Public Safety Committee Meeting 3/11/2025

come to order.

It's 933 AM, March 11th, 2025. I'm Robert Kettle, chair of the public safety committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council member Moore.

Present.

Council president Nelson.

Present.

Council member Saka.

Here.

Thank you.

And chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you.

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

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Before starting off with chair's comments, I just wanted to take the opportunity to speak this morning and really speak to the neighborhoods.

Last night, I attended a meeting in Belltown.

that really is focused on public safety and the challenges that Belltown faces.

And I think it's important for the communities such as Belltown to understand that We understand, we recognize the challenges.

I hesitate to say we hear because today's world that's almost become, yes, we hear you, but not doing anything.

So I'd rather say we recognize what's going on.

We're working to the best of our abilities to change the environment, change the trajectory we're on in terms of public safety.

And I do believe that we're doing that.

But there's a time delay between action taken, particularly here in Council on the legislative side, and when it takes root.

on the executive side, on the operation side.

You know, it takes, as I often say, it takes a year to grow a cop.

And we're making great headways, and there's reasons to celebrate, but we're in essentially a bridging function because those cops are not fully on board.

We're starting to see it, but in terms of having numbers that really has an impact, that's going to take time.

And so I believe that we're in essentially this bridging function.

And we really need to speak to this because it's a little bit of expectations management.

It's like last meeting when I said I'd gotten a question regarding the soda bills being my landmark legislation.

It wasn't.

It's one of the set that we did in 2024 and now in 25 with our less lethal weapons bill.

part of the package, and it's part of the work that we're doing.

And it's going to take the better part of this term to get in a place where we can really start showing changes on the ground.

So we're in this period, this bridging period, where we're not quite there yet, even though we're taking steps forward.

And it's going to be difficult, because people in the communities here, like, hey, recruitment's up.

Applications are up.

You know, we are making progress in some areas like vacant buildings.

I really appreciate Chief Scoggins giving us the updates in terms of the number of buildings that have been brought down.

That makes a difference.

Like in Belltown, the old Mama's building has come down.

It makes a difference.

So there's this feeling with the downtown activation team, which is doing great work.

It's making a difference.

And that gets reported on.

But it's not level set across.

Downtown, nevermind the city.

As I know, and I should speak to this as well, Magnuson Park, District Four and some of the areas over there.

And District Five with Aurora.

We still have these challenges.

And I just wanted to speak to it.

I wanted to speak to the neighborhoods because I heard quite clearly last night the frustration and the pain of the residents and the business owners of Belltown.

And it's important for them to keep up.

You know, we're here for them, but we also, you know, hey, please don't lose hope.

Please keep reporting.

It's so key to call, and there's a bridge here to today's meeting, is still keep calling 911. there's frustration out there.

But we need those calls.

We need the engagement with the precincts, in this case West Precinct.

And I'd like to thank Captain Brown and his team that were there last night.

You know, so we just need to keep that engagement up and have that positive interaction that shows that we do recognize and that we're We're working it, and we appreciate all the work that helps in that bridging function, by the way.

I appreciate the businesses that have private security and the other efforts that community groups are doing to change in a CPED kind of way in terms of what's going on in our neighborhoods.

So with that, I just wanted to acknowledge, based on my experience last night, that improvements that we have are not universal and that they're not necessarily 24-7.

They may be daytime only.

but we are making improvements and we will continue to make these improvements by building on what we did last year in council and with the executive, with the mayor and move forward.

And again, this is a bridge to this meeting itself because the care department is key to this to include the 911 call center.

So with that, we will 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 are signed up today?

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

Okay, each will have two minutes.

We'll start with the in-person and go to remote.

The comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

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 of their time.

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

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

The first in-person speaker is Alonzo Smalls.

Good morning, Alonzo.

I can't stand my father.

Like you guys.

Like my mother, right?

The city's mothers, fathers that make decisions for us.

I'm speaking to you.

My time has already started.

I'm speaking to you now, right?

So what I would like for you guys to have a better understanding of where you sit.

Safety should be our number one priority, period.

And if the police department can't do it, we will.

And other than that, they better get their house in order.

It's not about recruitment.

You know that.

It's about the leadership.

Policing is based off leadership.

Not friendship, not coming to work, being your pal, buddy, buddy.

So you got a choice.

Fix that house, or we will fix it.

That's it.

Thank you.

Uh, the first remote speaker is Andrea Suarez.

Uh, please press star six.

When you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

Okay.

Good morning council.

Uh, thank you.

Council pedal for your update in bell town, my neighborhood where I work clay live.

and provide private-funded outreach.

As many of you know, I wanted to just give you a quick update that Tim, Patrick, and I are in the Green Belt, in particular in District 7 in East and West Queen Anne, keeping those Green Belts as clean as we can.

Much like private security, we are picking up contracts to do private outreach with a focus on drug user intervention.

We strongly believe the fastest way to curtail crime is to curtail drug-motivated crime, and the way to get at that is to be vigilant in our offering to intervene and offer detox services.

We are tracking at about two a week using statewide detox centers, including the recent $300,000 friction-free fund this council and Sarah Nelson championed.

We graduated a man yesterday from Lakeside Milam and drove him to his halfway house.

We wrote the first check for his rent in the amount of $1,000, which is very cheap.

This is a much cheaper process than keeping people where they're at and whack-a-mole-ing them around the block.

So I urge outreach out there who, by the way, all of the other agencies, whether it be REACH or LEAD or Lifeline or American Behavioral Health, Welfare, COP, Youth care have all reached out to WeHeart Seattle because we get it done, whether it's bus tickets or transportation.

We are the private-public collaboration that's really ticking behind the scenes here in Seattle, helping the city.

I think it's also important to note I've unlocked 341 homes statewide.

uh that are halfway houses and we need to access that i'd also like to offer to amy barton and her team our services if she needs to scale we are here as subcontractors we are open for business call me thank you thank you the next remote speaker is david haynes

I thought the original idea of care is when 911 is called and there is crime, mental health problems, drug addiction, behavioral crisis, and or innocent houses unnecessarily suffering, the response would be holistically covered with police and care connected to service providers.

Yet the mayor and the council didn't even bother building enough capacity within the racist bloated budget to expedite the ongoing needs.

Instead, we have no real effective court order Only voluntary efforts by troubled individuals to deal with their addiction in self-destructive customs-violating ways who cause real problems for innocent others, resulting in massive 911 response and minimal success due to immoral rules of law, lack of proper training, and leaders that misinterpret what constitutes a crime and justify court-ordered requirements.

Excuse me for saying this, but one of the biggest concerns is how care and lead charm their way into the 911 call center and the police station and start running interference for 911 criminal calls and start claiming that these are low-level, nonviolent misdemeanor, no need to bother with as a crime.

That some of these are connected to the criminal underworld drug suppliers that are undermining their fellow man, bothering people in the whole community, imploding society, and being exempted from judgment, getting priority for housing and services first, For the repeat offenders without being trespassed in question at the police station before they bypass any and all punishment with no court ordered effective addiction treatment and no community service that supervise.

It's as if the executive aka Bruce Harold is still running interference for his criminal underworld friends of his childhood.

by using quarter-million-dollar taxpayer salaries to conveniently use care and leave to start listing evil criminals as nonviolent, low-level, no need to bother with, even though they are committing crimes against humanity, running pursuits of happiness, employing society, destroying economy.

Thank you, David.

There are no additional registered speakers.

Okay, public comment has finished.

We will now proceed to our item of business.

Members of the public are encouraged to either submit written public comment on the sign-up cards here, which are available on the podium, or email to Council at council at seattle.gov.

And as I always say that we do listen to public comments, and I will say yes, it starts with leadership.

And that's what we've been showing here on the Council, particularly with this committee as it relates to public safety.

And that's the reason why we're here.

So with that, we will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

CARE update, 911 center, CCR team, and future planning.

Well, good morning and welcome, Chief Barden.

I'd welcome you to the table, but you're here.

So if you can introduce yourself, you both can introduce yourself for the record.

I appreciate it.

And again, welcome.

And then we'll start up the presentation.

Yes, good morning.

Amy Barden here, Seattle Care Department.

Chair Kettle, I think you and I are the only people in the city who really enjoy public comment.

I always appreciate it.

I appreciate that people are engaging.

And I feel like half of my job, at least, is education, is illuminating and explaining what's actually going on.

I am joined today by my chief of staff, Jake Adams, who has been in 911 for a long time and is now serving in a leadership capacity, primarily concerned with operations and how we do scale up these interventions.

I have a whole bunch of my valued teammates behind me, which feels really good.

You remember the first time I presented, I was alone.

So it's been fun to build out the leadership.

Good to meet you, Jake.

And as I've told Chief Barden, next time she comes to my office for our check-in meetings, she has to bring you with her.

I look forward to it.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's true.

Ask him questions later.

He's very smart.

As you know, the Seattle Care Department is a fully independent third public safety department.

It currently houses Seattle 911 and the care crisis responders.

And you have all heard me say that by the data, by the 60s, we should have set up a new first responder unit that we had escalating mental health issues, homelessness, substance use, and suicide.

So I was in college when the ACES study was first published, that's Adverse Childhood Experiences, and it was watershed research at the time compelling us to really acknowledge that mental health and health are inextricably intertwined, and also suggesting that most of us do bear invisible scars, and some people bear wounds that never really quite heal.

While working in the space of foster care, I learned to stop saying things like, return a child to a healthy trajectory, because I came to learn that some kids were never on that path to begin with.

Things go wrong.

Sometimes things go wrong even in utero.

And so we started to understand things like grit and vulnerability, the psychological, the physical impacts of acute trauma, and also chronic stress.

And researchers also started to understand post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth.

And so why is it that two people can have roughly the same circumstances and one person will respond to trauma by forging meaning in it, using it really to compel transformation and personal growth, and yet another person might spiral into bitterness or self-destruction?

And the truth is we do not entirely know.

The brain is really complex.

And there are countless factors that impact our responses and our choices.

And I think about my own life and why I metabolize the hard things the way that I did, generally intellectualizing them and always understanding that every single experience could be used for good if I did the work.

So we have thousands of neighbors in our community all across neighborhoods who are suffering.

Some are dying slowly, and others are dying suddenly.

And most of those deaths are preventable and avoidable.

And in 911, we do uniquely have a front row seat to all of it.

And so I love academic journals.

I love research and theories and frameworks and dwelling in complexity.

But today, I'm going to attempt to distill what I think is really going on and how best we can help.

Next, please.

So the concept of sending a civilian response as an alternative to police is not new.

It was established in Oregon when I was in grade school.

Corresponder teams started to pop up all around the country, sometimes in police departments like ours in 2010, sometimes in fire departments like Health One.

Some community-based responses are outsourced to nonprofit providers.

This is the current model in Denver and in Atlanta and in lots of jurisdictions.

And when I started this role, I was really agnostic about the design.

I knew that the problems and considerations were too complex to be Google-able, and I also assumed that people had already dedicated years, lifetimes to this work.

and so I sought them out.

And I was lucky to be embraced by a number of really fantastic learning communities comprised of both academics and practitioners.

I went on ride-alongs all over the place and I prioritized first understanding the designs in Denver and in Durham and in Albuquerque because it looked like those cities had the best momentum in the space.

And I learned not just from the program directors there, I learned from the mayors and city managers and city attorneys and policy analysts and especially from people who had benefited from these teams and community.

I was teased a lot initially for having two really big jobs.

911 as an industry is vastly misunderstood.

It is overlooked.

It is catastrophically under-invested in.

And also, designing alternative response in a city of this size and complexity is not a small undertaking.

So I was chatting with Sarah Smith about this slide a couple days ago, and she kept saying, is that right?

Was that just in 2023?

And we laughed because we forget how much we have done in such a short period of time.

It makes me feel tired.

But it mostly makes me feel really grateful for the tremendous support this council has shown, the executive, and I've also had help from folks all across the country.

I've noted here for you a few key legislative moments.

I want to acknowledge council members Herbald and Lewis and all of the work they did that precipitated my arrival here.

So 911 was removed from SBD.

and originally was called CSCC.

Nobody remembered what that acronym stood for, which used to make me laugh.

In 2023, just before I arrived, the mayor had announced the care name in a speech, and it initially stood for Civilian Assisted Response and Engagement.

And the first email I ever got to my work email was from a strategic advisor who alerted me that folks in 911 were very concerned about the new name because Seattle Care Department spells scared.

and I totally thought I was being hazed and I found out it was a real thing and I thought it was pretty funny.

So I advocated initially not to use that term civilian because it's a militaristic term and this is a community response.

I won the debate, I was kind of smug about it, only to learn the night before our first press conference together, the mayor insisted on calling me chief.

And it was September, I was too fatigued to debate anymore, so I said I defer to the mayor, and we proceeded.

And now I can see, looking back, that that move that he made was a stroke of genius, and it was also really important in principle.

He wanted three co-equal public safety departments with three chiefs.

The care responders, just as of this week, are citywide, 10 hours a day.

The current head count of 24 responders is not nearly adequate to meet the need.

By the crisis data, we do need 24-7 coverage.

We're getting really close to being able to say, in 911, police, fire, EMS, or mental health.

And when we answer the phone, that is where we need to be.

Today, there are 89 alternative response programs around the country.

I often talk about RACER, which is just to our north, and I think that's a fantastic model for smaller jurisdictions to share a central crisis response team.

The co-responder outreach alliance is thriving in Washington state, and this is one category where we are the most advanced in the nation and organized.

We now have 50 co-responder teams across the state.

And the Central Community Crisis Responder Academic Hub has now been established at the University of Washington under the extraordinary leadership of Dr. Jennifer Stuber.

She also designed our Care Responder Academy.

Our dream is that all co-responders and community responders get to train up together, get to share learning, get to share best practice and vernacular.

You may be aware of House Bill 1816, which is actually going to a House vote tomorrow.

This legislation would give jurisdictions of 300,000 citizens or more the right to have an alternative response unit like care fully outside the jurisdiction of law enforcement.

This does not preclude collective bargaining and impact bargaining.

Rather, it suggests that once that work is bargained and it's established to be the body of work of a unit like care, care would be able to grow and expand relative to the data, fully independent, the same as police and fire.

And then secondarily, the legislation would provide a public disclosure exemption for care responders.

This is imperative to protecting the privacy of our vulnerable neighbors.

The bill is bipartisan, and it has 14 sponsors.

Next slide, please.

So back to how to think about the problem.

When I arrived in 911, I realized that we have designed the system to be siloed, fractured, incomplete.

At the time, I could see we've got multiple crisis and detox teams at the county level.

We've got many different outreach teams run by local nonprofits.

I've got patrol officers, co-responders, community service officers, firefighters, Health One, Health 99, all different records management systems, different nomenclature.

little to no information sharing across sectors and teams.

I spent really long days in 911, those first six months, and I did listen to police radio almost around the clock, and I quickly learned that very often a call will come in, we will screen it, we'll send it to fire, and fire will screen it and say it does not meet our protocols, right?

They're best positioned for medical calls that could end at the emergency department.

And so they send it back to 911, and then we send it back to police, and we compel police to go.

And then sometimes police go, and they say, this is medical, this is not us.

So it goes back to us, and it goes back to fire.

And I'm observing this every day as I start.

I don't have anyone to send.

It was Chief Scoggins who helped me to understand that there are exponentially more person down in welfare check calls during the past few years that are not appropriate for fire or police.

We don't have someone to send.

And today still, even with improvements in staffing across departments, the average response time to a priority three call, which is an emergency, hovers around two and a half hours.

And I consider that a non-response.

There was a day I realized that I run 911 and I still can't understand what number to call or where to file a report or what app to use.

I learned that assuming that people know what they need is catastrophically misguided by the data they do not.

In an actual emergency, you might relate to this.

Sometimes it's hard to even remember your address.

And the co-occurrence of mental health and medical and criminal justice issues is nearly universal.

Most calls would ideally require two of those teams.

So rather than attempt to duplicate a whole separate mental health dispatch system with a separate number, we should have added more diverse responses in 911. Keep it simple.

I think ideally there should be two numbers.

If something could get worse quickly, that is an emergency, that's 911. If my bike was stolen yesterday and it's gone, that may be a report, but it's not an emergency.

And again, by our data, people guess wrong 20 to 30% of the time.

I learned quickly that while folks in the city were debating the ideal definitions of harm reduction and recovery, we were losing on average four neighbors a day to overdose.

And that is the leading cause of death nationally for folks ages 18 to 45. You can imagine my confusion the day that I learned at the time I didn't even have 24-7 detox in the space of that emergency.

And also, I spent time at Harborview and realized you can't get methadone there at the time.

And so I felt like, why am I taking folks to Harborview post overdose?

And got the answer, where else are we going to take them?

I learned about the DCR process and that we actually have Ricky's law beds and capacity, but we don't refer to them.

A cop doesn't want to wait for two or three hours for a DCR to show up when there are priority one and two calls coming in right and left.

I learned a lot about fentanyl and the statistical improbability that someone with that dependency is going to show up for an appointment in five days.

One medical doctor said, Amy, it's improbable if it's five hours later, let alone five days.

I learned that it is incredibly easy and affordable to get these drugs, and it is almost impossible to get treatment.

I learned that most crimes in our city do correlate with substance use, and yet we only have 110 participants in drug diversion court, one of the best and most successful interventions in the country.

And I learned from people in recovery that a jail booking is absolutely not a deterrent.

It's not.

A friend said to me last week, well, that's where I used to make my user friends.

And then we would immediately exit, and we'd go use again.

I could go on and on.

Nothing made sense.

And it was clear that the system will predictably fail people with behavioral health needs right from that first call.

So you will recall, the first time I presented, I had this simple Venn diagram and a simple idea.

We should be three divisions of one and there needs to be a continuum of crisis response.

So I've got health one, I've got care, and then I've got police co-response.

I was in D.C.

a couple weeks ago, and I had the great pleasure of presenting to Georgetown Law alongside professors Tahir Ducat and Christy Lopez.

Now, Christy is a legend in the space of criminal justice and police reform and was a principal strategist behind the consent decrees.

And Dr. Lopez was explaining to this very bright class the need to de-center policing as the focal point of public safety.

And then one of the students asked, well, what do you center then?

And I jumped in.

I said, 911. You center the data.

We need objective, independent dispatch centers where professionals are elevated and supported to be the primary architects and conductors of the system of first response.

In an ideal state, we would never dispatch again on a badge if there wasn't an actual reason to believe the call required it.

Next slide.

So CARE has worked hard on developing an organizational identity.

When I arrived, we didn't have one, right?

We had been pulled out of SPD, but there was no new culture articulated.

I often say we're smart and we're compassionate.

we debate things in our department.

We respect and we sometimes demand dissent opinions because the work is really subjective.

We ask why five times.

My teammates learned quickly that I am not about rules, I am about principles.

I care about one thing deeply, which is the way we treat one another.

It is entirely possible to be tough on ideas and systems and never on people.

To be good at this work, you have to be able to suspend judgment about who someone is and how or why they arrived in the circumstances that they're in.

Our role is to help.

And my expectation is that we extend the same courtesy to one another as we do to the strangers that we support every day.

Now, these principles you see before you are still drafty, but we've been talking a lot about our shared vision and values.

I believe CARES should be the principal informant about what is working and what is lacking in public safety and public health.

Next.

So thanks to Sean Blackwell, we have hundreds of great photos from the past year.

Two of my favorite experiences in this job hands down were holding the first ever Care Department's Award Dinner, where we honored exemplary courage and service and contributions across a number of categories.

The expansion of the crisis responder team precipitated the first ever Care Academy graduation ceremony, which included honoring our extraordinary original six care responders.

The mayor spoke.

And I realized at that time that I'm probably the only person who's routinely in his audience.

He brought the house down.

Jake actually said after, that was so awesome.

That was like church.

And I agree.

The mayor and many of his teammates came to our holiday parties this year.

We have two so that folks can attend across shifts.

And every one of you has spent time investing in this young department, seeking to really understand the work both in 911 and in crisis response.

I appreciate it so much.

It's made a huge difference.

Community partners visit us, business leaders, elected officials at every level of government, faith leaders.

And so initially my introverted teammates were a little concerned about all this press and attention, but we've figured out how to do it where the folks who prefer to be anonymous can avoid the spotlight.

For the first time last year, we joined our professional dispatch organizations, APCO and NENA, and you can't imagine my delight when we won Team of the Year last fall.

We just participated in 9-1-1 Goes to Washington with 400 other professionals across the country.

So in 2024, I shared that retention was my top priority.

And to retain great folks, I know I need a great workplace.

Now, the work is fundamentally challenging, and we don't have the same supports as police and fire.

We don't have mental health considerations.

People don't talk about mental health impacts to dispatchers or well-being investments.

We don't have a gym.

We don't have emotional support dogs, although I might ask for one in the supplemental.

But what do we control?

I made a number of management moves.

I've been very committed to hiring and promoting internally where possible.

You probably know that two of my primary leaders on the care responder side came from 911 supervision.

My deputy chief, who's behind me, Charlotte Joseph, was absolutely not seeking that weighty leadership role, and I'm really glad I talked her into it.

She is brilliant.

And one of the best moves she made was putting Jamie McMurray in charge of training, who did a comprehensive training overhaul.

Some of you know that I studied learning science and cognition as part of a doctorate, and it's been really fun to take that knowledge out for a spin.

We learn by doing, and we learn best when things that we already understand are built upon.

Anxiety impairs learning, and psychological safety promotes it.

We changed how we recruit, and we changed who we recruit.

I sit down with every member of the new call taking class as they come in for about an hour to get to know them, generally sharing with them where we've come and where we're going.

crucially stressing the vital importance of the role that they're about to play.

Our peer support team has become one of the most active and passionate around, led by my teammates Ashley Shager and Audrey Washington.

They currently have 19 members, and they are investing in formal peer support training.

This focus on well-being and self-care, it's visible everywhere in 911 today.

And they're working with state leaders to develop a statewide peer support network for dispatchers and a 24-7 hotline.

So if you look at this slide, we cut attrition in half last year.

And I have stressed to people, I do not want to retain at all costs.

Some people will not be a good fit, and some will fatigue under the pressure of the work and should feel no shame about moving on.

Several of my teammates are about to join SPD to work in the real-time crime center, and I think that that's awesome.

I have hired a number of community service officers from police, and I really love watching people flow to the work that they want to do in the current season of life.

Next.

So you'll see here the calls coming in to 911 stayed pretty steady in 2024. They were incrementally higher overall.

What's not represented here are online report trends.

We are trying to automate anything that we can automate to alleviate the burden and improve efficiency.

So those dispatch times to priority one, two, and three calls should alarm you.

They keep me up at night.

So this is just the time from when we take the call to when we dispatch the call, meaning we assign a unit.

So it's going to be even longer before somebody actually is on the scene.

Ideally, priority one, I should be getting officers to those calls in under seven minutes, and it still hovers around 11 minutes.

So in this context, call prioritization reassessment was a huge operational priority last year.

Deputy Chief Eric Barden and Deputy Chief Charlotte Joseph drove one of the most efficient and intelligent work groups I have ever seen, meeting sometimes multiple times a week, to really analyze calls for service and rethink what constitutes an urgent threat to life.

Eric once said to me, Amy, if everything is priority one, then nothing is priority one.

And his point was, in the space of a true staffing crisis and escalating calls, it's imperative that the actual threat to life be prioritized.

So there was a lot of debate among our teams in SPD and CARE, and I really loved that.

One of the most interesting was around domestic violence calls.

In 911, we had strayed really cynical.

So we hear a man and a woman arguing, what if they're married?

What if he kills her?

But there are known indicators that something is escalating and likely to become violent, and we need to redefine our protocols and update our practice to be aligned with the data and what we know.

You see that last month we had 50% fewer Priority One calls over the same month a year ago.

And again, this is not because there are fewer crimes.

I wish that was why.

It is because we redefined what is a Priority One call.

Next.

Care responders have now been to over 1,700 calls and the trends have stayed consistent.

For calls, they are dispatched to about 30 to 40% of the time they're giving someone a ride.

Time on scene remains around 40 minutes on average.

Expanding the care responder team has been a challenge for us operationally because unlike police and unlike fire, we don't have folks purely dedicated to administrative support, purchasing, inventory.

We all do a lot.

And although I love being shoulder-to-shoulder in shared purpose with my colleagues, I am burning my people out.

My leaders and managers are often putting in 60 or 70, or last week, 80 hours a week, because so much of this work is time-sensitive and urgent, and we just do not have the bandwidth and administrative support.

So I will take a moment to remind the council about budget, that this year the police budget is $448 million, the human service department budget is $385 million, fire is about $327 million, and care is $33 million.

If the city is serious about building a sustainable department, we absolutely need more investment, and we especially need to invest in administrative support to grow these expanding divisions.

I'll also remind you that every time I dispatch care, we're saving 50 cents on the dollar at least versus a police response.

So I often say that scaling the care response is the best fiscal strategy we have for the general fund right now.

This year, we are focused on continuing to strengthen our learning culture and providing more opportunities for people to engage and learn inside the city and outside of it.

We know we will be more efficient and we'll get better outcomes when we invest in technology that leverages machine learning and automates processes.

We're investing a software right now that can synthesize data across public health and safety at all different levels of government so that we can actually articulate, are we getting better?

Are we getting more healthy?

Are we getting more safe?

Jake Adams, here next to me, is really great at operational design and information systems.

So he's working closely with Captain Britt to ensure that as the RTCC comes online, there's tight coordination and integration of our services.

There are a lot of different technological tools that we are in the process of adopting or investigating.

And so if you have questions about those after, I will refer you to Jake.

Next.

We're looking forward to the Seattle University care evaluation, which I have seen a preview of.

That research team was fantastic.

And a huge part of the research focus was the perceptions of utility and confidence that were headed in the right direction with diversified response.

Now, what I really wanted to study was whether or not I could get COPS to priority one calls faster with the addition of care.

But I was not able to do that because there's still insistence that SPD accompanies care on calls.

I frequently hear frustration from the rank and file at SPD that they're still required to do this, even though there is clear evidence that they are not needed.

I am part of two really fantastic national groups that are seeking to establish something more like a blueprint in this space of diversified response.

One is the CSG Commission on Expanding First Response, which is about 30 commissioners from different parts of the system, public health, public safety, legislators.

And the other is the Georgetown Alternative Response Research Collective, which is comprised of practitioners in nine jurisdictions where there's significant momentum.

We compare notes.

We're trying to come to consensus about what seems to be working.

I have become very vocal about why these care responders, community responders, should be public sector employees integrated into the existing system of first response.

They need to be on the radio, the same as police and fire.

Community responders need to be paid for by general fund dollars to eliminate that financial vulnerability and the volatility of shifting political perspectives.

So if you're not really familiar with this ordinance 126954, which was signed by the mayor in late 2023, I recommend you read all seven pages of it.

The council's intentions and requirements for the department are really well articulated, including language that suggests the care department's mission is to improve health and safety services by unifying and aligning.

these interventions.

Prevention, diversion, intervention, rehabilitation, all of these ideas are intertwined.

And in my opinion, all three public safety departments have a role to play in these spaces.

If you go out with Health 99 or with care, you will see them outreaching in between calls, really serving a preventative function and an educational function.

Albuquerque safety, they're only about a year ahead of us, and they have built a full headquarters in their international district.

They have a third division that is violence intervention and prevention that already has 30 people, in addition to their 24-7 team of ACS responders.

I think they have about 80 folks in that space.

I spoke with the deputy who leads the prevention division last week, and I check in all the time with police chief Harold Medina and director Jodi Escobel about the positive impacts resulting from the rapid expansion of that third public safety department.

Their responders have been to nearly 100,000 calls.

I actually recorded a congratulations message for a highlight reel yesterday.

This is an extraordinary achievement.

And so it is not true that we don't have evidence of efficacy all around the country.

I was just past a law enforcement action project report, LEAP, which has these really significant data points.

Community responder units like CARE handled more than 226,000 calls all across the country last year.

Over 55 million Americans now live.

in a jurisdiction that has a team like this.

And so I do believe that our budgets will be saved at every level of government when we do two things.

First, we have to send the right response to begin with.

And then second, we have to actually design a system that will help people to change.

And so I want to go back to my opening comments about why things are the way they are.

Brent, you can kill the deck if you want.

I'm just going to talk for a minute.

So when I was in D.C.

recently, I thought a lot about the birth of the nation, our Enlightenment era thinking.

And the past few months, I've been around a lot of people who are currently or formerly incarcerated.

And I've realized that essentially we haven't come very far.

We're still trying to sort people into good buckets and bad buckets in this country.

We are still arresting and jailing to punish rather than to interrupt and to redirect the behavior.

And so sometimes I ask people, why did we think it was OK to leave folks out here languishing under bridges, visibly suffering on our sidewalks?

And almost always, the response I get is something about autonomy and something about self-determination.

And I tend to reply, how is that different than old bootstraps thinking?

We will wait for you to make a different choice, and then we'll help.

We know way too much now about the brain and what is required to change behavioral patterns to persist with these old ideas.

And when I think about which people committing crimes have a mental health issue or a substance use issue, I assume it's all.

Because a healthy brain, a balanced person, does not make the self-destructive choices or the harmful choices to community.

I have a new friend, Jacob, in town, who recently exited prison.

And the first time we spoke, he asked me a question about what to do for the folks in prison who have a trauma past.

And I responded, I assume all folks in prison have a trauma past.

And he jumped up and he hugged me.

And he thanked me for knowing that.

And so to counsel, when you are evaluating programs that you are considering supporting, I think there's a really simple way to look at them.

Are they designed to predictably heal and redirect somebody's life?

Do they balance support and compassion with accountability?

We have to have both.

I have personally never seen someone successfully maintain change without both.

Cause and effect is imperative to repatterning behavior.

Now, crime does correlate with mental health and substance use issues.

So why don't we acknowledge that and demand change in our jails and prisons?

Why wouldn't we have detox on the front end?

Why wouldn't a comprehensive needs plan be made, treat the trauma, address mental health issues right from the first day?

I've become friends with our prosecutor, Lisa Mannion, and she did say that.

She said re-entry planning should start from the first moment, and I fully support that.

I do believe in diversion.

And my theory is that if I can send care to somebody to intervene outside of the criminal justice system and offer a swift path addressing people's concerns and needs, that a lot of people will say yes.

And I also hear repeatedly from people who have had these experiences, if I hadn't been arrested and booked, I would be dead today.

And I do hear that a lot as well.

So it is hard to change.

It's hard for the most privileged among us, and it can seem impossible for people who have lost everything and never had hope to begin with.

Several people recently have described to me the sense of becoming invisible.

One friend said, after 13 years of heroin use, when I was a couple weeks sober, if you had asked me my favorite meal, I could not begin to answer the question.

I had lost every part of myself, even to myself.

I recently visited Olympic Correction Center with my husband to observe a program that Jenny Burton is piloting, and it's showing fantastic results.

Eric and I listened one by one as about 40 men stood at a podium to share how long they had been incarcerated, why they elected into this class, and then what they had planned next.

And they were all within five years of re-entry, some within a few weeks.

Most had done double-digit sentences.

I know people can change.

And even still, sometimes I am astonished when I get up close.

We heard from a man who got mixed up with the Hilltop Crips when he moved to Washington at the age of 18. He's 50 today.

Many men expressed their desires to be good fathers and good husbands.

Most talked about vulnerability and learning how to be accountable.

I knew, statistically, most of them did have some victimization in their past, and yet nobody mentioned it.

They were empowered, and they were strong, and they applauded for one another after every little speech.

And it was amazing for me to think about how these men had become friends, people I could not imagine even being in the same room together.

Different former gang affiliations, you had some cowboys, wide diversity of age and race and religious and political perspectives.

And so people do change, but we have got to create the system that allows it.

So I will continue to work furiously to expand first response and get the first response right to triage correctly But ultimately, I want the 911 calls to go down.

I don't want to re-arrest or reverse overdose on the same person again and again and again.

It is expensive, and more importantly, it's really inhumane.

So I'm going to close with an excerpt from a draft personal statement from a young woman who's really dear to me who's applying to medical school.

And she's from a really sheltered community in the Midwest.

She took an internship, a research position at Harborview, and I was a little anxious for her because I know something about that environment.

She wrote, every day I have the opportunity to interview and speak candidly with patients about their substance use and how it contributes to their health, their housing instability, relationships, and expecting to learn more about how all substance users are alike.

And instead, every day I'm surprised by how unique each individual is, each replete with entirely different social determinants, attitudes, goals, or lack thereof.

I learn about all the ways in which their communities failed them, and all the ways in which they failed themselves.

I've met patients who have lost everything to the downward spiral of addiction, and I've met patients who lost everything first.

and then use substances to cope.

Some recover, some do not.

And each person provides deeper insight into what it means to be human.

Reading these words the first time brought tears to my eyes because of the maturity and the deep humanity they represent.

And so I just want to remind all of us, every one of our neighbors is worth our very best efforts.

I want to put aside the territorialism and prioritize paying for basic health and basic safety first in our budget, demanding that our interventions clearly advance, health and safety in meaningful and measurable ways in individual lives.

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

Thank you, Chief Barden.

And for the record, I also wanted to acknowledge we have a couple of non-committee members joining us today.

Councilmember Rivera, welcome.

On my left and to my right, Council Member Rink, thank you for joining us for this morning committee meeting.

Normally, at this point, I go to the Vice Chair, but our Council President needs to leave early, so I'm gonna give the honor of going first.

Sorry, Vice Chair, to the Council President.

Council President Nelson.

Thank you, Chair Kettle.

And thank you, Dr. Chief Barden.

Very powerful words.

I always appreciate what you've got to tell us, but today really did hit home, so thank you very much.

I appreciate what you said about Well, you gestured to the Venn diagram that you've often mentioned several times, and I see substance use disorder and the fentanyl crisis as the center of a Venn diagram that has public safety and chronic homelessness on either side, inextricably linked.

So I very much appreciate you drawing the connections and noting the inhumanity of expecting people to get help just on their own.

Public health is about trying to change behavior and get people the help that they need if they are not in a position really to have access to those resources.

And then a lot of things can interrupt that access.

Here's my point.

You mentioned the behavioral health system, and there have been pieces that have been focused on over time.

And what I agree with you is that we need a comprehensive system that starts with care response, outreach to people with ongoing issues, et cetera, all the way to sober housing, for example.

And that does not exist right now.

And this was brought home to me on last Monday night, I believe it was, when I toured, well, I went on a walk on 3rd Avenue at 9 o'clock at night from 9 to 10 with the DCC, the Downtown Community Council.

We Deliver Care.

And they showed me what it was like after hours when some people don't see.

And I learned a story of two people, one of the We Deliver Care staff told me, which was two people that they were able to get into detox and fairly long treatment, and they got out, and then they were back on the street.

And so this is what I see the beginning of your success as the first step of a vision toward a system that will really stop the revolving door, as you alluded to.

So I'm always open for a conversation about that.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

I especially appreciate that you went to walk along and to see people, to see the suffering.

One of the most intriguing parts of the work is that we do know that relapse is part of recovery.

It is.

I always say, I don't know anyone who's just improved in a straight line, right?

Who's changed in a straight line.

And so one of the solutions as I see it is, again, to tightly coordinate the work.

There's transparency.

If an officer arrests and then refers to lead, what happens to the person, right?

What happens?

Do they come into treatment?

Do they remain?

If they pop up in my CAD again in our software because of overdose or a crime, can I see quickly, oh, this is where they should have been.

This is what we tried.

This is the case manager.

This is where they live.

We should be able to achieve that, just even as we coordinate the first responders, and then I would say secondary response.

WeDeliverCare is a really important partner to us.

We're not even necessarily designed operationally to work together, but that is part of our team.

That is an extension of they have firsthand knowledge of a lot of people, reach as well, the mid-ambassadors.

So often we're just going directly to somebody we have a relationship with and care response to say, hey, I've got David here.

What do you recommend?

So I appreciate everything you've learned in this space, Council President.

All right, thank you, Council President.

Now I will go to our Vice Chair, Vice Chair Osaka.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I actually defer to our other colleague who has their hand up first.

Thank you.

Okay, Council Member Moore.

Yeah, thank you, and thank you very much, Chief Barden, for your presentation.

I actually did take your suggestion and go back and reread the ordinance, and I think that we are a long way from what the ordinance sets forth for the mission of care.

And so...

I just wanna ask, so, you know, walk me through how this actually works because first of all, People are calling 9-1-1, and 9-1-1 is not dispatching care.

And so I've started saying to my constituents, when you call 9-1-1, tell them that you're requesting a care dispatch.

Tell them this person is in a mental health crisis.

And it seems to me that it shouldn't necessarily be up to the constituent or the caller to have to identify that that triage ought to be done by 9-1-1.

through various questioning.

So I don't see that that effective triage is happening.

When people are going out there, who are you connecting with, right?

I'm not seeing DCRs being called when clearly they need to be called.

I'm not seeing people getting into substance use treatment when clearly they need substance use treatment.

I mean, we've got HealthONE out there doing a fabulous job getting people connected.

We've got Health 99 out there doing an amazing job getting people started on their medication.

And we've got all these Mobile One crisis fans out there.

Like, I just don't see what's happening on the street.

And I have so many people in my district, as you well know, who are in tremendous crisis.

I have so many people in my district who are calling and saying, how do we help these people?

And we have just tremendous, we have enough money in this city.

We have enough services in this city to make it work.

And why is Albuquerque, I mean, they're very small.

They managed to figure it out.

Why have we not managed to figure it out?

And I know that some of this relates to Spock.

I realize some of it relates to the union bargaining.

And when SPD says they're upset to their union leadership about that, frankly.

But please tell me why we are not...

You've been in place now for a while.

Why are we not doing a better job with the resources that we have?

Yeah.

Well, again, I appreciate everything that you just illuminated there, and I do feel the same urgency.

We have just added, in the last four weeks, more than six responders.

I have had six people.

I think people don't realize, too, it's furlough work, right?

There's furlough lines.

So the most, even now, I just came to North, right, the last couple weeks.

I will have between 12 and 16 care responders all across the city.

It is not adequate.

The way that Albuquerque scaled so fast, it's actually a very similar environment.

When they started, they were down 400 patrol officers.

It's very similar, getting all of these different crisis calls.

They're in a labor-forward city.

They have a strong mayor form of government.

It's very, very similar what they did there.

was they understood they were not gonna spend the staffing money in police in the foreseeable future.

You can't hire up that much.

So what they did was they took some of the staffing savings, they moved over to Albuquerque Community Safety and said, hire.

Mariella was the one running the department at the time, and she shared with me, there was an agreement, and if there was some miraculous police staffing, if something turned around and they hired 200 officers and they needed the money back, the council promised, we will replenish your budget.

if you get there.

But in the meantime, we've got to send somebody to the call.

There was no dual dispatch design, right?

In 911, they could determine the protocol.

Is this low acuity?

Is it consent based?

Send this other responder.

And it is extraordinary what they've done in three years because they scaled quickly.

Mariela said it was easy for me to hire.

The training was shorter, and I have had the same experience.

When I opened those care jobs this winter, I mean, I hadn't even advertised the job yet for the care responder.

There were over 200 applications in the first hour.

I have people who have moved from all around the country for these jobs because they're good jobs.

We are treating this like a profession.

So my recommendation to this council is if you want to see impact, two things.

One, I need to be able to send the team.

Send the team.

CARE, the Alternative Response Team.

I have 1,700 calls that we have closely analyzed.

I do not need police on these calls.

I don't.

And if we get it wrong in dispatch, sometimes we send fire.

Fire approaches and realizes I need law enforcement.

They radio them.

And CARE can do the same thing.

So there is not a justification to maintain this design further.

And we have got to scale the team.

One thing I want to address is that CARE is consent-based.

They do not do anything coercive.

We cannot legally call a DCR, nor do I want to.

I do not want to set up another enforcement unit.

That is for police.

Police only can call a DCR.

And Council Member Moore, it has been so frustrating to me when I get calls from community members saying, I've seen every single unit come out and this girl is still here languishing.

And multiple times I have then gone out myself to see what is going on.

Have I sent police and fire and care, and I still have someone here, partially clothed, in the freezing cold.

Neighbors are telling me she's being assaulted.

It is frustrating.

And I have worked around the system multiple times, the occasion I'm thinking of.

I was getting reports that perhaps this was a minor in First Hill, and so that's a whole different set of circumstances.

I was about to leave town.

I took the final call and thought, I'm just going to go see what's going on, if this is real or if people are exaggerating, and I said, care team, come with me.

Bring the supplies.

It was cold and pouring down rain, and I'm dressed in my little suit, and this woman is partially sheltered.

She's not in a full enclosure or anything.

She's just sitting on the sidewalk.

I can see that she does not have clothing on.

She is under a wet blanket.

And I sat down next to her and started talking to her to see, you know, again, is she, do we have a cogent conversation here?

What's going on?

And I talked to her as fast as I usually do and just started talking to her to try to engage her while, you know, Kira's giving me, you know, protein shakes and some snacks and things.

I'm talking and talking, and I'm saying, I'm not going to leave you here.

I can take you here.

We can take you here.

We can take you here.

These are my friends talking, talking.

She's not responsive.

And then at a certain point, I said, I like your earrings.

And suddenly she looked, and she made eye contact, and she said, I made those.

And I thought, OK, here we go.

And as I saw my care responder teammates conferring, and one of them said, one of the officers that I know pretty well, she said he knows her, I think.

He's part of the co-response unit in police.

He's been out.

And so I just called him and said, listen, if CRT is around, can you please send them?

Again, this is not really appropriate professionally at all, right?

I'm going outside of protocols.

But I said, we have got to call a DCR.

This young woman is not okay.

I know she's being assaulted because, again, I've learned if you are a female living outside, you are being assaulted.

If you're 15, if you're 80, it does not matter.

I am not gonna leave her here.

Now, I share that story with you so you understand.

I think about that all the time, those occasions where that is my message.

We are not going to leave you here.

And we have got to redesign our system so that we don't.

You know, very often law enforcement, I'm sure they went out and they're like, no law is being broken here.

There's nothing for me to do, right?

I don't know why the DCRs who had been called did not refer her.

I do know that sometimes even when we take that step, somebody goes in voluntarily and they walk right back out.

And I'm not really sure what to do about that, but I am telling you, like Durham, Albuquerque, and other units, if we actually scale, if I had 96 care responders to basically alleviate the burden on law enforcement to do what only they can do, and also on HealthOne, that is a critical unit in this city.

Health99 is my overdose response unit.

That is not care.

That is not what we're doing.

We reverse overdoses because everybody does in this city, but that's not what we're designed to do.

We're designed to do those calls in the middle that do not require HealthONE, and they don't require police or, again, a coercive intervention.

Did I answer the parts of your question?

Not really, frankly.

I need to be able to dispatch care without police.

I need many more care responders for the types of, probably have 400,000 calls a year coming in that would benefit from a care response.

I need treatment on demand.

We're getting close, right?

Detox on demand, right into the Orca Center, right into STAR, into Connections.

Because very often if we ask someone...

But respectfully, you've got a crisis care center in Kirkland.

Yeah.

Why are you not taking people to the crisis care center in Kirkland?

Why are you not taking people to the crisis solution center down here?

Yeah.

Like there has not been a willingness.

And this, you are in the position to do this.

Yeah.

This is about people who are in emergency.

It's about people who are not doing well.

If you look at the very language of the ordinance, you have to be willing to do that.

And when you say to me, you're not going to call a DCR, why not?

Because it's illegal.

I cannot do that.

Well, then you need to call the person who can call the DCR.

What we do is what I did that day.

Excuse me, Chief Barden, but this is not acceptable.

Across the board, this is not acceptable for all of these agencies.

I share this.

It's not just you.

I share this frustration with all the social service people that we have out there.

We have LEAD, we have CoReach, we have WeDeliverCare, we have, you know, we've got, I can't even begin to name all of the people.

And yet we are not seeing any change on our streets because we cannot coordinate and nobody wants to make the hard decision.

Yeah, I do want to make the hard decisions.

But they're not being made.

I'm not seeing it being made on my streets.

I am not seeing a change in District 5. I certainly did not see things happening down at Pioneer Street when I was down there, and I articulated that before.

Yeah.

Please stop telling me the same thing over and over.

I know what needs to happen and you need to be the first person to make that happen and the council is more than willing to help you make that happen.

But please don't tell me it's this person's responsibility or that person's responsibility.

Like, do we need a task force?

Do we need to bring everybody in and set us down?

Because this is an emergency that has been going on forever.

Yeah.

Councilmember Moore, I respect and appreciate your urgency so much.

I really do.

What you just said, that never frustrates me.

Ambivalence frustrates me and complacency frustrates me, and I agree with you.

We do refer to the CSC.

I actually had to get that contractually done because when I started this about 15 months ago, only police could refer to that service.

And so organization by organization, we've been making the rounds.

May I refer?

connections.

May I refer to you?

It really is a capacity issue.

I haven't been in North Precinct yet.

I haven't.

I was limited until this month in my ability to go into that jurisdiction.

I myself have been there.

I've had the care manager there studying the system.

I know Elizabeth well at Aurora Commons.

You know that.

I've been out with Andrea Suarez and every other team really trying to do outreach and good work in North Precinct, but I did not have the responders until this month.

I completely agree with you that it is disorganized and that the system is not effective.

I will be limited in my ability to change that.

Really, my job is 911 and first response triage.

But you see, I took most of my time with you today to sound the alarm about treatment.

It is not thorough enough or long enough to actually change behavior and lives.

We are returning people to the same circumstances.

It is a rinse and repeat, whether I'm talking about crime or crisis, and all I can do is keep talking about that.

It's not my job.

I like the ordinance.

I want the work simplified and coordinated.

We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars not actually affecting positive change.

And so I will also be the first to say, I could have all the police in the world.

I could have 1,000 care responders.

And yet if we are referring to a service where you're going to be inpatient for 14 days, you're not going to get a proper diagnosis.

You're not really going to get changed.

The city is not going to look different.

I think that I was the first person to speak really stridently about fentanyl when I arrived, because I understood that we are setting up a system to respond to a drug that is lethal, that 100% overrides your ability to make the best choice for yourself.

We're treating it like alcoholism.

And you heard me share the stat.

It's four people a day.

So North is absolutely a priority for me.

We are studying those crisis hotspots.

But I want to manage your expectations.

I'm going to have probably two people, four people, perhaps, in North Precinct at a time.

Until I can hire more than 24, it is not adequate.

Right.

But one of the things that this talks about in the ordinance is to provide diversified community-focused response.

Yeah.

excuse me, the 911 calls, and also to connect with the service providers.

We have a gazillion service providers.

Why are those connections not being made?

And also, I respectfully disagree with you that sending somebody to treatment for 14 days is a waste of time, because you know as well as I do that it often takes many opportunities at treatment before it sticks.

And so every opportunity is one more down the road to hopefully figuring out the solution that's going to work for that person.

And we've got treatment.

We've got Northwest Hospital.

It's being underutilized.

I know.

I know.

Thank you for the point about the 14 days.

What I should say is that everybody's different.

And so we need a lot of it.

I mean, you get into reimbursement models and things like that.

The system is so poorly designed right now.

And I do think in Seattle, We do prioritize autonomy, civil liberties above all else.

We really do.

So I talk to judges about that and public defenders.

And most days in 911, we see somebody lose their life because they were not referred into treatment, or they were for a minute, and then they came right back out.

And somebody's wandering in traffic, muttering.

There was a loss on the Ballard Bridge that really upset me.

Because, again, what we did was we sent a patrol officer who Person was on the sidewalk, no laws being broken.

And an hour or two later, this person is deceased, head split open on the bridge.

So I spent a lot of time talking to officers as well, because they are the ones that refer to treatment.

And I'm saying, don't think about this so prescriptively in terms of, is the law being broken?

I talked about gravely disabled.

You and I have talked about that.

I said, if it was your brother, wandering on this bridge, what would you do?

And so often I get like, well, the DCR is not going to come.

They're not going to do anything.

All these other parts of the system.

And my message is, do your part.

For every one of us in the system, do your part expertly in 911. Get that first call right.

We know we can't control what happens with all these other providers and things.

Again, I just really appreciate you.

I care deeply about people.

It does not have to be the way that it is.

I had that slide.

It is designed to fail people.

I have to have autonomy to dispatch swiftly from 911 the right response.

I don't directly dispatch Health One or Health 99. I don't directly dispatch the CSOs.

They don't even really have a body of work that's articulated.

So there's all these different units where if we would organize ourselves and get square with labor, I could just send that response and again, be able to see what happened next.

So thank you, sincerely.

No, and thank you.

I realize that I've been very direct and a little bit firm, but I really do appreciate everything that you're doing, and I know your heart's in the right place, and your head's in the right place, and it's a broken system, and I think we need to acknowledge as...

as legislators and in the mayor's office too, it's a broken system and we have to fix it.

And just creating one more social non-profit agency and another $100 million here is not going to fix it if we don't come together holistically and talk about how it's broken, be honest about where it's not working and the fact that we have different ideological positions about what should be happening and we need to be evidence-based and be prepared to say sometimes it's your civil liberties do you no good if you're dead.

So we need to be mindful of that.

But anyway, thank you very much for your work.

We speak the same language.

You know I appreciate the candor.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

Trust me, we will be fixing elements of this for sure.

Now over to my vice chair, number three today.

Normally number one, but number three today.

Council Member, Vice Chair Saka.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Chief Barden.

I want to thank the members of the care department who are here with us today.

When we have department heads and occasionally division heads here at council chamber, rarely do we get some of the other members of the department.

And so just wanna take this opportunity to publicly thank the team here, your work is important, your work is valued, your work is greatly appreciated.

And I had the pleasure of, going, doing a 911 call center tour, doing a ride along, although I don't think you call it a ride along technically, but walking and touring and driving with some of the folks that do this work on a daily basis.

And it's very clear policymakers, decision makers at this dais, the council, I think even the mayor's office are very impatient.

And for that, I make no apologies.

I'm impatient too.

But that doesn't, at the same time, mean that your work is not appreciated and your work is not valued and your work is not important, because it is.

And I know, Chief Barden, you share the sense of urgency and patience, and I know you do care.

I am eager to work with you, my colleagues and the mayor to channel our shared frustration and shared sense of urgency into actually achieving better results for this because I fear this great program.

I too read the ordinance.

Thank you for the challenge, challenge accepted.

I do agree with council member Moore There is an opportunity to close the gap between the goals and the visions set forth in the legislative document and the everyday experience and expectations of taxpayers and people suffering and needing in crisis.

And part of that view is shaped by Many factors, constituent, queries, concerns.

My own experiences, having taken that ride along recently in the summer, or whatever it's called.

Had an opportunity to drive and then walk a certain corridor downtown.

Great opportunity.

amazing, dedicated group of professionals, social workers, who are well positioned, if they're able to, if we fix some of these system issues, to do excellent work.

So I was struck by a couple of things.

That, the level of dedication and commitment of the workers on the care department that we do have, and then one particular instance, really struck a chord with me as well.

Walking downtown, turned the corner of that McDonald's, we all know that McDonald's, and there was a gentleman on the street, on the sidewalk, half clothed, pants halfway off, bottom cheek all out, in crisis, uttering something.

He wasn't really bothering anybody, but visibly in crisis.

In the care department, I saw their inventory, they have like socks and gloves and snacks and Pringles and chips and all these kind of great things.

And we ended up looking at this gentleman and walking right by him.

And the reason why is because I learned is because under the rules of engagement, you can't do that.

You can't proactively intervene in a case like that, certainly not without a police officer.

And I'm thinking to myself, if anyone needs to experience compassion, some proactive engagement, a pack of Pringles, whatever it is.

It's this man in crisis with his bottom cheek all out.

And so I'm concerned that the department is becoming more of a paper tiger.

than actually achieving its intended goal and vision that we all strive for, we all share.

As council member Moore noted, we have a lot of excellent programs and services today in abundance at the city of Seattle government level, nonprofits, county government, a lot of A lot of resources.

I would actually say we have an abundance of services and a dearth of results.

And so, again, we're all aligned, we're all impatient, we're all committed.

And by the way, that anecdote I shared with you earlier, an identical example of what you mentioned earlier, people languishing, visibly suffering on our sidewalks, need support and compassion.

Those are your words, not mine.

I agree with them, but in any event, and I think part of the barrier is that there is this, needless insistence that SPD accompany care responders for certain things.

And I applaud, I think Representative Scott, the State House proposing a bill to help provide relief.

I'll just say that.

What are some of the other barriers to the care department achieving better results?

That's a known one, kind of documented one.

What are some of the other barriers to achieving better results?

And I'm not talking about expansion and scaling the department.

I share that goal, and I share with you privately, and it's my goal publicly as well, is I want to help grow, expand, and scale this department so it's 24-7, 365 operation.

No different than police or fire.

If people call and need this kind of response, they can expect to receive it.

But I also think we should be very cautious about expanding a program that with the system flaws and inefficiencies that are in existence today.

So I know there are current plans to expand.

I think after that, after the most near term expansion, personally, I think we should pause on our expansions unless and until we can better address some of these systems inefficiencies, because we shouldn't scale a program that isn't equipped to work.

We need to scale a program that is starting to achieve results.

Better results, but what are some of the other barriers to achieving better results?

Well, let me first address the encounter that you had last summer.

So it was interesting.

Council member Rivera also had a similar experience.

I think most of us have.

And at a certain point, I disagreed with the way the MOU was interpreted.

I disagree with a lot of aspects of sort of the labor conversation.

I feel like I've got King County MCT.

I've got teams all over the place doing outreach work proactively.

And there's no bargaining issue there, right?

So it doesn't make sense to me.

This isn't police body of work.

outreach work.

It never has been.

It is not.

That is not their body of work.

We can do it.

And I felt very confident saying, okay, you know, if I get sued, I get sued.

I do not believe that this is part of police body of work and nothing should preclude care from being able to reach out to these folks who are in distress.

So when you look at the data, you see an abrupt uptick because I said, go.

If somebody is in distress and you know that naturally the responder would be a team like reach or the mid ambassadors or we deliver care, do that work.

See if you can connect them to services.

My contention, going back to the drug court diversion model, my contention is if I sent care first, think about open use, right?

Somebody is actually breaking a law.

We have an ordinance on the books.

If I sent care out first, Come with us.

This is not lawful.

We can get you detox.

We can get you help.

We can address all these different considerations you might have.

But the next call is going to be SPD.

I believe that if we get these things in the right order, a lot of people would say yes, just like they do in drug court.

Every graduate I know has said, I would never have elected into that service.

I was an addict, or I was this, or I was this.

I was deep into this cycle.

But I knew I had a sentence hanging over my head.

I knew I had felony charges.

Basically, I was going to be compelled to change one way or the other, and so I elected into this path.

And I feel like in first response, we should do it that way.

Anything that we're talking about that has to do with human suffering, send care first, but then have a very quick secondary response if we can't get to yes through consent, if that makes sense.

And so again, we could change that right now.

And even with only 24 responders, the system would look differently if we did it that way.

This MOU needs to get addressed.

It just does.

It's inefficient.

I need to, outside of the care response, I'm not getting officers to priority one in under 10 minutes.

That is catastrophic.

And every time something goes wrong, there's collective impact.

You know, the homicides, there is impact.

There is grief in a community.

There is ripples across family and across neighborhoods.

And we have got to address this.

And so I referenced that in this study.

I said from the jump, that's my primary responsibility is that priority one status.

CARE is getting to calls in 11 minutes.

And again, that makes me sad because this is priority three.

This is not an emergency by that definition.

And I'm actually more expeditious even with only a few folks with CARE than with police.

So.

Thank you.

Abundance of services, dearth of results.

Do we need more services?

Absolutely.

But now more than ever, we also need more results.

I agree that there's capacity in the system that we're not using.

Again, back to Ricky's Law, back to the DCRs.

I think the Seattle Times has done a really good job illuminating some of the issues.

We open UW, Behavioral Health Hospital, nobody's there.

The first time I spoke to the woman at the county who has oversight of those Ricky's Law beds, she said, Amy, nobody from Seattle uses these.

And I said, why?

Why are we not using these?

As city block, I need these beds, right?

And so, again, that is a disconnect in SPD and some of these other departments.

But I think that I'm talking about it more than anybody else.

I am not allowing myself to become desensitized to the suffering and the death that is avoidable every day.

Conversely, I keep myself in it.

So I remember that this is somebody's person and we are failing.

Well, there's many reasons to that point, but, um, council member Rivera.

Thank you, chair.

And thank you, chief Barden and care team for being here.

I echo the sentiments of my colleagues, council member Saka and council member Moore in, uh, expressing my gratitude for the work that you all do.

Um, I will say, Chief Barton, I've heard inconsistent communications about this piece.

CARE's not sending folks or they are sending folks on their own.

So I don't want to hear inconsistencies.

Either we are sending CARE folks on their own or we're not.

So that piece really needs to be addressed to get the consistent communication.

May I clarify?

Please do.

There's a point I haven't mentioned today.

So again, in the MOU, there is language that suggests SPD can turn the call over to care.

It doesn't say how.

And so I interpreted that to mean over police channels, and that does still happen.

We know it's a high utilizer and a sergeant will say care, take it.

And so that's happening progressively.

Again, sergeants don't all feel at liberty to do that because of their membership, and some do.

You know, so with the high utilizers, I've continued to stress that.

I've had great partners in police command who have said, please just turn the call over, let them go directly.

And that does happen more and more and more.

So that's why the contradiction.

Clearly, we need to get that figured out.

We do.

I will say that, you know, I appreciate you saying you have compassion and care.

Your team obviously have that.

I've experienced that firsthand.

and my conversations with them.

As you know, when I first got here, one of the first things I prioritized to do was to visit CARE and go on a ride with you all.

And I appreciated the opportunity to do that so I could see firsthand what you all were dealing with.

And I will say that I share the sentiment of compassion and caring.

as you've heard from some of my colleagues here.

And compassion and caring is not in and of itself sufficient.

We actually need action and we are really sorely lacking on the action part.

And I will say that I am reading from the ordinance because we keep referring to it.

So I'm going to quote for the ordinance in terms of the establishment of care.

create a new initiative to integrate the city's violence intervention programs using research and evidence strategies to reduce violence, including identifying specific measurable and outcomes.

This initiative will focus initially on gun violence prevention interventions, community-based intervention programs, including violence interrupters, youth programs evidence-based and the thing I really wanted to get to in terms of care is provide timely and vital information to the city's first respondents.

The care department's mission is to improve health and safety services by unifying and aligning the city's community-focused non-police public safety investments and services to address behavioral abuse, substance abuse, and non-emergent low-risk calls for service through diversified programs that are equitable, innovative, evidence-based, et cetera.

So this piece about unifying care's responsibility to unify and align the city's community-focused non-police public safety investments and services to address behavioral abuse, substance abuse, and non-emergent calls for service to diversified programs, is the call to care.

And so it's not just answering the calls, it's unifying and coordinating.

And that includes somewhere lower in this, and I won't keep reading it talks about community based organizations.

I'm not seeing care doing that, being that coordinator and unifying of the city services and investments related to crisis management and behavioral health and substance abuse.

And so that is what's missing.

from the work that you are currently doing and that is directly in your mandate, and I want to know why.

Because I think what you've heard from all of us up here is that we have huge investments in the city in all these areas, and folks are not getting access to these services.

So where is the disconnect here?

And what is CARE doing in terms of coordinating that response between the investments we make to the ...based organizations and the crisis response calls.

Yeah.

Councilmember Rivera, the best question.

I have been advocating on that point.

I take my job seriously and literally.

And when I arrived in 2023, I was part of this debate and this discussion.

And I confer with anybody who asked to talk to me, I talk about these things that we actually need to simplify the system.

We keep adding more and more and more and more duplicate services.

When you go out with different outreach teams, you'll realize resources is the UGM mobile outreach and Salvation Army and we have neighborhoods where there's like eight teams and no results and then we have neighborhoods where there's nobody.

I have stressed the urgency that we've got to get more expeditious in the way that we organize the work.

I have not been endorsed to do that part of the work yet.

I haven't.

I was told about 15 months ago when I was asking about it, because I was getting to know people, right?

I do think uniquely I probably know the system better than most.

I go out with all the nonprofits.

I directly call people all the time.

I'm trying to identify where are the gaps.

And it does happen almost every day.

We'll outreach someone, and they will have a circumstance, and I think, oh, I have no idea.

I have no idea where to take this person.

I'm on the youth care board, right?

And so I know a little bit more about the lack of youth resources and also where they exist.

And so I'm starting to get this ecosystem drafted out.

But I'm doing that just as a person.

I have also been told, no, your job is 911. Your job is first response.

Do that and set up the care pilot.

That's your job.

And I don't mean from any one person.

I mean, I get that all over the place.

And I'm saying, yeah, that is my core function.

But my job is to improve public safety.

And I think public safety and public health are the same thing.

So about 15 months ago, when there first started to be some conversation about moving the lead contracts, which I did not think was a bad idea, because I do think I'm the diversion department.

fundamentally, care is a diversion resource.

Can I send someone instead of police?

Also, that costs half as much as police and is likely to get better results is a different professional skill set.

It made perfect sense to me then that I would be able to hand right off to the next resource.

It is often a peer that can get to yes, whether we're talking about homelessness or substance use or the credible messengers.

And so that was the vision that I had.

And what I was told, and this is from Deputy Mayor Burgess, and I think it was very well intended.

He said, Amy, you don't have a chief of staff yet.

You don't have capacity to take on more than you're already taking.

And so I respected that.

And basically it's, you know, well, we're looking at this.

We're doing this audit.

All of this work is happening in the executive.

It is not happening with me.

It's not.

And I've been very busy and I've been trusting other people who are doing this audit and assessment that they'll come to good conclusions.

But I have not been given license, other than just organically as a person figuring out who's doing what, I've not been given license to do that part of the ordinance.

Thank you.

That's helpful information to know.

And also, Chief Barden, it is very squarely one of the main pieces that is in the ordinance that you referred us to earlier, and I don't think it was wrong for you to refer us to the ordinance.

Um, I was not here when this ordinance passed, so it's good for me to know what's in here.

And I very squarely know that the mission part of the mission of care is to do that unifying and alignment of the city's non police public safety investments, and that is not happening.

So We need to, I think this is a huge piece of the work, and we need to get to how we make that happen, because as you've heard, we're all feeling like it is a disjointed system.

I agree with council member more.

It is fractured, it is not working.

And I think that is a huge piece of it.

And what I observed from my ride along with CARE is CARE responders will not being able to respond because they were not there with police, but even when they did, because a community member flagged them down, hey, don't you see that person in need?

They didn't call any of the myriad of community-based organizations, and I don't know where the disconnect is.

We need to figure that out.

And I feel like we've been talking about this for a year.

So what is needed to figure that out?

And I see you squarely as the main person to identify what is needed to figure that out.

And I agree with council member Saka.

We can't talk about expanding something that is not working.

Well, respectfully, I'm still gonna send a response to all of these calls.

I'm gonna send police instead of care.

If care responders are gone tomorrow, if they're gone tomorrow, I'm gonna send police, and I'm gonna keep over-policing social issues in this city.

And so I do reject the notion that there's not validity, fundamentally, to sending a different professional to calls that do not at all involve law enforcement.

It predates you, but there was a study commissioned by Nick Jr., which is the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, Looking at Seattle calls for service in 911, 1.2 million calls.

This was published in 2021. 80% had nothing to do with criminal behavior or law enforcement, 80%.

6% were found to have some criminal implication.

And so you know I support law enforcement.

I know that we have violent crime in this community.

I know there are functions that only they can fill, but that is for 6% of the calls.

And so you will see efficacy and better results when I send the best first response and when we all share your urgency that we do need to help people into services.

We do.

Council member Rivera, that was an excellent example you shared with me last summer.

We did an after action review and I realized sometimes the disconnect is with the responders themselves.

Most of them are trained to do outreach the way it's always been done.

I'm saying, no, you're not an outreach worker.

You were a first responder and you are responsible for this outcome.

And again, you will see in the data when at a certain point, with 911 as well, with the supervisors, because a lot of this has to do with dispatch.

And I said, if we do not use this resource, I myself will recommend disbanding it.

I am not going to waste taxpayer dollars.

We have got to help people change and heal, and we can't keep leaving folks on the street.

And there was a difference in behavior.

So I take full responsibility and accountability for how my folks are interacting with people and whether or not they are getting the desired result.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for letting me sit in and be a part of today's presentation.

I wanted to sit in on today's presentation because I know just how much our residents want to see alternative response work.

It makes sense.

We want to make sure that we're building a public safety system that has a quick response, but the right response for given scenarios.

This is something I've continued to hear across the board.

So many times residents want to feel like they're seeing a crisis happening or something that needs to be deescalated, but they in themselves also recognize it's not an appropriate scenario necessarily for a police officer to attend to.

And so I just want to name that at the top.

This is something that our residents really want to see be successful in the city.

And so I want to make sure that we are fully empowering and making sure that we're living up to that call to action that we're hearing.

And I think it's also important to name that in a resource constrained environment, we need to be efficient with all the resources that we do have at our disposal.

and making sure that we're scaling our system appropriately.

So we are really mindful that we are making sure law enforcement officers are responding to the right scenarios, which can be extremely violent or situations of crime, but making sure then that we are scaling our alternative responses for the many calls that are coming in to respond and deescalate.

And so to that end, beyond calls being diverted, how are we measuring success of the care team?

How would you define a successful call that you're dispatching to?

Yeah, thank you for the reminder that community does uniformly want this.

I've been surprised.

I've done 200, at least, community groups and forums, businesses, every single neighborhood, and all I hear is, how can we help you?

How can we help you?

What more do you need?

And that has been so inspiring.

And it's really made me very optimistic about human goodness and our ability to put down what doesn't work and to try something else, something that is more humane and more compassionate.

During this study period, again, the things that I would really want to study as a researcher, I can't.

What I've really been focused on is that perception of utility.

Are we headed in the right direction?

I know, as you all do, when you're out with community, if they don't believe it can be different, if we just accept, this is how it is.

I did one interview on Cairo, it was with Dave Ross, and I remember he asked, Amy, is it reasonable to think of a Seattle without tents?

And I said, 100%.

That is reasonable.

Of course, this is solvable.

And so I know that if we don't believe that, it will never change.

So I really am always asking the same questions.

Do you like the care response?

Do you like the idea that you can call 911?

More likely to call 911, especially for groups where there have been disparities, for groups who justifiably have feared the system.

Do you feel better knowing that objectively, you know, in 911, we're going to send the response that we think is required?

People are so relieved when I say that.

Every time at the national level, too, if I say my dream is to never dispatch a gun and a badge unless I think I have to.

And I always feel this collective sigh of relief.

In the 1700 calls, a lot of what I'm trying to study, it's not so much about effectiveness.

It's been, what do we need?

So it was interesting to see about half the time, initially, somebody needs a ride somewhere.

You know, really, it continues to be about 40% of the time.

What services do we not have for people?

I shared initially, even the detox van, I learned I can't call that if I've Narcan-ed someone within the last, I think it's 12 hours, is that right?

Was it 12 hours?

Yeah.

And again, what do you do with that, right?

If I need to call detox for this person, they've said yes, but the resource isn't available.

And so we've been using this 15 months to identify those gaps, and you've heard me speak a number of times.

I'm trying to illuminate for the public what is going on, and that it is not just about police staffing shortages, it's not.

Council Member Moore will remember, she had a district forum up north, and people were very frustrated.

And again, we were very focused on the lack of policing.

And I was the one who said, listen, even if I had all these officers, there's no mechanism really to address this human trafficking.

There's not.

The officer, there's no premise to approach a young woman and say, are you being sold?

And what really saddens me is even if there was, and she says, yes, I have no system.

That is a specifically vulnerable population.

And I could not begin to recommend where we go to keep her safe.

significant security concerns and vulnerability and specific psychological trauma for those folks.

So again, outcomes, everybody likes it.

Everybody wants it.

I don't have to call police back.

In 1,700 calls, that's really significant.

We can refer to the CSC.

We're taking more rides to people into services.

I think the Orca Center is opening within weeks, and so is STAR.

And I'm really going to be interested in that, because that's what I've been really advocating for is the swift through line.

Can you get comprehensive, a medical workup, a clinical workup right there on demand, that it's not just about detox, right?

It has to be more holistic than that.

I spoke to a friend last week who said, Amy, he said, recovery is not just about sobriety.

He said, you can lock someone up, remove them from their drug, force detox, they will come into sobriety.

That is not the same as recovery.

And then he went on to be very eloquent about finding purpose, exiting to a different type of life, that you have to have different friends, you have to have different community, you've got to have people who will hold you to account and who will recognize if you're backsliding and catch you, right?

And so that part's hard to solve for, but it's really important that collectively we're aware of it.

Thank you for that and just kind of laying out for you how you would define what a successful call looks like.

And I ask that question because I'm hearing from folks on the dais about us thinking about what are the results that we're looking for.

And I think this is more a comment to my colleagues.

I think we need to start getting aligned on what are the results we're looking for, specifically.

Because care as an institution, and looking at all of the service providers that we're providing in many cases, I'm hearing this language, you know, we do have a number of service providers that are doing this work, and in many cases they're doing work that provides a short-term solution.

And I'm hearkening back to our conversation that we had in the Housing and Human Services Committee with our new outreach contracts.

And I'm mindful with our outreach contracts funded through HSD about basing their success on things that are dependent on long-term investments that they are not contracted to do.

And so I want us to be really mindful of that.

You know, we can be funding a number of service providers, but what are the services we are really funding?

Are they short-term solutions, or are they the form of long-term supports that ultimately mean that we will see less folks experiencing homelessness, folks getting into recovery, and so on?

can take years.

It's beyond just 14 days.

And so I want us to be really mindful about part of how, you know, if we're really looking at what essentially what results look like, if this council wants to define what results look like as less folks experiencing behavioral health crisis on our streets and homelessness, that's going to require a different kind of investment.

Yeah.

Yeah, if I could just respond to that and clarify, every time I have dispatched care instead of police and there's been no adverse outcome and arguably a better outcome, that's a win.

That was another great call.

I just freed up law enforcement.

In truth, they're not spending any time on these calls.

it's not a true co-response, right?

Co-response is when an officer and a case manager are there and they are there together.

The officer's rolling up you good and goes on.

So that's good.

Also, you remember during budget, I shared, I think we studied the first, it was fewer than 600 calls.

We had legitimately saved $1.2 million from the general fund without adverse outcomes.

And so I think it's always a success when I send somebody instead of law enforcement to a social work call, that is great.

And I'm so pleased that there have only been these three encounters where we needed the support of law enforcement.

It means I'm getting it right in dispatch.

We could save a lot of money.

If you look at the general fund budget and what I'm spending, I have to dispatch someone.

Why not be efficient?

Certainly, and I share and also the desire, you know, we want to make sure we're in alignment with also what the intention of this underlying ordinance was about, to really be aligning our responses.

And I appreciate my colleagues' desire to make sure we're actually doing that as well, because we should be, again, efficient, effective with the resources that we do have available, and that will mean that we're actually coordinating our responses.

But I'm also hearing from you that, you know, care and in your position, you will not have necessarily the authority to fully implement the ordinance.

So what can council do at this time to be able to support the true unification and alignment of these services?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

My recommendation to the executive earlier this year was if you would like the ordinance changed, then let's discuss that with council.

If you want it to be two divisions and not this third division, but I am very literal about my job and what I'm required to do, I took an oath I take this seriously.

I think this is the job.

I am not an underachiever, and I am not an underperformer.

So my advice is that the legislative and the executive get aligned about the intention of the department.

I am so agnostic about where things sit.

The first time I ever met Deputy Mayor Burgess, I was the deputy.

as I saw it.

And I was stressing the need to bolster Health 1, because Health 99 wasn't a thing yet, and I knew that's my medical unit.

I need so much more of that, and then also police CRT.

And I remember saying to him, listen, I need the care responder unit.

I've got hundreds of thousands of calls that are low acuity.

We should not spend the time and money of these scarce resources on the calls.

But I said, I don't care where it sits.

I don't care where it sits.

I just need it to exist.

And my boss at the time after said, don't ever say that again.

And I say it all the time.

You don't have to move things into my department in order for me to have a coordinated effort.

But I need a line of sight.

And we need to be collaborative.

The HealthONE design is HSD employees riding with fire.

That can work beautifully.

I want to be able to dispatch the right first response.

And right now, the only unit I can really dispatch expeditiously is police.

even fire that's going to a secondary fire alarm center, secondary dispatch, and then they have their discretion.

They have secondary resources beyond that.

That's what HealthONE is.

So I'm still going through layers.

We've designed the system that way.

It is a poor design.

And my final question.

Apologies, Chair.

Final question.

Final question.

Thank you again for graciously allowing me to be here.

House Bill 1816 and the state legislature is in rules committee right now.

How can counsel lend our support to making sure this gets through?

I know it's in rules, so want to make sure it makes cut off tomorrow.

Yeah, full vote is tomorrow.

You can signal support for it if you support it.

Again, it would really advance swiftly our ability collectively if we decide we want to invest more in these care responders to these priority three and four person down welfare checks.

I have tens of thousands of calls that fall in those categories.

And so I think we've been focused on more call types and more body of work.

That's not how I see it.

I feel like I would have to be well over 96 responders before I was adequately, expeditiously responding to people.

And back to, you know, Council Member Rivera's point, they need to act like first responders.

That's supposed to be the difference.

Care is supposed to be like police and fire.

They're supposed to be urgent and actionable.

in their work.

And I was talking to Representative Nicole Macri after session at Olympia a few weeks ago, and she had a really brilliant comment.

She said, I do see things differently, the difference between outreach, you know, these mobile teams and first response.

I understand as you see it now.

But she said, do you see, you know, King County MCT, do you see that more like the DESC outreach team?

And I said, absolutely, we need that.

You know, that's great, that milieu management, you know, and housing providers having somebody quick if it doesn't need to level up to 911. But that needs to happen across the system, that we know what role we play and the difference between first response and outreach and secondary response.

So please do signal support if you support it.

Thank you, Chief Barnum.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rink.

I do want to say that, um, are these fresh hands first council member Moore and Rivera?

Okay.

It's old.

Um, before, before going to, uh, as committee chair, I'm trying to keep things to two hours and I've not spoken yet.

And, um, And because we've gone longer, usually I like to blame, you know, circumstances beyond my control.

But we're really endeavoring to stay at two hours, and that is my goal, and I see what the time is.

So if you have a question, please ask quick, and Chair Barden, please respond quick.

Council Member Moore.

Can I add too, by the way, there's a theme here.

I've already been telegraphing on alternative response and community safety and everything else and the needs.

So a lot of the things that have been discussed, there's been discussions.

We're working these things.

We're setting up our committee schedule in a way to address these things.

So some of this is by design because I recognize the points and community safety has been something that To be honest with you, it was triggered by going through the budget process back in September and October.

And so I knew then that in 2025, in addition to the news reports related to community safety organizations, that this had to be a focus for us in 2025. So with that, Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll try to be brief.

Just a couple of things.

One is I just want to be very, very clear that I didn't hear anybody up here say we don't support CARE and we don't support an alternative response.

We absolutely do.

I think the frustration is because we do support an alternative response and we want it to be an effective one.

Thank you.

Just to make sure the record's clear on that.

And then also, I just want to be clear that I heard you say that one of the main things that you need to be able to do to be effective is to have the ability to do dual dispatch.

Not dual, to do sole dispatch.

Sole dispatch, that's correct.

Okay, so sole dispatch.

If there is one thing, one factor, that is the factor.

That's the factor, okay.

And then I think the other thing to Council Member Rink's question about what are the results we're seeking, I do think we need to have a discussion about what is the role of first responder and then how do we coordinate that with outreach and secondary response and making that spectrum of response.

We're in a good place to do the spectrum.

I think we're just kind of, there's a gap there between those two.

So being able to have that conversation.

And then there was a third thing and I forgot.

Oh, yes.

That is that you feel that you've not been given the permission or...

the ability to sort of fulfill the core function of the ordinance.

Just clarifying that that's your position and that's something that we can work on.

That is my position.

I will say, however, I think it's well intended on the executive's part.

I think they feel protective of me.

I mean, I talked about the 70, 80 hour weeks.

That's me, you know, as well.

And I think people are worried that I'm gonna burn out and take on too much.

I think it is wise to grow responsibly.

You'll recall I limited myself to 24 during the pilot phase because I was worried.

It was so long delayed.

It was a dream deferred.

And I was worried they were going to go, launch, 100 care responders.

It's a lot of work to set up these units.

And so I think it's coming from a good place in the executive.

But in reality, it's slowing me down.

It's creating more work.

It's creating more heartburn for all of us.

Back to your point about the coordinated system, I want to go from first response, again, do I hand off to a lead worker, and then what happens, and I can see the person.

So we, Kat's up here, Kat Hernandez, who manages the care team, she knows every outreach person in town and all the resources intimately, but we're basically working around the public sector design to do that.

It's slowing me down.

It's not helpful at this point, and more importantly, it's not about me.

We are failing people every day, and that should feel like an emergency.

And my last question from Mr. Chair is, how do we I mean, I'll just be really frank about this.

A lot of the obstacles are coming from the collective bargaining piece, coming from the police union and the leadership of the union.

How do we help?

Because I know the patrol, this is a huge help to them.

The people on the ground see this in partnership, do not see it as a threat, see it as a way to help them actually empower them to do the job.

How do we move beyond this obstacle where it is simply considered a transaction where we get more money from the city?

We don't have more money.

We need to make this work.

How do we fill this divide?

Because we are all on the same page here, but we are working at cross-purposes.

Now, it is the most ignorant part of me is that I don't understand how or why.

I mean, I fully believed if I brokered in good faith, if I was demonstrably supportive of labor and of the police department, that I would get the MOU, that when I had evidence that law enforcement liked it.

You remember the first 600 calls, 88% of the time care was requested by police.

And so very, very quickly, I hear it in roll calls.

I'm out with law enforcement here, but all around the country, my ideas are not unpopular in that space.

It's quite a relief because I'm very yes and.

Let's just be data centric.

I don't know why.

I don't.

I know that this sort of negotiation game is played a certain way in this city.

I don't know why that is.

I wanna believe that everybody is human.

And any one of us could be the caller into 911. And I often say, who do you want me to send if it's someone you love?

And I think that should be so universal.

And so self-interest, I would say I'm not prone to offense.

I actually am offended by self-interest.

I think it's not right.

I think it's not right.

I honestly don't know what the barrier to progress is.

I'm not in those negotiations.

But I appreciate the urgency.

I think you'll have to refer to the executive on this.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and I really want to appreciate Chair bringing this today through committee, and also I feel very grateful that you're always welcoming of me.

I know I don't sit on this committee, and I often have a lot of questions, so I want to acknowledge that and really appreciate your partnership, Council Member Kettle.

and your leadership on the public safety issues.

Chief Barton, I just want to say that this unifying and aligning of services piece is really important.

I'd love to see in terms of outcomes and measures, number of warm handoffs to a community-based organization that can help that person with And those of us who have loved ones that have been through treatment and are recovering, we know it takes multiple times, but it all starts with a warm handoff, a detox, and getting into a treatment to begin with.

and not just leaving someone on the sidewalk.

So in terms of measurement, you know, obviously with the unifying and aligning piece, I am here to be a partner to figure that piece out.

I imagine some of this might have been because, as you said, you were a new department and you had to get things situated before you could go on to the next piece, but I think it's very much still something that should be part of CARES work because the city has a lot of interventions that we invest in and there should be a coordinated approach.

And then just number of warm handoffs for one would be an important database, I mean, data point.

And as you expand to other locations, as you're expanding to the D4, and transparency going to be visiting you up there at your UW location.

How does this look as you're expanding?

Because these are, to me, hand in hand.

And so here to be a partner, I know we have a lot of concerns.

I think there's a lot of mutual concerns between us and the care department and your team that does the work.

And we just, you know, we're frustrated because there are a lot of people on the street not getting care, which is the antithesis of why we established this care department.

Thank you, Chair.

And chair, if I may just add, we are actually publishing the dashboard.

I think that's within dates, right?

I've seen a preview of it, which articulates what you're talking about.

It is an important data point.

I mean, I shouldn't discount the, the outputs, the things that we do every day.

I know it's important.

I'm just really consumed by outcomes.

I want to see people come into recovery.

I want to see people come into housing.

It's another thing I'll point out.

I have absolutely no line of sight.

or influence over homeless response.

People confuse that, because it's a unified care team.

They think it's me.

I get emails every day.

I have no line of sight into that.

And of course, it's an integral part of emergency response.

It's just designed that way.

OK, thank you.

Given the time, so I'll ask less, this usually happens.

More comments and I'll just step through the brief.

And I just want to also acknowledge that our public safety chief, Natalie Walton Anderson is also at the table as well.

Sorry, I didn't notice.

I know we're out of time.

I'm wondering, chair, if I can just say one, something very brief.

Okay.

Maybe.

I'm going to go for it.

The reason why I asked, and thank you again for allowing me to sit at the table, I think I was initially hearing the critique and the passion in terms of wanting the urgency and why can't we do more.

And so the care department is under my portfolio as of this January, and if there are going to be critiques and also constructive feedback as to what we should be doing.

I want to be at the table to hear that with the department, with Chief Barden, with the Chief of Staff, and with Kat as well.

So that was the first thing.

I think that's key.

The second thing is we all want to move with urgency.

be successful and sustaining.

And I do think it is well intended, although we are moving in January very fast, since January very fast.

We want to make sure that this department is set up for success and to be able to receive all of the work that we are going to be doing here.

And I do want to take a note, and I know it was highlighted earlier, The growth of this department in two years, this is my 28th year in the criminal legal field or in public safety.

I've never seen a department grow and expand citywide.

And one example I'll use, which is actually has come under the contracts and the outcomes and looking at what we're doing in terms of lead and co-lead, that is coming under the public safety department to in turn go to care.

And that is one example of how we are starting to extend that coordination.

But LEAD is also a program that we've tried to grow citywide, and it did not take two years.

It took many more years to do that.

But that is one example of how we are starting to move the work contracts, outcomes, and accountability to the care department.

We are also really keen on making sure that care is a part of DAT because we see that as one of the other examples.

So going to parts of the ordinance, when you're talking about coordinating the efforts and the referrals to outreach to our city and county providers, I think that's key.

And I also just want to hit on Council Member Moore's frustration that has been my frustration is the voluntariness.

That is one of our biggest challenges in terms of any treatment option, whether it's the city, the state or even federal treatment programs is we are relying on people who are not well to want to commit to that.

And that is why the contact, the connections, the relationships that the care responders, other city providers are making are key because that is our only avenue at this point in terms of motivating people to that.

And I'll just finish in terms of briefly on my care ride along.

We did make a referral to the crisis diversion facility.

So I know those things are happening.

And I share the urgency, and I just want to make sure it's clear that we wanted to build care up to be able to take on what is an incredible task in terms of coordinating all of our response.

So I hear the feedback.

I want to sit here while that feedback is coming to make sure that this department knows I support it and the executive is very aware of the challenges.

And I just wanted to say that.

So thank you for letting me jump in.

Of course.

You're always welcome as well.

And in terms of responsibility, too, it's just right that you're here.

And I appreciate you coming and coming to the table.

Just because of time, and just to close out as chair, I just wanted to note a few things.

and going through the briefing in that kind of order.

One of the notes made, you mentioned Ricky's Law, DCR, and all that.

And at one point earlier, I said, yeah, there's other people at play too.

Because I've been working this here from the dais, but also my previous volunteer positions.

And the idea of involuntary commit in the RCW.

So for those that don't want to move on this, That's a challenge.

And those folks with those ideas, it goes to your, you made this point about the self-determination and so forth.

That contributes to the problem.

That's a big thing.

That's a big challenge.

And we have that kind of sentiment here in Seattle.

And what it means is these people in crisis remain in crisis.

These people on the streets remain in the streets unless you have somebody named Tim, for example, who can come and engage and then encouraged to go to some type of treatment facility that's not even here in King County.

It could be in Oak Harbor.

It could be on the other side of the mountains.

But unfortunately, that's a problem.

So we're not operating in a vacuum here.

Two, you made a point about decentering SPD.

I made this point in a letter five years ago, October 2020. And this is something that we should look to do, but not seen as a penalty or anything like that, but to acknowledge that too many things have been lobbed onto SPD's mission set.

This is no different than DOD in the federal level.

Because DOD has communications capability, logistics, and so forth, everything gets lobbed on, even though it's not the war fighting piece.

And so it's about centerizing them on their mission set as opposed to being center of the entire public safety piece.

And I think that's important.

And so you made that note.

I just wanted to reaffirm that.

And I see this as allowing SPD to do its missing sets as opposed to being, you know, straddled with all these other collateral duties, if you will.

And then you talked about 9-1-1 demilitarization.

I would say decentralization.

But to your point about militarization, I will say related to SPD, more blues, better, less black, more guardian, less warrior, of course.

But the decentralization is no different than like after 9-11 with the intelligence community.

Absolutely needed.

And I see that here within the public safety space.

And I think we've made great moves in this area.

The fact that we have a public safety chief of Ms. Walton Anderson's stature goes to that.

On the call trends, very interesting in terms of the reprioritization.

I'd like to learn more about that, because that's such a massive change that it can throw off data sets in terms of how do you interpret.

And so need to account for and understand.

So that'd be like a follow on to maybe a letter or communication, understanding exactly how that reprioritization happened, because I think that's important for us to know.

the crisis response or responders piece.

By the way, I love the Georgetown aspect, Hoya Saxa.

I mentioned at the beginning during my chair comment about expectation management and this came out of my meeting last night in Belltown.

We need to do that here too with this body of work because 24 doesn't give you city wide coverage really.

As someone who, as a Navy guy, works watches, you understand in terms of getting 24-7, 365, as my vice chair asked for, that is a big number.

It's not 24, it's not even 91. And so we need to be pushing forward, but also doing an expectation management piece because it goes to how people are receiving this and how they're perceiving our movement as a city, as a one Seattle team.

And I think that's an important, And we also need to be doing this with our other government alternative response in terms of CSOs, Health 1, Health 99, and so forth, and making sure they come together.

Not for now, but I'm really interested in the relationship with lead, co-lead, REACH, We Deliver Care, We Heart Seattle, and how you work and can work with their case managers, how we can do these things better.

And I will also hear about a plug-in for good neighbor agreements.

I made this point last night.

All these organizations need to be committed and cooperating and engaging the community organizations, because in the long term, If the community and the neighborhoods falter, that doesn't allow us long-term to help those in crisis.

And so we really need to do this.

And then the next piece I wanted to raise briefly is community safety.

As I mentioned earlier, this is the reason why we're having this.

And by the way, we will have a community safety committee meeting too because first is the reports in the news about drug dealing with the tribal government or on the county level, embezzlement.

This is Council Member Rivera's lane.

You know, let's get that, you know, understand that 110%.

We have to do that on that oversight because we can't have these nonprofits, you know, embezzling money.

You know, that happened at the county level.

We can't have that at the city level.

But separately, and what really caught my attention was, you know, Council Member Wu adding a program in and then Council Member Hollingsworth adding in.

some community safety organizations, which is really helpful and needed.

But in looking at this community budget actions that were taken, which are needed, I'm like, oh, peeling back the onions.

there's this group, but it's not really coordinated to the way the oversight and so forth.

And is it nested in terms of what we're trying to do mission set wise or are some of these organizations kind of going off on a tangent?

We need to ensure that we're all working together in one Seattle way to include these community safety nonprofits.

And that's something that we have responsibility over.

in terms of our role.

So these are some of the things, this is the beginning of the conversation because I recognize, and I have no intention of taking out section one number six.

at all.

And so I believe in what the mayor signed off on with this ordinance.

I actually have my hard copy.

Didn't look it up.

I brought it with me.

Because we need to start talking through the ordinance and understanding and working as a council with the public safety chief and the, you know, the mayor and others to ensure that we're moving in the right direction and we're, you know, collaborating because these have budget pieces, there's mission set pieces, and so that we can work together on that.

And so again, By design, this is meeting one of a series that works through these issues to the issues that were highlighted by my colleagues.

And so just to close, because I'm over 1130, which was my goal, two things.

I'm kind of going back to, and my colleagues heard this, most of them, because we were the cohort in 23. Public safety, public health, two sides of one coin.

And we have to completely understand that.

And I just want to close, too, with the idea of compassion and wisdom.

Yes, we need to have the compassion for those that are in need, those that are in crisis.

But we also have to have the wisdom to know that we have to look out for our community and our neighborhoods.

We have to have the wisdom to know that, yes, we may have to address involuntary commitment.

Yes, we need to do the oversight to ensure these different pieces are working together in a coherent way and the relationships are good.

And this is a project that I commit myself as chair of this committee to work with the executive, with Ms. Walton-Anderson and others upstairs, and yourself included, Chief Barton, so we can get to a better place so that a year from now, we can have some answers to these questions.

And so thank you very much for your briefing today.

And with that, We have reached the end of today's agenda.

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

Hearing and seeing none, no further business.

We are adjourned.

Thank you very much.