Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 3/9/21

Good morning and welcome to the March 9th, 2021 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

It is 9.31 a.m.

and I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Present.

Chair Herbold?

Here.

Five present.

Thank you, Alex.

So for today's agenda, we'll hear five appointments to the Community Police Commission, and we'll also be hearing a reappointment to the Community Police Commission from the mayor, three of the new appointments or council appointments, and two are Community Police Commission appointments.

We also are going to hear the confirmation of Community Police Commission Executive Director.

And we'll be hearing a presentation from the Human Services Department on the $12 million community safety capacity building RFP and spend plan, including a vote on legislation to lift the proviso on the funds.

And then finally, we'll discuss Council Bill 119981 concerning the Seattle Police Department's budget.

Again, this time we'll be hearing a presentation from the Seattle Police Department.

We'll now move into approving the agenda for the meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

And at this time we'll transition into public comment.

I will be moderating the public comment period in the following manner.

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

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

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

This link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, you will hear a prompt, and once you've heard that prompt, you will need to press star six to unmute yourself.

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

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

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you wrap up your public comments.

And if you are not able to 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 speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line and if you plan continue following this meeting, you can do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

Looks like we have 21 speakers signed up for public comment.

And in order to allow as many speakers as possible to speak, we're going to try to get everybody in.

Not only, as I mentioned earlier, is speaking time, testifying time, one and a half minutes, but I also will amend the agenda to allow an additional 15 minutes of speaking time for public comment.

If there are no objections, I will amend the agenda.

Hearing no objections, the agenda is amended to allow a total of 35 minutes of With that, I'm going to call on the first speakers, and we will begin with Peter Delito, and Peter will be followed with Howard Gale.

Peter?

Thank you.

Hello, good morning.

My name is Peter Shelato Condit.

I use he, him pronouns, and I live in District 4. I am appalled that City Council would even consider breaking their promise to community regarding SPD overtime spending.

I encourage you to pass Council Bill 119981 without amendment.

Our police have repeatedly shown an inability to hold themselves accountable.

City Council must therefore be the ones who hold them accountable through your power over the budget, or the atrocities will continue.

SPD has already killed two people this year.

They have shown a willingness and eagerness to brutalize peaceful protesters, violating our First Amendment rights.

They even sent a sizable contingency to Washington, D.C.

in January to fight against democracy itself.

What more needs to happen for you to take this seriously?

Keep the $5.4 million out of SPD hands like you promised.

That money needs to go to participatory budgeting, which will provide the city with an accountable democratic system for equitable allocation of city resources and power.

Black Lives Matter, Council Member Herbold, do your part.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Howard Gale followed by Angie Gerald.

Good morning.

CPC and the Council continue a pattern of performative accountability cut off from the community reality.

Just two weeks ago, the CPC voted against supporting full civilianization of police investigations, contrary to the overwhelming community input, contrary to the current legislation in Olympia, contrary to the recommendations from the governor's task force on independent investigations of police, and contrary to common sense.

CPC appointments only further highlight the degree to which the council and the commission are cut off from the community.

The federal court memorandum of understanding specifically calls out the importance of student and youth membership on the CPC, but today's six appointments continue a pattern of excluding youth voices, with all appointees being over 30 and having an average age of over 41. The newest CPC appointed commissioner, Victoria Beach, said to the people abused by the SPD last summer who were providing emotional testimony about their abuse in an OIG forum, quote, I don't have pity or sympathy.

They are whining about this and that.

You knew it was going to be violent like that because you came out with that agenda, thereby blaming the victims for their abuse.

It should be noted that while Victoria Beach was accepted as a new CPC commissioner, a protester who applied to be a commissioner was rejected.

In fact, over the last eight years, there has never been a protester on the CPC, nor has there actually been a young person.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Angie Gerald, followed by Sean Glaze, please.

Hi, my name is Angie Gerald, and I'm calling from Ballard to ask that City Council prioritize budget support for the Seattle Police Community Service Officer Program.

The team of 13 unarmed civilian officers is a new form of public safety resourcing that has wide community support and has been fully supported by City Council in recent years.

After years of investment into planning and implementation, As of last fall the team of multilingual diverse staff have suddenly not been able to scale up as allocated.

There is immense demand for their services and it is also hampering their ability to conduct needed training.

The politics of defunding have frozen this program for many months.

I believe I believe because of the optics of it being housed within the police department the civilian CSO staff who have worked very hard to help define and implement the program have publicly stated they do not want to leave the department.

Please don't let this viable program stagnate.

It is ready to immediately scale up in a community sensitive way using previously allocated positions.

Seattle needs help responding to a wider range of 9-1-1 calls and other community support.

They can help with domestic violence landlord tenant disputes gun violence prevention social service connections and many other priority issues.

13 civilians serving a city of over 700,000 is ridiculously out of whack.

please fully and immediately fund the CSO program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Angie.

Sean Glaze will be followed by Shamir Tana.

Sean?

Sean is not present.

We will get back to Sean if Sean returns.

We'll move down to Shamir Tana followed by Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Shamir, please.

Hello, my name is Shamir Tana.

I'm a District 7 resident.

I'm calling to ask City Council to pass CD 119981 without amendment and reduce the SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that they overspent in 2020. These funds should be allocated to participatory budgeting.

Personally, I'm very disappointed that we are back here again after City Council unanimously passed Resolution 31962, which stated City Council would not grant SPD additional funding for excess overtime.

and is especially disappointed given investigations have concluded inappropriate SPD overtime pay over years.

City Council needs to honor its commitments and hold SPD accountable by reducing SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million and transfer the funds to support budgeting, which is directly driven by community need.

Thank you for the time.

Thank you, Mayor.

Kavanagh Thompson-Wiley will be followed by BJ Last.

Kavanagh, are you there with us?

Remember to press star six.

Hello.

There we go.

There you go.

Thank you.

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi.

Hi, I'm, I'm Trayvonna.

I'm a black woman who's 29 from the city of, uh, that we're on of occupied Duwamish territory.

I'm calling to ask the city council to pass the, uh, the, uh, CB 1 1 9 9 8 1 without amendment and reduce the Seattle police department's 2021 budget.

by the full $5.4 million that were overspent in 2020. STD has a huge history of overspending with their overtime.

This money can be used to help the black community, which they brutalized.

I wanna make sure that STD does not continue to use this overtime fund for their gain, but to really get this into the community's hands.

I want to make sure that the City Council honors what they passed last summer.

It's really important that these funds get to the community because this is the people that need it the most.

And we need to hold SPD accountable by reducing SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million and transferring those funds to participatory budgeting.

I'm asking that the City Council do what they said they were going to do.

I ask that the city council remain to be on the side of the public, to be on the side of the people that SPD brutalizes.

And again, please put this money back into the hands of the people, not to the SPD officers, which they brutalize the black community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is BJ Last, followed by Andy Vanderbilt.

Hello, my name is BJ Last.

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

I'm calling to ask council to pass CB 119981 without amendment and reduce the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that SPD overspent in 2020. These funds need to go to participatory budgeting.

Council members have recently talked about being concerned that reducing SPD's 2021 budget could create issues with SPD's compliance with the consent decree.

SPD is not and never has been in compliance with the consent decree.

SPD has had over eight years to bring itself into compliance with the consent decree and has failed to do so despite a skyrocketing budget that has grown by over 60%.

SPD's 2021 budget is more than $100 million higher than it was when Seattle entered into the consent decree in 2012 and will remain over $100 million higher even after the $5.4 million is reallocated to participatory budgeting.

Clearly, the budget is not what is keeping SPD from complying with the consent decree.

Judge Robart has consistently found SPD to be out of compliance in areas of accountability.

How can continuing to give SPD a free pass on its spending lead to SPD being in any way accountable?

City Council needs to honor Resolution 31962 and hold SPD accountable for its spending by transferring the full 5.4 million overspent in 2020 from SPD to participatory budgeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Andy Vanderbilt followed by Kalem Kirram.

Hi there.

My name is Andy Vanderbilt.

I'm a District 3 resident and I'm a member of the Washington State Nurses Association.

I'm calling to ask City Council to pass CB 119-981 without amendments They reduced the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that they overspent in 2020. These funds should be allocated to participatory budgeting.

FPD has a history of overtime fraud.

They continue to support the overtime budget.

It is fiscally irresponsible by the council.

They do not deserve special treatment compared to other departments.

$5.4 million is a ton of money that could vastly improve other services in the city through participatory budgeting.

Already this year, they have killed two members of our community for mental health issues, and as someone who has worked in the mental health sector, these deaths were not necessary.

Last year, this council made a commitment to defund this department, and now is the time to actually take action.

So please honor your commitments and hold us to be accountable by reducing SBE's budget for the full, 5.4 million this year and transferring the funds to participatory budgeting.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next person I have signed up is Caleb Kirram, but I see that Caleb is not present.

So we'll go down to Julia Buck followed by Alice Marabe.

Good morning.

My name is Julia Buck.

I'm a resident of District 6. And I'm calling to ask city council to please pass CB 119981 without amendment.

I'd also like to ask that these funds be allocated to participatory budgeting.

You know, the job of our mayor and city council is, or the job of every city department is to spend within the bounds of what our city council has allocated to them.

It's very worrying to me to see our department.

We need to live with it in our office.

Sorry, I'm having a hard time hearing you.

We'll just end there.

Council Member Mosqueda referred to cutting the 2021 budget as this is how we hold the line, and I hope to encourage the City Council to please hold the line.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Let's see, Alice Marabe, followed by Alex Bryant.

Alice?

Hi, and good morning.

My name is Alice Marabe.

I live in Mount Baker, and I'm calling in support of passing CB-1199-81's out amendment.

Both parts of this bill are really important, transferring the money out of SPD and transferring it to participatory budgeting.

And it's especially important that it be the full $5.4 million.

When SPD overspent last year, you let them have this money with a clear understanding that they were borrowing that money from their own funds for 2021. Now they're asking you to forgive the debt, pretend that didn't happen, talking about money that SPD never had any right to claim.

Because they were borrowing from their own future funds, and because money is fungible, granting SPD's request would mean that council is effectively going to pay now out of its own pocket to cover last year's overspending.

And that puts you in a rare position where you have the power of hindsight.

Usually when you budget, you're putting down money for outcomes in the future.

But in this case, we'd actually be paying for the past.

And we already know exactly what this amount of money produced.

It was used to pay for excessive amounts of overtime so the police could brutalize protesters who took to the streets in defense of Black lives.

We saw police in riot gear, pepper spraying and tear gassing people, firing blast balls indiscriminately into the crowd.

It would be unconscionable to decide to pay the police department any amount of money for assaulting peaceful protesters last summer.

This bill is also a fantastic chance to invest in participatory budgeting.

The funding is only one facet of the work.

We have a really beautiful opportunity to create true public safety in Seattle right now.

So I urge you to please pass this bill without amendment.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alex Bryant, but I don't see Alex Bryant present.

So we'll move down to Jack Francis, followed by Johanna Bitton.

Hello, my name is Jack Francis.

I live in U District, and I'm calling to ask City Council today to pass CB 119981 without amendment and to reduce the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that SPD themselves overspent in 2020. These funds should absolutely be allocated to participatory budgeting.

Last year, the City Council, y'all, unanimously passed Resolution 31962, which stated City Council, y'all, would not grant SPD additional funding to cover excess overtime.

SPD overspent on overtime, asked City Council for additional funding, and City Council granted it while pledging to reduce SPD's 2021 budget to offset the overrun.

City Council, y'all, needs to honor its commitments and hold SPD accountable by reducing SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million and transferring the budget, excuse me, transferring the funds to participatory budgeting.

The job of the mayor and every city department is to spend within the bounds of what City Council, y'all, allocates.

SPD should not receive special treatment.

We all have to live within our budget.

Taking $5.4 million out of SPD's 2021 budget shows SPD Council is serious, shows SPD The city council, y'all is serious about budget accountability.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

I see, um, one speaker who was not present earlier is present now.

Um, so we'll go back up to Caleb Kirram.

Remember to press star six.

Hello, this is Caleb Kirram.

I'm a resident of District 4 Councilmember Alex Peterson.

I'm calling in to strongly support CB 119981 to reduce the SPD budget by $5.4 million.

SPD has a well-documented history of abusing overtime to the detriment of our city budget.

This summer, SPD used overtime extensively to bully and police Black Lives Matter protesters in Seattle.

Even at one point, maintaining a 24-hour presence in many blocks in Capitol Hill completely unnecessarily for multiple days.

On other years, there is well-documented evidence of overtime fraud by SPD employees that clearly hasn't been put in check.

These funds would not actually go to places that support public safety as is right now, so they should be put into processes that might actually help through things like participatory budgeting.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is, let's see, Alex Bryant.

Hi, I'm calling to state that Seattle City Council needs to reinvest in the community, not the police force, which it's proven itself to be a danger to the community at large.

The idea that Seattle City Council would pay 5.4 million in overtime hours for a police force which waged war on the city over the summer is absurd.

$5.4 million in compensation for time spent throwing flash grenades at citizens, smoke bombing entire neighborhoods, and arresting those who are nonviolent and practicing their constitutional right to protest an unjust and inhumane system.

Our city has an overwhelming need to reinvest in community-based organizations and those with the skill set to work with the chronically homeless, including those with severe mental health and substance use related issues.

SPD has proven itself incapable and inadequate when it comes to providing safety for our communities and working for those in crisis.

As the manager of a high acuity tiny house village, I've had dozens of calls with SPD for help with their mental health team, attempted to triage safety concerns on site and been met with little to no assistance other than the suggestion to arrest clients in crisis.

I've had firsthand experience in consulting with SPD for working with those in crises and been told to evict them as a solution.

Evicting someone experiencing a mental health crisis is not only cruel, but extremely unethical given the current public health crises we are experiencing.

The city is relying on SPD to do a job they are unfit and unwilling to do in a myriad of ways.

This is of course to no surprise because their sole purpose is to arrest and incarcerate those in crises instead of engaging in non-punitive measures to protect public safety and of

My apologies, my internet is unstable this morning.

The next speaker is Ryan Great, followed by Ben Sercombe.

Hello, my name is Ryan Great.

I'm a District 4 resident.

The City Council must pass CB 119981 without amendment and reallocate the $5.4 million that SPD overspent on overtime in 2020 to participatory budgeting.

SPD shouldn't receive special treatment from City Council.

They must be held accountable.

SPD learns they can get a free pass from City Council to freely overspend on overtime and use those funds to violently suppress peaceful demonstrators protesting in defense of Black lives, as they did last summer.

They will do so again.

This kind of overtime spending is not only a waste of resources but also actively hurts Seattle's black communities who have suffered at the hands of SPD for decades.

The $5.4 million that SPD spent on overtime should instead go into participatory budgeting.

Seattle must not reward SPD for their unconstitutional behavior and instead invest in a more democratic municipal budgeting process.

I yield the remainder of my time.

Thank you.

The next speaker that we have present is Ben Sercombe, followed by Mariana Molina Beltran.

Hello, City Council members.

My name is Ben Sercombe.

I'm living in District 3. Thank you for the ability to speak in front of you today.

I'm calling to ask that the City Council pass CB 119981 without amendment.

These funds should be allocated to participatory budgeting.

I'm a community member of Seattle that lives next to the East Police Precinct.

Since I've moved to my new apartment in August, I've both been witness to and victim of countless acts of police brutality.

To be clear, I've not taken part in any demonstration outside the police precinct, but I have been an unwilling bystander of the police's actions.

Not even a month after moving in, I had to vacate my animals and myself out of my apartment because tear gas had filled every room, despite tear gas being banned by the city.

On a separate occasion, police tried to force themselves into my apartment complex to interrogate my neighbors after one neighbor yelled out the window for the police to go home.

Right before Christmas, I was nearly arrested for walking my dog in Cal Anderson Park while Seattle police were brutalizing homeless folks and clearing them out of the park.

Instead, the police have built a figurative and literal barricade between themselves and the community, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

I've never seen any police try to talk or work with any members of my community.

Our department has formed a coalition to deal with crime in the area because we cannot rely on police to do anything but harass us.

Do you all know what the median pay for a Seattle police officer is?

The median gross pay among SPD's more than 2,000 employees last year was $153,000, not including benefits, with 374 employees grossing at least $200,000.

The next speaker we have signed up here is Mariana Molina Beltran, followed by Cody Zalvisky.

Mariana?

Hello.

Hello.

Yes, good morning.

We can hear you.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Mariana Molina Beltran, and I am a District 3 resident and a student at Seattle University.

I'm calling to demand that City Council pass CB 1199-81 without amendment and reduce SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that they overspent in 2020. Last year, City Council unanimously passed Resolution 3196-2, which stated that you would not grant SPD any additional funds to cover their excess overtime, which was a great decision given SPD's history of overtime fraud.

This year, SPD has killed two people, including Derek Hayden, a Seattle University student, Stop funding the murder of community members by SPD.

SPD does not deserve any special treatment.

City Council has to honor its commitments and hold SPD accountable by reducing their 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million and allocate that money to participatory budgeting.

If you don't, they're going to continue to keep overspending.

Take a stand for something, Seattle City Council.

Our next speaker is Cody Zaleski, followed by Tim Blase.

Cody?

Cody, can you hit star six?

Can you hear me?

Yes, gotcha.

Oh, okay.

Great.

Hi, my name is Cody Zaleski, he, him, District 4. And in light of the current situation of law enforcement reform and budgetary issues, I would like to propose the Public Safety and Human Services Committee take up a resolution to decriminalize entheogenic plant medicine.

This would be a small step towards drug law reform by making it lowest law enforcement priority.

The plant medicine here are defined by only three plants, ayahuasca, psilocybin, and ibogaine, which are shown to have no potential for substance abuse.

And speaking of the medical researcher, however, they do, however, have a wide variety of applications in treating PTSD, major depressive disorder, and several other psychiatric illnesses.

While no doubt there are many expenses in the city budget this would cost the Seattle City Council nothing to take this modest step.

Several other major cities including Washington D.C. Denver Chicago and Oakland amongst others in this country have taken the step over the past two years with no negative consequences.

The research literature supporting the benefits of these plant medicines is overwhelming and having more legal recognition would help with the peace of mind for patients concerned with prosecution and for the public acceptance of their benefits.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sam Blase, but he does not show his presence, so we'll go down to Montserrat Castro.

My name is Monterey DeCastro.

I'm a resident of District 7, and I'm calling on the entire City Council to pass TD-1199-81 without amendment and reduce SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that SPD overspent in 2020 and allocate those funds to participatory budgeting.

Last year, you all passed a resolution that stated that you would not grant SPD additional funding to cover excess overtime, and you gave it to them anyway when they asked.

At the same time, you made a commitment to the people of Seattle to defund SPD by 50% at least, as we asked, and didn't uphold your word to us.

SPD has ignored active rape calls because they were too busy monitoring and brutalizing protesters.

I want to emphasize, it was not just this summer.

This is still happening right now, every week.

They continue to use their overtime to arrest people for using chalk and sending them to jail during a pandemic, sending protesters to the hospital for playing soccer at the park, and continuously targeting vigils to honor those who have been killed too soon.

Just a few weeks ago, SPD killed someone in a mental health crisis within 30 seconds of arriving on scene.

Honor Derek Hayden's life by keeping your word to your people and stop giving SPD money to kill us.

It's destroying us.

It's absolutely destroying us watching SPD kill person after person.

They're killing your constituents.

Please listen to our cries and stop pandering to SPD and help us get justice.

Honor your commitment.

Hold SPD accountable.

Black lives still matter.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

That is the last person that we have signed up to speak, who is also present.

So we will close public comment and move into the agenda.

Will you please read into the agenda items one through six.

Item agenda number one, appointment 01819, appointment of Naveen Robert Charles Pinto as member of Community Police Commission.

for a term to December 31, 2021. Item number two, appointment 01820, appointment of Austin Field as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2022. Item number three, appointment 01821, appointment of Tasha R. Johnson as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2022. Item number four, appointment 01822, appointment of Erica Newman as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2022. Item number five, appointment 01823, reappointment of Asha Mohammed as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2022. And item number six, appointment 01824, appointment of Patricia L. Hunter as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2023.

Alex, so before getting into the meat of the appointments, I'd like to ask that the CPC co-chairs first set the context for these appointments by speaking briefly to the work that the CPC does.

And then after that, we'll get into introducing the appointments themselves.

So co-chairs, please do take it away.

Good morning.

I'm Erin Goodman, and I'm a co-chair for the CPC, and I'm joined today by LaRon Baker, who is also with us.

Over the last year, we have spent a lot of time working to set up the systems that need to be in place so the CPC can do its work.

And one of the key things was making sure that we had all of the positions filled.

Currently, that makes sure that there's enough people to do the work.

And so this has been a really exciting process.

It's been collaboratory with both the other appointing bodies based on a matrix, looking at both the representation listed in the ordinance and then also identified by members of the CPC.

There were a number of people that applied.

We had a really strong pool and we're very excited to bring these appointees in front of you today, but also to have them on the CPC because we need, they have experience and understanding and representation that is strongly needed on the commission.

Good morning, City Council members.

My name is LaRon Baker, and I'm co-chair of the CPC.

And we are excited today to be here with some fantastic nominees for the CPC.

The CPC, unfortunately, has long been understaffed when it comes to our commissioners, which has hampered our ability to really do our fundamental work of ensuring that the voice of community is brought to the accountability discussion and that the interest in community standards that we want law enforcement to be held to is able to be done in a fulsome way.

So we're excited to bring the nominees and have built up our commission so that we can continue to do the work that the CPC has done for an extended amount of time, including ensuring that the community's voice is heard when it comes to compliance with the consent decree.

Thank you.

Thank you, Co-Chair Baker and Goodman.

So what we'll do is, since we have appointments from each of the three appointing authorities, we'll have each, a representative from each of the appointing authorities do the introductions of their own appointments.

And so since we've started with the CP Co-Chairs, let's pick up there.

If you guys don't mind introducing your recommended appointments to get us started, that'd be great.

Thank you.

So our first nominee is Austin Field.

And Austin, so the CPC is excited to nominate Austin Field for a seat on the commission.

Austin is a Seattle native, a veteran, a former criminal defense investigator, and a current law student at the University of Washington School of Law.

He also for many years has had concerns about the militarization of police and done substantial research in that area, including police standards.

While he was in the military, he was deployed to Afghanistan, where he was deeply engaged in shaping local law enforcement operations and in discussing security issues with community members.

As a defense investigator, he honed his ability to work collaboratively with individuals involved in the criminal legal system and saw up close and personal how such involvement including interactions with police officers impacted their lives and communities.

As a law student, he's developed legal analysis supporting the King County inquest process on behalf of families who've lost loved ones to law enforcement's use of deadly force and provided legal support to individuals involved with LEAD.

He will be a great asset to the commission.

Erin.

Thank you.

The CPC is also pleased to be nominating Erica Newman to the Community Police Commission.

Erica has served as a legislative analyst with the King County Council for the past five years and with the King County Prosecutor's Office before that.

In this role, she has spent countless hours helping individuals and families navigate the education and criminal justice systems.

Further, she has a deep understanding of policy, policy development and implementation, and the effects it can have on people of color and low-income residents.

She has significant community service experience, including with the National Council for Negro Women, the King County Legislative Branch, African-American Affinity Group, Africatown, and the NAACP.

She has experience working directly with underserved and underrepresented populations and a passion for advancing the equity and social justice agenda.

And she is looking forward to bringing her community activism experience and service style leadership to the CPC.

We are excited to welcome her.

Thank you so much.

And we have, looks like I see Austin with us.

Do we have both of your appointments here with us this morning?

Yes, great.

I just want to, before we move on to the next set of appointments, give both Austin and Asha an opportunity to say a few words about why they're excited to serve on the CPC.

Sure, thank you, Council Member.

I'd be happy to talk.

I really am deeply grateful for the honor of the nomination, and thank you, Laurent Baker, for those kind words.

I really appreciate it.

I share concerns that were expressed a few moments ago by a member of the public about the lack of youth on the mission and the lack of protest representation.

Although it was kind of sobering to think of myself as not a youth.

That was a little bit jarring for me, but accurate.

And so I do see my role, given the fact that I am currently at the University of Washington, as trying to bring more students and more young people into the commission's work and make sure that their voices are represented as well.

So thank you again.

I really appreciate the opportunity to serve.

Boston and Erica, are you with us?

I'm here.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me this morning.

Um, I'm excited to serve on the commission as a long term resident of the city of Seattle and a current resident.

Um, I'm fully aware of what we can do as a group to help develop, I guess, or improve better policing strategies, how we can incorporate our youth and how we can make positive change all around policing.

I have a big interest in serving kids and encouraging them to look toward the future and what does that look like.

And so I'm happy to serve on the commission and help out in any way that I can.

Thank you, Erica.

Let's move on, and I want to open it up to council members to ask questions, but let's get everybody in front of us first.

Noel, do you want to move forward and introduce the appointees from the council?

Yes.

Thank you, Council Member.

Naveen Pinto serves as an attending physician at Seattle Children's Hospital and also is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.

He has spent his career advocating for the vulnerable and underserved.

In addition to caring for children with cancer, he is a researcher actively involved in evaluating new therapies for vulnerable populations.

He has held several faculty and medical positions.

Tasha Johnson serves as the director of operations for Choose 180, building the infrastructure of programs, as well as implementation of programs with community partners and she co-created the LGBTQ plus staff training workshop.

She has a Master of Social Work from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude in Health Sciences at Portland State University.

She completed the Puget Sound SAGE Community Leadership Institute.

Reverend Patricia Hunter serves as Minister for Outreach and Education at Seattle First Baptist Church and Minister of Worship at Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Both congregations are advocates for social justice, marginalized communities, and police accountability.

She has advocated for justice in sacred and secular institutions for decades, including the financial planning industry.

As an African-American clergy lesbian, she has experienced oppressions based on race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and sexual identity.

She is also a certified financial planner and served as financial wellness program director and planning manager for the Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board before retirement in June 2020. She has a Doctor of Ministry degree from St. Paul School of Theology and a Master of Divinity from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.

She previously served as a Seattle Women's Commissioner.

Thank you, Noel.

I just want to say and open it up to each Naveen, Natasha, and Reverend Hunter to say a few words about why they're interested in serving on this really important body.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you all.

I'm honored to have the opportunity to serve.

Again, my name is Naveen Pinto.

I'm a resident of Maple Leaf.

and I'm a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital.

I wanted to echo Austin's comments about the sobering nature that I'm no longer a youth, as my gray hairs might attest, but I am an advocate for youth and the young, and my hope is, similar to Austin's, to get more youth involvement, both on the council itself and amplifying their voices, because I feel they're important.

So I thank Howard for his comments, and I thank the other members of the committee for pushing forward my nomination.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Natasha, are you with us?

Yes, I am.

Fantastic.

Hello there.

Good morning.

So my name is Tasha Johnson.

I'm a resident of Renton Highlands, and I want to thank you all for this opportunity as well.

I have had several family members that have been affected personally by the criminal legal system and by by use of excess force, which mitigates or which is what prompted my interest in the CPC.

When I decided to return to academia as a nontraditional student, so I returned a little bit later in life, my original interests were in areas of juvenile education and reaching higher levels of higher education.

However, upon my introduction to Choose 180, I realized that there's a large segment of the population that will never have this opportunity or may never have this opportunity if they are if their juvenile behaviors or youthful behaviors are criminalized.

And I, too, am a young person.

Well, okay, like everyone else said, I'm not really a young person anymore, but that was my history.

So as a young person, my behaviors were not criminalized.

I somehow managed to escape that part of of the police force.

However, I still have a lot of, I know a lot of people that have been affected by the excess use of policing and would really benefit from being able to collaborate and understand how to work within systems and that the police really are not against you, but learning how to bring these communities together And if we stunt these youth before they even get started, then that will hamper their futures.

So that basically states my interest in wanting to work with the CPC, and I'm hoping to be able to bring our communities together so that the police are not seen as the enemy.

Thank you, Tasha.

And then Reverend Hunter.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to come before you this morning and I am Reverend Patricia Hunter and I live on North Beacon Hill and as mentioned in my introduction that I serve two congregations on Capitol Hill that have deep roots in social justice as well as in advocating for police accountability.

I was born in Seattle and I have watched the city grow and expand and in some ways deteriorate over the past 25 years.

And I've also watched the credibility and the accountability and honor of the Seattle police ebb and flow over that same period of time.

I'm supportive of Seattle Police.

We need the Seattle Police.

And one of my ministry colleagues is a retired Seattle Police chief.

But I also need to hold the Seattle Police accountable for their missteps and their misconduct.

And I certainly watched the SPD, as others did, last summer act in very questionable ways during the protest marches and where peaceful people were exercising their First Amendment rights.

And so by serving on the Community Police Commission is one way that I can do my part in holding SPD accountable for their actions.

I do not even claim to try and be a young person.

I am an African American older lesbian, very proud of that.

And I'm very concerned about police actions and marginalized communities that I represent.

I'm concerned about how police interact with those with mental health needs.

It's common knowledge that officers are ill-equipped to de-escalate situations where there are mental health issues.

And so John T. Williams and Charlene Lyles are two reasons why I would like to serve on this commission.

I'm also an advocate for community engagement.

I want neighbors to be able to get to know the officers who work in their area and their part of town.

I want to see officers at community celebrations and August night out events and greater respect and perhaps even some trust can grow with greater community engagement and accountability.

So those are just a few of the reasons why I would like to serve on the commission.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Reverend Hunter.

Then we have Deputy Mayor Washington here to tell us about the mayoral reappointment to the commission.

Good morning.

I was going to say good afternoon and it is not afternoon yet.

But it's my pleasure to present the mayor's reappointment to the Community Police Commission, Asha Mohammed.

I don't know if Asha is on here, but we'll see when I'm done.

Asha is a dedicated public servant.

She's rooted in community.

She's currently the executive director of Somali Youth and Family Club, which is a nonprofit organization that addresses homelessness and refugee and immigrant integration.

She has been a Seattleite for over 20 years and has regular community engagement.

Asha has worked to form multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual spaces in the quest of seeking equity through a human rights and social justice lens.

She has brought this important lens to the CPC.

Additionally, she's a fierce advocate for reproductive justice and an ally for LGBTQ rights.

We're excited to reappoint Asha to this commission and keep her critical perspective moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And reappointments aren't expected.

They're welcome to join us.

But the fact that Asha is not with us today is just fine.

And I'm really pleased to have you with us, Deputy Mayor Washington.

So with that, I want to thank everybody for their willingness to serve.

As mentioned, this is a very, very important role to the city and particularly important at this time of inflection around issues of policing in our community.

I want to open it up to my colleagues to ask any questions they have of folks coming forward to serve.

And we'll accept, there you go, there's a visual, actual hand raised from Council President Gonzalez.

old school instead of using the hand feature.

This is a, I also want to express gratitude to all the folks who are willing to be considered for an appointment, who've accepted their nomination for this really important commission that has no shortage of work and responsibilities and duties.

So thank you to each of you for your willingness to step up.

I have one question.

I know we don't have enough time to, we have a long agenda today, so we don't have time to ask a lot of questions, a battery of questions.

So I'll just ask one that I think is really top of mind for me right now, which is around labor negotiations as it relates to police gills.

I just wanted to hear sort of, I suppose, thinking from each of the nominees, how you plan to, um, work within the context of the community police commission and your responsibility to the communities you identify with and, um, represent on issues related to the city's ongoing, um, development of parameters with the respective police guilds and, and ongoing, uh, negotiation issues, particularly as it relates to accountability and trust within the public safety system.

So just share with us a little bit about how you plan to sort of show up and wrestle with those issues related to how accountability works or doesn't within the context of our labor negotiations process with police unions.

And that's a question for everyone.

So anyone who dares to go first is welcome to.

Asking the tough questions, Council President.

Yes, Tasha, please.

So that's a tough question.

It's got me thinking.

But in my past, I've worked with the UFCW Local 21 as the union steward for my store.

And in my position, I was asked to take the concerns of our staff to the union.

as it pertains to salaries and other policies, processes that were of concern to our staff.

And I believe I will be able to take those skills and utilize those within the community that I live in now to bring those concerns to to the CPC as well as to the community.

And currently in my position as the Director of Operations with CHOOSE 180, we have a lot of partnerships with community, as in like the community of the folks that live that we live amongst, as well as juvenile detention centers, we work with the King County prosecuting attorneys offices.

So the partnerships that we have span a large spectrum of folks.

And I believe that I will be able to, to bring the communities together to discuss the matters of concern amongst all.

And yeah, I think I'm going to stop there.

Thanks for the chance to talk.

Much appreciated.

Austin, Erica, or Nevin, or Reverend Hunter, any thoughts?

Sure.

I think, obviously, that's going to be the most pressing issue that the CPC faces with this next go around.

And having done a little bit of research into police union laws as part of legal internships and scholarship that I've done, I think that there is a risk that public trust is undermined when the public discovers that collective bargaining agreements can subvert laws that are passed by people's duly elected representatives.

And so I think sharing that information with folks, explaining the process and then taking people's concerns about that process, especially, you know, the concerns of, say, students at the University of Washington or other places who may be a little bit less familiar with how the process works, but once they learn how the process works, they're very concerned about it.

I see that as my role.

Thank you, Austin.

Reverend Hunter.

Well, I'll hop in here, and I think that Many of the communities that I represent are supportive of unions and so would certainly respect the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

But it's also important to have all stakeholders at the table when negotiating these contracts.

And I would just not want to be bullied by the guild.

And so, for each stakeholder to, to share what they feel is really important in the contract negotiations to hear and to listen, but certainly not to be bullied by the guild.

Thank you, Reverend Hunter.

Naveen or Erica, any thoughts?

Oh, Erica, please go ahead.

Go ahead.

I just wanted to echo comments that have already been made that first of all, I think that, you know, the Seattle Police and the Officers Guild are accountable to the people they serve.

And I view that the commission's role is to amplify the voices of the people of the city of Seattle.

And so I share Austin's comments that I think the more that our public is aware of the mechanisms to which the Officers Guild has used collective bargaining to sort of undermine public sentiment and bully those to get their needs.

I think raising awareness of that and trying our best to, you know, have the Seattle Police Officers Guild serve the community that they're entrusted to.

Thank you, Naveen.

And Erica.

Hi.

One of the things that come to my mind is communication and transparency is key.

And the reason being is because you know, the commission would, if we can explain to the public, you know, be transparent with the public, communicate with them in a way that they understand and be able to take that back, I guess, and use it as a tool to make people think in different perspectives.

And so those are the key words that come to my head in an attempt to reach agreements or deals, rules, et cetera, that, are fair for both sides.

So I think communication and transparency is big.

Thank you so much.

And I do want to recognize, because I think the question raises the issue, the role that the CPC has already played as it relates to preparing the council and the mayor in developing bargaining parameters.

The CPC, in collaboration with the mayor's office and the labor relations office, of the city has hosted a couple of different community engagement efforts, both aimed at explaining to the public what the bargaining process is, as well as sharing with the public the top priorities that the CPC has for bargaining parameters.

So really want to thank the CPC for doing that work in conjunction with the mayor's office and with labor relations.

That was a prerequisite for the council members who serve on the LRPC chaired by Council President Gonzalez.

It was a prerequisite to us for beginning the discussions around bargaining parameters.

We wanted to make sure that the CPC had sort of checked in with community, not just about their understanding of the process moving forward.

We've got a lot of new people engaged in watchdogging, if you will, the labor relations negotiations with SPOG than we did back in 2018. A lot of new voices, a lot of new faces.

So it's great that you took that time to meet with community, explain to them the process, and then to identify for them so that they're aware what the CPC top priorities are, as well as hearing from them what additional priorities that we all should be considering going into bargaining.

So again, thank you for that really important work that Council President Gonzalez highlights its importance in asking the question, and I really appreciate everybody's thoughtful answers.

And if there are no further questions, and I'm looking, I see no further questions.

So I will move items one through six.

Is there a second, please?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Councilmember Morales.

Aye.

Councilmember Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate everybody's participation here today, this morning, your willingness to serve, and we, I think, will, we have additional vacancies that we can fill, and we heard from members of the public today about what they believe some of our priorities are, and I really appreciate hearing from you with us here today that you share those priorities.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number seven?

Agenda item number seven, appointment 0181A, appointment of Brandi Grant as Executive Director of the Community Police Commission for a term to February 3, 2027.

Fantastic, thank you so much.

Again, we will have the CPC co-chairs to present the appointment.

That will be based on the fact that this is an appointment that is brought to us from the CPC.

not typical as relates to other appointments that we often see for director positions.

This is not an appointment that the executive makes to the council.

It's an appointment that the CPC itself makes and they the process for identifying applicants and interviewing and bringing forward finalists.

So perhaps you could talk to us a little bit, Chairs Baker and Goodman, about the process itself and how you landed on Interim Director Grant as your recommendation for the Permanent Executive Director.

Great.

Thank you.

And I want to thank the council for appointing such a great slate of commissioners.

We're very excited to get to work with them.

And my co-chair, Erin, can weigh in a little bit more about the process, but we performed a nationwide search with really aggressive outreach and headhunting to people who might be strong candidates.

Ultimately, we ended up with three candidates who had interviewed with staff.

who did community meetings and had conversations with community members and then were interviewed by the commission as a whole.

We landed on Brandy Grant, who served as a commissioner and then served as interim director, and we now put her forward as the permanent executive director.

During the whole process, she stood heads and shoulders above all of the other candidates with her dedication to Seattle, our community, her knowledge of the working and political landscape here, and her real dedication to the Seattle Community Police Commission and knowledge of it.

And her dedication, longstanding dedication to community work, collaborative community work.

She was just a phenomenal candidate.

And I'll tell you a little bit more about Brandy.

And if anyone wants to weigh in more about the process, you can do that a little bit later.

But Brandy holds a master's degree from the University of Oklahoma and an undergraduate degree from the University of Tulsa.

She comes to us bringing a wealth of experience working with community, including over 20 years of Mental Health and Community Programming in Washington State, and seven years of experience working with community in Seattle, applying her mental health experience expertise to policy and programming, addressing gun violence in our community.

Brandy is dedicated to ensuring accountability and a functional accountability system when it comes to policing in Seattle, and improving the Seattle Police Department's relationship with the community.

and definitely ensuring that the voices of the most impacted are heard in the discussion about policing and that community standards are brought forward.

Indeed, as I said before, she served as a commissioner on the CPC and interim director, and she is well-poised to do amazing work as the executive director.

Erin?

Yeah, and since becoming interim executive director, Brandy has led the CPC during unprecedented times with police accountability being at the forefront of the national conversation.

She transitioned from commissioner to director with fluid ease and professionalism, and during her tenure oversaw the completion of a significant amount of work.

Under her leadership, the CPC has produced recommendation statements on crowd control weapons, SPD's use of force policies, and the collective bargaining process for the new SPD contract.

She has streamlined the process for tracking recommendations made by the CPC, and overseeing the creation of a recommendation tracker so that others can see where these recommendations lie.

Over the past year, she has brought on a new policy team and led the commission into new arenas of advocacy with the development of the independent state legislative agenda for the CPC.

Her tenure has brought about a new energy in the CPC office as she's developed new staff onboarding and professional coaching processes, and is in the process of developing an internship program to engage and mentor the next generation of leaders in this field.

All of this is impressive, but where Brandy truly excels is in her ability to engage with the community and build relationships across the city to ensure that the CPC is representing the broader community.

The Community Police Commission and its co-chairs are excited to nominate Brandy Grant to be the permanent executive director for the CPC.

Thank you both for that wonderful introduction.

Before I open it up to Interim Director Grant, I just want to echo some of the comments I've heard.

I really appreciated the spearheading of the work to ensure that CPC recommendations are accessible to the public and that we have a way of tracking their implementation so that we can hold all of ourselves accountable for acting on your recommendations.

Really appreciate the work that you've done to get the commission fully staffed and reestablishing this onboarding process for new commissioners that's so important to have an effective working commission.

And as Director Goodman, I'm sorry, Co-Chair Goodman said, really appreciate the development of a state legislative agenda, really helped to make my work as Public Safety Chair easier to focus in on what things we should include in our citywide agenda and what things I should work on advocating at the state legislature.

really impressed with the work that you've done as interim director.

You've jumped right in and really have enjoyed working with you over these very challenging few months.

And so with that, Interim Director Grant, would you like to say a few words?

Yes, thank you, Councilmember herbal I appreciate you so much and I just want to thank everybody for the kind words in general it's been a really amazing opportunity to go from being a commissioner to being able to really dive into the work and do it on an interim basis.

It says a lot about trust and relationship building and community, because the, it was an honor, you know, for me to have the opportunity but it was something that I felt like was painstakingly easy, because I felt like there was already a commitment to community around police accountability in the first place and so I want you to know if you know appointed as the permanent executive director, the type of leader that you will continue to have moving forward as someone who will be transparent, compassionate and hold the community up and amplify the voices of people that have been extremely impacted by.

you know, some unnecessary policing that we've had and we've seen and we've witnessed over a period of time.

But I will say this, I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful.

This is a city that knows how to persevere.

This is a group of amazing people and counterparts that I've been allowed to work with.

So I don't think it's anything that we can't overcome, but there's definitely more hard work.

transparent conversations, some difficult ones, setting some egos aside, but ultimately, I believe that we all want the same thing, and that's equity.

We want justice and equity and public safety within all our communities, no matter what we look like and no matter where we live.

Wonderfully said.

Thank you so much.

Council members, do you have any questions that you'd like to add?

Council President Gonzalez, yes.

Um, no questions.

I've had an opportunity to, um, spend lots of time asking, um, director grants and some good solid questions and, and to engage with her in conversation.

Uh, I was really, um, honored and humbled to have been able to first met, um, director grant, um, several years ago when, um, she applied to be considered for a CPC commissioner position that was a city council appointment.

And I remember this was back in the day when we can actually be in the same space together.

I remember you coming into my office down at City Hall and sitting down with me and Cody Ryder in my office to just talk about your interest in public safety and in police reform and accountability.

And one of the things I still remember about that conversation is how passionately you spoke about your own son and his own experiences as a young black man in this country with police and sort of your perspective as his mother.

And I think that you also, in that moment, not only spoke about the importance of holding police accountable and of the historic trauma caused by policing and carceral systems, particularly within the black community.

But you also spoke very eloquently about how important equitable community safety is and how important having these public safety systems in place that will serve communities of color is to you.

And so I just really appreciate your service as a commissioner.

I appreciate your service beyond the commission role when you were working on issues related to gun violence in our broader community.

And I really am so thrilled that the city will continue to benefit from your wisdom and from your servant leadership in this new-ish, your new permanent role as the executive director for the Community Police Commission.

So Brandy, thank you so much for serving and for doing it in a way that is a true model for us all.

I look forward to continuing to work with you.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate that more than you know.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council members?

looking both for real life hands and virtual hands.

I'm gonna ask one question in the meantime while maybe others are considering whether or not they have any.

Given that this commission is a little unusual among city departments, since you report to the co-chairs rather than having the mayor as your direct report.

Given that, what are your priorities as executive director and how do you work with the co-chairs to identify your priorities?

Oh, that's a really great question.

I honestly see it, even though our office is set up very differently than the other accountability partners, I think it's important to add that even though I primarily only report to co chairs, I am a servant of the council, the mayor's office community multiple different people right and I feel I feel a responsibility to all those different entities so I just want to make sure that I shared that outwardly as well to I honestly feel like.

I have accountability for all those systems.

And I think that's really helpful to actually have my feet kind of held to the fire.

But, you know, for me, most of my time here in Washington, three things that have really stood out for me have been people, processes, and policies, right?

You know what I mean?

You have to have people to be able to move the work.

You have to have trust.

You have to have relationships.

you have to be able to work on policies and systems that will help support those people that you are working for.

And then honestly, the processes part just comes down to, you know, from an organizational standpoint, the CPC, even though we've been around for the amount of time that we have, there definitely has been a life cycle shift where we're in the process now of, you know, organizational restructure, development of governance and strategic planning.

I would have to say for the first hundred days in this position, some of the things that I would like to out really share with community.

And what council today is my primary focus is going to be on, you know, um, an organizational restructure, you know, um, increasing our bandwidth, making sure that we really amplify and build up our community engagement team.

Also making sure that we are hiring from actually within the community and giving folks an opportunity not to just have their experience be based on educational backgrounds, but be able to strip some of that away and look at people that are doing some of the grassroots work what they can add to and compliment within our office.

So just being more open-minded.

about how we're hiring and how we're partnering.

I have about maybe 10 priorities.

Again, one is organizational restructuring.

The strategic planning process is coming up for us.

We're hoping to roll that out in April.

It will be the first time that the Community Police Commission has engaged in a strategic planning process.

I'm excited about that.

Most of all of you that are on this call and particularly are watching will be a part of that process as well, because it will definitely require input from our stakeholders and community.

As I mentioned before, we're gonna be doing a lot of, I'm going to be working to lead a lot of the CPC development around the governance, orientation and structure.

It was a really great question that Council President Gonzalez asked about, you know, how folks felt about the collective bargaining process.

But as someone who was formerly a commissioner, one of the things that I recall the most was not feeling super confident about how to do this work.

And so, taking that experience and making sure that commissioners that come on from this day forward will have a really intentional, specific, and well-rounded onboarding process so they can become familiarized with the work that we do.

We know we have some really beacons, right?

We have some champions.

We were just introduced to some amazing folks.

So it's not our inability to be able to do the work.

It's about making sure that folks feel empowered to do said work, right?

And really stand up and represent for community.

Some of the other things are going to be, you know, the district liaison implementation and extensive community engagement.

There's an integration process that I'm trying to develop now to make sure that commissioners were really tapped in to the communities, not only that we've been assigned to, but the organic relationships that we have within community.

I tell people quite often that There are some organic relationships that I brought with me to the commission and that I felt was a really good fit for us to continue to engage with.

I want to see us do that more and be a little bit more intentional about that.

There's some really great policy works, specific policy work that I'll be overseeing and helping implement.

with the help of the full commission and the amazing staff that I work with.

As Aaron and LaRon have already spoke to the, you know, the launching of the recommendation tracker dashboard.

There's a professionalism project that we're super excited to hopefully begin to work with SPD soon about and just talk about, you know, are there ways where we can enhance conversations around officer wellness how we hire, how we train people.

We've been having some amazing conversations overseas with police in Canada and some of the takeaways that we got from those conversations were language and semantics.

They don't believe in using the words law enforcement because of the context that comes with it.

They feel like they are peace officers.

Their hiring process for bringing on exemplary officers, they do it from the outreach process to the day they retire, you know what I mean?

They're taking care of families, they're putting systems in place where people are having mental health evaluations, and they're honestly not asking their peace officers, aka our law enforcement, to do jobs that are not within their power to do, right?

So again, just being able to strip away some of those things, the language and the semantics of everything regarding dismantling and defunding, and let's have an actual conversation about if we were to do those things, what would it actually look like, right?

What would it look like?

So that's where I'm at for the first hundred days, and I'll actually be explaining and rolling this out a little bit better.

in our upcoming CPC meetings, and you all will be able to track and follow along as to the things that I will be prioritizing with the support of the full commission.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate getting that insight into your goals for your ongoing leadership.

And if there are no further questions, I will move appointment 01818. Is there a second?

Second.

Well, let's call the roll.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

And Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Fantastic.

Thank you everybody from CPC for being here with us, commissioners and Director Grant as well.

Really enjoy working with you and look forward to our continued partnership.

Will the clerk please read agenda item 8 into the record?

Agenda Item Number 8, Council Bill 120011, an ordinance relating to the appropriations for the Human Services Department approving a spending plan amending Ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, lifting a proviso and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Alex.

We have a number of folks here with us this morning to discuss this item.

What I'd like, if possible, if we could do a quick round of introductions, just name and affiliation, and then I'm going to hand it off to Amy Gore to do the background, and then we'll have the presentation from HSD.

I'll start with my introduction.

I'm Amy Gore from Council Central Staff.

And I will hand it over to Tanya.

Tanya Kim with the Human Services Department.

Ellen Howell, Interim Director, Human Services Department.

Tiffany Washington, Deputy Mayor.

Good morning.

Natalie Thompson, Human Services Department, Interim Co-Director, Youth and Family Empowerment Division.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

And so Amy, you want to give us a little bit of background and then we'll hand it off to HSD and Deputy Mayor Washington to walk us through the presentation.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council Members.

Item 8 on the agenda is Council Bill 120011, which approves a $12 million spending plan for community safety capacity building.

and amends the 2021 budget to lift a proviso.

As you recall, the 2021 adopted budget includes $12 million in funds for capacity building activities aimed at scaling up community-led organizations to increase public safety.

Council placed provisos on these funds and specified that for 10 million of the funds, the proviso could only be lifted after council approves the spending plan organized within the intercept model.

The Human Services Department is here to discuss that spending plan and the outreach and engagement work that went into the development of the spending plan and the program request for proposals.

Unless there are any questions, I will turn it over to Director Howell from HSD.

While we do that, I just want to add a few words.

Again, as background for the viewing public, we did have Director Howe and her team present a brief overview of this work at the January 26th committee meeting.

Following that presentation, Director Howe responded fully to questions that we had developed in a memo that was distributed to committee members and that the answers were received on February 18th.

And I just want to say that I personally have felt a lot of urgency around getting these dollars out the door because that commitment was made to community long ago at this point.

And I've asked that the Human Services Department work to expedite the funding while still balancing the need for effective community engagement.

to inform the RFP.

This is a really, this funding is a key investment in the council's work to reimagine public safety.

This is part of a $16 million total appropriation in 2021 to scale up community-led organizations.

Again, it's a high priority and key request, not just of the council, but it comes from community led by Decriminalize Seattle and the King County Equity Now Coalition last summer.

That HSD moved very quickly, moved the initial $4 million out the door to the Community Safety Initiative.

under the leadership of Community Passageways.

We also heard a presentation on their work at the January 26th meeting and how they're focused with a geographic effort in three different Seattle neighborhoods.

community safety hubs that have wraparound services.

And now these investments I think are really important because they are intended to help community members really look at how they can provide services in the current system through a public health framework while also understanding the range of needs given our existing community safety programs and working with HSD to identify gaps or duplication in programs that the city supports.

So again, ultimately our goal is to move the city's community safety strategy toward a public health center harm reduction model of restorative justice, crime prevention, and ameliorate harm caused by the criminal legal system to individuals and communities most impacted.

And with that, yes, let's do hand it over to Director Howell to walk us through the presentation.

Hi, Council Member Chair Herbold.

I'm going to actually open us up and then I'll hand it over to Director Howe.

I just want to make a few remarks.

So I've shared this before, but I do feel it's appropriate to do so again, given the subject at hand.

My older brother, Michael, spent most of his life in prison.

I remember watching him on multiple occasions being thrown down by the police, crying, and asking for help.

This early introduction to police caused me to grow up with a negative image of who they are and how they treat people.

Unfortunately, my brother was shot and died at Harborview Hospital over 10 years ago.

Sorry.

With this history in mind, please know that I care deeply about this subject matter and agree that it is necessary to pour resources into communities of color to start repairing the harm done.

With that said, the budget ads this year are only the beginning.

We will not see significant changes for decades as the community immune system is strengthened.

What this funding will not do is result in instant community safety.

You will see this theme reflected in the community engagement conducted by HSD.

No one is saying that they believe that they can replace a police function.

What they are saying is that they believe they have an important role in ensuring that their communities are safe and thriving.

Black people were enslaved for over 400 years, and we cannot be expected to get better in a year or two, as there is a lot of repair needed.

Reducing the police budget to invest in communities this year will not result in immediate change.

I have to say that again.

When I call the police for help, and I'm a black woman, I have an expectation that someone will come to assist me in a reasonable amount of time.

This is not our current reality in the city right now.

As you will see in the presentation that you have next by SPD, our citizens aren't feeling safe and supported.

Our police force is short-staffed, and that has impacted their ability to respond.

Yes, the institution of policing was created to keep white people in power.

It needs to be rebuilt, but in the interim, as public servants, we are responsible to ensure that all Seattle residents feel safe and supported.

Let us invest in communities of color for the long term, address institutional racism and white supremacy within SPD, and let us do this apart from political grandstanding.

This is the commitment that I and the mayor have and hope you will join us.

Thank you.

I'll pass it over to Director Howe.

Thank you for your remarks, Deputy Mayor Washington.

Good morning, council members.

As Council Member Herbold mentioned, in January, the Human Services Department was at committee and gave a brief overview of the community safety capacity building investment.

Since then, the request for proposal was released on March 1st.

And today, HSD will provide an overview of the RFP guidelines and application, as well as next steps.

The presentation includes HSD's spending plan, a requirement to lift the proviso.

With that, I will hand it over to Tanya Kim, Deputy Director, HSD, to lead the presentation.

Thank you.

Good morning.

And so I have the privilege of presenting the remainder of the slides.

I want to thank Council Member Herbold for framing and also to Director Howell for framing the presentation.

And especially to Deputy Mayor Washington for sharing her personal story.

With that, I'm going to move quickly through some of the slides because it adds additional language around the framing.

The first one here you see is the reimagining community safety.

This really just articulates the work that the city has undergone in 2020, as well as the work ahead.

HSD, as Council Member Herbold has reminded us, is really focusing on implementing a couple of key pieces In this overarching work that we're doing collectively as a city.

Today we are focusing on the Community Safety Capacity Building, RFP specifically, that is a $12 million investment.

Next slide please.

HSD, as Council Member Herbold had mentioned, is conducting an expedited process.

Normally, we would do extensive community engagement, as well as literature review to do this body of work.

But in this expedited process in the month of January and February, we were able to conduct conversations with 36 stakeholders in the community.

Sessions were attended by community members with lived experiences of systemic racism, harm from the criminal legal system, as well as frontline and leadership staff at community-based organizations doing the safety work.

Participants identified themes around community ownership, self-determination, and resilience, and had expansive view of community safety that reached beyond gun violence and domestic violence and sexual violence to a broader sense of safety and well-being.

It's no surprise that themes included community safety is broad.

It must be defined and owned by individuals and groups for themselves.

Reimagining community safety cannot simply be alternatives to police functions and that the definition of capacity building for the purpose of this RFP must be broad and not just include building and strengthening structures.

So in summary, the definition of community safety must be holistic and inclusive.

A couple quotes I want to highlight from the feedback are here shown on this slide.

Don't define community safety for us.

Ask us to define it for you.

It's different for every community.

That was a gender-based violence survivor.

Secondly, we don't really see ourselves in national models.

We do our work by meeting people where they're at.

And that was a youth violence prevention provider.

In our community engagement, next slide please, we did ask about the intercept model and where, as providers, they saw themselves.

HSD placed self-identified community responses on both the intercept model and the prevention intervention continuum.

Many participants vocalized some version of, we do many all activities on this continuum.

They plotted, so we took their feedback and then we plotted on a table where they identified themselves.

And that table, if folks are interested, is found in the spending plan, and you can look at the appendices.

The RFP doesn't restrict applicants to specific intercepts given the overwhelming community feedback about really meeting people where they're at and following them in their journey, which is oftentimes not quite this linear.

So now I'm going to go deep into the RFP and provide some highlights.

The RFP is an open competitive process with approximately 10.4 million.

So we talked about 12 million and will explain in the spending plan where the total is.

But for the purpose of this RFP, it's 10.4 million of available funds.

Awardees will receive an 18-month contract starting on July 1. The RFP was released on March 1, so it is open and available.

You can find it on our website.

So the RFP is released and applications are due on April 9. Additionally, we're providing technical assistance to support organizations to complete the application.

And those technical advisors were vetted by our partners at the Seattle Office of Civil Rights.

So shout out to them, as well as our colleagues within HSD.

So thank you for that.

And funding recommendations will be made by a community panel and we anticipate up to 40 proposals that may be funded through this process.

Taking a quick step back, and again, Council Member Herbold framed this, the council budget actions for this RFP totaled $12 million for community-led efforts to scale up organizations to increase public safety through technical support, capacity building, expansion of capacity.

For the purpose of this RFP, we're looking at capacity building as this, expanding the capacity of community-led solutions that contribute to overall community safety by developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes, and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive.

For the purpose of the RFP, we are focusing on populations, BIPOC communities that are, but underscoring the Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Pacific Islander and immigrant refugee communities.

And so again, it is focusing on BIPOC with emphasis on Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Pacific Islander, and immigrant refugee communities because these groups are experiencing disproportionate harm from the criminal legal system.

The next slide illustrates a high level of the program requirements and who we're looking to invest in.

The RFP is prioritizing community-led groups and organizations who are generally led by the communities that they intend to serve.

So we want to see the staff leadership representing the communities that we just described.

We want these organizations to have a commitment to building power in the community and or supporting healing from the impact of oppression.

The organizations should be committed to addressing internalized oppression and or affirming all members of the community and are committed to ending all forms of oppression, including ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.

I mean, at the end of the day, we are increasing capacity for additional services, but we are interested in supporting organizations who are also a part of positive social change and social justice.

If applicants are representative of programs of multi service organizations large national multimillion dollar organizations, the majority of program leadership that's local should be representative of communities that they intend to serve.

So we're not limiting the size of the organization.

In terms of the awarded Applicants, once we have those awards, we do have expectations of performance metrics.

And those will be negotiated at the time of us developing contracts with the individual organizations based on the individual proposals.

Again, community is saying safety needs and solutions are going to be unique.

That said, we are expecting those awarded organizations to participate in a learning community where we will partner with an external group, such as the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, to have system-wide coordination meetings.

These meetings will be opportunities to share information and resources, make referrals, and build relationships, as well as really beefing up, enhancing our network of community-led safety providers.

This space will be created for collaboration and ongoing community-led solutions to safety and HSD will be there in partnership as well.

And then finally, that bigger picture vision and what the North Star is, we are committed to, HSD is committed to hiring external team of researchers, evaluators to help develop community level indicators of success, which ultimately will get us to that North Star that we can collectively work towards.

And getting to the spending plan.

So we discussed there is a $12 million investment.

This spending plan does showcase that the majority of the funds are 85%.

Approximately $10.4 million will be awarded to the organizations through those contracts.

HSD is also committed to providing honorariums for raters, providing the technical assistance that I just explained is available to applicants, and that external research team as well as a couple staff to manage the contracts that the spending plan articulates where the funds will go to.

And the spending plan, of course, is a requirement to lift the proviso.

And that really is essentially the overview of the RFP and how we got here.

As Council Member Herbold, it was important to get these funds out and available to the community as soon as possible, and we hope that we have delivered on that expectation.

And so with that, we can field some questions.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it, Tanya.

Really appreciate the thought and care that has gone into the development of the RFP.

Thank you, Director Howell and Deputy Mayor Washington for your participation, your opening remarks as well.

I want to just take a moment and underscore, I think, that the use of the RFP network convening as a tool moving forward is really inspired and really good thinking.

Again, this is really about creating a network and ensuring that we're doing what we always say in government we want to do, which is to get rid of the silos, but in order to do that and be effective at doing that, we have to create a place where people can collaborate, they can really leverage their unique expertise, because I think that's another element that I've heard from the community engagement is recognizing that different organizations working with different communities have really their own unique expertise and we need to do more as a city to lift that up and not expect everybody to be a generalist and recognize that specialized intervention in to unique communities is a valuable thing that we want to enhance and support.

So appreciate that we are also creating this place to identify the gaps, reduce duplication, and honor the expertise of folks who do have specialized capabilities and specialized relationships with community.

And as mentioned, the ordinance itself that we have before us, I do want to entertain questions and looking for both virtually raised hands as well as actual raised hands.

And seeing none, we're going to move into acting on the bill.

And I move committee recommended passage of Council Bill 120011. Is there a second?

Second.

any further comments on the bill?

Seeing no further comments, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

For and favor?

None opposed.

None opposed.

None abstaining.

Thank you so much.

This will move on to Council on Monday.

Thank you all for being with us here today and thank you so much for your for your good work moving these investments forward.

Very, very appreciative.

Thank you.

All right, so for the final item on our agenda, will the clerk please read in the agenda item number nine?

Committee agenda item number nine, Council Bill 119981, an ordinance amending Ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021-2026 Capital Improvement Program, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels and from various funds in the budget and adding or modifying provisions.

Thank you, Alex.

Can we just do a very quick round of introductions, please, name and affiliation, and then I'm going to hand it over to Greg to do a quick introduction, background on this item, and then we'll hand it back over to SPD and the executive team to walk us through the presentation.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff.

I'm sorry, Ben.

No, we'll see the budget office.

Angela says the executive director of budget and finance for SPD.

Adrian Diaz, the interim chief of police.

Chris Fisher, Executive Director, Strategic Initiative, Seattle Police.

And Mike Fong, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you so much, Greg.

Well, some ground on what brought us to the place that we are today.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the Public Safety Committee.

As you know, Item 9 on the agenda today is Council Bill 119981. This item, this bill was introduced on December 10th of last year, and the bill is fairly straightforward.

It cuts from the SPD budget $5.4 million, and then it adds $5.4 million to Finance General.

to fund recommendations stemming from the city's participatory budget process and imposes a proviso on that $5.4 million.

By way of background, resolution 31962 identified steps that the council intended to take related to public safety, including not supporting any increases to SPD's budget to offset overtime expenditures above the funds budgeted in 2020 or 2021. and to fund community-led activities to invest in public safety.

And with that as background, I would turn it over to SPD.

Actually, I'll say a couple more things.

The bill had its first hearing on January 26th.

At that time, Council Central Staff did an overview of an analysis that Central Staff had conducted on SPD's Staffing and salary saving situation.

And I think as most committee members are familiar with, there have been a great deal of unanticipated departures of officers at SPD, and as such, there is a great deal of well.

considerable deal of salary savings available this year in the SPD budget.

The estimate that Central Staff provided at the last hearing on January 26 was $7.7 million, with some heavy caveats that that number can change depending on the number of folks that depart this year or come in this year as part of the hiring plan.

As part of the Central Staff presentation, I guess, on January 26, We also talked a little bit about some questions that the council may want to consider when deciding to cut the $5.4 million.

And some of those questions are whether or not the $5.4 million should be cut or retained in the SPD budget.

SPD has identified in a memo that accompanied the central staff memo some purposes for which they would keep the money and invest the money in some public safety issues that they are currently experiencing.

They're here today to talk about those issues before the council and that's about all that I have.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Greg.

Really appreciate it.

And with that, we'll have no opening comments.

We'll hand it over to the executive team to walk us through their presentation.

Great.

Good morning, council members, and thank you, Chair Herbold, for letting us join you in committee this morning.

In a moment, I will hand this over to Chief Diaz and his team to share with you the current state of the department as it pertains to sworn staffing levels.

and the corresponding sort of operational and service impacts that they're experiencing.

At this point, I think it'd be fair to characterize that SPD is in a staffing crisis.

With more than 200 officers having separated from the department in the last 13 months, patrol and 911 response challenges have emerged at pretty much every precinct.

And the cascading impacts of Chief Diaz needing to redeploy officers and mitigate for 9-1-1 response has negatively impacted other units, bureaus, including investigations, training, civilian crime prevention and community service support, all of which also jeopardize our compliance with elements of the federal consent decree.

Again, SPD is at crisis staffing levels.

And I provide this context for you as part of your consideration as it relates to this $5.4 million budget action that is currently on the table.

And a $5.4 million that, as I understand it, is in addition to the already nearly $12 million in various budget provisos that you've had in place on SPD from the end of 2020 as well as into 2021, tying up a range of SPD resources pending various reports and other conditions being met.

And this is all in addition to another 12 million that the council cut on top of the mayor's proposed budget last fall.

So I do want to emphasize that we, like you, are committed to re-imagining policing and community safety through the work you just heard from HSD and the powerful opening remarks from Deputy Mayor Washington on investments in community safety programs and what it's going to take to create sustained and meaningful change.

Through our joint SPD interdepartmental teamwork, where multiple members of your council staff are part of, to analyze 911 calls, look at SPD functions, and advance innovation and reforms.

Through the creation of response alternatives, like HealthONE and other models.

And then of course, through the major generational investments in BIPOC communities to address decades of disparities and equities that we're working together on.

But fundamentally, the truth of the matter is where we stand right now is that we are not budgeted or staffed to sustain an acceptable level of public safety services in Seattle.

It is vital that SPD is able to hold on to these resources that you're discussing today in order to mitigate impacts for the staffing crisis.

through a number of strategies that Chief Diaz and his team will discuss in their presentation.

I just urge you that as you continue to consider the budget reduction, that you give careful consideration to Chief Diaz and his team's analysis and their perspectives today before you make final decisions about further reductions to SPD.

Thank you.

And with that, I will turn it over to Chief Diaz and to run through their PowerPoint presentation.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Fong.

Well, good morning, Chairwoman Herbold, Council President Gonzalez, and other city council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and to go over the current plan to attempt to mitigate many of the effects of the staffing crisis that Deputy Mayor Fong had mentioned.

We're experiencing it as a department and as a city.

Last week, I know and I believe we all had a moment of joy and hope when President Biden announced the accelerated timeline for having enough vaccine for every adult in the country.

This means we're on the cusp of some version of normal returning.

With that comes the likelihood of increased social interactions we all miss so dearly.

In-person commerce, major events, traffic, even and travel and tourism.

It also means a likely increase in some types of criminal behavior and calls for service.

As a chief of police, the person charged with running the police department, I must balance the hiring and staffing needs, our operational needs, our equipment needs, our training needs, and our technology needs.

At the start of each and every year, I work with the public safety professionals in the department to best determine how we will address the needs of the department and how we'll prepare for the unknown.

but by their very definition, it is impossible to precisely plan for the unknowns.

But that work is further complicated right now by an ever-changing budget.

If moving forward, the department is expected to meet ever-evolving demands while confronting significant reduced staffing, now indexed to matching reductions in available budget, the SBU will have to say no to requests for service, some things we've already had to do this year.

and I'm very concerned based on what I hear when I speak with officers and what I read when I review their exit interviews.

The continued cuts to the budget, especially those not matched to efforts to reduce immediate demands of the department, will only continue to drive further staffing losses.

At this point, it's a self-perpetuating cycle.

The best way to stop the losses and to drive hiring is to stop the ad hoc cutting of the budget.

We also know the staffing losses some seem to hope for have happened, not through informed process of rethinking or imagining the work we do.

But my concern is that if we don't change course, these staffing losses will continue and we will have a staffing crisis beyond mitigation.

I know this department is filled with amazing professionals.

I want all of those folks to stay.

We've lost some amazing people, most painfully to jurisdictions just across the city line.

I know I have heard questions about why is the department talking about what it can't do anymore and why it needs its full budget.

These calls are down and the crime is down.

The reality is a lot is not getting done.

And that is why we're still under pandemic restrictions.

We're in a priority call status too often.

Too many investigations are being inactivated.

Trains have been reduced, delayed, or shortened.

Sustained problem solving is basically on pause.

And valuable civilian hires are on hold.

I could put much of this into action if I knew that we could address needs with either successful new budget ads or with budget savings.

to ensure we could respond to emergency calls as close to our goal response times as possible.

I had to reassign individuals to patrol.

If that step had not been taken, I have little doubt about our response times would be through the roof and we'd be at priority call status almost every day.

But that came at it with a cost and there are no more problem solving focus teams.

I had to reassign the community policing teams and put off rehiring a crime prevention coordinator The anti-crime team, so essential in addressing ongoing crime issues and hotspots, often working with partners to address underlying issues, are back in patrol.

Half the traffic unit is back in patrol.

Some detectives are back in patrol.

That effort was to fill a gap, a gap that is reopening, and we continue to lose officers.

It is no longer feasible to pull more people back to patrol as a response.

Then there are units who have lost staff, and because of the broader staffing crisis, I've not been able to backfill to meet their needs.

Our professional standards bureau, including the training, are down across the board.

These are all units essential to ensuring we can meet the administrative obligations of the consent decree.

People have suggested reassigning a few more, moving some other folks there.

But at this point, there's nothing more than robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The work has not changed, and I have over 200 fewer officers to deploy to the work.

This is both not feasible and counterproductive.

We're exhausting our officers.

Their wellness is essential to their ability to provide the type of police service the community expects.

I need to be able to commit both more sworn and civilian resources to such needed wellness efforts, but I can't do that.

When I don't know what the budget is, I have our staffing challenges also intensify.

We have solutions and opportunities to help mitigate these constraints, but those opportunities come with costs.

We believe we can cover these costs in our budget while also advancing the broader work to think about alternatives that eventually can help share the work.

Today, we hope we make it clear where the police department currently stands and why it's essential that we use our existing budget appropriation to be more efficient, more agile, more supportive of our current employees, and more attractive to potential hires.

To achieve all of this, I need to be able to manage the department.

And right now, the instability in our budget is causing massive instability in the department, including our staffing.

As I noted, we do not know what 2021 will look like.

Right now, I know that we have no flexibility.

And we cannot count on using any salary savings to help address these losses.

I'm going to now turn it over to Executive Directors Angela Sochi and Chris Fisher to quickly go over the presentation.

Thank you.

Yes.

Well, it loads up.

Good morning, Council Chairwoman Herbold, President Gonzalez and other council members.

As the chief said, I'll try to be brief on this.

I know we're a little bit behind and obviously we'll want to have a discussion.

So, Angela, you can go ahead to the next slide.

Thank you.

So just a quick overview, we'll sum up, I think everyone knows, but we'll sum up our 2021 budget actions.

We'll look at where we are right now and where we think we're going.

Then how that translates to our 911 response times, which is really that front line way that most people experience their interaction with SPD.

And then we'll talk about how this translates into sort of outputs and outcomes of public safety and the consent decree.

So just as a summary, and at the end of this, if we want to dive into it, I know Angela and Dr. Noble can go really into the weeds here on budget.

But in general, when we look at the 2020 adopted versus the 2021 adopted, it's a $46 million reduction in the 2021 adopted budget.

came with a variety of mechanisms to get there from transferring some resources out of the department to reductions in overtimes for special events and some other categories, things as we, as the chief mentioned, a lot of these decisions were made when we had a different outlook on what the pandemic might look like in 2021. But this is where we start in addition to some of the provisional funds that senior deputy mayor Fong alluded to.

So that's just our context.

Thank you.

And I just want to add about $36 million of this reduction is from transfers.

So transfers of 911, Office of Emergency Management, and I can't remember the third transfer, but let's see.

Yes.

Thank you.

So, Chair Grubel, to that point, then, oh, I'm sorry.

I think I just interrupted President Gonzales, but I was just going to say, to that point, then, Dr. Fisher, would it be more accurate to say $10 million on that slide, the $46 million one, in terms of the implications we're discussing today?

I just want to, that was a question I wrote down when I saw that slide.

But before we go further, I just want to ask that.

Because changing it on operators ain't impacting your response times to things.

I'm going to leave the budget stuff to Angela or Dr. Noble if they want to speak to this.

I don't want to get a number wrong.

I don't keep the budget numbers in my head.

Yeah, to the extent that the 37 million dollars of that 46 million was tied specifically to the transfers, the true impact to the personnel budget and our equipment and travel training budget was definitely a smaller amount.

but larger than 10 million, you know, relative to baseline budget, the reduction was about 20 million in the proposed budget and an additional 12, approximately the council further reduced, if I recall.

So more on the magnitude of 30 million than 10.

Yeah, well, I think before we get into the discussion more, we should just establish what that baseline is.

And maybe Greg could jump in too, just because, you know, 46 being presented as the context starter, I'd like a little bit more, detail about how that breaks down.

Greg, are you still with us?

Yes, Council.

Yes, Madam Chair.

To your question, Council Member.

Yes, there were a series of transfers that you all have just noted.

Sorry, Greg.

Can we go back to the slide that we're actually talking about?

Yes.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

Go ahead, Greg.

Sorry to interrupt you.

Not at all.

So building back from the $362 million that you see in the 2021 budget, as has been stated, the council cut about $12 million.

And that would have been about $384 million originally.

And the $12 million that got cut largely was in salary savings, about $8.1 million there.

And then there was another, the second largest cut was $3.7 million in the overtime budget under the assumption that there would be a reduced demand for services due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Upwards from there, the reductions that were made in the mayor's budget, I would probably turn to the CBO to outline those.

So Dr. Noble or either Director Sochi.

So I'm sorry before we do that Greg so so just so I have the numbers you said $8.1 million.

In salary savings that that was a a reduction to SPD's budget that was proposed by the Council.

That's the first one, correct?

Yeah, the two largest expenditures were that were the 8.1 million in salary savings that were cut by the council and the assumptions there were one that a number of SPD officers that had already left.

I guess it's not an assumption they had already left.

would free up salary savings in the 2021 budget.

And then there was another $2 million.

That was $6 million.

And then there was another $2 million in expected attrition savings for 2021. And those two things together added to the $8.1 million in salary savings assumptions.

And then the second thing you mentioned, was it $3.7 million council-driven reduction of the budget in the overtime area?

Is that what you said?

Yes, Council President.

$3.7 million specifically to special events.

Well, I shouldn't say special events.

I should say all overtime focused on special events and other COVID-related activities.

So that could be anything from special events to traffic anything that would have reduced demand due to the pandemic, and that was 3.7 million.

There was also a cut to...

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I was going to say...

There were also some other cuts to travel.

I think there's a little bit of a delay between us, so we're talking over each other.

I'm going to stop talking until you finish getting through, Greg.

Sorry, there were also some cuts to travel and training that were smaller, and I don't have those exact figures in front of me, but I'm sure Angela does.

Okay, so I have just between the 8.1M dollars and the 3.7M dollars.

That's about 11 point.

$8 million plus whatever the travel and training was.

So I think that's why we've been saying $12 million of reductions that were council-driven on top of whatever the baseline was.

So the other thing I wanted to mention is I know that In the salary savings area, there was a proviso that I sponsored.

Are you including that in the $8.1 million, or is that in addition to the $8.1 million?

That is something that is completely separate, Council President.

I'm not including that.

That funding and appropriation authority is still in SPD's budget.

It is just restricted at this point.

Okay, thanks.

So we've got about $11.8 million accounted for that were generated by Council's fall budget process or 2020 budget processes of the $46 million.

Yes, and as I said, the difference to the 12 or 12.1 is is some more minor cuts or smaller cuts to travel and training and discretionary purchases.

Okay.

I think one important technical, well, at least one important technical point I want to clarify.

One is that the 2020 adopted figure is not really the appropriate one to compare as we look at reductions for 2021. It's important to recognize that there were just some basic inflationary and wage increases.

So the baseline budget for 2020 And what it would have cost to reproduce the 2020 activities had they proceeded as we'd expected, would have been closer to $420 million.

So the effective reduction in the budget is closer to $60 million in total.

So just as you think about the impacts to operations, I think that's important to understand.

I'm a little slow on the uptake, Dr. Noble.

So can you just sort of deconstruct that for me a little bit so I understand what the point you're trying to make?

Yeah, we'd be happy to.

So for all city departments, when we start building the next year's budget, which we have to be doing right now for 2022, what we do is we take their budget for 2021 and we build a new baseline for the following year.

And that baseline reflects the fact that it will cost more to do what they are doing this year through no fault of their own, if you will, just because a basic inflation for things like materials and contracts and the like.

and specifically because of wage agreements that we have and people stepping through salary bans.

So there's an increment to budgets that just is, if you will.

And for SPD going into 2021, that baseline, that net addition was about $10 million, which I think is about less than 3%.

So it's a small figure, but it means that the effective starting point for 2021 was closer to 420 million.

than to 410. So as we start trying to measure increment reductions, it's important to recognize that there is that the baseline from which one wants to start a comparison for 2021 is really substantially higher by the again, by this increment of 10 million.

So just as we're, we're going to get into this level of precision that that's an important point.

Yeah, no, I appreciate the additional context.

And I think that is an important I mean, for all for all of our departments, right, not just the police department, it's an important piece of information for us to make sure that we have.

I was just sort of, because this particular slide, slide three, is couched in the context of the 2021 adopted budget as opposed to the 2021 adopted budget asterisk new baseline starting January 2021. I just wanted to get an understanding of how you were, of the information you were sharing relates to the The characterization that we see on slide three.

So, so, so I appreciate the additional information.

I just wanted to sort of get clarity on the record about about what is being represented on this on this slide in the spirit of not wanting it to be taken out of context.

And so.

I think that's where Council Member Lewis's questions were coming from.

Before he raised his hand, I was going to ask the same question, sort of asking clarity around this $46 million number.

And so I think what I'm trying to understand and make sure that members of the public understand is that the $46 million in the 2021 adopted budget is actually a combination of budget cuts that were proposed by the mayor in the proposed 2021 budget.

And then there was a council process that led to additional reductions in SPD budgets on top of that baseline.

And I think the conversation we're having now is trying to establish what that baseline was so that we can, to the greatest extent possible, Be honest brokers about where that that baseline in the proposed 2021. Adopted budget was, and then and then what the additional reductions that city council made.

And I think that's important not to sort of.

in a creative like who did what or point fingers, but just to get an accurate record of who proposed what so that we can make a factually driven based decision on this additional proposal of the 5.4 million dollars, which I will admit publicly, I have a lot of questions about.

So so I just want to in the spirit of just making sure we understand what the numbers are and what the past work has been, especially given how this conversation has been framed at the top.

it I think is an important exercise and I appreciate the willingness of you all to answer those questions so that we have that important clarity around what was proposed in the 2021 proposed budget and then what we adopted in the 2021 budget.

Before we get to the conversation of, and now here we are in 2021 and there's a whole bunch of other variables that we also need to take into consideration, which I agree is absolutely relevant to the conversation around this council bill related to an additional $5.4 million reduction, so.

And I just don't want to, I appreciate that Council President Gonzalez, the conversation about who proposed what.

I don't want to lose track of the point that I was making in the original question, which is of this $46 million that the 2021 adopted budget shows the reduction, 36 million of it was transfers.

So if we're going to have a conversation about the staffing impacts of budget cuts, regardless of who proposed them, the council or the mayor.

I think we should really stay focused on the reductions that actually have impacts, not $36 million in reductions that don't have an impact because they're functions that have been transferred out of the department.

And I would say, Director Noble, to your point about the baseline, the 2020 baseline would have to also be reduced.

Even given what you're saying that the 2020 baseline should be increased over 409 million to look at a 2021 baseline, you'd have to reduce the dollars for the functions that have been moved out of the department as well.

The figure I quoted already did that.

So the figure you quoted removed $36 million from $409 million.

If I may speak up.

So the $36 million during the council phase was reduced down to $22 million to account for the delay of the transfer into June of this year pending the creation of the new community safety and communications center department.

The total general fund reduction that SPD took, we initially proposed a $20.4 million reduction, which was about 5% of our baseline budget.

That was accounted for sworn vacancy savings at around $10.4 million.

We had civilian vacancy savings that was anticipated and was going to be achieved by holding 40 civilian positions vacant for the duration of the year.

That was a $4.1 million reduction.

The OT reduction has already, I think, been referenced by Greg.

That was $2.7 million for this year.

And then we also took salary adjustments due to the the kind of demographic bubble.

We have a younger workforce now and accounted for the savings attributed to the reduced longevity of our workforce.

Later in the proposed budget process, we increased that number from 20.4 million to 28.4 million.

And I believe that is actually what was built into the adopted budget.

So when you see the 46 million, it's also important to keep in mind that while the total, eventually the total, amount attributable to the transfers is going to be in the $30-some million range.

What was actually built into the budget is about $22 million, which is where we get that.

When you factor in some of the ads, the OPA staff person and a few other budget items for the West Seattle Bridge closure and some of the automated enforcement, That's where you're going to get the net change of $46 million.

Let's move on.

Glad I turned it over to the budget folks.

All right, Andrew.

Go ahead, please.

So as the Deputy Mayor and the Chief mentioned, so I won't stay on these long, we are just hoping in this presentation just to outline and some of the points that were made in Director Soti's memo to Council Central staff and Council about what we think is driving some of our staffing constraints and how we hope to be able to address those moving forward.

And also just reminding us all that there are upcoming efforts that are currently not funded in the budget around large-scale vaccination efforts.

And hopefully, as the chief alluded to with the speeding up of the vaccine timeline, some special events may actually take place in 2021 that are not currently supported in the budget.

Go ahead.

So we've all seen this slide, but so just hit on it real quick.

As you can see, I'm going back for 22 years.

Our median attrition from the Department of Separation, so be it resignations or retirements, has been 56. It starts to go above that number in 2015 and has stayed above that.

Some of that is the natural cyclical procedure of when large scales of officers were hired in the early 90s because of COPS grants and other federal funding that supported some of this work and just a general upstaffing of police departments across the country in the 90s, and people reached their retirement age.

We do all remember, I think, we had an uptick that is noticeable in 2018. And then we had a decent year last year.

We had good, I mean, 2019 being last year.

Keep forgetting we're in 2021, thankfully.

2019, we had a good year for hiring, and we're starting to claw back from the losses of 2018. And then 2020, as has been discussed, At least we lost 186 officers.

We started out the year strong with separations low and hiring looking well.

As COVID set in and other budget constraints became apparent, the city in general and SPD had a hiring freeze.

So we stopped at 51 hires.

So we ended up losing 135 net officers in 2020. Next slide.

So what we have to think about, though, in context of that, that is just officers, sworn employees in the department who are sitting in funded positions.

We also have had, as we look at a workforce that at one end of the tail is increasingly young.

And when we have those hiring spikes, while we do get some, since we have no age limit, we take everybody who's interested.

If they could pass the standards, we do tend to have younger officers higher up.

But we also do sometimes are a older workforce because of the nature of the union contracts and commitment to the job.

People do sometimes stay 30 plus years.

So we are moving towards also a, we have to think about our deployable officer number, not just the number of officers who are technically sitting in a funded position.

When we look at, our deployable officer count in our historical reporting hierarchy data, which we're working to repair so we can go back even further.

That number actually gets a little closer to 1,400 further in the past.

But when we look at from sort of mid-2018 to now, you see the drop in officers here.

The scale is adjusted not to exaggerate the drop, but so you can see the fluctuations.

There is some natural fluctuation month to month.

But starting in mid-2020, we really see that deployable officer number, folks who can physically work out on the street or in any other position where a sworn officer is needed, that number drops.

You do see a little spike in early October.

I think some of that is the chief's reassignment of folks and a lesson in some of the initial COVID response.

So we attribute a lot of this initial drop to people going out on COVID restrictions.

We were very strict if people might have been exposed.

We used our RedCat system in partnership with Seattle Fire and UW to try to limit any exposure.

I think a lot of that work, including access to PPE, was amazingly successful.

I think the last count I saw since this started, we've only had 56. employees test positive out of close to 2,000.

I think that's a remarkable achievement from a lot of folks and maybe a little bit of luck.

But we also, a lot of that was putting people out on isolation or quarantine to keep people safe.

We also then saw individuals not be able to take time off because a lot of people weren't.

And then we did have a month of heavy deployment due to demonstrations and protests.

And people were injured, people were exhausted.

And people had to take medical leave or medical mental health leave, something we encourage everyone to do to take care of themselves.

And so we have seen both as officers have left and as we've had an uptick in folks being on what we call long-term leave to address medical or other issues, our number is down about 200 from the start of this graph.

And we look at the past year, that really translates to about 300,000 officer hours that the chief does not have to deploy to whatever the need is. based on where we are on deployable officers.

We are obviously, with our wellness unit, really working to get people back to work.

We can get back to work, but it is just part of the broader picture.

Next slide.

So what does this mean?

Chair?

Yes.

Chair Herbold, can I ask a question about the deployable numbers?

You are muted.

Oh, yes, thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Fisher.

I would love a little bit more detail on the number, on this drop.

And I know that there are, you mentioned there are folks who are on mental health leave or on some other kind of medical leave.

And I know that there is also a number, I don't know how many of officers who are on disability leave.

Can you walk through that a little bit so we can get an understanding of how many or how long these officers have been on leave and when we might expect them to be back?

We'd have to circle back to you with the details.

We've been looking at that too.

Sort of the anticipating when people come back is hard.

Based on city rules, not SPD, this is SBHR, rules about how often you have to check back in, how often you need a doctor's note.

The city, I think, has taken, my interpretation, a policy perspective of being very understanding and flexible around medical issues and not prying into that too much.

So I think we have struggled with anticipating when we would get people back, but we can work with our HR department to break out.

Why are people on leave?

We don't have that at our fingertips in our data system because it is an HR issue.

So we can see how we can collate that and get that back to you.

It would be interesting to know, you know, I mean, we certainly don't need anything tied to individuals, but for what reason are people typically taking disability, for what kind of duration, and if, you know, if we can expect some sort of estimated return time so that the staffing issue can begin to get resolved, you know, at least by that portion of the force, that would be helpful to know.

Yeah, of course, we'll work on that.

I think a lot of it, sitting in a patrol car a lot of hours a day with all that equipment on your shoulders or on your hips, I know it carries with it long-term physical costs that I think a lot of our employees handle as they get into positions where maybe it's a little bit less impactful to their colleagues if they take time off to have those medical issues addressed.

So I think that's part of it, but we'll work on those numbers.

And I see Chief Diaz coming up on the screen.

Chief Diaz, did you have something you wanted to add there?

Yeah, and I think actually Dr. Fisher has actually mentioned it.

You know, we, because of the wear and tear of the officers, typically we do find at the very end of the officer's career where an officer will have multiple surgeries, shoulder surgeries, you know, hips, you know, knees.

And so some of those officers could be burning time, getting a variety of different surgeries done prior to their retirement.

So some of those numbers, they might not be returning back.

They could be literally burning their time from different surgeries and then leaving the department.

Okay, so how this translates to what it means to a community member reaching out to the department for help?

We've talked about this before, but I'll just summarize it.

So priority status is when the call center on the direction of a commander, either a precinct, whoever's in command of that precinct at that time, or if we have a citywide commander, such as a night duty captain or an assistant chief or chief, makes the decision that based on call volume and staffing, or if they're a major event or two, that the call center needs to go to priority status, meaning We will still receive and dispatch priority one, those emergency, urgent, life-threatening situations, and priority two, very important to get there quickly.

It may have just finished and you need to get there as soon as possible.

They will still dispatch those, but priority three and priority four, Those people are going to be asked to do that online.

If there is an officer in our phone unit available, that really depends on the time of day, if they're willing to make that report over the phone or to call back later, because we are at that stage in our priority status moment.

We're not just then able to respond fine to priority ones and twos.

It means we're focusing on that because we're not even able to handle the priority one and two volume because of everything else that's going on.

So it doesn't mean magically all of a sudden response times are fine.

It just means that we're just being upfront with people that you would be waiting a long time right now if we told you we were coming for a priority three call.

So we're not even going to put that on the officer's queue.

So you see here the trend in that increase.

Um, you know, I, I believe we haven't, there's no sort of science behind this.

I think it would be way too many factors to dig into it, but I believe you see the uptick start in 2018 when we had our first sort of, you know, slight, um, uptick, um, at least at that time it felt large, but now I'm not, um, of officers leaving and a little bit of a staffing crunch.

Because of the time it takes for the aggressive hiring in 2019 to work its way through to deployable officers, it didn't get better in 2019. I think we had hoped that 2020 would be better as those hires in 2019 were able to hit the street as fully deployable officers.

But those, I think, due to restrictions around COVID and officer availability during large-scale demonstrations and protests, And then as we had our staffing losses starting in June of 2020, we see these priority status times where at least one precinct or sometimes the city at some point during that day went to priority status.

So we see that upswing in the number of times we're having to tell people for lower priority calls that no one's coming right now.

I have a question about the priority status policy.

As I understand it, we moved to the modified priority call handling policy in July, and it was described at that time as being done in I quote, in light of the public health emergency, the guidelines set forth in this directive are intended to limit officer exposure to the public for routine responses when possible, but not completely eliminate those responses.

So the purpose, as I understand it, of moving to the priority call, policy that's an existing policy within the SPD policy and procedures manual.

The intent originally was to reduce officer contact with members of the public for purposes of minimizing exposure to COVID-19.

So we'd love to know whether or not, I mean, given again, that it started not because of at least as I've heard it described, the staffing challenges, but the desire to limit the exposure of officers to COVID-19.

Have there been further changes, further modifications to the priority call status policy after its initiation in July?

And also, I think it would be helpful if it was possible to sort of break down this 2020 bar moving into 2021 for the number of priority status days, since calling it in July for purposes of limiting COVID-19 exposure, and then to see how with increased staffing reductions, the number of days potentially increases is what I would expect to see if we saw a month-by-month analysis.

But that would be useful information to sort of confirm that what I think would be sort of common sense belief that that would be the impact.

Just to make sure we're clear, so the call handling status change for COVID is not reflected here.

That was just, that was telling the call center, advise people, can you just in general, you know, for low priority calls, for everyone's safety, if it can be done online or over the phone, let's do it.

But we weren't, if someone wanted an officer, we were sending them.

This is a commander's made the decision that we do not, we cannot safely deploy and address priority one and priority two calls, obviously priority one taking the most precedent because of what's going on and telling the call center, not an option.

We're not even, we're not logging those lower priority calls.

They need to call this number, go online to the portal or call back later.

So it's a two different universities of things.

I don't think we have, the chief is there, so I don't remember amending the minimizing unnecessary interaction as we've continued to try to keep COVID spread at bay so we can reopen up and keep everyone safe, but two different issues.

This I think is really driven by we've lost 200 officers and it's harder to have enough folks on patrol without burning everyone out by bringing them in on augmentation over time to get up to better status.

So minimum call status, is really like the floor.

That is not what we try to stack to.

That's at the minimum that we can safely feel that we can handle calls in accordance with deployment strategies, some coming from the consent decree around two or multiple officer call types, and just the geographic distribution of certain precincts.

We always hope to have more officers, the minimum.

But as we've lost 200 officers, Our minimum staffing days are more frequent, and that translates directly into the likelihood of having to go into a priority status day if we have a major event or a high volume of calls.

One shot's fired in a precinct, especially if someone's hit, is going to take anywhere from four, five, six cars, which if we're at minimum staffing, that leaves very few.

cars available throughout the rest of the precinct to handle everything else.

And that's probably gonna send the precinct in the priority status until that shots fired or shooting is cleared up and people can get back to work.

So that just to make sure we're thinking of things in a different way or in the correct sort of two buckets.

But we can get you the week by week for 2020 and so far in 2021, we can break it out that way if that's what you're interested in Madam Chair.

I would like to see how the priority status days track against available staffing and as those staffing numbers reduce.

And I will go back and look at the I just wanted to make sure that I understood the order from the chief.

non-forged entry burglary with no evidence and priority three or four calls with no opportunity for apprehension being screened with a supervisor.

And my recollection is that document that was activated in July also said it was being done in light of the public health emergency, but I will check my record on that.

No, Council Member, I can answer to that.

So we started looking at right when COVID hit, we started evaluating all of our calls for service, especially the calls for service that we knew that there was gonna be no evidence, that the suspect information was probably not gonna be in existence because the, say a burglary happened three days ago and the person didn't know.

So to try and eliminate officers responding out to these types of calls for service, we wanted to make sure that we used our online reporting or our true system.

And so we did have, that's what we call COVID priority status.

So we have been in COVID priority status.

I actually don't remember the day, but if it says July, then it's probably around that timeframe.

I actually think we actually started a little bit before that because we've been constantly evaluating a variety of different calls or service, not just criminal calls, but also traffic accidents as well.

And so we've adjusted throughout the whole time that we've been going on.

But what we're speaking to as far as the priority one and two is exactly what Dr. Fisher has been discussing.

That's when we're on priority status.

And that is usually because of staffing plus some sort of event such as shooting or some serious level of issue that's requiring a lot of our resources and not being able to have that level of resources.

Just the other day, We had a homicide and then another shooting in two different precincts during first watch hours.

So that almost depleted our whole first watch officer status.

So those are the impacts when you have two different precincts having big events or big calls for service.

And I think just one final point, this 2020 number that happened, I think even in spite of might be the wrong word, but in spite of already having restrictions on the number of calls we were going to, because I think of our staffing, even with the COVID restriction in place, we still had to, because of both nature of calls and call volume and then our staffing, we still had to go to priority status this number of times.

So I think combined, I think it paints a picture of a patrol force stretched very thin at least over the second half of the year, if not since March 5th or 8th, whenever this started.

Thank you.

Next slide.

So just historical context here, we will get a little bit more granular for recent.

I know some of this is prior all of our time.

So you do see three different things here.

So priority one, which we give some examples.

Many call types can be many different types of priority based on what the caller says to the call taker.

So an assault can be both a priority one, or it could be a priority two, or it could be a priority three, given on is it happening right now?

Is there a weapon?

Did it just happen?

Are you reporting that it happened a week ago?

So it's not so much the name of the call type.

It's really about what happens.

But we do give some examples here.

The blue line is our median.

We tend to go on median because the average can be swayed by, and there's a typo in the graph, sorry, both of those are medians.

The average, the green is not, oh, sorry, I got mixed up.

One's median, one's average.

I thought this was a different slide.

We show both here, but we tend to go on the median because the average is more swayed by outliers.

Sometimes officers can't forget to log out of a call.

I mean, to log that they got to a call, they might just jump out of the car and go.

And so we can't have outliers.

We don't like to artificially cut outliers, because it could be real.

So we do look at both, but we tend to focus on that median.

It's a little less susceptible.

All measures of central tendency have their trade-offs.

But so we display everything here.

So you see the blue line is the median.

Again, our goal is seven minutes or less.

You see, you know, it was higher early in 2014. It went down as we had sort of the staffing drive of the prior mayoral administration.

A little bit of an uptick in 2018. Again, we saw some drops there.

2019, it came back down a little bit, not so much when you look at the percentage of calls that got responded to in seven minutes.

And then you see the large uptick back to prior levels of that 6.62, and the big drop in the percent of calls responded to within seven minutes.

The average, again, shows more of the influence of the tails of the distribution.

So you can see we got up to, in 2020, 9.58, which I think, while two and a half-ish minutes above goal might not sound ginormous, But I think in those priority one calls where something is happening to you or a family member or a friend or someone you see right then, I think seven minutes probably feels like forever.

I think that extra two and a half minutes probably feels like an additional forever.

But that's been the historical trend in these numbers.

And then this is looking at specifically 2020, looking at priority one and priority two.

So priority one, you see a slight downtick, I think, really as COVID set in and general social behavior changes.

Both we don't have nightlife, we don't have as many people out and about on the streets, both at daytime and at closing hour.

We also have less traffic.

It's a little easier for officers to get around, especially our more dense downtown area, which has our call volume.

And also our north end, which has A lot of our call volume then has some difficult traffic routes to get to, as well as the southwest precinct where sometimes our frame sector has some of the longer response times because of the difficulty of getting from the precinct down to the bottom of West Seattle.

So I think as traffic lessened and as call volume lessened, which we'll look at in a second, our response times go down.

Then you see in June the uptick in both priority one and two.

The obvious answer here is officers for many days were both having to respond to ongoing demonstrations and protests.

And we see, we don't break it out here, it's something we can provide as a follow-up.

When you look at the precinct by precinct, a lot of this is driven by the East Precinct, which normally has one of our faster response times because of the geography.

But with several blocks blocked off and officers deploying out of a different precinct, For several weeks, we see a large upswing in our response time on the East Precinct, which I think drove a lot of this, but it is maintained.

So for seven months, our median priority one response time has been above our goal of seven minutes, which, as we saw the historical, we generally are below that goal.

Priority two is a little bit, I think, harder to decipher what exactly happened there.

We see a large upswing.

Our goal, generally, we don't really talk about the 15-minute goal that much.

Just in these conversations, we generally focus on that priority one because it is an emergency.

But you do see the large uptick in priority two.

I think this, the clearest thing that makes sense to me, again, no science here, it's just looking at sort of correlations and trends, is if we're in a staffing constraint, if we're going to priority call status, we are stretching ourselves to get to the priority one calls.

If we happen to have enough deployable resources, they're also going to the priority two calls, but they are focused and trying their best to get to those emergency calls.

So it makes sense to me that the sort of recovery of the priority two calls has been a little bit less back to prior levels than the priority one, just because of the impacts of losing those officers and reducing our reliance on augmentation over time because of budget constraints.

We were at minimum staffing a lot.

We were at priority call status a lot.

So a priority two is gonna suffer more than priority one just by the definition of where we focus our resources.

Dr. Fisher, I just want to, if you can go back to that slide, please.

I just want to highlight the fact that the text in the box suggests that priority two has a seven minute performance metric goal, and that is not the case.

So I want to just state that for my colleagues and for the viewing public.

The priority two calls do not have a seven minute performance metric.

They have a 15 minute.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

All right.

And here is just another historical and to put things in context, looking at specifically earlier, we were talking about broader staffing across the whole department.

So those losses and deployable officer numbers that that impacts the whole department, every unit where there's a sworn officer.

This is specifically looking at the number that we have routinely reported to counsel.

Those officers who are in a patrol car whose primary Unit type is a 9-1-1 responder.

Their job is to answer 9-1-1 calls.

So we looked at the end of each year.

We had to pick a point in time rather than try to average 12 months every year.

So we picked December 31st of every year and saw how many 9-1-1 responders and their sergeants we had.

Part of that increase is through the consent decree.

We were directed and I think obligated to increase our Sergeant to officer ratio or rather decrease it a smaller number more sergeants for officers than we had for supervision oversight and review of incidents.

So, but we also were successful in up staffing.

And so there you see that the 911 response pool was growing.

along with their supervisors.

When we lost staff in 2018, it came back down.

Again, the training to deployment timeline, 2019 was no better than 2018. I think we had hoped 2020 would be better.

But then as we had the staffing losses, as we had people not available, you see the number ended around 507. As the chief mentioned, he made the decision to reassign 100 and so individuals and their super and some couple sergeants back to patrol to help plug this hole to make sure we can continue to respond to calls.

We also created the community response group out of that to help us have flexible deployment at our busiest times.

The CRG, you know, that was an agreement that was reached.

It's not something that we can maintain forever.

It's volunteer basis.

People can ask to go back.

And so it was really a critical element that allowed us to be flexible at our busiest times while we had ongoing protests and demonstrations to not pull 911 away.

But also they've been remarkably helpful at their other primary goal of reducing 9-1-1 wait times.

They've responded to over 1,000 dispatches, just that CRG group.

But at some point, those folks will go back.

It may be gradual, and a bunch of them may decide to ask to return to where they were before.

But it shows a sense of, if not for that reassignment and the CRG, which is not permanent, we would be at a remarkably low number of 9-1-1 responders.

If we could just pause here.

So that blue box that says 604 with CRG is the 100 or so officers that the chief temporarily redeployed with the consent of the officers being deployed.

So folks, the redeployment to patrol was not voluntary.

I see, I'm conflating the two.

Participating, joining the CRG team, that was voluntary.

Got it.

And because it changes their work conditions, it's a different shift time.

So that had to be voluntary if we weren't going to go through labor negotiations.

Now, so where is the 100-officer redeployment represented here?

Because I remember seeing information that showed that when those officers were redeployed to patrol, that we actually, for a period of time, had the most number of officers on patrol that we had had for several years.

Can you speak to that?

I'll speak to that.

It was like 566, something like that for a while.

So we actually were at the lowest number of 9-1-1 responders.

That is the reason for the deployment or redeployment of 100 officers back into patrol.

As we, you know, continue to see losses, you know, in October, November, December, those were all wiped out very, very quickly.

So even that

that bump if we would have not had that bump of of officers coming back into patrol we would be at devastating uh numbers in i i understand that my question was that for a time after you did the the redeployment of the 100 officers for a time i think the number was up at around 566 in patrol but then a number additional officers left um and so i i recognize that the the The number now, and at the end of 2020, is the lowest that it's been.

But my recollection was when you first did the redeployment, which I thank you for doing, it was an important thing to do, that the number was actually higher than the number in 2019. I see Greg raising his hand.

We were actually closer to about 435 prior to deployment of the 100 officers in patrol.

That is the reason why I actually had to make the decision, because we were at such low numbers.

That didn't include the bikes and the ACT team and some of the other different units that weren't necessarily 911 responders.

Now I've literally pulled all of them together and CPT, all of them together under one, under the 911 response now.

And that's the level of confusion because we, by moving the 100 officers into patrol, it didn't include the ACT teams and the bike teams that were part of those numbers too.

So there might be just some confusion with the numbers, but we were actually in around the 430 range of people that were, deployable, and I'll say that also, that's the other thing, deployable for patrol.

Because we do have people burning time or taking time away, and while they might be initially assigned to patrol, they weren't deployable for 9-1-1 response.

Thank you.

Greg, you have something to add here?

Yeah, just to clarify a little bit.

And basically, I'm going to say much of the same thing that the chief just said when when the department talks about patrol.

They're talking about A group of folks, 911 responders are one part of that group.

There were other parts of that group, the anti-crime team, the community police team.

There are bikes that are patrolling downtown, officers on foot.

When the chief made his move of 100 officers into 911 response, he moved folks that were already working beats already working on the bikes that were already out there and patrol, but not answering 911 calls.

When he did that there was a bump in 911 responders.

in folks that were assigned to 911 response, just like you mentioned Council Member Herbold, but it didn't change patrol that much because it was mostly a reassignment of folks that were already out there in one capacity or another.

They just weren't answering 911 calls.

And then I can't necessarily speak to availability of officers as you mentioned that went down.

So I of course understand that 9-1-1 responders is a subset of patrol.

The title of this slide is lowest level of 9-1-1 responders, but then it goes on in the box to talk about patrol.

So this is a chart only of 9-1-1 responders.

The statement about the patrol being short 158 officers is speaking truly to patrol, not specifically to 9-1-1.

So right now, with the chief's reassignment, patrol is, except for maybe, I think there might be a chief could confirm, there might be one bike squad left, but patrol pretty much now is exclusively 911. That was sort of his reorientation was a generalization of the patrol officer to do all the work that we had specialized when we had better staffing.

Correct.

Correct.

So all the specialized groups that I just mentioned, the ACT team, the bike team, the CPT, all of that is now under the 911 response because of the moves that we had to do.

But Madam Chair, we can get you a month by month because I know what you're asking and I just don't have it in my head and it's not in our deck, but we can show you the month by month count in a follow up.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And just the other point here, just to explain the box for those.

So as we've seen, we saw the response time go up as we've lost officers.

Using our triangulation sort of approach to minimum staffing, our MPP program, our performance management sort of approach from Michigan State and the Department of Justice, and just our sort of operational deployment realities of officer in every beat for some version of community policing, took what we learned here, applied it to those models, and the best we can tell statistically, if we lose an additional 50 patrol officers out of patrol, which is now an essence 911 response, the numbers forecast that it would lead to an almost three minute increase in priority one response time.

I think speaking to that, we sort of are at that edge of a knife or edge of a cliff where we go over there, there start to be, you know, we saw a two and a half minute uptick and we've had a loss here and in some other conditions happening.

I think here, it's just making the point that if we continue to lose out of patrol, and the chief mentioned earlier, it's hard to do another redeployment.

We would anticipate sort of a, not exponential, that might be a little too strong, but we would start, we would see a definite further increasing in our response time.

because there'd be little left to sort of fill the gap.

And sort of what does this translate?

So we've lost these officers.

We are concerned that continued cuts, as we have heard, may have been driving some of the loss, the fear out of being laid off or of not having the tools and equipment and training they were used to having.

that if we continue to see these cuts is going to put us in a even more dire situation than we currently are to meet these sort of two giant buckets of providing adequate police protection across the city.

However, we define adequate protection in districts and the contract, the obligations under the consent decree.

As mentioned briefly during this, the monitor and the court and DOJ sort of really spelled out a It's a general deployment model, not a where and a how, but that there are certain call types for it to decrease the potential for force.

We must have a certain number of officers and a certain number of supervisors.

So as we reach sort of ever-dwindling staffing numbers, it stretches our ability to meet that model of deployment and patrol.

Chief also mentioned the Professional Standards Bureau, where our training unit sits.

Almost all of those units have been hit by significant separations.

He, as he has stated, cannot The large bucket of our employees on the sworn side are in patrol.

I think in the past, if a particular unit went down low, we would have pulled folks from patrol and it was more better staff.

It's not really possible to do that.

So as we lose individuals from these other units, we can't backfill.

In each of these units, wrapping up a case, bringing justice to a victim or a victim's family is a big part of community engagement and sort of, providing the service that people expect.

They want the outcome of the case to be decided.

Collaborative policing, the consent decree speaks tremendously to the importance of a community policing, community engagement model.

We have to continue to invest in our technology and keep it running and evolving.

I think when you look back to the origins of the consent decree, a large part of the discussion was around our inability to report the data because our systems could not select it or collate it.

And then a big new focus of ours, I think it's always been an awareness, but Chief Best and now Chief Diaz, I think even more so really pushing the essentialness of focusing on officer wellness.

And we've had great partnership, I think, on this from council, from CPC and the OIG and the OPA on the importance of officer wellness.

And we're working right now on coming up with a best-in-class early intervention system.

Even the monitor, the prior monitor, admitted that the prior system needed to be improved.

I think all of the current team is on the same page of pushing this new early intervention system to be one that gets to issues before they turn into problematic behaviors versus one that identifies problematic behaviors as essential.

Angela, you want to go to the next one?

And so I'll hit this one.

I think the next slide is actually Angela's.

So speaking to the technology, this is really sort of our case for letting us keep this 5.4 in our budget.

These are things that we believe are essential to both the reimagining work, being more effective and efficient, and this technology aspect.

We've broken them out as best we can.

I think in a side conversation, we could get more detailed on the actual specifics of each program, but the DAF, which is the system we built that allows us to do the reporting that met all of those administrative oversight, in reality, sort of fueled the operational oversights of the consent decree.

It needs to be updated.

We need to move it to the cloud, both for cost reduction and to allow it to tie into new and evolving tools that are sort of hard to do on-prem.

We have that partnership in place.

and it will allow us to do this EIS system.

There are modeling softwares and tools that exist in the environment where we're putting the DAP, and we need to make that move to do that.

We've identified a much more agile and user-friendly and understandable planning tool that ties into this same, the DAP's access to data that would allow us to much more easily and what that would look like to staffing needs and outputs and outcomes on a public safety measure beyond the sort of the black box MPP program that we currently have.

The innovation blueprint, which is called out in the mayor's EO around reimagining, this is really developing a comprehensive across the 10 areas that are spoken to both in the EO and SPD letter, I believe, to central staff, or maybe it was to the mayor's office, but we could reattach that one.

I think people have seen it.

But the areas where we want to focus on innovation is really identifying what we need to do from a technology training, better practice standpoint to really increase transparency, engagement bi-directional engagement with community and just be more effective and efficient.

And again, the improvements and building out really a first-of-its-kind early intervention system, those technology efforts and scoping efforts to 2.185.

I don't know if we want to...

to move on and we can talk about sort of the process.

Yeah, if we could pause here.

I'm just, yeah, thank you.

And I see Council Member Lewis coming on screen.

I think he has a question too.

I'd just be really interested to understand then these planned investments, why this was not included in the proposed 2021 budget, this nearly $2.2 million in spending.

I think Angela can speak to some of it, but I know the move to the DAP, we thought that was something that was actually going to be able to be done for low to no cost in 2020, but I think external realities, both with Seattle IT and the city pre-executed that, and so it's now something that we're going to have to invest a decent amount of money to make that happen.

The CBT tool was also a late identification that this was a tool that existed and that we could get access to and connect to our systems.

And I think the blueprint and the EIS, Angela, do you wanna, I know you put that in your memo, but I don't know if there were other areas that you were thinking in the creation of the 2021 budget.

Before we move over to Angela, because I want to be efficient, I have a feeling Angela might be the person to answer this question as well.

The memo from the 25th of January says that DAP 1.0 was originally designed to respond to a specific set of requirements under the consent decree.

Since then, use cases have grown dramatically as the platform was used to meet increasing demands for non-consent decree-related information and analysis.

So I'm also really interested to, in this proposed spending, whether that's for the DAP or for other technology elements, to parse out which investments are necessary to respond to consent decree requirements.

from, in this case, from DAP use cases distinct from meeting non-consent decree related information and analysis.

Before Angela jumps in, just on the DAP, so I mean, I think this would be a question I'm going to sound like a lawyer, but I'm not.

It's the letter versus the spirit.

So stuff that's not specifically called out to that level in the consent decree in terms of the technology is the wellness.

The team that manages the DAP is trying to work with our technology partners to, I think, do some pretty amazing and cutting edge work around stuff just beyond EIS, just around helping to support and identify and evaluate tools and technology and ways of monitoring how officers are doing so that we can provide support.

So I don't know if that by letter of a contract would be consent decree related, but it's something that the DAP supports that we think sort of holistically supports the intent of the consent decree.

But for the other stuff, I'd let Angela chime in.

Yeah, I would say for the most part, the items listed here weren't known as we were developing the 2020 proposed budget.

The work of clearly defining the scope of this project and understanding what the potential costs were.

These costs weren't even known when we transmitted the memo in January.

Much of what you see here has been born out of the work under the executive order, and was very much a work in progress, and wasn't known to us when we submitted our 2020 budget proposal.

Some of the upgrades for the data analytics platform were known, and as Chris said, We had, I believe, there were funds available for some of those updates, which were just O&M type updates, ongoing maintenance.

I believe that may have been built into the Seattle IT rates.

However, due to COVID and just challenges with implementation of some of the ongoing project work in Seattle IT, this work was postponed and the funding was not rolled over into 2021.

Chair herbal, if I may, I, I just want to emphasize the points and maybe chief Diaz can speak more to it, but a point that Angela just made, which is, I think, part of the, some of these items also illustrate that.

Given the unprecedented staffing losses through the 4th quarter.

We are also identifying strategies to help mitigate those impacts.

And some of these items are based on some of that thinking to adjust to the staffing challenges that have emerged for SPDs.

So, and I know Dr. Fisher and Angela have spoken to some of that, but if Chief Diaz has anything else to add, I just think that's an important point to emphasize as far as what's on this list.

Oh, and thank you, Debbie.

Mayor Fong.

That's exactly to our point is we're we're constantly trying to evaluate and adjust what tools can actually make us more efficient.

So we're able to even still try to meet some of the demands that are being requested in 2021 with the short with the staffing crisis that we're experiencing.

I would just also add is think about the 2021 budget and its development.

Recall that we were facing significant financial crisis in 2020 as well.

So resources were not abounding.

Budget was built to provide the resources needed to fund staffing that we understood then.

Staffing has since obviously fallen off relative to those forecasts.

So we weren't in a position to entertain significant additions to anyone's budget.

I think that's an important reality for members as well.

reporting and call responsiveness.

Frequent constituent work that my office has been doing tends to revolve around complications and being able to report things online, which is something a lot of people have found to be very difficult.

They found the program and form where you fill things in to be difficult.

They've been bumped from that system because sometimes a a crime does not fit within it and they have to physically call a hotline to report.

In addition to that, people have had issues transmitting evidence.

I've got a lot of constituents that will have, you know, surveillance footage of someone who stole their package or who stole something out of their business, and they just cannot, for the life of them, transmit this video.

There's no way to upload it.

These are not sophisticated or large data videos in a lot of cases.

We should, in this day and age, be able to electronically submit that kind of evidence.

So I wonder what a lot of these investments, this $2.185 million of technology investments, where in there there might be some way to address the streamlining and effectiveness of the online reporting so people can can file their reports and can also submit evidence to help the department resolve these kinds of cases.

Yeah, thank you Councilmember Lewis.

I think two quick questions, I mean two quick answers, and we can obviously talk more in detail, but so On one, a large part of this innovation blueprint is identifying what are those technologies that are out there that can meet some of these needs.

One part of this that our partner has done in other jurisdictions is a community member portal that's a lot more interactive, so you don't necessarily have to get someone on the line to have your question answered or to complete your task.

We're also, just on the two that you brought up, The portal that's used for online reporting is almost, I think right now, one of the only existing providers in almost every jurisdiction I'm aware of uses it, but totally have heard from the community the frustration.

And I think we've had our own sort of back-end complications at times.

So we've actually pushed our records management vendor.

They're building out a front-end so that the community can report in that system.

As we have seen in the implementation of that software, it was a tremendous leap forward in usability and user friendliness for our officers working with the system.

And I would imagine that we'd see the same sort of modern architecture for a community member.

And we also, through one of our other, our vendor around our body-worn camera, they obviously, you know, experts in video, they have a solution that we're exploring, implementing, where folks could submit in a much more easier way their digital evidence.

They're just speaks to these tools are out there.

Some are being developed.

We want to make sure that we're aware of the whole sort of panoply of options and that we're also engaging vendors and making sure that we're meeting as we develop these and acquire these that we're doing it in a way that's in alignment with sort of the values and ordinances of the city and the surveillance ordinance and the privacy ordinance So I think that's why we think that part's essential.

The rest of this work on this page really is, you know, the DAP, it's making sure that thing can continue.

The city invested a tremendous amount of funds to set up the DAP to support the consent decree, and it has to continue to be upgraded.

You know, its visualization partner, Tableau, continues to evolve.

We have to keep it in pace with the rest of technology.

So a lot of this is moving forward.

It's also adding new data sources so that we can more easily respond to council data requests, some in slides, some ad hoc.

So upgrading our technology helps us to provide information to everyone in a more short and streamlined and less siloed way, and also can help us as we develop these new technologies sort of on the front end for community engagement, we also have to make sure we can pull that data in to work with it on the back end.

So it's an ecosystem, but I totally hear you that we need to make, our drive needs to be on the engagement with the community and that that's as seamless and painless and friendly as possible.

And that's the blueprints identifying all those opportunities.

And this other work, I think, sets us up on a foundation to then connect all those tools and really be that modern, very easy to engage, not needing an officer in situations where you don't need one, where you can get your question answered or issue addressed.

But that's the vision.

We want to fully bake out that vision before we start investing in deciding this is how this work's going to be done.

We want to make sure we've thought about all the issues.

Thank you.

And Angela, I think the next one's your slide.

Yes, thank you, Chris.

So in the 2021 adopted budget, there is included a $4.1 million cut to the personnel budget for civilian positions.

In order to achieve this level of savings, we need to maintain a minimum of 40 civilian vacancies throughout the year.

This has necessitated the continuation of a civilian hiring freeze at SPD.

Since July of last year, we've limited our hiring of civilian positions to 12 positions, three in OPA, seven police dispatchers, one advisor position to support the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Initiative, and then one grant-funded position.

We would like to use Horn Salary Savings instead to satisfy the cut and hire the positions listed here.

If not for the pending legislation and the proviso on sworn salary savings, it's likely we would have already filled these positions.

I know some of them have raised some, there's interest in hiring, especially the public facing positions like the CPCs and the CSOs, which are public facing and could potentially help with the staffing shortage or help address the staffing deficit.

My takeaway from the budget discussions last fall was that council wanted to have more visibility into our internal budget decisions.

I can't predict how this year will play out, but there are known budget needs, which I outlined in the January budget memo.

to central staff.

And this here is an example of just wanting to highlight for council ways that we might repurpose savings in our budget in order to make hires, civilian hires, or to respond to unanticipated events like a sworn staffing deficit.

So in this case, we're hoping for consideration to be given to redirecting some of the sworn vacancy savings to the hiring of what we deem to be critical civilian positions.

Let's see.

And then second, As far as separation pay goes, the budget shortfall for separation pay was around 3,000,000 in 2020. We were able to partially mitigate the shortfall through vacancy savings and by heavily restricting purchases and overtime usage at the end of the year.

Additional budget cuts prevented us from fully closing the budget gap caused by record high attrition, and that's what necessitated an appropriation request of 1.5 million at year end.

For 2020, we've developed a rough estimate of the budget need for this year.

The estimate's based on normal attrition.

If we separate more officers than estimated here, we will need an additional appropriation.

Normally, we would use vacancy savings to offset this cost.

As everyone knows, we saw higher attrition in Q4, and when officers separate later in the year, the salary savings derived from the separation may be insufficient to cover the cost, depending on the length of service.

So I just wanted to highlight this here that for me, the separation pay issue, like I mentioned before, this is a known issue.

We saw it impact our budget balancing last year and just wanted to highlight early on that this will be impactful and we will either need to seek an additional appropriation to build this into the budget.

because of the uncertainty around how many officers are going to leave this year, it would be great to have an opportunity to continue to track this and potentially true it up at year end.

Alternatively, we could submit an appropriation request in the second quarter supplemental or potentially have some of the $5.4 million left in our budget to address the budget shortfall.

I'm open to discussing that, the best way to achieve the closing of this budget gap.

With that, I'll pass it back to Chris.

Were you going to take the slide?

I think the chief was going to make some conclusions.

Yeah, you know, and I know that there might be some questions so I want to just emphasize some final points in this presentation in our early budget memo.

I know there are real concerns about departments use of overtime and we're not proposing to use any of this money for overtime, and if there are additional deployment needs, if our special return events, our special events do return, well, you know, we'll have to come back because that was part of the overtime funding that was cut in this last year's budget.

I am confident we can help mitigate these constraints while also ensuring that we're sending a strong message that Seattle needs a sufficient number of police officers.

In the first two months of our new online national testing, We have very encouraging trends.

We've had a record number of applicants, a strong sign that people want to serve this community.

And we have a record number of BIPOC applicants.

With the majority of applicants, we're actually at around 64%.

And we can hire a record number of officers building off our earlier success, but it'll take months for them to be ready and to fill those spots that we've lost.

And this won't matter, however, if officers continue to leave.

And they will leave, as we've seen, if they see these continued cuts in the department's budget.

But we do not, and yes, we do not know how 2021 will unfold, but it appears that it'll be different than 2020. We have a plan in place and we're aggressively working to implement it, including our hiring plan within budget.

I cannot, however, manage to a budget that keeps changing.

Yes, we will have salary savings from employees leaving, but the work has not changed.

And if we can not invest in those savings and strategies to fill those gaps, it'll be difficult.

I cannot forecast what a return to normal will look like as we move forward into the later months of 2021. Chris, do you have anything?

I think maybe Senior Deputy Mayor Fong, did you want to close this out?

I don't think I have any further comments.

Thanks, Chris.

And thank you, Councilmember.

I don't have a lot to add, just to emphasize the point again that, you know, the executive feels strongly that these resources are going to be needed and necessary for SBE to mitigate really this unprecedented loss of officers over the last year.

And as the last couple of slides have outlined some strategies for how we can carry out and execute that mitigation.

We hope that council will give that due consideration as you look at this potential proposal.

So thank you council member.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate you all so generous with your time here today.

I just wanna restate what I've said in the past.

Although I was signed on as a co-sponsor of this bill, even as sponsoring it, I expressed a willingness to not be rigid on the reduction of the department by $5.4 million and that I wanted to hear from the police department on what its needs are.

And I'm happy to consider what you've shared with us now.

And we've had a lot of time to sit with the January 25th memo that served as sort of a foundation for the presentation.

that we have now before us.

Next meeting is March 23rd.

I have submitted some additional questions and was intending to ask some of them during this presentation, but in the interest of time decided not to.

Council President Gonzalez also submitted some questions, so looking forward to receiving that information.

And ask my colleagues that if they have amendments for consideration for the bill, please do get them to us by March 16th.

And then also, again, want to underscore what I've shared in council briefings meetings is that we are also consulting with the monitor.

The monitor has indicated that he may be reporting to the judge overseeing the consent decree regarding budget issues.

The city attorney's office has submitted to the monitor a comprehensive memo that describes the 2020 budget reductions, the 2021 budget reductions, as well as the council's add to the budget in 2020. And explains of the 2020 budget reductions, which ones were not able to be realized.

Well, some of the ones are highlighted that we're not able to realize specifically the out of order layoffs.

So we will take all of this into consideration.

I have expressed my interest in not only supporting the department's interest in fully funding the CSOs, which has been a long and strong priority of the council to fund CSOs.

as well as the CPC positions.

I also have an interest in addressing the needs associated with public disclosure requests.

And in addition to the staffing requests that SPD is asking for, I have a number of inquiries in about other ways that we can also help deal with some of the public disclosure backlogs, both including shifting some of the OPA public disclosure requests to OPA rather than having SPD have to respond to them, which is currently the practice, as well as having some of the email searches be done by SIT, the Seattle technology department.

They do e-mail searches for nearly every department in the city to fulfill public disclosure requests.

Understand that e-mail public disclosure requests are a fraction of what SPD is dealing with, and the bulk of the time that they take is really focused on some of the body-worn camera public disclosure requests, but still I think that shifting to having Seattle IT deal with some of those email public disclosure requests would be helpful.

And then finally, really motivated to address the issues that, or at least take a step towards addressing the issues that the Office of the Inspector General has identified with evidence storage.

So these are all elements, in addition to separation pay, all elements that I think we have to struggle with looking at this particular piece of legislation as a vehicle in determining what investments are ripe to be considered now and which ones we should wait until we have additional information on.

And if there are, looking to see if my colleagues have any questions.

Councilmembers, let's see, we still have Councilmember Lewis, and I know, Councilmember Lewis, yes.

So Madam Chair, given the advanced hour, you probably don't want an extensive line of questioning, correct?

This is just more clarifications and going forward.

That's right, and of course, if you do have questions, I think it would be important to get them to SPD as soon as possible, given that The goal is to develop amendments for this legislation by the 16th of March.

Yeah, understood.

Thank you.

I'll hold questions then and submit them in writing.

Okay.

I actually have to unfortunately note that we've lost quorum for the committee as well.

I just received a text that Council Member Morales is trying to get back on.

But given that this is the situation that we're in, I think it's probably best.

Yes.

I want to just thank you for your comments on the elements that you've highlighted.

We look forward to continue our discussions.

I do want to emphasize though, just coming back to a point I made earlier,

We don't have quorum for the meeting, so I think I'm going to have to close it down.

I'm so sorry.

This is unusual.

It's the first time I've had to do this.

Yeah, we need to maintain quorum throughout the meeting, not just at the beginning.

No council rules.

So thank you.

Our next meeting is on the 23rd, and we are adjourned.

My apologies for that.