Public Safety Committee 7/28/2026

Good morning.

Public safety meeting will come to order.

It's 9.34 a.m.

July 28, 2026. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lynn.

Here.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

I mean, present.

Council Member Saka.

Waring, here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thank you everyone for being here today.

In light of the tragedy that was at Seattle Center on Sunday, I would like to ask for a moment of silence.

Thank you.

Before starting my chair comment, I just wanted to say regarding Sunday night, I was there not at the time of the incident, the shootings, but afterwards I received a call from Deputy Mayor Surratt and I joined him on location, on scene, and I just wanted to say a few thank yous.

I want to thank the Seattle Police Department, When I arrived on scene, I was able with the help of also Seattle Center Security in order to get from essentially the Sioux Birdway cross campus to the armory and to the command post.

During that time, I saw the professionalism of the Seattle Police Department and this is while an operation was ongoing.

SWAT was coming on board.

This relates to the IMAX theater and the search.

So it was an ongoing operation at that time.

I saw You know, those at command posts, Assistant Chief Davis, I saw a number of captains I know, lieutenants from West Precinct, officers that I know that have Seattle Center as their beat, and I speak to them on a regular basis, spoke to them, and the work that they did, particularly the work that was done in the immediacy of the shooting.

I also want to thank the Seattle Fire Department for their work, for their instant response, and then transported those that were injured to Harborview.

So important.

Unfortunately, one who was transported died, which was the third fatality.

So, incredible work by the Seattle Fire Department.

I also want to thank Seattle Center.

I was with Deputy Mayor Surratt but also Acting Sales Center Director Engstrom and some of his team were there too at the command post area this location where initially it was SPD but then later King County Sheriff, ATF, FBI and others joined in and they were there to support and they had a massive effort at the incident but also afterwards and yesterday and no doubt today and it was hard for those people.

Obviously two fatalities were there on scene.

The post-apoptic look of a scene without any people, what looks to be a festival, that is hard for the Seattle Center team.

And in addition, the fire department and police department personnel as well.

So I just wanted to thank all of them for their work on Sunday night and continuing through today as well.

In past chair comments, I have spoken about 18, 19, 20 earlier this year, and those were the ages of people killed just before another Public Safety Committee meeting I held.

You know, a young man, a UW student, and another young person.

and I'm reminded then too of the 19 year old Juniper Blessing and you know, it struck to me as a op-ed that was written by Jessa Davis who works on our commission who said, I didn't move to Seattle for progressive politics, I moved here to survive.

You know, we have to take action.

across the board.

Public safety is serious business and we have to be serious as we go about this.

It's serious as another chair comments when I talked about Little Saigon and North Aurora and the chronic public safety challenges that we have there.

You know, when we're being asked why it's so chronic and when we're being asked, did we care enough?

I think we do, but that's not necessarily enough.

I noted in another, as part of this process related to Little Saigon and North Aurora, I noted that it's not a tale of two cities here in Seattle, but a tale of a city of two minds with an apparent inability to move forward, to take decisive action.

action with a belief that we look out for our neighbors in crisis, but also do the same for our neighborhoods in crisis, to now include Uptown Seattle Center.

And the crucial need for sustained leadership with follow-up and follow-through of passing ordinances and then actually implementing them.

Colleagues, as you know, and people in the audience most likely know, many of you I've seen before, we have our strategic framework plan for a safer Seattle, which we updated in January of this year at the start of the new council, incorporating lessons learned of the previous two years.

In this plan, we're building on the mission and the vision that we have.

here in council with this committee.

Understanding the permissiveness is a common thread to the challenges that we see across the board.

And with that understanding, we updated six pillars to include having a functional criminal justice system.

It is so important to have a functional criminal justice system across the board.

Another pillar was gun violence prevention, reduction, and community safety.

And because of that, we had meetings We had briefings here in committee on this very topic, and my colleague, Councilmember Rivera, held a symposium with national experts on the very topic that we're dealing with today following Sunday's shooting.

And another pillar too was addressing the seam between public safety, traditional public safety, the police, but also with public health, mental, behavioral, substance use, housing, and human services.

and all the issues that reside in that seam that need to be taken care of.

Where we cannot be of two minds, we have to be decisive.

So now we have a mass casualty shooting event that killed three and followed two near mass casualty events in the days preceding North Aurora and Capitol Hill.

And there's common threads through each of these.

As I said related to Little Saigon and particularly with North Aurora and what's happening with minors being trafficked, I said it's not right and it's not acceptable.

And that goes too for the gun violence that we're seeing and the through lines.

There is a direct through line between Sunday night, what happened earlier this spring in a King County Metro bus station, and two years ago at Garfield.

where I remember being at the church with the pastor, Mayor Harold, and my colleague, Council President Hollingsworth, regarding the loss of Amar Murphy Payne that day.

There's the through line.

And part of the through line is the inability of the city to take action, concrete action.

There's actions taking, but to have that follow-through, that follow-up, and to see it through and not be of two minds.

So we have our strategic framework plan.

We're working a lot of pieces related to the public safety challenges that we're facing to include gun violence and violence intervention.

So I call on Mayor Wilson to build a fully comprehensive approach.

We can't have a lock them all up approach, but we also cannot have an abolitionist approach.

We have to have a comprehensive approach that starts with compassion for our neighbors in crisis, to include our young people who may pick up a gun, and our neighborhoods in crisis that are represented here today.

Downtown, Belltown, now Uptown, North Aurora, all these neighborhoods.

And I think our strategic framework can be a guide to work with the executive, to work with the mayor, to really create a plan.

a plan that goes away with, once and for all, this issue of being a city of two minds, that is decisive, that is done with the follow-through.

So, members of the chamber here, from all the neighborhoods that are represented and the organizations that are represented, I thank you for being here and colleagues.

Recent event is just yet another.

I don't want to put it higher, really, because that would lessen, you know, the loss of lives at a King County Metro Station in Rainier Beach and all the other challenges that Rainier Beach has faced.

Or Lake City.

Or Belltown.

Or Downtown.

Or the CID.

Or North Beacon Hill.

Little Saigon.

Across the board.

That's our duty.

That's as I see it.

and colleagues, I think we as a committee and as a council can press forward and partnership with the mayor, but we need to do that.

And we need to do it with the organizations that are out here.

And a number of them are represented here in the audience of chambers today.

So that's my chair comment for today.

Thank you.

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

Hearing, seeing, no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of the committee clerk.

How many speakers do we have signed up today?

We have 17 in person and I think four remote.

Okay, each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll start with the in-person speakers.

How many remote?

Four.

So let's do ten in-person, do the four remote, and then we'll finish with the remaining in-person speakers.

Understood.

Can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

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

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

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

This public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first in-person speaker is Eric Zimmerman, to be followed by Kevin Dares.

Thank you.

My name is Eric Zimmerman, representing the Nonpartisan Washington Policy Center.

I have more than two decades of experience with national poverty programs worldwide.

In Washington, I focus on homelessness policy and behavioral health.

While diversion can be an appropriate tool, LEAD is an experimental program that operates beyond what its evidence supports and is now used too often in Seattle.

The 58% reduction in recidivism cited in LEAD's own presentations and in your council packet is not factual, and it misunderstands LEAD's small and preliminary study.

The study uses statistical modeling to predict an odds ratio.

Reducing the odds of arrest by 58% could correspond to the non-LEAD group's arrest rate being 20% higher than the LEAD group, perhaps.

It does not show a 58% drop in arrests.

It has been cherry-picked for the council, but that can happen both ways.

The study does say that the lead group had 150% higher reported death rate than the non-lead group.

Six months after diversion, the arrest rate for the lead participants had not declined.

Both the lead and non-lead groups ultimately received fewer criminal charges over the longer term, with no statistically significant difference.

According to the study, a reduction in felonies for lead participants may have resulted from special treatment by their study partner, the prosecutor's office.

We can evaluate Serra's mass diversion through other evidence.

Between the years 2014 to 2024, Seattle and King County are first in the nation for the growth of chronic homelessness, plus 850%, several hundred percentage points above jurisdiction number two.

Seattle and King County have the country's second highest total population of chronically homeless, equaling the combined totals of the third and fourth highest jurisdictions.

Because of Seattle and King County, Washington is also first in the nation for growth of chronic homelessness with the second highest state population.

Because of Seattle and King County, Washington is first in the nation for the growth of drug overdose deaths, shifting from 33rd place in 2019 per capita to fourth place in 2024. Driven by Seattle and King County, Washington has massive drug exposure and is first in the nation for opioid overdoses seen in hospitals in 2022, 2023, and 2024. What is happening in Seattle has no precedent.

It's entirely new territory in our country.

We cannot see it copied by others.

We cannot continue it.

Please vote no on increasing diversion in Seattle.

Thank you.

Next, we have Kevin Dares to be followed by Jessica Norton.

Should I add, he's here in one capacity, but as it turns out, Mr. Zimmerman is also the Mayor of Normandy Park, so it turns out, you know, electeds or former electeds do get a courtesy, so it happens that you went first, so welcome.

Okay, Mr. Derriss.

I want to talk to all of you because I've talked to the Council and the powers that meet for over a decade and nothing changes.

I mean, we've had meetings, we've had community walk-arounds, we've had everything you can think of, from Durkin to Harold to Wilson, nothing's been done.

And I don't know.

I'm winging it, and I hate to assume how anybody thinks, but I have to imagine your experiences are far different than mine.

Because when I wake up in my neighborhood, 9 times out of 10, there's feces and urine spread all across the front of the building.

There's a gentleman named Todd who has one limb left because he can't stop injecting into the others, and nobody does anything for him.

They bring him to the hospital, and they chop another limb off, or they remove a little bit more of his arm, but then they put him back on the street.

And there's people who overdose in my neighborhood every day, and there's young girls.

in the alley getting turned out and getting drugged up and getting raped over and over and over again every day.

We had a conversation earlier.

We had a kidnapping in my neighborhood that was called in by more than six people that was videotaped and no cops ever came.

And when we investigated this, it was shown in the 911 report that they marked it as low priority.

I don't know.

I don't know what your thought process is if you're for less enforcement.

You're for allowing this to continue because what you're allowing is for your communities to collapse and people's lives to be destroyed and nobody steps in.

And I didn't even want to be here today because I'm tired of addressing a council who doesn't seem to have the political will or acumen to make a difference.

So I don't know, I don't know where y'all are from but I hope that y'all can step up and change it.

Thank you Gavin.

Thank you Mr. Jefferson.

Next up we have Jessica Norton to be followed by Tom Graff.

Good morning.

My name is Jessica Norton, and I have lived, worked, and frequented Belltown my entire life, 54 years.

For more than 22 years, I've owned a business on Second Avenue.

Belltown's a dense, walkable, transit-oriented, mixed-income neighborhood with housing, businesses, and social services, all in close proximity.

But today, those strengths are being undermined by an entrenched, organized, open-air drug market.

Every day, residents, workers, seniors, and visitors must navigate open-air drug use, drug sales, humans in extreme distress, related traumatic disorders, simply to move through the neighborhood.

We can't use our sidewalks.

We have to walk in the street.

This is not an isolated problem.

It is a daily reality, and it affects everyone trying to live, work, visit, and access services in Belltown.

The greatest tragedy is it is harming the very people that we are trying to serve.

Affordable housing providers report people are leaving or refusing placement because they do not feel safe.

Businesses struggle, and people living with addiction are left in degrading conditions that deepen their crisis in full public view.

This is not a failure of housing or social services.

It is a failure to provide public safety that allows these investments to succeed.

Compassion and public safety are not competing values.

They depend on one another.

People in recovery, people seeking services, residents, workers, all deserve a neighborhood where they can move safely and with dignity, which we cannot right now.

I ask you to make Belltown the densest residential neighborhood in the county a priority, not because it matters more, but because it matters just as much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Norton.

Thank you for coming.

Good morning.

I'm Tom Graff, Chair of Belltown United.

I live and work in Belltown, and I'm committed to a safe and prosperous downtown.

And the entire center city matters to me.

Right now, the open drug use and the open drug market on Blanchard is unacceptable.

and it seems like the police have let it go.

They have other priorities.

And I get the city council cares, but you are not in charge of the Seattle police.

The mayor is, and I am begging you to figure this out with the mayor and get clear direction from her to the police department that open drug use open drug dealing, and covering it up with a tent is not acceptable either, has got to stop.

This is our home.

This is the heart of this region.

And it is getting worse.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Greta Levinson to be followed by David Levinson.

Good morning.

I am a 22-year resident of Belltown.

I think of myself as a fairly Fearless person.

I was a home health nurse for decades, and I never knew what I would find behind that door.

No, I am not so fearless.

Daily, I encounter people who are screaming, wielding makeshift weapons, urinating and defecating in public.

People openly drug and deal on the street.

That seems almost innocuous to the fear of being assaulted.

This is not normal in a civilized society.

We need more police and social service action and coordination, mainly coordination.

This is not working as it is.

Thank you.

David Levinson.

Hi, my name is David Levinson.

I live in Belltown.

And I want to say everything that's been said is true.

Belltown is full of debris.

Belltown has tents, tents that people deal drugs out of, people falling over from overdoses, and nothing happens.

I don't understand it.

You know, we live in a tech city.

We have a technology department in Seattle that's over 600 people, and as I understand it, run by a woman who is very very up on technology, and yet we take the cameras away.

And we take the cameras away to study them?

We're a technology city.

The cameras are an old technology.

Use them.

And so we get a report.

We send it to NYU.

Oh, great.

It's beautiful there.

There's no drugs.

There's no tents.

But there are cameras all over, and they're going to study whether we should have cameras.

Give the police what they need to move forward and clean up the mess that is Belltown right now.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Julia to be about and to be followed by Justin Perkins.

Hey, good morning.

My name is Julia Beabout.

I am a Third Pike Pine resident, and while I'm here to speak as a resident today, I am also very involved in the Third and Thrive Coalition, which is focusing on problems at Third Pike Pine, very much fitting the description of what everybody else has seen, and I'm also chair of the Downtown Community Council, so deeply involved and supportive of solutions, all sorts of solutions to these problems.

I want to first of all commend the council today for the legislation that is before them for taking an evidence-based approach and clarifying the implementation guidelines for police.

I found the central staff memo to be particularly informative especially the rationale that this was being caused or the lack of pre-booking diversion was being caused by the officer's perception that the public health and case management services that they needed at the time were not available.

They are not wrong.

We need to meet those suffering on the street, not just where they are, but when they are.

At Third Pike Pine, we still nightly have 50 to 100 people gathering to use drugs nightly.

It is a drug den.

The Third and Thrive Coalition has been successful in getting some of the daytime interventions extended to 11 p.m.

at night, including We Deliver Care.

They have been invaluable in diagnosing the problems up to that point, but they have also said the best they can do is diagnose.

They have nowhere, no people, no services to connect them to at these times.

So until we shift or extend our public health resources to cover the hours when these problems are happening, we will not see any improvement.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Justin Perkins to be followed by Devin Moore.

Good morning, committee.

Good morning.

I'm Justin Perkins.

Client of the Lead Option, I mean, Ideal Options, and they pretty much been helping me from this time.

I've been here for, I moved to Seattle within the last three years, had a job at the airport, but then the end of the week after I got here, and unfortunately, some things happened with my folks where I'm out here on the streets, and they've been helping me get my ID in hands and pretty much get things on the roll again.

I was stabbed last year with a friend of mine and I'm getting back from recovery and starting to get back to work and it's all because of ideal options that has helped me get that and that's about it.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning.

Council members, thank you for having me here today.

I'm here today to ask you to continue to support and invest in the LEAD program.

My name is Devin, and my relationship with the LEAD program goes back more than a decade.

I was first referred to LEAD around 2015 at a time when I was unhoused, deep in my addiction, and living downtown Seattle.

I didn't have much left in me then.

But right away, LEAD led me with kindness, They gave me a little bit of hope, and when you're using the way I was using, hope is something you hold onto with both hands.

Over the next six years, my life was a cycle of jail in the streets and trying to survive.

I went in and out of jail dozens of times.

Every single time someone from LEAD showed up for me, they didn't lecture me, they didn't shame me, they just kept showing up, trying to reignite the hope that I kept losing.

I made plans to get clean more times than I could count, and just as many times I chose to go back to the streets instead.

But on January 15th, 2021, I went to jail for what turned out to be the last time, and LEAD was there again.

And in that time, I finally said yes.

I went to treatment, I moved into an Oxford house, and LEAD made that transition feel possible.

They told me I had already done the hardest part, which was saying yes, and that's something I try to carry in my work today.

I haven't committed a crime in over five years.

I work a program of recovery, and now I work as an outreach navigator supporting justice-impacted folks, the same way people once supported me.

I can honestly say I don't think that I'd be standing here today without the patience, kindness, and resource navigation LEAD gave to me.

They didn't just help me change my life.

They helped me build one.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our last in-person public commentator before we switch to online is Angelo De Jesus.

Welcome back.

Hi again.

Welcome back.

I'm Angelo De Jesus.

I live in District 7 in North Belltown.

I do not want open air drug use in my neighborhoods.

I do believe that there should be a pathway to getting people the help they need, but if they say no, they got to go.

With police staffing, we need pathways through education, starting from high school or college or techs.

and our mayor's a failure in this.

You guys are our backup.

You're a dual.

It's not even backup.

You guys are side by side and we need this done to get more jobs.

We need more tax revenue.

You want more housing?

Get them jobs.

Change the zoning laws.

That way we can have commercial real estate turned into residential.

It has to be done.

and creating these other jobs.

It's not just police or civil service, like pretty much any job that's civil service.

And you guys are in charge of doing this.

And the mayor, I believe she's a total failure in this situation.

She's not even a college graduate in this situation.

She's an undergrad.

And all of you have almost master's degree.

As a trans player in Seattle, I left my city, and my city is awful.

I'm from Miami, and it doesn't compare.

It's kind of light here.

I'm really happy to live in this city, and I feel safe in this city.

But also, I look like this.

And other people who don't look like this are scared, and they need protection.

Thank you.

You guys have a great day.

Thank you.

Fellow Navy veteran.

Not the only Navy veteran who's spoken this morning already.

We'll transition to our seven remote speakers before coming back and finishing in person.

The first remote speaker is Jake Wallach.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt.

You have been unmuted.

She signed up.

Hey Chair Kettle, this is Jake Walk.

I live up in North Aurora.

I'd like to say that the violence continues and that we cannot turn our eyes.

You mentioned at the beginning that there's an inability of the city to take action and I totally agree.

What I think we need to do is we need to ask for state help and we need a task force on Aurora Avenue.

What's different between the North Aurora corridor and the Seattle Center shooting is that on North Aurora, the city already knows why it's happening and by who.

Over 60% of the shootings are directly related to prostitution based on SPD data.

The narrative on the street needs to change and the city press releases aren't going to change it.

After the streets were closed, we saw a dip in violence for about a week or two.

But then two weeks later, we saw over 200 Johns in our neighborhood back on Aurora.

SPD only has two vice detectives for all of Seattle, and they're not making enough progress because of course they're not.

There's only two of them.

We need to ask for state help because we need it.

and we need a task force on Aurora Avenue.

Thanks for the time.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Sarah Clark to be followed by Alberto Alvarez.

Please press star six.

Councilmember Kettle, Chair Kettle, members of the Public Safety Committee, for the record, my name is Sarah Clark, and I am here today testifying on behalf of the over 2,600 members of the Seattle Metro Chamber in support of Council Bill 121248. First, I'd like to thank Chair Kettle for sponsoring this bill and for your continued leadership and thoughtful work to find and introduce balanced policy approaches to address our region's public safety issues.

After dropping slightly in the November 2025 index results, which is our voter research project, our May 2026 polling showed that public safety has moved back up the second highest priority voters want the city to address, coming in only one point behind respondents' top priority, addressing homelessness.

This is particularly poignant after the tragic events at Seattle Center over the weekend.

We support establishing infield pre-booking diversion as the city's preferred approach to enforcement of drug use or possession crimes.

More importantly, we support the requirement for SPD to collect data on referrals, participation and outcomes that is included in this bill.

We will continue to support city policies that emphasize tracking outcomes so that elected leaders can make fully informed decisions.

Council Bill 121248 affirms our values of the city while also ensuring metrics are tracked, policymakers are fully informed, the policies passed achieve the intended results, and that we are getting the positive outcomes for our neighbors we all want to see.

We respectfully urge you to pass this bill.

Next up, we have Alberto Alvarez.

Thank you.

Good morning.

How many tragedies has the police chief been away in Chicago or on his speaking tour in other states?

We need a chief who lives here, values our city, you can't run a police department via Zoom.

Barnes especially has no right to feel upset when a reporter asked him if he was going to be out of town again until mid-August.

If running the police department in our city is too much of a bother for Barnes, he needs to turn over his badge or the mayor needs to fire him.

It's a bad enough problem that many police officers don't walk and live in our communities.

It's even worse when you have a chief who doesn't value our city and spends his time in another state every chance he gets.

We need a chief who lives in our town and upholds our values.

Thank you all and have a good day.

Thank you.

Next up is Joe Kunzler.

Thank you, Seattle Public Safety Committee.

Joe Kunzler here.

I want to get right to the point.

I am deeply concerned that last Sunday night I heard there was an offer for a drone to come assist Seattle.

and that offer of assistance was turned down at least twice.

Once reported by somebody else, the second I heard on the live radio stream and I'm wondering what happened there.

I think you at the City Council should demand answers as to why the offer of a drone to find suspects was denied and I think that this City Council should please support the use of drones in the event of emergencies such as this.

And I would like to leave my public comments at that.

I obviously give my condolences to those that were traumatized by this event and I want to conclude by Wednesday is the 16th anniversary of when I was home invaded by an anti-Semitic felon and his nephew and I had to fight off that anti-Semite with my bare hands and the anti-Semite came from Seattle in a prison game so I take anti-Semitism pretty seriously and I hope you will speak out against that as well thank you for your public service goodbye thank you

Next up, we have David Haynes.

Mr. Haynes.

Hi, David Haynes.

Did you see when the police chief lost his cool and tried to act violent and bully and verbally abused the reporter when he simply asked about why he's always out of town?

It's a real concern.

I think we need a new police chief.

I think we need to purge the Jim Crow Law South scorn-lived experience lens that shows up in Seattle and starts playing the race card, running interference for black criminals.

There's a prolific amount of violence.

And just because people are shooting a ton and they're bad shots, it doesn't mean that it's more safe because less people have died.

We need to address the fact that the Human Services Department is undermining public safety.

They went on a travel junket to Baltimore, and to justify the payment in the hotel, they came back with a bad idea.

They're literally copycatting Baltimore.

Baltimore, right now, has more shootings, 185, than they did last year, 183. And I think they have somewhere of like 57 deaths this year.

they're considering it an improvement because there was 81 deaths last year.

But yet this is the sole foundation of the mayor's approach to gun violence.

All those non-profits that were created during the George Floyd protesters where they showed up and said, we want to reimagine police.

We want to run interference for gun-toting criminals.

We want to pay gangsters to relocate if they don't retaliate.

We have this ongoing.

We have people running interference for criminals.

We have a police chief who's trying to blame his captains for all the problems.

But yet the police chief, the only thing he's taking seriously is his $375,000 salary and trying to run interference for black criminals that he used to teach when he was in history class.

We need a revolt against this captain.

Thank you.

Next up we have Andrea Suarez to be followed by Art Dollar.

That's all of our remote speakers.

OK, we good?

Andrea Suarez from, hi, I'm Andrea Suarez from We Heart Seattle.

Please do not vote on anything today.

Councilman Lynn Kettle, Suarez, please don't vote, vote no.

Just please stop until you meet with the folks from Battlefield Addiction, from Washington Policy Center, who's debunked the data today right here.

He was first to speak that said that the lead data does not prove to have the outcomes that I think you've been led to believe.

please vote no or stop until you allow us to also meet with LEAD and unpack the data together and have a conversation with what's working and what's not.

On July 14th, I got a chance to see the mechanics of the LEAD diversion from my own eyes.

I was eyewitness to an 18 year old girl.

Imagine listening in council mayor's office, Erica Evans.

18-year-old daughter was missing, and you're at home, and we have thousands of moms and dads that call us and be like, God, I just wish my daughter or son or loved one would call from jail so I can know that they're alive.

But in this case, this 18-year-old came into the South Precinct.

I met with her.

She knew who I was.

We were going to either go to Valley, Orica, the Kirkland Crisis Center.

We were going to take her to Lakeside.

We were going to take her to Ituha.

We were going to take her to a safe state, the more we love.

We had it all figured out.

but the officer said, but we've got to do that lead protocol thing first.

The lead intake came in and said, what's your name?

What's your race?

What's your age?

Boom, boom, boom.

Three questions.

Sign here.

Charges dropped right there at midnight.

That little girl grabbed her backpack and bolted.

She's now back with her boyfriend twice her age.

back on Rainier Avenue South in District 2, smoking fentanyl.

And even if she was to show up at her appointment with her paper three days later, she's still high as a kite and expected to have the faculties to know what her best plan is.

It doesn't work.

The LEAD program doesn't work.

And they've been our gold standard for 10 years, and we've lost 20,000 people to death by overdose.

We're asking you to do something different.

Please, thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Art Dollar.

Art Dolan, Battlefield Addiction.

I brought my evidence here today.

We're talking about this word accountability that somehow has become some negative word or some hurtful word.

When we speak of accountability with each other, we're not talking about punishment.

We're actually talking about holding each other to a higher standard.

So the way our programs work is this.

You guys stand up, please.

What we're gonna do today as a program is we are going to hold each other to a higher standard.

What is the standard of behavior that we all conduct ourselves with?

Is there any standard anymore that people must...

Is it a bad thing to ask somebody to be held to a higher standard?

We're not asking for punishment.

Nobody here was punishment.

I got guys that have an ankle bracelet on from City of Seattle that saved his life.

Thank God he was arrested because he's in our program now and you'll hear from him.

Thank God for all of you that were arrested every single person was brought to us through accountability.

It wasn't their choice.

They didn't just decide one day to wake up and go, you know what, today I'm going to stop doing drugs.

Somebody asked them to be committed to a higher standard of living, and they're either doing it for their family, they're doing it for the law, they're doing it for their probation officer, somebody who asked more of them.

So when we talk about accountability, it is not a negative word in our vocabulary.

It is a word that actually means something to us.

It means, hey, look out for your brother and hold him accountable today for a higher standard of living and require more of him, especially when people don't want it for themselves.

this myth out there that someone's got to want it for themselves.

Nobody wants it for themselves.

People actually, what happens is somebody requires more of you and along the way you start wanting it for yourself.

We have people that went to jail, didn't want to go to jail, didn't want to get sober, but now they want it.

So it's not about punishment.

It's about holding what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Protect business, protect our citizens.

These guys will get better.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Noah Lager, thank you.

My name is Noah Lager.

I'm currently in the Battlefield Addiction Program.

To be frank, the only way I found success was through being arrested, not because I didn't want to, but because addiction held me back.

I was offered LEAD five years ago.

I was let go that night, did not show up for the program.

Charges were eventually dropped.

Leah's it now is not a workable program without accountability and accountability for the person that program is the only way to success.

Thank you.

Please do snaps or jazz hands.

Next up we have Peter Orr to be followed by Hannah Ziff.

Good morning, Council.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Peter Ora, a resident of North Aurora neighborhood.

I'm here to represent neighbors who live along Aurora Avenue North with an update on our experience there.

The barriers that were put in place at several residential intersections have been working as intended to protect residents' homes from drive-by shootings connected to the human trafficking along Aurora.

However, as predicted, these measures simply move the problem, as evidenced by the shooting at North 96th Street on July 23rd.

Our security camera network has captured an increased volume of prostitution solicitation at North 97th Street, East and West, and North 109th Street, also sites of documented shootings.

This activity regularly involves violence, including physical beatings between young women and pimps recording them, with nearby neighbors waking to their screams.

The June 30th review by Seattle's Office of Inspector General of the Seattle Police Department found that out of 40 seller contact cases, 37% were minors.

Let us not forget that the moment a trafficked individual turns 18, they're no longer a minor and the crime is a misdemeanor.

The prostitution on Aurora Avenue North is undeniably a human trafficking issue, full stop.

This activity follows a predictable pattern night after night and frequently during the day.

Neighbors grow weary and disillusioned about calling 911 because when they do, our footage shows SPD officers typically show up for a moment, often stay in their vehicle, and drive away a moment later.

At an SPD press conference last week, Andre Sales, Police Deputy Chief of Administration and Investigations, said, crime is mobile.

We don't want our officers to be stationary.

In the case of human trafficking on Aurora Avenue North, I disagree.

two mobile patrols are going to miss the activity at a handful of hotspots.

I continue to advocate for a satellite precinct on 97th and Aurora.

I advocate for a task force dedicated to Aurora Avenue North human trafficking.

I advocate for funding for a dedicated prosecutor on City Attorney Evans' team, for state aid to help stabilize our police force, and for funding of 24-7 recovery services for trafficked survivors.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

We have Hannah Ziff.

Hi, my name's Hannah.

I'm from Pioneer Square.

I want to take a moment to recognize that we're on native land.

So yesterday, we talked about the shootings, and it was talked about a lot in terms of health, and today the meetings about safety.

And I was kind of thinking in broad strokes.

There's the health and safety division of our federal government and then under that is housing and urban development and there's a reason that's federal because the security of our community is also the security of our nation.

They're two sides of the same coin.

So just to get granular, the Waterfront Park showed the values of our city pretty well, that we want to have the reciprocity of investment between the citizens and the global economy.

And I think recently this summer I heard that if there's a building that's completely counter to our values, it can actually get taken down by housing and urban development.

And the Jack on First, I live on First in Jackson.

The Jack on First and Alaskan Way has turned our neighborhood into an unsafe situation on that corner.

So here's my home, and then you can see it.

It's a brick wall, and then there's the waterfront park.

So I know two residents, I didn't take a poll or anything, so there could be more, two residents who own in our building moved because they used to look out and used to be a 1930s parking garage, which was mixed use.

And now it's just a brick wall.

There used to be people walking there and now there's assaults there.

Okay, and people are smashing the building of the Jack because it's created a bad vibe in our community.

People are spray painting my building and I want to take down the Jack.

I want good investments, not greedy.

Thank you.

Next up is Ashley Narbervig to be followed by Craig Thompson.

Hi everyone and I know this is a hard week for everyone in Seattle so thank you Councilmember Kettle for your words up top.

A little over two months ago we presented on LEAD outcomes since the public use ordinance and the data showed that client outcomes improved with exposure to long-term case management.

This mirrors the many evaluations that have been done on LEAD over the years and this continues to be one of the most rigorously evaluated diversion programs in the region.

Today you heard from Justin and Devon, two weeks ago you heard from more lead participants and graduates, and these are the people who feel the impact of this program most acutely and to humanize the data in those reports.

These are people actively recovering, repairing their relationships and reuniting with their families and communities.

In particular, when I meet with people who have their kids in our Zoom calls, I see how important and essential our program is.

I didn't benefit from having a dad in prison.

I don't think anyone does.

Please support this legislation, which continues to build a much-needed coordination system between law enforcement and LEAD.

Thank you.

Last public commenter, Craig Thompson.

Hi, my name is Craig Thompson.

I live on North Beacon Hill.

Three months ago, we had a very large meeting for public safety concerns in my neighborhood.

Can you speak closer to the mic, please?

We're now three months behind where we should be.

There's been little official follow through.

People are called by some people in government.

We respond.

No answers come.

There needs to be a real sense of communication, but also there needs to be coordination.

I know from the work that I did with the Nichols and McGinn administrations that a single point of program management is needed to have a large public safety and social outreach program work.

Today we have heard from several neighborhoods.

So it's not just my neighborhood in Little Saigon and the jungle.

It's the downtown corridor, it's Belltown, and it's North Seattle along Aurora.

We need to have individual points of reference for those communities who are accountable not only to this council, but the bureaucracy as a whole and the mayor's office It is that model has worked in the past.

That model is what will eventually happen.

But the time to study solutions has to come to an end.

And we need to begin implementing these programs with single point management authority.

to have accountability to change what is happening in our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Okay, we have no additional registered speakers and we'll proceed to our items of business.

The 60-minute, the public comment period has expired.

I want to thank everyone for being here, for those individuals who are speaking in terms of their personal experience, whether with addiction or their neighborhoods.

I'm really happy to have Belltown, downtown Third Pike and Pine, North Aurora, Pioneer Square, Little Saigon, these neighborhoods being represented today and having their voice heard.

Very important points were made as a bit of a transition to the next item of business, the idea of 24 hours.

You know, I think of San Francisco's reset center, rapid enforcement support evaluation and triage, which could be very helpful.

to some of the points that were made today or my own experience in North Precinct where there was a woman, you know, and those that were organizations would not be there during second and third watch.

It's clear that we have to have coverage in second and third watch.

I'm really happy that Devon was here.

Key word is hope.

We always have to remember that and how to provide that.

I just wanted to note too, Mr. Kuntzler talked about those reports about drones.

As I said at the beginning, I was on scene there at the command center on the Seattle Center.

And when the King County Sheriff was there, we do not have drones in our city with the Seattle Police Department.

There is a pilot with a fire department.

but so our drone coverage like during FIFA World Cup was covered by King County Sheriff to include counter drones work as well and but I just wanted to note King County Sheriff was on station Sunday night and I actually saw a drone myself so I'm not sure where those reports are coming from.

I physically saw a drone.

I recognize to the point regarding the challenges of diversion gold standard and all that talk well recognizing those challenges why we're here today.

This is why we're updating this bill.

This is the reason why this committee got the PDA, the Purpose and Dignity and Action Contract, shifted from Human Services Department to the Care Department.

So now it falls under our committee.

This is a step-by-step process.

It's not by accident and it kind of goes to the idea that we should be always striving for that gold standard and to constantly be looking to improve it.

to include some of the points that I noted already.

And one last thing I'll say too, because I said it yesterday in interviews that I had, I do support Chief Barnes.

I think Chief Barnes is a great police chief for our city and for the unique aspects of our city.

And the fact that he was in Texas supporting two people from community getting awards from a National Black Law Enforcement Association group, shows his leadership.

So I recognize that as a topic today, but as Chair of Public Safety, I do support Chief Barnes and I've said so in interviews today and no doubt in the interviews I have this afternoon, I'll be saying the same thing again.

So thank you for everyone for those comments.

I listened and I wrote down and starred many to include Devin, Julia, Joe and others as well.

So thank you for the comments.

and remember the public is encouraged to either submit written public comment on the sign-up cards available at the podium or email us at council at seattle.gov.

Recommend using your own personal one, not some of these aggregator groups.

Okay, we'll now move on to our first item of business.

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

Council Bill 121248, an ordinance relating to controlled substances updating city policy for the enforcement of the crimes of knowing possession and the use of controlled substances amending section 3.28.141 of the Seattle Municipal Code and repealing section 4 of ordinance 126896.

I'd like to invite Mr. Doss from Central Staff to come up, but not just him, I would like to also invite Captain Garth Green from West Precinct and Ms. Smith from Seattle Police Department.

Assistant Chief Brown, you're also welcome to join.

And lastly from PDA, Mr. Wolf, Sam Wolf, please join us.

Colleagues, we're gonna go into different aspects of the bill from the PDA perspective, SPD and so forth.

But ahead of that, I do want to look to move this bill.

So I wanted to say I move to recommend passage of Council Bill 121248. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

So we'll start a discussion of the bill overall and then we'll go into our three amendments.

Okay, Mr. Doss, can you just do a quick update on the bill and probably save most of your addressing to the amendments in more detail?

Since you spoke to it last time, just a quick refresher, and then we'll just work ourselves down the line from you, Mr. Wolf, and then SPD.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For the record, Greg Doss, Council of Central Staff.

We'll be discussing today Council Bill 121248 and three potential amendments to the bill.

And I will save further explanation for later.

Thank you.

Hello, Council.

Sam Wolfe with Purpose Dignity Action.

My role is the Seattle King County Policy Director.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

I'm Mark Gerstein.

I'm the West Precinct Captain.

Hello, I'm Sarah Smith, Seattle Police Department Chief Operating Officer, and I help with our legislation.

Thank you.

I am Rob Brown.

I'm the Chief of Patrol Operations for Seattle Police.

Thank you, Chief Brown.

Okay, why don't we start, since we kind of came this way, let's start with PDA and speak to the build, speak to the issues as you see it from PDA.

And really, you know, look to address also any points that were made during public comment that could be helpful too.

And colleagues, We'll do the PDA piece first, and then if there's any questions related to PDA, we'll start there.

Mr. Wolf.

Okay, well, I mean, I think in a broad sense, echoing what some of the public comments said, just that, you know, supporting this bill as, I think, a much-needed, like, continued construction of the coordination between SPD law enforcement and diversion services, You know, we've talked a few times about LEAD this year in Council, and I think one of the things that I've hoped has come across is just the way that this model for case management is critical for individuals to find a path to stability, whatever their needs are.

This is something that can meet a wide variety of individual needs, work with them.

And we did see, again, in our April presentation, a strong correlation between exposure to long-term case management and recovery and other outcomes.

That is of course not the entire picture of public safety issues in our city.

So grateful to the work being done here to build that coordination between law enforcement, who's doing another very critical piece of that work.

I think one example being in the project happening in Little Saigon right now, kind of two sides of the same coin, care for a place and care for a person.

And when we are able to build these two systems to be like highly integrated, we can see those work hand in hand.

So, yeah, happy to answer any questions.

But I guess we'll pass it to...

Well, actually, we'll...

Care for a place and care for a person.

Sorry, could you say that again?

Care for a place and care for a person.

It's almost like look out for our neighbors in crisis and our neighborhoods in crisis.

And just for clarity, because all these projects seem to have multiple names.

This is also the community solutions project in part.

LEAD is supporting the Community Solutions Project.

The Community Solutions Project is a little bit more specifically focused on people experiencing homelessness, which of course has a huge overlap with our population.

But the work that LEAD does with SPD is very directly people who have criminal legal system exposure involvement stemming from extreme poverty or unaddressed behavioral health issues.

Extremely high correlation of people who are unhoused when referred to LEAD, not a requirement.

Our goal is basically to work with folks that are repeatedly coming up on SPD's radar who are generating 911 calls, again, stemming from extreme poverty or unaddressed behavioral health needs, and working with those folks towards behavior change.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I usually start with my vice chair, but the care for a place, care for a person caught my attention.

So I go to my vice chair now.

Vice Chair Saka.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

No questions, comments at this time.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Mr. Wolf, you heard public comment here today.

We've heard this for a while.

I've been around since 2015 in the creation of not only our accountability partners, but the issue of lead and co-lead and started out as the Public Defender's Office, which I used to be a part of.

So how would you respond to what Andrea Suarez said?

Yeah, I mean, I think what Andrea Suarez identified in her public comment was a pretty irregular situation.

It was not a typical handling of a diversion situation without going into too many details of the person, but I mean, our response for that situation is going to be the same as other clients, as working with that person towards what they will accept in the moment.

including resources that I think she brought here today.

Those are all on the table.

Our goal is to build a relationship with that person, to figure out what their needs are, to create an individualized plan for them.

That plan may end up going to some of the other public commenters if battlefield addiction is something that that person finds appropriate and wants to work with, but that's not necessarily the outcomes.

We will work with that person towards addressing their needs.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions?

Council member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

I think, to be honest with you, part of the issue here sometimes is we're just not doing a really good job presenting the data to folks.

So I will say, you know, when I look at the quarterly reports that LEED is currently sending us, we're just not getting enough information on those reports.

To know that you have 990 people on your docket, I'm gonna call it a docket, I don't know what else, so apologies for the reference, but on your list, but then not knowing how many of those folks are in treatment, what is happening with folks, and I have been told, well, you know, there are you know we have there's a certain level of confidentiality with information that you know that is able to share but there is something between just knowing you have 990 people and I don't need to know folks' names to know what happened to these folks and how many are in treatment and you know what extra do they need or so there's a level of a lack of information that we get that you may have because you're doing the work but but the public writ large and we might not know.

And so I think, and as far as we should be having databases or more robust information that we can share that really shows where people are, where those 900 people are in the system and then adding to that because that's just a moment in time.

I think that would be, not just valuable, but critical.

And so I'm going to continue to bring this up, because Sam, you and I have had many conversations about this.

I've talked to Lisa about this.

And if we can't get that, not painting a better picture, because painting a picture means we're making things up.

I don't want us to be making things up.

But in as far as we can get, you know, critical information out there to really show what is happening to individuals.

We will continue to get folks to come to chambers or emails, et cetera, to say like, what does LEAD do?

How are we helping these individuals?

And I understand that you did a presentation before in chambers a few weeks ago but I just still didn't get that level of information that I think is needed.

I need to know, are people getting treatment?

Are we actually helping people?

Like not just diverting people, but actually helping them.

I mean, diverting them to actual help, that they're doing something, that they're plugged into treatment, that they have housing, that they have jobs.

Like I do not know any of this information.

And so I'm just gonna keep lifting up this request because it's really essential.

It's critical.

And, you know, in order to continue to support programs, we just need this level of detail and information.

And again, I'm not saying it's not happening.

I'm just saying we're not getting that level of information.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

I really appreciate you being here, Mr. Wolf and lead.

As you know, I do believe in diversion, but I also know that's a work in progress.

And one of the things that drives this is that as I look at what's happening on our streets with the public drug markets and so forth, and I interact with police officers and so forth, there's two main issues that we have.

One is their confidence in the diversion program, and two, medical declines in their lack of confidence in KCJ Health.

So these are the reason why I'm attacking this, you know, in terms of our role as the oversight in the community.

So with the belief in diversions, like, so how can we do things better?

And for everyone out there, that's the reason why this bill has a lot of data collects.

We started this off, again, nothing's by accident, in January, February with OIG, and they couldn't really present on their review because there was no data.

They had some, I don't know, interviews which was helpful and that kind of highlighted some of the challenges because at the end of the day everybody should be diverted or to jail.

And sometimes jail helps in diversion, you know, as noted in some of the public comment.

So these are the rationale and the push that we're doing from our perspective with PDA and this is the engagement that we're going to have that I don't think was really being done before but it's definitely going to be done now on the public safety side of things because of the seam to come back to that, that's so important.

For SPD, I guess Ms. Smith will start.

If you have any comments regarding the bill, you can comment on what I just said or anything else, but just some introductory points.

Oh, sorry.

Before you do that, can Council Member Juarez a quick follow-up?

I apologize.

I had my little hand up.

I don't know if you saw it, but that's okay.

Thank you, Sam, for being here and for the information you provided.

I just want the public to understand that, and I'm a bit skeptical of this infield diversion, quite frankly.

I know that there's in-court diversion, and I know that once people are arrested and they're in jail and they get sober and they're of their right mind, and being a former judge that people or more likely to, when a court says, when you come out and divert when you've already been through the court system.

To me, and again, this has been a while, and to Council Member Rivera's point, without some data, I don't know which one is more successful.

if it's in court or in field.

I still am not comfortable with this warm handoff thing because I think that's a made-up term.

I don't even know what that means when you really think about it, especially what we've seen post-2020.

So you're talking to somebody who was around where when we thought we were getting to North Precinct in 2015, and they did block the bunker, and then they said stop the sweeps and defund the police, and all this stuff that just went on.

So the accumulation of all that is where we're at today.

And so I was here when I watched the LEAD program begin and doubled their budget, tripled their budget, added on co-lead, satellite offices, when we created Chief Barden's position.

and of course was there when we hired and was on the hiring team for the OIG, the Officer Inspector General.

So you're talking to somebody that's kind of been around and getting back to Councilmember Rivera's point, I don't have anything like a dashboard, anything in front of me that says, Here's the data that we use to show that when we do diversion through PDA, I'm still gonna call it PDA, not what you guys call it now, to tell me what comes in and what goes out and if that's successful.

Because every budget cycle you come back for more money.

and every time we ask these things and we don't get them.

So one of the things I've heard over and over and over, and I've seen it in my family and everywhere, particularly in Indian country, people who are in addiction, in sobriety and fight for that.

So I understand that component, but I also understand something I've been taught and watched and I'm glad it was articulated here many times.

Yes, you should have empathy, but it should be in equal parts of accountability.

Asking people to be accountable doesn't make you racist.

Doesn't mean that you don't care.

You're telling me those should be in equal parts.

Empathy, yes.

Accountability, yes.

Because that's how people who you love are around how they get well.

So I am not, you know, Maybe I'm not progressive enough, I don't know.

Maybe I'm just old and I've just been around.

So I'm really struggling with this infield diversion as an alternative and somehow an officer is going to be able to do this in that transition period.

I just don't know how that's gonna work.

and I'll be really frank with you, Chair.

And Chair, thank you very much for when we had our meeting on July 14th and when we went through the bill and we went through the questions.

I really appreciated your leadership there.

And of course, Greg, providing us with a summary and fiscal note and all the memorandums that we received and going through what the infield diversion means.

And so I just want to be straightforward with you with that.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Mr. Wolff, you do have an opportunity to...

We'll shift to...

Mr. Wolff, do you want to...

Anything you'd like to say?

Yeah, I mean, I think a couple of things there.

One, regarding data, you know, the intent of our presentation back in April, I know there was a lot of a lot of data we talked about in that presentation, but specifically with the lead client outcome data was to show a little bit of a, here's what we can see between the relationship of exposure to long-term case management and those outcomes, which again, we include those in our contract reporting, but I think, don't have the numbers in front of me, but for the cohort that was had exposure to long-term case management for 24 months.

We're tracking things since the public use ordinance was originally signed into law.

70% or so, meaningful connections happening to recovery services of a broad variety.

I know you had some questions as well about what those look like.

We'd be more than happy to talk about those.

Again, what works for the person is what we're going to connect them to, whether that's inpatient, outpatient, you know, methadone, suboxone, figuring out what's going to work for the person that they will A, voluntarily accept, and B, will be part of a sustainable recovery plan.

We host those, you know, the quarterly report that we publish, we'll host that information on our website as well, but would be more than happy to work with, you know, the council members on what kind of data you're looking to see and how we can show that better.

Mr. Doss?

Yeah, thank you.

If I might add, I was trying to discreetly point out a section of the bill.

So there is a section that says that any diversion strategies in which SPD participates, which is obviously LEED, must be structured in a way that assures there is data collected on referrals, participation in treatment, and outcomes and participant information, and that that data must be readily accessible to city departments and policy makers.

So the bill requires the collection of the kind of data you're talking about, council members, and it's just a matter then of lead, of taking that data and ensuring that it's getting to you in the right form.

Where is that in the section?

That is...

in section one, it's sub part four of J, reporting requirements.

It's on page, should be on page five.

And this is a clear lessons learned that's being incorporated here.

and I appreciate the points raised by my colleagues to my left and I think it's important.

I don't know how many times I've been on the street with groups to include lead representatives, but I think that kind of engagement here in our offices would be helpful as well in addition to showing up in chambers.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

I wanna thank Chair for your due diligence on this.

And I know that you care about the Rivera due diligence.

You care about the data as much as Council Member Juarez and I, mainly because we do support people and we want people to get better.

And someone said that in chambers, many people said that in chambers beautifully is, you know, we can have compassion and we need accountability too.

I will say I'd love to also know how LEAD interacts with other organizations in town that are also providing services to folks because oftentimes we see in chambers somehow like there's a we could do lead or we could do that or we could do the other thing.

Really, there are many tools to help people and we should all of the services that we fund and even those that we don't fund directly as a city should be working together to ensure that we are robustly helping people.

And to the point about the about 990 folks that are on leads list, how many of those are the same folks over and over?

So do we need to be doing something different?

I know from family experience that folks need multiple times of treatment in order for it to sometimes work, sobriety to work.

are these the same folks and even with multiple treatment points, are those folks still not managing to stay sober to be able to have a job and stay housed?

If that's the case, what else do we need to be doing?

I don't get this information from what is presented, and I also feel like there might be some other things out there we're not trying that maybe we should to help people.

I feel that way in the gun violence space, which is why, Chair, as you know, I'm looking at the National Network for Safe Communities because that is a model we haven't tried here that can work.

Similarly, I'd love to know is there a different and additional because it's not additional model that we can work for folks that are coming to lead the same individual multiple times or that are part of the folks on your current list that just continue to be on because really the goal is that we help people, they get housed, they get jobs and then we to move on, not move on like we're not caring, but that they're being helped and then we're able to help others as well.

But if it's the same individuals over and over, I've got to believe then something's not working well.

And it can't be as simplistic as they just need more treatment multiple times.

Yes, I understand that and that is true.

for those individuals that have those multiple treatment points, what else can we be doing?

And I don't know any of this.

So when I think this has to be a part of it, and also how LEAD interacts with some of these other organizations that are providing services as well, because, you know, it's all hands on deck.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

I think somewhat Mr. Doss's point kind of answers this, but this is something that needs to be worked on, of course.

Anything briefly you want to add to?

Yeah, I just wanted to say I really appreciate that, and I think one of the key design elements of this program is that it's not mutually exclusive to other approaches.

There's a couple examples.

One, something like drug court might not work for every individual, Some lead clients do go through drug court and in many cases their lead case managers are a key part of helping them maintain that program.

You know, separately I think about, you know, you were talking about what are like the big bottlenecks to people really getting better.

I think sort of the elephant in the room is shelter and housing and the limitations in our like sort of regional stock for both of those resources.

you know, thinking through so lead case management, you know, long-term care and co-lead, which is part of the contract that the city signed for 2026. It's basically lead plus lodging, high support shelter.

So, you know, thinking about that plus the other high support shelters that the mayor's office and the city are bringing online this year, hopefully, it is a situation where we see Lead case management, when paired with that, what that means is that person has a safe place from which to make life plans.

Their case manager can more consistently find them.

We do see recovery and stabilization speed up very rapidly.

So kind of regardless of what the resource situation is, lead case management can augment that and build on it.

Again, not mutually exclusive.

So we'd love to have more of that conversation with you about what this population really needs and how we can build that.

Thank you.

Okay, we're going to move to Ms. Smith and we're going to shift to SPD.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, council members and council.

Thank you, Sam.

Thank you, Greg, for allowing us to speak here.

I'm going to be very high level with my comments and that I'm going to allow my colleagues to actually offer real insight because they are the ones who are doing the work on the streets and they know how this all operates.

But at a high level, I think Councilmember Rivera, what you're saying is it's about the people and it's about protecting our neighborhoods and making sure that it's really clear what our goal is, which is to keep people safe, to keep businesses safe and make our city a welcoming place for all.

And that needs to be something that drives us.

I will say it takes all the tools necessary to be successful in that.

It cannot just be law enforcement.

We have to have a whole government approach and more tools is going to help us address this nuanced issue.

I will also say, as we all know, addiction is nuanced and we need to have a comprehensive initiative and strategy with partners to make sure that we're actually addressing that in the right way.

We can't do it alone.

We have to have others there.

So I just want to ground us in what our overall objective is, in that it takes more than just the law enforcement side.

It takes more than just the diversion side.

It takes us coming together and working together.

Chief Brown.

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Yes, actually, I'd like to highlight one of the stories that we heard earlier.

And unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the gentleman.

but I think this is a good example of how LEAD can be successful, a success story.

You had a person who mentioned that in 2015 they were referred to LEAD, and they continued to be engaged by LEAD, even though, in their own words, I believe they characterized it as not really having effective engagement to move forward from themselves.

It wasn't until 2021 that they reached a point, after having been arrested, and booked into jail that LEED engaged with them, and they were able to then use that to move forward and get to a better place, moving beyond their addiction, moving into a place where they're housed, and no longer involved in the criminal justice system as they had been.

So that's one example.

And the last thing I want to highlight from that is, and I've said this before here, but LEED is not an either-or.

It's a one-time arrest diversion, typically for drug possession or something like that.

And so we, you know, if you're talking about accountability, law enforcement is still there for accountability for criminal activity.

And if they're arrested for a crime, they're going to be booked as they would otherwise, whether or not they're a lead client.

The difference is that we're communicating, we, the police, are communicating with the lead counselors to try to make sure that they're there to meet with them at the jail, to meet with them when they get released from the jail, and try to provide that opportunity that that client can utilize to get to a better place where they're no longer engaged criminally, no longer engaged in substance abuse, and housed.

And because you gave us free reign with microphones, I'm going to add to that as well.

So apologies for that.

But thinking through what you just said, Chief, and something you mentioned, Sam, the work in Little Saigon is a great example of how this work can actually happen.

So starting on June 3rd, we had a team of officers actively patrolling in Little Saigon, working together, and diverting folks to lead.

Can you actually talk a little bit about that, Captain Garth Green?

Because I think it is a good strategy that we can implement to address these needs.

Absolutely.

So in Littleston Island, what we did is we dedicated one sergeant and four officers to work in that area.

And with that, we're working with REACH, LEAD, CO-LEAD to divert folks that meet the diversion criteria and that we believe would be good candidates for the program.

Not everybody that's arrested gets put into LEAD.

Not everybody that's LEAD eligible goes to LEAD.

There is a discretion by the officers done at that time.

But what we're trying to do is work with LEED and the other outreach in that area.

We've had them do ride-alongs with us to kind of see what we're seeing from our side and then have the ability to call on them, do infield diversion.

Or mostly what we try to do is if we infect an arrest, we will take that person back to the precinct.

We will use what we call the green light phone.

We call a case manager and we do a warm handoff to Councilman Warriors where we physically hand the person over.

We just don't let them go and ask them.

So that's kind of what that is to them so they can take custody of that person, take them back to their office or somewhere else and have that speech and do the paperwork that they need to do on that end.

with it.

We do some in the field.

A lot of times if somebody might be in a wheelchair or something where it's really prohibitive for us to and inconvenient for them for us to put them in an ambulance, drive them to the precinct and put them in an ambulance to get them back somewhere else, we will see if we can meet in the field with folks and then divert them that way.

I think there is a misconception of LEAD that LEAD is immediate and LEAD is not immediate.

and I think Mr. Wolf would say the same thing.

It is progressive, it takes time.

So when we look at LEED and say, well, if somebody's arrested and they're diverted into LEED, we won't see them out on the street tomorrow.

That's not the case.

It is a long-term program.

It has fruitful endings, but in that interim, it's not going to change that immediate action on the street for the most people.

We might have a select few that it does, but for the most.

So I think that is a misconception sometimes with the public as well, is that they believe that the moment we arrest them and divert them, they're gone, they're into treatment, they're into housing, and we're done.

And that's not the process.

Thank you.

Although that presents another challenge when constituents see the arrests and then they see that person the next day.

So there's some of the challenges that we have there.

I appreciate Ms. Smith going in.

So basically we've had the introduction.

By the way, it was Devin who was the person from 2015. He's the one also who said hope, which I referenced as well.

Council Member, I always go to my vice chair, Council Member Saka, or otherwise I'm going to Council Member Lin.

No further comments, questions?

Appreciate the conversation, though.

Thank you.

All right, Council Member Lin.

Thank you, Chair.

And just want to say thanks to everyone that showed up to comment today, including those who have left, and thank you to our presenters.

I think we're dealing with complex human issues, people dealing with substance use, mental health.

And I'm not sure that there's one-size-fits-all easy solutions.

I think if there were, we wouldn't be here today.

But one piece of the puzzle, and I'll just say a couple Meetings ago, we heard a lot of very compelling testimony from lead folks, from people who participated, and it changed their lives.

We heard from somebody today who said it did not work for him, and I think there are, and we heard from a lot of folks today from Battlefield that that was changing their life, and I think we've seen sort of Different programs work for different people.

You hear from people who say going to jail was really important and maybe the best thing that saved my life.

And then we hear stories from others who I think a lot about this constituent who her brother was jailed and left jail with no resources and overdosed as he was released on a Friday night.

went right back to being unhoused and using.

And there's certainly a lot of statistics where people leaving jail are more likely to die from an overdose.

And so that, Council Member Juarez, I fully agree that it is both.

It is empathy and accountability.

And I think one of the worst things we can do is not to have any accountability, to have low expectations.

I mean, when you talk about racism, I think it is extremely racist if we do not have expectations for folks.

We think, oh, this is the best that we could, you know, giving up hope.

I think that is one of the worst things that we can do.

And so I guess the question, you know, oftentimes is what does accountability look like?

How do we, what is the, you know, what is the data informed program that we can, you know, lean into?

And so I guess part of this long introductory question is about our criminal system, our jails.

And what are the outcomes that we are getting from our jail system?

And I think part of the reason we are looking at alternatives is because we oftentimes are not getting great outcomes when people are leaving jail.

And that doesn't mean that, I mean, I think that there's a lot of things that we can do better in our criminal system, in our jail system, so that when people leave, they are not right back to where, you know, or maybe worse off than when they were arrested.

And I think that that's where, you know, again, sort of the origins of this LEAD program started was that officers would arrest and people would be right back to where they were.

And so I just, I want to, I mean, perhaps that's the discussion of a future meeting, but I think that that's a critical piece of the puzzle as well, is like, how do we get better outcomes?

You know, sometimes people do need to be arrested and sometimes they need to be jailed.

But like, how do we make sure that those outcomes are also, and I know that There's programs in place as people leave jail or prison to try to get those better outcomes.

But as we talk about accountability, as we talk about data-informed sort of programming, I just think that that's a big piece of the puzzle that we also need to keep in mind.

Thank you, Councilmember Lin.

Yes, empathy, accountability.

I also say rights and responsibility, as one of our public comments are said, two sides of the same coin.

On the issue of people leaving KCJ or any other jail, this is where we've had discussions with CARE and could they fill a role because to the point, and I doubt this on the street too, somebody was released, they had nowhere to go.

and it was a very difficult situation.

And I also have the, out of this in your question is the idea of the reset like we have in San Francisco.

And I understand on the addiction side, it's one thing.

We definitely need that second, third watch touch point when it comes to the miners on North Aurora.

We can't just say, okay, it's going to take this many times.

So that's a point, too, that we're looking at the differences, dare I say it, between soap and soda, for example.

Council Member Juarez, I see your hand up.

New hand.

Thank you.

First, Council Member Lynn, thank you for articulating that point.

I think it's important for the viewing public that we do understand the origins of LEAD and co-LEAD and what happened with the consent decree that we are under.

and the unconstitutional policing.

And as a former public defender, I know that.

I want to thank the captains for being here and thank you, Ms. Smith, for being here as well.

Let me just make a few comments and then I'll let this go, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate that LEAD is a long-term a long-term program.

I don't expect it to be a one-time thing, diversion, everybody's fine.

The world just doesn't work like that.

As is recovery.

And part of recovery is relapse.

And we know that.

And that's just part of the program.

Being a former judge, you see the same folks in front of you.

I was one of the very first judges that did drug court, 20, in the late 80s, I'm dating myself here, where they weren't doing drug court then.

and part of that was recovery, relapse, accountability, treatment and doing the things you're supposed to be doing that the court stayed on you and you had a support system that was there to hold you accountable and it worked.

In fact, Judge Martinez was a judge as well and now he's a federal court judge.

So I'm not here to say that it should be one or the other.

I know it's and or and repeat.

I understand that and I want the public to know that too because I think they think because there's lead and co-lead that somehow it's a one-time silver bullet, it's going to work and we're done.

And I know that.

I understand that.

And I do appreciate this long walk or this journey that you have that PDA brings to your clients.

There's no doubt the commitment that you bring to your clients to walk them through the system from arrest, to jail, to after jail, to in court, to diversion, to treatment, to accountability, to relapse, to back.

They violated their responsibilities when they were supposed to be back in community.

I understand that cycle.

and it is high time that when the court started looking at, look, part of recovery is relapse.

You can't keep smacking people down every time.

It's a disease and we need to treat it like that.

It just happens to be in a courtroom.

So I understand that piece.

And looking at the whole bill, and again, my only skepticism is I do want you to succeed.

I'm not here to be a naysayer.

I'm here to say, I hope it works.

I hope we get the data.

Thank you, Greg, for pointing out where in the bill.

I actually kind of saw that, but I actually needed to see it again in black and white on the reporting requirement.

So I think that's what Council Member Rivera was getting at as well.

And I don't have a problem if some of these folks are, they've come back, they've been counted twice.

They should be, because some of them are gonna be successful.

And if we can save many lives through that or a few lives through that, then we've done the right thing.

That's just where I've come from as a legislator.

So I don't want you to leave here thinking that, you know, I'm anti-lead and co-lead, though I still think it should be the Public Defender.

I still have my T-shirt that says that.

And I'm holding onto my hoodie.

I should show it to you.

It's old school.

Yeah.

So I was very proud of that.

I was a public defender for five years.

I spent four years in felonies.

So I kind of have a feeling of how this system works.

So I just want you to know that I'm hoping that this works, and I'm supporting the chair.

I know that he's worked hard on this, and Greg's done some really good work for us in answering our questions.

and doing the summary and fiscal note so we can come back and see how this looks out in the field with your new term now, infield diversion, while you're doing a warm handoff.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

This will be a continual work in progress.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I wholeheartedly agree, Council Member Horace.

I do want it to succeed.

We want to help people.

That's the thing.

We're all on the same page about that.

It's how the best to do that and how do you show your work?

How does LEED show its work to show it is working?

I think it's challenging and I'm just suggesting we need more information that's why there's more data collection in the bill to show how this really is working and to the point about people needing multiple treatment multiple times I know that I'm okay with folks you know I understand that we're going to double count folks all I'm saying is that level of data also lets us know maybe we need to be doing something different with with that subset of folks, is there something even additional we can provide them to help set them up for success?

Because at the end of the day, we want these folks to set up for success.

So we want the program to be set up for success.

There are other programs that are helping set people up for success.

Let's make sure we're coordinating and working together.

And ultimately, we want neighborhoods and our residents writ large to be set up for success.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Okay, just to close this section, a lot of discussions about our neighbors in crisis, but we also have our neighborhoods in crisis.

and this comes to the drug markets themselves.

What can we do to address this in terms of the active drug markets?

I can go, as you all know, I know where all these locations are and it's chronic.

What can we do to shrink them?

What can we do to attack them?

What can we, going back to my original point, a big challenge is faith in the diversion program and then also KCJ, King County Jail, these pieces.

So what can we do to attack the drug markets that are destroying our neighborhoods?

And adding to that question, how can we help you do that?

I'll say it right now, soda.

I've already spoken to soda and it's a tool in the toolbox and we don't use it, which is a problem.

So that's like RST and LNN on Wheel of Fortune.

I'll throw that one out as a given.

Anything else?

So I would say the number one thing that you can do to help the Seattle Police Department combatting the open street disorder in these inflicted neighborhoods is continue the hiring of Seattle police officers.

We have been at an extreme deficit, which has made it very challenging to field proactive officers.

I'm going to repeat something I'd said before in front of counsel.

We have a phenomenon that started around 2020, 2021, which I called defiant open consumption, where people feel they can brazenly break the law in a public place like a sidewalk with disregard for citizens, for even officers walking the block.

Those folks need to have a behavior change.

I'm not saying that everything is led with putting people in jail, but they need to be uncertain that they might be arrested for openly consuming fentanyl on the sidewalk, and so they better go skedaddling the other way and not doing it in the public view.

We're trying to establish that behavior change.

We are making great headway in doing that.

We've had a proactive team.

I talked about needing the staffing so that we can feel these proactive teams.

We have a proactive team at 12th and Jackson, Little Saigon, a sergeant and four officers that have been leading the charge to get that behavior change.

don't feel that they can break the law in public.

We're doing the same at Third Pike and Pine.

We now have a team out there of a sergeant and four officers that is doing the same thing.

In the end, again, continue.

As we get more officers, we can field more proactive units.

And that helps us, you know, focus our efforts in these communities that have been impacted.

Thank you.

And I would like to add to that, that it takes consistency.

We have to be consistent in hiring when we have a roller coaster of up and down.

When we have a roller coaster of capacity within our case management, within housing.

that all affects it.

And so, you know, Councilmember Kettle, you mentioned, or actually Councilmember Kettle and Councilmember Lynn, you mentioned the criminal justice system.

We also have to have consistency in our criminal justice system.

So making sure that we understand when things are being deferred, when they're being diverted, making sure that we're in lockstep with our judges, our prosecutors, our jails, our council members.

I think that's going to be really critical for us moving forward to really tackle this.

And so being consistent continuing to hire officers so we can be proactive.

The Neighborhood Resource Officer Program in Magnuson in Little Saigon can work.

We need more officers to be able to do it long term.

The Little Saigon effort is working, but it is not 24-7.

It is not at night and it's not on the weekends.

If we had more officers, we would be able to do more.

The officers can't do more until they have someone to replace it.

Otherwise, we have a captain working third watch when he's low staff.

So more hiring, more consistency would be very helpful to the Seattle Police Department.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Captain Carth-Green, anything you want to add or you're good?

Sir, I'd just say that, you know, looking at ordinances and legislation that address some of the drivers of the narcotics sales out there, like right now we have a lot of illegal vending that is incorporated in driving that market with EBT fraud, things along those lines.

So addressing those issues, these are through ordinance or legislation as well.

It's not just the narcotics, it's the things that are surrounding them as well.

Street markets, thank you.

And by the way, I'm also saying on a regular basis we have to reach our goal 1,258 officers and we have to maintain the momentum.

Okay, that colleagues, we're going to go into our amendments and I'm going to start since I have amendment number one.

I move to amend Council Bill 121248 as presented in amendment one and you're welcome to stay.

It's been...

Second.

has been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented in Amendment 1. Central staff, Mr. Doss, would you like to recognize and describe Amendment 1?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for coming.

And right before I read Amendment 1, if I might just give one paragraph of summary on the bill.

I'd say that, as counsel is aware, this bill would change the city drug ordinance to prioritize the use of infield pre-booking diversion strategies through a warm handoff.

of an individual to lead outreach personnel.

Also want to emphasize that this change would not preclude other alternatives to booking, such as a charge by officer or arrest and release, nor would it prohibit booking.

All of these things are set to the officer discretion and could be implemented, really, whenever the officer thinks it's appropriate.

This bill would simply set a preference for a direct handoff to recovery services when it's appropriate.

So with that as background, I'll go ahead and get into the First Amendment.

The Amendment 1 would make several technical and clarifying changes.

First, it would specify that a field-based diversion can include a direct in-person handoff that occurs at a police precinct.

This is a change that Councilmember Lynn suggested in the last meeting of this committee.

Second, it would specify that the city's preference for a field-based diversion is made by a recovery service provider who utilizes the law enforcement diversion framework, which under this amendment would be defined to include, but not be limited to, the elements in the RCW for a law enforcement assisted diversion program.

And that can be found in RCW 71.24.589 sub four.

This was a change that Councilmember Saka suggested in the last committee meeting as well.

Third, it would clarify that the data and evaluative requirements in Subsection 3, 28141J4 apply to recovery service providers.

This subsection, as we discussed earlier, requires service providers to collect and maintain data on referrals, participation, outcome, and client demographics.

This change was suggested by SPD so that it would be clear that it would be the lead program that would be capturing that data.

Lastly, it will clarify that an officer does not need to include in an arrest report information regarding the threat of harm assessment.

This is a technical correction to reflect the fact that officers are not required to do a threat of harm assessment.

And therefore, if they do not complete a threat of harm assessment, they can't put anything in the arrest report.

So this is just syncing up a technical issue.

along with another change that was made in 328.141 recommended by the law department.

So with that as a summary, I'll entertain any questions and whatever you need.

All right, thank you, Mr. Doss.

As the sponsor of this, I should really say that I'm the sponsor of it because as you noted, and as walking through, we have inputs here in this amendment from Council Member Lynn, Council Member Saka, SPD, and the city attorney's office.

There was a question from the mayor's office, although that was too late, couldn't get a law review.

Although that was, again, pretty small, straightforward piece.

But so again, this amendment is sponsored with inputs from across the board.

And I thank Council Member Lynn for your input, Council Member Saka, Vice Chair Saka, SBD and also the city attorney's office for their support.

In addition, of course, central staff.

Colleagues, any questions or can we proceed to a vote?

Okay, thank you.

Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment number one?

Council member Rores.

Aye.

Council member Lin.

Aye.

Council member Rivera.

Aye.

Council member Saka.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

There are five in favor.

Okay.

Amendment one is adopted.

Council Member Rivera, would you like to move your amendment number two?

Thank you, Chair.

I move to amend Council Bill 121248 as presented on amendment two.

Second.

Okay, it's moved and seconded as presented amendment two.

Central staff is recognized to describe amendment number two.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I apologize for failing earlier to recognize you are the sponsor of Amendment 1 and Councilmember Rivera, the sponsor of Amendment 2. Thank you.

And for Amendment 2, this amendment would require SPD officers and diversion service providers to report instances when an officer requested a field-based diversion and the number of times that a diversion service provider responded timely to that request.

One thing to note with this amendment is that SPD would need to define in its policy what timely means, and it is the case that central staff have asked them how they would do that.

It is the case also that when LEAD is training SPD officers, they say that they will respond within 30 minutes and that SPD has been using that protocol.

Of course, there would need to be exceptions potentially for high emergent calls, high priority priority one emergent calls and so that's some language that SPD is working on and I can provide to you before the final vote and it'll be up to you all as to whether you want to put that into the bill or have SPD put it into its policies as they would do under normal course.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, would you like to speak to your

Unless anyone has any questions, I think you did an excellent job at explaining more data by which we have a better picture.

Well, with that, I don't see any hands.

Clerk, will you please call the roll on adoption of amendment number two?

Council Member Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Lent.

Aye.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Sacra.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

They're five in favor and none opposed.

Okay, amendment number two is adopted.

Council Member Rivera, would you like to move your amendment number three?

Thank you, Chair.

I move to amend Council Bill 121248 as presented on amendment three.

Second.

Thank you.

It is moved and second as presented on Amendment 3. Central staff, you're recognized to describe Amendment 3.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Amendment 3, also sponsored by Councilmember Rivera, this amendment would recognize an officer's ability to take into custody individuals in severe crisis due to substance abuse.

By way of background, RCW 71051532 authorizes officers to transport an individual to a secure withdrawal and stabilization facility for emergency stabilization and or evaluation by a designated crisis responder.

The amendment notes that the state passed Rickey's Law to allow for involuntary treatment of individuals experiencing severe substance abuse when they are no longer able to make safe decisions for themselves.

SPD has indicated that a treatment bed is not always available under Ricky's law, but that officers would still use 7105153 to take an individual into custody, deliver them to a hospital, and ensure that they are cared for if they become gravely disabled due to their drug use.

From there, it would be up to a designated crisis responder to determine how that individual receives further treatment.

So this amendment, in short, would recognize that officers have this ability and under the threat of harm to self section of the bill, it would put in that when it's appropriate that officers should use this method.

Thank you, Mr. Doss.

Councilmember Rivera, any

No, unless someone has any questions, I think Greg did a great job explaining this, something that's already available.

So in this piece of the legislation, it just made sense to me to do the reminder that this is another thing that is available to folks, especially in an emergency.

Thank you.

Thank you.

On questions and comments, Councilmember Lin.

Yeah, so just to clarify, this is something that officers already have the kind of authority to do.

We just don't want to send the message that somehow this legislation would preclude them from doing it, so this just allows them to continue.

Okay, thank you.

Correct, Council Member Lynn.

Just kind of raising the flag, highlighting, if you will.

Especially, again, in case of emergencies, this is another tool to help folks.

Okay, not seeing any indication of question and comments.

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

Council Member Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Lynn.

Yes.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Sacco.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

Your five in favor, none opposed.

Amendment three is adopted.

Okay, colleagues.

will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to adopt Council Bill 121248 as amended.

Council Member Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Lin.

Yes.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Sacco.

Aye.

Chair Kettle.

Aye.

Five in favor and none opposed.

Okay, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council bill be adopted will be sent to the August 4th City Council meeting.

Okay, colleagues, very...

Big meeting, long meeting coming on the heels of this weekend.

I want to again thank everyone who came.

Most have left, but thank you for being here and giving comments.

And we've looked to incorporate that throughout the course of the meeting, which is all my colleagues have done, so thank you.

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

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

I don't think so.

Okay, hearing no further business come before the committee.

We are adjourned before 1130.