Good morning.

The public safety committee meeting will come to order.

It's 9 32 a.m.

April 28th, 2026.

I'm Robert Kettle, Chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Warz is excused.

Councilmember Lynn.

Here.

Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Saka.

Here.

Count Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are three members present.

Thank you.

And uh welcome everyone.

Uh for chair comment this morning.

I'm not gonna really do one except for to reiterate some points from Chair Comment on Friday, where I spoke to an article by Danny Westneat that came out about a week ago in the Seattle Times talking about Little Saigon.

Um it was titled Amid Seattle's neglect.

Um very important article.

Um it is uh that chair comment is up on Seattle Channel from Friday's um public safety committee meeting.

And uh you know, and I was there at Little Saigon yesterday, you know, and the challenges that Little Saigon is facing remains as of yesterday morning when I was in the in the community.

In that article, there's a lot of different pieces.

Really important to hear those voices from the community and the points that they were making.

But one thing I wanted to highlight towards the end from the author of the article when he was talking about the act, you know, the the efforts thus far.

And uh key is when he says um, but alarming, but is uh it is alarming how little effect it seems to have.

Um our efforts thus far are basically akin to running to stand still, and we cannot continue in this vein.

Also, in the uh chair comment on Friday, I spoke of the issue of Seattle being of two minds.

Um this is something that's a challenge for us as a city, and it gets us into a situation where it leads to some paralysis or it leads to elements that are working in cross purposes.

I think we need to look uh together, look for those common areas and look at facts on the ground, like in Little Saigon in terms of trying to develop a movement forward.

Um I also highlighted in the chair comment last Friday about our strategic framework for our safer Seattle.

We updated it this year uh from what we had from the previous term of the council, the two years of the council, and uh two changes I wanted to highlight.

One was a bullet uh pillar that was updated, and it speaks to you know, furthering a functional criminal justice system.

There's so many little pieces within our criminal justice system that are not quite working that we need some tweaks in.

And then a new one titled Addressing the Seam Between Public Safety and Public Health, Housing and Human Services.

This is very important.

Uh so addressing the seam, by the way, means a lot of times means addressing alternative response.

Um this is primarily focused, but not solely on the uh care enabling ordinance and the work that goes there.

We need to improve alternative response to get better outcomes.

Also, and I saw this yesterday morning again in Little Saigon, but you know what?

I see it in Belltown every day.

I see it in downtown.

Um it's been an issue in Lake City, um, other parts, North Beacon Hill and D2, it's not just Little Saigon and parts of the CID.

Um Pioneer Square is throughout our city, is addressing the drug markets, and this means actions that need to be taken as relates to the public drug use and possession ordinance.

The ordinance, in my view, has been a failure in itself, but also in its implementation.

We must bring some clarity.

Uh, we must address uh the uh two minds issue.

We need to simplify it.

But going back to alternative response, we also need to bring in the alternative response aspect uh to the issue as well.

And separately, and as I mentioned Friday, we're engaging with central staff legislative department is has an effort called native uh neighborhood engagement and mitigation plan.

Think of this as the new version of a good neighbor agreement.

We need the further relationship between our service providers and the city, but also more importantly, with the neighborhoods in which they serve.

So at the end of the day, we must take action uh working with stakeholders, of which I see many here today.

Thank you uh for coming out to address the point again in the article.

It is alarming uh how little effect it seems to have, and that means our efforts thus far in terms of addressing some of these problem areas.

And so I look to work with everybody in here.

I know most of you uh generally or specifically, and uh I look forward to this along with my colleagues here in the committee, and then um the council overall.

Okay, that's chair comment for this morning, and again, you can see Friday's on Seattle Channel.

Uh if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing seeing no objection.

Uh uh the agenda is adopted.

Okay.

Public comments.

Uh we'll now open a public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up for today?

Currently, we have 14 in-person and four remote speakers.

So that means uh two each, two minutes each, uh, under our new council rules.

Okay, let's let's go with the in-persons.

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

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

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

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

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

The public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first uh honored guest, uh council member uh former council member Tanya Will.

And as former council tumor Tanya Wu starts, I also wanted to note that Councilmember Rivera is here and has joined us uh just after we had the roll call.

All right, thank you.

Welcome to the United States.

Good morning, council.

Um, my name is Tanya Wu.

I wear many hats in the Chinatown International District, but today I represent the um or am the president-elect for the international district rotary.

So let's be honest about what's happening at Twilight and Jackson.

This past week, we've seen this population explode because of the nice weather.

And what we're seeing on the ground is a system that is not meeting the scale of the need.

And the reality is the scale of the crisis far exceeds the resources and tools that we're currently deploying.

Um we need to be clear about what we're dealing with.

This is not just one problem.

This is about two.

Um it's a drug crisis fueled by stolen goods market, and it's also a housing crisis.

And we can't address one without addressing the other.

We need to continue to address both.

The condition in this area continue to be serious.

Um, it's pushing out into North Beacon Hill, it's spreading to other parts of the city.

We're seeing it in the Lake City, we're seeing it in Aurora and Belltown, in downtown.

And so we really need to prioritize what we're doing on the ground, and we need to listen to community.

These conditions, open air drug use, ongoing safety issues, and strain on businesses and residents are not improving at the pace our community needs, and we've seen the data, and we need more to be done.

So we need to support and continue supporting proven models like LEED.

We need to continue building more tiny home villages, because in a less than 40 days, we're gonna see a major world event come to the Seattle area, and that's the 2026 FIFA Soccer World Cup.

And so there is added urgency, and we need a plan, and it's not very much time.

So, I mean, these folks who live in the neighborhoods and have to see this every single day, they deserve to feel safe and supported in their own communities, not only during World Cup or major events, but for uh time that they are there.

And so please continue to do what you're doing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Cara Williams to be followed by Sharon Lee.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Kara Williams.

I live in D3 and work at the Low Income Housing Institute.

I'm here today to join the call to promote public safety throughout the city and especially in the CID by lifting the proviso that was placed on the 11 million for new shelter beds last fall.

For this year, these funds are not needed to fill potential federal cuts to our continuum of care and permanent supportive housing.

By keeping them per viso, they are being underutilized when there has never been a better time to use them to support the mayor's shelter expansion plans.

In a time of so much uncertainty and so much need, I ask that you meet the moment and not keep them on hold for a future budget when everything is in place right now to get more shelter live fast, bring people off our streets, address public use, connect people to services like treatment for substance use disorder and behavioral health, and promote the safety of the public.

These issues are concentrated in the CID, particularly Little Saigon, where I work every day, and we need support to address the scene now.

Everyone is affected when not everyone has access to their human rights.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm Sharon Lee.

I'm the executive director of Lehigh.

And we were we are one of the larger employers in Little Saigon CID, as well as we have lots of residents.

I want to speak to the committee today to have you stop the sale of stolen goods in Little Saigon CID.

People are shoplifting and bringing goods to Little Saigon to sell for cash to buy drugs.

Street vendors are supposed to have a business license and a permit to vend on public right-of-way.

Now, SDOT, Seattle Department of Transportation is supposed to regulate and address this issue, but we do not see any enforcement.

We are continually faced with people offering to sell goods.

It's creating a serious public safety issue.

It fused the drug issue.

It's not just, it's actually a whole network, it's a business network.

It's not just incidentally.

And lots of people who are selling stolen goods are housed.

They're not necessarily unhoused.

And so we think the council should do something to put in place to stop the sale of stolen goods.

And also we ask that you set up more tiny house villages because when you when we are able to move homeless individuals out of Little Saigon into Tiny House villages, we believe that this is a way to prevent them from returning because they will get services elsewhere.

So for instance, when we open up Maple Leaf Village, we made sure there was a commitment to handle the residents who are you know, people who are homeless in the Maple Leaf community.

And so we believe that we should have a target strategy to have more tiny house villages.

So we thank you for your support for this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Tan McCarrag to be followed by Madigan Lodal.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Tom Makaraeg, and I live in District 3, but work every day in District 2, specifically Little Saigon.

When I first came here as an AmeriCorps volunteer, I had never seen anything like what is happening in Little Saigon.

All the open air drug use, drug dealing, and stolen goods markets, blocking people who are just trying to grocery shop or get on the bus.

Seeing it then was shocking.

Seeing it day in and day out for almost three years with no significant change is enraging.

You will not find this kind of activity anywhere else in Seattle.

The CID and Little Saigon is the only place that this kind of rampant crime and drug activity is allowed to exist.

It is the only neighborhood that the city allows it to exist in.

The city's actions have pushed these activities into this Asian minority neighborhood, continuing the historical racism this community has faced from the city it calls home.

The people of the CID and Little Saigon deserve better.

There are organizations like Friends of Little Saigon and their beautiful neighborhood plan, Skipta, Interim, and many more who are tirelessly working to uplift this neighborhood in the face of apathy and inaction.

It is your turn to help uplift this neighborhood.

The solution isn't to keep displacing people to other places.

It is to bring services and shelter to them.

We need less arrests and more diversion.

We need more outreach, more social workers, more shelters, more recovery resources, more housing, more service options for these folks.

This challenge needs a holistic solution, and it is the city's responsibility to enact it.

Everybody who lives and works in the CID and Little Saigon deserves to feel safe, and it is the role of this council and city to ensure that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council members.

My name is Madagan Lodal, and I live in District 3 and I work in District 2.

I'm here to ask you to promote public safety in the Chinatown International District by lifting the proviso on 11 million for shelter expansion and increasing services for our unhoused neighbors.

This community has been systemically discriminated again and ignored, creating an unsafe environment for all those who live and work in the area.

These conditions result in people avoiding the area, further perpetuating stigma and discrimination to the Little Saigon community.

I personally have avoided going into certain restaurants or walking past certain streets when I'm by myself out of fear for my safety.

However, simply displacing people or putting them in jail does nothing to address the root cause of these issues.

I have also seen from working directly with people in substance abuse recovery that shelter without services does not create the opportunities and support needed for change.

By lifting the proviso on the 11 million, you can improve the public safety of this neighborhood by increasing shelter, providing the basic human right of housing alongside essential services.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Amanda Benson to be followed by Nathan Woodenknife.

Hello, good morning.

My name's Amanda Benson, and I'm a resident of District 4, and I work every day in District 2.

Uh, specifically Little Saigon near the intersection of uh 12th and Jackson, the epicenter of this uh public safety crisis.

Uh since Seattle's drug possession and public use ordinance took effect in 2023, arrests have actually increased and lead diversions have decreased.

And yet the open air drug use and selling of stolen goods that I see every day in Little Saigon on my way to work has only gotten worse.

Uh there's no evidence that arresting people for drug use reduces use or addresses the root causes that bring people to that point.

Stable housing does.

That's why I'm here today to advocate for tiny house villages.

They're not just a place to sleep, they are communities that provide case management, peer support, stability, and dignity.

They provide a foundation that makes every other intervention possible.

Addiction treatment, employment, reconnection with family are only possible with stable housing.

I urge this committee to fully fund more tiny house villages and the wraparound services that make them so effective.

It's the most cost-effective evidence, evidence-based uh investment in city the city can make in public safety.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, good morning.

Uh, my name is Nathan Wood and Knife.

Um, I am a resident of Seattle in District 3, and I work in Little Saigon for the low-income housing institute.

Uh we have an office with over 40 staff members and an apartment building with over 80 residents and many other buildings nearby.

Um daily we are presented with drug use crime and violence on the street in front of our workplace.

Um I believe we need to stop the sale of stolen goods in an open air market.

Um, these are not small one-off offenders, but rather large organized um organizations.

It's a massive market, and the funds are used to help fund drugs that are sold to vulnerable populations and prey on those who need help and support the most.

I get off the streetcar at Twelfth and Jackson, and I have to see this every day, and it's rather heartbreaking to see what people are going through.

Um, if we can get people off the streets and into shelters like tiny house villages, um, we can help stop this this phenomenon.

Um, and it's very important for the council to recognize what is going on and try to find humane solutions that can help support people rather than punish them for being preyed on.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Andrea Suarez to be followed by Corey Ratliff.

Hi, good morning, council.

My name's Andrea Suarez, founder of We Heart Seattle.

Um, I'm here to talk about the harm of possession in our community.

We've picked up hundreds of thousands of needles and hundreds of thousands of pieces of foil that our county hand out to drug addicts.

I think that really just speaks to the drug-friendly and enabling culture we have.

There's other major cities that are starting to ban handing that out, especially tent side without enrolling in programs.

So there's some little adjustments we could make to really shift from a drug-friendly city to one where we we are a recovery first city.

Um in terms of harm to women, especially, they're preyed on.

I've seen women trafficked, I've seen women be the front people to go in and do retail theft for drug addicts.

Uh sort of very predatory element out there in terms of the culture.

When we talk about why it never gets better, Council Kettle, Councilman Kettle, it's because we have an inflow crisis.

We don't have anything like proposition F, which San Francisco has.

It says if you're gonna come to Seattle, you need to pass a drug test for illegal substances before you get your food stamp card and your ABD card.

Little things like that are what other major cities or and democratic around cities are doing to kind of create the uh not uh drug-friendly culture.

My mantra is here is we have very cheap drugs and free crime, and that's what's creating uh the havoc we see in our community.

Um I heard a couple people talk about tiny houses and wraparound services.

Last time I went into a tiny house, I saw a designated tiny house to use fentanyl.

So help me understand how we're stabilizing somebody inside a tiny house village when there's a tiny house designated to smoke fentanyl.

Wraparound services aren't required.

The whole city is a wraparound service.

You can walk out the door and get services.

They don't have to be at the village.

So don't get sucked into that, that things get better there.

I don't know one person that's graduated from the LEED program where you can smoke fentanyl in their program.

What I do know is when people get arrested and get a clear mind and go to treatment, they get better.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Uh my name's Corey Ratliff.

I am a drug addict and uh homeless.

And uh I just want to speak on the fact that uh it took me 45 days in jail to finally get my mind right, you know, and and hold myself accountable.

Uh before that, uh I was in the streets all the way from Aurora to Tacoma, and I was being enabled from the city with free pipes, free foil, free housing, places that police can't really come in and do anything about.

So now we're encouraging and enabling a drug addict and a homeless to be comfortable in that situation.

That does not help the situation.

What helps the situation is to hold us accountable.

If we're slipping in the streets and we're selling dope or we're pimping or we're doing anything that's against the law, hold me accountable, arrest me.

Don't give me a slap on the wrist, don't let me go.

You know what I'm saying?

That time in jail is enough time for me to think, take accountability for what I did, understand that I need to change things, get out, get into places like Cope and Chance or Battlefield for Addiction, start going to work, you know, things like that.

These sober living programs are the answer it was for me.

And I still have an older brother who's still actively in addiction, who has no thought whatsoever of getting out of that situation because tiny home villages, housing projects, everything there is comfortable to be homeless in a drug addict.

Ten years ago, I couldn't do that.

You know, these days it's so easy to be a drug addict, and you're accepted in the city because it's okay.

And and we're just putting them into a building off the street.

So now the city is thinking that it's not a problem anymore.

No, it's still an issue, it's not being handled correctly.

And I think the best way to do that is hold me accountable.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Marta Kidan.

Cadem, I sorry.

My name is Marta Kidan, and I'm the community engagement manager at the low-income housing institute.

Thank you for allowing uh community the time to be heard here today.

In the fall of 2025, the low-income housing institute developed a 15-point plan focused on the CID and Little Saigon.

The goal of this plan was to lift up the deep needs of community and various resources that can be activated to lift up our community.

Public safety requires a wraparound approach, and we believe that tiny house enhanced shelters uh being included in that plan will help alleviate some of the strain that is being experienced by all that live and work in the area.

One of the items that we asked the city of Seattle to prioritize is the tiny house shelter funding, which was allocated at 11 million dollars last year.

Prior to closing the budgeting process, a provisa was placed to ensure that the continuum of care funding was fully funded at the federal level and to ensure that the shelter funding would back that if there was any shortfall.

Prior um now that these dollars have been secured, we ask that we you lift the proviso and make more shelter possible and honor the advocacy that we alongside our partners have done in the region.

Our offices are located directly in Little Saigon.

Uh, for those of you that don't know, we're right on uh Jackson and Rainier.

And um, we often experience the common public safety issues you've heard about today.

Um, both ourselves and the residents that live in the unlocked property above us.

Um there's a need for many safety practices to be activated and uh many uh outreach uh and diversion programs that we want to make sure that are being uh protected and allocated for.

But we also ask that the highest of these be the uh sheltering and housing of our unhoused neighbors in Little.

Please help us ensure that housing is a human right by releasing these shelter dollars so that shelter providers can do the good work of creating safe spaces without judgment or harm.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Teresa Bloomberg, uh followed by Steve Rebstal.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Teresa Bloomberg, and I'm here on behalf of the Seattle Indian Center, a nonprofit organization that's been serving the international district since 1958.

We've witnessed many negative changes in our neighborhood, especially the increased open drug use and growing safety concerns for all the businesses, residents, and families.

As a housing coordinator for the Seattle Indian Center, I see every day that enforcement that has been happening now is not enough.

We need real solutions, more shelters, access, more tiny homes, stronger pathways for supporting recovery and stable housing for those living on the streets and in need of support.

Our community deserves to feel safe.

Our unhoused neighbors deserve dignity, opportunity, and I cannot emphasize support enough.

We ask the city to act with urgency and balance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My opinion has been clouded by the fact that I work primarily in Pioneer Square, Bell Town, who have worked in the ID and have worked on Capitol Hill.

So my experience has been clouded because there's too many carrots, not enough sticks.

I you still have a perfect record in the times I've been assaulted and threatened.

No one has ever gone to jail.

No one has ever taken the ride.

No one has ever received, you know, what amounts to a ticket.

A very perfect record.

Now I have been warned that when assaulted, if you do too much in response, you can go to jail because retaliation is something you can go to jail for.

But it appears assault in Seattle, unless you use a gun, a knife or a hatchet, is not jailable.

It's not worth your time and effort.

I don't know whether the courts or the prosecutor would do anything because we have never gotten that far on that.

And I see a lot more.

I see that moving people out for trespass is something police can't do because no ID.

Who are they?

I recently had a situation where an individual allegedly owned the garage.

The police hadn't come within an hour and a half, almost two hours.

I was lucky, I flagged down a police car.

Two officers were in it, they checked, nobody had been assigned, and they did go in, and after several hours trying to help the individual, they did get them out.

Now, later on, the same individual threatened someone else, and they did end up going to jail.

I haven't seen them since, thank goodness.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Jessica Norton to be followed by Alison Blevins.

Good morning.

My name is Jessica Norton, and for over 22 years, I've owned a small business in Belltown.

Belltown is exactly what the city says it wants in a neighborhood.

We are the most densely populated residential community in King County.

We are socioeconomically diverse with million-dollar condos alongside public, subsidized, affordable, and transitional housing.

We're walkable, transit connected, and filled with independently owned small businesses.

We also carry a significant share of the city's social services, serving some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

And yet, we are being overrun by a flagrant, violent, very violent open-air drug market, much of it operating directly outside the housing and service centers people rely on for safety and stability.

Affordable housing providers in Belltown are reporting vacancies as high as 30%.

And that is not because we don't need housing.

It is because people do not feel safe here.

Even poor people do not want to live in an unsafe community.

Small businesses, their employees and clients are navigating unsafe conditions every day, and it is the biggest threat to my own business.

And many of us have stopped calling 911 because there are never any responses.

Allowing vulnerable people to be exploited in plain sight outside the very services meant to help them is not compassion.

It is neglect.

And it is not equitable to expect neighborhoods like Belltown, dense, diverse, and already caring so much to absorb this alone.

We are doing everything right as a community, but the city is not meeting us with the action the situation demands.

We need consistent public safety presence.

We need real enforcement of open air drug markets, and we need safe, dignified conditions around our social services.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Alison Blevins.

On behalf of the Sandal Park neighborhood and Greenwood, I am asking the city to provide a dedicated police unit to the Sandal Park area, which is police beat J1.

Our community is struggling under the weight of drug dealing and usage at Sandal Park.

It is rampant and disturbing.

Often we call 911 and the police never come.

When they do come, they rarely do anything about up and open drug use and drug dealing.

We are asking the city to enforce the 80-inch vehicle with restriction, which is municipal code 11.71.070.

And the 772-hour parking limit, which is municipal code 1120 7240, at and around Sandal Park.

We're asking that all current drug laws be upheld and enforced.

And please restore our well-loved, well-used community park back to the community.

And for the safety of our children, our community cannot continue to bear the burden of rampant unchecked drug use.

I have um petition signed by 151 of my neighbors.

Can I give this?

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

And our last in-person speaker is former councilmember Sarah Nelson.

Welcome, former Council President Nelson.

Uh friends, we've had a bookend.

We started with Councilmember Wu, and now we end with former council president Nelson.

And then for the in-person, we also have some remotes.

Thank you very much.

And hello, everybody.

Thank you, Chair Kettle, for having this particular topic on the agenda today, because as you and other folks know on the committee and elsewhere, that uh this topic um city policy on addiction and uh and in the drug epidemic is very near and dear to my heart, not only because I'm in recovery myself, but also because I believe that addiction, substance use disorder fuels public safety challenges, and chronic homelessness.

And so this is a key root cause of two of your um major issues that you have to deal with.

So, anyway, two things.

Number one, uh, first of all, I have read the the presentation materials and kudos to LEED for its hard work uh in diversion services, and I will remind folks up here that there are 200 2.85 million dollars in the 2026 budget ongoing for recovery services.

And so just letting you know that there is money that 500,000 for access to on-demand residential treatment, and that's on top of whatever was left over of the 300,000 that might got in there in the 2024 budget, 250,000 for uh sober housing vouchers, 500,000 to nonprofits providing providing housing and substance use disorder treatment and other behavioral health supports.

And so that money is there, and um so when it comes to uh what uh services lead case managers are um are encouraging their clients to go to in inpatient treatment is one um is one option among other things.

And so just wanted to say money is there, and then finally, I just want to uh recognize that as you go forward, think about um I'll be listening to how the drug uh ordinance has been working out so far since it's since its passage.

Anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

Um we are transitioning to remote speakers.

The first remote speaker is Julia Beabout.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

Uh my name is Julia Biabout.

I am commenting today on Seattle's public drug use policy as a third high crime resident.

When people ask me where I live, I often reply that I live downtown.

It doesn't get more down.

Like all jokes, it's funny because it's true.

If a drug user has reached third pipe crime, they have truly reached the neighbor of Seattle's drug scene.

Like political Saigon, like Belltown, we daily have crowds of 25 to 100 people using and dealing drugs, trafficking human beings, and selling stolen goods on our drive on our sidewalk.

They block residents from reaching their homes, have assaulted our neighbors, and are causing millions of dollars of damage and security costs.

As someone who has had a front row seat to the fentanyl and meth crisis since 2020, I and many of my neighbors believe it is first and foremost a public health crisis, but with public safety symptoms that have become reached at an intolerable level for our neighborhoods.

I'm here to advocate for the addition of a missing link in our current intervention approach.

The reclassification of sidewalk vending without a permit as a misdemeanor.

Currently, vending without a permit is a fable offense enforced by STAT, which is not capable of enforcing it.

Reclassifying this offense as a misdemeanor would allow SPD to take on enforcement.

Fencing of stolen goods plays a big role in the current sentinel and death crisis, allowing SPD to confiscate the stolen goods would help the disrupt the ecosystem that enables enables and funds the current crisis.

Let me be clear.

Thank you.

Next up we have Howard Gale.

Good morning, Howard Gale.

September 2023's drug ordinance, which you'll be discussing, had a stunning five and a half pages of whereas all created to wave off the concerns of the hundreds that testified in opposition to that ordinance, centered around the concerns that police cannot be trusted to use discretion in assessing when possession or public drug use presents a serious threat, concerns that the city would fail to provide proper resources for diversion and treatment, and concerns that racial disparity and arrests would increase.

All of these fears came true.

One of the useless whereas states that the SPD shall quote create policy establishing diversion and treatment as the standard approach for most instances.

The 2023 ordinance also states that, quote, a lack of diversion opportunities shall not be a reason for arrest.

Yet the data presented today demonstrates that whereas in 2024, 40.44% of people arrested for drug crimes were entered into post-arrest diversion.

This percentage dropped to 19.11% last year, less than half.

A stunning, dismal and predictable outcome from simply trusting the police.

Former councilmember Teresa Muscat said in voting against the 2023 ordinance that, quote, this law will exacerbate the racial disparities in who gets arrested.

A report from the King County Department of Public Defense last October found exactly that result.

African Americans are 4.1 times more likely to be arrested when compared to white people.

This report also found that arrests resulted in less than 3%, either completing drug treatment or getting a court order to do so, another failure in a promised outcome of the ordinance.

The data presented today lacks the information, most notably on race, to determine most all of what the 2023 ordinance required for accountability.

This is part of a longstanding pattern where the council prioritizes punishment over protection and ignores accountability for unjust criminalization whilst demanding accountability for any programs that might offer just amelioration of systemic disparities and harms.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Lars Erickson.

Good morning, Chair Kendall and members of the committee.

My name is Laura Zergson.

I'm here today on behalf of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, representing more than 2600 employers and 70 750,000 workers across the Tugstown region.

Thank you for your remarks at the beginning of last Friday's meeting, elevateing the important conversation about public use and possession enforcement and accountability, particularly in downtown and the international district.

I want to express our support for Chair Kettle's call for clarity, consistency, and measurable accountability in how this ordinance is applied.

Enforcement without transparent transparency erodes trust and policy without fall through these communities carrying the consequences.

I also appreciate Councilmember Lynn's remarks underscoring the lived realities of the international district.

This is a neighborhood filled with many small family-run businesses, seniors and trans independent residents.

The challenges there are not abstract.

They affect access to sidewalks, safety at storefronts, and whether elders feel comfortable leaving their homes.

The public use and possession ordinance was designed to balance compassion with public safety.

That balance only works when expectations are clear for outreach teams, law enforcement, service providers, and the public.

And when the city holds itself accountable for the results.

Accountability is not punitive.

It is how we ensure the ordinance delivers the safer, more accessible public spaces, our communities were promise.

Thank you for your leadership and continued focus on implementating implementing, implementing to match the intent of the ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our last public commenter is David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

George Soros, the evil billionaire, swore to destroy the United States from within.

And he uses Seattle as his pilot program.

He financed the straw donor Jimmy Durkin and Obama, who politically appointed her, the U.S.

attorney, who sued the police department.

And she during the negotiation split the sentence in that said low-level drug push is exempted from jail.

When the police negotiator signed off on it, and then the judge agreed, it became the law of the land.

Any jurisdiction in America that wanted it.

And Bruce Harold led the efforts to exempt drug pushers under 3.5 grams.

And now we have a city attorney who was repeating the same failures of Pete Holmes by purposely informing the chief that she's not going to prosecute drug crimes that are listed as misdemeanor.

Even though some of those misdemeanor is based on the weight of the drugs, it's destroying all of these people's lives.

And all these unqualified Lehigh wrap around services that hook up with some alternative drool drug from big pharma are destroying the brains of people and not making them break their addiction.

It's like you could put all these people in the fucking streets into a jail for up to 21 days.

And then before they get released, you have them supervised into an authorized encampment that you could prop up within three days to be used all the resources that are available and make them focus on their drug addiction.

But instead, we got these nonprofits, all these virtue signaling women who think that they're so fucking advanced by giving alternative jewel drugs to people and keeping them quailed and all screwed up behind the door.

They need to focus on breaking their addiction with healthy foods and exercise and make them do supervised community service.

Like go out and pick up trash to practice being an honest, with diligent person instead of slothing out in some untrustworthy nonprofit that needs to be investigated along with the chief who needs to be replaced.

He is on record saying he is not going to thank you.

I really do want to thank everyone for coming.

This has been an interesting uh public comment in terms of the the wide range of individuals that are here, organizations.

So uh as I could tell we have little Saigon represented.

Um we also have Chinatown in the ID.

Uh, we've had Bell Town.

Thank you for coming.

Um North Beacon Hill.

Okay, got that.

I saw the hand raised back there.

Um, Greenwood, uh, Fremont, um, downtown, uh, great mix.

And then we've had individuals, but we've also had organizations.

Uh, I like to thank Lehigh team for coming out.

Also, We Heart Seattle.

Obviously, we have our accountability partners, so we have a mix and some folks from the government side.

Um, we have uh a nice mix of people to include two former local electeds.

Thank you, uh, Councilmember Wu and Nelson uh for joining us today.

And um, you know, it highlights uh that we have neighbors in crisis, but we also have neighborhoods in crisis.

And by the way, sorry, but it's not just uh little side gun and the CID as you're hearing.

Trust me, I've been there.

Um, downtown, Third Pike and Pine, Belltown, Sekolin North, Erdon Blanchard.

Um, we have uh some places in Pioneer Square, Lake City, it is but Little Saigon is a main piece, so I wanted to acknowledge that.

Umce you have a drug market, you have a stolen goods market, and then how that goes in.

And so I appreciate the points related related to vending because that came up from different angles.

Um you know, and there's also the use.

It's kind of about a month ago, I was in Bell Town, probably as far as I am from former council member Nelson from a person that OD'd and died at a bus stop.

And I talked to King County Metro, uh, the King County Sheriffs were there.

I talked to an officer from the West Precinct, and he was talking about the situation that led to that person ODing and dying there and being on the sidewalk, as I could see him again, as far as that distance.

And it really brings home the challenges that we face.

But it's also about understanding and speaking to the issues as they are on the ground.

And I think that's really important.

Also, the scene.

Thank you for mentioning the scene.

And I note the point about proviso.

It's not just from what you're talking about, but it's also goes to the community solutions project for Pioneer Square, which is so important.

So thank you for that.

And uh so that's really important to note.

And um and I would have to agree with uh Mr.

Gale, which is uh you know, so I just want to note this, you know when you know he talks about you know the the issue related to um the bill.

Um as I said in my notes, it's been a failure in itself, but also in its implementation.

So that's something that Mr.

Gale did.

But I just want to close to that um some people said yes, more diversion.

And but we do need a rest, maybe more, maybe less.

But what we have to have is less of do nothing.

This kind of goes to Danny Westney's question, you know, in terms of you know what's been the effect of our efforts thus far.

And um, and you know, sadly in our city, and I'll I'll quote Chief Bardin from CARE.

Sometimes in our city we do nothing, and we call it compassion.

Um I think we know from the in neighbors in crisis and our neighborhoods in crisis, um that that's not really something that we want to follow through.

So with that said, we will now uh move on to our first item of business uh now that public comment has expired.

By the way, you can also uh email us uh at council at seattle.gov if you want to do additional comments.

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

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

Seattle's drug possession and public use ordin ordinance policy and data review.

Thank you.

We have Mr.

Doss uh from Central Staff who will do the first presentation, and then separately we also have SPD and um PDA lead represented with Chief Barnes um leading the SPD delegation and Ms.

Dugard uh leading the PDA team.

And for those that were here on Friday, I do believe that we have a new computer uh here at the table that which should facilitate our presentations.

Um before starting, Mr.

Doss, can you introduce yourself and where you're from for the record?

And can we just go down the table table and do introductions before Mr.

Doss starts his um his presentation?

Yes, thank you, Mr.

Chair and members of the committee.

Greg Doss, your council central staff.

Uh good morning.

Uh Brandy McNeil, Deputy Director at uh Purpose Dignity Action or PDA.

Good morning, Lisa Dugard with Purpose Dignity Action and the Lead Project Management Team.

Good morning, Councilmember.

Sean Barnes, Chief of Police, Seattle Police Department.

Good morning, Rob Brown, Acting Assistant Chief of Patrol Operations, Seattle Police.

Morning, everyone.

Sarah Smith, Seattle Police Department COO.

Good morning, Sam Wolfe with Purpose Dignity Action, Seattle King County Policy Director.

Thank you.

I think we have a great mix of individuals here.

So with that said, and I Mr.

Doss, I I believe if we go through your briefing in its entirety, that's probably the best and hold questions to the end.

Yeah, uh, for sure.

Um if uh members would like uh when I get to the last couple slides, they're gonna be on data.

It may be uh helpful uh if I can take questions during that session.

But um maybe before I get to the data slides, uh if I could press through, yeah, that'd be helpful.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Dawson.

Okay, um, please proceed.

All right.

So uh at the chair's request, I put together a presentation that provides an overview of Seattle's drug ordinance.

That's ordinance one two six eight nine six.

And uh am today going to give you a little background about the ordinance, how it came to be, and uh what it required uh of SPD in terms of drafting policies to enforce simple or uh personal possession and use uh and other uh drug um uh charges.

And so uh gonna start today by giving you some background.

Um second.

There we go.

So in May of 2023, the legislature changed Washington state law so that individuals could be arrested without diversion for violations of misdemeanor drug possession and use.

However, the new state law still placed a heavy emphasis on diversion when possible for uh drug-related crimes.

Shortly thereafter, the Seattle City Attorney transmitted proposed ordinance 120586, which would have codified in Seattle municipal code the state's drug law.

And that bill did not do anything more than just codify the state's drug law.

It did not include any Seattle specific laws on diversion or arrest or any guidance to SPD.

Later, and and that bill did not pass a vote of the full council.

Later that year, in August of 2023, Mayor Mayor Harrell authored and transmitted a revamped or rewritten council bill, that bill being 120645.

That one also adopted the new state law, but that one also required a uh a diversion emphasis for individuals who are potentially arrested, being arrested or under uh investigation of arrest for um drug use and possession.

That bill also required a threat of harm assessment to guide officers' decisions when uh engaging with folks who could be arrested for drug use or possession.

I'm gonna refer to that bill as the city's drug ordinance, the one we're gonna be talking about.

Uh earlier this year, the committee heard the first annual evaluation of the drug ordinance, which was presented by the officer of Inspector General for Public Safety and conducted by the University of Washington's addiction, drug and alcohol institute.

That I want to be clear, that evaluation was a um study that was designed to determine how the threat of harm assessment was working.

So it focused on an individual and their path through uh the criminal justice system from the moment that they uh were arrested, then whether or not the threat of harm assessment was done and considered by an officer and and whether it uh went into the officer's decision to arrest or divert, and then on the diversions that that resulted.

I want to be clear that what I'm doing here today is not that evaluation.

I will be showing you some data at the end.

The data is strictly number of arrests, number of diversion.

Uh it shouldn't be interpreted in any way as to be an evaluation of whether or not that threat of harm assessment is working.

And we're gonna talk about that threat of harm here assessment in just a minute.

Okay, so digging right in.

Uh I'll let you know I don't plan to read all of the slides that uh all the text on the slides that you're gonna see today.

It's very narrative heavy.

I'll summarize what's going on here.

I I wrote uh this presentation um narrative heavy so that you had uh a resource.

There's no central staff memo accompanying this, uh, but what you're gonna see here is the um excerpts from the ordinance themselves and SPD policy.

So you've got the exact language in front of you.

Um in its opening section, the ordinance establishes that SPD must adopt policies that will govern arrest, and that diversion is the preferred approach when enforcing drug possession and use laws.

And then finally, a lack of diversion opportunity shall not be a reason for arrest.

So I'm gonna go on.

So uh SPD then uh pursuant to the ordinance developed policies that place uh emphasis on diversion.

This slide shows SPD policies that says uh the very last um uh service uh when and when an arrest is warranted, sworn employees should prioritize diversion in lieu of booking.

I'm on the wrong slide.

It's this last sentence.

When arrest is warranted, sworn employees should prioritize diversion in lieu of booking.

Sorry, I lost got ahead of myself.

Okay, so um as part of its policies, SPD developed a section on LEED.

This slide shows that officers are required to contact LEED when a subject is arrested and prior to booking at a 24-7 staff number that uh are answered by lead personnel.

And so again, that's SPD policy 15.150.

So now I'm gonna jump into the threat of harm assessment.

Uh as I uh said earlier, the uh drug ordinance requires uh a threat of harm assessment for officers uh to guide their decision making in whether to arrest and whether to complete a jail booking.

Um I want to be clear right at the outset that the threat of harm assessment, whether uh the officer determines that there's a threat of harm to community or whether there's a threat of harm to self.

Get into that in a minute.

In either case, uh the SPD policy manual does not mandate that arrests occur, it does not mandate that arrests not occur.

Those things are covered under state law and SPD um policy elsewhere.

The uh right to arrest or not arrest is uh lays with the officer uh under state law, officers are provided discretion to arrest or not arrest, and that is true of uh Seattle police department officers as well.

So as we move through these sections, I want to be clear that whether we're talking about threat of harm to others or threat of harm to self, the ultimate decision for an officer to arrest is their own, and that is you will not find in the uh SPD policies something that says you have to rest here or you don't have to rest there.

So with that, jump into the threat of harm assessment.

Uh what you um what you see here is that officers once they have established probable cause may do the threat of harm assessments or or shall do the threat of harm assessment.

Uh to be clear, this is only done after an officer has probable cause to arrest.

So the officer has either seen someone using drugs or someone has admitted to using drugs and they have probable cause to arrest.

So none of this occurs until after they have probable cause.

Uh want to be clear with that.

The ordinance uh up there at the top of the slide requires SPD to specify conditions under which the public might be harmed when someone is using or possessing drugs.

And so, in response to that, and I'm gonna sort of go back and forth between SPD policy and ordinance to show how they complement each other and relate.

So, in response to that, SPD developed policy 15150.4 and established a number of different conditions by which uh uh someone who's using or possessing drugs may be considered a harm to others.

And I'm not gonna go through this entire list, but uh what I will say is that the last bullet, public harm is presumed if the person possession occurs near a school, park, bus stop, um, station, or other transportation infrastructure, also point out that presidence of community members presence of community members or businesses nearby also uh would guide the officer into a threat of harm to others uh assessment or or situation.

So if you look at this list all together, um one takeaway is that uh most people that are using drugs downtown, they're gonna be near a business, they're gonna be near transportation infrastructure.

This uh this assessment and these conditions would apply to quite a bit of open drug use downtown uh anywhere you are.

Um so that's that's noticeable.

But also notable is that the ordinance's framework still places an emphasis on diversion.

So even though an officer uh determines that there may be a threat of harm to others under NIST ordinance, uh there is still an emphasis on diversion versus arrest.

So now I'm gonna move into the threat of harm to self.

So both the ordinance and the uh SPD policies state that if the assessment, if the officer doing the assessment determines that there is not a threat of harm to others, then by default, the next condition is that there is only a threat of harm to self.

And both the um both the ordinance and SPD policies again prioritize diversion in this category as well.

Uh as you'll see number under number three on the ordinance, the ordinance says that an officer will not arrest when the individual poses only a threat of harm to self, absent articulable facts and circumstances warranting such an action.

Um again, discretion lies with the officer as to whether or not they wish to arrest.

Uh when an officer uh does arrest, they have to show probable cause.

Probable cause is indeed articulable facts and circumstances.

So that's something to note.

Um, SPD's policies do not say that an officer has to arrest or not.

So there's a little bit of difference in in what you're seeing between uh the ordinance and policy here.

All right, so uh moving along to the next slide, which is a continuation of threat of harm to self, uh SPD policy um uh encourages uh officers to contact lead case managers if those case managers are known, and that's what the first paragraph is all about.

The second paragraph is that uh SPD has identified certain conditions that when they're met um may warrant, I say may warrant a jail booking.

And here we see three bullets possession of seven grams or more of the suspected narcotics, uh transportation to a community-based care, or to prevent the subject from causing additional harm to self.

So with those three conditions, SPD may consider a jail booking.

Although again, I'll maybe keep coming back to my theme.

SPD ultimately has the discretion to do whatever they want.

Um, so now I'm gonna get into the data and uh just go over this slide, and then um because it may uh there's a lot of stuff up here, there may be questions, so I'll pause.

All right, so what you're gonna see on this slide is um arrests and diversion data.

The first category at the top of the slide is pre-arrest diversion, which uh lead calls social contact um diversion.

So when an officer believes that somebody uh a subject may be uh in need of lead services and maybe not in that probable cause arrest situation I talked about, they may refer um what through a social contact that person to lead, and that that happens.

As you can see, there were 164 instances of that in 2024.

There were 96 instances of that in 2025.

So that is showing that officers are doing that um fewer times.

The next box is SPD arrests versus the uh post-arrest and diversion.

So the first row shows a count of people that were arrested, and this is SPD data pulled out of their uh CAD RMS system.

In 2024, there were 633 individuals that were arrested for drug use and possession, and in 2025, there were 942 individuals arrested for drug use and possession.

Um the 633 and the 942, you can almost divide those numbers in half.

And half of those folks that were arrested are arrested for uh drug use and possession and more complicating factors like intent to sell or intend to distribute.

The other half are folks who are uh I'm not gonna say simple possession and use, but are um using themselves and um possessing themselves without those complicating factors, more um personal use, if you will.

Um the second row is lead diversion data.

Uh that is data coming from the lead uh organization on how many folks were uh diverted post-arrest.

As you can see, there were 256 in uh 2024 and 180 in 2025.

And so the big picture here is that uh arrests are increasing 47 percent and diversions are decreasing 37 or 30 percent.

So with that, I'll stop and ask if there's any questions, and then uh we'll go on to some additional detail.

Colleagues, vice chair, colleagues, no questions?

Yeah, keep pressing.

Okay, so this is the additional detail.

So what this slide attempts to do is to take um that group of folks that were arrested in the prior slide.

So if you see the row of SPD arrests, 633 and 942, and I said that about half of those folks were um simple possession and use or were just uh personal possession use.

This focuses on just that half, just the half of low-level offenders.

Uh so about 456 folks in total and how uh and the disposition of those folks using SPD data in 2024 and 2025.

Uh so you see a row or a column for 2024, column for 2025, and then you'll see the various categories that SPD recorded.

You've got identified and release, Mark 43 recorded diversion, charge by officer, decline to gel, new offense booked, warrant booked.

Uh so I'll go through each of those categories uh quickly in one moment, but what I want to highlight here on the data is these are a count of rests made by SPD, but there are about um 10% of these uh numbers are folks re-offending.

So let's look at the 2025 category.

In the 2025 category, you have 456 count of arrests.

There were about 33 individuals or roughly seven to ten percent between the years that that re-offended or were arrested twice.

So you may have a person that was part of the 69 group on identify and release, and then they were re-arrested, and maybe they were uh brought to jail at that point, and they're in the decline to jail category.

So it's a small group of people, only 10% or so.

Most of these are are uh standalone, but there are some uh duplications within these categories.

Um a couple things to note the re Mark 43 recorded diversion.

That happens every time an SPD officer arrests somebody and they they uh they refer that person to lead and they fill out uh a document, a template that they're required to fill out per SPD policy that uh shows that there's a lead referral happening.

Um so you can see that that happened 173 times in 24 and 109 times in 2025.

Clear here, um lead referrals can happen and enrollment can happen in really almost any of these categories uh and due.

So it it's not uh it's not correct to say that 173 or 109 are the only lead deferrals.

Those are only the at the scene, filled out a template, did it the right way, completed diversion by SPD policies.

There are also going to be LEAD uh lead it's gonna be happening when there's an identify and release.

It'll be happening in any of these any of these categories.

But again, as we saw in the prior slide, regardless of of how you look at it, diversions are down by about 30 percent.

The last thing I'll highlight here is that there is a shift towards the charge by officer category and towards the um subjects that were either decl booked or declined at jail.

Um that latter group, booked or declined at jail, grew about 191% between 2024 and 2025.

And as you can see, the group of charge by officers grew from 80 to 180.

Uh I think we all understand uh the decline to jail new offense booked and warrant booked.

Um many folks may not understand charge by officer.

That's an option that officers have at the point of arrest where they may release someone and uh essentially fill out a form in their uh CAD system that forwards charges and and SPD can correct me on the technical parts here.

I'm covering this at a high level, forwards uh charges to the city attorney's office where the city then they would release the individual and the city attorney's office will will figure out how to um press forward or not with that charge by officer.

Uh in the last couple of years, there have not been any lead diversions coming at the uh request of the prosecutor.

Uh the uh former city attorney uh was instead using a um uh uh a drug um drug assessment program that the court had on the ground, and uh that was the primary uh option for uh drug use and possession subjects.

However, that's now changed, and when the city attorney receives a charge by officer, uh the city attorney will be able to divert those folks to the lead program.

And out of the uh 43 folks that they have received so far this year, they have referred 33 uh to lead.

Um that's not exclusive of charge by officer, but just the charges that are coming to the city attorney.

So you can see that on the ground there's there's a bit of a shift uh where officers are more often either taking folks to jail or referring them to the city attorney and and the city attorney would make the diversion decision stop and ask any questions.

Go ahead.

And then the takeaways I think we've pretty much covered here.

Um SPD policies require or strongly suggest that folks are diverted through the LEED program.

Arrests are increasing.

Uh the portion of simple possession or use remains constant at about 50 percent, even though arrests are increasing.

Um lead diversions are decreasing both at the pre-arrest level and post-arrest level.

Uh and it's possible that lead capacity and SPD operational issues are affecting SPD's ability to use post-arrest diversion.

That's something that all the folks at the table will be able to talk about today.

With that, I'll end my presentation and ask if there's any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Doss.

I appreciate the uh the presentation and you know the the walkthrough for the various pieces to include state law or local ordinance and also SPD policy.

Um I understand your points uh regarding diversion preferred discretion, very important point.

Thank you for making that regarding arrests or not arrests, following uh probable cause.

Uh thank you for noting the transportation pieces.

And I was gonna make a side note because we had one of the public commenters who um each day with their business or employees are dealing with people in the alley.

Uh so alleys are part of the transportation infrastructure, and um and that businesswoman who was here is now left, and also one across the street in Belltown, also with the alleys is uh many issues.

I had a question regarding city attorney.

I've had conversations with community uh city attorney, like on community court, we need a new improved drug court.

Uh we need you know, we need an approved uh system, and um and these points and in your briefing, thank you very much, really highlights the need to further our criminal justice, the functioning of our criminal justice system.

Before going to any questions, um Chief Barnes or Assistant Chief uh Brown or Ms.

Smith to get all the names in.

But Chief Barnes, if you had any comments, General Pitcher before questions, uh please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

Uh thank you, Council members.

Um, always a pleasure.

Um thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the operational realities facing the Seattle police department as we work to meet community expectations.

LEAD is a pre-arrest diversion program designed to connect individuals in low-level criminal activities with services rather than the traditional criminal justice process.

As you know, the city attorney has directed the drug possession and drug use cases be diverted to lead unless aggravated factors are present.

SPD will continue to follow this directive.

My goal today is not to dismiss the program, but to support it.

In many cases, it is better than having what we've always done, which is no intervention at all.

But it's also important to be clear-eyed about what the program can and cannot accomplish and whether it's meeting the expectations of the people who live, work, and visit the city.

One of the central challenges that officers are being asked to do is to evaluate harm.

In situations where individuals are opening using and or smoking illegal drugs in public spaces.

In Seattle, this behavior is visible in parks, sidewalks, near transit, hubs, schools, and our local businesses.

And while the policy framework may seem to allow it, the community does not approve of it and this level of disorder.

Visitors also do not expect to see it.

Our officers are placed in the difficult position of responding to behavior that is clearly harmful to the public environment while being limited in the tools available to address it.

We should also acknowledge the empirical evidence.

Research from cities across the country shows that open-air drug use correlates with increased police calls for service, reduced foot traffic, decreased commercial activity, and heightened perceptions of fear and disorder.

These impacts are not theoretical.

They are measurable and they affect the economic and social health of our neighborhoods.

Last year, King County welcomed 39.9 million visitors.

Many of them came from cities where open air drug use is not tolerated, not legal, and not part of the local culture.

Their experiences of our city and their willingness to return to our city is shaped by what they see on our streets.

That matters for public safety, and it matters for our economy.

At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves a simple but essential question.

Are we given the community what they expect from our public safety system?

Are we willing to deliver the level of order, safety, and visible presence that residents, businesses, and visitors believe should be indicative of a major U.S.

American city?

Diversion is part of the solution, but it cannot be the only solution.

This program should be a supplement to the fundamental need for clear standards of behavior, clear standards of behavior in public spaces, consistent with enforcement, as previously stated, since my arrival, arrests for drug use and possession has increased by 47%.

And a police department with the staffing necessary to meet the demand of community-based policing.

I look forward to discussing how we can align our policies or realign our policies, our program, and our resources to ensure that Seattle remains a safe and welcoming, thriving community for everyone.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Chief, and um I appreciate that.

And to your point, as noted, we have neighbors in crisis.

We have neighborhoods in crisis.

So I think the question about harm is being answered two and a half years in.

But with that, I'd like to go to my vice chair.

Vice Chair Socket, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Doss, Ms.

Dugard, Chief, for being here.

Really appreciate you all sharing your insights with us.

Couple questions, comments.

First off, starting, Mr.

Doss, if you can go back to slide nine of your presentation, the one that begins with SPD data, disposition of simple drug use and possession arrests.

That heading.

Yep.

Bingo, that's the one.

So what would be super helpful from my perspective?

First off, let me just say this.

The bright light of transparency is the single most powerful disinfectant in public policy.

Transparency is the single most powerful disinfectant in public policy.

That's in part why we're here today.

If it wasn't abundantly clear.

Huge, wide swath.

What, 1,100 deployable officers currently, we're on pace to hire a lot more over time, but can't single-handedly track every specific neighborhood, cross street, across 80%.

That's not that's neither practicable nor feasible.

That said, there are some of the most notorious, infamous sites, locations, cross streets across our city that could use and benefit from this kind of enhanced data disclosure.

Twelfth and Jackson comes top of mind.

The top three to five of or the bottom three to five cross streets that we know attract the kind of community and public harm and behavior that we're trying to better address from a public policy standpoint.

I would love to see broken out this kind of data broken out by some of these known problem areas.

Point number one.

Mr.

Doss, if you wouldn't mind uh backtracking to I think slide number five, threat of harm assessment.

Where it talks about that sub-bullet there, SPD policy.

Says public that last bullet there, it says public harm is presumed if use or possession occurs near a school, park, bus stop, rail station, or other transportation structure.

So my read of that in layman's terms is any transit stop or connection point.

And I I appreciate the chief's comments a moment ago.

We are asking our officers to do too much in many material respects.

We are asking them to assess, you know, have complex assessments of public harm and um they're in often cases they're neither equipped nor trained or uh resources to make those complex determinations.

That said, the department's policy, I this I would support this, is also pretty clear on what constitutes a presumed public harm.

And I can't think of a better caniacal example than 12th and Jackson, in terms of checking all those boxes, well, at least the transit access.

Uh and in fact, I was at a late eight press conference um unveiling a plan with the mayor last week, and President Greg Woodfill from ATU Local 587 was there, and he was celebrating this great achievement.

And President Greg Woodville from ATU Local 587 was there and he was celebrating this great achievement.

And then he said, and he cautioned us, and he challenged us.

12th and Jackson, transit stop, out of hand.

We need to do better.

All this to say is on the one hand, it seems like yes, we are absolutely calling on our frontline officers to make these complex judgment calls and uh that they're not empowered to make, they're they're they're not best positioned to make, it's probably a better way of stating that.

Um other hand, you know, there are there are presumed cases, and in the case of Twelfth and Jackson, uh would like to see stronger action.

That's that's what I'll say there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Um, Councilmember Rivera or Lynn.

Councilmember Rivera.

Um Thank you, Chair Kettle, and and thank you for uh convening this um these presentations today and and um bringing up the drug possession law as a point of conversation.

It's very necessary, and I'm glad we're all the partners are at the table and in the room and community members showed up.

And um I was just gonna say the U District is also on the list of of um high uh uh areas um of this particular activity, and it means that as um I believe it's the most dense neighborhood in the city of Seattle, we are s seeing um a lot of impacts to residents and small businesses and the small businesses being local, family-owned mostly in that area, having huge impacts by um drug activity up in the U district.

So wanted to say that so anyone listening could know.

I I know our district is also suffering um from these issues.

Chief, you said something um I'd love to hear um it almost sounded like you were saying when you talked about realigning our policies and you brought up threat of harm assessment prior to that.

Um can you tell me a little bit about what are your thoughts?

Um do you have recommendations for eliminating threat of harm assessment as part of this work, or how would we um make changes if it's you know, I'd love to hear more about what you think needs to happen, I guess is what I'm trying to get at.

Thank you.

Um I think there is a significant policy decision that will be had that will have to be made about when is the best time to um include lead in the diversion of people who uh we believe need help.

Um the list, which was written before my arrival is expansive.

It would have been better to say we're not to um than to list all of this, because then you have to go through and like see what what to see the locations uh almost everywhere where I am hearing complaints from businesses from community members and from visitors apply to this list.

So I'm trying so I don't know why this list was created this way instead of just saying it the in the inverse um unless you are.

Um, but I do believe that a very uh important policy decision will have to be made, whether or not officers can enview people using drugs, and whether or not we can make that arrest without having to go through the checklist and whether or not we would send them to lead then, or we would send them to the courts.

As you know, the city attorney has stated that if it comes before her, she will make the diversion to lead.

And so that's a policy decision that they will that people will have to make.

Um I'm also concerned that when we are encountering someone who is in possession or is using illegal drugs under the influence, we're asking them to make a very important decision or engaging them to make a very important decision under the influence of what could be a narcotic.

Um my experience, people make clearer decisions when they're not under the influence of uh of a substance.

Um, but again, it's a policy decision, and I think will will have to be made by the policymakers.

Thank you, Chief.

And I know that we have a second presentation from the lead program because I do have a lot of questions that Greg raised as part of this first presentation that I think lead will have to fill in some blanks.

I will say that I understand what I have seen in the time uh amount of time I've been on the council is just um there are some concerns with the being able to consent to services and the need for I kept calling it a sobering center, so people get picked up, they're under the influence, they get somewhere to sober up, so then they can say yes, I will accept services because I believe what I have heard is that if people can't consent, they're just back out on the street and they're gonna get re-arrested.

And Greg talked about a lot of the folks getting re-arrested.

Um uh some of those folks in the data sets were uh re-arrests.

So that is something that we need to grapple with and figure out how to best address.

But I'll wait.

And counsel, I'd like to uh add on to the chief's comments.

Um specifically with how the Seattle Police Department is using this law right now.

Uh Councilmember Saka, you're exactly right.

I think if you got that data about where it's being used, you're going to see that this law is being enforced in the areas you referred to, Twelfth and Jackson, Belltown, Third and Pike Pine, those are the areas where we get the most complaints about widespread public disorder uh that includes the open consumption.

And something I want to talk about where this law is being applied by our officers is when what I would call, and this is a phenomenon I've seen in recent years, what I call defiant open consumption.

This is where somebody is trying to come in and out of their condo or come into their business or customers or tourists are traveling through an area, and folks are consum openly consuming, not in the back alleyway.

I mean, they do that too, but right there in the entryway of various businesses and and various uh residences.

And they won't even step aside when those folks are trying to come in and out, making the the residents and the you know the folks traveling through feel feel very uncomfortable, understandably so.

This defiance is even when an officer walks right up and they feel like they're entitled to continue to consume.

And so I understand that somebody who is an addict, that jail alone by itself is not necessarily going to help them get to moving beyond their addiction.

But what I do want to see is behavior change for this type of um defiant open consumption.

So this is something I've encouraged when I was the West Precinct Captain in 2025, uh officers to engage in that and use this tool when appropriate per their discretion, as Greg Doss had covered.

Um the let's see if there's anything else I want to add to that.

Uh for uh councilmember Rivera, um the the the threshold is fairly low when we're applying it in these areas, because like Councilmember Sokka you know pointed out, these are transit corridors.

It's easy to demonstrate that when somebody is along the sidewalk, even underneath an umbrella, but you have fentanyl fumes out in the general air, uh, that's a harm presented to the community.

So we've been able to apply this, it's a fairly low bar for the officers to be able to illustrate harm to others.

I'm not aware of any, if at all, uh harm to self-arrests that involved incarceration.

Um I think that uh that that's I just kind of want to give you an assessment of how we're applying this law now.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh Assistant Chief Barnes.

Can can I Ms.

Smith, did you have anything to add since okay?

Can we come back?

Because uh we have to get the other briefing into Councilmember Lynn uh thank you, Chair, and thank you.

This is such a uh meaty topic.

I feel like we could spend all day uh uh discussing this, and I know we have limited time.

Um, uh as mentioned uh last week, um, you know, we had a lengthy town hall with our new North Beacon Hill residents.

And uh just a number of uh not only drug uh open air drug use, drug sales, but just related concerns around assaults, uh deteriorating public safety issues in North Beacon Hill and closely tied to the issues that we we see in Little Saigon.

And and I think the the one thing we can all agree upon is that uh we are not making progress uh nearly as quickly as we would like to see um both in terms of the neighborhoods, but all as well as um you know the the overdoses, uh the deaths that we continue to see, um, the the continuing failure to address some of the mental health and drug uh abuse um concerns.

And we are making some uh I'm glad to see overdose deaths on the decline.

Uh we have great new programs like the overdose recovery center, but again, clearly not uh not seeing the rapid uh success that we would like to see.

I do have a few questions.

Um, I I think it's really important that as we have this difficult public debate that we we at least are being uh have an open discussion.

Um that you know we do see a wide differences of opinion, but I think it's important that that we have clarity on um what is happening.

Um so for one, for example, you know, I do think there's sort of a narrative that no drug possession arrests that officers can't arrest for drug possession.

And I just want to clarify that that's not the case that there are arrests happening for drug possession.

Yeah.

Um another thing I just want to clarify sort of a there was some misconceptions at our public safety town hall that um arrests can happen for drug dealing as well.

I just want to make clear that drug dealing that we are making arrests for drug dealing, because there was a little bit of confusion at our public safety town hall.

So I see heads nodding.

Um I also just want to clarify in terms of um I I see an increase in arrests for drug possession.

Um just wondering if you could provide a little bit of context uh for these numbers uh chief.

Uh it looks like it was around could could we pull up the slide that has the total number of uh drug arrests.

And it looks like it went up about 40 percent.

Yeah, so the uh this this slide is the one that shows the total arrests 633 in 2024, 942 in 2025, and again, about half of those are gonna be for more serious drug charges that include uh manufacturing or dealing, and the other half, roughly uh our 48 percent are gonna be for less serious, more personal consumption and use.

God, okay.

And just wondering um in terms of these numbers, just wondering if you could kind of give us a comparison of how these to the extent you know might compare to other cities of our size um I would have to get back to you on that.

Um we haven't done any comparatives of it's hard to find too many cities that compare to Seattle, sir.

So it's gonna take some time, but I think we could do that.

Um, you know, what I will tell you is um we made significant changes last year, my first year here with how we approached some of these.

The first thing that I did was I did a uh instructional video um introducing my philosophy around whether or not we would or would not be arresting people for uh drug use and drug sales, clarifying as you stated before, we do have the authority and power to do that.

And then um our CEO at the time helped to author a uh training program uh based on the law so that officers knew what they could and what they could not do.

Some officers were even confused about it, just like you stated, you heard in your town hall.

So I clarified that number one when I first got here.

Another thing that we did was we started to move some resources to some of the areas that were mentioned that we were seeing a lot of complaints and a lot of activities in 2025, and then in this year, one of our groups, um our community response group, um, that's kind of like our Swiss Army knife, if you will, uh they handled a lot of community complaints for us rightfully.

So I've moved them from special operations to investigations.

So we're gonna go um a little bit heavy on the people who are supplying uh people in the streets who are quite frankly preying, if you will, on people or who are vulnerable in our community, and so I look forward to this time next year being able to um explain the number of people who were arrested for drug billing, whether they're selling them out of you know, RVs, encampments or on the street hand to hand.

Um you will see some significant cases this year once they are up and running.

We've established some some uh tools for them to do this work.

Um they just completed a training and undercover operations and operations around street level drug enforcement.

So I look forward to next year being able to give you some of those statistics about what we have done in this area.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay.

And council member, can I just add one additional thing for some of the changes that happened in the year over year?

So a few other items that I think are really important to note that are exciting to know is that we've had an increase in our officers.

So we have been in the last few years finally making headway and getting our officers, um, getting more officers who are qualified on the streets.

And while it is not enough, we are seeing a change in in activity.

So some of these numbers are gonna be part of the staffing, and hopefully we'll continue to do more as we actually get to our full staffing that we're looking for.

So that's one note I want to mention.

Additionally, thinking about the chief's comments around actually moving our our staff to different areas that are these hot spots, these spaces that need more attention.

We launched the downtown activation team that has additional emphasis zones where folks are coming in and doing operation and making arrests.

While those are not consistents, I do think that has led to some of these increases.

And then I know that um Lisa will talk about this soon, but capacity.

I think capacity is is going to be changing in the next year, both for our staff but also for case management.

And so that has also affected some of these numbers, and that will come up in the later presentation.

That's one of the reasons why you're here.

And I do want to turn it over to Assistant Chief Rob Brown to also talk about what the on the ground experience is like for an officer.

Because I think that helps get to your account, uh, your questions.

Yeah, absolutely.

So uh I'm gonna speak uh start briefly historically.

I first became involved with LEED back in 2015.

I became the sergeant of a downtown bike team.

At that time, there were two ways that people were entering the LEED program, fairly standardized.

This is before the Blake decision.

Possession was still a felony uh for many of these substances, and arrest was made out on the streets, the arrestee was transported to the precinct, and if it was deemed that it would be a good lead referral, uh then a call was made out to the green light program, they would respond to the precinct.

There was a handoff made, and the person did not go to jail, they rather were released after speaking to the intake from it was either REACH or the LEED uh folk.

Um so that's one standard way.

The other thing I want to talk about is social referral very briefly.

Um social referral is made by an officer when they know that someone would be a good fit.

Now, let me explain this.

LEAD is a voluntary program.

You have to have somebody willing to engage in it.

And so it's not typically the first time that an officer encounters somebody using on the street that you're gonna make that great referral that they're gonna be even open to considering it.

It's the relationship that an officer builds over time with the people on the streets that they're encountering, due to the nature of their duties out there enforcing the law and and coming across folks that are struggling with addiction.

Um so they can have an ongoing conversation and then reach a point where this person is like, yeah, you know, I'm done with this, I need help, and they can connect them up with LEED, and that's usually where that's going to get a more successful referral.

Um let me fast forward to what's happening now, because some of this has changed over time.

I'm not going to go into all of the changes.

Um, but obviously the Blake decision happened.

You have the this misdemeanor that was on it that is on the books.

Um, quite frankly, when you have uh somebody who is arrested for open possession consumption, one of the questions they're going to be asked when they get down to the jail is hey, have you consumed drugs recently?

And more often or quite often the answer would be yes.

That triggers a six-hour hospital guard.

In our resource-strained department right now, that's a a lot of resources committed to getting this misdemeanor booked.

Um so I'm just giving you the reality that officers get creative, you have more charge by officer, you have other avenues to uh to address the violations on the street.

Um you also have continued lead referrals, but I want to address something here about what you're witnessing in this data.

Because I know it's been pointed out multiple times now, but not yet addressed.

Um I provided a training when I was at the West Precinct back in 2022 to the first, second, and third watch, all of the officers in the precinct, uh, along with our partners with LEED, and we saw a tremendous spike in LEED referrals, which challenged their capacity to to deal with that.

And in 2025, fast forwarding to then, um, lead and I won't speak at length to this, but I know that you're gonna talk about the capacity challenges of 2025.

And so we were communicating, we're like, okay, we can't do more trainings.

Um let's let's make sure that the referrals that we're making are quality referrals because we want to get the most bang for our buck with this very with this very good program.

Um I believe is there anything more you wanted me to address on that?

So that's kind of a status update of where we're at.

Lead referrals are still occurring, but we did start slow rolling it a bit in 2025.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh Chief Brown, appreciate it.

We're gonna keep moving, and I'm not gonna ask any questions, but I do want to make a few statements before we must push over to the PDA side.

One is um it's you know, we this is our second meeting.

We had the OIG here earlier.

Um we have to have the data for the OIG and that piece to work, and so we need to look at that.

This goes to a furthering a functional criminal justice system.

And then in the interviews at the end, one of the issues was basically we need diversion or jail, but what came out of that?

There is the kind of move along or do nothing piece, and that's something that we need to uh shrink and and work on.

And so um that came out of that OIG report.

Thank you, Chief Brown, regarding the medical declines.

I was gonna ask about that.

I was actually a little surprised on the numbers, um, because that is a major issue.

And that also goes to a furthering uh functional criminal justice system.

And we've had King County Jail Health here last year.

And so the data pieces on that are important.

And uh and then by the way, we also need to look King County Jail Health is a king county function.

Well, Harborview is a king county function too.

Why can't we have telemedicine?

You know, we can't have it being the system being played, and we have to get to these root pieces in order to be able to do it right.

Um and you kind of answer the question, by the way, in terms of these pieces.

And the last piece I was going to ask, and actually speak to, and I'm gonna use it as a transition to our next piece is what's what's interesting, uh Chief.

Uh by the way, this was done before my arrival on the council, too.

So we're not alone on that front.

In fact, everybody on the STIS came after this bill came into being.

But you know what's different also?

We didn't have alternative response back in 23.

We didn't have the care department like we had today.

So this prevents presents an opportunity to update to bring in the um alternative response piece, also to bring clarity and you know, simplify and make clear for our officers, because that we put them in a bad position.

As I said on Friday, for those sheriff's deputies and those officers from SPD that are sitting outside Twelfth and Jackson and the residents and the shop owners see this, but they also see this illegal activity.

That is not good for our Seattle Police Department, it's not good for King County Sheriff.

And so these are the kind of things that that we need to address.

And one way to do it, and particularly in the pre-arrest in that kind of space on view with the crisis care responders, the CCRs from the care department is look for these opportunities.

But uh, by the way, it's not just that.

We have the you know the star center, we have the ORCA Center.

You know, so we need to update, we built so much capacity on the alternative response side that we need to update the system, the care ordinance itself, but also public drug use and possession, so then we can have a better functional system that serves the police officers right, because I think they're being but into very bad position, but also leverage not only care department, but also the nonprofits.

And is to close that piece, it's not by accident, PDA now reports to care.

So with that, um, if you can again, well, you've already presented yourself, but if you can present your uh your briefing, colleagues, no questions until the end, uh, so we can ensure that this moves along.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Kettle.

We have two decks.

Um Deputy Director Brandy McNeil will start us off.

I'll finish the first deck and then we'll turn to Sam Wolf for a short um exploration of the cohort that was diverted to LEED since the drug ordinance was adopted, and what the um methodology of change has been and um what results we've seen.

So uh by way of introduction, lead recovery services model of care aligns with SAMHSA recovery framework pillar.

So a safe place to live, access to medical and behavioral health care, relationship and connection, and a well-founded hope for a meaningful life.

Um LEED is uh a combination of a few things long-term case management, legal services, and legal system coordination.

So focusing on the first of those three things that I listed, long-term case management itself is a core recovery services intervention under Washington law.

And our case managers are skilled in supporting behavior change through motivational interviewing, brokering available benefits and services, providing housing navigation and legal system coordination, and connecting to clinically appropriate treatment services.

So uh some of the resources that league case managers have access to are uh lead legal services, which is a small uh but mighty, as I like to say, team of lawyers who can um address barriers that lay advocacy can't resolve.

So some things at first appear to be a money problem, they actually have a legal solution.

And so lead legal supports lead participants and lead case managers in removing those barriers.

Uh core to the program um and involvement in this framework is that all participants sign a release of information authorizing case managers to coordinate care plans with law enforcement, prosecutors and others.

So and these care plans um and the related information that's shared by case managers is shared pursuant to lead's core principle, which is that no one can be worse off because they shared information with their lead case manager.

Um but another really key and important um characteristic uh of LEED is that this is not immunity from enforcement.

And as you heard uh assistant Chief Brown reference, right?

Officers retain their ability to exercise their expertise.

Uh perhaps on the first encounter, they don't yet believe that a person is open or interested in receiving services.

But after multiple encounters, they and getting to know that person, they decide they are the officer decides they're gonna exercise that discretion, use that expertise and decide to make a uh a diversion.

Um, but it doesn't prevent again continuing to enforce uh the law in the future.

So just because an officer has made a referral to LEED doesn't prevent them from deciding on the next encounter at this point, an arrest is appropriate and booking is appropriate.

Um just briefly, uh LEED has been rigorously evaluated.

Um we have uh we there was an independent University of Washington uh researchers funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation found that LEED reduces recidivism for all crimes by 58%, reduced felony charges by 39%, resulted in 41 fewer days in jail per person annually, and lowered the odds of entering prison by 88%.

A participants' odds of being housed increased 89%, and their odds of being on the employment continuum increased 46% over their status at entry.

Lastly, the in 2022, King County auditor uh found that LEED Seattle King County was unique among local diversion programs in its commitment to rigorous evaluation and using data to make program adjustments.

Um now I won't belabor this slide too much because I think assistant assistant chief Brown covered the first first two pathways uh very very well, but there are three paths into LEED.

The first is the duress and arrest aversion, you know, a post-arrest referral by law enforcement, the second is a social contact referral, and that is a proactive referral by a first responder outside of the context of arrest.

So at that point, maybe an officer doesn't have probable cause, but can identify someone they think is a good fit and they can still make a referral.

Um, and going to a point uh that uh council member Kettle made is that now there is also there are also care responders that can and other first responders that are able to make referrals as well.

So they see individuals that might be a good fit, they can make that referral.

And then last um are community referrals, and these are referrals made by uh community members without the need to pass through the emergency response system.

So without the need to call 911, a community can make referrals as well.

And this is this third pathway also includes the pre-filing referrals that we've received from the Seattle City Attorney's Office, and that is a new innovation as of this year that we are you know getting started as well.

So with that, I'll pass it over to Lisa.

So here are here's some data that I think um are illuminating about the um landscape that we've been collectively passing through over the last five years, six years.

Um and I do um want to underscore something that Sarah Smith um uh theorized, which is that the data that you see, that the numbers going up and down are really a simple story of um changes in capacity, both for SPD, which was you know at a sort of all-time low compared to demand um from 2020 to 2024, um, and is gradually now starting to recover due to the efforts of many of you.

Um and then a parallel story of LEED capacity, which despite in 2023, leads an old program, right?

It goes back to 2011.

Um, and we've seen sort of steady uh slow but steady increases in um funding and and resources as the program itself expanded and the expectation of taking referrals from one precinct and then another precinct and eventually citywide expanded.

But um sort of high watermark in 2022, LEED took a dramatic reduction in city funding.

And I won't drag you down the rabbit hole of how that happened.

Um I don't think it was um fully understood in the budget process, what was what was happening, there's a long story behind it.

But that happened at the very same time that the ordinance put LEED in a central role to take a significant uh volume of the um uh sort of newly prioritized enforcement activity around drug use and possession.

So what Chief Brown said and what Sarah alluded to are absolutely right that just as sort of the policy landscape expected us to take more work, our capacity to take that work was diminished by a falloff in city funding.

This council and the 2026 budget remedied that with stabilization funding.

So we are just now in a position where if and when, because it is planned, we'll get to that at the end, SPD does roll call trainings on this methodology, how to make referrals, what referrals are appropriate, pushes out a department wide e-learning, which Chief Brown has helped record with Chief Barnes' permission that is about to go out to the entire department.

We will be able to take those referrals and not have the system sort of collapse under the weight of demand.

Okay, so here on this slide you see referrals.

We went back to 2019 just so you can see how this whole ecosystem responds to sort of larger policy and political ebbs and flows.

So LEED from the inception took arrest referrals.

It's not an alternative to arrest, it also is an alternative resolution to arrests.

If officers make arrests, that incident can still resolve within a warm handoff transfer to LEED.

And that happened throughout the history of LEED from 2011 to 2019.

Over time, officers started to rely more on social contact referrals because as they would say, if they knew that somebody needed help and the person knew that they knew that, why should they have to wait until they had probable cause to that a new crime occurred?

Why couldn't they be proactive and go ahead and initiate?

So over time, the SPD referral ratio started to center more on social contact referrals and less on arrest, just because arrests were less necessary in order to initiate that connection.

But number two, um, because in 2021, after the Blake decision, the state legislature removed legal authority to make an arrest without making prior um diversion efforts.

It was a sort of unfortunately worded law that was revised in 2023 to make clear that referral was discretionary, though encouraged.

So in 2023, you see a rebound because the legal environment for arrest was restored by the state legislature.

Also at the end of 2023, uh the drug or Seattle drug ordinance was passed, and so the um with the focus, sort of an intentional policy focus here locally, the bulk of those 100 referrals came at the end of 2023 after the ordinance was passed.

In 2024, you see a very robust utilization of arrest referrals.

In 2025, the fall-off largely because we were not training a whole bunch of new officers joined the department but have not been trained in LEED utilization because we were at well over um caseload limits uh throughout the LEED program.

In 2026, interestingly, so 72 arrest diversions in the first quarter.

So we're on pace for 288 for the year, which would uh even exceed the 2024 level.

So this is in short an option that SPD has shown it will utilize as as long as we can take the referrals that they are gonna send us.

Next slide.

So this breaks the data down quarter by quarter since the um introduction of the, or I guess we used the quarter before the introduction of the drug ordinance in October of 2023 as a baseline, and there's virtually no arrest referral activity happening.

And you see in quarter four of 2023 an enormous um change as a result of the new environment.

And again, this is just really the department using the ordinance tools that it was given and differentiating some post-arrest and some pre-arrest referrals, but both in significantly larger numbers.

And again, you see this drop off just as the lead capacity to receive was squeezed in later 2024 and throughout 2025 with a rebound in 2026 because that sort of sense of a ceiling has been removed because of the LEED stabilization funding that you provided in the 2026 budget.

Next slide.

If we drew a straight line from our quarter one experience, which Mr.

Doss will uh emphasize, that's never really how it works.

But if you just extrapolated from Q1, you would expect to see 380 SPD referrals.

That is before we do roll call trainings and the department wide e-learning.

So you could expect that to go up with the large balance concentrated on post-arrest referrals.

And then 460 community referrals, as Brandy said, that includes uh the pre-filing referral project with the city attorney's office.

Um I want to stop and say the ordinance focuses on the role of police.

This is a crime.

Police have authority to enforce it, they can make arrests, they can also proactively refer for care without arrests.

We can also engage these problems without police being the exclusive front door, and LEED is a part of that as well.

That's not what this presentation focuses on.

Community uh groups, the you know, neighbors, business uh organizations, business improvement associations in uh the U District, Councilmember Rivera, the University District Partnership, these have proven incredibly skillful, these organizations have proved incredibly skillful at identifying people who chronically violate the law related to behavioral health conditions and poverty, and they are able to make referrals that are very appropriate to LEED services without having to burden the emergency response system.

However, so that third route into LEED was added in 2020 because SPD just couldn't make any referrals, and we had some resources and they needed to get to people somehow.

So our partners just could go out and find them.

And I want to stress that this third route into LEED has been constrained historically by the fact that we prioritize police referrals.

We don't want law enforcement to be holding somebody who the right response is connecting to them to long-term case management in a warm handoff, and us saying we can't take them because we're taking community referrals.

So this is always the sort of the last served.

We never do community sort of awareness promotion campaigns about this.

If we did, we would be swamped by much, much more demand than we can take.

And I think this is just a reminder that this ordinance provides for the role of law enforcement, the appropriate um legitimate role of law enforcement, and it is not the only way that we can find and solve these problems if we wanted to bulk up these strategies to match the um ability of community partners to identify them.

Next slide.

Someone, Councilmember Saka asked for geographic data, and we all kind of laughed because we weren't sure whether to include this slide, but now I'm glad that we did.

Um, so you can see the precinct breakdown, and indeed the um precinct concentration um has swung between East and West precincts, and this is because of precinct level um leadership.

Precinct leaders who really understand how to use the program and are well sort of uh adapted to providing that guidance going forward with precinct level roll calls and the department-wide e-learning.

I think we will see greater utilization from other precincts, uh, not just concentrated in East and West.

But of course, most of the hot spots that you've discussed are now in the West Precinct now that all of the CID is included in West.

And so you see a sort of um what you the profile that you might expect here.

Ms.

Dugard, just for the quick uh notice is that for the public West Precinct includes district seven, but also parts of District One and Two.

Yeah.

And so this is not the precinct uh breakdown doesn't necessarily match our district breakdown.

Uh just so uh just to make that point.

Thank you.

Okay, continue on.

Um, and I just want to stress LEED is not PDA.

We are project managers, and frankly, you could fire us.

That's a function that needs to be played, but we are just a contractor that provides that function.

We report to a policy coordinating group that um is composed of the mayor, this council, the chair of the public safety committee traditionally represents the council, that's councilmember Kettle.

Um Chief Barnes or his um designee, the city attorney and the county counterparts, uh, the executive, the sheriff, the King County prosecutor, and um the King County Council law and justice chair.

So we report to that body, that body sets policy.

Also want to stress, especially important at this moment that the City of Seattle has aggressively audited the contract for LEED every year for years now.

It's one of the larger contracts that was sitting in HSD until this year, where we've moved to care.

And that auditing includes rigorous financial practices auditing, rigorous contract compliance, site visit, and uh looking at client files.

So if you're wondering, are your agencies confirming that work is being done, that it's the work that you contracted for, and that strong financial practices are being used.

The answer is yes.

Um it's not necessarily a fun process, but it's one that we need to be going through, and um and that has been ongoing for many years now.

Finally, the King County auditor, as you know, has identified many county side contracting challenges.

LEED, though, um was included in a 2022 King County auditor report on the county's diversion programs and was called out as unique among the community-based diversion options in our region for having been rigorously evaluated and for its ongoing commitment to um rigorous use of data for ongoing um program evolution and improvement.

And that, I mean, we as the project management team, we have of course um embrace that, but that is because we are accountable to our public funders through a formal structure of accountability.

Next slide.

So we've alluded to all of these.

I think you will see um greater utilization of lead diversion to the extent that um in the last year there's just been a fall-off of utilization due to the capacity constraint because stabilization funding was achieved for 2026 and now we can lean into training.

We should see an uptick in referrals.

Um it's really, you know, you've heard from SPD, their intent to provide strong guidance about where that's appropriate and where it they they're not going to recommend the use of this tool, uh, and that is totally appropriate.

Um the following slide shows where we stand with a data integration project that it has been many years in the making, and we finally sort of cracked the nut.

Next slide.

Um for many years, officers have sort of had to rely on memory or analog knowledge about whether when they're driving down a street and they see someone that they think was referred to lead, you know, two years ago.

Are they still in the program or not?

They are able to call the green light phone number and find that out, but they didn't have that information at their fingertips.

That is now um different that is now changed.

Integrated into SPD's um uh business systems and information systems.

There is now an icon.

If someone's name is run, their current lead status pops up, as well as contact information for the case management agency that that person is staffed by if they are still active in the program.

If they're not, that information will also be available to officers.

So this greatly enhances speedy recognition of the status of the person.

LED is not the front door, is just the front door.

LED is a long-term case management framework.

The as we know, recovery from severe substance use disorder is protracted and it is nonlinear.

Office, the whole structure of LEAD allows those who are having ongoing touches with those individuals to have more information than they otherwise would, so that they can strategize the best most impactful response under the circumstances.

So to be able to access that information in real time is a real step forward.

Um phase two and phase three, phase two is for later this year, where we'll have two-way integration and phase three is um expected in 2027.

But we are already in a very different and much better place than we've been in past years.

Um I'll quickly turn it over to Sam, who has a study of um how the cohort that came in since October of 2023 has been doing and the kinds of progress um that they've experienced.

Okay, Mr.

Wolfe, yeah, if you can step through that really quickly.

And by the way, I also want to note you know, the issues with the budgeting is also related to the state funding, um, which is another subject.

Um, but I believe we are now right-sized and and so forth.

Um but to really quick so we can then get to questions.

Um it's important to get it into the record, but uh, we have these numbers and um and then we can ask all three of you questions.

Okay, go.

Sounds good.

Um thank you, counsel.

Yeah, like we um have been mostly talking about the implementation of this ordinance today, but we did want to touch on outcomes for the individuals referred since the ordinance.

So this slide, um, Brandy spoke about it, so I just want to pause here very briefly to contextualize some of the outcomes I'm gonna share.

Um lead clients are people who have complex situations.

Their care plans require nuanced planning across multiple systems the criminal legal system, hospitals, healthcare, behavioral health, uh and of course social services.

Long-term case management is the critical piece of how LEED contends with those complex situations.

Umstance use disorder does not happen in a vacuum, nor can its response.

And so the idea is to weave together uh resources to address people's unmet needs and work towards behavior change via individualized plans, implementing those via long-term case management, and build a scaffolding that can support sustainable recovery that aligns with SAMHSA's four pillars of recovery um health, home, purpose, and community.

And lead case management itself also has embedded in it a case manager client relationship that for many clients, especially those who have been years without formal supports, um, is itself uh a key piece of that community pillar.

Uh on the next slide, going into the data we're going to talk about.

Uh, there's two units of progress that uh we track in the LEED program.

On the left, substantive meetings.

Um, these are um meetings between lead clients and case managers, where those individualized plans are identified uh needs are identified, we discuss the goals, they work towards them.

Essentially, these are work meetings, uh, not just like passing by contacts on the street.

Um it isn't flashy on paper, this is where the motivational interviewing happens.

Uh, you know, this is where uh smaller supports and connections to things are made.

Um, and this is really where like some of the actual work for behavior change and life change occurs.

Uh then going to the right, um, we call them accomplishments here.

Um, and we often call substantive meetings the building blocks of accomplishments.

Um, these accomplishments are generally formal connections to external resources in our regular contract reporting to the city, we call these outcomes under a number of different categories.

Um, so for example, if somebody has an outcome or an accomplishment under the substance use category, uh, what that means is that somebody enrolled in or followed up on medication assisted treatment.

They might have gotten a bed date and attended inpatient treatment, they might have completed outpatient treatment, any number of things.

Um, but these aren't just referrals to services.

Uh this is a formal connection where somebody enrolled in or engaged with that service.

Um and the building block relationship here is literal.

Um, lead's been evaluated a number of times over the years.

And one of our peer-reviewed outcome studies, uh, researchers found a 2% increase in the likelihood of obtaining shelter and a 5% increase in the likelihood of obtaining permanent housing per contact between lead case manager and client.

Um, so really those substantive meetings filtering into these formal outcomes.

Um the next slide, getting into our cohort here.

Um, so what we did uh to show some outcomes is we looked at referrals received since the public use ordinance.

Um over 1,600 referrals, uh referrals to LEED since October 20th, 23 through the end of February 2026.

Uh, this is about 60% law enforcement referrals.

Uh over 1,300 unique individuals referred from these 600 1600 referrals.

Again, about 60% of these are from law enforcement.

Um, 667 individuals enrolled in LEED, and of those, 606 were assigned to REACH, which is one of LEED's subcontracted uh service providers, uh the largest street-based service provider that we have in our umbrella.

Um this 606-person cohort is about 75% originating from law enforcement.

Um for those 606 individuals, this table provides a breakdown of people who engage both with case managers to work towards goals and people who had those more formal accomplishments.

Just a couple of notes.

Um on the substantive meetings column in the middle, uh, the rate of work is very high, with most clients working with their case managers towards multiple goals.

Um, just wanting to acknowledge this to note the sheer volume of work happening on a previous slide talking about substantive meetings.

We had over 33,000 substantive meetings across our Seattle program in 2025.

On the right side, accomplishments, quickly noting up at the top, you can see that nearly everybody that enrolled in this cohort had a formal accomplishment connection enrollment and external resources of some sort.

What this table does not do very well is parse through uh the how this looks for like an individual client.

Again, this is a cohort of people referred um across almost a two and a half year period.

So from October 2023 through the better half of Q1 2026.

Um next slide, please.

Um so what we wanted to do to sort of break this out.

We worked with uh Dr.

Tim Thomas, who's in the audience now, uh, to run uh the same data set.

Oh, sorry, I thought that was a question.

Uh I just wanted to know where he was in the audience, that's all.

Thank you.

Front and right.

Um so Dr.

Tim Thomas helped us to run that same data set, uh, that cohort of 606 individuals through a series of regressions.

And what we saw um testing for multiple variables was that the number of days post-LEED enrollment was the single strongest predictor of achieving outcomes.

Um so for example, um, these three bar graphs here each represent uh different categories of outcomes.

So if you look at the center one for recovery or substance use disorder supports, um this is saying that for clients who enrolled in LEED three to six months ago, uh, 19% have achieved at least one outcome related to substance use disorder.

With more time, the rate of achievement rises.

Um so after a year, the rate rises to about 44%.

And after two years of exposure to lead case management, nearly 70% of clients have achieved these formal types of outcomes.

Again, you know, enrolling and engaging with these external resources.

So, in short, across different outcome types, the percentage of lead clients that you can expect to be achieving outcomes rises the longer that they are exposed to lead case management.

Um, and the rate of this increase, we can also see change uh with access to different resources.

So we were talking about uh, well, many of the public commentator commenters today were talking about little Saigon.

Um we've been doing some close work there with the ambassador teams with community partners.

Um, and in the summer of 2025, we had sort of a special assignment to utilize co-lead uh to work with a cohort from Little Saigon.

Uh co-Lead is essentially high support, uh low barrier shelter uh that utilizes lead case management on site.

So um as opposed to this cohort, which is receiving street-based uh lead case management.

Uh we brought 41 individuals in from Little Saigon uh prioritizing people based on having very frequent encounters with ambassador teams in the areas, um, as well as people identified by their community or law enforcement as having public safety impacts.

Um for those 41 individuals who are receiving not just case management but high support shelter, um, we saw uh 95% uh of them achieving these formal SUD related outcomes.

Um and we also saw over a 50% reduction in encounters with ambassadors.

So all that's just to say adding more resources onto this can very much speed up the rate at which people are able to engage with recovery strategies.

Um in any case, all of the outcomes shared here today um really do mirror the evaluations that have been done on LEED over the years.

Um the control group, 89% more likely to be in permanent housing, uh, 58% less likely to recidivate.

Uh but the key is for all of these evaluations uh that they are tracked over the periods of months or years.

Uh the consistent effect here is long-term case management plus time equals progress.

So um I'll end it there, but I think this is the type of takeaway that I makes me really excited about all the things that our SPD and my PDA colleagues shared today.

Uh database integration, the ability to take more referrals from SPD, um, and of course, situating uh case managers and law enforcement so that they can better wrap around and coordinate for this population as that recovery happens.

Um, just getting us closer to a system of response that matches the complexity of the behaviors it's responding to.

Okay, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate the uh the audit points by the way, because King County was in the news again over the weekend.

Um quickly, uh basically a question each starting with vice chair.

Um, we're trying to uh wrap up before noon, at least slightly before.

Thank you, Chair.

Just want to want to thank everyone again for presenting and and sharing your insights with us today.

Very, very helpful and valuable.

Um wanna briefly comment on some specific public comment that we received earlier today, because it's been on my mind, been on my heart as well.

You know, what we learned from that uh was that all these interrelated challenges um you know are sort of work together.

And the solution lies in addressing the problem from a multifaceted comprehensive approach.

Uh for example, we know that to your point earlier, Chair, you know, once we have open flagrant drug use, we have predators who come and target people suffering from these behavioral health drug use crises and challenges and sell to them.

Uh then there's a market to earn money for um to purchase these illicit substances, and so then there's a uh illicit goods market, and it's all right in the same ecosystem.

And so I want to address the the illicit goods market and why isn't the city addressing I you know the that SDOT is empowered absolutely right in the public rights away.

Um I think the the comment was first made by Ms.

Sharon Lee from Lehigh, but the same underlying concept was reflected in multiple comments that I heard throughout today about the the unpermitted uh street vending and and merchandise vending in often cases stolen goods uh where it's known, documented, stolen goods.

And I'll share what what we've been doing on this council and remind what we've been doing on this council to address that behavior today.

Last year in the fall budget, the former administration proposed 2.7 million dollars, 2.7 million dollars to hire six new inspector positions to the street use inspection team, which includes an expansion of what's known as the JET or joint enforcement team JET, which includes street use inspectors.

So we've almost three million dollars we funded uh for additional inspectors to ramp this up to better clamp down on this kind of behavior.

By the way, the same the less so with the sale of stolen goods, but the the sale of of other goods and food.

It's it's it's we're getting to a point where it's coming to a head um and with with these vendors, local businesses, et cetera.

But we've we funded, and it was included in our final adopted budget last year, almost three million dollars to hire more people to better enforce it.

The second thing we did was we we call we I sponsored prime sponsor of both these things, uh, but I prime sponsored a statement of legislative intent, basically a sli, calling for the mayor's office to lead an interdepartment review and devise an action plan to better address unpermitted food and merchandise vending in our city.

We we intentionally set a due date of that of April 30th, um, just ahead of FIFA, and we specifically reference the correlation importance of FIFA.

Uh and my understanding is that report is coming soon.

So look forward to seeing what plan and and recommendations might be included in the executive's report on that.

Uh I will also be personally inviting S.

DOT to come present more on the street permitting uh and enforcement issue, and including presenting on this slide and one of my future committee meetings that I chair.

Uh I've read the code.

I think the code is crystal clear locally what is permissible and what is not permissible, what is authorized versus what is not authorized.

The challenge that we're we're we're we're seeing, one of the key challenges we're seeing um lies with implementation, lies with execution, lies with operalization of these these uh law these legal requirements and investments, and so we'll be we'll be taking that up in committee.

But all this group very important feedback, uh appreciate the opportunity to learn more and contribute to the conversation.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

I think it is important to highlight because we're pushing on the legislative side, the executive side, and all its different pieces to include SDOP in partnership with you know, obviously SPD and as I've been noting care, the alternative response piece.

Um very important.

So thank you.

Uh Councilmember Rivera Lynn.

Okay, Councilmember Vera.

Thank you, Chair.

Um thank you again for being here, and thank you, LEED, for this presentation.

Um I would love to hear more at a later time uh about leads recovery services in particular, what kind of recovery services are people getting through LEED?

And then, you know, I appreciate that it can take up to two years to get someone to accept services and and get toward a path of recovery, and of course, recovery is a lifelong um journey.

Um and I think we all know this appreciate it and and and understand it, and at the same time.

Um, you know, let's take 12th and Jackson.

There are small businesses down there taking someone it taking two years to help someone get off of 12th and then Jackson is not helping that small business be able to stay in business and stay open.

So both those things coexist and they're true.

Our responsibility is to figure out where are the levers that we can tweak legislatively to both continue to do the work obviously of helping people get treatment because I don't think I've spoken to one person in the city of Seattle that doesn't believe people need treatment.

Fentanyl is a drug unlike we've ever seen, and we're not gonna get out of it by just telling people to stop.

So I just readily acknowledge that.

While at the same time, we need to address this reality on the ground with um our businesses and not just our businesses near our schools and um in our parks and um in our right of ways.

We need to be able to ensure that our kids and our families and our individuals, our residents are um living in a city that is taking safety and public safety seriously, and that we're not just saying it, but they're actually we're taking actions to ensure that our city streets are safe for folks.

So um to me uh yes, this is a challenge, and we've over the years taken different approaches and and legislatively uh made tweaks to different laws to get to somewhere.

I do think, um, Chair, as as you stated earlier, we need to relook at this public um uh uh possession law, uh drug use law.

I appreciate um that's why I was asking you, Chief, about what your ideas are what could be tweaked to make um this better.

Um I appreciate you, Lisa, coming to talk about LEAD and um the progress that you're making with LEED.

I appreciate that you say, and please um I don't mean any disrespect by this, but everyone comes here and says if we had more money, it would be different.

But I actually don't think um more money in in and of itself.

You know, we have thrown a lot, I mean, PDA gets 20 million dollars from the city.

That's not that's it not that you shouldn't.

We need to address this problem robustly, but we have a lot of money, and that's just one area where we've put money to address this issue.

So um, you know, we don't we're in a budget deficit.

So are there other things that we can do to address the problem?

That's what that's where I'm at.

What what can we do?

Not I mean, notwithstanding putting more money into it to address these issues because I don't know that we have more money that we can put into it.

And I want to make sure that the money that we have invested into it is is working for us in in as robust way as possible, and that the laws that we pass are working for us in a robust way as possible.

So, Chair, there's so much to say there, but I'll just leave it there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

It's best not to give the question.

So I'll invite you to make a statement because uh we do running out of time.

Uh Councilmember Lynn.

Thank you so much, and um thank you to the panel.

Obviously, obviously so much more to discuss.

Um, you know, I appreciate uh again as we heard in this um in the question or in the comments and and the discussion today.

Um I don't think there's a a one size fits all approach to our public safety needs, to our uh substance use uh disorders, to to meeting our mental health needs.

You know, I think oftentimes and chair, you talk about this two mindsets, you know, it's uh well let's just arrest our way out of it.

I don't think that's gonna solve it.

I also don't think we can just uh say diversion without uh any police activity.

Um, I think there's a role and we can talk about the balance and whether we're doing the right approach.

Uh you know, I think there's always improvement in coordination, collaboration.

I do think there's a big question of resources.

In my mind, I I take a different approach uh to than my colleague.

I do believe additional resources are very much uh uh needed, and I think they're being well spent on on lead.

Um, you know, and I I'm concerned about the the many, many millions of that our businesses and neighborhoods uh are spending on things like private security, um, on sort of I I think we have uh an emergency room approach to our problem, a reactive approach instead of a proactive approach, and that um all the money we're spending on security on broken windows and insurance is the money that could be better spent being uh proactive.

Um just one last comment.

Um I saw basically the South Precinct, no lead diversions.

Um, includes uh some of SACA's district as well, um, Soto, Georgetown, and uh just anything we could do to um have some diversion from the South Precinct.

Uh it also includes North Beacon Hill.

Um I I would appreciate uh figuring out why there are no and and how to improve some of those.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Lynn.

I suspect there will be more in the future.

I just want to thank everyone at the table, um, uh starting with Mr.

Doss, who kicked us off from central staff, but also from SPD and from PDA lead in the combination.

Um really appreciate you being here.

I also want to thank everybody who's here and uh in chambers from all the different um neighborhoods.

It's so important to have your voice heard.

Um but also those that make things happen to include you know the people who run the system, you know, um, you know, the the audit to the audible pieces of it, for example, is really important.

Um but we have to do our job to your point.

We need to be proactive, not reactive.

And that's why we have the plan.

That's why we have these pillars and they're guiding posts, like furthering a functional criminal justice system.

There's so many little pieces.

And I'm working with, I will be working, have been, will be working on all the stakeholders, some that are here but others to work those pieces.

You know, and and at the end of the day, we have to have a mindset where we're setting up the system.

We're setting up the people who are on the ground for success.

And we have to have that mindset, whether it's within SPD, whether it's within care, other elements of the city government with our you know our partners uh on the outside, you know, contracting in like PDA.

We have to have a mindset of setting up for success.

Um, because at the end of the day, uh we have to do that.

Otherwise, Danny Westney in his article for a year or five years from now can ask the same question with the same result.

That is not an option.

So let's work together and press forward and uh look forward to doing so.

And with that, at noon, uh we are reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

It's further business coming before the committee before we adjourn.

No, no, no.

Nope.

Heard no business before we committee.

We are adjourned.

It's too late.