lot of work.

But our staff is, I'll just say they're incredible people that we get to work with every day with the support of the commissioners.

So I am very excited to see what we'll continue to do.

But thank you.

I really appreciate that.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair.

So, in regards to OIG, I think you're all aware that we have four main areas of function.

I'll just recap briefly.

It's, you know, we do audits of SPD and OPA also.

We have a policy best practice, a pretty data-heavy function to look at ways to improve the system based on innovations that are out there nationwide.

And we also have the function to review OPA's casework specifically.

I know there's been mention of that.

you know, in the public comment period.

And then the other category, I just lump into strategic leadership areas where the inspector general is involved in both the consent decree work and also other city efforts to further accountability.

So the presentation today talks about the work we're doing in those four general areas.

So Shailene, if you'd like to go ahead and advance the slide.

So for 2021, I think for OIG, it really does feel like 2020 part two.

that a lot of things that were set in motion last year are continuing into the first half of this year for us.

And so a lot of the projects I'm going to briefly talk about focuses on impacts to First Amendment rights, obviously the mass demonstration, police protest response, and community trust around the issues of use of force.

The main project I want to highlight today is the Sentinel event review.

And this is something that has, in terms of the mid-year report, it has occupied 25% of our staff have been working on this project.

And it is big because early on, mid-year last year, the city was interested in how to improve its response to police protests, and looking at that from a Sentinel event review lens has given OIG the ability to, this isn't a disciplinary look, this is a systemic look, that being the OIG charge, to look at what has caused the way police has responded, the way the public has reacted, and how to have a better city response going forward.

So one of the key aspects of this process has been that it has been as community-centered as we can make it.

And so it is, the Sentinel Event Review is a model that's used in the airline and medical field, for instance, to look at tragedies that happen, to find ways to keep that plane from going down, to keep the death on the operating table from happening.

And so in this case, what's novel about it is the Inspector General wanted to apply that model to police protests, which aren't a single tragedy, but a long series of recurring events over a long period of time.

And she brought community and SPD to the table to have that conversation.

So Shailene, if you wanna go ahead and advance the slide.

Part of building the Sentinel Event Review and making it community centered is that there is a planning group of community members, law enforcement, and other stakeholders talking about what should the Sentinel Event Review look at.

So if you look at the arc of use of force over time, that's this particular graph, or any other sources of data looking at misconduct complaints, looking at body-worn video, looking at what's happening in social media, There were trends and patterns over the period of protests of what was happening on the ground and how police were responding.

And so this particular slide is just to illustrate that OIG took a lot of data, and that's where the policy staff really came in.

They did a lot of data mining to look at what was happening and where were the logical pieces of information.

And these were these are broken out into you can see various spikes.

And so the work that's going on right now is to have the panel look at those first few days where you can see there was a lot of heavy activity.

So the planning group.

is our way of having community and law enforcement voice come together to say, what should we look at?

Because obviously what you look at can really set the tone for what you conclude and what aspects are explored.

So it really sets the tone.

And so it was important to have community voice up front.

then the panelists themselves selected with the assistance of the planning group is also a mix of community and law enforcement.

And I just really can't do justice in this presentation with my lone voice to express how remarkable the conversations have been.

There have been over 70 hours of panel meetings to date.

Just a huge, incredible commitment of time.

from the volunteer community panelists and also from law enforcement at the table really talking through these issues and and the hope is that the recommendations that they are of what they saw and what was important to all of them it based on the expertise that they brought to the table.

We're hoping that those recommendations, which are coming out soon, will resonate with both the community and also with the city in terms of next steps and what can improve.

So turning to the next slide.

So that's Sentinel that has really, that's our mid-year report.

It's been consuming a lot of work.

But in addition, the other aspects recognizing the intersection of community protests and policing OIG also has been undertaking examinations, looking particularly at response to people in crisis.

And this is some work that is being done in this case, in this particular bullet point, looking at things actually that went well.

And so the idea is we are both looking at where, you know, when there's a use of force that may be out of policy, then there's a whole mechanism that is in place to look at those.

And the idea here was to look at are there also lessons to be learned where sometimes things go well to bring those forward, emphasize those good practices, in addition to calling out where things need to change that are not being done well.

Pursuit policies that had some coverage in the state legislative session as well.

But a particular interest from OIG on examining and providing some assistance to SPD and looking at their pursuit policies and the impact that has on public safety.

And then the other one that I'll call out in terms of how everyone within OIG is looking at how the system is changing, how police are responding.

looking at minor traffic offenses and whether there are alternatives to some of those that are lower level that don't present safety or security risks where there may be heavy racial disparity implications.

And so that body of work, that again will be stakeholder led where the inspector general is convening experts and community and other stakeholders to come in and weigh in on the impacts to community, the impact to policing and move that conversation forward.

So next slide, please.

On the audit front, again, you'll see that theme of things that have come up in 2020. Mask wearing review, there was a matter brought to our attention about whether SPD officers were wearing masks.

And so that is a review that's in progress, looking at compliance with mask wearing policies.

And that report should be coming out in the near future as well.

Mutual aid.

Has been on our work plan for some matter of time.

What happened with that one is the protest being heavy with mutual aid components really did expand the scope and duration of that audit.

And so we'll be wrapping up that one this year as well.

But the idea there is to look at.

how other agencies respond and assist SPD and the policies and practices around that.

There's been historically some interest in immigration issues around mutual aid and other such topics of interest.

And so the mutual aid audit looks at those kinds of components.

The one major new audit that has really taken off this year is in the area of discipline.

And this is one that will also be wrapping up later this year.

But looking at the discipline process, it's been a topic of court concern.

It's been a topic of council member, the council, of course, and.

The city in general has had a lot of eyes on the discipline question.

And so looking at it from the time there's an OPA determination through to what happens at the disciplinary hearing and the appeal process and so forth, looking at the timeliness, the completeness of the response, whether it's fair, whether it's transparent, looking at that from an accountability perspective.

So I think that will be a very interesting one when it comes out.

And I don't need to go into detail about all of these.

This is just a highlight.

There is ongoing bodies of work going on in our audit and review for this list in particular is focused on SPD.

So, Shamie, if you want to go and advance the next slide.

So on the OPA review front, we have a couple of our staff who are regularly engaged in, excuse me, in our charge to look at what OPA is doing with its body of work.

So it's oversight of oversight, if you will, but civilian led.

And in this case, so I have on the slide, you know, one of the charges we do is we look at whether OPA is classifying cases correctly.

And so part of that is, it's not just a matter of is an investigation thorough, but there's a decision when a complaint comes in of should it be investigated?

And so there is a check built into that system to make sure that everyone's in agreement that the things that should be investigated are being investigated.

And then once it gets to an investigation stage, then OIG will issue certifications.

And those are certifications on whether it's timely, thorough, and objective.

And there were 142 as of mid-June, but just to give you a sense of volume in updating the slide, there actually have been 208 as of today.

So you can see just in the span of a month, there is a lot of ongoing investigative work that OPA does.

And then correspondingly, that is a wave that then comes over and hits OIG in terms of performing a review of those.

And I would say for OPA review, in terms of a mid-year status, far and away, it is the certification process that has been consuming the resources.

And what has happened is when the protests happened last year, there were, of course, it goes through, there's a complaint, and then there's a classification determination.

Then there's an investigation.

which can have usually a 180-day clock on it.

And then OIG gets a completed investigation to look at.

And so we're really seeing a heavy volume in early 2021, which is the culmination of reviewing OPA's work that occurred in 2020. And with the protest cases in particular, they tend to be more complex.

and more compilations because if you recall, OPA got 19,000 complaints.

And so in terms of the volume of investigations, when we're in the hundreds of investigations, excuse me, any one of those investigations can actually have a lot of issues or concerns contained within it.

And so that really has been the heavy lift for resources in this area.

Separately, I think these are on the slide, other areas of work that are within our charge looking at, other methods by which cases or issues are addressed or resolved.

Bias reviews, they'll just call out briefly.

We started a project, Council Member Herbold, Chair Herbold, in regards to one of your questions about how are bias reviews conducted?

How are they done across the country?

Are there better ways to do it?

And so taking a closer examination of that.

So that's all I have to say on that one.

Shailene, if you want to go ahead.

I just want to pause here, please, on this slide.

Thank you.

I see that Council Member Lewis has a question.

I have a question as well.

As it relates to the certification of investigations, are you reporting here full certifications?

I know there has been recently a lot of attention to partial certifications, and I'm also curious as to whether or not there is a number of investigations that weren't certified at all.

Very good question, council members.

So clarification, the 208 is our body of work.

So anytime we issue a certification, regardless of the outcome, it's 208 total.

So that's the body of work done.

In terms of partials, I can get you the specific number after this, but the full certification rate of timely objective thorough is about 95%.

And then so in about 5% of the cases, there would be a partial certification where a case might be on any of those criteria will be a partial, so it might not be timely thorough.

or objective.

Timeliness usually is around the areas of if there's a missed deadline of some kind, that would be the most likely trigger opportunity to correct a particular deficiency.

And then thoroughness, I think some of those would just be, just for example, whether there was a certain line of questioning that OIG felt should have been pursued that was relevant to the outcome of the case.

It would be examples like that.

One thing I was going to say in terms of partials, well, sorry, it escapes me.

That's okay.

We'll go to Council Member Lewis's question.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I don't know if it was this slide or the last one, but my question is about the auditing of discipline and accountability.

And this might be, this might be, feedback for scoping questions as we undertake that work in the future work plan.

But Madam Chair talked about this a little bit yesterday during briefing about efforts in the Seattle Police Department to respond to what is really becoming a national problem around extremism in the ranks of law enforcement and anti-democratic sentiment.

And I might have a follow-up question, but I guess I just wanted to throw that out there just as a scoping thing.

It seems ripe for a discipline and accountability audit.

And so I wanted to throw that out first, and I will almost certainly have a follow-up to this, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

Before you take that, Amy, as relates to that particular issue around extremism and identifying it within the ranks, it's my understanding that part of the bias review work that you're doing is intended to address that issue, both how we handle bias complaints, but also, I believe you have a body camera project that you're intending on working on to look at body camera and work with an academic to analyze how officers, even in cases where there's not an arrest, but to look at how they engage differently with different people.

Thank you, Council Member.

I think that's a good highlight is my list, by the way, is not exhaustive.

There's actually other projects that are ongoing, and so these are some of the highlights.

Directly to Council Member Lewis's question, extremism wouldn't be within the scope of the discipline audit that's in progress.

And in part, it's because really I think extremism is coming to the forefront of conversation right now, but the audit is looking at the disciplinary practices of what has been imposed.

And so when you think of a case working its way through the system, If you had an officer disciplined for extremism, then now it's within the scope of the kinds of cases that the auditors might be looking at.

But I think Councilmember Herbold raises a great point that there are other areas to try to get at some of those kinds of concepts that you're talking about.

And I think you yourself have done a really good job of highlighting that there is also a distinction between extremism and just bias institutional bias and other kinds of related types of issues that come to mind for people.

And so I think there is a lot of work certainly in the partner arena being done on disparity and bias in general.

So the bias review I just talked about, the one that Council Member Herbold is referencing, I think we actually have a couple.

So making sure I'm tracking which one you're talking about.

But we are, for instance, looking at professionalism.

And that's really early stages, which is part of the reason why it hasn't made this highlights list.

of just understanding that the interactions people that law enforcement officers have on a day-to-day basis just has a cumulative large impact on public trust and getting a better handle and review of what are those professionalism instances and how have they been treated?

How have they been addressed?

Are there systemic issues coming out from that?

And we are also looking into partnering with others institutions to look at disparity through body-worn video and or use of force reports or biased reviews or any of those other documents and part of the challenge is the city is a very large city and there's a lot of incidents and so some of the challenge around this is how do you pull up thousands of interactions right how do you look for All of these within body worn video and so part of the reason for academic partnership is looking for creative ways to data mine, if you will, looking at things like natural language processing or other, you know, ways to.

just pull the most likely cases to look at.

I'm sorry, I'm veering off into technical territory, losing the audience probably.

But so a lot of work, and I think it's definitely worth further conversations with you, Chair Herbold and Council Member Lewis, just in terms of where all of those different avenues can go.

There are definitely a lot of intersections.

Just even some of these others, just the impact on racial disparity implications, public trust implications, in terms of interactions, professionalism plays that role there, even the mask wearing, anything that is, you know, the culture of SPD, how it presents to the public, I think these, you know, now I'm getting way far afield from extremism, your original question, but I do think that they all tie into cultural aspects with racial aspects of the partners that you're looking at.

And I just want to also highlight that I have asked that the OIG consider the use of climate surveys as recommended by some best practices to actually hear from officers about their experiences of white supremacy, racism, and extremism in the workplace, because as we have heard, I think it's important for us to think about what we can do to make sure that the way supremacy affects officers of color, and so trying to get at that in a more systematic way I think will be useful to our efforts.

Ready to move on to the next slide if you are, Chair.

Well, Madam Chair, I did have some quick follow-ups I think more broadly what I'm trying to get at, and I appreciate an overview of a lot of the methods and kind of scoping, but I just want to bring it back to something very tangible.

I mean, I think it's pretty clear that not wearing a mask and being indignant about it as an officer, and gosh, like a case if an officer used a racial slur against somebody, clearly would be unprofessional.

I don't understand why anti-democratic sentiment as expressed by the tangible act of visiting a rally that is called Stop the Steal is not considered in those same categories.

And I do think it would warrant an audit to get at some of the fundamental underpinnings of the recent determination by Director Meyerberg that there are free speech implications of attending an anti-democratic rally that are not triggered by similar free speech rights people might have to not wear a mask or indeed to say a racial slur in public.

Americans have a right to say a racial slur in public, there's freedom of speech.

You don't have a right to do that when you're a police officer because it's unprofessional and you can't police a culturally pluralistic society and engage in overtly racist activity.

So if you have the monopoly of force in a system that is undergirded by democracy and you fundamentally don't believe in democracy and you're demonstrating that publicly through anti-democratic activism, I just don't understand how that's not professional in the same way as a lot of these other activities that could have speech implications, but we've determined they're not professional and people can be disciplined for them.

I just think that that would warrant as scoping an assessment.

I understand it was a tough call that Director Meyerberg had to make, but I don't see how we can have faith or confidence in these officers that attended the rally, but didn't engage in the insurrection directly.

I still think that there are professionalism concerns.

And I think that they're very concerning.

And I don't think that we can normalize the big lie and activities that are related to the big lie under the banner that that is just normal political behavior.

It isn't.

I mean, it's insidious.

And it's a national thing where people that have the monopoly of force are engaging in this.

It's not the same as believing in trickle-down economics or believing in having different opinions on if there should be a capital gains tax.

This is fundamental to our social contract and the monopoly of force that they hold to protect.

So I just wanted to throw that out there as I think I'm talking about a fundamental, as part of this professionalism review, really grappling with those questions.

Because I don't think it's just this sort of jets and sharks division, we're on different sides.

It's more fundamental than that.

It's saying you don't believe in the democratic system of government.

That has to be addressed in a more fundamental way.

If I may, Madam Chair, just to clarify, without speaking to the OPA case in particular, but in regards to my comments earlier, just to be clear on what I'm expressing, professionalism for me would be an overall umbrella that encompasses many things.

And so extremism is definitely, when you think of aspects of professionalism, to look at professionalism in general, basically my point would be that it's not sufficient to address extremism for the points you're raising, that there are unique aspects to extremism that aren't necessarily part of the base of professionalism.

overlapping concepts, but that to study it and to do like, for instance, for the survey, the climate survey that Chair Herbold is talking about, a survey about professionalism in general is not going to get us there.

You know, so because extremism has particular aspects to it.

If that helps to clarify, it does as it relates specifically to the certification of investigations, would there be a way to scope and audit?

on the question of certifications, partial certifications or certifications that OIG has not approved and link that to the question of whether or not an investigation is incomplete because of how it looks at this question of protected free speech and professionalism, because Council Member Lewis is correct.

The courts have given latitude to law enforcement agencies when it comes to restricting free speech of officers in those instances where there is a connection between the conduct and their responsibilities.

and has allowed law enforcement agencies to restrict speech and association, citing specifically the heightened need for order, loyalty, morale, and harmony.

And so I'm just wondering whether or not there might be a way to use the process that includes the OIG certification to look at this issue as well.

I think definitely it's something that we can talk with you further about, Madam Chair.

I think you always have a really creative way to think about the ways that one piece informs the other.

So happy to have that continued conversation with you.

Yeah.

This question of the completeness of an investigation, this particular investigation that we're talking about right now, has raised the question for many of us of whether or not that was a complete investigation because of this determination that the free speech rights of the officers sort of trump our expectations for how they professionally do their job.

Yeah, I think you have a good underlying question.

What comes to mind for the investigations is they do tend to be individual case-specific, investigator-specific determinations of what worked in that particular situation for thoroughness, objectivity, without going to some of those, I think, larger principles you're talking about.

They do inform, in our quarterly and annual reports, we're looking for trends of how OPA in general approaches cases.

So that will start to get there.

But I think you're asking a very specific question about investigations in this particular professionalism context.

So I think definitely worth further conversation with you to think that through.

Thank you.

So if we're ready to advance to the next slide then.

This is just a highlight some of the other policy work.

I mentioned that we do audits, but also look at best practice and innovative ideas.

So Sentinel Event Review, obviously front and center for us this year on that.

So the first wave where you saw the spikes in the graph are being analyzed and those recommendations are coming out soon, but the Sentinel Event Review process with the panel is gonna be continuing throughout the year.

where they're going to tackle and are in the process of tackling those other waves of activity and looking at the systemic factors going on there.

The monitoring plan, Shaylene already talked about CPC's involvement, so just me too.

OIG also is part of that process, and so looking at, you know, opining on use of force, crowd management policy, having those conversations with the partners.

And, you know, some of that has come up in the Sentinel event review as well.

So I think really, truly, it's been a collaborative conversation around what are those policies, how have they manifested and how can they be improved.

And then there's also other ongoing work that we do as part of our annual requirements.

And just highlighting at the end there that we also play a role in issuing recommendations on the state legislative agenda, so that'll be coming out later this year.

So, just really quickly on the last slide, we talked about our certification of other people's work, but we recognize that there's a lot of work to be done internally as well.

And so just in the spirit of always trying to improve where we're at, the Inspector General is in the process of setting up a community advisory group to help ensure that her thoughts and priorities are reflecting the community's priorities as well.

We've engaged a consultant to help us look at how we do analytics in-house to make sure that we're doing it with a a racially thoughtful lens, aware of the institutional assumptions that can and are often embedded in our line of work, and then also undertaking what has been on our work plan for some time, but really taking on, you know, getting legs right now is to look at that quality control review of how we do our casework.

So with that, that is our year so far.

And if you have no further questions, Madam Chair, I would turn it over to OPA to wrap up.

Thank you, Amy.

Thank you.

As I said earlier, my name is Lauren Caputo.

I am the data and policy analyst for OPA, and I'm going to talk a little bit about our policy recommendations to SPD, which are called Management Action Recommendations, or MARS.

So MARS are a tool to clarify or correct ambiguities or gaps in SPD policy and training.

They come about through an OPA investigation when OPA is unable to definitively say that an employee violated policy, we will say not sustained management action, and we will turn that over to SPD.

We'll issue a recommendation and ask them to fix whatever is missing in SPD policy or training.

SPD is not required to implement MARS, but they do work with us to find these solutions.

There is no required timeline for SPD to complete these recommendations.

It often depends on the complexity of the recommendation or SPD's scheduled policy review cycles.

But in general about four months to a year.

And we meet quarterly with SPD to discuss the status of active and active recommendations.

Next slide please.

So this year, in 2021, we have issued MARS on 14 unique topics.

And actually, as of yesterday, now 15, we issued one yesterday.

12 of the 15 resulted from protest cases.

They include blast balls, changing the blast ball policy, long-range acoustic device, which is LRAD, force reporting, providing medical aid in demonstrations, such as when protesters are hit with pepper spray, Screening social media posts, things of that sort.

Two MARs have been completed and both were fully implemented.

Enforcement towards media and complex incident command.

And that one was strengthening incident action plans or IAPs and just having a stronger command over officers.

working protests, and then 12 MAR topics are still active this year.

And since MARs carry over often into the next year, our next slide, which we can go to, summarizes our 2020 MARs, which some are still open.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So also in 2020, we issued 14 MAR topics.

Five of those were fully implemented by SPD, mental health transport, court dispositions, which related to SPD employees providing input in a court setting outside of their regular job duties, body-worn video recording, employee wellness, and handling money evidence and recording that on body-worn video.

One more was partially implemented.

which was strengthening special commission permits and restrictions on who can have a special commission permit.

And then two were declined actions.

So one, the leadership expectations one, SPD did not have the resources to implement that MAR, and then the sound transit response related to the dispatch center, which is no longer a part of SPD.

And so that one was also declined by SPD.

And then six MARs from 2020 are still active.

That's all we have.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm just checking to see whether or not we have any questions for the OPA on their contribution to the work plan here today.

Just checking.

My notes really appreciate that management action recommendations are also listed on the website as well as listing the status of the recommendations so that it gives I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I know this is an opportunity for policymakers and opportunity to inquire, but with the department on the status, but it also gives the general public the opportunity to see what has been recommended and what has been implemented.

So really appreciate that offer any comments that you might have as it relates to the earlier discussion that we directed towards the OIG around the OPA certification memos, the investigation certification memos, or the conversation that we had around investigations also looking broadly at anti-democratic behavior on the part of police officers that can have a negative impact both on policing and community relations, but when that anti-democratic behavior is examples of extremism or racism, it also has effect on other officers who work within the department as well.

And just giving you the opportunity to comment on that issue as it relates to OPA's investigations.

So on the topic of extremism, I would have to send that back to Director Meyerberg.

I wouldn't be able to comment on that.

But as Amy had said, I believe somewhere in the upper 90 percent of our investigations are fully certified by OIG.

But without commenting further on that specific case or on the topic of extremism, I would push that to Director Meyerberg.

Understood.

I didn't want to put you on the spot, but I also didn't want to just gloss over and not give you an opportunity to discuss it since you're in the room and we're talking about it.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council members before we close this conversation out?

Or any other questions from any of the other panel members recognizing that we also have SPD recognized participating here as well.

And I thank everybody for their participation here today.

and look forward to ongoing conversations about your work and about how we can together work to improve accountability of our Seattle Police Department.

Thank you.

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

Item number two, pay up policy proposal briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And so, just opening remarks, we have been meeting weekly since June 9th and have had robust stakeholder conversations.

And Karina is going to – she has a presentation, but first we're going to – before we jump into the presentation, we're going to hear from I believe we're first going to hear, correct me if I'm wrong, to hear a couple of workers talk about sort of the need for this discussion over the policy proposal for the areas that we have discussed.

and just kind of briefly go over sort of the high-level areas of discussion.

We're not going to go deep into the stakeholder feedback on each of those areas, but that is all captured in the presentation itself.

So, Alexa, am I missing anything as far as what the run of show is here today?

No, I think that's great.

I think it might be helpful if Karina presented her first slide, just kind of centering on what the policy proposal is, and then we'll turn it over to Michael Wolfe for two and a half minutes, and then James Thomas for two and a half minutes, both of which are workers.

Okay, thank you so much.

Karina, handing it over to you.

Good morning.

I am Karina Bull with Council Central Staff, and I will pull up a slide presentation.

All right, so what I have attempted to do here is, as best as possible, distill a very comprehensive proposal for a suite of labor standards protections for app-based workers.

Ultimately, these protections will be separated into a number of ordinances, but we're focusing just on the policies right now.

And thus far, there have been stakeholder meetings on minimum compensation, transparency, flexibility, deactivation, and then moving forward, there will be discussion of other topics, including background checks, access to restroom, civil rights protections, such as protections against discrimination and right to reasonable accommodations, and also the establishment of an app-based workers advisory board.

And here is a proposed timeline for those remaining stakeholder meetings.

And just to note that I believe that the committee meeting for September 14 is still being determined as far as the subject matter content for that meeting.

So with that, I will stop sharing my screen and we will hear from stakeholders.

And just to clarify that last screen, that did not show all of the meetings that we had already had.

It just shows the meetings that we haven't yet had.

Correct.

Correct.

So as you noted, the meeting started June 9 and covered those first four topics and an introduction.

And then that is the future.

Thank you.

Michael, two and a half minutes, please.

Thank you, Chair Hurlbult and members of the committee for giving me an opportunity to address you today.

I'm Michael Wolfe.

I'm the executive director at Drive Forward and a gig worker.

The issue of gig worker pay standards protections is an important one and certainly requires serious consideration.

As a gig worker, I most value the ability to use the platforms to tailor my work to my needs, whether it is to pay an unexpected bill, save my son's college education, or take a vacation.

The beauty is I get to set my own terms of when I work, where I work, and for which platforms I work.

My experience with Drive Forward has allowed me the opportunity to speak with a great many of gig workers and get a real sense of the community and what they value.

Most of what we hear are anecdotal stories of gig worker experiences out on the job, both positive and negative.

In an attempt to quantify some of these anecdotal evidence that we were hearing as we move close to the beginning of these stakeholder discussions, Drive Forward created a survey of app-based delivery gig workers, which admittedly we thought would be the narrow focus of this legislation.

The results of the survey, for the most part, confirmed what we had been hearing from our members about the work they were doing.

Gig workers are mostly part-time workforce.

Gig workers are usually not their primary source of income.

And full-time gig workers are more likely to use multiple apps in their work.

Our survey data also confirmed with DRIVE Forward members that anecdotally reported to us about their earnings in the delivery sector.

Pre-tip earnings would always hover around $15 to $25 per hour gross.

And you really made your profits on tips.

These reports were always concerning to us as we felt that they would not likely meet a reasonable earning standard set either by the City of Seattle or the State of Washington.

With this data, we can confidently say that we agree with the City Council, Working Washington, and other stakeholders that gig work pay standard is needed.

However, the devil, of course, is in the details.

While you'll hear from Karina Bull in a minute on some of the discussions and ongoing debate in the stakeholder meetings, I want to be clear that the members of Drive Forward support the creation of a pay standard that recognizes we are independent contractors, sets a pay floor with no limit on how much we can earn, does not have a severe impact on consumer demand, and is driven by data.

Our biggest concerns in the process for creating the standard are, unlike the fair share process, there has been no attempt by the city to collect any data to support some of the numbers being used in the calculation of the standard, and the process feels very rushed, with insufficient time for many of the stakeholders to adequately review the proposals being made.

If the goal is to have final passage in December, then why rush to legislation in August?

This process needs to be fair, open, and let all voices be heard and considered.

In closing, one of the most important lessons I've learned in the past six years of working in the gig economy is that gig workers are not a monolith.

We do not all see the work we do through the same lens.

So it becomes particularly important that when the community broadly agrees that something needs to be done, it's best not to just do what one voice is suggesting being done.

Take time to listen, collect data, and then come to a policy decision that the broad community can all support.

The City of Seattle has done this before when we were the first major U.S. city to embrace $15 an hour living wage.

I ask that we do it again for all gig workers.

Thank you for your time.

You, Michael.

James, please.

You are muted, James.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, my name is James Thomas.

I'm a senior handicapped gig worker since October 2016. I've done Postmates, Lyft, Amazon, Uber, Uber Eats, DoorDash, you name it.

An example of the climb to the bottom for delivery drivers.

In January 2017, Postmates paid me $4.50 minimum, $1.17 a mile, 15 cent wait time.

Currently, it's zero minimum, $0.72 a mile, and $0.07 a minute wait time.

Made a delivery to Bothell one time to a cul-de-sac, and I missed the person's house.

As I was making a turnaround, I saw him come out of his house.

He had his wallet in his hand.

When he saw me, This blackface, he put his wallet back in his pocket.

Thank you for listening to that, okay?

Now, still have not received my 1099 from Postmates since 2017. So, for 2017, is it right or wrong?

Is it not cool to disenfranchise the people who are expected to meet the challenges of satisfying a customer base with a 95% or better satisfactory rate who are totally being kept awry of the monetary and equitable gains within the gig industry?

Right now, as the earth turns, this shall continue for the next 20 to 30 years.

Enough is enough.

A good life is deserving to all the bodies who participate in the massive growth and success of the gig industry.

We insist that driver's pay is derived from the total profit of each and every single trip.

We want our fair, equitable share of every nickel that is being charged to the customer, plus untouched gratuities.

Please be kind and read Julia Shore, how the gig economy promotes inequality.

Then understand how they, the drivers in California, were bamboozled, okay?

Deriving millions of people worldwide from decent living wages and other considerations, Seattle has this great big huge opportunity to show the world of its intention to be unequivocally the innovator and leader of a fair and equitable living society for all who now and in the future venture forward to live in the Pacific Northwest and someday return to its pre-COVID success.

Remember, we are seeking the absolute truth in the American way.

We cannot allow billionaires seeking to become zillionaires at the cost of people of color who are the majority workers across this nation in the gig industry.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, James and Michael.

Really appreciate you being with us here today to help set the stage and your weekly participation in the stakeholder meetings.

We're going to hand it over to Karina next.

And in the interest of time, if you could focus the discussion on sort of the description of the high-level topics with an understanding that you've done a great job along with the input provided from collecting minutes from each of the meetings of capturing the stakeholder feedback to the issue areas.

And I appreciate that that's captured on the slides, but if we could just focus the presentation on the issue areas themselves.

with a hope that council members can take some time to look at the feedback on our respective own times.

Thank you.

I will most certainly do that.

Thank you.

Okay, so to begin, all of these protections would apply to app-based workers, and that includes a range of workers who are being treated as independent contractors and who are providing on-demand or pre-scheduled physical services for a network company's worker platform.

So as examples, those could be workers who are delivering groceries or items from a store, it could be alcohol, it could be, those would be examples of the on-demand type of work.

Prescheduled could be workers who are agreeing to perform a certain kind of service in someone's home or in someone's business, whether it be moving, cleaning, furniture assembly, pet sitting, et cetera.

So these Protections are for these physical kinds of services.

What would not be covered is what the legislation would term as those workers with significant bargaining power and influence over the conditions of their work.

And the proposal would itemize these types of workers and online orders that would not be covered.

For example, work that requires a professional license to perform, and those types of work and workers would be identified by rule.

And as with other labor standards, this proposal is thought to be implemented by the Office of Labor Standards, so it would be OLS's rules.

Creative work, graphic design, wholly digital work, sale or rental of goods or real estate, and TNC services of those drivers are of course covered by other legislation.

Also online orders resulting in payment of $1,000 or more.

The network companies that would be covered would be those with 250 or more app-based workers worldwide, regardless of where those workers are conducting their work.

And that threshold for coverage would align with the paid sick and safe time for gig workers and also the premium pay for gig workers legislation.

Not covered would be platforms that are not serving as an intermediary for the relationship between the worker and the company.

So an example might be a company that is purely serving as a matchmaker and is not intermediating that of the payment and overseeing or governing the types of work and work performance.

The first protection that we'll focus on is minimum compensation.

And the policy goal of this would be to set a single pay standard for all businesses and workers and to ensure payment of a minimum wage plus expenses with a per minute and per mile floor for all engaged time and engaged miles.

Here is a formula that would be used to determine the pay for workers.

And the next slide will plug some numbers into this formula.

The basic idea is that there would be a minimum wage equivalent, which would equate to whatever the minimum wage is for that year in Seattle divided up into a per minute amount.

And then what's called an associated cost factor and time factor to account for all of the time that workers are spending engaged, which is, I'll give an example.

If a worker is, accepts an offer to deliver items from a grocery store, they would be engaged from the moment the worker accepts the offer through completion of it, going to buy the groceries, going to drive to the person's home and then delivering it.

Those would be engaged time and engaged miles as well.

However what is known is that that is not the only time that the worker is spending to complete that work.

There is a certain amount of waiting time.

There is the cost of doing the work without benefits time to review the offer etc.

So it's it's those amounts of time and expenses of the worker that are sought to be covered by what is called an associated cost factor and an associated time factor.

Same idea for the mileage as well.

And for those who are familiar with the TNC driver minimum compensation, that same idea is handled in a different way.

It's called a utilization rate where there was actually, there were actually studies that were able to determine how much time drivers spent waiting for a ride.

For this particular proposal, these are going to be estimates and also what is known as far as the cost for certain benefits.

So it would be this per engaged minute payment plus an amount of compensation to.

compensate the worker for their engaged mileage.

And so it would be a standard mileage rate, a certain amount of money per mile, and then associated mileage factor, taking into account that for workers, it's not just the time spent driving to the grocery store and to the person's home.

It is also the amount of time to get from to the place where they accept the offer.

If they're driving very far away, they need to go back to a hub or back to the area where most of their services will begin.

So putting this general formula, adding some numbers to it, an example here for the minimum compensation per engaged minute would be $0.28 per minute.

That is this year's minimum wage for employees in Seattle, $16.69 divided by 60 minutes is $0.28 per minute.

And then it'd be a $1.25 for that cost factor.

and 1.13 for the time factor, and then the mileage as well.

The mileage rate would be based on the IRS rate, which is, I think, very well known to a lot of contractors and employees.

It's what the city of Seattle uses.

And then that mileage factor is 1.25.

So the next, and adding those two things together would result in the minimum compensation standard for workers engaged minutes and engaged miles.

Now, the next three slides will address the numbers behind each of these associated factors, the cost, the time, and the mileage.

So for the cost factor, here are the items that it is addressing.

Payroll tax, for example, contractors, they are paying both their own tax and what the employer, what the companies are paying.

If you're an employee, you're only paying 7.65, but contractors have to pay double that amount.

So here, this would reimburse the workers for what would standard be the employer amount and employee situation, state paid family medical leave, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, and then also other miscellaneous expenses that would be necessary to complete this work, such as the cell phone All of that would equate to a multiplying factor of 1.13 for each engaged mile.

The time factor includes estimates of time to reflect the need for workers to take rest breaks.

Every hour of this rest break is formulated on what is required for employees, 10 minutes of rest time per four hours, an estimate of time to review offers, time to make them selves available and then time to complete administrative tasks.

So you'll see there what that averages out to and this time factor is 1.25.

And then last, the associated mileage factor.

So what this factor is taking into account is an estimate of 1.25 miles to travel to locations where the offers will be available and then 1.25 miles to travel to locations for rest breaks, meal breaks, restroom access, etc.

And again, these are based on estimates and the stakeholder slides can speak for themselves.

Some might think these are high and some might think these are low.

And then similar to the TNC driver minimum compensation, any offer would be compensated at a minimum amount, no matter whether it's canceled or if it would result in something less.

So it's always a minimum amount of at least $5 per offer.

So that is the summary of the minimum compensation standard.

These are slides on stakeholder feedback thus far.

And then next is transparency.

So these transparency, this transparency proposal is aligning with the idea that workers should have information to inform which offers they will accept.

and to enhance the profitability of the work that they perform, and also to provide information both to end customers and to businesses on the nature of charges and the payments that are going to these workers.

And of course, recently there was the independent contractor legislation, which also was focused on the issue of transparency and having pre-contract disclosures and payment disclosures.

So these transparency measures Proposals are aligned with that and go into much more detail than the independent contractors legislation to focus on the unique.

Aspects of app based work.

So to begin, there would be information about each job offer.

Workers would have at least three minutes to consider this information, and that would allow time for workers who are driving to be able to find a place to safely stop and review this information and make an informed decision.

There would be a best estimate of engaged time and mileage, the guaranteed amount of payment, locations of work, physical requirements of work, such as flights of stairs and weight of the items, in contents of unsealed projects, especially when handling those types of projects could pose a health risk.

So I will share that in stakeholder meetings, there was an example of a worker who might have a seafood allergy, and that worker would want to know if they're delivering food from a restaurant or from a store, if what they were delivering could have seafood that could make them very sick if they were to be exposed to that type of food.

So this would be advanced notice of that situation.

Worker might decide to decline that kind of offer or maybe accept it if there are some ways to acceptably mitigate that risk, such as a sealed container.

The next part of transparency is information for the worker and for the end customer and for the public at large.

Electronic receipts within 24 hours if each completed offer or canceled offer with cause This particular requirement aligns with the TNC driver minimum compensation that has a similar requirement for both workers or for all workers, customers, and third-party businesses.

Weekly information for the workers on their completed and canceled offers, annual and quarterly tax information, 14D notice before significant change to any payment calculation.

That particular requirement aligns, as many of these do, with the wage theft ordinance for employees.

There's a right to have an itemized pay statement for employees and a right to have advance notice before it changes to their pay.

So this policy would replicate a lot of that for app-based workers.

And then last, public disclosure of aggregate data on worker earnings and work reform, and that would be something that the companies would be expected to perform for the public to be able to access on their own.

The next policy is regarding flexibility.

And what we hear from workers is that one of the reasons that app-based work is so valued is for the amount of independence that it can offer workers and so this next proposal would seek to legislate the ability to maintain that independence and perform the work at the same time.

So there would be a list of rights that workers would have to maintain the flexibility to be able to log into the platform on specific dates without restriction, no restriction on the amounts of time to be logged in, no adverse action based on availability, the right to accept and reject any individual offer, which is a key right that generated a fair amount of stakeholder discussion, the right to cancel an offer with cause, the legislation would itemize what types of situation would rise to the level of cause, no restriction on working for other companies, including self-employment, and then limits on monitoring in the interest of the company.

And that's a quick summary of the flexibility.

Next, deactivation.

This will be the last substantive topic that is part of today's presentation.

And this proposal would seek to protect a worker's right to access work and jobs and prohibiting unwarranted deactivation and then also setting up a procedure for workers to challenge deactivation and a timeline to get them information and to challenge that.

To begin, the legislation would establish a list of unwarranted reasons for deactivation.

It could be up to 14 or so reasons.

And it would be established immediately, I believe, for the TNC driver deactivation that the Office of Labor Standards established that list, that this legislation would do that on the front end.

Companies would be expected to post an exhaustive list of their warranted reasons for deactivation for the public and for workers to know before they took a job, started working with the company, and for that to be, of course, updated throughout the duration of their work.

For any deactivation, a company would be required to provide 14 day advance notice of impending deactivation, including the reasons for the deactivation.

Same as for the TNC driver deactivation rights, a company could immediately deactivate a worker for egregious misconduct.

And then once a worker received notice of an impending deactivation, the worker would have a right to request company records that were relevant to that decision and then have a right to receive those records within seven days of the request.

The idea being that the workers could use this information to decide whether or not they wanted to challenge that deactivation.

So then the proposal would establish a timeline for challenging the deactivation along with the company's response to that challenge.

So workers could challenge the deactivation within 90 days of the effective date of the deactivation, or 90 days of the last time they attempt to use the platform, whichever date is later.

Within 14 days of the challenge, the company would provide what's termed as satisfactory justification for that decision.

and satisfactory justification would be evidentiary substantiation of the allegations against the worker and then responses to any of the workers questions or claim challenging the deactivation.

The company could provide a statement of reasonable cause to extend that timeline but it would only go so far because the worker would have a right to reinstatement with back pay if the company did not provide that satisfactory justification within 30 days of the challenge.

Another situation where the worker could receive the reinstatement with back pay would be if the company did not comply with the advance notice procedure.

This timeline would be enforced by the Office of Labor Standards.

Unlike the TNC driver deactivation rights, which would, which could be, the timeline could be enforced, the procedure could be enforced, but in that particular situation, there would be an arbitration panel that could actually adjudicate the facts of each deactivation.

This proposal was very different from the TNC driver rights in that, It's this proposal focuses on timeline and procedure.

So what Office of Labor Standards would be enforcing is whether or not the timeline and procedures were followed and whether or not the company provided satisfactory justification for the deactivation.

They would not be expected to adjudicate the substance of worker claims.

There was some stakeholder feedback on this proposal as with others.

And that ends the overview of the policy proposal thus far.

In the future, beginning this afternoon, there will be discussion of background checks, fair chance to access the platform, and then later access to restrooms, civil rights protections, the establishment of an advisory board, and then last, enforcement and other aspects of implementation.

Are there any questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Really appreciate the overview, Karina.

Thank you so much.

In addition to my thanks to Michael and James for being here with us, I want to also thank OLAF staff for participating in the stakeholder meetings every week as well as staff from And I do, you know, we are, today's overview was focused on a particular proposal that Working Washington has made.

Many of the stakeholder comments that are contained in the presentation that Karina just went over reflect a different perspective on Working Washington's proposal.

So I encourage folks to take a look at those.

Really appreciate in particular, Mike Wolf's engagement because he has actually put ideas on the table, which I think is really useful for this discussion so that we can really we're going to have to push up our sleeves and look at the different approaches and the different philosophies underpinning those approaches.

And so, again, I appreciate everybody's time and effort on this.

And we'll have more coming up.

So, thank you.

And, Alex, you want to read the last item into the agenda, please?

abetting the ownership, purchase, rent, storage, or use of less lethal weapons, and amending sections 3.28.146 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, Alex.

Before I hand it off to Lisa Kaye of Council Central Staff, I want to just, and Lisa Kaye will briefly summarize the legislation that she presented on January 22nd, and then we'll talk about the amendments before us.

Just a quick recap.

Legislation involves engagement with the U.S.

Department of Justice and the Monitor.

Engagement has been sort of an informal engagement that is separate from the process that is laid out in the consent decree for use of force policies.

Legislation builds off of the legislation originally introduced by Councilmember Thawne and unanimously adopted by the Council.

It includes the subsequent consensus recommendations from the accountability bodies, the OIG, the CPC, and the OPA.

And again, incorporates the feedback that we've received informally from the Department of Justice and the Monitor.

Changes since February 9th and act on by committee are designed to address the issues identified by both DOJ and various court decisions.

And just, again, for the viewing public, the law that I referenced that we passed unanimously in June, OJ sought a restraining order against that legislation.

The judge granted that restraining order, and so we have no regulation in place at this point.

So back in August of last year, we received recommendations from the CPC, the OIG, and the OPA.

They've been presented in committee in September, and then we took back legislation back of the budget process in December.

In January and February, the committee discussed a draft bill, again, based on the consensus recommendation of the accountability bodies.

And then since then, we have incorporated feedback from DOJ and the Monitor.

And with that, I'm recognizing that we're coming up on a year of working on this iteration of the bill.

My overall goal is to adopt the strongest legislation possible within the context of the consent decree.

And I think with that, I'm just going to I will pass it off to Lisa Kay.

I will have some closing remarks about the process going forward because there has been concern that there's been information out there that has muddied what the process is moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I will go ahead and share my screen and then walk through a recap of the bill.

Does that show up for you?

Are you seeing it on the screen?

Oh, great.

Okay.

So I would direct the committee members, at least the K council central staff, just directing the committee members and the audience that the staff memo for this bill is on page 76 of the agenda packet.

It is the same staff memo as was presented at the June 21st committee meeting.

So the table that I've shared with you is attached to the staff memo.

It's on page 79 of the agenda packet.

And I'm just going to briefly summarize each line of the table.

So starting with the second line of the table, Council Bill 120.105, which is on page 66 of your agenda packet, would ban five types of less legal weapons, same as in the February draft.

Those five types are acoustic weapons, directed energy weapons, disorientation devices, including blast balls, ultrasonic cannons, and water cannons.

Moving to the third line, Section 1D of the ordinance before you today or the council bill before you today pertains to noise flash diversionary devices.

Under this bill, these devices would be prohibited from use in any demonstration or rally, but they could be used outside of a demonstration or rally, but only by SWAT officers and only if circumstances meet a specific risk test.

That is that the risk of harm from violent actions must outweigh the risk to bystanders.

Moving to the fourth line, section 1E of the ordinance would restrict the use of 40 millimeter launchers used to deploy chemical irritants.

These launchers would be allowed only for use by SWAT officers and only when the risk test is met that we've described above.

Subject to those two conditions, the use of those 40 millimeter launchers would be allowed outside a demonstration or rally or in a demonstration or rally for purposes other than crowd control.

So those would include things such as intervening with small groups engaged in dangerous or illegal activity.

I just want to add here, as it relates, this is one of the changes that was made in the most recent bill, and it was intended to recognize that the launchers that launch pepper balls have just recently, as in February, their use and the use of force policies associated with them were just approved by the court.

recognizing that that puts this intended regulation in a position where we would basically be asking the judge to undo the policy that he just approved.

It seemed more appropriate to take that issue off the table, since it's already been addressed.

And it's further clarified by the amendment that you're bringing forward today also?

So moving to the fifth line of the table before you, this summarizes Section 1F of the Council Bill, which restricts the use of pepper spray.

So pepper spray could be used in any of the following circumstances, but only when the risk test is met.

That is, the risk of serious bodily injury from violent actions must outweigh the risk of harm to bystanders.

So the circumstances in which it would be allowed, as long as that risk condition is met, are outside a demonstration or rally, during a demonstration or rally, but for purposes other than crowd control, or for crowd control during a violent public disturbance at a demonstration or rally.

Moving then to the last line, this is tear gas, and SWAT officers, only SWAT officers, would be allowed to use tear gas outside a demonstration or rally, and only if two conditions are met.

First, the use must be reasonably necessary to prevent the threat of imminent loss of life or serious injury and the risk of serious bodily injury from violent actions must outweigh the risk of harm to bystanders.

The bill also authorizes the use of tear gas at a demonstration or rally, but only if five conditions, all five conditions are met.

So the first four conditions were included in the February draft that the committee forwarded to the monitor, and the fifth adds a second risk test.

So the five conditions that have to be met to be able to use tear gas at a demonstration or rally are first, it must be during a violent public disturbance, It must be at the direction of and by recently trained officers.

So both the people, the officers providing the direction and the officers deploying the tear gas have to have been recently trained.

It must be deployed with a detailed tactical plan.

And then it's got these two additional conditions that the use must be reasonably necessary to prevent the imminent threat of, pardon me, to prevent threat of imminent loss of life or serious injury and the risk of serious bodily injury from violent actions must outweigh the risk of harm to bystanders.

That summarizes the table before you.

I can summarize the rest of the bill if you wish, Council Member, or we can move to the amendments.

This is a refresher on the same presentation that But truncated, we did on June 22nd.

Unless there are specific questions, I think it would be great if we could move into the discussion of the amendments.

Before we go into the discussion of the amendments, I think, sorry, you're presenting what the contents of the amendments would be great.

Okay.

All right, so I will just walk through the three amendments briefly and then I'm assuming then each of the sponsors would speak to the amendment?

Correct.

Okay, so, um, the first two amendments would modify section one H of the council bill that establishes a private private right of action.

And before I summarize these two, let me note that questions about a private right of action that have been raised during public comment today and previously raised complex legal issues.

And I would suggest that the city attorney respond to council members in executive session on any of those questions.

They are not questions I can speak to, I'm not an attorney, and they need to be discussed in Executive Session.

So the Amendment 1 that you see before you is sponsored by Councilmember Sawant.

It would make a private right of action available to anyone impacted by police violating provisions of this Council Bill, including during a violent public disturbance, and also would be available to a person who, in the judgment of a reasonable person, committed a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of less lethal force.

Amendment two is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

It also speaks to the private right of action.

It would make the right of private action available to persons impacted by the police, violating provisions of this council bill at any time, including during a violent public disturbance.

This amendment retains the restriction on the person who may have committed a criminal offense.

Finally, the third amendment before you today is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

This clarifies that the restrictions in section 1E of the council bill would apply to the deployment of pepper balls regardless to the caliber of the launcher.

So previously, the language was restricted only to 40 millimeter launchers and pepper balls may be deployed by a different kind of launcher.

So that completes my summary, council member.

Thank you, Lisa.

And before we get into the amendments, I do need to get the legislation in front of us.

We can open that.

Thank you.

I move adoption of Council Bill 120105. Second.

Second.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

We now have the bill in front of us and we can move on to a discussion and vote on each of the three amendments.

Thank you, Lisa, for your description of those amendments.

And I think what we'll do is we'll get each of the amendments individually in front of us and invite discussion after that.

With that, inquiring whether or not there is a motion for Amendment 1.

I move Amendment 1.

Thank you.

Member Swan, is there a second?

Can I get a second just to be able to discuss it?

I will give you a second for discussion.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold said earlier that we want the strongest possible legislation to go into effect.

Needless to say, I completely agree.

Unfortunately, the draft bill that is in question today, and I'll speak to the amendment in a second, actually creates two glaring loopholes in the enforcement section of the original ban.

And let's remember the original ban on the so-called crowd control weapons, was won last year in the midst of the height of the Black Lives Matter protests with a real massive coordinated action by Black Lives Matter protesters and our Socialist Council office.

And these loopholes go beyond all the loopholes allowing the police to use many crowd control weapons.

In other words, these loopholes make it so that in many cases enforcement is not possible even when the police flagrantly break the law.

So, so often politicians and the Democratic Party wring their hands and lament how difficult it is to hold police accountable when there are outrageous examples of police brutality that make the news.

Loopholes like these are why this happens.

This sort of loophole is why it's so difficult to hold the police accountable.

The first loophole is the is what I would call label the protest violent loophole.

If 12 Proud Boys start a fight in a 10,000-person BLM protest, it is defined by this law as a, quote, violent public disturbance, end quote.

And according to this loophole, there can be no enforcement for any illegal use of crowd control weapons the police do during that protest.

If the police put an illegal blast wall you know, towards an innocent person at a protest, it cannot be enforced because of this loophole.

And I give these examples to demonstrate that this loophole removes the enforcement for absolutely anything, no matter how egregious, as long as the police can define the protest as a whole, as quote unquote, violent police disturbance.

So, you know, because really this is a question of whether this, the law that goes in the books will actually give avenues, real avenues for ordinary people who are exercising their right to protest to actually hold the police accountable.

Council members have talked at length about how many of these weapons are still restricted, such as the undefinable restriction that there has to be a genuine threat to people's safety if the police do not use the weapon.

But that is meaningless because none of those restrictions are included in the enforcement section.

It is like saying murder is illegal, but you can only be prosecuted for murders that happen on a Thursday.

The second loophole is the frame the victim loophole.

If the police flagrantly and illegally use every banned weapon from blast balls to a microwave gun, against a totally peaceful protest and then arrest people for not abiding by the mayor's undemocratic curfew, there can be no enforcement because people committed the quote, criminal offense, end quote, of violating the mayor's undemocratic emergency order or resisting arrest or something like that.

In fact, now that I think about it, almost 100% of the people the mayor gassed last summer had technically committed the quote unquote criminal offense of violating curfew so the enforcement section could never have been used no matter how brutal the police were if this legislation and this loophole were in place.

This loophole will actually cause the police to arrest more peaceful protesters for these so-called crimes that are really a catch-all for any protest.

The city attorney's office, who has a duty to defend the city against lawsuits, will look for opportunities to prosecute anyone who is the victim of police brutality because then the victim cannot sue the city and be compensated.

I call this the frame the victim loophole, hence.

And more generally, the idea that excessive force is okay if it is done to the what we would consider bad people is totally contrary to democratic rights.

Either the use of the crowd control weapons is legal or it isn't.

And if it's illegal, excessive force, then the enforcement should count regardless of the victim.

Amendment 1, which I am proposing, makes the enforcement very simple.

If the police break the law, the enforcement applies.

If they don't, then it doesn't.

So if this amendment passes, the enforcement section will read, quote, a person shall have a right of action against the city for physical or emotional injuries proximately caused by the use of less lethal weapons in violation of this section 3.28.146, end quote.

I know Council Member Herbold has an amendment that will come up next that will only close one of these two loopholes that she has introduced in her draft bill.

If this amendment closing both the loopholes fails, I will of course be voting for that other amendment and note that that amendment exists only because this amendment exists that it looks like I'm predicting that most Council Members or all Council Members except for me will be voting no on And it's a testament to the mass pressure that the Democrats on this council are under because of all the promises that they made last year in the thick of the protests.

And then one by one by one, those promises were walked back.

And so if the second amendment passes and this amendment fails, that is still a really important partial victory that would be an important partial victory for the Black Lives Matter movement and for the struggle that has been led by the movement activists and my socialist council office.

But of course, I will undoubtedly, I will urge all council members on this committee to vote yes on this amendment one and close both loopholes, including the frame the victim loophole, as opposed to just closing one of those loopholes.

Thank you.

Councilmember Morales.

That's always tricky.

I have some questions, but I wanted to understand our process here first.

Madam Chair, are we going to bring up all three amendments or are we doing this one at a time?

We're doing one at a time.

Okay, so I will say in general that I agree with what Council Member Sawant is saying about the two separate issues here.

It seems to me that if there is a use of force violation from an officer, it shouldn't make a difference whether or not the person You know, is perceived to have committed a crime 1st.

I'm certainly not an attorney, so I'm just trying to think this through.

It seems that someone should not lose their right to private action even before they've been convicted of a crime.

And the way it's written now seems to me to indicate that the person would not have received due process before being denied their right.

And I don't see how an officer is absolved of violating policy just because somebody may have committed an offense.

Those seem like separate things to me.

So that's one issue.

And then my second question is, I am interested in hearing just a little bit more discussion among council members about the issue of a private right of action altogether.

So those are, the things that are running through my head right now.

And I would have to say at this point, I would be supporting Council Member Sawant's amendment before supporting Council Chair Herbold's amendment.

Thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate that, Council Member Morales.

Council Member Gonzalez.

So I'm just going to speak on this issue, not relying on the city attorney's office, but on my own experience as a civil rights attorney who spent years representing people in these types of cases.

And there's a couple of things that are I think, important for us to keep in mind as council members.

1 is that.

A private cause of action for folks who have experienced use of force exists under the US Constitution and that Washington state constitution, regardless of what is included in this particular bill.

And so I think I'm hearing a lot of.

insinuation that a private cause of action will not exist unless this bill passes.

And that's just simply inaccurate.

I filed plenty of use of force bills related to crowd control weapons and less lethal weapons in my practice here in Seattle long before today.

So just to be really clear, a right of action for members of the public continues to exist.

It is also true that in many of the cases in which I represented individuals who were subjected to excessive force, there were allegations and investigations of potential criminal conduct of a victim of excessive force in those cases.

There is a body of law that exists under federal and state law that is referred to as collateral estoppel, in which if the individual was convicted of a crime in the context of that incident, then there would be a significant barrier to overcome to be able to successfully file a private cause of action in a court of law.

And in most instances would result in a complete dismissal of the civil rights case if that individual was in fact convicted of a crime that occurred either during or before the use of force incident.

So I offer that to you all colleagues as we're having a conversation about this incredibly legal wonky component of this particular bill, because I do think it's important to acknowledge that victims of excessive force do unfortunately face pretty significant barriers of entry to courts of law in the instances in which there have been either a conviction of a crime or in some instances the allegations can come in.

But I don't think that mere allegations of a potential crime at the scene would by default Disqualify a person from bringing a private cause of action.

And so I think I'm struggling with this amendment because there doesn't appear to be the nuance of.

Of acknowledging the difference between a conviction of a crime or a mere suspicion or or thought of a crime that might have occurred during the scene.

So I just want to offer that for some additional context that that probably muddies the waters a little bit more.

But, um, But that's sort of in the spirit of Councilor Morales who is offering sort of what her thinking is around both of these amendments.

I think that's sort of my frame of mind as I'm evaluating proposed Amendment 1 and 2.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez, very appreciative that you're speaking from your personal experience and giving us the benefit of your legal wisdom.

Otherwise, I would have just suggested that folks review the attorney-client privilege information sent at 8.30 this morning as relates to this amendment.

One thing I would add, not just that, people can currently without this law file suits against the city.

Not only can they, they are right now for the events associated with the protests.

And the fact that this language doesn't exist has not impacted their ability to file these causes of action for negligent.

I do want to share for people's recollection, the language that is being proposed to be inserted is language that we previously struck from the legislation as of our review and understanding of the city attorney's advice in this area.

So they have previously advised us on what the impact of this amendment would be, and we had decided to strike language in the proposed amendment then intends to insert it.

Actually, it's the other way around.

We added language in the proposed amendment, suggest that we delete language that we had already decided to add.

So, there are no further questions.

I'd like to I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand raised.

I didn't raise my hand because I assumed you would let me close up.

So.

I don't agree with the comments that have been made.

Yes, the state constitution has that right.

You don't have to be an attorney to know that.

Yes, people know that.

And as a matter of fact, the hundreds of people who have spoken in public comment on this issue and on the bill as a whole, on the attempts to undermine the weapons ban that our movement was able to win last summer, And as you yourself have reminded us correctly, Chair Herbold, that bill was passed unanimously by the council, but it clearly shows what a pivotal role mass movements play under the pressure of that movement and the spotlight that the democratic establishment had last summer.

Everybody was forced to vote yes, and then once the movement subsided, then there are just systematic attempts to undermine the victories that people have won.

But I wanted to point out that, yes, we all know that that right exists on the books.

And at the same time, the people who have spoken, the hundreds of people who have spoken in public comment throughout this year, starting in January and even before that, are absolutely correct.

to be able to be fighting for the private right of action in this bill as well.

And council members should know, my office did not, I mean, we've really, we've helped people to understand what this undermining of the bill really constitutes, what are the specific features that are happening.

why we are fighting for the private right of action.

But a fact is that hundreds of people have reached this conclusion on their own, that we absolutely need this private right of action in this bill, regardless of what the state constitution says, because they understand correctly on their own, not because I coach them, they understand on their own that as President Gonzalez herself acknowledged, there are significant barriers to entry in the criminal justice system for ordinary working people, much less working people of color and for immigrant people.

and poor people, it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to get any justice in the criminal justice world.

So if you acknowledge that, and this is what the hundreds of people who have spoken have acknowledged, which is why they are fighting for the private right of action in this bill, then why would you not go out of your way to remove all the barriers?

Why would you put in place barriers when you know, and by your own acknowledgement, There are significant barriers to entry, you know, but based on what you all are saying, thousands of people in Seattle should be paid for what the mayor did and what the police department did under the mayor supervision to them last summer.

Well, show me how many people have got any kind of redressal to the courts.

So in other words, I don't believe that Any additional law is by itself going to be a panacea, and that is not why we are fighting for the private right of action in this bill.

We're fighting for the private right of action in this bill because we need to do everything in our power.

My office believes we need to, as elected representatives, we need to do everything in our power to make it easier, not more difficult.

for people.

I also believe, of course, that at the end of the day, as we have seen through recent history, there is no substitute for mass movements and mass action and democratically organized movements, because no single legislation is going to do that.

And furthermore, to win any kind of legislative victories, it takes that kind of action.

If the police break the law, enforcement should be in effect, period.

Thank you.

Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Councilmember Sawant?

Yes.

Thank you amendment to I move amendment to is there a second.

Second.

Thank you.

Council Member Swann did a great job of describing Amendment 2 because this does address one of the issues that her amendment intended to address, making the private right of action available to persons impacted by police violating provisions in the Council Bill at any time, including during violent public disturbance.

The amendment brings the private right of action provision in line with the rest of the revised bill, achieves consistency.

And again, for the viewing public, the term of violent public disturbance is not something that officers can say exists.

We also have a definition for what a violent public disturbance is.

And if an officer claims something is a violent public disturbance as a justification for the use of less lethal weapons, and that is in conflict with the definition of what a violent public disturbance is, that is a violation of policy that could be a basis for discipline.

Are there any, Council Member Lorena Gonzalez, I see your hand.

Yeah, thank you.

I think consistent just as a follow-up to the comments I made during Amendment 1, I am generally supportive of proposed Amendment 2. However, I do think that there There is some strengthening that can happen in the last sentence consistent with the statements that I made in the context of Amendment 1. So I would like to abstain today with the hope that I can work with you, Chair Herbold, as the sponsor of this amendment to make a small modification to the second sentence that would clarify that That would clarify that last intent to indicate that that what we're looking for is something that is a higher standard.

So, in other words, if a person is convicted of a criminal offense that occurred at or immediately prior to the use of the last lethal force, then I would be interested in exploring that potential change with you with the with advice of of our law department as as well.

But I'm a little.

nervous about how to evaluate the standard as it currently exists, which is that a person who, in the judgment of a reasonable person, commits a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of less lethal force.

I'm just hoping that we can have a conversation offline about whether it would make greater sense to change that standard to a person who was convicted by a Legal fact finder of actually having committed a criminal offense at or immediately prior to the use of lethal lethal force that that would make I think that would make this particular amendment a little a little stronger in my mind.

But again, I'm generally supportive of.

of this amendment and certainly don't want to hold it up in committee today because I think that's something that you and I can discuss and hopefully thread the needle on.

Thank you so much.

I was going to save this for the end, but I think it's appropriate to share now as it relates to the full council consideration of this.

Since there is an announced status conference with the parties to the consent decree that will be held on the afternoon of August 10th, In recognition of this, I'm proposing that the full council not vote until after that date, which will be August 16th.

That would give us some more time to create some additive language to this amendment.

Perfect.

Thank you, Chair Humboldt.

Absolutely.

Senator Solante, your hand is raised.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I have already spoken to this, so I just wanted to inform members of the public that I will be voting yes on this amendment to close one of the two glaring loopholes in this legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Swann.

All right, if there are no further questions, will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment 2?

Council President Gonzalez.

Abstain.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Four in favor, one abstained.

The amendment passes.

Thank you.

The third and final amendment is Amendment 3. I move Amendment 3. Is there a second, please?

Second.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

The third amendment, as Central Staff Lisa Kay explained, it clarifies the restrictions in Section 1E that it applies to deployment of pepper balls regardless of the caliber of the launcher, 40 millimeter or otherwise.

This is largely a technical clarification.

And just want to also highlight that you all received a letter from the Community Police Commission that really highlights their long concern around around less lethals and is supportive of this piece of legislation in recognition that it does not incorporate all of their recommendations, but that they recognize that it does work towards implementing some of the recommendations and that they are engaged in ongoing conversations around policy changes in this area.

So again, looking to see if there are questions or comments about this bill, this amendment.

Thank you.

As far as I know, the CPC letter does not say anything about this amendment.

I do think it is problematic to cite the CPC letter overall as a reason to support the legislation.

I mean, it is accurate that they are calling for a yes vote, but they are clear in their letter that they are settling for something totally inadequate.

Their letter says, quote, This legislation does work toward implementation of some recommendations made by the CPC last fall.

However, those CPC's recommendations identified additional changes necessary to best protect our community's safety and civil liberties during protests, for which we asked the City Council to not stop striving towards, end quote, which in other words means that this is not adequate.

But as far as this amendment goes, I don't believe the CPC letter has weighed in on it in any way.

And I will be voting no on this amendment because it increases the types of guns, shooting, chemical weapons that the police can use against protesters, which I do not support.

Thank you.

And just to clarify, I said much of what you said, Council Member Sawant, myself.

I said at the CPC letter what supports the legislation, acknowledges that it only works towards implementing some of the recommendations and that there's more work to be done.

So thank you for underscoring what I previously said.

The amendment relates to a regulation on the deployment of pepper balls.

There's been a concern that without this amendment that we will not regulate the use of pepper balls if it is in something other than a 45-millimeter launcher.

If it's in a different type of launcher, it will be unregulated.

So just want to clarify, then, your statement that you don't support the amendment, what not supporting the amendment would mean.

Thank you and.

Chair Herbold, so in other words, not supporting the amendment means that if SPD acquired launchers that were larger or smaller than 40 millimeters, then under, without this amendment, they would be able to use this munition.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

All right, if there's no further question.

Oh, sorry.

No problem.

I had raised my hand again.

Just to, I wanted to confirm with Lisa what you just said, because that was not my understanding.

My understanding is it's not regulated and it's not covered by the loophole, but can Lisa clarify that, what you just said basically?

My understanding is the opposite of what you just said.

Anyway, I'll stop there.

No, I'm sorry.

Council Member Herbold's interpretation is correct.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

All right.

So let's call the roll on Amendment 3.

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Swann.

I abstain and just, sorry, if I may quickly clarify, I'm abstaining because I'm not clear myself, so I'll just abstain.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Four in favor, amendment passes.

All right, great.

Returning to the main motion, again, I want to note that my intent in making the motion to vote on this legislation is to be sent to full council to be scheduled for a vote after upcoming status conference scheduled for October, I'm sorry, August 10th.

First potential date would be August 16th.

We do not know for a fact that this legislation will be discussed within the context of the as conference, but in the spirit of getting as much input informally before the policies associated with this bill are sent for the formal process, I want to give the opportunity for the council to benefit from any discussion that might happen about legislation at the status conference.

So with that, I should probably wait to see if anybody's got any more comments before we call the roll.

Not seeing any.

And again, just recognizing that when we take this up full council, it will be nearly a year's work on this latest iteration of this legislation.

I thank you all for your engagement on it.

I'm sorry, Chair Herbold, I'd raised my hand just for brief final comments.

Go ahead, Council Member Kwan.

Within struggles, there are always questions about when to accept something insufficient and when to hold out to win more.

It is inaccurate to suggest that this bill represents what the movement has advocated for, the legislation my office proposed that passed last fall, represents that.

And I believe the city council should hold out to fight for that legislation, going to effect rather than pass this bill, creating cavernous loopholes, but to the extent that the conversation has advanced so dramatically since last year.

And the pressure that exists on democratic establishments in city after city to show some results for all the promises that were made last year during the protest.

I think all of this shows that protests and mass movements do work.

The problem is that when they subside.

You see all the the real positions of politicians coming out and that is why I would want to urge all the hundreds of people, maybe even thousands of people who have engaged on this issue specifically this year.

fighting to hold on to most, if not everything, that we had won last year.

I wanted to thank them and congratulate them for their persistence and for their courage, and also to urge them to understand that the fight is far from done and that we have to keep organizing and keep mobilizing.

I will be voting no on this bill today.

Thank you, Council Member Solange.

And If there are no further comments, I would like the clerk to please call the roll.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

No.

Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Four in favor, one opposed.

Bill passes as amended.

Thank you.

The motion passes and the recommendation will be sent to the school council.

As noted, a vote could take place after the August 10th status conference.

We're thinking that will likely be August 16th.

Thank you all again for sticking with us today.

Another long meeting.

The next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for July 27th.

And unless there are other comments from my colleagues, it is 1226. And seeing no further comments, we are adjourned.

Thank you.