Public Safety & Human Services Committee 91120

I live?

Yes, you are.

Again, whenever you're ready.

Very good.

The September 11th, 2020 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Great.

All committee members are present.

Thank you.

We'll now approve our agenda for the committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

So first, we're going to move right into public comment.

Before we open public comment, I ask that folks be patient.

I have not been running committee meetings for quite some time now, so I'm still working to operate and learn this new system.

I'm going to be moderating the public comment period in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak, and I will call on each speaker by name.

and in order of their registration on the council's website.

If you haven't registered to speak but would like to do so, you can still do that before the end of the public hearing or public comment period by going to the council's website.

the links for quite some time now, so I'm still working to operate and learn this new system.

I'm going to be moderating the public comment period in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak, and I will call on each speaker by name.

Did folks just experience that?

IT people?

Yes.

Okay, good.

I just want to make sure it wasn't just on my end.

Should we pause to figure out why that happened?

I think we're okay for now.

Let's just keep on proceeding.

I saw that blip as well, too, so let's just proceed and we'll observe here.

Okay, thank you so much.

So if you are still interested in using public comment but haven't yet signed up to do so, you can go to the council's website.

The link is also listed on today's agenda.

So once I call a speaker's name, you'll need to press a star six to unmute yourself.

And I request that you begin speaking by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

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

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

If you do not end your public comments at the end of the allotted time, speakers mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to call on the next speaker.

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

And if you plan to continue following the message, you could absolutely do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

So public hearings now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

First speaker on, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If you do not end your public comments at the end of the allotted time,

So I, every time I share my screen, it seems to cause a problem with the timer.

Oh, you're doing it, Alex.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let me, uh, Hey, Alex, let me go ahead and run the timer on my end.

So, uh, I'll take on that duty and maybe just kind of observe the attendees and just unmute the, uh, the public commenters.

Let me go ahead and share the screen out real quick.

All right.

Thanks for figuring it all out in real time.

So the first speaker is Angie Gerald.

Hi.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Angie Gerald, and I'm calling regarding community policing.

I called in today to make sure city council is aware that as of this week, Seattle police has had to suddenly disband the entire community police team.

This was the one avenue my neighborhood had to contact a specific officer about ongoing issues.

Someone very familiar with our neighborhood and the people and businesses in it.

I live in Ballard, which is served by the North Precinct.

This precinct is 40% of the city's geography with a population larger than the city of Spokane.

Ballard is a 911 hot spot but has minimal police patrols and very slow response times compared to city averages.

Last weekend, I met an armed off-duty King County deputy patrolling the neighborhood on behalf of a business.

They had many questions about visible safety issues and no familiarity with our neighborhood or the city's specific policies and approaches to homelessness and drug addiction.

Ballard has many lessons learned from the plethora of best practice low barrier services concentrated here.

Yet we have no holistic leadership to ensure the outcomes have any bearings on actual, not aspirational, improvements in public safety.

In this transformative era, we have no functional accountability for public safety at the neighborhood level, not through LEAD, CSOs, the Community Police Commission, or other emergent programs.

So with the abrupt end of the community police team, which was a tangible informed point of contact, I called to ask if anyone will be accountable for safety leadership specific to challenges in North Seattle, which community leaders and organizations will be involved in imminent budget discussions and community advocacy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Howard Gale.

Howard, are you with us?

Council Member, you have to remind the public commenters to hit star six to unmute themselves.

Oh, thank you.

For folks who are doing public comment, this is a reminder to star six in order to unmute yourself.

So, Howard, are you with us?

And if so, can you star six to unmute yourself?

Okay.

Okay, here I go.

So this is Howard Dale from Lower Queen Anne, District 7, speaking on police accountability.

I just want to be sure I have this right.

Today, you will be hearing from Seattle's police accountability partners, the folks tasked with keeping policing constitutional and non-abusive, on what are the appropriate materials for police to use to continue to harm folks and infringe on their First Amendment rights.

not that you'll be discussing how to stop these abuses which have continued now for over a hundred days and are certain to continue on to the future but rather you will be discussing today the means by which these abuses are to continue really who are these accountability prop partners you're talking with today the orgy in response to over a hundred days of abuse holds a ninety minute listening session which they then refused to make public until just last week when any side was shamed in public releasing it to me but still not making public Then you have the OPA, which has approved or ignored all 27 police killings since John T. Williams as within policy.

And last, there is a CPC, the supposed voice of the community, which just last week completely shut down community by ending any form of public comment at their meetings and then went into a blatantly illegal secret executive session.

The CPC-excluding community is not new.

For nearly six years, they have failed to hold any public forum in egregious violation of their mandate.

Maybe all of this is minor stuff when you consider that all three of these entities have now failed miserably at responding to our George Floyd.

Terry Caver, the African-American man having a mental health crisis, murdered by SPD in May.

To this shocking and avoidable murder, these accountability partners have had no response and no investigation.

until a supposedly lost complaint was found.

I beg you, revise your agenda today.

Do the hard work of holding police accountable and stopping the daily abuse.

Do not advocate your moral responsibility.

In doing that, you might realize that your accountability partners have become unaccountable themselves and they have lost what little moral authority they may have ever had.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Quan Liu.

Kwon, are you with us?

And if so, can you please hit star six to unmute yourself?

There you are.

Hello.

Am I ready to speak?

We can hear you.

Thank you.

Okay, so good morning city council members.

My name is Kwon and I live in District 7 in Pioneer Square.

I'm calling to reinstate that currently SPD is not providing any public safety to anyone.

Since George, they're not accountable to their taxpayers.

And since George Floyd's murder, people have been protesting for over 100 days.

And whatever, they must be defunded by at least 50% and reallocate to allocate those funds to agencies that could actually provide public safety and human services to BIPOC communities.

And let me say, on the Labor Day protest, there were elderly children and disabled people in wheelchairs.

And the police not only responded violently, with no dispersal order, they started to pepper spray.

and push all the protesters violently, tauntingly, with smirking faces, all the way to Rainier Avenue, which is the most dangerous road in Seattle.

It is clearly that SPD has no interest in public safety, and SPARC does not stand for labor and should not be in the union in the first place.

Also, I have known that SPD have illegally obtained protesters' information and threatened to arrest them and stole their belonging as well.

So, city council members, I urge you to push on defunding the police and not to compromise with the mayor who is also standing with the police as well.

And that's all I have to say.

Thank you so much.

Have a good day.

Thank you, Kwan.

Next speaker is Daniel Clark.

Daniel Clark, please, if you're with us.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Daniel Clark.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, I'm a protester.

I've been protesting since basically day one with the police.

As a protester, I think that the police ought to have ever constricting rules, not expanding and restricting budget also.

We've seen as protesters, we've seen protesters have broken arms by the 40 millimeter sponge bullets.

We've seen protesters for obstruction after the fact, hours later, have their heads hit onto the ground and get concussions and bleeding with stitches.

Just recently, we've had protesters with permanent hearing damage.

We've had protesters killed Um, recently by a sheriff who drove into a car and killed a protester who was prominent and then another protester in the early on.

It's my understanding that SPD is actually corrupt and, um, they have been deploying tactics, have got the federal oversight person to resign.

So in resigning in stating that they have been using unnecessary force and created bad will within the community in order to restore community, um, faith and civil organizations.

And this, we need to continue to restrict as CDs use of force on labor day, they played stable horse, ride a cowboy on loudspeakers on a boarded up.

SPOG headquarters flying a Blue Lives Matter flag and attacked protesters when there was no documented violence that happened on the SPOG building, indiscriminately pushing them back for miles with...

Thank you, Daniel.

Next speaker we have is Valerie Schloret.

Hi.

Hi, my name is Valerie.

I'm a resident of district two.

Um, and I've been following Seattle policing since 2010. This morning, you'll hear from Seattle's police accountability bodies, the CPC, the OPA, and the OIG regarding the use of less lethal methods of crowd control.

The SPD should not be allowed to use CS gas or blast balls, or what are called rubber bullets.

However, they will still have pepper spray, bikes to use as weapons, physical restraints, long batons, and guns with metal bullets.

Given the state of policing, taking away SPD's so-called less lethal weapons is a partial solution and perhaps no solution at all.

We have an opportunity now to make radical transformations and how we manage police safety to do that.

We have to change the structure of policing, but also how we manage police accountability.

The Seattle provision for accountability is inadequate and provides the illusion of police accountability without the reality.

I'm asking city council to begin the process today.

of reimagining accountability that is transparent and answerable to the people who pay for it, that is us, the people, the residents of Seattle.

We need to break the cycle of police abusing people, whatever weapons they use, and whether those people are alone or in a crowd.

Thank you.

Thank you, Valerie.

Our last speaker is Mike Thomas, but he's marked as not present.

So if that is the case, then I will close public comment.

I'm speaking slowly here, though, just in case Matt Thomas comes back.

doesn't sound as if he will.

So we are going to close public comment and move right into the items on the agenda.

First, this is a review of the legislation that the council and specifically, there is a requirement in the bill itself that identified the council's desire to hear the advice of each, the CPC, the Police Commission, the Office of the Inspector General, and the Office of Police Accountability, And under their authority, under the accountability legislation, we have charged these three accountability partners with consulting with the council in policymaking in these areas.

And so in this instance with this particular bill, we asked for their advice, but we did not seek it in advance of the date that the legislation was to go into effect.

We also recognized in the legislation that the federal court under Judge Robard had some authority to review the legislation under the consent decree.

And there's a particular process for review of legislation under the consent decree.

And we have asked the court to do so.

The court agrees that they have authority for a consent decree review of the legislation and also agrees that we need to hear from our accountability partners on the impacts of the policy related to crowd control weapons on the issues covered by the consent decree.

So with those opening remarks, unless any of my colleagues on the council have opening remarks that they would like to make as well, and I recognize Council Member Mosqueda has joined us as well.

Greetings, Council Member Mosqueda.

I would like to just hand it over to our first presenter, the Community Police Commission.

But I just want to take a quick pause to see whether or not anybody, any council members have opening remarks they need to make.

All right, seeing none.

Council Member?

Oh, yes.

I need to read the item into the agenda very quickly.

Oh, thank you so much, Alex.

I appreciate it.

This is committee agenda item number one, reports from the Community Police Commission, Office of Inspector General, and Office of Police Accountability on crowd control dispersal policy and less lethal weapons.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Much appreciated.

All right, so again, our first presentation is going to be from the Community Police Commission.

And Director Grant, are you going to be kicking us off?

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for allowing us to be here today to present.

I'm going to actually have my policy director go through our presentation and provide any responses to any questions you all may have at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Grant.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Shailene Morris.

I'm the Policy Director for the Community Police Commission.

Thank you to our Fearless Leader Executive Director, Brandi Grant, for the introduction.

I will be going through first our presentation PowerPoint that goes over the points and recommendations that we made within our report.

Afterwards, I'll leave some time for questions.

I believe Council Member Herbold, that's what you'd like for us to do.

I had some in advance, so however you'd like us to do that at the end, totally fine.

I will go ahead and share my screen and get started.

Okay.

Is everyone able to see this presently?

Let me back up.

We are not seeing a presentation.

Yeah, we just see the Zoom page.

You're not seeing the presentation at all?

Okay, let me try something different.

So everyone bear with me.

Let me see if I can close some things down.

Okay.

Can everyone see this?

Yes.

Yes.

Perfect.

Let's get started.

Always best to start with a little bit of a hiccup.

Right.

No pressure.

No pressure.

Again, I'll start over.

Shaylee Moore is here, policy director for the Community Police Commission.

And I'm going to start going through the recommendations that we made on Seattle's crowd control weapons ban.

Okay, just to start off with a little bit of background, and for council members, you already know, but for everyone that has tuned in, why CPC is making these recommendations, as Council Member Herbold has already stated, we were requested and mandated all of the accountability partners, OIG, OPA, and CPC, to submit recommendations.

These recommendations should include suggested policy revisions to the Seattle Police Department's Manual for Use of Less Lethal Weapons and the Purpose of Crown Dispersal, and also identification of those crowd dispersal authorization process that does require executive approval and reflects best practices.

And that is to minimize harm to protesters from police.

A couple of items here that we want to, as a communication, reflect on.

There have been experiences that have been obviously presented with the media, but also experiences that we have heard from community.

Some of those include dozens of injuries from SPD, less lethal weapons were reported.

Many protesters were seriously burned or maimed by blast holes, and a lot of that also was reported by Seattle Times and other media outlets.

Munitions hit journalists who were reported on the protest.

We also had video footage of that and also their reports of infants suffering from the effects of tear gas while they were sleeping in their homes.

Prior to this report that we released on August 14th, the CPC had raised this issue regarding SVD's use of crowd control weapons repeatedly.

This reflected all the way back from 2015, 2016, asking SVD to disregard or eliminate the use of blast balls and tear gas.

So now we're gonna go through the recommendations in our report.

There were nine in total.

Now I'll do this rather quickly and then we can, I want to leave some time for questions at the end.

Our first recommendation was that CPC supports the city's ban on the use of crowd control weapons as it pertains to First Amendment protected activity, and we recommended that SPD implement it as soon as possible.

Recommendation two, SPD should immediately revise with input from the accountability partners and federal courts, crowd control policies and trainings to comply with the city's elimination of crowd control weapons.

Over the coming months, those policies and trainings, along with other crowd control policies and tactics, should go through, and we cannot stress this enough, a community-centered review process that also incorporates input from CPC, OPA, OIG, and the federal court.

Recommendation three, the city should ensure the crowd control weapons ban allows for the use of some appropriate, some appropriate, less lethal options with strong policies and accountability mechanisms outside of crowd control.

recommendation four, the CPC recommends the city work with CPC, OPA, and OIG, and other community stakeholders to set clear, strong, and high standards for when police and city officials are authorized to declare unlawful assemblies, riots, and then are able to establish curfews.

Recommendation five, the CPC recommends that in the event SPD issues orders to disperse or they declare a riot.

The authorizing officers should thoroughly document and an agency outside of SPD should subsequently review any and all actions taken and those resulting in outcomes.

Additionally, we strongly urge that this documentation and the authorizing chain is made publicly available within 24 hours of the incident effective immediately.

Recommendation six, we recommend the city prohibit the sale of crowd control weapons to other law enforcement agencies.

In the spirit of the ban, we do not feel that it would behoove the city to sell these to other law enforcement agencies.

So then they would also be able to do the same thing to their constituents.

Recommendation seven, the CPC recommends SPD investigate and make public the full inventory of the department's crowd control weapons to determine next steps of disposal.

Similar to recommendation six, if we are to get rid of these and no longer store and house them or sell them, then the city needs to know what does SPD have in their arsenal.

And that way, when the information is on the table, that way people are able to make the best decision on how to dispose of those weapons.

recommendation 8. The CPC recommends the city initiate a community-centered review of SPD's use of force policies in collaboration with key community stakeholders, CPC, SPD, and the federal court.

Our last recommendation is that CPC recommends a review of SPD's strategic plans for disparities in the way officers attend, appear, and use force during demonstrations.

This is Along with all the recommendations, another key aspect of highlighting the way that SVD deploys officers and how officers show up, i.e. riot gear, to these demonstrations versus the other 300 demonstrations on average that happen in Seattle on an annual basis.

I know this is a little small, but we wanted to have a slide where we could show all nine recommendations collected on one slide, so all together.

And now if it's okay with you, Council Member Herbold, I'd like to move into questions.

Let me back up so I can just keep this slide up in case anyone would like to see it.

Thank you, Shailene.

So, yeah, I think it's appropriate for us to move into questions.

I know that my office did collect some questions from council members in advance of this meeting and sent those on.

We will, what I'll do in interest of hearing from Council members who may not have Have submitted Questions that are with us today Perhaps we'll we'll just start there And if I don't hear any questions, then I'll I'll move over to the questions that I know were submitted on behalf of Council members and and we'll we'll offer those so with that Does any council member have a question for Shailene or Director Grant?

I have a question if I can.

Thank you Chair Herbold and thank you so much to Shailene and the others from CPC for Pulling together this report and having the recommendations available to us.

Just a couple of questions.

One is there's a couple of references to a community centered process.

And was hoping you'd be able to speak a little bit more about what that means from CPC's perspective.

And then secondly, there's a few references to particularly in recommendation number three where it says the city generally.

And I think there's another place where it just sort of references the city generally.

Yeah, three and four talks about the city should ensure crowd control weapons, etc, etc.

And then the CDC recommends that the city work with us.

And so I'd like to get a little bit more clarity around sort of who CPC defines as being the city in the context of recommendation three and four in order for us to get a better understanding of who the CPC believes should be leading that work or triggering that work into actually happening.

In other words, does SPD have to lead this work?

Is it the responsibility of the mayor to initiate the work?

Whose responsibility is it when some of these recommendations refer to the city generally as opposed to a specific agency?

And then the last question that I have is, one of the recommendations here suggests that there should be an independent agency to evaluate to evaluate some of these issues.

And I'm wondering if the CPC has any initial thoughts on who that third party independent agency should be.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

I appreciate those questions.

If I may, and I also want to give Director Grant if she wants to chime in as well, I would like to say your first and second question really go hand in hand quite well.

And I'll say it this way.

So when we talk about triggering a response or leading the work, a lot of times what ends up happening is that it comes from an agency level first.

And at CPC, and I'm sure our Community Engagement Director, Nick Christian, would say the same thing, is that really the triggering events have already happened, so we're already in it.

And so community-centered, so along with community-centered, the community is already driving the work.

The community is already screaming and shouting at us, we want to be part of the table, and not just a silent partner at the table where We see them, they're in a chair, but they're actually given the mic.

Notes are taken from what they said.

We implement the actions that they're telling us to take.

So the triggering as far as who drives, who leads, we would love that on the agency level to be a collective action.

which is why we talk about the city.

The city should include SPD, council, the mayor's office.

It is not just one body, one agency that needs to drive this work.

Now, while it is SPD that will have to ultimately change their culture, I'm sorry, change their culture, implement change, and see that through and be held fully accountable to their actions.

It is the city, including the CPC, including the accountability partners that have to work in conjunction with each other.

So when we say community centered, what that means is that the community is at the center of the decision making.

They are at the center of driving the discussion, driving the conversation, and letting us know, hey, these are the issues that we want you to tackle.

We heard in the public statement, public comment earlier, what people are focusing on, what makes, what they fear from SPD, what they want from us.

We listen, and at the CPC we have done a good job of listening, but now we put that language in there as centered, as they should be centered with every process, every step that we take to police reform and overhaul every time.

So when we say the city, we're talking about every city agency that has a hand in this fight, as we should alongside with the community.

So your first two questions really go hand in hand.

As far as the third question, independent agency to evaluate issues, that is a fantastic question.

And again, I'll have to refer to the first and second question.

This should also be community centered.

I think at CPC, we have commissioners and staff who have varying levels of understanding, education, expertise, where we are here to advise the community, to listen.

Here's what we think.

And then allow them for the first time to really take that information, have all of it, have a transparent process.

Let them tell us, here's what we want as far as agency, as far as process, including that independent agency that you're speaking of.

I think collaboration can look very different in these days.

So I'll leave it at that.

But community-centered in all three of these questions, let them decide.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Are there raised hands?

All right, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

And I really appreciate everyone from the Community Police Commission, not only for the presentation that they have prepared for today, but also the ongoing work.

I just, I mean, first of all, yeah, I could not agree more that We have to see as an elected body, the city council has the obligation, the mayor's office, Mayor Durkin has the obligation to actually listen to voices of the community and listening to voices of the community doesn't mean just just offering them space where they can talk about how the police violence is affecting them, but actually acting on them.

And, you know, on behalf of the thousands of people who have shown such courage, I'm so proud of the bill that we were able to pass.

I mean, the ban itself, the ban on crowd control weapons or so-called crowd control weapons itself was a result of my office listening to the people in the community And it was, I believe, passed unanimously or almost unanimously by the City Council.

I can't recall exactly.

But I know that the majority of the City Council stood strongly in favor of that.

And that, in my view, that is a a positive example of community-centered approach that can be taken by elected representatives.

So one thing I just wanted to clarify from you is, in your report, you say that you would like the community police commission is requesting the office of police accountability, officer inspector general, and the CPC themselves each submit recommendations that suggest policy revisions to the SPD manual for use of less lethal weapons for the purpose of crowd dispersal.

I'm just asking to clarify, because you haven't said that explicitly, do you mean, which is what I would favor, of course, do you mean that those revisions in the policy manual should be made in accordance with the ordinance that was passed?

Or do you mean just in general?

Because that was the whole purpose of that ordinance is to seriously address, not just talk about it and make some minimal changes, but seriously address the violence that was being directed at protesters.

And I really appreciate it on that note.

Just in closing, I would also say that I really like that in your presentation, you first started by noting that harm is being done by police violence to the community.

And that is why I never say crowd control.

I always say so-called crowd control because the whole premise is mistaken and is dishonest when the police say, well, we had to use these, we had to deploy these weapons because we were facing some situation that needed to be controlled.

But that is far from the truth.

The overwhelming majority of the situations is when they are, you know, instigating the violence against a peaceful protest movement.

And that is not just me saying it, you know, thousands of people will attest to that based on their own personal experience.

So if you could just clarify that.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you for that question, Council Member Sawant.

So In the revision of the use of force policies, I'm speaking about specifically the revision of those policies, yes, should always fall in line with ordinances and legislation that has been passed.

But as we have seen and as you have noted, and as we know, the presentation, things have been tumultuous, very different, violent in the last few months in Seattle and nationwide, but local to Seattle, very much so, and have been felt by every Seattleite in the surrounding Seattle area.

So what we're also proposing is also a deep dive, an overhaul with partners, with community center, again, at the table, really looking at these policies and not just from an ivory tower academic stance of, here's we pulled facts and figures and here's what we think.

We have the statements from people on how the operation of those policies have failed them.

So what you're espousing is exactly what we're saying.

Let's take that deep dive and let's look at it through the newer eyes of what's been transpired in the past few months.

So yes to both.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, I saw your hand was up before.

Council Member Morales?

No?

You're on mute, I'm on mute.

I'm going to wait until the, I want to hear all the presentations and then I'll have some questions.

That's fine too.

I just want to lift up some of the questions that were submitted in advance from council members and specifically questions for the CPC.

One question relates to the fact that the OPA report cites that noise flash diversionary devices, otherwise known as flashbangs, are more powerful than blast balls.

While the CPC's position is they don't believe blast balls should be used, and just wondering the position on flashbangs versus blast balls and just wanting a little bit more understanding about that given the perception that the flashbangs are more powerful.

Also, there's a question of whether or not whether or not we should consider changing the title of the ordinance itself, because the title is crowd control weapons.

And as we have heard from all three accountability bodies, as well as other stakeholders, these weapons are used in multiple contexts.

not only crowd control, and if we're going to regulate these weapons, I believe we might need to consider whether or not we have a title that broadly explains that we are regulating these weapons broadly, not just in one particular use.

And the third question that was submitted in advance relates specifically to the policy of declaring unlawful assemblies when the commander sees, the incident commander sees that there are acts or conduct within the group of four or more persons that create a substantial risk of causing injury to any person or substantial harm to property.

What elements does the CPC think should be considered when determining an unlawful assembly?

Thank you.

Thank you for those questions, Council Member Herbold.

So let me work in a slightly different order.

If that's okay, I'd like to go with question two, then one, and then three in that just particular order.

So the question about just do we believe that the title should be changed to one that regulates weapons of less lethal force, given that these weapons are used in context?

Better not crowd control.

So just to start off the naming of this ordinance is completely up to your discretion as counsel.

However, our stance is that some appropriate and heavily regulated.

less lethal options should be available to officers outside of protests and demonstrations, such as patrol operations or in extreme situations, hostage situations as well.

Furthermore, those weapons should only be available to lessen the overall amount of force that officers must use when facing those kinds of incidents.

So that's the first part.

The second part, the question about the flash bangs versus glass balls and what tools would we recommend as a commission for SPD to use for less lethal options in patrol operations.

So under SPD policy, I think it's 8.200 that describes the use of force tools.

It is clear that the main purpose for SPD having blast balls in their arsenal is to use them in crowd control situations.

We have seen the dangerous results of blast balls, including near death of a protester who was struck by one in the chest.

That's why we called for their ban.

Flash bangs, on the other hand, are not mentioned.

and any crowd control or department wide policy.

They are part of SWAT and are generally not used during protests.

So CPC as a commission overall, we have not reviewed their use.

If that is something you're requesting, we're happy to do that.

But that is why we did not review.

So the CPC, we fully support the council's ban on less lethal weapons used for the purpose of crown control or protest suppression.

However, like I said earlier, we also acknowledge that outside of protests, for example, during patrol operations, less lethal options such as tasers, pepper spray, and some very extraordinary extreme measures, 40 millimeter launchers may be necessary.

And the key part here is that as long as SPD has strong policies and accountability measures in place, Seattle has seen situations in the past where an officer does not bring their mandated less lethal device and it has had deadly results.

So again, it is very important to also have those strong policies and strong accountability mechanisms that they're going to be used.

That being said, SPD should fully eliminate their ownership and use of tear gas and blast balls in line with CPC recommendations going back for several years.

They are indiscriminate weapons.

Tear gas is banned in war.

Blast balls can be deadly and in SPD's arsenal specifically used during protests.

And for the last question, if I may do that, talking about what elements does CPC think should be considered when determining unlawful assembly instead of a peaceful protest?

To the CPC, it is clear even from a cursory reading that the four or more person standard is far too low.

That effectively enables police to declare constitutionally protected rights no longer exist if one person in a crowd of thousands does something wrong.

Again, that standard is way too low.

In our report, the CPC recommends that the council, CPC, OPA, OIG, and other stakeholders come together to set clear, strong, and high standards for when police and city officials are able to declare unlawful assemblies, riots, and then institute curfews.

We want that to be a collaborative process to set those standards.

Though what is clear is that there needs to be a pressing reason, likely involving the preservation of life, and it needs to be possible to comply with that order.

As we saw in the early days of the protests, the mayor's office instituted a curfew that gave people only minutes to comply, and then effectively turning many of the peaceful protesters who were still on the streets into criminals.

Then that curfew was left in place for days long after any claims of violence could be made, voiding First Amendment rights in the prime hours of a mass movement.

The previously instituted curfew not only infringed on the ability for protesters to assemble, it also exacerbated the frustration protesters expressed of not being heard by the city.

We did not center the community.

we need to do a better job of guaranteeing constitutional rights in our state's laws, policies, and practices.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other questions from council members?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the invitation to participate today, knowing that I'm not a member of this committee, but appreciate the option to weigh in after others have commented.

I really appreciate being able to hear the presentation today.

I guess I have 2 questions.

The 1st, 1 is a clarification on the last response that you just gave to.

I believe you said your strong recommendation still remains, even though there's all of these recommendations here, you're unequivocally saying that we should eliminate the use of tear gas and blast balls.

Is that correct?

I think that's important to lift up because as we are engaged in this process of continuing to pull individuals together, coalitions as we have, representing hundreds of organizations and bringing in more individuals into the conversation.

I think that it's important for us to hear and lift up that recommendation that immediately we should be eliminating the use of tear gas and blast balls, not only because it's causing physical harm to people.

We know that these items have been banned in And we are in the midst of a pandemic that affects the lungs, as I talk about all the time, where tear gas is deployed.

We know that it can create individuals who are more susceptible to COVID at this point.

So I think that that's a really important recommendation that you've made in the past, that you're making again, that we implement.

My question as well is regarding timing, especially as I look at, you know, recommendation number four in terms of when a, quote, riot is declared.

I'm very concerned as the Seattle Times has reported just four days ago that the term riot continues to be used even though it's not declared or not defined in statute.

And riots are being used as justification to deploy tear gas and blast balls continuously.

Do you have a recommendation for when not only all of these recommendations that you've listed on the slide should be deployed, but a recommendation specific to ending the use of declared riots until we can get agreed upon term because what is in statute is criminal mischief.

And obviously that would include fires and broken windows like we've seen.

You mentioned some extreme situations like hostages.

I can understand in those extreme situations where certain weapons may be necessary, but when we're talking about crowd control and the term riot being used on a frequent basis, do you have recommendations for what to do in the interim and how fast we should be moving to stop the use of tear gas and blast balls?

So I'm going to answer this a little bit.

And then I also want to reserve the right to also confer with co-chairs.

Some of this we've discussed, but also I want to make sure that I get this right and we're happy to respond again publicly.

So when we're talking about the use of less lethal weapons and saying some of these can be used, that is strictly outside of demonstrations, constitutionally protected behavior.

This is just in patrol operations that we say that officers might need some of these at their disposal, so they're not just left with a firearm.

So I think you said it, but I just want to make that also very clear.

As far as timing, we're talking about the use of tear gas and blast balls.

When we made that recommendation in 2015, 2016, that was effective immediately.

We said right now, stop this practice immediately.

Those are very harmful, very dangerous.

And as you pointed out with tear gas, we are in the middle of a pandemic that is largely respiratory.

So that use is completely inappropriate.

But so are blast balls.

So that for us immediately, as in right now, moving forward on how in the interim, That timing is one of those things that if we were to have to give a time frame, that is something I would love for that to come from our co-chairs or from our director, but what I will say and what we have.

said repeatedly over and over again is that weapons during a constitutionally protected behavior or assembly demonstration, protests, whatever language you'd like to use, all of this is the same.

These are rights that people have.

And unless there is the threat of imminent harm to persons, then they should not be used.

This standard of four persons is far too low.

We've seen our demonstrations.

We've seen our process.

There are hundreds and thousands of people.

How are you able to discern?

We have counted, and the police officers that show up, we have met the bar of four people.

They are causing what we consider mayhem.

And now we are using tear gas, blast balls, 40 millimeter launchers.

We are, you know, the officers are skidding their bikes into protests as we saw on Monday.

These kind of violent action behavior completely erode community trust.

Is there community trust?

So as far as timing on when we should act on any of this, it should be today, right now.

The CPC is here and ready and wanting to do this work and wanting to lift up the community and point out to the city, here's the community, we would love to help with these conversations, let them speak and respond to them.

As far as timing, it's imminent, it's right now.

I think giving it a time frame of two days or four days or six weeks, I think to the community that might seem arbitrary.

But I can also refer to the commission as a whole and we're happy to get back to you in a public manner as well.

Very much.

Thank you, Shailene.

You're welcome.

Council Member Sawant, and then I would like to move on to OPA's presentation.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I also wanted to echo my appreciation to the CPC for making it very clear, crystal clear, that in your opinion, tear gas and blast walls should be banned, period, and appreciate the evidence you cited in showing why they can be so deadly.

And also, I think you've touched on a very important point, which is, that we recognize, we acknowledge, and in fact we want the police, and in fact that has been a problem, that they haven't used, haven't done this, which is what I'm about to say, which is that when they are carrying out patrol operations, we want them to prioritize life and make sure that if there are situations that warrant the use of some sort of force, then it should be less than lethal force.

And so in that sense, we want the city's policies and my office absolutely as socialists, we want the policies to be determined in such a way that it actually makes reasonable and very humane policies possible.

And that means we have to achieve both.

And I don't think it's an impossible thing.

And it's a specious argument, very dangerous and specious argument when the police department and when Mayor Durkin and some other corporate politicians around the nation, they make it seem like you can't achieve both, which is that make sure that the police department has at its disposal and insists on using and has a policy manual that dictates this policy of using less lethal weapons when some force is absolutely called for in patrol operations, although there's a whole thing to be discussed there as well, but I won't get into that.

And at the same time that our democracies, our cities should allow the constitutionally protected right to protest, to gather on the streets, all of that to be enabled as well.

And I just wanted to note in that context that uh that was precisely why hundreds of community members pushed back against an amendment that would have actually you know rather than actually clarify those issues actually make we don't want the policy to be crafted in such a way that there is that is very open to question and that the police can say well you know uh i felt under threat or i needed to do this and that's why i did it i wasn't against the constitutionally protected rights we have to be crystal clear about those things and that the policy should be determined in such a way that for the most part, it is ironclad, that the rights of people are protected and at the same time, we're not taking away any ability to actually make sure that life is not lost but situations are brought under control.

But the cases in which the police say that, there's nothing to be brought under control.

I mean, I've personally attended hundreds of protests and my experience has almost always been the mayhem was started by the police, not that they were responding to some mayhem or riot.

So I really appreciate you saying that because I think noting that is very important for future policymaking and also how this ban will be implemented going forward.

Thank you so much.

Thank you Council Member Sawant.

Let's turn it over to Director Meyerberg if we could.

Thank you.

I'm going to try to share my screen.

Is that working for everyone.

Yes.

Okay.

So thank you all for having all of us here today.

I appreciate obviously getting the time to present on this report to council and being allowed to to ultimately be part of the process and redeveloping this policy.

As you've seen from the CPC's presentation, as you'll see from the OIG's presentation, there are some differences in opinion between the three accountability entities into whether less lethal devices should be reauthorized, if so, in what capacity, and how they should be utilized.

But I think where we can join is that what's been happening right now is not working, and there has to be changes with these policies.

And I think we're willing, just like the CPC said, to participate in moving that forward.

So I'm not gonna spend much time on the background, just because it was pretty well covered by Council Member Herbold.

So I'm gonna move right to our process.

So during OPA's analysis of these issues and in response to the council's request, we interviewed SB personnel that were involved in the protest.

We interviewed people at SPOC, which is the Special Operations Center.

We talked to OPA staff about what they were seeing in the investigations that we had completed thus far.

And for most of those cases, we were at a fairly preliminary stage.

We were able to develop some trends that we were seeing throughout the cases.

We also looked at studies on the use of impact weapons, the various policies, the SWAT manual, the incident action plans that were created for the early days of the protest.

We looked at use of force data that was generated by officers in response to these protests, as well as both community member and body-worn video that showed what was happening on the ground.

We also looked at some past uses of force in now non crowd control context to inform our decision as to whether these things should be reauthorized for patrol operations.

So first and foremost, our recommendation was that all less lethal tools be authorized for non crowd control situations.

And when I say non crowd control situations, what I mean is either patrol or SWAT operations.

I think it's important to note within that first recommendation that for CS gas, which is tear gas, We are not saying that it should be authorized for patrol.

In our mind, patrol should never be using CS gas, and frankly, the times that CS gas is used should be incredibly limited.

What we are saying, though, is that there are times that SWAT may use CS gas, and that is used in a very targeted manner, often for barricaded subjects and for the sole purpose of avoiding the need to use a higher level or deadly force.

So, I just want to be clear that what we're not saying is that CS gas should be available to patrol.

It should never be available to patrol.

The second point was reauthorizing the use with new restrictions that are set forth in our memo of all less lethal tools except for CS gas for crowd control situations.

Within that, We, we came up with recommendations and again these are fairly preliminary because the recommendations are coming up as we see them.

So again, we're continually going through our cases we're continually evaluating what went right and what went wrong to build on these recommendations but I think first and foremost, even if we do reauthorize these tools and that would be up to the council the federal court and others.

What we would say is that new restrictions need to be answered.

One of those restrictions would be preventing individual officers from using less lethal tools solely to prevent property destruction.

And I think this goes to the point that for these tools to be used, there really needs to be an imminent threat of harm to persons.

And obviously there are costs associated with the breaking of windows and the destruction of property.

But when you balance the risk of harm from less lethal tools, I think it's important to focus on harm to people before they're utilized.

One gap that we saw, at least preliminarily, is that the plans that were being generated by incident commanders were not particularly detailed.

And we think that that's a problem.

And it prevents officers having guidance to know when they should and shouldn't be using these tools.

So we would very much urge the department to create more detailed planning.

And that planning would also be available to the public through public disclosure and hopefully voluntary disclosure by the department.

We also saw that these protests were different than other protests insofar as they were focused towards law enforcement and real anger towards law enforcement.

So what we believe is that SPD needs to consider where this is the case, minimizing their presence and minimizing their interaction with protesters.

And that may mean staying to the side.

It may mean not being front and center in these protests because just being there may exacerbate the process and escalate the protests.

Another thing that we've seen is a lack of communication between demonstrators, police, and vice versa.

What we're suggesting is to have more robust communication, to have a portable public address system, to give orders to disperse, to let people know what's going on in the crowds.

I think it's obviously unfair to expect that if you have a crowd of 2,000 that everyone in that crowd may hear in order to disperse.

So ensuring that that is done effectively and to allow people the ability to hear the order and then leave.

What we also are requesting, and this is not something that we have necessarily recommendations on right now, but we would like SPD, working with experts, working with the CPC, OIG, with community groups, is to explore the feasibility of tactics to allow them to arrest people within crowds that are engaged in criminal activity so they don't have to disperse the entirety of a crowd.

And I think that's what we saw with some of the early days of the protests where you had thousands of people and perhaps, you know, 2530 people in those crowds engaging in criminal activity.

But the result was to disperse the entire crowd instead of trying to extract the people that were conducting the criminal activity.

This is difficult and I don't know of any department now that knows how to do this or has done this.

in a good way, but what we're asking is to think outside the box and to explore tactics that could allow this, again, to continue to allow the people that are peaceful to demonstrate and exert their First Amendment rights.

The last point was the executive approval process.

We don't think that this is a good idea for a couple reasons.

First, First, it was unclear to us whether what was being asked for by the council was a process that the mayor would approve the use of less lethal tools or whether the executive approval meant command staff approval.

If it's the mayor, we don't think it's a good idea to have a political entity be making decisions as to when less lethal tools are used, particularly as they may occur during the middle of the night or they may require expertise and knowledge that's not available to that political individual.

So we think that's a bad idea.

We also think that there could be potential conflicts with the city charter that would have to be fixed before that could be done.

So that's our presentation in a nutshell.

I'm happy to answer any questions, including the questions that were posed to us earlier by the council.

Thank you.

Let's start like we did with the last presentation with inviting questions from council members who are present.

And then after that, I will refer to the questions that were submitted in advance.

Looking for raised hands.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I guess I'm not surprised by what Director Meyerberg has just said because it's not new what we've heard, but it is, I still find it quite stunning and alarming at the same time.

First of all, I would note that this presentation by Director Meyerberg did not start with the important point, the premise that a lot of harm has been done to peaceful protesters, including all the way up until a few days ago.

There was no mention of that whatsoever.

And my main point here would be the Office of Professional Accountability's mandate is to evaluate police misconduct.

I want to know how is it that the OPA has actually done their job before they start advocating for cops to have more weapons?

how many officers has the OPA held accountable for the violence and the lies against the protesters that resulted in 18,000 complaints?

What did the OPA do about the officer who maced a seven-year-old in the face?

I mean, Director Marber, you're advocating for officers to be held independently accountable.

What have you done to hold officers accountable for any of those 18,000 complaints?

And how is it that You know, not having done any of that work you are you are basically saying that any kind of restrictions on the police, despite this, just, you know, mountain of evidence of egregious behavior from them is going to be problematic you're also raising.

You know, you're saying, oh, I don't know what this means.

I don't know how to implement this.

I mean, I don't take this at face value.

This is problematic.

And it's really problematic and deeply troubling, given where we are.

This is not 10 years ago.

This is today, after everything that's happened.

So I would like some honest answers here.

Thank you.

You asked me a lot of questions there, so I'll try to answer each one of the questions.

Before you start, I do want to say that for I want you to hear Director Meyerberg that I heard you preface the beginning of your comments with the fact that you've reviewed the complaints that you've been receiving.

and that is those complaints that allowed you to identify particular patterns and trends.

So I just want reflect, you may not use the exact words that Council Member Sawant would have liked you to use, but I feel like you conveyed the message that the complaints that you are receiving from the public on the 100 days of protest are absolutely informing the recommendations that you are making.

And I want the record to reflect that.

So what I'll say is that thank you Councilmember Herbold and thank you Councilmember Sawant for your questions.

I mean I think what I would say is that you're correct that we haven't issued any findings as far as these cases go because We've received 87 cases for now, which keep growing.

We are in the process of issuing findings.

We expect that the first round of findings will come out next Friday, and those will be made public to everyone, including the city council.

Within those cases, there will be cases in which officers are found to have violated policy.

There's also cases in which they'll be found to have not violated policy.

There are cases in which protesters have been injured, and that is extremely unfortunate.

That's not something that we are happy about.

That's not something that we want to continue and that we are going to do our best.

Obviously, we are only one part of the system, but we will do our best to hold officers accountable for those acts.

That being said, I don't look at it as a binary conversation like I think you're trying to create right now.

From my perspective, there are protests where on some occasions, like we saw on May 30th and May 31st, where they may turn into scenes of violence, where you may have cars being burned in the street.

There may be times that SPD will be required to disperse those protests.

What I'm saying is that there should be tools that allow SPD to do so.

I'm not saying that the usage of those tools in every situation is okay.

It's not.

But I think to take all those tools away and to expect that the city, if in a dire situation, could be kept safe, I think that is an unreasonable request.

I also think that the ordinance that was passed by the city council was incredibly broad insofar as it removed tools from patrol operations.

You said in response, council members want to to Shailene's comments that you wanted an ability for patrol officers to use less than deadly force in situations where someone presents a threat in patrol operations.

Without the less lethal tools, it's very difficult to do so.

For example, the 40 millimeter launcher, that is utilized for if someone had a knife, for example, was on the street and they were 25 to 100 feet away from a patrol officer, if they were trained, they would be able to use that device to disarm the person.

That is the purpose of it.

It's purpose to prevent higher levels of force.

So I don't agree with, I think, your characterization of our presentation.

I think from OPA's perspective, we are concerned with what's going on, both in the level of force use, the amount of force use.

We're also concerned with some of the damage and violence that we've seen on both sides.

So our job is to evaluate these cases and to look at the video and to look at all the evidence and to make conclusions that we haven't issued those conclusions yet.

I certainly apologize, but but frankly, we are swamped with complaints.

And as you mentioned, we received 18000 individual complaints that we had to go through one by one.

So I'm not sure if I answered your questions.

If you have other follow up questions you want to ask me.

I do want to follow up very quickly on this.

That's OK.

Yes, go ahead.

Yeah, I just want to, I mean, I, again, I, I, I find your response also unacceptable director Marburg.

You say that I'm trying to create a binary picture.

That's not at all true.

Everything that I have said has been based on statistical evidence.

I'm sure.

You understand statistics.

This is a question of statistics.

It's a question of where does the overwhelming evidence point to what that is the point.

And so you are in fact portraying a picture that is not existing and it's hypothetical that that the police department.

And many politicians use, but that does not conform with reality.

What the reality shows is that this is not a both sides situation, as you said, where there are problems on both sides.

That is completely in.

denial of the overwhelming statistical evidence from Seattle and from every other city that as when you look at protest movements, overwhelmingly, the violence and the force comes from the police department.

And also they have the weapons on their side.

I mean, so I would, for example, I would not consider somebody through a water bottle at a police office.

I don't advocate for those things, absolutely.

And if I'm there, I will advocate for not doing that.

But the point is, where does the overwhelming violence come from?

Ordinary people don't go around with tear gas canisters and blast balls and rubber bullets and all that sort of thing.

They're protesting.

And as I said, it's a question of statistics.

In the overwhelming majority of the situation, what happens is peaceful protesters are targeted, movements are targeted.

It's not about individual protesters.

It's when it becomes a movement that it becomes a threat to the state, and that's when the police forces are deployed.

And the same sort of dishonesty is being used even with the less luther.

Yeah, I stand by what I said.

I absolutely think that we need a reasonable and humane policymaking approach.

But look at all the deaths that have happened in the hands of the police through routine patrol operations.

Look at Charlene Elias.

I mean, there was no law.

And there isn't one that says you should not use less than lethal approach to make sure that the situation is brought under control without loss of life.

So why are these lives being lost?

So there's no accountability there as well.

So while obviously we have agreement on the general premise, I think that there is a big distance in what you think actually needs to be done.

And I'm sure you're reflecting what Mayor Durkin's position is also.

And it's not just about you, it's also about political officials, you know, the buck stops with elected officials.

And my position and the community's position and the movement's position is coming from a review of actual evidence which does not support the way you are

And I'm hearing what you're saying.

My problem is I don't know what you're talking about as far as statistics go.

The evidence that's being reviewed is being reviewed by my office.

There may be people that are also looking at the cases on their own.

We are evaluating each of the cases that have been in the media.

We are evaluating them and not just looking at One piece of video, we're looking at all the community member videos that we can find.

I'm not looking at one piece of the video.

No, I understand, but you keep saying statistics.

I don't know what you're talking about.

We're looking at the same evidence.

We haven't yet reached findings.

If after the fact, you think that the findings are wrong, I welcome you to then call them out.

But at this point, we haven't yet reached findings, so I'm not quite sure how you've reached a definitive determination on these things.

We're still looking at the cases.

So, so, okay, let, let you, you look at the cases and you tell us your findings.

I'm happy to come back to the discussion at that time, but I also think it is, it would be obtuse of any of us to pretend that this is some, all sides are bad kind of situation.

It is not that kind of situation we have seen.

When I say overwhelming evidence, I'm talking about the overwhelming majority of accounts from ordinary people.

People who weren't part of movements have testified in the hundreds in public comment, something this year in response to the George Floyd protest, something that I haven't seen happen before.

People have personally said, I have not been part of any political movement, but I'm here because my baby couldn't breathe because of the tear gas that was used.

I looked up from my flat on Capitol Hill and I saw the police starting the violence.

So it's not one person who's saying that, it's overwhelming numbers of people.

So, and this is something that we see happening in every city.

The police are targeting protest movements.

It's something we have seen for decades.

It's not about today.

So while I agree that you should review those cases, and I'm happy to come back to the discussion, I also think it would be obtuse for you to say that, well, we don't know what overwhelming evidence you're talking about.

We're talking about what happens on a day-to-day basis.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Are there other council members that have questions right now?

Council President Gonzalez, please.

Thank you.

I appreciate an opportunity to perhaps refocus on us on the issues at hand here.

I'll just say that I just found that line of questioning, not necessarily productive and helpful to moving us forward in.

Identifying clear solutions to the issues that we are being asked to consider, which is. in the instance of crowd control issues, what kind of less lethal weapons should be used, if any at all.

And I appreciate, Director Meyerberg, the fact that you have spent, you and your staff have spent many, many, many hours As an independent agency that is civilian led, looking at the evidence and materials available to you, many materials and items that are not available to me as a council member and to many members of the public.

I certainly have not had the benefit of reviewing 18,000 individual complaints and associated supporting information to each of those complaints and so I'm not going to sit here as a council member pretending like I know more than you because I don't as it relates to those 18,000 civilian complaints that were filed with you as a result of what I think we all agree were instances of atrocious incidents in the field that were rightly referred to your office and are intended to be reviewed by your office.

Now, I continue to stand by your independence.

I disagree with the ongoing attempt to undermine our accountability system for political purposes, and I just really reject That attempt and and I apologize and feel regretful that it's occurring it is appropriate for us as policymakers to ask you all tough questions to make sure that you stay accountable and to make sure that you stay independent.

But I also want to say on the record that I still have a high level of confidence in the Office of Police Accountability.

I have a high level of confidence in the Office of Inspector General.

And I have a high level of confidence in the Seattle Community Police Commission to do what we asked you all to do when we unanimously passed the Police Accountability Ordinance in 2017. I want to focus us a little bit more on one of the big, the statement that I heard you make at the top of your presentation was that even though there are some micro differences between the three reports from the accountability entities, at the end of the day, you, like the others, believe that the status quo of how SPD is managing crowds is not working and there needs to be change.

Did I hear that correctly?

Yes, agreed.

Okay, and one of the things that I'd like to hear more from you about is this issue of, is this issue related to the standard of when crowd control weapons should be used.

One of the things you said is that, one of the recommendations was, look, we shouldn't be using these kinds of indiscriminate weapons when there is Only property damage occurring.

And this has been a subject of great debate amongst the city.

Around, you know, sort of, there is 1, 1 spectrum that says.

You know, property should be protected at all costs.

And there's another side of that spectrum that says.

Property damage should be tolerated because we don't want to we don't we don't want to put property damage above.

life and serious bodily harm.

So I just want from your seat as an expert in this area, I want you to have an opportunity to talk to us in more detail about what you mean when you say that these weapons shouldn't be used unless there is imminent harm to people.

And perhaps you can give us some examples and some more texture around that nuanced analysis.

So thank you for the question.

So from right now that what the policy says is that a command staff member can give an order to disperse and then utilize less lethal tools.

But it also allows under I think it's 14 0 9 0. It allows individual officers to make a discretionary decision to use less lethal tools, including blast balls and pepper spray.

And it allows them to do so not just when there's a threat to safety, a threat to a person's safety or imminent threat of danger, but also for property damage.

What we would say is that remove that individual discretion from officers in that regard.

All that's going to do in our minds is to create more wiggle room and more confusion for officers as to when they can utilize blast balls.

And blast balls are really the one, and we're not minimizing, and I want to be clear, we're not minimizing the risk of harm from blast balls.

There is a risk of harm, and that is an uncomfortable risk, and we don't like that risk.

But what we are doing is balancing that risk against other risks of harm to people.

So how do you balance those two?

And that's kind of what we're struggling with in our report and in our evaluation of this policy.

So what we're saying is remove the individual discretion from officers to utilize glass balls or really any less lethal tools solely to stop a window from being broken or from a rock being thrown at a store front or a dumpster being moved in the middle of the street.

Stop doing that.

If there is, for example, officers for example are though getting hit in the face by rocks or in the body with rocks and they need to move the crowd back we don't think they should be prohibited from using a blast ball to move the crowd back that being said you cannot use blast balls in a manner that's not been trained and that's not appropriate and what we've seen for some of these cases is you are seeing the use of blast balls in potentially inappropriate manners.

Those cases are going to result in discipline, and those cases will likely then result in other policy changes.

For example, you should not be throwing a blast ball at another human being.

Blast balls are not purposed to target people, but to roll them on the ground to create space to prevent you from being hit with an object.

And I'm not talking about just a water bottle.

I'm talking about rocks.

I'm talking about bricks.

I'm talking about other things that have occurred during these protests.

That could be the place to use those tools.

Again, if the council is going to go in the direction that these tools are banned, let's work on a way to make that happen that's consistent with best practices, consistent with the consent decree process, and that can be approved by all the parties that need to approve it before it goes into law.

And we're happy to be part of that process.

We agree with the CPC that the community needs to be involved in that process too.

We cannot just do this at a government policy level because I think that hasn't worked in the past.

Let's not continue to perpetuate what doesn't work.

I would take the CPC's lead on how to integrate community in that process.

I don't know, that's not my expertise, but I certainly think that that is important.

Perhaps that will come out during the central event review that the OIG will be putting on and that these are all things that will come to light and policy recommendations will flow from that.

But again, I think it's fundamentally, I think where most of us are on the same page is that We should not be using these types of tools that have a risk of harm solely to prevent the breaking of windows, even though that has a risk or a cost to other people, too.

You just have to balance the need to protect that against the possible harm that can flow.

Yeah, I appreciate that additional information and clarification as it relates to.

Riots and the declaration of riots 1 of the thing that you set 1 of the things that you said is that you do not agree that there should be an executive approval process.

It was my understanding, and I could be wrong, so please let me know if I am, that there was some statutory language that at least seems to create an inference that there already is an executive approval process for when a riot is declared.

And so I wanted to hear a little bit more from you about sort of how do you reconcile your opinion with that and sort of how do you help us sort of thread the needle around all of these moving pieces as it relates to what I think is the goal here, which is how do we make the process and the standards for declaring a riot, which sort of really does create a massive exception for when these tools can be used, how do we create an increased level of transparency and accountability and standardization in those contexts in order to feel confident and give the public confidence that when the police does declare a riot, that there has been some due process and diligence executed before getting to that point?

Yeah, so I think one of the issues was, I think, you know, when you frame it in that respect, I think I understand more what the ask is.

I think part of the confusion that I had was it wasn't clear whether the council was asking for an executive approval process for the actual utilization of less legal tools.

I think when we discussed it internally as the three accountability entities, there was some confusion on what was being asked for.

I don't think it would be a bad idea to have some sort of an executive approval for the riot declaration insofar as you're right.

I mean, the executive does already issue emergency orders.

That would be, for example, would be curfews or restriction of firearms.

You could do that.

I mean, I think the concern that OPA had was are you having mayoral staff take a phone call and making a tactical decision as to whether or not they're going to be using less lethal tools.

So say, yep, use blast balls at this intersection or use pepper spray at this intersection.

That, from our perspective, we did not think that was a good idea, and we thought that was potentially violative of the city charter.

However, I don't have the same concerns if you were to have the mayor or a mayor staffer or mayor's legal counsel a pine in real time on a riot declaration, particularly given the CPC's criticism and I think the OIG's criticism too of how broad that is.

So particularly if it was narrowed to a situation where there really was a true riot, I think that would actually be a good idea to have some sort of a process reviewed by the executive.

So perhaps we, I misunderstood the ask, so apologies for that.

Yeah, no, I don't I'm not sure that you misunderstood the ask.

I think.

I think what I was trying to get is an understanding of of whether that was.

your position that an executive approval process shouldn't apply in any context, or if it was just limited to the tactical questions that you've highlighted, and I appreciate that.

And those I view under the purview of the chief of police pursuant to charter, and that was the concern that I had, is if you take that ability away from the chief, do you violate the charter?

You could obviously change the charter, but I worry that there's some conflict.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn to some of the questions that were submitted in advance by council members.

The first is that both OPA and OIG reports recommend that the council reauthorize all less lethal weapons for non-crowd control situations.

I'm just wondering, What level of definition do you recommend that we use for defining non-crowd control situations?

Do you recommend that we define them?

And if so, do you recommend that we do so as a way of describing the situations as you have a hostage scenario, armed barricade suspect, suicide by cop?

Or do you recommend that we define them as to the who, i.e.

SWAT?

I just want to get all three of these questions out.

The second question is what recommendations does OPA have for targeted arrests during demonstrations in response to law enforcement?

And the last relates back to the question of blast balls.

would like to understand a little bit more about why, given that the OIG states that blast balls have the potential to be indiscriminate, inflicting pain and potential injury on peaceful protesters, and the CPC of course has a long-standing concurrence with this opinion as it relates to blast holes.

I actually think their recommendations on blast balls go back to 2017. Um, and believe they should be banned for both non crowd and crowd situations.

Just, um, asking that you get a little bit more into the details about why you sure.

You reinstated for crowd control functions.

So I'll say for you.

I think you could use categories for when the less legal tools were used outside of crowd management situations.

I think the categories in the email or the email questions were a little bit narrow.

So for example, an armed and barricaded subject, that would not necessarily include someone who has a knife on a city street that's being confronted by patrol.

Patrol officers are trained, not all, but there are certain patrol officers that are trained to utilize that 40 millimeter launcher.

And in my mind, when I think about the less legal tools that are banned, that for me is the most important because I think that is sometimes the difference between someone being shot and killed versus shot with the foam bullet to drop a weapon so I think if you were to include categories or to include the people that utilize them that's fine I just would want to work with the council and with you know other stakeholders on what those categories are sorry you're muted councilmember

The reason why I ask is this is a concept that I attempted to introduce in the original passage of the legislation, the recognition that the use of these weapons in non-crowd control situations might be warranted in, whereas in my belief, they were not warranted in use in the instance of demonstrations.

And when I tried to introduce that concept into the ordinance itself, you recall, and as Council Member Sawant, again, Amanda, mentioned today, there's concern that just simply saying non-crowd control situations will then become this huge loophole.

And so I do agree that it's important to figure out a way to define it in a way that non-crowd control situations is not abused.

Yeah, I think it's definable and certainly we could work with you on what that looks like.

I mean, just anecdotally, I mean, we looked at, when we were analyzing the various less lethal tools, we looked at 11, the 11 incidents in which the 40 millimeter launcher was used in patrol operations.

It's not used very often.

But in most of those situations, there was someone that was armed with a knife and it was able to disarm the person without any further force being used.

So we would just want to make sure that the tool, and I'm happy to provide you all with those cases if it would be helpful to the council, but I think it's an important tool to utilize to ensure that less harm is used.

So however you're going to present it in the ordinance, and I think that's within the council's discretion, I would just leave discretion for officers to utilize it in situations where someone is armed with a deadly weapon and it's the sole alternative other than a higher level of force.

So however you want to characterize that, that's what I would strongly suggest.

The other questions, there was a question that we received about the different recommendations that were made both by OPA and the other accountability entities.

Would it make sense to create a new policy?

Absolutely, you could do that.

You could also amplify 14.090, which is the existing crowd management policy.

Regardless, we very much would want, certainly we'd want our recommendations to be considered, if not implemented, and whether in a new policy or that policy, that would be fine.

For blast balls, just going back to what I discussed before, I agree.

I mean, I don't think it's disputable that blast balls can cause injuries and do cause injuries.

Like, that is a fact.

they're all less lethal tools can cause injuries.

So pepper spray, I think we've seen injuries caused from pepper spray and that reaction to the pepper spray.

The foam tipped from the 40 millimeter launcher can cause big bruises on people's legs.

They do cause injuries.

The question is not for us whether they cause injuries because we understand that they do, but are there other options where if a crowd is becoming violent and is, and I'm not saying that all crowds do, but if it happens that the crowd does, How is SPD going to disperse that crowd if they have to?

Again, putting in new restrictions, lessening the opportunities for the crowds to be dispersed because the riot will be more narrowly construed.

Eliminating individual discretion for line officers.

Even if all those things were put into place, there still will be times that a crowd may have to be dispersed.

And how are we going to have officers do that?

And if there is a risk of harm to people, how do we make sure that it can be done in a way that doesn't involve officers going into the crowd and going hands-on with people?

That is not a good situation, and that's where we got into trouble, I think, in the first place in 2011 when DOJ came in, to be criticized for the use of impact weapons and batons.

We don't want to be using batons.

So I think that's the struggle that we're having.

I don't like blast balls.

It's not something that I like.

I don't know right now of other tools and tactics that can replace those in the absence of working together as a system to come up with those tactics.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

So I have two questions.

One just kind of taking off on your last point there.

Director Meyerberg, we're talking about the need to disperse, how the police would disperse a crowd without the option of less lethal weapons.

But you've also mentioned in the report that those aren't really useful tools in a stationary crowd, and that's part of the other discussion, right?

Like we're talking about the standard practice for crowd management assumes that the crowd is moving, But in this case, particularly at the East precinct, this was a stationary crowd.

And so those tools weren't appropriate anyway, based on how I, how I'm understanding your report.

So, so my 1st question is, you know, how do you reconcile those 2 recommendations?

Which seemed to me to be contradictory.

And then my second question is, I know we're trying to look at this from a systems perspective and looking at how we can change the system of how this operates, but I am interested to know what information we have over the last few months about the, you know, The record, I guess I'm imagining a matrix or a table of something talking about how many times riots were declared, how often different kinds of weapons were used, how many different outcomes of violence we had, and I'm interested to know how often that happened with particular incident commanders.

So how do we tie these patterns together so that we start to see, you know, was it particular officers?

Was it more likely to happen at a particular time of day?

Or, you know, I just want to understand the ecosystem of things that led to these outcomes so that we can try to incorporate that and respond to it as we're talking about these policy changes.

Yeah.

And I think so.

Your first question is a really good question.

I mean, I think from from from my perspective, we do see two types of protests.

Generally, when we're evaluating the cases, you see the more static stationary protests, like you mentioned, Councilman Morales, that was at the East Precinct and that we've seen at other occasions.

versus a more mobile protest.

I think one of the reasons that we had come up with our recommendation of extraction from crowds was because we agree that the way that protests are done historically, or the way that SBA has historically policed the protest, does not work in those static situations.

So how can you better police those protests to eliminate people that are engaging in criminal activity while allowing the protests to remain?

In rare situations, I agree with you, like those types of tools are not useful for those situations.

can you develop tactics that are better purpose for those situations?

And I think that's what, I think both OPA and the OIG had recommended is to say, let's figure those out.

And I don't have the answer to those.

And I just wanna be totally honest.

I don't know what those tactics are, but I'm hopeful that Seattle can innovate and figure out what that is.

So I don't, I mean, I guess I see what you're saying in that they are contradictory in a way.

I guess what I'm saying is that there are times that you may have to disperse a crowd through those means, through less lethal tools, and that may be appropriate, but there are other times where you may want to disperse a crowd where less lethal tools will not be appropriate.

multiple options available to you, which SPD just simply didn't have during those first rounds of protests, I think would be a huge step in the right direction.

Well, can I, I'll quibble with one thing you said, which is that they do have tools available, and that is to de-escalate rather than to form a line in riot gear and respond, you know, In a really quick way, because somebody has opened an umbrella.

So that's what we're trying to figure out.

And I think that's been that was one of our recommendations right is to in situations where you know that you are the target of the protest.

Do not go out there and face the protesters pull back.

remain in the background, let people protest.

And I think that was something, when we look at these protests, that is something that probably went wrong, was to not allow people to protest and to march, and instead to create artificial blockages that then created these friction points, which did not result in a manner that I think anyone was happy with in the city.

You're right.

I mean, everything you're saying is true.

I mean, there are there are multiple things that SPD could have done better during those protests, and we're still evaluating them.

We're still coming up with them.

The things that we pointed out are only those that we've determined in our initial round of these cases being evaluated.

This might be a little bit off point, but is there a time particularly with the experience that we're having right now where we've had over a hundred days of protest, that it is appropriate for the accountability partners outside of a formal investigation to say, hey, we've been watching this for months now and we keep seeing the same issue and making a public state, like, you know, for instance, Labor Day, That's another example where the police officers were the political target of protests, and by coming out, and for no apparent reason that I could see, confronting the protesters, and then chasing them through the city, I just feel like that again, we're in this cycle, and that there are certain things that are being repeated in this cycle, that I don't know if waiting for the, you know, the resolution of dozens and dozens of complaints and having a political process to discuss changes in policy is the best way to go in order to sort of disrupt what we're seeing happening, continuing to happen in real time.

I think it's a valid point, and it's certainly something that, you know, CPC, OPA, and OIG meet regularly, and we discuss these things all the time, and we're constantly trying to figure out what we can do now.

I'm regularly in communication with SPD command staff and others expressing my concerns of what I'm seeing.

Our investigations will come out on a rolling basis, and we'll be able to inform tactics and activities that are engaged by SPD.

It may very well be that there is a time and place for that occurring, and maybe it's now.

And it's something that I'll discuss with Lisa, sorry, IG Judge and Brandy Grant.

And customer morale is one thing you had mentioned that I wanted to get to really quickly is the like the officers that are utilizing the force and the commanders that are supervising it tends to be it does tend to be some similarities just because of staffing like often it's bicycle officers and other officers that tend to have the same commanders given where it's occurring in precincts.

But we will be able to identify that commonality.

OIG will also be able to look at the numbers of the amount of force that was used, when it was used.

They're creating, my understanding, and IG Judge and Mary Dory can address this, but they're creating a timeline to map each and every kind of application of force that, not application, but usage force and protest incidents that occurred.

So we will be able to map that out to identify trends within personnel as well.

I appreciate that.

And I do just want to echo what Chair Herbold said.

It's been really clear that there's been a change in tactics, increased escalation over the last 100 days.

And the community is really, really not satisfied with being told file a report when that doesn't disrupt the behavior that is happening and people are getting injured for, you know, over and over again, and the pattern of behavior continues.

So I am also really interested in understanding if there is some way for these accountability organizations to step in and disrupt something like that when there is, you know, when there is clearly more needs to be done than for the public to wait for a report and a process to happen so that we can prevent injury.

Thank you.

We have one more presentation, and that is from Inspector General Judge.

I would like to hand it over to Inspector General Judge.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Madam President, council members.

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak to you this morning.

Our report was pretty dense, and so I have decidedly more slides than my accountability partners who preceded me.

So I will try to move through them as quickly as I can.

I've tried to answer some of the questions that we got from council members in advance in the slides.

So hopefully, you know, many questions will be addressed in the presentation and I'll leave open some room at the end.

But if I could just start by commenting a little bit on council member Morales's previous question, I really appreciate her raising that issue and acknowledging the urgency of the situation and just watching the same dynamics happening over and over again.

I would like to add to what Director Myerberg said.

Our recommendations are out there.

It's not a secret.

We've identified issues that could be actionable today.

They're written in reports that have been submitted to council and the mayor and made public.

So I think those already provide a framework for a conversation that could happen anytime.

And I think we need to be mindful that a new monitor was just appointed.

And the court has weighed in on this issue.

And so I would be very supportive of a conversation soon about these issues involving the monitor and other stakeholders to try to provide some pretty immediate critical feedback to SPD about potential changes to approaches.

So thank you, Council Member Morales.

I really appreciate that.

If we could move to the first slide, I'm just gonna start with a little bit of an overview of what we're doing I think we are all here because we agree that the right to peaceably assemble is really critical to our democracy and our society.

And so, you know, I and the accountability partners and all of you here, I think are here because we want to make sure that people who are coming out to express outrage, grief, and other feelings about racial injustice, their right is protected to come out and do that.

And so I will unequivocally say and there's a lot of agreement with my partners and others that the use of less lethal weapons should be prohibited on peaceful protesters.

And so I appreciate the comments that have been made already about really the need for clarity and when riots are declared in circumstances under which force is appropriate to use to address specific acts of violence or to disperse a declared riot.

And again, I chose the word declared here so that we can focus on having some meaningful criteria about when it's declared.

When there are acts of violence that are specified and identified individuals are committing those acts of violence, police need to have the appropriate tools to address those.

But I echo the sentiments expressed previously that SPD should work on tactics to target those particular acts and move them out of an otherwise peaceful crowd so that the crowd's rights can continue to be facilitated.

And I think one of the things that needs to be highlighted in any policy development is the approach needs to be one of facilitation of First Amendment rights and not of control of crowds and control of messaging.

So I would hope that that would be the beacon for whatever framework we come up with here.

I think as has already been highlighted, we continue to believe that less lethal tools are important to address other types of high risk calls that are outside of the crowd control context.

I'll just weigh in since the question has come up already with both of my colleagues.

In terms of delineating these things, I think it's probably a better focus for council to broadly define what crowd management and crowd control means and have the restrictions on less lethal weapons tied to that rather than trying to figure out the universe of potential other non-crowd control scenarios where less lethal weapons might be appropriate.

So I would, it would be my recommendation to focus on carefully defining what protected First Amendment activity means and whatever restrictions are put in place on less lethal weapons in those First Amendment context.

So just, you know, to kind of wrap it up, we support retaining less lethal weapons for use by SPD, but with strict criteria, both within a crowd control context and in a patrol and SWAT context for their use, making sure folks are properly trained and the policies are adequate.

And then I think one of the things that I've heard discussed and I think is a really critical issue is having strong means for accountability on the back end of those.

I think we have already processes for individual officer policy violations and misconduct, but we definitely saw a gap in accountability for command level decision making, like declaring riots, authorizing large scale uses of force, and having some way to go back and look at those decisions.

So I think Council Member Morales, your questions got to some of those issues, so we will be looking at that further and making recommendations and hopefully assisting with policy development.

So Mary, if you could move the slide.

So in terms of the issue of reauthorization of less lethal weapons, again, we agree that the ordinance should be redrafted to distinguish between patrol functions and crowd management uses of less lethal force.

I already talked about this next bullet, so I won't Spend time on that.

I think Director Meyerberg has already talked about the benefit of having less lethal weapons available to provide options for officers when higher levels of force might be inappropriate or undesirable.

My notes page is just turned off, so let me just get my computer back on.

OK.

And I think we all understand that if you ban certain weapons, without providing some alternatives to using higher force, especially without providing any sort of opportunity to decide what replacement strategies will be put in place, it may wind up resulting in more violence.

And so we're hopeful that any solutions that we arrive at will avoid that.

Mary, if you could move the slide, please.

So in terms of specific tools that we want to talk about, first of all, with regard to blast balls, Any decision that's made about whether they should be reauthorized should come with a very strong recommendation that SPD follow up on all of the previous external recommendations they've received concerning blast walls, CPC, and I believe this dates back to 2016, and other external sources made a lot of recommendations about blast walls and their use and proper use and training.

recommendations need to be revisited, and we should ensure that SPD has acted on those previous recommendations.

So I think that's a starting point for any sort of reauthorization of blast walls.

I would highlight that OIG is concerned about them.

They are explosive devices, and if not used strictly in accordance with manufacturer recommendations or training, they can cause a lot of injury, but potentially death.

So I think any reauthorization of those needs to be done with great care and deference to previous recommendations.

Moving on to tear gas, OIG also supports a ban on those in any sort of general protest setting.

And if there was any reauthorization of tear gas, it should only be as a tool of last resort if a riot has been declared.

And I completely agree that there need to be very specific criteria about the declaration of a riot.

There needs to be, an acknowledgement by whomever is the in-sync commander that the circumstances going on meet those criteria and there needs to be accountability for that decision making.

But in those circumstances, that would be the only potential where something like tear gas, while it's an effective tool to be considered, there are so many other things that argue against its use.

It was something that was a tool of last resort.

We would certainly never support it for use in any residential area.

The really minute particulate nature of CS gas, which is different from OC spray, allows it to seep into things and cause really significant secondary impacts to people who are completely innocent.

We saw that with complaints of CS gas seeping into residences in Capitol Hill.

So, you know, I think The recommendations of my colleagues that it not be reauthorized are sound, and we would support that.

If CS gas is authorized in certain circumstances, and I think Director Meyerberg may have mentioned SWAT as being a limited instance where it might be appropriate, officers have to receive adequate training on its proper use and how to decontaminate folks who have been exposed to CS gas.

Some other things that we, we found in our work leading up to this is that SPD personnel frequently receive some training, or they receive some training so that it makes them qualified for using less lethal weapons, but they frequently don't have adequate opportunities to practice with some of these tools.

And I'll talk a little bit about that later if I've got time.

Also, they need to avoid using expired munitions and they should be disposing of any unsafe stock that they have which we detected was going on.

Mary, if you could move the slide.

So that's really the recommendations that we have.

They're specific to less lethal weapons.

But what we did was, like OPA, we conducted interviews and did a lot of research into SPD's crowd management policies and other agencies, just so that we could provide some context around the force that was being used and perhaps why certain things went awry and there were improper uses of force.

So just to mention, SPD's crowd management policy is really in line with most other major cities.

It wasn't an outlier in any way, not to say that it's the one that we want here, but there isn't anything about it just on its face that diverges from most major cities.

Go ahead, Mary.

But we found that, and I think this really gets to the issue of communication and making sure that officers and incident commanders have very clear criteria about when force is appropriate and making sure that they communicate with individuals and with the crowd to make sure people have an understanding of what's happening.

Because what we found is that officers were perhaps perceiving some sort of risk and deciding that they needed to use force or an incident commander was authorizing force or directing force.

And officers then use that force with ineffective or no communication to the crowd, resulting in the crowd not understanding what was going on and viewing that action as illegitimate.

And then that serving to escalate the crowd and increase tensions and violent acts, creating this sort of vicious cycle of escalation with the crowd.

So one of the things we identified as a critical feature of any development is better communication with the crowd.

So.

This has been alluded to in a number of ways, but we found SPD's policy to be very lacking in detail, both in terms of when a riot can be declared and really talking about crowd dynamics and at what stage certain levels of force may or may not be appropriate.

And so we feel like perhaps a matrix that breaks down crowd dynamics into certain levels and makes it very clear what force may or may not be appropriate.

Or perhaps just a much more detailed policy would be assistive to officers and incident commanders so that they know what criteria is in place for using force.

And it reduces the discretion that they might otherwise have to make force decisions in unclear, ambiguous circumstances.

So the other thing, and I will harp on this a lot is requiring communication with the crowd is critical.

So one thing is requiring warnings to crowds before there's any attempt to disperse or before there's any use of less lethal weapons is one of the ways to minimize escalation.

And, you know, policies always have exemptions for emergency situations or whatever, but those exemptions, if they are present in the situation, need to be documented and there needs to be some basis for not providing a warning.

And along with giving warnings, this is really, it boils down to due process.

It's giving people some notice of what's about to happen to them and giving them some meaningful opportunity to respond to that notice.

So if you're going to issue an order to disperse a crowd, you have to make sure that the crowd hears it, understand it, you have to do it in a variety of ways so that you can Let as many people know as possible what's happening and then give them a meaningful amount of time to disperse.

Give them meaningful avenues to disperse.

Don't engage in kettling or doing things like that that trap them in certain places and don't allow them to disperse.

Don't shut down public transportation, leaving the event so they have no way to get out of there and get home.

There are a variety of things that go into this little bullet that I think are really critical in giving people an understanding of what's happening and giving them the opportunity to respond before force is used on them and police action is taken.

Mary, if you could move the slide.

Again, communication, communication, communication.

What we've sort of proposed here is that traditional de-escalation tactics like time, distance, and shielding don't really work with large crowds.

Really, the way that you would deescalate a crowd is to reduce presence, to reduce, you know, skirmish lines and officers standing out in hard gear, and to find ways to meaningfully communicate with the crowd, both before any sort of crisis occurs and ongoing during any sort of mass demonstration.

So, with regard to communicating before a crisis, we suggested, and we found a couple of jurisdictions that have done this, if you know that something is happening or there's some event that may bring people out in masses to demonstrate, running some public safety announcements or doing something to educate people about their First Amendment rights and about what may happen if riots are declared.

We found in Minneapolis in 2016, they did that with a situation where they were about to announce prosecution decisions regarding the police shooting of Jamar Clark.

And so they did some PSAs to try to manage folks.

And so, you know, I think what comes out of some of the experiences that we read about is making sure that you're answering questions that community might have and not just what officers or government wants people to know and pushing out information that will allow people to make decisions about their behavior and give them some prior notice of things that may potentially happen.

So in terms of communicating during a mass demonstration, we suggest using a variety of different methods.

Sound amplification is pretty critical.

Sometimes sound is an ineffective means of communication.

There may be folks who just can't hear.

There may be noises in the crowd that make it ineffective.

So also using visual communication, pushing out information on social media or other things are a way that you can do that.

Mary, if you'll move along.

There are various jurisdictions that use things like this.

These are examples of Oakland Police Department's visual communication boards in a recent protest.

I think what you'll notice about these is they're pretty low and they're pretty small.

Unless you've got them up high or you got a bunch of them, this is probably not going to be super effective.

They're also probably decent targets.

for folks who might want to cause damage.

So there are also decidedly low-tech ways to do visual communication.

You could print large banners that can be furled on poles and, you know, hoisted or brought down.

So you can, there are many ways to imagine doing visual communication, but important to give people options to know what's going on in managing a crowd.

Mary?

All right, we talked a little bit about this, about officers having few opportunities to practice.

And we think if SPD can retain some weapons, having them provide more opportunities for officers to practice them might reduce the risk of incorrect use in high stress situations.

Mary, go ahead.

Okay, this issue has been highlighted already as well.

And what we found is that in a lot of SPD's own materials, they already understand a lot about crowd management tactics and that using fixed riot lines serve to escalate crowds and they limit opportunities for de-escalation.

So they know this, but SPD, like most other agencies in the United States, have not come up with a solution for dealing with large static crowds who are gathered in one place and can't be made mobile or can't be kept moving.

And so what we've seen here happen this summer is that SPD's policies and training are largely geared for mobile crowds and to get crowds moving, didn't have that option.

And so they were left with very little guidance on how to deal with those crowds that were in fixed locations.

So that's one of the things that I think Director Myerberg mentioned would be ways Seattle would have to innovate to come up with different ways to approach this.

And I think one is that you do approach it with, like I said, the ethos of facilitation, that you do it in stages or in graded ways where if you're gonna have officer presence, you can have, officers in soft uniforms who come out if officer presence is necessary.

And then you have ways to, with folks who are staged elsewhere, to potentially extract people committing violence, to otherwise let the crowd continue with gathering and expressing First Amendment rights.

Or if it devolves into a situation where an actual riot is declared, you've got other personnel who can be staged and move in to handle that that aren't just standing around serving to escalate the crowd all throughout.

All right.

And I think this is just a slide about the East Precinct where we saw some of those dynamics at play.

Mary, if you want to move on.

So I think what I've been really talking about here in a nutshell is that SPD needs to develop a complete policy tactics and training that addresses stationary crowd situations and for, like my colleagues have mentioned, for having targeted enforcement capability for people who are committing isolated violent incidents within a crowd to otherwise allow the peaceful crowd to remain and to improve communication with crowds.

This is, it's really kind of a tangential issue, but it's, something to consider.

One of the things that we saw was that with not being able to have appropriate levels of staffing for some of these events, officers seem to then resort to reliance on less lethal tools when they didn't have enough folks.

And so they, SPD did not have sufficient staffing to manage the protests this summer.

So it began by requesting aid from other departments.

But the problems happen when you bring in people from outside to help SPD.

They're not required to follow SPD's use of force policies or even to report their uses of force to SPD.

And so SPD relies on voluntary compliance of those agencies to report what force they've used when they're assisting SPD.

So obviously that creates a risk that the public's being subjected to force that's outside the norms and standards that we require of SPD personnel.

One of the things that we highlighted as a potential solution if mutual aid is used in the future is that there should be some sort of regional solution to, at the very least, ensure prompt and transparent reporting of use of force by any officer or agency that is providing presence at a large-scale protest event.

Mary, if you can move on in this.

Just specifically with regard to this summer, SPD

began having a lot of trouble finding.

Almost done.

Yep.

And if we can switch we can skip the slide.

We can actually probably let's see if there's anything else I really want to highlight here.

Nope.

You can skip this one Mary.

We suggested that SPD try to do outreach after these things and provide information very soon after the fact when there has been a protest response that has resulted in impacts on public trust.

We suggested that they try to use less technical language and not overblow situations that tend to delegitimize what they're doing.

I think we saw the pushing out of information about the incendiary device that was a candle.

Those kinds of things in their communications don't don't engender public trust.

So we're highlighting that that kind of communication, course correction is desirable.

Go on to the next slide, Mary.

And with regard to external authorization, we are not supportive of that.

And I think Council Member Herbold, we also were a bit confused about what was being asked, but really, The bigger issue for us is if you're contacting somebody externally to get some sort of authorization, they're already relying on information being provided by police.

So if the concern is that you don't trust information coming from police, you don't trust decisions being made by the police, the information will then be thusly biased if it's communicated to any sort of third party who's not there.

So there's a risk in that and there may be time constraints where if it's really a life safety emergency, you don't have the time to do that.

And I think really the bigger issues here are having clear criteria for declaring a riot, having documented circumstances that meet that criteria and having backend accountability for those decisions as has been identified already.

All right, and this is just a slide about Sentinel event review.

I won't spend any time on that because we can talk about that at a later time.

So that is my presentation.

Hopefully I caught much of the information from the council questions previously provided in the presentation, but.

You definitely did.

Thank you.

So I will not have any questions to offer, but I do ask my colleagues on the committee whether or not they have questions at this time.

All right.

Councillor Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

I'm also happy to defer to your other council members.

If you'd like, Council Member Herbold, I'll just ask one quick question, if that's okay.

Thank you very much, Director Judge, for your presentation, and I didn't get a chance to say thank you to Director Meyerberg, who I see is back on as well.

I wanted to ask a quick question that I think relates to recommendations from both bodies.

Director Meyerberg mentioned that one of the recommendations was that the nature of the recent protest being directed to excessive use of force from police officers across the country resulted in One of the recommendations being to stop having police officers sort of present a hard line and to stop exacerbating the protest or escalating the protest.

And you also mentioned that one of the things that we could do is, you know, clear communication, put up these PSAs, you know, have these signs, examples that you mentioned.

I think my concern based on the data and the reports that I'm seeing nationally, and this is not just for Seattle, So I want to ask you specifically about any indication that you have for Seattle, is that the response to the protests was escalated because police use of force was being questioned.

You saw excessive police use of force.

And I'm wondering, I've seen reports across the nation talking about this.

Can you comment on any of the sort of indication that you have that there was excessive use of force because of the nature of the concerns around police use of force being the target of the protest.

And I want to make a distinction between the use of force versus officers, because I think what people have been protesting is excessive use of force.

Can you comment on how you saw the local department respond and if it was excessive in retaliation to the topic that was being protested?

Yeah, I don't know that I would, I mean, I think there were certainly instances of excessive force and I think it's pretty clear that officers came out with a very strong presence.

One thing that we did observe and we noted it in our report was that the mission of SPD seemed to change very dramatically when the protests became, I don't think they were expecting the level of anger and outrage expressed specifically at police because I think in most previous protests, it's been a different issue and police have been able to largely avoid becoming the issue as long as they were using appropriate tactics and not, you know, in other ways, inflaming the crowd.

I don't think they were prepared to be the subject of the outrage and the expression.

And so we did see some actual changes in their incident action plans and in their approaches when it became apparent to them that the anger was directed at them specifically.

And so I think in any discussion about future policies and how you, the culture of those officers that are out there at those protests has to be one that acknowledges the legitimate anger at the, not them.

And I think that's hard for people to separate their good intentions and what they've done in terms of thinking they're doing a very honorable profession from the institution of policing.

And so I think there needs to be some training and some real recalibration in their understanding and their willingness and their ability to go out there and stand there and take some pretty hard stuff that's directed at the institution of policing, but still remain professional and still approach it with the belief that this person has the absolute right to express that and be protected in expressing that.

I hope that answers your question.

Council Member Swann.

For that presentation, I have several questions that I will go ahead and ask all at once.

And I would also, in addition to your verbal responses, if you have any I'm not sure if that is something you want to send later that is also fine.

But I want to preface my questions by first clarifying something for members of the public who have been watching.

I just wanted to clarify that I do not share her confidence, and the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Professional Accountability are part of the executive branch of government, and we have seen Mayor Durkan's approach and her political positions on many of these crucial issues, and these are not minor issues.

These are questions of indiscriminate violence being targeted at peaceful protesters and at protest actions where children and elderly and women are have been present.

And this is in response to the ongoing police violence that is especially racially biased.

And so these are not small issues we're talking about.

And so it is absolutely correct that elected representatives should be asking hard questions.

But like, as I said before, it is not just about you as individual It's you know, that's why the people are protesting against the system itself because they understand that.

ultimately the rot is at the core of the system of capitalism and the state it needs to keep protest movements in check.

So that's the context in which we are talking about.

But I also think that is not an academic point.

It's also an observed, it's an observation of people that the reason these agencies have not been able to actually bring about accountability is because they are called, quote unquote, accountability organizations, but their purpose is actually to not bring about accountability.

And that's why it is important to examine the record, and that's why I ask those steps.

What steps have these organizations taken to increase police accountability?

Not talk about it, but actually what has been done.

And the assessment of ordinary people is that not very much has been done, and that's why the protests are happening.

So I just want to clarify that.

I appreciate you saying publicly that And I don't want to put words in your mouth, so maybe you should clarify what I'm saying is not accurate.

I think I heard you say that you are not in favor of steps such as shutting down public transportation.

And I think you said the police should not engage in kettling.

I, if you could just clarify that, I mean, I absolutely think that shutting down public transportation is, it's a terrible thing to do, and it's not just the police department and the law enforcement agencies that are responsible for this.

Elected officials have been responsible for that.

I mean, the light rail was shut down, for example, on the day that thousands of people were courageously at the airport protesting against Trump's Muslim ban.

So, you know, such a thing should not happen.

Kettling should not be engaged in.

They're very, they're violent practices.

So just clarify your position on that.

The other thing is I'm a little surprised, actually quite surprised, to say the least, to say that you're saying that the police were not prepared to be the subject of protest.

The protests were justice for George Floyd protests who had been murdered by the police.

So how can the police not know that?

First of all, I just don't find that believable on the face of it.

So that's one thing.

And then you also, a lot of the things you said were, along the lines of, well, as the protest developed, it became very sharply against the police.

And then they had to respond.

And whether they did right or wrong, that was the context.

Well, that was not the context.

For example, the seven-year-old who was maced by the police, that happened on the first day of protest.

So in other words, the first few hours of the protest.

So that's just one of the many examples.

I mean, I was there on that first day of protest.

And a lot of violent actions were taken by the police, which To my mind, and I understand there may be difference of opinion, but to my mind and the minds of hundreds of people, that was not provoked at all.

What the police did wasn't a response to anything.

It was because this is what happens when protest movements show courage, something like this happens.

The other things I wanted you to clarify are You said that SPD did not have enough personnel, sufficient personnel.

I don't understand that.

I mean, your report says that the SPD only had 400 officers on the first day of the Justice for George Floyd protest.

I think that's what the sentence says.

Only 400?

I mean, I think that's a question of, again, you know, what is your analysis premised on?

And for policing, if the police want to police a largely peaceful protest, then why isn't that number enough?

And also, I want to understand, I'm not understanding, how do you square the claim that there wasn't sufficient personnel with the fact that there was $6.3 million of overtime in the first 12 days of the protests?

And so even if you didn't have individual officers, in your view, I don't accept that view, but in your view, not enough officers, clearly a lot of public monies were being spent on overtime.

So if you could just provide some clarification on how you square those two things.

And then on the communication, better communication, I really appreciate you brought that point.

This is my last question.

I, of course, don't disagree at all.

I mean, of course, there should be very good communication, very clear guidelines from the police on what is going wrong or what might go wrong, and so that people in the movement understand what is going on.

All of that I accept.

What I don't accept is, that that is some sort of main or one of the important reasons why the police failed in doing the right thing.

There's many examples, but I just want to give you one example of one of the protest nights at the 11th and Pine protest movement when I was there personally.

I mean, this happened every night, but I just wanted to talk about one where nobody can say that this is secondhand evidence because I was there.

I'm giving you a firsthand account.

The communication was perfectly audible, very loud.

We could hear every word clearly.

And I don't know who was saying it was a disembodied voice on the public announcement system.

I never saw who the incident commander was.

I don't think that the police makes that clear.

I don't know if that's my intention or not.

But that's the situation I saw.

I couldn't see who was actually in charge, but I heard a disembodied voice very clearly.

But the problem was not the communication.

And yes, there were warnings and all of that.

And I agree that this communication and these warnings should be used to whatever extent possible to minimize escalation.

But the problem is that all that the movement was doing was marching forward step by step.

They weren't engaging in any violence.

The very act of marching forward on a public street was considered escalation by the police.

So the problem was not unclear communication.

The problem, I mean, the situation, there was a breakdown because ordinary people, young people wanted to march forward and the police were not going to let them and that's when this violence happened.

So I hope that you will also address, you know, how do you expect that that situation could have gone differently?

And just to let you know, minutes after that, there was tear gas, pepper spray, whatever, CS gas, whatever you want to call it, blast balls, and just absolute, it looked like a war zone just minutes after.

Thank you for those questions, Council Member Sawant.

I would invite Inspector General Judge to follow up after this meeting in answering Council Member Sawant's questions.

I do want to wrap up and talk about next steps and move on to our last item on the agenda before we start losing people.

Just in closing, the United States Department of Justice, you may recall, obtained a temporary restraining order against the implementation of this ordinance.

Per the 2012 consent decree, we all know that that case is ongoing.

U.S.

District Court Judge Robart requested the three accountability bodies to submit recommendation to him as well as our own request in the ordinance itself.

to receive these recommendations.

To allow for further consideration of our approach moving forward, there's been a request for a short extension of the current deadline set by the court.

The court had previously ordered that the parties submit by September 12th an analysis of the interaction of the ordinance with the consent decree, as well as any police department policies that the consent decree governs.

The court also directed that the parties respond to the reports submitted by the OPA and the IG.

So in light of this work yet to be done, we recognize that more time will be needed.

But again, it's important to remember that the current restrictions on the use of crowd control weapons that came from another temporary restraining order adopted by U.S.

District Court, sought by Black Lives Matter and the ACLU, is in place.

The city has agreed to extend the injunction limiting the use of crowd-controlled devices through September 30th.

And on August 10 in response to a motion of contempt by black lives matter in the ACLU, the city agreed to the extension of the expansion of the injunction to further limit the use of chemical irritants or projectiles and specifically called out.

a prohibition on use against journalists, legal advisors, and medics, and specified that declaring a riot does not exempt the city from its obligations under this order.

So there are lots of good questions about whether or not we are acting in accordance with this preliminary injunction, but its existence, I believe, does give us The ability to continue working on.

the issues that we have heard today, and also discussing what our legal approach is going to be moving forward.

And I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues, both about the content of the policy, as well as our approach moving forward.

And I'll be having conversations with each of you about that very soon.

Item number two on our agenda.

If Alex, you don't mind reading it into the record?

Committee item number two, council bill 119879, an ordinance relating to the operation and maintenance of a new regional 800 megahertz emergency public radio communication system authorizing the chief technology officer of Seattle Information Technology Department to execute on behalf of the City of Seattle an interlocal agreement between the City of Seattle, King County, and the cities of Auburn, Bellevue, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kent, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Redmond, Renton, and Tukwila for the purpose of creating a non-profit corporation as provided under RCW 3934030 to own, operate, and maintain a regional emergency radio communication system that is being installed and developed under a separate interlocal agreement authorized by Ordinance 124685. Thank you very much, Alex.

I think we're going to kick this off with a brief background from Central Staff.

Lisa Kay.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is Lisa Kay with Central Staff.

I'm sorry my lighting is not optimal in my Office Cave here at home, I'll work on that.

Council Bill 119879 would approve the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network Operator Interlocal Cooperation Agreement to create a new nonprofit corporation to own, operate, and govern the emergency radio system after the network is complete.

Operation of what's called the PCERN system will be financed through user fees and an April 2015 voter-approved property tax levy.

The current emergency radio system is directly owned by the City of Seattle, King County, the Eastside Public Safety Communications Agency, and Valley Communications Center.

The system is over 20 years old, and the current vendor is no longer supporting aging technology.

The new system will continue to support over 100 agencies, including Seattle's two 911 centers and nine other dispatch centers across the county, and over 16,000 emergency radio users.

Owners and users of the existing system have been planning for the replacement system for over six years.

And this proposed operator agreement is consistent with a 2015 memorandum of agreement between the current system owners that anticipated creation of the new nonprofit corporation.

My staff report is included with the agenda materials, Madam Chair, and Chief Scoggins and Chief Technology Officer Beshear, I believe, are here to speak on behalf of the executive.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Chief Scoggins, thank you for joining us.

And I assume you're going to be leading the presentation.

Yes.

Good morning, Council Member Herbold and members of the City Council.

Thank you for allowing us a few minutes to give a brief overview of the Peace Turn system.

But before I start, I do want to pause for a moment in time to recognize today is the 19th anniversary of 9-11.

when our country faced some very difficult times.

On that day, we lost over 2,900 people, 71 police officers and 343 firefighters.

On that day, the fire service made a commitment that we will never forget.

The Seattle Fire Department this morning has had events honoring those members.

We read the names of all 343 firefighters at our fire stations this morning to honor those firefighters who passed away on that day.

So I'll start our presentation from there.

Let's see here.

All right, I think I'm sharing my screen now?

Yes.

Okay, good.

So just a brief overview of the system.

Let's see if I can advance to the next slide.

So I'll give an overview of the system, talk briefly about what the ILA does, give a few project updates, and then open it up for questions at the end.

Lisa Kay did a really good job giving an overview, so she covered some of the points that I'll cover.

But what the ordinance does, it authorizes the City of Seattle to enter into an interlocal agreement with King County, and 10 other agencies to actually stand up the nonprofit.

And that's critical for us.

We've been working on this project for a number of years now, and we're coming to some really critical points on why this is important to stand up this nonprofit and establishing the terms for governance and operations.

That's going to be important for us also.

The City of Seattle will have one of four voting seats on the PCERN board, as we have had a voting seat since this project has stood up a number of years ago.

All parties are working to have signed interlocal agreements in place by the end of September, and that's been our goal.

And I think right now we're about 50% complete.

Our current system is an analog radio system that was stood up in 1995, as Lisa mentioned.

It has reached end of life.

The system is 25 years old and it is no longer being supported by our vendor.

The partners you can see on the slide, we have Eastside Agencies, the City of Seattle in King County, and Valley Communication Center Agencies, which is the south end of the county.

In Seattle, the system is primarily used by the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department, as well as Public Works and other entities in the city.

On the street coverage right now is 94% on the street coverage, so The new system will provide some improvements in that area.

The new system is a digital system.

It'll be owned and operated by a single owner, which is PCERN, and it's also designed to provide 97% on the street coverage with a portable radio.

So that is an improvement of our current system.

Neither system is designed to penetrate in building coverage, but both systems do provide coverage in buildings.

Here in the city of Seattle, we have about 240 buildings that have antenna systems in the systems to improve our coverage.

And, you know, each day we're working to improve that just a bit more.

As Lisa mentioned, this was passed in 2015 by the voters here in King County that set aside funding to actually stand up this system.

The system will have 57 radio transmitter sites throughout King County.

Today we have 26, so going from 26 to 57. But also on top of that, we made adjustments as we've been moving along at four more in-building covered sites will be stood up to cover areas that needed additional coverage here in downtown Seattle, in Bellevue, and in Renton.

So it's quite an expansive system.

Over 17,000 end users that will be using this system, and over 5,000 of those users will be here in the city of Seattle.

The voter approved measure has approved about $290 million to support this project, and right now we are on track with coming in on budget for the project.

This map provides a general overview of the system and the different towers And you can see that this really expands all over King County.

All of the green dots on the screen show the hard work that the PCERN team has been doing and building out all of these towers.

The ones that are in yellow are sites that are under construction.

And the only one in red, which is a very good sign for us right now, is still being worked through.

It's an escalation and they're working through some challenges there.

So you can see where the towers will be from the eastern part of the county, western, northern, so we're really going to have good coverage all over King County when this new system comes online.

What will PCERN provide?

Advanced digital technology.

It's going to improve capacity, capability, and connectivity.

You know, many times people may say that you get a clearer radio transmission from a digital system.

It removes the background noise.

And I guess a simple way I would like to explain it is AM versus FM radio.

You know, anytime we click on FM radio, it sounds just a little cleaner and a little clearer.

That's probably going to be important for this system.

A new 20-year contract with our vendor, that's going to be important.

A single billing agency with uniform rates and uniform operational standards and system performance requirements, no matter where you are all over the county.

It's also going to have improved coverage throughout the county.

on highways 2 and 410 and I-90.

So as our units transition around the county with our different aid agreements, we won't lose any coverage.

An example of that is we sent resources down south to help down in Sumner to help with the fires, and they won't lose any of their connectivity down there.

Consistent updates, upgrades, and repairs of both systems and dispatch consoles.

That's going to be important for us also.

And as I mentioned earlier, over 17,000 new end-user radios that will be deployed throughout King County.

And that's pretty significant that all the agencies in King County will be on the same radios.

And infrastructure support 24-7.

This project has been in the works for, as you can see, about eight years now.

That started in August 2012. And you can identify a number of the milestones from the slide on the screen there, but we have some more significant ones ahead of us.

And this is one of those significant steps in standing up the PCER and ILA so we can actually stand up the operator.

You know, in the next couple of years, we're really going to make some really large steps forward as we start to test the system, turn the system on, and reach full system acceptance.

All those are going to be really significant steps for us.

And just to give you a brief update of where we are, 98% of our legal agreements are done, 93% of our radio sites are constructed or under construction, and 58% of our Motorola land mobile radio equipment is installed, and 60% of our microwave equipment is installed, and that provides the link that transmit the radio signals.

So we're really on a good pace right now with a lot of things that are moving.

The PCERN operator, ILA, so far 50% of the agencies have signed, so six of the 12. Our goal is by the end of the month to get all 12 signed and approved so we can start to move forward with standing up the operator, because that's a lot of work to do there.

The transfer of all assets and responsibilities for operations and maintenance to the new agency will occur as we start to close out the project in the next couple of years.

And this will actually hit the Seattle IT budget in 23 and 24. But it'll be a transfer of fees that we already pay for our existing radio maintenance and our existing radios.

So the Board of Directors for voting members, as I mentioned earlier, the City of Seattle will have one vote.

Currently, I am the representative of the City of Seattle on the PCERN board, and in that position, City of Seattle still will have a voting member.

And there will be two non-voting members representing the fire and police agencies around the county.

And that's important because the fire and police agencies are the major users on the system.

The executive director will run the day-to-day operations.

The implications for the ILA, no longer responsible for maintaining the 800 megahertz radio tower infrastructure, that'll transfer to the PCERN operator.

The PCERN operator will manage the day-to-day business, but will continue to support the 800 megahertz mobile and portable radios for all city departments.

The ILA also allows the option to transfer Seattle IT technical staff to the PCERN operator to help with the maintenance, and then future budget adjustments will be required in 2023 and 2024, as I mentioned on the previous slide.

And that's all I have for you.

Are there any questions?

Yes, I do have a couple questions that I want to ask.

I have two questions related to slide five.

When you talk about 97% coverage at the street level, what is the geographic area that you're referring to?

Is it the city or is it King County?

And then as it relates to the facts that building owners provide in building repeaters were required by code.

Is there a point at which building density or height makes getting a radio signal difficult?

And if so, I'm just wondering why it's only required by code if there are so many jurisdictions participating in this interlocal agreement.

I'm just wondering whether or not the interlocal agreement itself is an opportunity for creating some consistency for the in-building repeaters.

And then lastly, well, actually it's two more.

For slide nine, the timeline, just want to check to make sure that the timeline completion dates are still accurate given the current public health crisis.

And then as it relates to the decision-making body, if there are four voting members, can you speak to what happens in the event of a tie?

Okay, that was a lot of questions.

But the testing and the coverage, the 97% coverage, the same coverage parameters will be deployed throughout the entire county from Seattle to Bellevue to Renton.

And it'll be in, I believe it's two-tenths of a mile increments.

So whether it's in downtown Seattle or it's in Renton or whether it's in Bellevue, it will all be the same testing coverage.

So that's a 97% reliability from a portable radio, which I have one right here, from a portable radio if you're on the street, basically on your hip.

So that's the reliability that we're talking about, but the same coverage standards will be deployed throughout the entire county.

That's important.

The second question, let's see, maybe you can refresh.

Absolutely.

It relates to the point at which building height or density might make radio signal reception difficult.

And why is it that we're relying on building codes when there's so many different jurisdictions?

Just wondering whether or not the interlocal agreement itself might create an opportunity for consistency.

Well, the authority having jurisdiction adopts its own fire codes here in Seattle.

We have adopted the adjustments in our fire code, and that's why we're probably further down the field than some other agencies because we have adopted it.

That's why we have approximately 240 buildings already have DAS systems, which is digital antenna systems.

It's basically an antenna on the roof with a system that runs through the building that connects up to allow additional coverage inside of the building.

The height and the density and the materials do make a difference, so our fire code specifically lays that out.

As a matter of fact, as you can see, we have a number of buildings in the process of being constructed here in Seattle, and they're already moving forward with adding these systems.

Our fire marshal is working with the other fire marshals in the county, so hopefully we can get a uniform standard adopted in the county, but that's based on the authority having jurisdiction.

Okay, thank you.

And then the last two questions are just wondering, um, slide slide nine has the timeline are just wondering whether or not those completion dates are still accurate, given the public health crisis.

Um, and then, uh, given the governing body has four voting members, what what happens in the event of a time?

Um, so the timeline is still accurate on on slide nine on what I showed you.

If there are adjustments needed, we'll make those adjustments.

The public health crisis, the COVID-19 public health crisis, slowed some of the construction, but adjustments were made and then it continued to move forward.

Now, here's another example.

It may just not be the public health crisis.

Construction has slowed because some of the wildfires that are taking place right now in the region, so the teams can't get to the towers to finish the construction.

So it could be a variety of things, but generally the team adjusts And then that works itself out.

So that's pretty important to note.

And then the last one was, you have one more question.

The composition of the governing board, the number of votes is four.

It's an even number.

Just wondering what happens with that.

Well, generally, most decisions have to be unanimous voting decision.

So we, in my three years serving on the joint board, we actually haven't had a tie.

The team, the PCERN board, works pretty hard to educate, and the board members work really hard to accommodate, because, you know, we're just not worried about Seattle.

We're worried about the east side.

We're worried about the south, and King County's worried about the entire county.

So the team works really hard to try to bring consensus together, and we actually haven't experienced a tie.

I understood.

Thank you so much.

Other questions, Council Members?

We are planning on voting on this today.

And Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

I did see that Lisa Kaye had raised her hand, so I think she may have wanted to add some information, wanted to give her an opportunity to do that before I made some general comments.

Thank you for watching for that.

Lisa Kaye.

I just wanted to clarify that there is an impasse resolution, impasse process resolution, sorry, I figured out the right language here.

Anyhow, that if a decision that requires a unanimous vote can't get that unanimous vote, there's provision for mediation and some escalation of the sort of food chain for more people to get involved in trying to resolve the issue.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Well, I really, really appreciate the many years of work that has been required in the collaboration with the other jurisdictions and, you know, both both as it relates to actually getting the transmitter sites up as well as funding the project and moving towards our implementation goal of 2020. And then all of the discussions that have been necessary to get us this far with the interlocal agreement.

This, I know, has been a challenge and a very, very large and important project.

and really am appreciative and grateful for the work that has been done to get us to this point.

And with that, I think I will, if there are no further questions, I'll move to pass Council Bill 1198-79.

Second.

Thank you for a second.

All those in favor of passage of Council Bill 119879, please.

You got to call the roll Council Member Herbold.

Oh, that's right.

Virtual world.

It's all different.

All right.

And just a note for the future.

My notes indicate this because I'm learning this all over again.

That's all right.

It's a whole new world.

Can you please call the roll on passage of Council Bill 1198-79?

Yes.

Council Member Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Shawant?

Yes.

I think she might have had to leave actually.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so Council Bill 1198-79 has been is recommended for passage by this committee, and it will be heard at full council on Monday, September 14th.

That is the last item on today's agenda.

I appreciate folks staying with us so we could get to this voting item, and if there's nothing more for the good of the order, it is 12, 17 p.m., and I call this meeting to a close.

We are adjourned.