Public Safety Meeting 7/9/2024

Okay, good morning.

The public safety meeting will come to order.

It's 9.34 a.m.

July 9th, 2024. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

Thank you.

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

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Thank you, everyone, for coming.

Very important day today.

Today on our schedule, we will have our second meeting on street racing that is plaguing our communities across our city.

Street racing is a danger and a threat to traffic and pedestrian safety.

And it is, to be clear, it is also a threat to the health and quality of life of our neighbors.

And, you know, it's also pollution.

It's pollution as the vehicles meet the street, whether it's the emissions from the carbon, tires and the like.

But it's also noise pollution that is affecting our communities.

And ultimately, it is also another example of a situation not dealt with that will contribute to the permissive environment that is underlying our public safety challenges.

It is the thing that kind of contributes to the idea that it is permitted by what we've been seeing on our streets that oftentimes has been fatal and or contributed to other circumstances like what we saw in West Seattle and Alki Beach.

And because of that, it is an emergency and we're pressing forward as an emergency bill so that we can take action immediately, as opposed to waiting 30 days to go even deeper into the summer.

So that's the first item on our agenda.

And the second one, I just wanted to note that we have an opportunity to show our commitment to our accountability partners who are present today.

I thank you very much for joining us.

I think it's really important to have these periodic check-ins to see what the issues are out there from each of your perspectives.

We're unique in that we have three different, with the Community Police Commission, the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General.

These three different perspectives are very important and really give a fuller picture of the challenges that we're facing and the actions that we're taking to further police accountability and to basically move closer to constitutional policing and build on the reforms that have been taking place over the last dozen years.

So again, thank you very much for the deputies and the executive director and director in the case of OPA.

With that, we will now open the hybrid public comments should relate to the items on today's agenda or within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many, speaking of which, Clerk, today being filled by Rebecca Duran of my office, how many speakers are signed up for today?

Currently, we have two in-person speakers sign up and there is one remote speaker.

Okay, each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with the in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

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

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

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

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

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

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first in-person speaker is Carolyn Malone.

Thank you.

I'm Carolyn Malone, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

I'm not a criminal, and I do not have a criminal record, nor am I engaged in criminal activity.

Yet Seattle Police continue to occupy space in my senior housing, Why tap my phone?

There's a dual number on this phone.

I have one number, but their number supersedes my number.

I've never met my great-grandchildren, nor can I contact family easily.

usually disconnected or I can't make the call.

There's no reason for police to continually harass me because I exercise my constitutional right to stand in front of their building and protest.

After all, they live in mine illegally.

I'm tased.

I'm pepper sprayed within the building.

I'm awakened each night, each day by burning eyes, nostril, and throat.

And worse yet, Seattle firemen and AMR ambulance drivers operate in solidarity with police.

Whenever I stand at Fifth and Cherry, they circulate around me blaring sirens.

Whenever I'm at bus stops, the same thing happens.

I carry a camera always and have lots of photos of police and firemen and ambulance drivers running ahead of the buses I ride on.

This is a dangerous undertaking, and yet they do it because, seemingly, they think they have the authority.

I will do whatever it takes to stop police from harassing me.

I've gone to many agencies, and all they do is send me in a runaround, and I'm gonna keep protesting.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

The second in-person speaker is Terry McLean.

Hello.

Hi.

Good morning and thanks for everything you guys do.

My name is Terry McLean.

I live in Lower Queen Anne.

So it was May 11th that I went out to try to see the Northern Lights the day after.

Instead of seeing that, I saw cars build up in the area and it turned into illegal street racing.

So I saw all these cars, saw a lot of people.

I already knew something was going on.

I I called 911, not emergency, I called them a couple times.

And things just got bad.

I don't know if I was the only one that was there that was saying, hey, 911, we got an issue here, we got all these kids, we've got families, we've got cars sitting in the beer hall, they're racing down the streets, they're doing wheelies.

So when the first cop car came, that's when I saw the individual come up and kick the car, the cop car, and then went back and kicked it again and fell back on the sidewalk.

And I get why the cops just sat in his car because it would have been a mob mentality.

So that's another issue.

So all the streets were blocked.

The buses were there.

Everyone was at a standstill.

I saw the car do a wheelie around the police.

And then the other police came minutes later.

I spoke to the police after that.

He said, I asked him what I should do.

He said, contact the council.

And that's what I have done.

I think the fine is what I believe $500 is too low.

It should be raised up higher because then that gets into people's wallets.

And I don't know how it works, but seizing the cars, compounding the cars, that ends the situation right there.

And also motorbikes.

Motorbikes is another issue.

And they run around our towns too many groups.

So I just want to say thanks for listening.

I hope things change because it's a bad issue going on right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your eyewitness testimony.

And I appreciate the officer saying to contact your Seattle City Council.

I appreciate that as well.

Thank you for that.

Our remote speaker is not present, so this ends public comment.

Okay.

There's no additional registered speakers, so we'll now proceed to our next item of business.

The first item of business, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

An ordinance related to street racing, adding the crime of racing, adding the traffic infraction of vehicle participation in unlawful racing, adding a new section 11.58.440 to the Seattle Municipal Code and amending sections 11.20.230 11.31.020, 11.31.121, 11.56.120, and 12A.09.020 of the Seattle Municipal Code declaring an emergency and establishing an immediate effective vote all by a three-fourth vote of the City Council.

Thank you for that.

And thank you for Mr. Johnson from Central Staff for joining us today.

I really appreciate you coming back after last committee meeting to talk about this very important topic, as noted from eyewitness testimony.

So over to you.

Good morning, Chair Kettle and members of the committee.

I am Tommaso Johnson from your council central staff.

I'm here to provide brief overview and comments on Council Bill 120806. This, as you mentioned, Chair, is emergency legislation effectuating policies that are substantively identical to Council Bill 120799, which was heard on June 12th.

25th 2024 At that meeting there was a presentation by the city attorney's office and Seattle Police Department on the details of this bill So I'll just provide a refresher, but happy to answer any more questions about the mechanics in depth this emergency legislation also includes a additional recitals on the topic, as well as the necessary findings to effectuate the emergency clause.

In primary part, this legislation would do two things.

One is create a new municipal traffic infraction in the amount of a $500 base fine assessed to the registered owner of a vehicle involved in illegal, unlawful racing.

And two, adopt into Seattle Municipal Code recent changes to the revised Code of Washington made by state legislation that was passed in 2023 with an effective date in January of this year, which provide an expanded definition of the crime of unlawful racing and classify it as a reckless driving gross misdemeanor.

A bit on RCW adoption.

The Seattle Police Department has the authority to enforce the laws of Washington State.

Adoption of the RCW into municipal code gives the Seattle City Attorney's Office the ability to prosecute those gross misdemeanors.

The first thing the bill would do in terms of creating the new municipal infraction, as I mentioned before, That's a base fine amount of $500.

Generally speaking, infractions that are codified in municipal code in particular indicate a base fine amount.

Additional fee amounts are added to that when the fine is assessed to an individual by the municipal court.

So there are statutorily required additional fees that are, some are in state law and some are in Seattle law.

So just to note on that, the actual fine amount paid by a person receiving the fine would be a little bit more than double the statutory fine amount, so $1,071 in the case of the $500 base fee.

The base fee, the one thing that makes it unique, the infraction for unlawful racing, is that it's assessed to the vehicle, registered owner of the vehicle.

That means that the police do not have to make a determination that the person receiving the fine is in fact the person driving the car.

It's designed to punish and disincentivize the use of vehicles and unlawful leasing through that manner.

It can be assessed post facto after the conduct has occurred using video evidence identifying the vehicle license plate and then a ticket is transmitted to the registered owner at that point.

Um, the other thing that the, um, unlawful racing, uh, infraction does is expands the definition, uh, add the new definition to Seattle Municipal Code of unlawful racing, which, um, primarily expands it in two ways.

One is it incorporates, uh, a definition of off-street facilities, which is traditionally means parking lots as well as, uh, prohibiting contact on streets.

And number two, it also expands the definition of unlawful racing beyond contests of speed, sort of straight line speed contests to include activities known as drifting or maneuverability in circles.

So many of the incidents of conduct that you saw on video and described by SPD during the legal takeover events that were described during last meeting.

As I said, this also incorporates changes that are similar.

Those changes relate to the reckless driving gross misdemeanor of unlawful racing but similarly expands that definition to cover off street facilities as well as conduct drifting and other conduct that is beyond straight line speed contests.

There are since it was the question was asked in public comment I will mention that there are vehicle impound and forfeiture provisions attached to the gross misdemeanor specifically Any vehicles used in unlawful racing Can be impounded generally when a person is arrested their vehicle can be impounded the special provision that attaches there relates to a when the vehicles can be released.

So vehicles used in unlawful racing have a 72-hour hold, effectively, on release.

Forfeiture is invoked if a variety of circumstances are met.

Generally speaking, the person has to be convicted of unlawful racing offense, and a finding needs to be made that that specific vehicle was the one used.

If a person, excuse me, The person also has to have previously had any vehicle impounded for illegal racing.

It doesn't have to be the exact same vehicle.

And the person has to have been previously charged with reckless driving, racing, or a similar crime under local ordinance.

So those are the circumstances in which a forfeiture can attach.

There are two amendments filed to this legislation.

The first amendment one would increase fines for vehicle participation in unlawful racing.

Once again, that's the infraction amount that attaches to the registered owner.

The legislation currently has a $500 base fine, as I mentioned.

This amendment would retain that $500 base fine for a first infraction and increase the fine to $800 for a second infraction and then $1,500 for third and subsequent infractions.

And once again, those are base amounts that would roughly double in terms of the actual amount paid at the court by the person being assessed that violation.

Amendment two would penalize attendees at unlawful race events.

So this amendment adds unlawful race attendance as a prohibited activity under municipal code punishable by a civil infraction.

Any person knowingly attending an unlawful race event with the intent to observe, support, or encourage the event may face a civil infraction-based fine of $100 if they fail to leave the event if instructed to do so by a peace officer.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

I have one question, but as tradition, I will go to my vice chair first, if he has any questions or comments.

No, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good to go for right now.

Go ahead.

I should make sure that I also have my electronic and make sure there's no hands up here.

Any questions or comments from this side of the dais?

Council Member Moore.

Yeah, sorry.

In looking at the second amendment, I did have a question about number 12A12050, number two, where it says actual or constructive knowledge that an unlawful race event is occurring.

Can you flesh that out a little bit?

Yeah, so I can speak to that a bit, and I'll allow, you know, if Council Member Sacco wants to speak to it as well.

He's welcome to.

So this language was based in large part on Kent City Code during the first hearing the city attorney's office specifically references section of Kent City Code that they view as a model for this kind of provision Though it wasn't included in the base legislation when it was transmitted.

That was there based on some feedback from them about an appropriate language to bring to bear for Seattle

Well, I mean, what does that mean, that you have actual or constructive knowledge and an unlawful race event is occurring?

How do you prove that?

I suppose we could ask the drafter.

Yeah, I mean, what I would say about that is, you know, my understanding is that that's legal terminology that requires not that someone...

not that SPD proved definitively what is in the mind of the person in terms of their knowledge that they're at a race event.

I understand constructive to generally speaking mean in this context the person should know based on the circumstances that there's an unlawful race event occurring.

That they're at?

I mean, I could be at my home and have knowledge that a race is occurring or going to occur How is it tied to being actually a spectator, I guess?

I think the next words in that sentence, being in attendance, So it's knowledge of being in attendance.

And then the third factor there, the intent to observe, support, or encourage the unlawful race event would tie to that as well.

I also say that factor four there speaks to specifically being in the area of an unlawful race event versus being in your home hearing noise or observing something out of a window, for example.

Okay, so you're at the event.

And you're trying to say, I had no idea that this was actually a race event.

And we can say, well, it's pretty obvious that it is.

So we're going to assume constructive knowledge that an unlawful race event is occurring.

Is that how that works?

I mean, I believe so, yes.

You know, I'll also say practically the way that this infraction would be implemented and effectuated would be on-the-ground ticketing.

Unlike the infraction for vehicle participation, which can be assessed using video footage of a license plate, this would require an SBD officer in this case to you know, observe someone and hand them a ticket there on site so that maybe obviates some of the concerns around someone sitting in their home being ticketed.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Vice Chair, anything further on that?

I mean, I don't know, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

And thank you, Council Member Moore.

Great questions.

I don't know if now would be the time, the appropriate time for me to speak about my own two amendments.

Or at some other point, I defer to you.

Well, we can do that at that point.

Sure.

And by the way, Clerk, I just wanted to note, too, that Council Member Hollingsworth is in attendance.

Councilmember Moore, the way our discussions about it, this is not a bystander just having to be walking by.

This is actual constructive knowledge of the event.

And to Mr. Johnson's point, A4 is key because if you're disobeying the instruction of a police officer to leave the area of this unlawful street racing, illegal street racing, as our public commenter noted, and which it is, that would be the trigger.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, thank you, Mr. Johnson.

I appreciate it very much, the background.

At this point, I would like to move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120806. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it is moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 120806. Are there any final comments?

Yes, Mr. Vice Chair, this is a chance.

Council Member Saka, would you like to move Amendment Number 1?

So moved.

It is moved and seconded to adopt Amendment Number 1. Council Member Saka is our sponsor.

You're recognized in order to address it and speak to it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So, colleagues, first off, I want to thank Chair Kettle and Councilmember Wu for co-sponsoring this legislation.

Also, thanks to the mayor and the city attorney's office for their hard work on the issues as well.

Yes, this is an emergency and calls for urgent action accordingly.

That's what the thrust of this bill does, and that's the thrust of my two amendments that are intended to strengthen this bill.

And I have been informed personally on numerous occasions by many residents and constituents who have continuously reported upon persistent, dangerous, and illegal racing, particularly in my district.

Well, it's all over the city in certain problem areas, but my district, primarily along Elk High and Harbor Avenue, there have been reported racing in other areas again throughout the city.

And in my district, that includes Highland Park.

As recent as the holiday weekend, it was reported that a loud motorcycle and car were racing at 4.30 in the morning along El Kai.

And so I'm personally aware that illegal racing occurs, again, in other areas beyond the public streets, and this bill addresses these areas, including parking lots.

A prime example is that the racing that was a persistent problem at West Seattle High School's parking lot a few years back and was only resolved when a gate was finally installed.

This law can help other areas beyond our public roads.

And colleagues, you may recall during our last committee meeting when we initially discussed this, I mentioned that I was going to speak with Kent Mayor Dana Ralph who my Second Amendment, we'll talk about momentarily, is substantially based off of a relevant Kent ordinance to address problem street racing.

And happy to report that Kent Mayor Dana Ralph is fully supporting the implementation of an incorporation of existing state law, which is another element of this bill, which we learned, and to make it that came into effect the first of this year.

And they had an incident in May. where five people were shot and also involved hundreds of people watching, spectators, carrying out dangerous donuts and drifting, sideshows, whatever they're calling it these days, drag racing in the Kent Valley.

And so my proposed amendment number one directly addresses the piece.

It stiffens the penalties.

It preserves the base penalty for the first offense, $500.

But now, second infraction, we want to make this meaningful as well.

So a second infraction would be assessed a penalty of $800.

And a third and subsequent violations would be assessed a penalty of $1,500.

Folks, we're here to take this seriously.

I...

I'm saddened personally to learn of the tragic murder of a 22-year-old a few weeks back in Alki and Harbor.

The facts are unclear, and Duwamish had.

The facts are unclear and evolving as to whether, you know, there was dangerous problem racing occurring in connection with that specific event.

But here's what we do know.

In that particular area...

where that man lost his life, tragically.

Problem, it is often a launch point for people to gather and rally and then go engage in dangerous racing along Elki and Harbor Avenue.

And it's often a post-race rally point for people to gather after they've already raced.

So we need to address this.

the problem racing that's plaguing our city.

We also need to make the penalties more meaningful.

And so colleagues, I ask for your support on both of my amendments, but right now we're talking about amendment number one.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Saka.

Any questions or comments from other members of the committee?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you very much for bringing this forward.

I recognize that this is an issue that requires a lot of attention and I do hear about it from a lot of constituents, not just in the places that you've indicated.

So my question is the escalation of the subsequent infractions or penalties.

Is that a graduated penalty increase that follows other crimes.

I'm just wondering, where did you get the numbers to go up to?

The amounts?

Yes.

The amounts themselves, I wanted to make them meaningful and intended to dissuade that kind of behavior.

The original proposed legislation, as you know, it just proposes one fine amount.

There are other provisions and other chapters of the code that call out a graduated, kind of escalating series of fines and penalties for subsequent offenses, and so High Level wanted to match that, and then the numbers themselves wanted to...

Again, make it meaningful.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Thank you, Vice Chair Saka.

On that point that you just raised, our office had been getting reflections from the community that $500 was not enough.

And we heard it.

TODAY AND PUBLIC COMMENT, THANK YOU AGAIN FOR PROVIDING YOUR TESTIMONY AND YOUR VIEWS, MS. MCLANE, ON THIS ISSUE OF ILLEGAL STREET RACING, BECAUSE IT SECONDS WHAT OUR OFFICE HAS BEEN HEARING AND SEEING AND BASICALLY, YOU KNOW, THE POINT THAT YOU'RE MAKING.

SO IT'S CLEAR THAT, YOU KNOW, A GRADUATED SERIES OF INFRACTIONS, FIRST, SECOND, AND THIRD, CANNOT JUST STAY AT $500.

SO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT.

AND THANK YOU ALSO FOR HIGHLIGHTING your discussions with the Kent Mayor because these discussions, this is the benefit of the Puget Sound Regional Council that both Vice Chair Saka and I participate on because we recently had our annual meeting at the Convention Center where we got to meet with a lot of elected officials throughout the region and have these kind of sidebar conversations on the issues that are plaguing us.

And so these meetings develop the relationships throughout the area, the region, and allows for to hear that this issue is not a city of Seattle problem.

This is a regional issue.

It's definitely a county issue because they will stage, these individuals will stage in one, like you're noting with Kent and Renton and other areas in South King County, will stage in one area and then move to the city, you know, up I-5 and then into the city.

And then, as you noted, the posts, you know, street racing go to another location in terms of a follow-up to that.

And, you know, one thing, too, not mentioned, Mr. Johnson, I'm not sure if this was mentioned, And but just to be clear, getting this into books to include the graduated infractions is important.

So the RCW on the state level can be prosecuted by the city attorney's office.

They can't press forward unless it's part of the Seattle Municipal Code.

And so this is a key factor.

And I think the state's done a fantastic job in terms of the various areas that Mr. Johnson's gone over.

And now we need to do our part in terms of bringing it into Seattle Municipal Code so that our city attorney can also take action on this very important problem that is not limited to street racing.

As noted by Vice Chair Saka, that this activity in this environment leads to other violence.

This is not unlike what we see in other parts of the city with other issues.

It starts at one level and then ramps up and oftentimes into violence and oftentimes into gun violence.

So thank you for proposing this amendment, Vice Chair Saka.

At this point, I will call for a roll of the adoption of Amendment 1. Clerk, can you do so please?

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Chair Kettle?

Aye.

There are five in favor and none opposed.

So Amendment 1 is adopted.

Okay.

Council Member, Vice Chair Saka, would you like to move Amendment Number 2?

So moved.

Do we have a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to adopt Amendment 2. Councilmember, Vice Chair, again, Sokka, Sponsor, you are recognized in order to address it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and colleagues.

I also ask for your support of my Amendment Number 2 here.

So Amendment Number 2 addresses spectators.

Many of these races are occurring because they're putting on a sideshow.

They're putting on a show for people.

And if you address an element of that, that's exactly what we're doing here with this amendment, is making it a civil infraction to be a spectator at one of these events.

And you're right, Chair Kettle, these are all regional issues.

They're not...

You know, these challenges here, we might have local Seattle-specific implementations, but they are principally regional challenges, and so we don't need to try and spin our wheels and solve these challenges in a silo or in a vacuum.

We need to look to best practices in other jurisdictions, including Kent.

And Kent has a street racing ordinance on the books that in part goes after spectators.

It's been on the books for at least 20 years, as I understand it.

And so it's modeled, my amendment number two is modeled substantially after the relevant Kent Ordinance, with one key exception.

The Kent Ordinance, colleagues, it criminalizes being a spectator at one of these problem racing events.

And what my amendment, that's an approach that might work well in Kent.

And what my amendment does is it makes it a civil infraction for attendees and spectators here in Seattle for racing events.

And so it's been on the books for so long.

In Kent, we borrowed relevant constructs and language from the relevant provisions of the Kent ordinance.

And again, because it's been on the books, you know, I think SOME OF THESE QUESTIONS, GREAT QUESTIONS THAT COUNCILMEMBER MOORE ASKED ABOUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

IT'S BEEN ON THE BOOKS A LONG TIME.

AND, YOU KNOW, I THINK IN ANY EVENT, IT'S WELL ESTABLISHED AT THIS POINT.

SO, AGAIN, WE'RE BORROWING RELEVANT CONSTRUCTS THERE.

AND THE KEY DIFFERENCE, KEY DELTA, WE'RE MAKING IT A CIVIL INFRACTION, WHICH I THINK IS THE BEST APPROACH IN SEATTLE.

And so again, it adds the civil infraction for problem racing attendees at unlawful race events.

And I strongly support this as a deterrent of attendees, which at times can number into hundreds, hundreds And beyond and certainly cannot be adequately managed by limited law enforcement personnel currently.

And these events, as you know, especially with spectators, can devolve into large out-of-control events with massive repercussions, including possible injuries or worse, deaths.

We've seen it.

And so first, the bill title adds civil infractions for attendees.

The next thing, my amendment number two adds an aspirational recital to expand civilian enforcement authority for non-criminal infractions such as illegal racing to city departments beyond SPD, which could provide additional deterrence and enforcement capability I also understand that such authority is a union collective bargaining issue at its heart, at its core, which is why I'm signaling the desire for the council that this issue be addressed going forward in that space.

Third, I'm adding a penalty for the civil infraction.

Because we make it a penalty to be a spectator, the penalty is $100, and in general, I believe We can't be afraid of taking risk and taking strong action to shut down this kind of problem behavior that we're seeing plague our city over and over again.

We can do better.

And in this case, the public safety of our constituents is of utmost concern.

I ask for your support on my amendment number two.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Saka.

Any questions from the dais?

Does the chair consider this a friendly amendment?

Yes.

Any other questions?

OK, VICE CHAIR, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

IT'S REALLY KEY TO HIGHLIGHT FIRST THE ACTUAL CONSTRUCTIVE KNOWLEDGE, THE IDEA THAT YOU'RE THERE AND YOU'RE PARTICIPATING IN SOMETHING THAT IS A PROBLEM FOR OUR COMMUNITY.

ALSO IT IS THE INTENT TO OBSERVE OR SUPPORT OR ENCOURAGE THE UNLAWFUL RACE EVENT.

SUPPORTING AND ENCOURAGING AN UNLAWFUL RACE EVENT.

That in itself contributes, again, to the problem of a permissive environment.

But the key thing here is, and I understand that there may be people who are passersby and the like, and that's one thing.

But I think this is addressed in terms of particularly numbers three and four, and particularly number four that says, failure to leave the area of an unlawful race event if instructed to do so by a peace officer.

This clearly shows that if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, you move along, you exit the area, as directed by the police officer in this case.

And that's pretty clear.

This is dealing with the issues that we've seen in news reports again and again and again, where individuals are encouraging and supporting this behavior.

And this goes to the underlying problem that plagues our city.

And this ripples into other areas, as you noted, in terms of follow-on violence because of, you know, whipped-up emotions and the like or feeling that they're bigger and stronger than they are.

You know, the bottom line is, you know, this is a situation, as I said in the opening remarks, that this is a clear and present danger to our community, whether it's pedestrian or traffic safety, mental health, the impacts on those that hear and see, like our witness today who made public comment just from her home in Lower Queen Anne.

HIGHLIGHTS THAT THIS IS NOT JUST WEST SEATTLE BUT ALL OVER SEATTLE.

AND THAT, YOU KNOW, THESE ISSUES ARE POLLUTING OUR ENVIRONMENT, THE NOISE ENVIRONMENT, NOISE POLLUTION THAT AGAIN GOES BACK TO THE MEDICAL CONDITIONS AND THE MENTAL HEALTH AND THE OVERALL QUALITY OF LIFE OF OUR NEIGHBORS.

SO WITH THAT, THANK YOU AGAIN, VICE CHAIR SACHA.

Will the clerk please call the roll on adoption of amendment number two?

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Moore?

Abstain.

Council President Nelson?

Abstain.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Chair Kettle?

Aye.

There are three in favor and two abstentions.

Thank you.

OK, AS WE MOVE TO CHAIR, I WANT TO JUST TAKE NOTE THAT I FULLY SUPPORT THE SPIRIT OF THIS AND I THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

IF WE'RE GOING TO ADDRESS THIS ISSUE, THEN WE HAVE TO ADDRESS THE FACT THAT THE AUDIENCE FOR IT THAT WHENEVER WE ATTACK A PROBLEM, WE DON'T JUST WE HAVE TO LOOK AT THE SUPPLY AND THE DEMAND OF ANY ISSUE WHEN WE'RE TALKING ABOUT MAKING SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN IN IN A in various types of crimes.

So my abstention was only because I am just now...

I'm bringing myself up to speed.

I was gone last week, and I just needed to check a couple procedural things.

It is not a reflection of...

of the fact that I think that attacking this issue from all angles, including the demand side, which is the spectators is very important.

So Council Member Saka, thank you very much.

And I just wanted to explain my abstention.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Council President.

Any other comments on the bill as amended?

Okay, thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll on passage of Council Bill 120806 as amended.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Oh, sorry.

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Chair Kettle?

Aye.

There are five in favor and none opposed.

Okay, the motion carries.

The committee recommendation that council pass Council Bill 1201 will be sent to the city council on the 16th of July.

Thank you, Assistant Clerk, for that.

All right, thank you very much, Mr. Johnson, for jumping in and supporting and backing up the city attorney and the police department on this very important topic.

Thank you.

All right, we will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Accountability Partners Mid-Year Report.

Thank you.

I'd like to welcome Executive Director of the Community Police Commission, Kylie Ellis, also Deputy Director Glenn, Deputy Inspector General Scott to the table.

And we'll also have Director Betz join in too.

Thank you very much.

Again, it's really important to have these opportunities to support our accountability partners and give a forum a chance to voice your observations in terms of what is happening in terms of the accountability space and how we can build on it and move forward.

So again, thank you very much.

And thank you for all three joining together.

I think it makes a statement.

WHEN ALL THREE OF OUR ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNERS ARE TOGETHER IN ONE SPACE AT ONE TIME TO DO SO.

SO OVER TO YOU.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH AGAIN FOR JOINING US.

THANK YOU SO MUCH.

THANK YOU, CHAIR KETO AND VICE CHAIR SACA.

Madam President and the committee members for having us here today.

It is a treat when we can sit in the same space with our accountability partners as we work very closely together and we're proud to walk alongside them.

So I'm going to give an overview of the work that we've done so far this year for the Office of the Inspector General for Public Safety, and then I'm going to pass it over to OPA and then the CPC.

I believe SPD may join us at the table at some point because we like to have them here in partnership.

and to answer any questions you have about our cross-collaborations.

All right, so I'm going to start this presentation and give a quick outline.

I know that we only have about 45 minutes for this, and I have borrowed a few minutes from OPA and CPC without them knowing.

They'll be fine with it, just to get through all the work that we have on our plate.

All right.

So I'm gonna go over OIG's audits and review for the year, investigations, our policy projects, our standards and compliance unit, as well as communications and community engagement efforts that we're beginning this year.

For audits and reviews, we're going to complete, expected to complete four audits this year.

So our audit of SBD paid COVID leave was issued in April and took a look back at how SBD administered paid leave for COVID.

It found that controls and the approval of leave monitoring of symptoms and payroll processes were really good given the circumstances of 2020 and 2021. It did find that SPD was an outlier in the city for providing employees with an additional paid benefit and that that process didn't go through labor negotiations.

That audit was issued in April 2024. The next audit that we're working on is the follow-up audit of chief of police discipline determinations.

This is a limited scope review to update our 2021 audit describing the body of disciplinary determinations, and in particular, how they compare the recommended ranges of discipline.

We're gonna issue that audit at the end of Q3, hopefully, or maybe at the beginning of Q4.

The next audit is extended leave prior to retirement.

And this is an audit to find out what the financial and operational impacts are within the department when an officer does not retire until they used all of their sick leave, as opposed to cashing it out at the city standard of 25%.

And that's expected to be issued at the end of the year.

The last audit for this year is an examination of an audit of vehicular pursuits.

This we're gathering data to describe the outcome of all pursuits in the recent years.

And once that work is done, we explain what could be improved or where SPD is doing well in mitigating that risk.

And that's also slated to be complete at the end of the year.

All right.

Next, we have surveillance.

OIG Audits Unit also completes annual surveillance usage reviews.

There was a landscape analysis that we completed, which followed a question from Council President Nelson earlier in the year.

She asked, how does our surveillance requirements compare to the rest of the country?

we found several large cities have comparable surveillance ordinance, but ours is an outlier in a few areas.

The scope of what is considered a surveillance technology is one of those areas, and we have a robust and independent post-use review.

We're currently working on six surveillance technologies and we're trying a two-tiered risk approach to manage the workload.

When we were here last, we talked about our surveillance reviews and the workload and having 16 surveillance technologies to review in a certain order, and it is a large body of work for our office.

We're also monitoring the potential acquisition and implementation of this year's new surveillance technologies, which are closed-circuit television, real-time crime center, and automated license plate reader expansion.

The mayor's office has asked us to take a deeper dive into the effectiveness of the two-year pilot program.

So we're expecting to be working with an external consultant this year, and have an evaluation completed at the end of the year.

And just to brag a little bit, we received a Knight Award.

It's an exemplary award for our 2023 audit of youth access to legal counsel.

We received that, I believe in March.

And then we also presented at the ALGA conference on best practices and lessons learned for using body-borne video as audit evidence.

So I'm Dan Pitts, our audit supervisor is very busy and his team is doing a lot of good work.

Next up, we have investigations.

So these numbers capture the total numbers received and reviewed by OIG staff and OIG report on concurrent statistics in our mid-year report.

So we're not going to get into it too much because OPA is right next to us and they're going to give you some of these details.

But for contact logs, we have reviewed 41 since July 1st.

First, for bias reviews, 55, supervisory actions, 98, mediation, one, and rapid adjudication, one.

And I would like to just go over what these are really quickly.

So contact logs are cases that are not appropriate for further investigation.

For example, this could be due to issues with jurisdiction, a lack of information to follow up on, a general complaint, The complaint being implausible as shown by available evidence are issues that aren't SPD policy violations.

Supervisory actions are cases that involve minor violations or performance issues that are best addressed by an employee supervisor through training or coaching.

In these cases, OPA sends a memo requiring the employee supervisor to take specific follow-up action before returning the case to OPA to review.

Mediation is a voluntary alternative dispute resolution process for SPD employees and community members to discuss a conflict with the guidance of a neutral third party mediator.

And both parties must agree for the mediation to actually go forward.

Rapid adjudication is a case where the SPD employee must acknowledge their conduct and that their conduct was inconsistent with SPD policy and accept a predetermined discipline instead of an investigation.

All right, for our investigations review, OIG issued 140 certifications on 135 cases this year so far in 2024. 94% of the certifications issued were full certifications and nine were partial certifications.

And I just want to make sure that you all understand we review OPA investigations and certify them for timeliness, thoroughness, and objectivity.

So when you see the crossover of 140 certifications on 135 cases, it's because sometimes there are multiple counts in them.

And so for the certifications, I think maybe...

Director Betz may have this information, but no, I have it.

One case was not thorough, and eight cases were not timely in terms of those nine partial certifications that you see up there, so not meeting the three thresholds.

All right, so for policy, we are doing a study of sworn and civilian staffing for OPA, and our ordinance requires us to assess OPA's mix of sworn and civilian investigators.

In conducting this year's review, we found two key factors that are limiting our assessment.

One is a limited sample size, and the other is that sworn investigators conduct more complex investigations than civilians.

And so those factors in terms of how we're going to move forward with our assessment.

I know that the contract did allow for two more civilian investigators, the spa contract, so we're going to assess it further as we go forward.

Okay, the next is claims and lawsuits against SPD.

We are required by ordinance to review this, and we'll be publishing the findings in Q3 at the end of Q3.

We do an analysis of complaint types, resolutions, and payments paid by the city.

And then we also look at evaluation of OPA findings of civilian complaints related to lawsuits settled by the city.

All right, our next area that policy is reviewing is mutual aid.

And this is a review of emerging and standard practices, SPD obligations and current agreements.

Our findings are that SPD has requested mutual aid 31 times between 2014 and 2023. And local agencies has requested aid from SPD 24 times.

We also found that there's records gaps and some of our recommendations are improved documentation and records management and updating the mutual aid agreements themselves.

This includes the interlocal agreement and notice of consent, including terms related to the requesting and providing aid and determining incident command and reporting requirements to be made in those updated agreements.

And then we're also doing emerging and standard practices research.

We continually review emerging best practices in various areas.

And this year we've been looking at various aspects of crowd management, police interactions with non-conforming persons and vehicle pursuits and tactics.

And so our policy unit under Alyssa Perez Morrison has a lot of good work going and we're grateful for the team.

For standards and compliance, this is our newest unit.

This is our in-house monitoring unit that came aboard on July of last year.

So this is our first year.

And they just completed in February, the use of force assessment, which was their first assessment.

and they developed qualitative and quantitative methods to assess SPD's use of force from 2021 to 2023 and provide ongoing feedback to SPD's force review unit and formal periodic reviews and real-time feedback in the area of crisis response in the SPD use of force assessment as well.

The next ASSESSMENT FOR THAT UNIT IS THE CRISIS ASSESSMENT.

THIS IS AN EVALUATION OF SBD'S RESPONSE TO INDIVIDUALS IN CRISIS.

WE'RE GOING TO PROVIDE AN UPDATE SINCE THE FEDERAL MONITOR'S LAST ASSESSMENT AND THIS CRISIS ASSESSMENT IS GOING TO INCLUDE A QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF SBD CRISIS RESPONSE FOR 2021 THROUGH 2023 AS WELL AS A QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF SBD CRISIS RESPONSE BY REVIEWING body-worn video and chain of command review from 2023. We've also been out to evaluate crisis trainings provided to SPD officers.

So we did go to the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission's 40-hour training and did a comprehensive assessment using a methodology and assessment tool for best learning principles, and various components and have recommendations as to that.

And then what are the gaps that SPD uses to fill out what is not given at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission?

So we'll be attending SPD's trainings on crisis as well this fall and summer.

And then we do ongoing assessments.

So supervision and bias-free policing is kind of baked into the assessments that we do because they're a component of those areas, including use of force in crisis.

All right, so our last area is communications and community engagement.

We hired a communications and community engagement specialist in March, and he is amazing.

We're creating a comprehensive document detailing our communications and community engagement strategy through 2027. and we'll publish that at the end of Q3.

We have a new social media strategy, and we are using content and gathering insights from the community to engage across social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

And we're also starting a podcast.

We are excited, and we may ask some of you to be in the podcast, so please say yes when Project reaches out to you.

So we're excited about that as well.

And we have...

I'm not sure if you're all aware, but we get a lot of inquiries from the public.

We have OIG info at OIG email, and so far we've gotten 429 since July 1st emails.

We've gotten 49 phone calls and three letters.

The themes of the contacts are everybody is attempting to contact different federal OIG entities, or they want to report a crime, are complaints about OPA cases.

So we also are monitoring for trends and that will probably be in our next annual report.

In addition, we are happy to be engaging with the Community Police Commission by sitting on their committees, the Behavioral Health Committee, Police Practices Committee, and any ad hoc committees that they have.

And we've also been working across the community and we'll be sitting with the Urban League, um, tabling an event this summer and getting out in community in various ways.

So that's us.

Um, and, oh yeah, I think we're, oh, there's me.

Um, it's a good selfie.

All right.

So that's, um, where we are and thank you for your time and listening to OIG.

Thank you very much.

And I think we'll go with questions as a presentation is completed, just so then we don't get too far beyond the original presentation.

So as custom, I will go to my vice chair, but I think I'm going to volunteer him as the first participant in your podcast, at least from today.

Okay.

I feel like he's going to say yes.

Mr. Chair, you've been great at volunteering me for a lot of things without my consent in the past few days.

But, yeah, I wouldn't mind.

After you participate first.

Okay, I would be more than happy to participate in the podcast.

But, Vice Chair, any questions or comments?

No, Mr. Chair.

No, I just want to thank you all at OIG for the hard work you all do every day in collaboration and partnership with the accountability partners represented at this table.

Really important work and honored to support and uplift in any way I can.

I will say, as a friendly aside, your comment about, you know, leveraging some of that time from others, like, I saw some faces, and not all were equally impressed, I'll say.

Looking at you, Director.

It was a friendly amendment.

All good.

Thank you.

Okay, Council President Nelson.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for this presentation.

I wanted to follow up on your mention of my previous question about surveillance technology auditing.

Yes.

So that used to fall under my purview in the first years I was in office.

And so I know that the annual, per the ordinance, the annual review is very difficult to do with the backlog of technologies that we have and that you're actively monitoring right now.

Here's my question.

You have enlisted the help of the city auditor, I think, to devise a better system for scheduling the ongoing audits.

And so I'm just wondering how that's going.

Sure.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you very much.

So yes, our audit team, as well as the city auditors, have developed a risk assessment tool to better manage the review and resources.

I think it's still new, so we can check back with you to see how it's going later this fall and if that's okay.

Sure.

If you need any help or if there are any steps that council needs to take to systematize that, and if it's working better, let us know.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Council Member, by the way, I should have noted that Council Member Rivera joined us as just started, and so I wanted to recognize her presence.

And as noted, all our colleagues, not just on the committee, but fully on the council, are welcomed at all times to join any committee meeting.

So thank you and welcome.

And over to you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for always inviting me to come, even though I don't sit on this committee, and for really allowing me the opportunity to ask questions.

And I pop into committees that I don't sit on from time to time because I really appreciate the ability to ask questions that I would not be able to ask if I don't attend the committee.

That's why I do that.

And so toward that, on the ongoing assessments slide under supervision.

Yes.

Can you and I apologize, colleagues, if you all know about this, but I do not.

It says in each of the assessments completed by the standards and compliance team, OIG will review aspects of supervision.

Can you talk a little bit about what aspects of supervision means?

Yeah, so in each of the assessments, we go with, you know, how are reports given up to chain of command, how are issues, you know, addressed and coming back down so that the areas that we're assessing are improved, so use of force.

How does supervision play into that?

Supervision of officers, for example.

Are they leading by example?

Are they sending to OPA?

All those things.

And then same with in bias-free policing.

So those areas are baked into all the assessments because supervision plays a role in the outcome of officers and policing, as well as bias-free policing.

Does that make sense?

So the aspects are based on what the situation that you're reviewing is and how supervision, what role it played.

Is that right?

Okay, great.

Thank you.

And the same, you were, I think you answered my second question was going to be under bias-free policing, where it says all areas of OIG assessments include a bias component where possible and appropriate.

And I just wanted a little more information about where possible, but it sounds like it's it's related to the thing that you were reviewing and whether there was a correlation.

Correct.

Thank you so much for letting me.

Some of these were standalone.

Biosphere policing were standalone reports, but now we're baking them into our assessments, all of the assessments.

Perfect.

Really great to hear, and thank you.

Yes.

Thank you for the question.

Okay.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

There's a lot in this presentation, so I'm obviously not going to have time to get through it all, but thank you for putting it out there for consideration.

So the first thing that I wanted to start with was the OPA-sworn civilian staffing study, and I know that this has been an issue about...

trying to get more civilians, sort of to civilianize OPA investigations, and I'm wondering if this study is going to be looking at how well that is going, where it has occurred, and whether it would be making recommendations about whether that process should continue, and what sort of category of cases, whether OPA should be all civilian.

Yes, those are different components within including the categories of cases that civilians can review versus sworn.

So those are aspects of the report that we will be addressing.

And I will be sure to look back at this recording to make sure that we cover it.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

And when are you anticipating having this study completed?

I am not sure, but I can get back to you on the exact date.

Okay, thank you.

The next slide is claims and lawsuits.

We do seem to have a lot of lawsuits.

We do seem to pay out quite a lot of money in lawsuits.

Just sort of wondering, When you say you're reviewing the litigation process and budget composition of expenditures, what does that look like?

And then also internal complaints.

One of the things we're hearing now is that OPA process is sort of being weaponized, and we're trying to figure out how to stop that from happening.

Is that something that's going to be addressed in...

I'm not sure about the latter, but we are looking at the types of cases and the amounts paid out per year.

So personal injury, fleet, tow, as well as civilian complaints.

So I will also make sure to use this recording to look at that.

And then I can also give you an answer specifically later if that's okay.

I do have the draft report, but I didn't write it, so I don't want to deep dive it and give the wrong information because my policy director will kill me.

Okay.

I understand that.

I think any sort of recommendations that you can make for how we can do a better job so we're not looking at so much litigation.

And I think the move to mediation is a great step in that direction.

But other ways that we can limit our liability would be very helpful.

And then lastly, I'm curious about the mutual aid.

So we've just started the care team, and that started after this, but are you going to be looking at the interaction between SPD and the care team as a mutual aid relationship?

I don't believe so at this time, but that's something we could explore and come back to you on.

Okay, that would be for the next piece, that would be incredibly helpful to look at that relationship.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Glenn.

I DON'T BELIEVE WE HAVE ANY MORE QUESTIONS.

I JUST WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT A FEW THINGS.

OBVIOUSLY, THE OIG HAS A ROLE HERE RELATED TO THE FEDERAL MONITOR AS WE'RE TRYING TO PUSH BEYOND THE CONSENT DECREE.

AND SO THE OIG HAS A SPECIAL ROLE IN THAT SENSE IN TERMS OF THE DUTIES OF THE FEDERAL MONITOR.

AND SO I APPRECIATE THE BRIEFING AND HITTING THE DIFFERENT TOPICS.

Before I go any further, by the way, I wouldn't ask my Vice Chair to do anything that I too would do myself.

A and B, I did mention this back in the spring, congratulations on the Knight Award, but I want to take the opportunity to say so again, congratulations to you, to Inspector General Judge and the whole team for the award.

Well deserved and congratulations.

Thank you.

Back to federal monitor, consent decree, and so forth.

A big issue for me of interest, and I should also note that our SBDCOO, Brian, Mr. Maxey, has joined us at the table as well.

I highlight that for members on the dais who didn't notice that he joined just after the briefing began, is the crowd management point.

You know, that's going to be a key piece in terms of moving forward and beyond the consent decree.

So looking for anything further on that and, you know, working together with the other partners and SPD in terms of how best to move forward to really kind of close out that chapter so we can, you know, AGAIN, MOVE FORWARD FROM THE CONSENT DECREE.

AND AS YOU NOTED IN YOUR SECOND BULLET, WE DO HAVE SOME IMPORTANT TIMELINE POINTS, AND THE WORLD CUP IS GOING TO BE KEY.

AND AS SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN TO WORLD CUPS IN OTHER COUNTRIES, YOU KNOW, WE WANT TO BE SURE THAT WE'RE SET ACROSS ALL TYPES OF CROWD MANAGEMENT AND ENSURE THAT WE'RE IN A GOOD PLACE.

AND THIS IS WHERE THE ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNERS COME IN TO BE IMPORTANT TO WORKING WITH SPD TO ENSURE THAT WE GOT THE RIGHT APPROACH MOVING FORWARD.

So thank you for that.

I'm also interested, it comes up twice here, the vehicular pursuits and vehicle tactics.

That's another important thing for a couple reasons.

One, we talked about safety on our streets.

We need to have that.

But it's also an important piece because we're developing a list to engage Olympia on.

and this is an area that we need to do so for vehicle pursuits in and of itself, but also we've mentioned high-speed vehicle operations, and a key observation of mine is that we need better training opportunities for our officers, and that's something that we need to engage Olympia on as well because I'm sure we're not the only jurisdiction with that challenge, and I think with a shared...

approach and a shared ability to have a training facility, we can, you know, further.

So we avoid some of the challenges and some of the tragedies that we've had in a not too distant past.

And of course, the last thing I want to highlight before moving on because we do have time, you know, time is the surveillance technology pieces.

As you know, we passed the automatic license plate reader.

We do have a, you know, a couple more coming up.

I CAN'T REMEMBER NOW THE SLIDE, BUT TWO OF THE THREE WE'RE LOOKING TO MOVE FORWARD ON.

SO ANYTHING ON THAT AREA OF COVERAGE IS REALLY IMPORTANT, AT LEAST IN MY ROLE AS CHAIR OF THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE.

SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

WE WILL NOW, I GUESS, MOVE ON TO THE NEXT TEAM.

SO WE'LL ADJUST THE BRIEFING.

ALL RIGHT.

GOOD MORNING, PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE.

COUNCIL MEMBER RIVERA.

Welcome.

My name is Gino Betts.

I am the director of the Office of Police Accountability.

I'm joined by my deputy director, Bonnie Glenn, who will present on the Office of Police Accountability's mid-year report, accomplishments that we have achieved so far this year, and she will also forecast some of our upcoming projects.

So without further ado, I will turn it over to Bonnie Glenn.

Thank you, Ms. Glenn, and again, welcome.

Excellent.

Look forward to hearing from you.

All right.

First of all, my name is Bonnie Glenn, and I am the Deputy Director of OPA and the Chair of Public Safety Committee, Council Member Kettle, as well as the Vice Chair, Council member Osaka and also the chair of the council council member Nelson and the entire public safety committee It is my honor to be here today with all of you to present not only to yourselves But also as we stated earlier with all of our other accountability partners and also Seattle Police Department present as well It's an opportunity to share information about kind of our mid-year report but also to answer questions that you might have as we go throughout the year and next steps and So with that, I'm going to go ahead and begin our presentation.

First, our overview.

I'm going to start with just an introduction and overview, kind of the process, and then OPA's projects mid-year, and then OPA's projects upcoming.

And then also, we have some mid-year data for you to go over, and then, of course, to answer any questions.

Just so it's clear to everyone what our mission is, obviously we do investigations, but it's a good reminder of what we do and also in our mission things that we can do.

Sometimes people are surprised when we do community outreach and things of that nature, but it's so critical to have public trust so people know that they can make a complaint, to understand our processes.

So the mission is to ensure SPD's employees' actions comply with law and policy by conducting thorough, objective, and timely investigations, recommending improvements to policies and trainings, and engaging in collaborative initiatives that promote systemic advancement.

So that requires a lot of working together across systems, it requires outreach, it requires listening, all of those things.

Also, our vision is a reminder to safeguard a culture of accountability within the Seattle Police Department, and also our values of independent, transparent, and collaborative, and innovative.

We're charged with that, and I'm happy to say that we strive every day and to lean into actually fulfilling the mission, vision, and values at OPA.

Our role is to process police misconduct complaints.

And most people, when you talk to the public, they think it's just sworn officers.

But I think all of you know is that it's the entire police department.

So it's over 1,100 people or more plus with regards to sworn as well as also police.

civilian employees.

Also to enhance police accountability culture, right?

And working across systems and listening and sharing that information.

You're gonna hear about some of our projects where we're reaching out to people in order in the community.

to get their input and so forth in order to help bring that voice and also hopefully engage trust across systems with our community.

Also, a community awareness.

Of course, that's things such as awareness, awareness how to make a complaint.

In fact, even when we present community, we've also presented at places like the Department of Neighborhoods, even our own departments.

Do you know how to make a complaint?

Do you know who we are?

How would you do that?

What are things that you think might make the system better?

It's nice to be able to, when we talk of community, not only our city of Seattle, but our community at large and others.

For our structure, I think most know that we're an independent structure in the sense that we're independent physically and operationally from SPD.

One of the advantages of being with regards administratively within SPD is that we're able to get documentation in order for our investigations in real time, those type of things, body worn video, we don't have to subpoena for that type of information from our process.

We are a hybrid structure, hybrid meaning that we both have law enforcement officers sworn officers that are sergeants, along with our civilian.

We are a civilian-led office with our director, Director Betz, myself.

We have our general counsel, Nelson Lease, and then also we have assistant directors who help with our assistant directors of operations, assistant director for investigations.

In addition to that, our civilian investigator supervisors that oversee our sworn officers.

As total, we are staffed for 31 members, but we currently have 30 people who are working with us now.

At full staff, that would make 22 civilians, employees, and nine sworn officers.

As for investigators, we have nine sworn officers and we have two civilian investigators.

And so as far as our office, we actually have a picture.

It's one of our pictures of our staff.

I'll just hover over it a little bit.

And that's our sworn in ourselves.

And then also we have Gino and some of his training that he does out.

We did just release our 2023 annual report.

We encourage you to look at that.

There's a lot of good information in that over the years.

Although we're giving a mid-year report, as you know, our data is going to be from January 2024 to May 30th because there's a lag time for some of the data.

So you're really getting a good snapshot at 2023. And I think probably by the next month, I think we'll have all the other pieces for the July data.

So just so you're aware of that.

But some of the highlights of our annual report is the Office of Inspector General fully certified 92% of OPA's investigations as thorough, timely, and objective.

OIG concurred with 96.5% of OPA's complaint classifications.

And SPD fully or partially implemented over 60% of OPA's management action recommendation, also known as MARS.

And so these are some of the things, as you look through the annual report, it does break down information, whether it's our alternatives to dispute, alternative resolutions such as mediation, rapid adjudication, things of that nature.

You can look in the annual report as well.

Next, we did have, we wanted to share, we had a youth art contest.

So as for our annual report, drum roll, we had a contest for youth throughout the city to participate, to ask the question of what does meaningful police oversight look like?

That's all that we said and what that would be.

And so with that said, to the left, we had our winner, came out and we went out to her middle school and presented to her.

We actually framed her artwork and she was able to get a tablet with her family.

You can see the picture down below.

We went out to the school, Director Betts and us.

And you can see, they talked about for her and in sharing it with her entire class in school was dignity, equality, and kindness.

It talks about, you can see there's a badge there if you look closer.

It's a junior badge to help to a young person.

So it turned out really nice.

It's being innovative and out in the community.

It actually shared even more about what we're doing in the community.

and engaging with our young people too, what does that look like?

So we're really proud of that.

So again, just so you know, the contest, of course, on the slide, we had that throughout March of 2024, and it was for youth ages 18 and under.

And as such, a 13-year-old, she was 13-year-old, and she was from the Seattle Public School, so.

And to our surprise, her father, he's pictured below, is an SPD officer.

Right.

That worked out pretty cool.

Yeah, we walked in and we shook hands.

And actually, Gino recognized him.

I hadn't.

I've seen him in the community plenty of times.

So it was like, wow.

So that was really a nice surprise.

And you can see the full report and click down here as well.

So that was nice.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was OPA's projects continued.

Some of the things that we have done, and Director Betz has gone out to the precincts.

He's gone out to all the precincts visits, and one of the things that he has done in doing so, he's been able to be there to answer questions any of the officers.

So he's there to answer questions.

He's there to see if there's any questions about any of cases per se and about how our process works.

You know, there's a lot of things that we do and how cases are processed.

And I think it's value added not only to make connections, to be there if there's any questions.

So there's a name attached to the face with that.

Anything else you wanted to add to that if you wanted to?

Okay, we're very happy about that.

The other thing is SPD training.

We did have our staff, we had our civilian investigator supervisor, as well as we had our assistant director go out to Mark 95 and do training for SPD officers.

And it was about background and kind of what we do.

and to answer any questions, but it was like, this is what OPE is, here are some of the things that we do.

These are some of the things that in making decisions, this works, et cetera.

When you process cases, what's the timing of things?

Obviously 180 days is the time period, generally from the time that we receive a case And of course there's other things that could, you know, toll our cases and so forth.

Like example, if there's a criminal allegation or some other things, but generally we have 180 days from the time of complaint.

Also, I wanted to talk a little bit about our mediation program.

We're excited about that and we're trying to grow that.

And it was nice, I was gonna have a shout out to council member Moore.

We recently had a conversation about that.

You know, mediation can be very helpful, especially in a lot of cases, especially with this type of work.

We really do believe that.

In order for there to be a mediation, it has to be agreement by both parties.

So both parties have to agree, the complainant and then the other party as well, the officer.

It has to be a minor incident.

It can't be something, a serious incident, but as a minor incident.

It's amazing how when people can sit next to each other, we do have trained mediators.

Sometimes we use King County Mediation and so forth.

So they're trained mediators who participate.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention our senior complaint, our community engagement specialist, Geneva Taylor, who actually runs that program and just does a wonderful thing.

So we're trying to grow that.

And we've been successful and we're hoping to grow it even more.

So we don't have large numbers, but part of that is we planned, and that'll be, I'll talk a little bit more, but to create a video about that.

And some of the people in the video have actually gone through the process to encourage it.

So they actually liked the outcome and they enjoyed having the opportunity to express how they felt about something.

And then you got the officer's perspective on the side, what they were thinking at that time.

And so, again, this is why I acted this way.

This is why I did what I did this way.

This is how I was feeling as a community member.

I didn't feel heard.

I didn't know what you meant.

I thought when you looked this way, you know, so forth, well, that's not what I was thinking.

I was here, I was working on the incident trying to do that, and no way did I mean to do that.

So some of those things actually can be successful.

If for some reason it does not, it will go to investigation if it does not work.

but it is something I think for a lot of people, it really can be satisfactory to have that moment to talk and actually for both parties if people choose to use it.

Next, the complaint and impact statement.

I know you've probably heard about that before.

I know some people have presented on that, but we're getting closer to launching that pilot project.

And that was an idea of the Office of Inspector General that, and so I wanna give them credit to do that.

And then picking up the gauntlet, Director Betz actually charged us with putting that program together and what that would look like.

So we have put it together and it's similar to a victim impact statement that if you were in a criminal court, That's what it's called, right?

And so in that case, it's the judge, right?

You would go either how that would work in court, as I'm a former prosecutor and former judge, if you didn't know that as well, but when I was a prosecutor, you would have victims who would either choose to come forward or they would just want their statement, right?

So in this case, in the complaint impact statement, once we came up with a process and then shared what that would look like with our partnership triad, and also SPD, one of the things was we wanted to make sure that we invited as part of this, and that was Director Beck's idea was to bring in the Community Police Commission to be part of this and to work with the complainants.

And so for them to write a statement uh one of the things we're working on now um is we're certainly we have legal looking at it for the final pieces and also um we also have uh you know labor and so forth just making sure looking at all of those things um one of the things we're also doing now is putting together a protocol the protocol i think will be very helpful because i think One of the things for making sure in interacting with complainants, it's very important to make sure the questions, you know, are not leading in any nature, making sure that they're writing the statement, making sure that, again, it's their words and how they're feeling and so forth.

This is a pilot project, and...

As it is at this point, it would only be a written statement, and that written statement could be seen and reviewed by, like at a Loudermill hearing or something of that nature, by the chief of police.

And so where we're at with it now, we're just waiting for the last pieces of that, legal and labor, and also just making sure we have that preamble and answer any questions that we might have.

on that.

Next, external resource guide.

We finished and also our complaint navigator.

One of the things we're very proud about is our complaint navigator in that we have somebody who originally followed up right after something was actually filed and then we did it at closing.

Like when we closed the case and listening to the community and listening to people, we've expanded their role.

So at 60 and 90 days, they will actually follow up with them.

And that actually has helped out quite a bit.

I think so people don't feel like it's, you know, what happened to it's in the abyss, right?

And so we're very happy with that.

Also, our external resource guide that came about from, again, listening from people that Where would I go if I need a protection order?

Where would I go if I need help here and there?

And so we created an external resource guide to help with that.

Also, we had a complaint feedback survey and a community engagement survey in 2024. talking about the Community Engagement Survey.

In 2023, we partnered with a local research firm, EMC Research, to explore the community awareness of and opinions about Seattle Police Accountability System, particularly with OPA.

And just recently in June of 2024, we finalized and published this report, so we're very proud of it.

But the survey, just some brief highlights, 98% of respondents believe the police accountability is essential in Seattle, with 93% considering it very important.

96% of respondents across all demographics said it's important for Seattle to have a police department that holds officers accountable.

67% of respondents had heard of OPA before their surveys.

So it's one of those things, again, the more that we reach out, the more things that we can learn, and they know that we're listening, and also we hope to continue this in the future.

Also, our community engagement, we're very proud of that.

We've been very, very busy.

The Office of Police Accountability has been presenting, attending, and tabling at 69 separate events.

That was just in 2023. And also we've been in 2024 still on the pace with a lot of those events.

Primarily where we're going is aimed at increasing awareness about Seattle's police accountability systems within marginalized communities.

And OPA has doubled its community outreach efforts since 2022. Some of the ones I wanna point out, this is one is close to my heart.

It's the 33rd Annual Judge Charles V. Johnson Youth and Law Forum for over 30 plus years that's been going.

Personally, I've been part of that over those years.

But part of it is bringing people together across systems, which are police accountability, partners, judges, prosecutors, the community.

And just to give you an idea what some of that does there, I was able to moderate a panel the year before last, and it was the chief of police of Redmond and Bellevue.

And the conversation was, can you be black and blue?

How do you do that?

How do you balance that within the community?

We also dealt with issues with young people for them to provide questions.

Some of the questions were, as an example, and some of them, you know, young people are so bright in how they feel about things, but they were being real.

At another Youth In Law Forum, they talked about, you know, officers, you come into our community.

Sometimes you need help and tips with regards to a case.

However, when you come in, once you get the information, we don't see you again, and we become snitches in our community.

How can you help us with that?

How can we work together?

So those are the kind of dialogues that can happen in some of these community meetings to help create that connectedness between communities and hear from each other and be real to do that.

Very powerful work.

The Urban League, as you can see, and some others.

Obviously, Asian Pacific Islands and another one.

So we've had some really great programming that we've gone to.

Next, the resource guide, I talked about it, not to take too much time, because I know that we're limited.

But here you can see here's a sample of what it is.

But again, it's posted to our website.

And so for crisis support, crime reporting, customer service, domestic violence assistance programs, damage claim filing, legal related matters, other services, Seattle Accountability Partners and public records requests.

Again, these are things, again, to help with our community members and people who come in contact with us.

upcoming projects.

You know, this one, the frontline investigations, there's been ongoing discussions.

I know Director Betz and obviously Lisa Judge, as well as Brian Maxey and others have been talking about this quite a bit.

We help provide information and share that with our director.

But frontline investigations is such a critical piece where for minor offenses that there are some things that could be going back to the police department for some of the smaller offenses and what that looks like.

And so there's ongoing discussions about that with numbers of cases that we as OPA with an office of 31, right?

there are some that could empower officers, you know, supervisors and officers from frontline investigation matters, and also with regards to, you know, going that next step, you know, and then talking about that, you know, and so that's still going on and very important work.

Also, we're very proud about our OP manual update.

That'll be coming out by, actually it gets filed the beginning of 2025, but by the end of the year, that will be done, our OPA manual.

Nelson Lease and a number of people, but I wanna give him credit for that, for really pushing for the update of the manual and reaching out to many people, including obviously police, SPOG, you name it, all the different unions, et cetera, and other people for any updates to that.

Case closeout meetings, that's something that actually Director Betz had talked about and it hasn't started yet, but we put the framework together.

That's for a time for a sustained case that we, Director Betz or his designee or myself would sit down with somebody if they had a question about their particular case and why we came to the decision we did.

And so to meet with that person.

And so anyway, that's something that's in the work as a pilot.

We've created the structure.

And so we look forward to implementing that coming up.

Also we have coming up in September, a school training.

We've already put together the slides for that.

Also, we added to it tips from our own sergeants, what they're seeing, which we thought would resonate with SPD as well, that could be helpful for them as part of their training.

Also, the rollout then we're hopeful in this next quarter for the complaint impact statement rollout.

And then also with regards to the chief of police ordinance.

I wanted to say thank you to people, obviously Chair Kettle and Vice Chair Salk and others who are familiar with the issue.

But for our chief of police cases, one of the things in the ordinance when it started out, obviously it was the first time it was there.

And now we've worked with it a little bit.

And there are some changes I think that people might be open to with regards to that.

And just one of the big ones I just wanted to say and not get too deep.

into that, but proposed language to section 3.29.510C And currently it says a civilian investigator supervisor shall be assigned to complete the intake of the complaint, right?

And so it's only the civilian investigator supervisors.

We only have two.

And so for those two to do that on top of everything else, at this point, I can't even be designated to help with that or anybody else.

And so a shout out to Mary Oppler and Alex Seraphim for their work and for really, working on those cases in between.

And all of us that had different times, we've actually picked up FRBs so they can continue with that work or anything, because you can imagine that can cause a delay and so forth.

And also contacting log, contact logs.

So again, there'll be something maybe forthcoming, but this is just something would be helpful for the chief of police cases.

Upcoming projects continued.

It talks about our website update right here, making OPA's website more user-friendly.

And you can see here, you get a lot of compliments already, but even more so to streamline it.

So close case summary, there it is for people in the public.

We heard you.

Click here instead of three clicks.

Request records, report a crime, check complaint status, just to make it a little user-friendly, although the information's in there will be helpful for them in listening to them.

Also, we're gonna be having a symposium.

We're excited.

We'll be inviting you, be on the lookout at the Langston Hughes Center in October.

And it's not gonna be on police accountability.

We're gonna have a panel and we're looking forward to having some good discussions with respect to police accountability, hearing from people, and also having a time to give it in the community for community to come as well.

And we'll be also inviting departments as well from the city.

mediation I've talked a lot about, but growing the program and then also community engagement, again, continuing building that.

So again, those are some of the other things.

mid-year data, and here's just some basic data.

Number of contacts received by year, mid-year data for 2021 to 2024. So for 2024, these are all for January 2024 through May 30th of 2024. And you can see for contacts, which includes contacts with OPA in person, website, phone calls, emails, US mail, basically we have had an uptick of contacts.

Next, we have our use of force allegations by year for our mid-year data.

Again, the same time period.

And then you can see here for raw numbers, just about almost the same, but we've got 562 here.

And I'm gonna move this over here if I can.

It's about 562 from 564. And then you can see our use of force.

You can see just right about there.

Next, number of allegations by type.

Again, professionalism has always been our number one for a number of cases.

Anything for public trust, professionalism.

Next comes use of force, bias-free policing, vehicle operation, stops, detentions, and arrests, and then investigation and reports so you can see the raw numbers.

I asked them to show me had that differed much, and it did not differ much from last year.

with regards to that for 2023. Next, complaints and locations for precincts.

You can see just where cases are at.

You can see east, north.

Outside Seattle, you may have an officer who's responding to something that started in Seattle that ends up somewhere else for outside of Seattle, or someone who might be working as part of some other project or so forth.

And basically it would be outside Seattle.

Obviously, null means that they didn't identify where it was at in their allegation, and so that's how that spread out.

Next, full versus expedited investigations for 2024. Again, it seems fairly similar at this particular time, and again, this just goes to the end of the year.

through the end of May 30th.

Also, this one for classification type as percentage of total complaints.

This one here, we do not, as you can see, 2024. Now we're at 11% as compared to 20%.

And some of this, it's a little misleading because we have a number of cases that, although it's gone through the investigative process, it hasn't closed yet.

It may not have had a disciplined hearing.

It may be at different parts of the process.

The same thing with the type of discipline imposed.

Right here, we pulled the data.

We see some written oral termination, suspension without pay.

We actually went back and pulled the data again because again, there's that lag and there was actually three cases where it was at least three days or one to three days.

So actually more days with regards to time.

Also, we had two more that just happened.

One had not gotten finished with their Loudermill and another one.

So again, for this data.

Next collaboration, we did wanna say that we were happy to help convene the meeting with the Office of Independent Investigations.

And we had all our part accountability partners present as well as representatives from the mayor's office, which was great.

They didn't follow up, then they did follow up with each of us.

Also, we did a police accountability partner presentations.

We did one at the NAACP and that was nice, but we talked about at the last partnership meeting, it would be nice to be able to do a couple of those together again.

I think it makes a difference with the community and us working together.

And so that's something that we've talked about doing.

Also, we actually responded to and worked with the Office of Intergovernmental Relations regarding legislation, right, and provided that, which we continue to do during the legislative session, and also our community outreach.

And that's it for now.

All right, thank you very much, Vice Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you for a really insightful presentation here and update.

First off, appreciate the call out on the Youth in Law Forum.

That is a community event that's really near and dear to me.

I haven't participated personally in a few years since before COVID, but since I was a baby lawyer, I always enjoyed going to that event.

I taught in a course on I think social media law or something to that effect.

But really good community engagement opportunity to expose teens and preteens for preteens and teens and their families and guardians and parents and community members, expose them to potential careers and policing.

Absolutely.

And as lawyers.

Mm-hmm.

As there's judges there, as you know, and it just gets a lot of people together, particularly at Opportunity Youth.

If you can see it, you can be it.

And so it's historically occurred at our historic first AME.

In the Central District, it's migrated a few locations the past few years, as I understand it, but put on by the Lauren Miller Bar Association, Association of Black Lawyers, Civil Rights Organization of Black Lawyers in the state of Washington.

And so, great event.

Glad you all are engaging and partnering with them and other organizations like them to...

to advance this work.

Just curious on the data slides that you shared out, the update.

On my end, it's slide 14. So the slide that speaks to the uses of force, allegations.

So I note that There are 74, the mid-year data reveals that there's currently 74 allegations of uses of force, which according to this slide, according to my reading, please correct me if I'm wrong, appears to be higher than any other year at this point in the year than in the last three years since 21. So just curious, what are...

What would you attribute this higher, relative higher allegations of uses of force to this year?

So if you all have a point of view, our partners at the police also are here represented.

If you have a point of view on that, I'd be curious to learn more.

Thank you.

Yeah, honestly, Councilmember, I'm not sure that we can answer that question.

We haven't examined the root causes for the uptick.

It is higher than the preceding years, but again, we haven't assessed the reason for that yet.

Thank you.

Does SPD have a point of view on that?

Well, I too would need a lot more information on the data.

It does not seem to be a particularly significant increase.

And remember, these are just allegations.

So we don't know how many of those have merit looking at the outcome slide and the discipline opposed.

Given the fact there was one termination and one suspension, my bet is not many of these are going to be related to use of force being sustained.

And, you know, use of force is never pretty, and it leads to complaints.

So we'll see.

Again, I don't know what any of those 74 are, sir.

Thank you.

Yeah, I don't know if it's statistically significant, but it is, you know, clear evidence clearly higher than the preceding year.

There's more to it, but I think that is worth coming back and maybe during the next and reporting on and why and providing a little more color around the edges, around the data, and how many of those were sustained findings and the like.

Thank you.

I will point out at this point, Like we don't know where we're going to land at the end of the year.

So it could be lower than the preceding years.

Absolutely.

Once we hit December, but we don't know yet.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We'll be happy to provide an update.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions, comments, committee members and committee guests?

I had one, Mr. Chair, if that's okay.

Thank you for the presentation.

Can you clarify, potentially, what professionalism means?

I think I had asked at the last meeting, but what is that in...

If someone's making a complaint about professionalism, is that based on their view of professionalism, or is it like there's a list of things where they can say, hey, this was nonprofessional?

So the guidance and the policy...

And I'm just summarizing the policy.

Profanity directed at someone as an insult, any words or actions that may undermine public confidence in the department or that officer or other officers, things to that extent.

So it's pretty broad, and it can be widely interpreted.

And I think for that reason, it causes some issues.

Right, Brian?

Yeah, it is definitely a complex category.

We certainly expect our officers to act with integrity and to be polite and caring and help the people in our community when they encounter them.

That is our expectation.

So the professionalism policy can encompass a lot of, it's quite a large spectrum from, you know, minor profanity, and it gets worse if it's directed at a person, you know, all the way to actions really not becoming of a police officer.

It is one of those categories that often surfaces as you know it when you see it and then you try to categorize it.

What it does not include is anything more significant like bias or a use of force or if there is an abuse of authority.

Those have separate categories for them.

No, I understand.

Okay, no, that clarifies that really well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Seeing none, I have...

Basically four things coming from the briefing, so thank you very much.

First is on accountability long-term, we have to build up the leadership piece, and this is really particularly a focus on sergeants in terms of moving forward, and this is across the board.

So I really appreciate the sergeant training, but also the frontline investigations.

I think that's really important, and this goes to different areas, But in terms of accountability and building our officers to build our sergeants, we need to have this ability for sergeants to be able to do their job.

understanding what the ordinance says, you know, it's finding that balance, which is also helpful to OPA in itself in terms of how you're being able to carry out your duty.

So thank you for bringing that topic up.

I think it's really important.

And obviously you'll be supportive from the council or committee in that process as you work with SPD and others involved.

The second point that...

FROM THE BRIEFING THAT I WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT AND SUPPORT AND RECOGNIZE IS THE ENGAGEMENT WITH COMMUNITY.

THERE'S ALL THESE DIFFERENT PIECES IN TERMS OF THE OUTREACH AND CONNECTIONS TO COMMUNITY.

I THINK THIS IS VITAL.

AND IN PLAYING OFF THAT, I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO SEE THE MEDIATION EFFORT IN TERMS OF THAT'S TRUE CONNECTION RIGHT THERE.

IT'S LIKE HOW CAN WE INCREASE IT?

HOW CAN WE HELP YOU you know, go to the community and really promote the mediation aspect for the minor, relatively minor.

Everything's relative in terms of who's making that assessment.

But, you know, what can we do, what can your accountability partners do to help SPD help do in terms of really promoting and furthering the mediation program?

Because I think that was fantastic.

If we can do that.

Third one is, thank you for highlighting the chief of police ordinance.

This kind of goes with frontline investigations.

It's like right-sizing, you know, the level of effort and, you know, and the like.

And, you know, that really goes to pillar two of our strategic framework, you know, ordinances, you know, looking to address to make better chief of police ordinance.

And then the last one is, PRECINCT VISITS, I THINK THAT IS VITAL.

AS MR. MAXIE KNOWS, I'VE BEEN TO ALL FIVE PRECINCTS.

I'M IN A PERIOD NOW OF VISITING FIRE STATIONS, BUT I WILL COME BACK TO THE PRECINCTS AGAIN.

AND I JUST WANTED TO COMMEND THAT AND REALLY PROMOTE IT AND REALLY ACROSS THE BOARD, BUT SPECIFICALLY EVEN MORE SO FOR OPA.

ALL RIGHT, THANK YOU.

AND THEN WE'LL MOVE ON TO OUR...

QUESTIONS, IS THAT OKAY?

Sorry about that.

I should have thought of that.

You mentioned mediation, Chair Kettle.

The previous presentation on page 33 does show that of all the classification review statistics, there was only one remediation or one mediation compared to, say, 98 supervisor actions.

A lot of...

And so it is...

I do wonder why mediation is not used more often, and it maybe has to do with the type of allegation that's being investigated.

So I recognize that, but that is interesting to me.

And then one question I had when I had my pre-briefing with OIG, the turnover of the sworn investigators, I think it happens every year.

Is that automatic that they only have one year Is that, how long do they serve in that position?

It's not automatic.

We have people that are sergeants who have been at OPA for five years.

Oh, okay.

Three years, so.

One, seven, yeah.

The ask is that they stay there at least 18 months.

Okay, got it.

But as to mediation, when I first came here, we had zero mediations across the board.

Well, thank you very much for that improvement.

No, we only had one, but that's, you know, it's encouraging.

The pushback that we got is, you know, when I came here, I feel like the climate was a little bit different and community members were not inclined to participate in a process where discipline was not attached to it.

So it's a part of my job to sell them on the benefits of mediation.

There are studies across the country.

I look at New Orleans.

They have a robust mediation program, and the reality is most of OPA investigations result in not sustained finding.

There will be no discipline attached to it, and a lot of complainants end up being dissatisfied with that process.

However, when it comes to mediation, The research shows that both parties are typically overwhelmingly satisfied with sitting down, communicating, talking at a table with an independent mediator where there is no power dynamic and just talking about their experience.

So that's what I'm really trying to sell to both sides and what we're hoping to see an uptick in mediations pretty soon.

Got it.

So it's basically just a culture change or the information of this resource and people taking you up on it.

Thanks.

Thank you for that.

And again, whatever we can do to support, I appreciate it.

And now Ms. Ellis.

Well, I recognize we're going a little bit long.

So feel free to, you know, move briskly through your slides.

I'll try my best.

Okay.

So, chair kettle.

So, for example, I mean, you know, some of the background slides you can quickly just highlight and then move on, you know, get to whatever data or, you know, points that you'd like to make.

Okay, thank you.

So, yeah, chair kettle.

Is it working?

Thank you.

Okay, everyone can see that.

I wanted to say, I'll keep it short.

So thank you, Chair Kettle, Vice Chair Kaka.

Welcome, Council Member Rivera, Council President Nelson, Council Member Hollingsworth.

I am very pleased to be able to talk to you about what the CPC is doing right now and what we've done over the course of the past year, because it's been a big year.

My name is Kali Ellis.

I am the Executive Director of the Community Police Commission.

Tech.

Tech.

Okay, so as you can see, this has been a year of significant change.

One of the reasons why, hopefully everyone has had a chance to see the totem pole that was erected in honor of John T. Williams, who is part of the reason why we are all here.

This is in the Seattle Center, and I will get back to this at the end of the presentation.

Some brief background on our work does have to do with him.

This was after police brutality and the killing of John T. Williams that community groups came together to establish the accountability system starting with the CPC in 2013. So it's important to remember overall our mission and everything we do is to ensure public confidence in the responsiveness of the accountability system, to engage with the community, to be a connection and be directly connected between the community and the police.

And this is the authority of responsibility.

This comes directly from the accountability ordinance.

So monitoring the implementation of these policies and monitoring what our partners do, as well as SPD, reviewing closed OPA investigations, exactly what you were asking about before to identify opportunities for systemic improvements, may write recommendations there.

Collaborating with our partners in the city attorney's office and improving system transparency, and then reviewing and providing input into SPD recruiting, hiring, and promotional practices.

Just as a brief overview, this is our structure and we are very different because the volunteer commissioners guide our work.

We are in a very independent agency as with all our partners, but it very much is driven by the commissioners and supported by staff like myself.

So these are our commissioners.

This is our newest commissioner who was confirmed last year, Philip Sanchez.

Our commissioners are appointed in equal number by the mayor's office, by the city council itself, and then by the CPC.

And we have dedicated seats for the two representatives from SPOG, SPMA, as well as attorneys from public defense and civil liberties.

And this...

photo that you saw before was Director Betz presenting at our in-person new commissioner orientation.

This was very much moving from online to in-person, important for empowering the commissioners.

So this is one of the most important things that happened over the past year and it happened after the last mid-year presentation.

These were the first revisions to the accountability ordinance and a lot of them had to do with the CPC.

So there was a long period starting in August 2022 of engagement with our partners, engagement with city council, engagement with SPD, anyone that would be affected by the ordinance revisions.

And the result was that we advocated for parity with our partners at OPA and OIG, specifically to have a deputy director position, which was not part of the original accountability ordinance.

That did pass and it was funded as part of the budget.

And we are getting very close to filling that position right now.

This also established qualifications and procedures for removal.

The CPC executive director very importantly returned the size of the commission from 21 to 15. They had tried out making it larger.

It didn't really work.

15 is better.

And then clarifying the authority to remove commissioners for cause and removing council district assignments for commissioners.

That's a lot to ask.

Very importantly, and the reason why I bring up the deputy and how important it was is because we are the smallest of the oversight partners.

So you've heard that our partners, as they do investigations, audits, they're much larger, but we're pretty small.

When we're fully staffed, we will have 10 FTE, and it's divided up into community engagement staff with a director and two community engagement specialists, and then policy staff with a policy director and two policy specialists, as well as the important role of communications.

So...

Deputy Director Bonnie Glenn earlier mentioned one of the important partnerships that we have with OPA that really illustrates how we all work together.

So OIG came up with the idea, and it's a very important one, of these complaint and impact statements.

And OPA reached out to us to have CPC staff do the work of talking with people in a trauma-informed way and helping them, in their own words, produce complaint and impact statements that would be part of the discipline process.

Right now, anyone that's affected and going through the process doesn't have a voice, but this would provide a voice in final discipline hearings for victims.

These are some other examples of collaborations that we do, some of which are mandated by the accountability ordinance.

So we meet every quarter, all of us and SPD.

We've had OIG and OPA present at our bimonthly meetings over the past year.

And then as Deputy Inspector General Scott mentioned, there is staff collaboration on work groups and other issues.

important policy initiatives of the CPC.

So these are the priorities looking forward for 2024 and 2025, and they fall into both organizational and systemic So organizational, our goal is to increase responsiveness to community policing concerns through facilitated community engagement meetings with data and feedback collected measures, which I do have.

To implement a comprehensive organizational restructuring plan, the role of the deputy is gonna be very important for making this successful, including updated processes and protocols to increase time allocated to our core duties.

And then a comprehensive review of operational policies and procedures benchmarking against recognized best practices in civilian oversight nationwide.

In terms of systemic priorities, we are always committed to the police accountability ordinance.

And our goal is to enhance public trust and confidence in police services through demonstrated commitment to these ordinance.

As well to promote transparency and information sharing with the public about police contracts, that's been a priority this year, and to strengthen community voice and direct input and SPD policy.

So the communications as all the partners have identified is a very important part of what we do.

We now have a robust communication strategy to share our work with you all and city council and community members.

Our website is also regularly updated to reflect the work we do, the statements that are made by the commission and the co-chairs and as a resource for archival materials from CPC's history.

So if there's anything you're looking for from that 2013, that's the place to look.

We also have an ordinance education series of videos educating the community about the accountability ordinance.

And for the first time in two years, we now have our newsletter back up and running.

And I encourage all of you to sign up and get that.

That provides every two weeks what we're doing in between our regular meetings.

And here's the newsletter.

It's a good one.

So one of the most important things we do, again, this is in the ordinance, is to make a connection with policy, to do work on policy.

And then there's a number of ways that we do this.

So as you can see, and you might have heard, and we talked to all of you, trying to collect community feedback and get input into the ongoing contracts.

It was in 2023 that we commented at this same hearing about the SPMA contract and then in 2024 when the SPOG contract was released that we held a community meeting and tried to get community feedback onto their priorities for police contracts.

We also had a number of consent decree filings.

So CPC has amicus status with the federal court.

And so we can file things and speak directly to them.

And we did that in support of the changes on the winding down of the consent decree as well as a response to the monitor's report in December.

We're also very much engaged with the legislature.

So the ordinance gives us the ability to lobby independently of the city, the mayor, the city council.

Again, independence is really the key when it comes to CBC.

And so there I am in Olympia along with community members, and we went down there as part of a lobby day and educated the commissioners on important things that were going through the legislature about traffic safety reform and independent prosecutor for police misconduct at the AG's office.

We have that same photo that OP had.

We were at that meeting with the Office of Independent Investigations.

This is a state-level agency that will be investigating serious police misconduct, is already doing so around the state, and will come to Seattle eventually.

And then we regularly make statements from the co-chairs and the commissioners about a number of things that are emergent.

Long ago, you might have heard about there were enforcement actions at Seattle LGBTQ bars.

We made a statement about that.

We made a statement that was voted on by commission about SPD's technology-assisted crime prevention pilot program, and the technology is there, as well as emergency vehicle operations.

So this is, I wanted to highlight this as what input looks like from community members to SPD policy.

This is an SPD policy right here.

This is emergency vehicle operations.

Above it is a community meeting.

So most of our meetings are online.

The commissioners are online.

The community members were online.

And these community members were concerned about this policy.

and wanted to share their feedback with us.

So we had the meeting, we collected the feedback.

I met with a number of people working in policy at SPD and we were able to share that with them as a written document about this is what the community wants out of this policy.

And we're doing this with other policies as well.

So this is community engagement.

This is the core of what we do.

This is the main thing that's in the ordinance that guides our work and also creates this feedback loop between policy and community engagement and what the community wants that's important.

So this is our staff at a number of different meetings, Leschi, Garfield, I don't know what all that is, but you can see that we go to demographic precinct advisory council meetings, community council meetings, often yourselves, public safety, Council members, focused council members will have public safety meetings and we've been at those as well.

So this is a very important part of what we do because the ordinance tells us that we are tasked to be responsive to community needs.

We have a number of different options for doing that.

We can do outreach, we can maintain connections with representatives of disenfranchised communities and then share that information with our partners.

This is a little bit of the data on what we're doing.

This is just in 2024 already.

So as I said, the ordinance requires that we go to all the legislative districts.

You might see your own district there for the council members, but there's a number of things.

We go to events, we do tabling, we do quite a bit of data collection about what our community engagement staff is doing.

And this is the most important thing that we did in 2023 when it came to community engagement.

And the reason why it ties back to the slide earlier is because that is Rick Williams.

That's the brother of John T. Williams, who was one of the reasons why we came into place and came into being.

And so we have a mandate to have it public and report meeting.

This was at the Langston Hughes Center.

And you can see we had the Seattle Police Department, our partners from OPA, OIG were there, the city attorney's office was there, the mayor's office was there, and a lot of community members.

And this was really a great example, and this was the first one we'd done in two years, a really good example of community engagement being responsive to community, listening to them, connecting to policy, and being true to our roots.

And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH, AND I APPRECIATE THE PACE IN WHICH YOU HAD THAT BRIEFING DONE.

THANK YOU.

NOTHING FROM OUR VICE CHAIR, ANY QUESTIONS?

NO QUESTIONS.

Chair, I have one quick question, if I may.

Just noting on the community engagement reporting, I don't see districts four or six represented here.

And I know the North Precinct Advisory Council is very active and it includes district four constituents, but I'm just wondering what kind of outreach is done to those two districts.

Yes, I know that our community engagement staff has done things up there.

They might not show up on the format of the slide, but I'll make sure that that's something that we prioritize because I know there's a lot of issues in those districts as well.

Yes, very much so.

And I would love to just have a follow-up on the kind of engagement that you all are doing.

I'm happy to follow up.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Yes, you know, engaging even...

TAKING MY CHAIR HAT OFF AND BEING THE DISTRICT SEVEN REPRESENTATIVE OF COURSE YOU KNOW WE ALSO RECOGNIZING WHY CERTAIN DISTRICTS ARE HIGHER THAT'S THAT I APPRECIATE THAT POINT BUT ALSO TO YOU KNOW ENSURE COVERAGE THROUGHOUT THE CITY PARTICULARLY IN THE NORTH BECAUSE THEY'RE DEFINITELY DEALING WITH SOME SOME MAJOR CHALLENGES NOW NOT SO MUCH I SAY THAT FROM A PUBLIC SAFETY SIDE AND HAVING THAT ENGAGEMENT MIGHT BE GREAT IT'S NOT SIMILAR TO OTHER ISSUES, BUT IT'S DEFINITELY SOMETHING THAT WE NEED TO GET THAT COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ON.

REALLY APPRECIATE THE BRIEFING.

LIKE YOU, WE DO HAVE A COMMITMENT TO THE POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY AND KEEP WORKING WITH THE ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNERS, ALSO SPD.

obviously you have a keen interest in police contracts, and a number of us are also on the Labor Committee, and obviously there's restrictions in terms of what we can speak to, but we do hear what you're saying on that front, which is probably the most I can say on that topic.

And then lastly, community input.

Just as we were saying, we need to encourage that continued community input.

And I think...

THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WE AS DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES CAN HELP WITH, ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION.

YOU KNOW, I HAVE MY DISTRICT SEVEN NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL, WHICH IS A COUNCIL OF COUNCILS, WHICH MAY BE A GREAT OPPORTUNITY IN THE FUTURE.

SO, REALLY APPRECIATE THAT, YOU KNOW, THAT OUTREACH TO COMMUNITY.

AND I WILL NOTE, for the record, I recognize that in terms of the commissioners, there's two empty spots.

We've been engaging with community too, and we've got a couple asks out.

Unfortunately, I don't have a response I can give you right now, but we do have asks out to communities to fill the two positions related to the council.

So I just wanted to say that to you directly, but also for the Seattle Channel audience as well and others and your partners.

We appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay.

That is it for me for questions or comments.

Nothing else here.

So, again, thank you all for coming from the accountability partners and really important to have SPD represented.

Thank you, Mr. Maxey, for joining us and for the work that we have ahead on some of these issues that were brought up.

from frontline investigations to community input, and OIG ensuring that we do this transition as we look to move beyond the consent decree.

So thank you.

We have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

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

I suspect not.

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

Thank you.