Everett City Council Community Health and Safety Committee Meeting - July 2, 2025
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Everett City Council Community Health and Safety Committee Meeting - July 2, 2025
The Community Health and Safety Committee of the Everett City Council met on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, at 5:00 PM in City Council Chambers. Councilmember Tuohy chaired the meeting, joined by Councilmembers Fosse and Bader (who arrived a few minutes late). The agenda included a Youth Violence Prevention Update from staff and a Legislative Impacts Briefing from staff.
Youth Violence Prevention Update
- Context: Mayor Franklin issued a renewed directive on youth safety in 2025, building on a 2018 directive focused on comprehensive gang reduction. The directive has four initiatives: prevention, partnerships, community engagement/activation, and innovation (technology).
- Police Department Philosophy: Deputy Chief Hendrickson described a balanced approach emphasizing accountability and interdiction of retaliation cycles. The department integrates its violent crime unit with major crimes detectives to quickly identify and arrest shooters, aiming to stop further violence.
- Crime Statistics: Overall violent crime in the city is projected to be the lowest in seven years—down 30% compared to 2019 levels. Property crimes similarly decreased 30% below the seven-year low. Juveniles are less likely to be victims of all crimes than in the last five years. However, juvenile involvement in gun- and gang-related violence increased last year and is expected to remain at that level this year.
- Community Partnerships: The police department relies on trusted community partners to engage at-risk youth, including The Mod Race, Latino Civic Alliance, The Access Project, YMCA, and Boys & Girls Clubs. The Latino Civic Alliance's IMJ Wire program (started February 2025) received 12 referrals: 4 youth graduated (2 obtained jobs), 1 left the state, 1 dropped out, and the remaining 6 are still in the program.
- School Resource Officers: Both the Mukilteo and Everett School Districts retained their school resource officers during the 2020–2021 period, and the Mukilteo district has requested additional officers, though staffing is insufficient.
- Upcoming Ordinance: Staff is working on an ordinance (expected in 3–5 weeks) to impose civil penalties for illegal graffiti, covering costs incurred by the city for removal and extending cleanup assistance currently available only to single-family homeowners to also cover multifamily and business properties.
- Technology Use: The department uses technology to reduce investigative stops and increase probable-cause stops, aiming to avoid unintended contacts and build trust.
- Funding Needs: The department sought federal funding twice for the “Alive and Free” program (a YMCA partnership modeled after an Oakland program) but was declined both times. They continue to attend the Evidence-Based Policing Conference to identify new strategies.
Legislative Impacts Briefing
- Presented by: Lacey (City Attorney’s Office). She provided an overview of significant 2025 legislative bills affecting criminal justice and highlighted a few 2024 bills that may require future council action to adopt into the Everett Municipal Code.
- Key 2025 Bills:
- Hate Crimes (effective July 27, 2025): Amended definition to include crimes motivated “in whole or in part” by perception of protected class—expect potential increase in reported hate crimes.
- Animal Cruelty (effective July 27, 2025): Expanded animal fighting and cruelty laws; judges may impose permanent ownership bans. Council may adopt the new misdemeanor for violating a ban.
- Firearm Purchase Permit (effective 2027): Establishes a state permit-to-purchase system with safety training, annual eligibility checks, and cancellation provisions for disqualifying convictions. No local action due to state preemption.
- Forged Digital Likenesses (effective July 27, 2025): Expands criminal impersonation to include knowingly distributing forged digital images/recordings with intent to defraud, harass, etc. Council may update Everett Municipal Code 10.14.
- Criminal Insanity Task Force: Creates a task force to review competency-to-stand-trial laws; the City Attorney’s Office recommended Senior Deputy Prosecutor Flora Diaz to serve.
- Hope Cards Expansion: Requires hope cards (summary of protection orders) to include firearm/weapon surrender information; expands to Extreme Risk Protection Orders.
- Judicial Orders (various effective dates): Permits minors who were protected parties to petition for protection orders upon turning 18; adds possession of ghost guns under a protection order as unlawful possession of a firearm in the first degree (felony).
- Domestic Violence Co-Responder Grant (effective July 2025): Funded by a $100 fee added to marriage licenses; future council approval may be needed to accept grant funds.
- Crisis Co-Response Academy (effective July 2025): Requires UW School of Social Work to establish a training academy for co-responders; no council action required.
- Rape Sentencing (effective July 2025): Allows exceptional sentences above standard range when rape results in pregnancy of an adult victim (previously only for victims under 18).
- Intelligent Speed Assistance (effective 2029): Permits use of GPS-based speed-limiting devices on vehicles of habitual offenders; tampering is a gross misdemeanor that may need to be adopted locally.
- Tribal Warrants (effective July 1, 2025): Clarifies procedures for entering tribal warrants into superior court and allows patrol officers to enforce them.
- Theft from First Responders (effective July 2025): Expands first-degree theft to include theft from EMS vehicles under certain circumstances.
- Criminal Justice Training (effective 2026): Requires patrol officers to complete training on trauma-informed victim interviews and responses to sexual violence, with refreshers every three years.
- 2024 Bills Needing Local Adoption (potential future council action): Catalytic converter theft (gross misdemeanor), firearms in sensitive places (libraries, zoos, aquariums, transit facilities), election security interference, and protection orders after insanity findings.
- Additional Issue: The state Supreme Court’s guidance on public defender caseloads (ramp-down starting 2025, fully effective by 2036) may require future legislative action; the city is tracking impacts through the Association of Washington Cities.
Next Meeting
- Proposed Agenda (August 2025): Briefing on homelessness and related services from Community Development staff.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes were taken. Staff will bring forward a graffiti ordinance in 3–5 weeks.
- The committee will consider future council actions to adopt into municipal code several gross misdemeanors created by 2024 and 2025 state legislation (e.g., forged digital likeness, catalytic converter theft, firearms in sensitive places, tampering with intelligent speed assistance devices).
- The committee will receive a homelessness services briefing at the next meeting (August 2025).
Meeting Transcript
Good afternoon, everyone. Um, this my name's Council Member Tui, and we're here tonight. The community health and safety council committee meeting uh on July 2nd, 2025. I'm here with Councilmember Fosse and Councilmember Vader will be arriving uh a few minutes late. We have two things on our agenda tonight legislative impacts briefing from staff and a youth violence prevention update from staff. And we're going to start with the youth violence prevention uh update, and we're gonna start turning it over to Jennifer. All right. Thanks. Um the mayor recently issued a directive around youth violence, and we've got kind of the um drill down on the police department perspective, but just as some context for that. Um Mayor Franklin had asked staff to tackle that issue starting in 2018. And the at the time, that directive focused on comprehensive gang reduction and youth violence prevention, um, working with community partners, working with juvenile justice partners, um, and several other initiatives under that. Um, the focus this year is just a renewed commitment to youth safety. Um, leading up to that directive, uh, the mayor called together a forum of school, community partners, youth, and that kind of helped create the content and um paths for the directive on youth violence. It's got four initiatives, um, prevention, so existing crime prevention programs and also new community focused strategies partnerships, existing partners, and then also other initiatives that promote youth safety. Uh community engagement and activation. So I think of this as kind of the like providing new um options and pathways and things that um get folks point pointed in the right direction away from any violence um risks. Uh, and then innovation. So using technology as we have in the past with the with the PDE and other departments to enhance our response and um and things like that. Um I think part of my point too in starting things off is just the recognition that there's lots of departments right now, community um uh community communications and community development are also both really involved in these initiatives, along with the police department. Um we're working to expand that so that we kind of have a whole of city approach so that we're really looking at um all the ways that different departments um interact with youth and can help um help uh prevent youth violence. Um item that we are likely to bring forward to council in the next few weeks, um, probably like a three to five week timeline, maybe faster. I think the mayor said faster than that, so maybe it'll end up being faster. But legal is working on an ordinance to um focus on um a legal graffiti. So um it would uh make it so that graffiti taggers would be subject to a civil penalty for violations and for costs incurred by the city to remove illegal graffiti. So um, you know, and when homeowners or businesses are are tagged with graffiti, like through no fault of their own. The city is funded for a long time. Um has a fund that helps single family homeowners do that cleanup, but we don't fund for multifamily or businesses, and they obviously are just you know just as frustrated at um at that cost. So uh this is an ordinance that at least one other city has passed. So we're working on fitting it into the city code, and we'll bring that forward to council. Um I think I'll stop. I might jump in, but um, Deputy Chief Hendrickson has a bunch of other stuff to talk with you guys about and related to some of the questions that Councilmember Tui and Bader uh sent our way before the meeting, too. So cool. Thank you. Yeah, I think probably we'll start off with uh the overall philosophy of the police department when we're dealing with juvenile crime. Uh, we really believe in a balanced approach. Uh, by no means do we think we should throw kids in the jail and throw away the key. We don't think that's the right way. Uh but we also believe that there has to be some accountability. Uh and so the police department is kind of in a unique area position to provide some level of accountability. Uh, and so we do aggressively go after suspects, whether they're juveniles or adults. Uh, but realistically, the real driver for us when it comes to juvenile suspects and violent crime uh is we want to interdict the cycle. Uh, something we've seen since 2017 when we first started seeing increase in gang violence in the town uh is one act of violence will lead to four, five, seven more shootings because we'll have a retaliation cycle that starts. And so we're able to go back afterwards and track it back. So what we found is the sooner we can interdict that and contact the original shooter, the sooner we can stop that violence. It is extremely common for us to go on a scene of a serious crime, and nobody wants to talk to us. Victim won't talk to us, the witnesses won't talk to us, people in the area won't talk to us. And we hear the common statement of don't worry about it, we'll take care of it. And we're literally seeing additional shootings after each of these incidents because of that. And so our philosophy is adopted a little bit. We want to really interdict that.
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