The public safety committee will come to order.

It's 9 33 a.m., May 12, 2026.

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

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Juarez.

Here.

Here.

Councilmember Rivera.

Present.

Councilmember Sacco.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you.

We have our five members of the committee president, and we also have a guest attendee today.

Councilmember Rink has joined us today, and I believe there will be one more joining us in the not too distant future.

Um I wanted to start off chair comment uh today.

First, I do have uh a comment that I was going to read um to uh this morning, but I wanted to start with the fact of um what's been happening in our city, and I wanted to say 18.

18 is the year of the young man, uh a senior at Renier Beach High School that was recently shot over the weekend, shot in the head, and thus far surviving.

I don't have details on his condition.

Um first thing I thought of is uh representative Gabby Giffords who I met again last summer.

You know, you know, the impact is immense, and what's in front of this young man is incredible based on her experience, and uh so we think of her, we think of gun violence, and this is one reason why we've taken it up as a uh a topic for the committee and and and part of our strategic framework plan, and we look to work with SPD.

Um Chief Barnes has a lot of experience in this there in this area, Dr.

Hunt, but also outside experts, um, council member Rivera is working that, and then we're doing our piece here on the committee as chair with my team.

It's on so important gun violence.

Remember 18 is the age of the woman at UW that was killed over the weekend, 19 years old, just starting her studies at University of Washington, and what this highlights too, and it's always important not to comment when you first get reports, but my understanding based on UW uh statement was that this young woman was part of the LGBTQ plus community, and we often have members of the LGTQ plus community here, either at community and particularly at council, and I've talked many times uh within that community to the trans um uh folks who come to our meetings and talk about their concerns, their concerns about their public safety, their concerns about unemployment within the community across the board, but on the public safety side.

You know, we are a welcoming city, and that community is fleeing the the rest of the country due to the hate that they're being uh subjected to in various states across the country, and they come here as you know as a refuge, if you will, and so to have this happen that you dub with this uh this 19-year-old is concerning for many reasons for the person herself, but also for the broader community and for our city.

And lastly, 20.

20 is the age of the young man Q, who was killed at the tap room, uh, North Seattle, just found one morning after working at his as a place of employee at the tap room, and he was found dead by a worker coming in the next morning, recent graduate of Nathan Hale, high school.

You know, these three instances, these three individuals, these three people, an 18-year-old, a 19-year-old, and a 20-year-old, is a stark reminder that we have a lot of work to do in this city.

We have a lot of work to do on this committee and this council, and it touches so many different areas, and it's so it's really important.

And uh, I think that we should just you know reflect on this again 18, 19, 20.

I'm still gonna read the you know my chair comment, because it's really it's it's connected in a sense, some ways.

The recent arrests of a second suspect and the assault of a seventy-seven-year old man near Third Avenue in Pine, where I was yesterday.

Actually, actually.

I was at that McDonald's meeting with community, is a significant milestone.

This development highlights the critical public safety value of the real-time crime center and the close circuit television camera program.

It's highly probable that this arrest would not have been possible without the real-time crime center.

Given the brazen and callous nature of the attack of a seventy-seven-year-old on Third and Pine, it is also likely that these individuals have committed similar acts before, and importantly, and would have continued to do so if not for this tool, if not for being arrested.

The analysts who staffed the real-time crime center provide a clear contribution to Seattle safety that far exceeds the costs of their salaries and the in the center itself.

Their work is a force multiplier and demonstrates how technology can enhance the capabilities of the cop on the street.

We're making significant progress to achieve our goal.

Speaking of cops on the street, we're making significant progress in our goal of achieving 1,250 officers, 1250 by the end of the year.

It is imperative to main these types of investments, both in people and in the technology and the systems in the safety public safety's uh programs.

We must continue our forward progress on public safety.

After saying that, yes, we've made progress, but as I started with our 18, 19, and 20 year olds, there's still more work to be done.

So thank you.

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

Seeing hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Uh Councilmember Rivera.

Uh, may I have a point uh point of personal privilege, Chair?

Yes.

Um, I just wanna thank you for your words this morning.

Um, two of those individuals were in my district.

Um there are no words um when anyone is killed, particularly a young person who's just starting out in their lives, and as not only um the council member who represents that district, but as a mother of teenagers myself, I can't even imagine.

I have a college um student coming this week home from college.

I am thrilled.

Um, and there is uh there are parents somewhere not getting their child back at the end of their semester this year.

So I just um wanna say that.

I also want to say um if people had not seen Seattle Times this morning, um, they have made an arrest and cues homicide.

Um we don't have more information than that, but an arrest has been made.

Um, and I will continue, um, I'll keep you posted, um, chair and and any of my colleagues that want to uh know about the when when arrest is made arrest is made and the killing of the a UW uh trans woman.

Um, and I really want to appreciate the UWs been a great partner.

Um they've kept me posted on what's happening.

Um they're an invaluable part of our um of the district that I'm so lucky to represent, and I know that that community um is really suffering right now, and the UW has a number, a helpline for their students to call if they should need um counseling help for immediate counseling help.

So I just wanted to say that chair this morning um to to colleagues up here to members of the audience and anyone that's watching.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Uh yes, very important, Councilmember Vera.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, we'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

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

Clerk, how many, with the addition of Mr.

Gale, how many uh commenters speakers are signed up today?

We have eight in person and three remote.

Okay, eight and three.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with the in-person uh person speakers.

Uh clerk, will you please uh read the public comment instructions?

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 the in which the in the order in which they registered.

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

Speakers and 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 speaker on the list.

The first in-person speaker is.

Good morning.

And it's a beautiful May morning outside.

And I hope you all get outside to enjoy it as much as the rest of us will.

One of the issues that has been ignored in the ongoing conversations about what to do about homeless addicts in Seattle is how do we transition these individuals back into society in a humane and good way.

Now, there is a facility that exists in Council Member Saka's district that provides a model for such a facility, and that is the secure community transfer facility.

It could be a model for creating a secure yet non-incarcerate incarceral setting for rehabilitation, yet nobody in this room today can access it because it is an ongoing department of corrections site.

However, I wrote an article for Pacific Publishing right before it opened and was given full access to that facility.

I would like to offer to you, council members, that information so that you can actually see what the layout of such a facility could be that would help people go through withdrawal, counseling, meeting up with the prospective employers or sponsors in the community who can help them make that transition onto a better path.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll send it to Bob.

Okay.

Next up, we have Gabriel Diaz to be followed by Kelsey Burns.

Hey there, folks.

My name is Gabriel Diaz, and I'm here to talk today about violence against trans folks.

Obviously, we have to start by honoring the death of the student at UW.

Trans violence is an epidemic, and another life loss is way too many.

However, we can't talk about violence and harassment towards trans community without talking about the way SPD has victimized the same community.

We talk all the time about police accountability.

We talk about how if we want to be a good city and follow the one Seattle way.

Our police need to be held accountable.

And I'm sorry, but that's bullshit.

We've constantly had the ability to hold them accountable and chose not to.

We could have held them accountable during the contract, but instead we capitulated and gave them everything they wanted.

If we wouldn't have real accountability, you would have invited the victims to speak today, which is why I also demand that myself and Kelsey, who were victims and ver victimized that day, have a seat at this table today discuss this.

If it force believes they can do whatever they want they want, they will.

And that's why we have the people whose job it is to handle these intense protests, telling people that they're there to fuck people up.

That's why we have trans women being maced in the face while they're on the ground.

Why officers fired so many so much pepper spray and OC spray into the air that a council member who showed up an hour after it was deployed still chokes on it.

I s I, and surely you have to think about how bad that was after everybody, after everybody saw how awful it was, how off that day was.

That some there'd be some accountability, right?

That there would be someone there that officers would be held accountable.

No.

These recommendations, the recommendations coming from this are it's gonna be we need more cultural trainings officers can ignore while we pretend we did something.

We just need to give SPD more money because God knows 500 million next year isn't gonna cut it.

Not a single officer has been dis or sorry, excuse me.

There's been one single officer that was received a that received a written reprimand.

Not the officer that said they were that SPD was there to cause violence that day.

Not the officer who shot someone in the back of the last lethal.

Not the officer who punched multiple people as their arms were restrained.

The victims of that day cry out to you, please do more.

Hold these people accountable, fire these officers because this will happen again.

For Cal Anderson, I stood in front of you and I said the majority of this council voted for more innocent, innocent, excuse me, voted for more dead and injured innocent civilians.

I never imagined it would be me, but here we are.

So I guess I have to ask the final question.

How much blood will be on your hands before you decide enough is enough and actually fight back?

Thank you, Mr.

Diaz.

Next up, Kelsey Burns.

To be followed by Cedar Boucher.

Hi, my name is Kelsey Burns.

I am a Seattle resident.

This isn't the first time that I've spoken about what happened at Cal Anne here.

SPD beat me, gave me a concussion, and arrested me on false charges nearly a year ago.

This violence is not isolated, it is part of a pattern of behavior.

It is part of a cycle of violence by our police city and county that often targets specific communities and then exerts additional bullshit on trans people who end up in solitary.

This process is designed to dehumanize everyone.

Even more so for trans folk.

Illusions of accountability with former cops won't give us the change the city needs.

Stop protecting shitty cops with SPD concessions everywhere.

And make sure that we have systems of actual accountability.

Officers need to be fired for behavior.

These review processes that go on with just a bunch of former prosecutors and cops, not involving community voices, those impacted, are not going to cut it.

Months-long PDR requests are not going to create a system of accountability.

I know at least three people that got concussions on May 24th.

That's just the ones that I am personally aware of from one day of excessive police violence.

This needs to stop.

You need to represent us.

We need to create additional systems of accountability because the current ones are not working.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Cedar Boucher to be followed by Castile Hightower.

Hello, my name is Cedar Bashu.

Throughout most of my life, I belonged to a wealthier family who was quite pro-police.

That changed after I served in AmeriCorps for two years, and one of my friends was driven over by police during a protest.

As if far as the ecological crisis goes, we have about six months of food left due to our 70% of our farmers not being able to afford to grow all their crops.

This is important because we seem to have no shortage of funds when it comes to the police department in Seattle.

So in six months, we will have a heavily heavily militarized police and no food and supplies due to the ecological crisis and the mass surveillance centers that we keep building.

And if we are following in the footsteps of the Roman Empire, which we seem to love to do, we are going to have a heavily militarized police faction that has no accountability that has all the funding while we strip more funding from programs and from our food supply.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm here in solidarity with people who have been brutalized, survivors of police brutality.

My brother Herbert Hightower Jr.

was murdered by Seattle police.

Since that time, since before that time, we have continued to fail.

Survivors, we have continued to fail.

Surviving family members of police murder and police brutality.

We're asking for a voice.

The presentation you're going to see today does not include the voices of survivors.

That's not okay.

On top of us continuing to not hold the police who brutalize and murder us accountable on top of the continued refusal to grant any level of resources to people who have been brutalized.

I continue to say this to you all.

You treat survivors, you treat surviving family members as if they are guilty until proven innocent.

But you treat the police officers who brutalize us as if they are innocent until proven guilty.

It's exhausting, it's frustrating.

We shouldn't have to be here.

We shouldn't have to plead with you all to give us a voice when it comes to our own trauma, when it comes to our own life experiences.

We don't need representatives to speak for us.

We can speak for ourselves.

We don't need representatives to speak for us.

We can speak for ourselves.

The question is: are you willing to listen?

Are you willing to center our voices?

Are you willing to hold the police accountable?

Are you willing to create the basic resources so that our lives are not ripped apart because of the actions of a city employee?

Hear us listen to us.

Center our trauma.

Stop giving representatives to do it for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Avery Summers to be followed by JC Saunders.

Good morning.

I'm Amy Summers.

I'm with Citizens Group P4, and we've heard this morning about ways that our public safety system is working really effectively with the example that Councilmember Kettle offered of the real-time crime system and also ways that the system is not working and the deep pain that leaves for people in our community.

And we in the city have developed an alternative response capability that brings us with the in reach of being at the national forefront in terms of what's happening in terms of uh real police accountability and public safety.

But we have a situation where we still need to negotiate contracts with our police union.

And the end of 2027 seems very far away, but we know from past history that those contract negotiations take a long time, and that we have seen that the union will use time to give them greater leverage in those negotiations.

And so we would really urge you to begin now negotiating both the management contract with SPMA and the spog contract to give us a chance to get ahead of that timing uh issue and also to pursue real support for the care capability that is so vital to achieving the kind of system that Council Member Kettle outlined at the beginning of today's meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

What happened nearly one year ago in Cal Anderson was not anomaly.

The neck nail has been banned since 2020.

Yet in less than one year, I have personally experienced and witnessed on three separate occasions the neck kneel.

This is me here on May 19th, arrested for burglary on the outside of the convention center after being pepper sprayed by SPD thugs.

I never even entered the building.

This was covered by international media, and yet to this day, to this day, there has been no OPA investigation.

And I am still waiting for fucking body cam footage for nearly a year since making a request for it.

Just days later, we saw the same SPD pigs kneeling on someone else's neck at Cal Anderson.

And then SPD thugs did it again just last month.

Same tactics of deploying chemical weapons and then snatching people and kneeling on their fucking necks.

Those of us who are speaking out against hate and bigotry and a fucking genocide that's being waged with our taxes are actually doing your job.

We're doing your job.

Have any of you publicly condemned the genocide and local companies that are profiting off the slaughter of women and children?

None of you were there speaking out against the hate and bigotry of Cal Anderson on May 24th.

Should we stop teaching our kids about the history of the trail of tears of Stonewall and of every every civil and human rights struggle?

Because the lackeys on this city council won't even do the basic of their job and raising their voice against hate and evil.

Rather, you just turned around and rewarded these violent thugs by giving them fucking pay increases.

The least that this council can do to begin repairing the harm is to divert divest from half a billion dollar budget of these thugs to resources for victims and their families.

We demand community-led oversight because until that happens, this, this is going to continue.

So, what I have, what we have on this board and what I've personally witnessed SPD violence, it's happening every fucking week.

We're not asking for a symbolic gestures.

We're demanding reinvestment into the lives of people who have been egregiously impacted by state violence.

Thank you.

Howard Gill as our uh to be followed by Sean Killy.

We have Howard first.

Oh, I'm sorry.

This morning you'll be discussing the police violence that resulted in 23 unconstitutional arrests and many injuries to protesters at Cal Anderson Park, May 24th, last year.

SPD Lieutenant Matthew Didier speaking to at least 10 other officers was captured on body camera saying, quote, we're going in this time with guns blazing, all our pieces in place.

We are past talking to people.

We are here to fuck people up.

We are done with these guys and the shit that they're doing, unquote.

The OIG report to be presented today describes this video in an anodyne fashion, stating that this was simply an interaction, quote, between SPD officers saying it was time for a stronger police response due to escalating criminal conduct of counter-demonstrators.

This is absurd.

The OIG wrongly assumes that this was a cause rather than an overt indication of how deep and widespread SPD's dangerous beliefs are before, during, and after that day.

This is not about one bad officer because not a single officer objected to that insane rant.

This is not about policy because culture eats policy for breakfast every day.

The OIG has asserted that this event was a one-off aberration.

Yet just three days later, SPD officers displayed the same behavior.

You are given the power to make informed decisions.

That is how representative democracy works.

But the key here is informed.

You do not have the right to make arbitrary uninformed decisions, like for example, the one you made just last year with the legislation for housing in Soto, which State Hearing Board violated stand state land use rules, and in a few hours, you will be repealing that legislation.

And you are sure as hell not given the right to gaslight the public with their tax dollars, 20.8 million this year alone for the OIG, OPA, and CPC and the SPD use of deadly force investigation you're gonna hear from today, all while re-traumatizing the people you have injured with your failed policies and accountability measures.

Yet that is exactly what you have for the next couple of hours.

Thank you, Mr.

User Power.

Thank you.

This is undemocratic.

And no, I'm not going.

My recommendation is Mr.

Gill, your time's done.

And you wait until you can actually hear, you wait until you can actually hear from the victim.

Mr.

Gilly.

Don't do that, I will not allow this.

We designed to voice.

Sean Kelly.

We deserve the voice.

We deserve the voice.

We desire the voice.

Got 10 seconds.

We deserve the voice.

We deserve the voice.

We deserve the voice.

We deserve the voice.

We deserve the voice.

We deserve the voice.

We deserve the voice.

Please respect his voice.

Thank you.

I'll be quick.

My name is Sean Killerwee.

I live on Beacon Hill for about eight years.

I just want to talk about the parks that are unsafe for women and children because of the addicts who are uh overtaking the parks.

Uh the dog park, um, and the the sale.

The there's there's uh there's a in there's a camp in a red outside the dog park on Beacon Hill that I've I've sent pictures to the cops, I've said called them, and they constantly sell fentanyl day in and day out.

If you go down the bike bike trail up around there, there's 25 to 50 addicts in a various states of uh of being high.

They need to uh I'm not saying we need to throw them all to jail.

They need help and something's gotta be done.

Um they're dangerous to us.

You know, I was a homeless addict, and what got me clean was accountability, and there's no accountability.

These people are allowed to smoke in front of schools in front of kids.

Um they lash out.

Uh you know, there has to be something put in place for these people because people are have had it and they're gonna start taking things into their own hands, and that shouldn't have to be shouldn't have to go that far.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll transition to remote.

The first remote speaker is Lucky Jordan.

Uh please press star six when you hear the prompt.

You have been unmuted.

Rob Medal, your monologue discussion, promoting policing and mass surveillance.

Police are murderers, and policing increases murder and community violence.

We need leaders with political will who are well educated.

I will have to provide education today because clearly you are unable to go get education on your own.

You're quick to dissolve KCRHA, which has only existed for seven years.

So what about SPD, which has existed since 1869?

SPD cost us 30 million dollars when a police officer doing 7525 with no siren or lights killed 23-year-olds thinking of your 18, 1920, 23-year-old Janavi Tandola in 2023.

How much are we paying for SP's officer Camilo DePina crashing into an electrical pole and parked cars doing 77 in a 30 with no life as silent?

Siren Camilo was extended for one day.

What has been the impact on families who have lost their loved ones?

People brutalized at Cal Anderson, suffering from brain injuries to this day.

People whose neck SPD continues to kneel on.

Let's talk about the connection between unhoused folks, drug use, policing, and prison.

Jim Crow and the war on drugs have been the two major increases in policing and incarceration in American history.

The text of the 13th Amendment states that slavery is still allowed to this day as a punishment for a crime.

In the Jim Crow era, hundreds of thousands of black people are forced into slavery through policing and incarceration.

During the war on drugs, the prison population increased in America tenfold to a staggering two million, and today forced prison labor produces an eleven billion dollars of value.

This is all about money.

The estimated cost of the war on drugs is over a trillion dollars, and its legacy is being carried out by SPD every day.

Mind you, the Reagan administration officials and the CIA both admitted to being complicit and intentional in bringing cocaine into the United States and purposely using the war on drugs as a racial tactic.

Regarding the current opioid crisis, this was caused by the Sackler family in Purdue Farmers, well documented by numerous sources.

You can even stream it on Netflix, Rob Kettle.

What you see on the street today is the impact of police supporting the racist and violent desires of the rich and powerful.

Policing will not solve this problem.

You will not solve this problem in your term as a city council member, but you can start to address the root causes.

Take the first step by supporting the effective persons program now.

Convene a committee of and fund resources for victims of police violence.

Next up, we have David Haynes.

Thank you, David Aynes.

The 77-year-old who was attacked at Pine is proof that the police chief and the transit are failing to work together to make it safe in and around transit-oriented public transportation.

It's like you should be allowed to come out of the Westlake tunnel without being bothered by 40 junkies and hop on a bus and haul ass to Seattle Center with green light priority.

Instead, we got evil running around conducting uncivil war on community, and the police chief acts like he's got better things to do.

And nobody wants to hold him accountable.

That said, God bless the police who protected those Christians at that May Day rally.

And goddamn, all you irrational, violent people who think that all inclusive means that you purposely discriminate and hate innocent Christians.

Those cops protected those people from all kinds of evil violence.

And because they were stopped, the protesters now they want to change their team and act like they're innocent.

It's shameful, but it's it's shameless in Seattle because you're you're the pride of the denied.

It's like you all need mental health, man.

You all need to check yourself, stop doing drugs, stop doing alcohol, eat healthier foods.

We have a serious societal implosion, a wicked corrosion, and you all have addressed the public safety that comes from the evil predatory criminals.

You act like the cops are the biggest problem.

Like you're watching too many movies or something, man.

We need to wipe out the drug pushers.

We need to like trespass all the junkies and interrogate them simply to find out where they keep getting the drugs and make them break their addiction instead of moving into a house so that Shane Lee can get rich subhumanly treating people and prioritizing the self-destructive wolves.

God bless those cops who protected those Christians and goddamn you people.

Thank you, Mr.

Haynes.

Is that the okay?

Thank you, everyone.

I just wanted to note, um, I appreciate all the uh the public speakers in person and remote and and I would ask, like in the second agenda item when we have our accountability partners, um, as Mr.

Burns was speaking to.

Current systems and accountability are not working.

Um, something that should be spoken to.

Um, as being uh, as Ms.

Hightower mentioned, being voices of the um survivors.

I think that's something to consider.

And Miss and everybody, everybody, and Ms.

Sumner, thank you for speaking to alternative response and uh and Mr.

Gale for bringing up the quote.

I think it is that it is the quote is the quote to your point, and it should be something that could be spoken to.

And um, and I really appreciate representing for North Beacon Hill.

Um, and uh and speaking as a former addict and and speaking to accountability and uh and um I often don't say this, but Mr.

Haynes uh made a very good point about SPD and King County Sheriff yesterday morning.

I was at Third and Pine, I was at the um McDonald's seeing little kids, and one of the issues that we discussed was the you know the partnership between SPD and the King County Sheriffs and the King County metro security teams and what we could do better, particularly in those kinds of areas that we have.

I was there by the way with King County Council Member Rob Dembakowski and members of King County Council Member Theresa Miskeda's office as well.

So I appreciate everyone um coming this today for public comment.

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

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

The Sentinel Event Review for the May Day 2025.

Okay, we have uh Deputy Inspector General Perez Morrison and Deputy Chief Underwood.

Uh, please join us at the table and introduce yourself and uh or IG.

Uh at least a judge.

I'm not here from the victimizers without hearing from the victims.

They need a seat of the thing now.

Mr.

Gill, the agenda is agenda, please sit down.

If you could please introduce yourself for the record.

Good morning, Deputy Chief Ivan Underwood, Seattle, please.

Thank you.

Mr.

Chair, point of order.

Mr.

Chair, point of order.

We can't hear with Mr.

Gale in the background screaming.

So I would like to put on the record that he has been disruptive for the council rules.

This is his first strike.

And if it comes to, then there'll be three more because this is just beyond just respectful.

It's the people's house.

And we can't hear with Mr.

Gale in the background screaming.

Let's talk about disrespect.

Keeping the victimized victimized silent and giving a seat to the void victimizers.

That's disrespectful.

I promise you nothing to do.

You've been noted by uh Councilmember Warz.

Thank you, you two, Mr.

Diaz.

Uh security, please uh ask them to be quiet.

Because the voices, those representing the net table.

I'm sitting here.

We're not going to go.

We will not.

Mr.

Gail, it is not happening.

The meeting is agenda is set.

Please sit down.

Second time.

No.

Ms.

Saunders, you're also being warned.

You've also been warned.

Please sit down.

Please have to get the gate.

Okay, we're gonna have a recess for ten minutes.

Yeah, take a reset.

Okay.

Okay, the public safety committee will come back to order.

Oh, we get it.

All right.

Okay.

Uh please, um, present yourself and start the presentation.

But I want to get back to the start over.

Start from beginning, yes.

Christine Berbilis, supervisor at Office of Inspector General.

Mr.

Mr.

Diaz, Mr.

Diaz, you have been noted before by the presiding officer of disruptive behavior.

Uh, you are now engaging in disruptive behavior.

And it's not in compliance with council rules.

Mr.

Diaz, your failure to comply with council rules is disruptive and delaying the orderly progress of this meeting.

Uh, proceeding pursuant to council rules, I'm excluding you from further participation.

Please step away from the the front here.

And Mr.

Diaz, please take your seat.

You are engaging in uh disruptive behavior and it's not in compliance with the council rules.

Your failure to comply with council rules for disruptive and delaying the orderly progress of this meeting.

Pursuant to council rules, I'm excluding you from further participation.

Please take your seats.

It's very important for the OIG to say how important it is.

Council is disruptive.

Security.

We have three accountability partners, and they're here to be heard.

And unfortunately, they're not being heard.

And important to that, Miss Saunders, you are being disruptive and delaying the orderly progress of this meeting.

Pursuant to council rules, I'm excluding you from further participation, please.

Security, escort Ms.

Saunders to her seat.

No.

You don't have to go anywhere.

I won't.

I'm standing right here until you have to do what you have to do.

My number one mission here, my number one goal here is to give voice to the accountability partners to show support for the accountability partners.

Mr.

Diaz, you have disrupted the view many times.

You want to talk about county building partners, I'm right here, Bob.

I'm your town building partner today.

We are like it or not.

You don't want any partner.

And then we're gonna go remote.

There you go.

Councilmember Warris.

Council Member Lynn.

Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Saka.

Share the four members present.

Some other pieces.

Um to uh include frontline investigations, which came out of the uh the labor agreement.

And we do that in support of our accountability partners to give them voice as they look to represent and engage the community.

And it's very important that they do, but it's very important that we as a committee give this opportunity to our accountability partners.

Now this year is special, we're doing it on the one year, not quite, but anniversary of the uh Cal Anderson protests, and it's really important also in terms of the mechanisms of accountability partners to show you know, like sentinel event review, you know, and the pieces that came out of that and to give it a public hearing and to do so in person because that's where you get better engagement back and forth, follow-ups, questions, and we will do this here remotely, uh, but it's not quite the same.

And and that's the unfortunate thing in terms of today's disruptive behavior that was occurring in chambers because it takes away from the ability to get a proper hearing, a better hearing of the central event review to hear better from our accountability partners and to you know speak and for those others to uh listen as well, because not everybody in chambers was uh being disruptive, many were not, and then unfortunately, um we have to move away from being a person which would have benefited them.

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

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

Okay, I do believe that everybody is set there in the uh Sam Smith room.

Um can you introduce yourself and then once that um proceed with your your presentation, Deputy Chief Command Underwood, Seattle Police Department, Pisa Judge, Inspector General for Public Safety.

Christine Berbilis, Supervisor and Office of Inspector General, Sienna Hiller, Senior Policy Analyst at Office of Inspector C.

Thank you so much, and um again, please proceed with your briefing.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, committee members and uh everyone for having us here today.

Um, I think in light of uh how we started off in council chambers, I really do just want to preface this by saying all of the accountability partners have different and varying roles in the accountability system.

The Office of Inspector General is charged with systemic oversight of the Seattle Police Department and the Office of Police Accountability.

This particular process is um innovative, it's new, it is a forward-looking process, it's a problem-solving uh process so that we can really do a root cause analysis of an event that went wrong that had results that we never want to replicate again.

Look at the systemic contributors to that and try to um figure out how to do it better next time.

And so this is not about holding individuals accountable.

I think we, you know, OPA is the office that's charged with that responsibility.

I think um the folks who were speaking this morning have um, you know, and they want to be heard and want to have voice, and and that is perfectly understandable and desirable.

And I think we have accountability partners who could set up processes so that victims could um share their experiences, uh, and have voice in the process.

This particular process, however, even though it did involve community participants who were involved in Cal Anderson who were there, um, who may have been arrested or injured, was not about retribution and accountability, it's about problem solving and looking forward.

So just want to add those opening remarks there, and I'll turn it over to Christine to discuss the process.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Catalogue committee members, thank you all for the opportunity to speak about the Sentinel Event review of May 24th, 2025.

Um Inspector General Judge had a little bit of an overview, but I just want to give you an idea of what we're going to talk about today.

So just giving an overview of what a sentinel event review is, we're going to be talking about the methodology of the SAIRE, the event that was reviewed, and then the outcome, intributing factors and recommendations.

Um, so sentinel event review is a collaborative stakeholder effort to identify root causes of significant incidents and design systemic improvements to prevent their reoccurrence.

The purpose of a SERA is not to assign blame for individual culpability for actions taken during the incidents review.

The goals to develop consensus contributing factors and recommendations.

The SARA panel did, as Inspector General Judge mentioned, consist of community members and SPE personnel.

There were six community members, some of them were impacted and were there on the day, some represented organizations that represent impacted individuals.

And in terms of who was there from SPD, there was the sergeant, there were lieutenants, and then Deputy Chief Underwood was there with us as well.

OIG initiated the Sentinel Event Review to identify those contributing factors that resulted in that escalation of tension and the conflict arrest and uses of force on May 24th, 2025.

Finally, we did have a report that was published in February of this year.

And that summarized those contributing factors, those recommendations and the discussions that were had during.

So to look at the methodology and how the sentinel event review happened and what the events were that led up to it.

So it began with data collection.

So almost immediately after the event, OIG began uh reviewing news media, blogs, body worn video from officers who were there that day, SP documentation and reports, as well as POPA complaints.

We then conducted an expert analysis with Professor Clifford Stock.

He has worked with OIG and SPD for many years.

He is a product management expert, and we identified factors related to SPE's pre-event planning and real-time decision making that contributed to the escalation.

We also gathered perspectives from community members.

So the community police commission, CPC collected testimonies from impacted community members that we reviewed and then provided to panelists while they were there at the panel so that they could hear from community members that were there that day and that were impacted beyond the people that were there on the panels.

I already mentioned who was on the panel and who was represented.

I will also add that Inspector General Judge was there and that it was facilitated by John Holloway, who was an expert in criminal uh justice sentinel event reviews.

The panel review that actually occurred was three sessions over the course of three days in November.

Um there were four incidents that I'll talk about shortly that were to be reviewed.

The panel got through three of the incidents.

The discussions were very thorough, very robust, and as a result, we weren't able to cover everything that was everything from that event and from the day, and uh OIG had planned to schedule at least one more panel.

However, before we were able to do that, there was a breach of confidentiality and the ground rules that panelists agreed to when they decided to be part of the panel.

And so the panels were unable to continue after this.

So OIG with Professor Stott did complete an evaluation of that final incident.

We do include that in the report.

It is an appendix.

We wanted to distinguish it from the rest of the report because the panelists were not able to review it as.

So on April 8th, the Seattle Park and Recreation granted a permit to Mayday USA for a hashtag Don't Mess with Our Kids Rally.

Mayday USA is a fundamentalist Christian movement that promotes anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion viewpoints, and advocates for the quote sanctity of human life and secrality of biological gender.

SPD wasn't alerted to the rally until May 14th, and that's when they began intelligence gathering.

On May 21st, SPD had their initial planning meeting, and the police outreach and engagement team, referred to as POET, also suggested to the rally organizers to move the event from Calenderson Park to Westlake Park, but the organizers declined.

The community did express concern before the event happened and they were they wondered why the city would permit this event in a historically LGBTQ neighborhood.

And on May 24th, hundreds attended the permitted rally.

Hundreds also attended as counter demonstrators to protest the event.

On the day there were 16 reported uses of force that included crowd management tactics like bike pushes as well as individually reported uses of force against individuals like pepperball or pepper spray.

There were 23 arrests, there was one officer injury, and then there were six OPA investigations that resulted.

After the event, the community members organizations denounced SPD handling and called for the city to review the permitting process and the use of force and arrest by SP.

The incidents that were considered, OIG identified four key aspects of the day's events for review by the panel.

The first incident was the process to grant a park use permit to a fundamentalist rally and historically LGBTQ plus neighborhood and the short time frame that SPD had to prepare.

The city permitting process that resulted in this fundamentalist rally and historically LGBTQ plus neighborhood and SPD's planning and engagement, including the early engagement efforts by the poet team.

The second incident was the attempted arrest of a counter-demonstrator for misdemeanor property destruction and 11 additional arrests.

The third event was the use of bicycle fencing to create a counter-demonstration zone, as well as the escalation of conflict arrests and use of force that related to that barricade.

The fourth event, as I already mentioned, was not able to be reviewed by the panel, and that was reviewed by OIG and Professor Stott and included at the end of our report.

And that incident was the continued crowd control protest posture of SPD after the conclusion of the Mayday USA rally.

When the panelists met, they identified 66 contributing factors that crossed the incidents that they were able to review.

Those fell into four categories.

I just want to note that those weren't broken down by panelists into these four categories, but as OIG was reviewing them, we saw that they fell into these broader areas, and some of the contributing factors fallen more than one.

The first one was city procedures and the lack of information sharing between city departments that delayed SPD awareness of the planned rally.

So the coordination between city departments limited SPD advanced knowledge of the permitted rally and then hindered planning efforts.

The cultural context, though there was a historical lack of trust, there is historical lack of trust between SPD and the LGBTQ community, and that's resulted in limited engagement and potential feedback loop wherein community can convey those concerns.

And the cultural significance of Calendar's support for LGBTQ communities, particularly against the backdrop of federal actions that threatened transgender rights and the lack of acknowledgement of that context by SP.

The fourth category is anticipatory defensiveness.

One of the contributing factors is that SPD that the panelists found is that SPD assumes BlackBlock and Antifa are established hierarchical organizations intent on inciting disorder and criminal activity.

And assumptions about these groups, assumptions that these groups are violent and intent on confrontation with police led SPD to misjudge the need for significant crowd control tactics.

The final contributing factor area was this different this idea of differentiation.

So SPD perceived minor acts of property damage as an indicator of likely criminal escalation, necessitating a visible deviation from a peaceful protest response posture.

Assumptions about motivations of attendees created a breakdown in communication and hampered the ability of poet and CRG, the community response group to appropriately identify potential instigators of violence.

So the ultimate outcome of the panels were 24 suggested recommendations to SPD and the City of Seattle.

These also fall into four categories, the first being community legitimacy.

One of the recommendations is to increase pre-event engagement by establishing relationships and consistent lines of communication with community members and organizations, addressing the lack of trust in SPD by various Seattle communities as well as the equity impacts of SPD outreach and intelligence gathering process.

There were seven recommendations that fell into this category.

The second is situational awareness, improving SPD intelligence beyond open source social media by working with community to gain a deeper understanding of cultural context and concerns, and acknowledging the need for SPD to change and mindset when responding to demonstrations by minimizing the belief that protesters worked as a unified oppositional group rather than adverse population of individuals with varied reasons for attending.

There were nine recommendations that fell into that category.

Communication.

So finally, there's a tactics category, and that is uh based on prioritizing targeted arrests of agitators rather than taking actions that serve to escalate the larger crowd.

Improving SPD crowd management tactics by prioritizing dialogue policing and targeted enforcement tactics to safely facilitate first commitment activity.

Before I hand it over to Deputy Chief Underwood, I just want to say how grateful OIG is to the community and SPD panelists that participated in the panels in good faith with the goal of improving police protest response in Seattle.

We want to acknowledge that there were really great connections and understandings that are built during the panel sessions.

And to that end, I just want to share a quote that a panelist gave us permission to share, that I think encompassed that.

They said, I'm happy with small shifts and even just having one or two people see from other perspectives, everyone included.

I think that's really all we can realistically ask for in this long game of trying to rebuild.

So I think SARE did a really good job of creating an avenue of shift.

Thank you.

Thanks, Christine.

Yeah, I just wanted to add a couple of comments.

I think that it is, you know, just given the comments that we heard from the public as the meeting began.

Characterizing this as a report that condones SPD actions and thinks that this was just a you know a one-off.

I don't think is accurate.

Um, but a set of implement review is a process that is only initiated when we all come together and acknowledge that something went wrong, something went really wrong in a way that we don't want to replicate against.

So I think we start with that baseline.

And in terms of you know, this just being something where SPD needs to have some cultural awareness training, that also really minimizes what happened and what went wrong.

This was on the eve of pride, pride Month, and you know, the historical conflict between police and the queer community, particularly the trans and black trans community that is the genesis of pride celebrations, was not really taken into account here, and the the historically queer neighborhood where this was happening wasn't fully taken into account in the planning and preparation and just you know understanding the dynamics that were set to happen at this event.

So it's more than just cultural awareness training.

And with that, I'm really grateful to Deputy Chief Devon Underwood for being here to share SVD's perspective and their responses to us.

Good morning.

I want to thank the public safety community for having us today, and I appreciate OIG including in this process.

I did feel it was a very good product, it was an opportunity for FPB to really try to build relationships and kind of own up to some of our mistakes in this.

It wasn't our best work that day.

And you know, as an agency that's always continuing to try to improve our processes and look at our um, you know, how we handle events, especially crowd management, it was a really good opportunity for us to do that.

Um, we were disappointed that there was a breach of confidentiality.

We would have liked to have participated fully in this process.

And I also want to acknowledge the officers that participated in this process.

They went in, um, they were very candid with information.

They owned their piece of this.

Um, I'm not going to get too far down the road.

There are open active OPA complaints regarding this incident that they're still they're still going through at this time, but they really participated fully, and I really appreciated them doing that.

Um, with that said, um, I'm just going to give you a high level overview of the recommendations.

We have gone over these one by one, and we're working to try to track these and document how we're going to approve moving forward.

Um, first the community legitimacy piece.

Um, we fully acknowledge that there is uh, you know, relationship building that needs to happen there.

There's a breakdown of trust between some members of the community and the police department.

Um, we've really tried to actively uh take a you know a solid role and um meeting with different uh groups in the community, we're doing monthly community work walks, we're meeting with Lavender Rights Group, we're leaving meeting with GSBA and other LGBTQ IA plus communities, either monthly or quarterly, trying to continue to build on those relationships.

Um, we scheduled several uh coffee with cups where we're including our community support officers in that to just try to get out more in the community to try to establish that trust.

We've also, with community legitimacy, one of the recommendations is to try to educate people on our crowd management policies.

We've asked OIG to consider um putting up our crowd management policy on the website so that people can have equal access to that.

Um we've also really focused on our poet team, our police um outreach engagement team, and we want to make sure that they're adding additional information every time we have a significant event that we want to make sure that they're providing that cultural diversity piece and providing community perspectives in that.

We've also um uh appointed a uh a full-time LGBTQ liaison, Haiti Barton.

So that's a good opportunity for us to bridge that gap with the community with that officer.

Um, regarding the situational awareness piece, um, we are going to be doing some additional training that we're working on.

Um, we want to continue to do training on a yearly basis.

CJTC has some state mandated training that we're going to add to everybody's transcript so that they can participate in that surrounding effective communication, race and diversity training.

Um, we're also working with before the badge to find a liaison liaison within the community that can talk to the students before they're starting the police department, and so we're working on that as well.

Um, and then also just continuing to use POET to talk about event location history and making sure that people are aware of the history.

That was a problem in this event.

I think the officers didn't fully understand the significance of Calendarson Park.

So we want to make sure that we're including that information on significant protests moving forward.

We've talked about revising our language with our briefings, you know, we we have that has been a true situation in which we use black block and antifa in a negative context, and we've tried to try to figure out a way that we can come up with different verbiage when we're talking about specific groups of people, whether that's bad actors, agitators, and we're still trying to figure out how we're going to label them moving forward.

Um we're also going to continue and we're in crowd management training right now.

We do that on a yearly basis.

We're also continuing our crisis intervention and our de-escalation training, so that we can make sure that we're, you know, educating our officers on how we want them to deal with the public in the future.

Communication piece.

One of the things that came up was we're giving commands to move back.

In this specific incident, it wasn't a clear direction.

So we want to make sure that we're training our officers to give clear directions on where they want them to go, what they want them to do, and also then providing information to the community when it's safe and feasible to do so regarding arrests and why we're arresting people and to just communicate more with the community.

Tactics, um, we obviously want to prioritize targeted arrests of any type of bad actors.

Um we have been doing that, but we're we're honing in on focusing on you know specific individuals that are you know committing crimes that we want to focus on.

Um we're reviewing department policies and tactics.

We're also uh looking at our crowd management policy to see if there's any way that we can continue to update that as needed, and then lastly, we are making sure that when we have multiple arrests, that those are all documented appropriately and that you know that people are being charged for that actual crime they've committed.

Um, again, with our training, uh, we are trying to upstaff our police operation engagement team and formalize the training in the curriculum, and we're upstaffing that unit.

We're also doing some uh commander training for incident command system for our lieutenants, captains and chiefs to get them trained on additional incident command system training.

And so we're just really happy to be part of this process and um work with OIG on any future events that we may have.

Yeah, and I would just like to acknowledge SPD is, you know, obviously a critical accountability partner, and they were um really genuine in their participation in this process and in their desire to improve and not have a situation like this happening.

And I think you know, one of the overarching uh principles that we all agree on, and that I think has emerged as perhaps the most important uh dynamic to manage in these things is the legitimacy and how the public is viewing the actions of police officers here, SPD as legitimate or not legitimate, and so that's why that discussion of tactics of differentiating between people who are actively seeking to cause real harm and perhaps danger to folks versus you know the crowd in general is so critical.

And I think that broke down here.

There wasn't differentiation, and they didn't focus on serious crimes, and we can see that the devolution of the actions really turn quickly to the crowd viewing SPD as not legitimate.

And so I know that SPD has a commitment to making sure that they are taking approaches in facilitating crowds, keeping people safe that seeks to differentiate people who are there to hurt people, um, and and cause real harm from those of uh our community who just want to gather and express themselves.

So thank you very much.

Appreciate your partnership.

Thanks to all the hard work that OIG put in, and that will take any questions.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much, IG judge and uh deputy chief underwood.

I appreciate the uh the run through and um and the the various points made.

I'll quickly go to um my vice chief and/or um other colleagues who have jumped on council member for the record, council member Lynn has joined us, and I also wanted to note that uh non-committee members, but uh always welcome to attend council member rink and foster are on board as well.

And so uh Vice Chair, any questions?

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

First, first off, want to thank uh OIG, the accountability partners, but especially OIG for uh driving this and doing doing the the work, taking the laboring or to complete this important review and sharing your findings here with us today.

Uh really really appreciate that.

Um, I think even in the absence of a Sentinel event review, uh, one thing that was immediately clear from my perspective.

Um, well, couple things.

One, the city should not ever engage in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and sort of cherry pick which perspectives we we choose to permit and highlight and which which we don't.

Um, you know, that's a that's a bedrock principle of our democracy, of course.

Uh that said, we also should better plan and and you know figure out better, more optimal siting uh and make better siting decisions for these kind of events.

An event of this nature should have never been held in the historic Cal Anderson Park.

Um, that is for all people, but especially in including our gay and trans community.

Uh, so that that was that was an important learning number one uh from from my perspective.

Um I noted that so it looks like there wasn't any reports available on legislature, but I did uh scour and find on OIG's website the the actual report, so a lot more fulsome than the slide deck shared um to here today.

So I haven't had a chance to thorough thoroughly review this yet, but I but I do appreciate it's existence.

Um just quick question regarding so it looks like there was and I don't know what slide maybe my colleague will comment on.

I don't know what slide it is.

Uh the but it's the one that begins with the heading recommendation.

There are no there are no slide numbers, but it's the one that towards the end that begins with the heading recommendation.

It says that there were 24 suggested recommendations.

Um in the report itself, the main report, the underlying report, it it purports to add more detail there.

High level, so two questions.

High level, what's the status of implementation, executive implementation of each and every one of those those 24 uh recommendations?

I understand they're broken up into four different categories more broadly, but what are what is the status of those of implementation of those recommendations?

So, question one and question two, uh do you anticipate uh faithfully and rapidly implementing these recommendations would require any new uh legislation, legislative changes, or even potential resource allocations that are that are outside of the uh you know executives' principal powers.

So there are a lot of questions in that question.

Um I think just taking your question about what's the status of recommendations.

I think we would be happy to sit down and put together a quick memo just to give you all, you know, a breakdown of what has occurred, what is in process, things like that.

One of the benefits we learned this in 2020 2021 with the the those protests at nil events is having SPD there as a partner.

They can start making changes almost immediately as we're talking, talking through these discussions, they take that information back and say, hey, this came up, this was a problem, you know, we can do this better.

And so many of the lessons that we were learning in this, I think were being taken back and implemented in real time by SPD.

So you know there's a real benefit for our heads together for SPD to engage in this process.

But happy to um give you all a written rundown of the status where we're at, and I think probably the opportunity to talk and see if there are um things that we could benefit from legislatively, you know, we could include that in the memo.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um also I wanted to say we just published if you don't want to read all 81 pages of the original report, which there's a QR code at the on the end slide of our presentation today.

We produced a four pager that is a summary of the report that's also available on our website.

Great.

Thank you.

All right, colleagues, any additional questions from my colleagues.

Um to include our guests uh okay, Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

And sorry, can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for the presentation today.

As I begin my questioning, I want to remind the committee and the public that I was present at the May Day USA rally and counter demonstration in Calenderson Park in my capacity as a city leader to monitor the situation, given my concerns about an anti-trans Christian nationalist event being held in the historically LGBTQIA neighborhood.

I know we actually met for the first time uh at this event while I was trying to encourage a peaceful window.

And for the record, I witnessed the second string of arrests and what I would also characterize as a misuse of pepper spray as a less lethal weapon.

In fact, I was impacted by that misuse and my symptoms from breathing pepper spray in uh did not fully subside with my chest pain lasting for at least a week.

With that in mind, thank you, Chair, for allowing my participation today.

Um, and I have a few questions.

Uh, first of which is a question related to Seattle Police Department's training budget as it relates to special events.

Um, perhaps uh Deputy Chief Underwood, you might be the best person to speak to this but invite anyone to answer the question.

It's my understanding that SPD has a yearly budget for trainings outside of the scope of required accreditations and certificates.

Is that correct?

Yes.

And there is room in this budget for trainings that are declared as priorities by the chief of police.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Thank you.

Can you all or and the Seattle Police Department commit to making a training for special events or crowd management policies as a part of required trainings for SPD officers?

We do have that right now, ma'am.

We have we have crowd management training going on right now.

Okay.

I at this juncture, and given what we've we've seen, I'm just finding it inexcusable that we've had multiple recent instances of SPD mishandling special events and injuring people.

There is damaged trust, there is a lack of legitimacy in the eyes of community.

Um, and I'm I'm wondering if there's an opportunity to have SPD really include history and context in special event locations in their intelligence briefings moving forward.

Is that a change you all can make?

Yes.

If I could just add an observation as you know, somebody kind of watching these things unfold over the years.

Um, one of the issues that we've identified, and I think this is, you know, there are issues that SPD has to address with labor contracts and budgets and things, but the fact that you have they have a rotation of commanders that come in.

And so, you know, the chief and SPD has an overarching philosophy and everything, but you get people rotating through as the incident commander or the operations chief who maybe don't have the grounding that you know some people who handled more of these do.

And so you get inconsistency in how in the leadership of these and that shows up in how officers handle these things.

So one of the things, a recommendation, one of the things I believe SPD is working on is having training for command level people so that they're all on the same page about our goals for providing safety for differentiation for maintaining legitimacy so that we, you know, we don't have these kind of varying results given who happens to be assigned a particular protest.

Which is something that we are working on currently.

Thank you for clarifying that point hearing that training for command level um officers is something that would be a meaningful step forward.

I just really want to signal that this is a priority for my office, um, and for the public who continues to raise questions about how SPD is conducting themselves during events.

I do believe that we as a legislative body should consider a proviso on SPD's training budget to ensure that this kind of training is happening and ensuring that we're doing everything within our power to make sure these failures don't happen again.

And I'd like to formally request a copy of next year's training schedule to be sent to us as a council body and central staff as well.

Um, moving us to um a separate note.

I know on the contributing factor slide as a part of the presentation.

Um, SPD perceived minor acts of property damage as an indicator of likely criminal escalation necessitating a visible deviation from a peaceful protest response posture.

And in a different scenario, what what would a peaceful protest response posture look like?

Do you want me to answer that?

Okay, so it it's we keep using this word differentiation.

So it would be we, you know, you would have officers maybe observe somebody um have intelligence that somebody has a backpack full of Molotov cocktails.

So they might monitor that person through the crowd, and then you know, at an opportune time when they're not getting into the middle of a crowd, they might pull that person aside, do some investigation, um, they would communicate with the crowd.

Maybe you have somebody in the crowd who's shoving people or assaulting someone, you know, you identify that person, and in a way that you can do it safely, you take that person out of the crowd and then let the crowd continue on with what they're doing.

So that's differentiation and usually it should focus on things like that, like assault or you know, the threat of something, somebody starting a fire or something like that, not releasing balloons.

So I think what happened, and this leads into the incorrect assumptions that SPD was making about black block and antipa.

And in the conversations with the panel, we had really good conversations about black block.

It's not it's not a group, it's not a thing, it's a defensive tactic.

And so I think you know, just maybe educating SPD who were operating on assumptions from 20 years ago with WTO things about what it really means now, um, and you know, that Antifa is we should all be antifascists and it's it's not this thing, you know, that is an indicator of violence, pretty much violence in and of itself.

So it's that in a way that this should have happened is okay, you know that they released some balloons or they, you know, um we're messing with a bubble machine, then you maybe keep an eye on those guys, and then at some point later on when they're out, not in the crowd, you contact them, do whatever is appropriate, not chase them through the crowd.

So that's where it went wrong.

I appreciate that.

And I think this kind of leads into my next question.

Some of these activities that you're talking about, you know, the SPD manual defines like low profile tactics as strategies and techniques that minimize visible police president presence.

Um, how is SPD training its officers on the use of these low profile tactics?

And can you give us some additional examples of these tactics?

I think what you were just speaking to might be described as some of those tactics, so can you just clarify it and then speak to you how officers are trained on these tactics currently?

So, like I said, we always have crowd management uh control tactics training that we're doing currently in the department.

We also have de escalation training that we're, you know, we're doing on a routine basis.

When we're monitoring crowds, the preference is to always just kind of take a hands off approach until we actually need to step in and do something.

Kind of like Inspector Judge was describing there.

We want to monitor the crowd.

If everything is going peacefully, our goal is to stand off and let the peaceful protest continue on.

If we do see a bad actor in the crowd, the goal is obviously to target that person when it's safe and feasible to do so, and then extract them from a crowd, so that the rest of the protests can continue.

Yeah, I'll add that we what we know about crowds is they also tend to be self-regulating.

So if the police are standing off, just sort of keeping an eye, making sure you know, general safety is happening.

If people are acting up in a crowd, other crowd members don't want their event disrupted either.

So often, you know, other crowd members will engage in self-regulation of that kind of behavior.

Some groups that organize have peacekeepers that will serve that function so that there's no need for any sort of police intervention.

And if we if we find something that's starting to go awry, then we always use our poet team to kind of go in, talk to the organizers, say, hey, we're having a problem with this.

Can you mitigate that?

And so we try to work together with the organizers to keep the the protest or demonstration as safe as possible.

Thank you for that response, Chair.

If I may, I just have one final uh bit of questioning if that's all right with you.

Yes, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, a final topic for today.

Um, it's my understanding that according to SPD policy, a briefing sheet is required to be completed and forwarded to SPD command staff.

So kind of a chunk of questions on this.

Who holds the responsibility for the material in the briefing sheet or the incident action plan?

Does SPD command staff receive trainings on how these documents could prevent intercipatory defensiveness?

And um, are SPD command staff uh required?

Are they required to meet with uh community directly as a part of the incident action plan process, or is it just the community liaison?

So that's a multifaceted question, but so yes, we always have an incident action plan for every event that we have.

Um, those are housed in our special operations center, they're distributed and gone over at our roll call briefings at every event briefing that we have.

So that's where they're housed, and that's what we do with them.

Um, one of the recommendations was to educate people about any specific events where there's community concerns, and that is part of the recommendations that we'll be implementing.

Yeah, if I just add one of the breakdowns here in engaging with the communities that are impacted before the event is there was very little, if any, communication between police and the career community here.

And one of the things that we've or that SPD has started doing out of this process is making connections, building relationships, and building a feedback loop that you can rely on in advance of these kinds of events to talk with people and talk about the concerns of the community, talk about the approaches the police are gonna have and whatnot beforehand, but there was no communication.

So that was that was another problem.

We also try to use our poet team to reach out to the organizers in advance of the events to kind of gauge if there's going to be any problems and try to set tone, try to establish ground rules right away.

Um, in this case, one of the recommendations that we're going to try to implement is also not only engaging with the organizer, which is something that we currently do, but also engaging with the community prior to the event.

Thank you for that response.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, uh, Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I appreciate it.

Um, as somebody who's not a member of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to ask questions of our panelists today.

And thank you so much, uh Deputy Chief and Inspector Judge, and to both of your teams for being here.

Um I want to start off with a question just about the the report and one of the things that really um stuck out to me was that there are, I believe, at least seven instances in the report where it states that panelists identified similar recommendations in previous Sentinel event reviews.

So those would be in wave one or wave two from 2020.

And you know, that's particularly concerning to me because these are recommendations, obviously, that have been identified now, you know, five years in the past of when the event occurred that we're discussing today.

So I'd love to hear, you know, what we're doing to make sure that these recommendations are going to be implemented.

I want to make sure that we're not seeing, you know, in a future Sentinel event review, you know, again, a reference to recommendations that were made previously.

Yeah, um, I appreciate the opportunity to address this particular question.

Some of those things were lapses in communication.

I mean, I think in most Sentinel Limit reviews, if I was gonna, you know, look into the future and predict we're probably it there's probably going to be some communication breakdown that's part of a contributing factor to a negative event.

So some of the things that we identified were simply just um misperceptions of the police about what was happening, not using a differentiated approach in this particular case.

So while they are things that were had similarities, um, I think SPD has you know worked hard since 2020 and those recommendations from the protest sentinel tenant reviews to change their tactics, to change their trainings, to change their approaches to how these are managed.

Um, you know, this one, they didn't uh differentiate with folks, they didn't have a communication loop with that particular community.

Um, they lost legitimacy by by coming in and you know making arrests in the crowd for low-level um violations without communicating with the crowd what they were doing.

So they were very similar.

That loss of legitimacy, it's a dynamic that may recur again.

And it's not that SPD didn't implement recommendations, they did.

I think we issued a close to 160 recommendations and SPD implemented most of them, and so um I think we're we're starting from a good base where those recommendations were implemented, but they they didn't use all of the lessons learned in a way that could have prevented this in the Cal Anderson protests.

So, yes, they were identified.

I think they're going to be common themes when things go wrong between the police and community of communication, of making assumptions that don't bear out, things like that.

But it's not that SPD just didn't implement recommendations previously, and now they're doing it here.

But I but I think it is going to be a continuous process of making sure these kinds of things are baked in to how they plan for incidents and how they respond.

And I don't know if that answered your question, but I think so.

I mean, I um I appreciate the response, and I appreciate again the you know the reference to the number of recommendations that were made in 2020.

And I think um, I think what I'm hearing is you know, many of the recommendations were implemented, but they were um not implemented that day.

Um, or that's that's sort of my takeaway when I hear you say, like, you know, the laps in in communication.

Well, here just wasn't a communication loop between the police and the queer community.

Like there were concerns, there were things going on that that people in the LGPT QIA community had, you know, they had concerns, they, but they didn't have an outlet to share those things with SPD because of a lack of trust in communication.

And SPD was kind of relying on open source data for intelligence rather than talking to people on the ground in that neighborhood in that community to get better intelligence.

So part of it is um going from a posture of no trust, the no relationship between SPD and the queer community to building those relationships so that that feedback loop starts being created.

Um that's one of the things that we are working on.

We really want to get out of the community.

We are actively doing that.

We want to rebuild that trust and have that legitimacy in the community.

So we are working towards that.

Thank you so much.

Or described the continued protest posture of SPD.

And I wonder if we can just hear more if there's been sort of an internal look or an internal review of that continued protest posture.

I think you spoke about that briefly in the slide deck at the beginning, and just what that, what we may have learned from any additional research there that did not happen through the SER process, given that breaching confidentiality didn't allow you to get to that final stage.

Yeah, as uh Christine Bergless mentioned, we have worked since 2020 with Professor Clifford Stodd, who was I think probably, if not the most, one of the most renowned crowd psychology experts in the world.

And so uh Professor Stott worked with my staff to do an analysis and a breakdown of what we think the contributing factors were to SPD maintaining kind of like a hard posture, you know, a line well past the event when they when they could have just like taken it down and moved out.

And I think this is going to be a question also for you, but we we did do an analysis of it, it just didn't have the infusion of the panelists' thoughts and experiences who were there.

Um certainly CPC did a number of uh of events of perspective gatherings.

So we had community thoughts about those things and experiences, but it just wasn't an active discussion that we got to have with the panelists for that last event.

Yeah, it would have been great to be able to have that discussion and to hear the community perspective on that, but we just didn't get that opportunity.

You know, one of the things that we talked about is whether we should have been folding a line or not, and whether we should have, you know, come back out, you know, from the park a little bit, give them their space.

You know, there was a lot of things that we could have done differently.

Um, you know, I was there at the event too, trying to get people to uh, you know, try to get our officers off the line, get them out of the way sooner, get less officers there.

We did call for mutual aid in this, you know, trying to get them out of there.

So there were definitely areas that we could have improved on.

And so when we look at these things, we look at how what do we do?

How do we debrief it and what can we improve on in the future?

This was one of the cases that you know, we like I said, it wasn't our best work.

Um, you know, we we have hundreds and hundreds of protests where everything goes extremely well.

We do exactly what we're trained, we do all the things that we've learned from 2020, and in this particular event, it just didn't go right.

And you know, but but that doesn't mean that we can't continue to grow and learn from it.

You know, I also want to acknowledge all the other protests that you know we do everything exactly right, textbook, and the officers do exactly what they're trained to do.

In this case, it just didn't happen that way.

And so we have to go back and go, why didn't it not go well?

Why did they not follow the procedures that they normally follow, and how can we improve that moving forward?

And that was what this process was designed to do.

Yeah, and I'll just add that one of the lessons we learned in 2020 was once you get into a line and you're facing off with people, it's it's really hard to move away from that.

And I think one of the situations they got into here is they they got into that fixed line where then you have to start deciding how do we retreat, when do we retreat?

And you know, once once you get there and you face off with somebody, it just creates a dynamic that's so hard to not so hard, but it's harder to extract yourself from, and I think that's one of the things that that SPD does a good job of avoiding generally, and they fell into that trap of of creating a line and and facing off and creating an adversarial posture with community.

And so then they just they stayed out there, you know, longer than they they needed to.

Thank you for that.

And chair, if I may, just one more question.

Um, you know, I would I want to ask, just in terms of the report, one of the things um I guess I'm curious about is the approach.

And um I one of the you know, obviously there's been a lot of reporting about specific language that was used by officers that day, and in particular that we're going in their guns blazing.

And I know that in this report, we don't reference that specific language, and I'm sort of curious a little about the process and the decision making on that.

I mean, I just know that's we hear comments and questions around that and the role that that played that day uh for officers, and I'm curious why we don't you know name that specifically.

Yeah, um, I'm not sure that that that necessarily played a role, as large a role as is assumed.

Um that statement came out when they were hours in to this and had already made a number of arrests, a number of uses of force.

So that wasn't just the philosophy of SPD going in and starting that day.

That was after um, that was kind of in the middle or toward the end of the day.

So um, you know, it we in this process, it's important to not attribute particular statements to anybody so that if we encourage participants, community members, and officers to be as candid as as they can be and and frank about things, and you know, to to be able to have a full discussion without censoring yourself because you're worried about being quoted.

So it is a established process of a sentinel net review that you don't attribute quotes to particular people.

Um the body word and camera is out there, and I believe it was released by OIG.

So, you know, the information is there, um we were transparent about that, but um I'm not sure that the panel you know that that it was a focus of the panel.

Okay, thank you, um council member Foster, and thank you uh OIG judge and IG judge and deputy chief underwood.

Um appreciate the questions from um council member rink and foster and also the questions and statement from uh my vice chair.

I do want to say if somebody comes to the city specifically requesting a certain location, uh First Amendment plays in.

But with as we know with this case, uh they had gone in for Pike Place, and then they had an open-ended question regarding where to go to next.

And um, yes, the executive could have made better choices on that.

Um, I spoke to the executive at the time regarding Lake Union Park, you know, the follow-up was at Gasworks Park.

So many parks could fit the bill and support the uh the right to protest and or to demonstrate um without including Cal Anderson.

Um and so there's a separate lesson learned in itself, and it kind of goes to the communications piece, which um mentioned at the beginning in terms of notifying the various elements of government on the executive side, particularly.

Um just quickly, I just want to say hey uh training training training is so key.

I love the fact before the badge being included here, uh, start at the beginning, um, and the annual is so important.

You know, you cannot do it once, it's got to be a continuum, as Deputy Chief Underwood knows, but it's important to say it out loud that training is so important, you know, it's about ensuring that the officers on the line uh know and and I've been practiced and trained on that, but also the leadership piece uh so important.

You go, you know, creating that line as IG judge said, you know, when to do things, when not to do things, um, very important.

I will say one factor that you know maybe could play a better role, I don't know, but something to consider, no need to answer, uh, because we are, you know, need to move forward is the poet could the poet uh uh effort play a bigger, better role in this.

And I don't know the answer to that.

I just I say that out loud.

Um, also, more separately beyond training training training is outreach, outreach, outreach.

Um, and it that needs to have support from the upper echelons of the department and city government overall to include us uh as a city council, particularly as the committee.

And uh, and I just asked one thing is you know, could OPA's mediation program, you know, we've been working on the OPA's mediation program, we're talking about it, you know, could this as a case study could be like a special case where we may be able to in you know use the uh OPA's mediation program um to some effect?

Just to in terms of that connections and so forth, I think it would be um valuable.

Um again, no need to answer questions.

Bottom line is we need to go through all these things.

Uh we have the World Cup coming up, and as noted uh by IG Judge, because about the same time, same time as last year.

Pride month is coming up, pride weekends coming up, and you know we obviously we have two countries whose football associations have made quite clear their views on LGBTQ plus and the you know queer community more generally, and so uh we need to be ready uh before and so I was gonna move to the you know the three briefings, which I think we're gonna do back to back to back.

Uh councilmember Vera, I saw your hand has come up.

Um I was looking to make this break and move on to the next agenda item.

Can I just make a quick quick point chair, which is actually um uh upstream, unrelated to this particular presentation in terms of um our accountability partners, but when permits are being given by the special events office, all city or most city departments involved in in the permitting process are represented on the special events office, and I think that there needs to be a um uh review of the special events um uh office that participates in giving the permits, the right people need to be part of that process, and that can also help ensure that things go um in the right direction.

And so I think that we need to look and and the executive needs to look at that special events office to make sure that we have the right folks from each of the city departments participating in that.

So just well I agree, yes.

Thank you.

Yes, the special events.

Top of everything what that we just talked about, Chair, thank you.

Yes, the special events office needs to be able to discern uh just like SPD.

Um, and if everybody has that kind of nuance and understanding to a larger level, then we could maybe avoid some issues.

Uh so thank you uh for that uh everyone and uh uh can we um we have our second part um the accountability partners annual update can we uh follow into that and and colleagues I recognize it's late, but if we can have these three briefings done back to back to back, um I think that would be beneficial from a timing perspective.

I think it was doing it.

There was an early question from Councilmember Saka about resources.

Uh I mentioned that we've had a relationship with Professor Stott for since 2020.

Um that is a really critical budget piece, and I know the city's facing a lot of budget crises right now, but the ability to have an expert to help us um analyze and break these kinds of incidents down and make sure that we're on the leading edge of crowd management, I think is important.

So any budgetary support for OIG and SPD with regard to uh crowd management expertise would be impreciated.

Thank you.

Very good point, IG judge.

Uh yes, okay, Clerk, let's um roll into our next um again.

I like to do these presentations back to back to back because we are obviously late.

Clerk, okay.

Are we going to start with uh OIG or should we uh we can mix it up?

However, you've used uh we have it lined up, we'll feel that way.

Okay.

Are they doing it from Sam Smith or sorry?

We're trying to figure out how to the presentation up.

It might be better to start with another agency.

I'm sorry.

We're trying to get ourselves situated here.

Councilmember Kettle, we're trying to figure out where everybody, all the other community partners are because we're remote and they're not in the same room.

Glenn, you might want to focus on your backlighting because he can't see you.

Maybe shut the blind behind you.

Can't see.

Yeah.

It's there's a glare so bad you can't see your face.

Can you hear me now?

Oh good.

Thank you.

Seeing great now.

Perfect.

Thank you, Councilmember Warriors and all.

All right.

Uh well, obviously we're all about the noon hour, but good morning.

Uh to Chair Kettle, Vice Chair uh Saka, uh the public safety committee and committee members and the public here today uh regarding our mid-year report.

Um and also I have with me uh my uh deputy and general counsel Nelson Lease for our presentation.

Um I wanted to make sure with staff uh are you putting up the PowerPoint uh for us, or do we need to do that?

Thank you.

Okay, just wanted to make sure.

Okay, go ahead.

All right, thank you.

You can make that uh first of all, I'd like to state on the record uh on behalf of the OPA that uh in listening to the conversation being there today that we appreciate uh the sentinel review process and the importance and value of it uh and uh next steps.

Uh OPA is looking part uh looking forward for further discussions with accountability partners as well as ways to um look at uh this incident, learn from it.

Also, in addition to that, uh ideas and strengthen uh different ways.

So I did want to acknowledge that and the good work with respect to that and the importance of it uh for even in the future.

With that said, for our mid year, I'll go to the next slide.

Thank you.

All right, and pretty much I think most people know, but also for the public, I put this slide just to make sure what our mission is.

The mission is to ensure SPD employees uh actions comply with the law and policy by conducting thorough, objective and timely investigations, recommending improvements to policies and training and engaging in collaborative initiatives that promote systemic advancements.

SPD employees include sworn and uh non-sworn for SPD employees.

Also, the vision is to safeguard a culture of accountability within SPD.

Next slide, please.

A little bit about our roles and responsibilities, and I and again, for the public, uh, as an example, we just were out this weekend uh on Saturday at the Human Rights Commission, and SPD was there with us, CPC, uh, and others uh council staff were there as well.

Again, it's important to get out as accountability partners.

I know all three of us uh believe in that as well to make sure that we're out there uh with regards to our roles and responsibilities to better educate and also to help build community trust and a little and people know more about our process and our different roles in that process.

But our roles and responsibilities generally are process police miscontact complaints, enhance police accountability culture, educate the community about OPA, and also making policy and management action recommendations about our structure.

We're one of the few in the United States that is a hybrid structure, which means that it's a civilian-led organization, direct department.

And with that said, it also has sworn who actually work for us as well as civilian investigators.

So for fully staffed, we have nine sworn investigators and we have four civilian investigators.

You may have recalled in the last uh SPOG agreement.

We actually actually we actually obtained two civilian investigators addition.

So originally when I started, there was nine sworn into civilian, and we now have four civilian.

In addition to that, they're able to help in investigations and working with the sworn in those.

At when we're fully staffed, we have 31 total staff.

And the other part for education with the community, everyone, is that we're independent.

We're physically and operationally separate from SPD, however, we are connected within SPD in order to get data in real time.

And so that's one of the advantages of that.

I just came back from the FBI LEDA program and air, and we have trained people from around the country, and we're very rare in that we get things in real time that we can actually see, and that's a big benefit of that process.

Next slide, please.

Next, with regards to budget, you can see over the last couple years with respect to our budget.

Um, and so you can see from 24 to 25 to 26.

Uh and I was just gonna say a huge few highlights just given our time, but uh we did uh gain uh public disclosure officers.

Uh we had one uh from SPD in 2024 and also in 2025, and so that's part of the uh independence that used to be for OPA public disclosure that that body of work came from SPD to us, uh, and we're happy we we have two wonderful employees who do an excellent job and work very hard with that, overseen by Mr.

Lease with regards to that body of work, and so you may see a difference in in the funding a little bit as well, that type of thing.

Also in 2025, I'll just go down the list, but you can see the majority of our budget is really personnel.

Uh, and you can see that uh that our lease uh we actually moved.

If you did not know when you saw in 2024, we were at the Pacific building, we moved here to SMT, Seattle Municipal Tower, and so it made savings, and so that's why you see the decrease in and with regards to the lease, those type of things.

You can see for the labor for the 31 FTEs, you can see we received two civilian uh employees and so forth.

Other than that, at the same time, we did lose people as well.

Uh, and that'll be on the next page in just a moment.

But anyway, I just wanted to let you know the upshot in looking at our our budget is that we're lean, very lean.

Uh the majority of it is in salaries, and uh you can see um across the way for equipment, those are general things for our we have a few vehicles when we go out because we actually go out to the scenes for OISs, officers involved shootings, those type of things.

So we have vehicles and also community engagement and so forth.

So uh I'll just go to the next slide.

Thank you.

Budget items to note.

Uh, although we didn't take a cut, we actually, we'll call it our stewardship, approximately one million dollars last year in savings.

That was 15% of our budget.

Uh, OPA complied with the Miro and C VA direction to be judicious with spending to include limited traveling.

Uh, even when we went to NACOL, we were approved for one.

We may I was able to squeeze in a second person to go and delaying and hiring and things of that nature.

Uh, we lost quite a bit.

And you can imagine um, you know, for training and our community outreach, you can uh that was less, of course, with that savings.

Um, also previous reductions.

I wanted to point out, um, it's critical from 25 and 26 budgets overtime was reduced.

Uh, you can see uh as it started in 2024, it was 225,675.

But you can if you go to 2026, we're at 65,762.

We took a 16,672 dollar cut and then in 2025 you see the 1432 41.

And so overtime is something that we need it's critical to for people who are doing investigations, those type of things.

It's important to us and also I have to say for admin, our admin our admin staff, because of the cuts, as you can see below I'll go to that, where it says two FTD two FTEs for the 2025-26 budget.

There was an administrative specialist too without that position has been very critical.

I have staff who are assistant directors and other people who are doing that work since we now have the cut to overtime to have them do that work.

It's so little that taking transcripts right we used to have more money so that we could have the transcriptions that are required things of that nature and I can't tell you the importance of that.

So we have people doing double duties in that regard.

The next one was we did lose our communications person, the Strat 14000 the body of work of that person included the newsletter as well as communications as well as our social media and some of the website people have taken that on as double work with regards to theirs and of course we had to make those adjustments accordingly.

So I say that as we come into 2026.

So with that said we're very lean and I do know that this is uh times that we all have to make you know cuts uh those type of things reductions but I do say that we are very bare boned at this particular time but with that I also have to do indicate that we have put things up for our proposal as required and so that is there.

But in addition uh one of the things I do have to do that we've agreed to do with SPD is that in our independence for um the body of work like we took back the public disclosure there's one other piece that needs to be transferred and that is uh an FTE position for the body worn video video analyst and what that does is the video redacting.

Right now that is still with SPD and so we agree we raised it last year we rose you know raise it again this year but that we would raise it each year but that is the other one and that goes along with securing our independence uh with that uh of this body of work and being separate uh next slide the next slide um it has to do with our work with regards to frontline investigation uh OPA has been working hard and has been diligent and working on frontline investigations uh with SPDOIG uh in addition to all the different folks who are at the table I know CPC uh is also there with regards to their work that is coming on board uh and it's a great body of work that I'm gonna have folks who've been working on this um along with myself and obviously Chief Barnes and obviously uh assistant chief um underward as well and helping lead that process uh and for this important body of work and so with that I'm gonna turn it over to Nelson Lease uh and I also before I turn to him I did want to acknowledge him as well as Amanda DeFisher both of them uh you have to have someone to help remember we're kicking all of this off right and making sure for putting a lot of hard work and uh they've been very diligent with that and I do want to applaud them as well as the folks uh from SPD and the subject matter experts.

So with that I'll turn it over to Mr.

Lease.

Good afternoon.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the council for allowing you speak about frontline investigations.

It's a new process I'm very excited about to develop as folks may be aware with the changes last year in the SPOG CBA there is a new ability for uh alligations of less than serious misconduct to be investigated by the chain of command and result in uh discipline up to a written reprimand.

So this has really been a missing link in the oversight landscape for uh SPD, the ability to uh have less than serious misconduct be uh handled by the chain of command as opposed to OPA, uh, who has a focus more on serious misconduct and uh as defined in the accountability ordinance.

Uh real uh opportunities for growth here are to empower SPD supervisors to help with upholding a culture of accountability, also in the spirit and uh letter of the accountability ordinance, OPA working with SPD to help uh supervisors uh work to uphold that culture of accountability.

Uh one of the big wins here uh would be also a more timely intervention on less than serious misconduct, uh the ability for supervisors to handle things quickly, more directly, and uh overall uh hopefully have that quick intervention lead to a reduction in misconduct that that stitch in time that saves nine.

Uh OPA also then would have the ability to return uh more of its focus to handling allegations of serious misconduct and things that would implicate public trust, which is the uh defined uh ordinance charge of OPA.

Right now, we're still in the earlier stages of developing this.

Uh we began in uh January with engaging uh our stakeholders and building out a process for building this.

Uh the frontline investigation uh processes bargained in the SPOG CBA won't go into effect until uh SPD has new processes specifically defined in 5.002 and 5.003 of the SPD manual.

Uh we just uh have been working to develop uh drafts uh there, and we are continuing to bring uh stakeholders on board to engage them throughout building this process and uh getting ready, preparing to share materials more widely with our stakeholders, such as CPC.

Uh the goal ultimately here is a clear workable process for uh handling less than serious misconduct within SPD.

Uh, that will be uh uh both a shared responsibility between OPA and SPD, and then ultimately also audited and overseen by OIG, which has a defined role in this process.

Uh make sure we're adequately training SPD supervisors on how to engage with the frontline investigation process as it gets developed, and working towards an anticipated uh pilot program rolling out January 2027 on an anticipated basis.

So that is the frontline investigation piece.

Uh, go to the next slide.

Throughout all of this, OPA also is continuing to do uh its its main charge, which is to conduct timely, thorough, and uh objective investigations into individual allegations of misconduct.

Uh this data that is here is uh from OIG's 2025 annual report reviewing uh OPA's work, and uh what we continue to see is that uh overwhelmingly OPA's investigations are uh found and upheld to be uh thorough, objective, timely in the vast majority of cases.

Uh also OIG reviews OPA's classification decisions as to whether or not complaints should be classified as contact logs, supervisor actions, expedited investigations, or full investigations, and continuing to see very high levels of concurrence with the decisions that OPA makes from OIG's reviews, and that is again a sign of a healthy accountability system, uh, us being independently audited and reviewed by OIG.

We'll even go to the next slide, please.

I'll turn it back over to Bonnie.

All right.

With respect to some of the project and updates, highlights, um, one of the things that we continue to do, and is to reach out to our young people, and we do a youth art contest, and every year uh I'm always surprised about uh the enthusiasm and also about uh some of the drawings they do.

Last year, uh it had an officer sitting on a bench, and uh the officer gave the hat to the young person, and it was like, you know, remember our youth, right?

It's about you know that relationship.

This year's winner.

Uh I was at from elementary school.

It was 11-year-old and it's building bridges, and it has an officer, and there's a young person actually reading.

Even more so when we go to the classrooms and talk about this, it's interesting, it's even this time at such a young age, the questions that we get about policing and also about accountability.

Our question is, what is you know, good policing look like?

What is good accountability look like to you?

What does it look like with regards to uh police and community relationships?

And at an 11-year-old, we had a very uh a really robust dialogue.

Uh, you know, I said they were our present in our future, and we went from there talking about current things to include what was the difference between SPD and federal officers of ICE at 11 years old.

It was amazing with regards to what's going on around us.

So it's very important.

Uh, they always say, remember our youth, so I pass that along.

Uh and so uh that'll be on the cover of our annual report as part of our outreach and building trust with our young people as well as the community.

Also, like you said, um, council member Kettle and others for our mediation growth.

Uh, one of the things that we've done, uh, we're reviewing each case that comes into classification.

That's one of the things that we're doing with regards to that body of work.

So we're seeing up front as they're coming in.

Are these particular cases uh for mediation that could be done?

Uh also we've reached out to NACOL, and that's the national organization for oversight uh for uh people who do oversight uh that happen in sort of the national conference NACO once a year, but they also have information and things that are important.

Uh, we actually have asked them to do a survey, which they're doing of all the different around the country mediation, and I think it's actually going to be done this month to kind of look at the different models and so forth in order to look at different ways, you know, as far as building upon what we're doing as well.

I'm also gonna mention with regards to frontline investigations.

Um, we've had beginning discussions with SPD, and they seem at this particular point very interested in mediation there.

If you think about it, it would make sense for frontline investigations if some low-level offenses go back to SPD.

If they're eligible, that might be a really good place to grow that as well.

And so I'm excited about that and using that more.

Uh, in addition, uh for community events, we're out and about uh tabling, attending, and uh, like I said, we just came back Saturday from the Human Rights Commission, and it was a listening session, and I think that's one of the important things that we can do.

It's important to be out there listening, and we did listen and we did talk, and we had actually it's something about although we do surveys and other things, it's about being out there knowing who we are, having that dialogue.

I went out to Seattle University, had a program from uh Stonewall to Cuffs.

SPD was there as well, having uh conversations, they had an exhibit there as well, talking about issues and better relations, those type of things.

So it's important to get out and about with people and listening.

Also, it was brought to my attention this last Saturday, too, to remember that most people, if their housing isn't stable, in order to be listened to, they need to have a place local to them in order for us to go to to also be heard.

So I share that and passing on.

Um next, with regards to those activities, we also have our complaint impact statement.

Uh, this is the one that I uh we've had this now.

Uh the process is almost completed, however, we at this point uh are engaging with CPC and EC and their team, as well as we also have what we have done put together questions in order that might be part of that complaint impact statement.

For those people who aren't familiar with that, it's familiar to most people about in a court, there's a victim impact statement on uh, and so this is giving an opportunity.

Uh, we hope to have um you know feedback from the uh you know victims to be able to be part to be forward to the chief of police for recommendations, and so that's something uh that we're working and I've just talked to EC recently as well as other folks as well to make sure our hope is to uh have this by the end of 2026 since we have almost all the pieces there, so uh we're ambitious, but I think we can get there.

I think it's important we'd be one of the first in the country to do it something like that.

I still remember back in the days when it was a victim impact statement and those type of things, our drug court.

A lot of times when you start things, it's not, you know, people are always like, Well, I don't know, is this gonna work?

Those type of things, but and then it becomes practice.

And I will give OIG credit because it was OIG Officer Inspector General who passed it on to us.

We did our part, and so we've been working with CPC and uh in the past on this and look forward to the uh continued work with them.

Next citywide uh digital accessibility uh project.

Um, we're uh I have to get hats off to our team.

Uh that body of work um again is for screen readers, uh, those type of things to make things easier to read and those types of things.

Uh, and so we are in compliance, even though there was a one-year extension, we were able to do that, and so very proud of our folks to get that done, and we'll continue to update uh our website and so forth and our paperwork.

Next, our OPA website, uh update process, plain language, that a lot of work.

It's a lot of work, but it's important work for folks.

Um, also uh very proud.

Uh, they're in our picture at the bottom, our symposium.

In 2025, we did a symposium called Building the Bridges, Imagining the Future for Police Accountability in Seattle, and it's one of those things build it and they will come, and that's what happened.

Uh, people uh basically it was packed.

Uh people flew in, even from Eastern Washington and other places.

We have people from the county, we have people uh there, and back to I'm having follow-up meetings with some of the people coming up as well from the Washington State police accountability work and so forth.

But I appreciate uh people who are there.

I know EC was part of the panels, whereas others, and uh all of that good stuff that was there, but some really really good dialogue with community, and as I said at the time of it, I felt like halfway through, and well, actually, by the time we get to the end, was that you know, we were really just beginning, and that's saying a lot for people who still wanted to stay in the same room because we really, you know, there's kind of that building of trust, building together, and then really talking about the issues.

One of the things that came out of that is that our accountability system is not static, and that as such, people do have a voice in what that may look like.

I mean, that may be an ordinance change, it could be in big policy change, right?

Or it could be something that we can do ourselves, right?

Our best practices.

So very excited about that.

We're going to do another one building on that, uh, and we're shooting for October.

Um, I had to see a question, and then I can take that now if you'd like, or I could finish it out.

Director Glenn, I think uh I know that's we're on the last slide.

I think that's a uh, you know, it's a probability is a work in progress, is a great way to end.

And I do see the uh the engagement with SPD and those various pieces, and that's that's there.

Um, because we we we are short on time, which may be uh because um we are losing uh one.

Um I'm gonna be losing my vice chair shortly.

And uh the hand may have been related to that.

So thank you so much for the uh presentation.

It's important to get it uh out and for the public.

And again, the entire briefing is is available.

Um Clerk, can we uh so thank you so much, Director Glenn and Mr.

Lees, thank you so much as well for your your piece.

Obviously, I've been uh very um you know um related to frontline investigation, so thank you for covering that.

Um is CPC is Director Albani uh available, Clerk.

Yeah, we can't go.

Whoever's ready to go.

Um we are ready.

Okay.

Okay, great, thank you.

Um good.

I guess after now, shared by the whole thing.

Um I'm Elsie Pennis Morrison, Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety.

Um, I'm gonna just give a quick update on some of our work.

I know you've heard a lot from us already today.

Um, we are going to be touching on some issues that have high community interest, including crowd management, as we've already discussed today and the real-time crime center project and surveillance oversight.

Uh, just one note.

Um, you know, as we mentioned earlier, OIG is systemic oversight of SPT and OPA.

Um, we also have taken over many of the monitoring duties um at the end of the consent degree.

Uh we have collapsed our compliance team and our policy team together to create um a centralized hub for research, policy, and statistical analysis.

So, our compliance and policy team, as we've already discussed, um, has been working on crowd management.

We concluded the SARE panel and published that report in February.

We also mentioned that we published a short summary.

We're also going to work on a short video just to kind of work in making it more accessible for people to kind of understand the takeaways of this report since we are aware that it is 81 pages and that can sometimes be hard to get through.

We are doing ongoing monitoring of crowd management and response by SPD and collaborating with Clifford Stott.

That includes a protest that occurred on April 19th that did have some uses of force and arrests.

We've written a short analysis of that, and that's kind of making its way through our editing process now.

We also attended the briefings for the Mayc protest, and we are going to attend the briefings for FIFA World Cup as well as in real time, observe some of the cloud management that they're doing there.

We also are continuing our work in use of force with the observation and evaluation of SPD sports review board.

We release periodic FRB memos that have feedback criticisms, as well as you know what we think that they're doing well, that will be published soon.

And FRB continues to be a valuable internal critical review of force.

In addition to that, in response to observed racial disproportionality and SP use of force, in the 2024 use of force assessment, we've developed a methodology that will assess the probability that a person will experience force based on their race and whether the probability changes over time.

We're also looking into alternative response to crisis in our 2024 crisis assessment.

We highlighted the needs for review on alternative response.

In 2025, OIG published a report highlighting the work of care in an exploratory data analysis to identify impact.

We're currently working on an update to that that will include the changes that resulted from the new SPOG CPA and an update on response data.

We're also going to be working on a jurisdictional comparison to other departments and analyzing care narratives to identify location, events, outcomes, and issues care is encountering.

We did publish a report on the efforts of SPD to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion principles in February.

We've reviewed the SPD 30 by 30 gender disparity analysis and completed our own review, and this will be published soon as well.

We are planning to conduct an equity assessment that explores preliminary findings from an SPD commissioned assessment of the sexual assault unit.

We additionally will continue our work on issuing recommendations on the city-state legislative agenda, which we do each year and monitoring bills that affect oversight and other projects, issue areas that are of interest to the office.

In 2023, we assess the ease of use and presentation of the insights of SPD data, making sure that their data was accessible to users that might be unfamiliar, and we're working currently to update that assessment, see what's changed, see what still needs work.

We're working on a memo that summarizes SPD policy guidelines and practices around the involuntary treatment act.

We are also doing an evaluation of the effectiveness of traffic stop prioritization.

So in 2022, SPD prioritize stopping individuals for certain violations based on recommendations from the OIG.

And so we'll be looking at if and what impact that has had on outcomes.

And then as always, our compliance and policy team it works on ad hoc projects.

So that means that they can be really responsive to issues that emerge from the public, from the community, from council, and even from you know SPD if they approach us with something that they like us to look to do.

Our audits team are currently in the analysis phase of an audit of taser effectiveness.

Um the report is expected in Q4.

We're also continuing our work on the controlled substance ordinance.

Um so that's the partnership with the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute, and we have been able to address some of the data access issues that we've already talked to you all about.

Um we're also continuing our work on the surveillance pilot program with UPenn Crime and Justice Policy Lab, where uh they're going to be evaluating effectiveness of the real-time crime center, ALPR, and CCTB.

We concluded focus groups in early April.

Those were um really effective.

We got great feedback from the community.

We had a really good turnout, um, so we feel really excited about that.

And we're working with the mayor's office to make sure that you know our assessment and theirs are complementing each other and the information that we can get to community.

And in addition to that, we are continuing our annual surveillance usage reviews.

Um, this year will be focused on a parallel review of ALPR and CCTV, um, which again will kind of dovetail into the pilot program evaluation as well.

We are expecting our first biannual 1412 um report in Q2.

We just initiated uh an overtime controls audit of SPD and the report is expected in 2027, and we also will be doing a preliminary report on um our um so on the soap ordinance that we're required by ordinance to conduct.

Our investigations team um has issued over A certifications by Q1.

That's 447 classification decisions of OPA.

We have looked at about 25 chief of police complaints.

Um this uptick is primarily fueled by frequent communicators who are not actually alleging policy violations by the chief of police.

Um the new ordinance actually allows us to work with OPA and closing those as contact logs, and we've been able to close 13 of those.

Uh, we are working on a more formalized system for tracking complaints and other referrals OIG makes to OPA.

Uh we implemented the system in Q1 of this year, and it's going to improve our tracking and referrals that we're making to OPA.

And then throughout the course of OIG's work, uh we communicate with OPA using a variety of means, email, teams, telephone, and we're going to implement a system that will allow us to better track communications across the board, and this will provide a more accurate tracking of OIG work that is done through technologies.

The system is currently in development, and we're expecting to roll that out in Q4.

And then as OK mentioned, um, OIG's been working with OPA and SPD on the frontline investigations.

And then we are continually trying to improve our communications and community engagement work.

We published our 2025 annual report recently.

We're working on digital accessibility project to be um to make sure that our website is digitally accessible.

Um these are from DOJ rules that are doing 2027, but we're trying to get ahead of that.

We've had a website redesign.

We're currently trying to produce consumer-friendly OIG products.

Um, you know, an example again is the SARE summary to make it a little bit more accessible.

And again, these um videos that we're hoping to roll out soon.

And then, you know, as always, we're trying to improve our community engagement collaborations with CPC and OPA.

And that's it, Chris.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you so much.

Um, and Clark, can we roll quickly into CPC?

Well, I think we're actually out of time for holding on.

Um, sure.

That's thing one, two, three.

Okay, thank you, Clark, for bringing up the briefing.

Good afternoon, everybody hear me.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you for holding on.

I appreciate the the uh resilience and over to you.

Wonderful.

Council members, Alag Mahi.

It's good to see all of you on screen and also earlier in chambers today.

I'm ECAMA, I'm the executive director of the community police commission.

You can't see it, but I'm joined by almost my entire team here in this room.

They had a big part of today's presentation and all of our work.

I'm really excited to present it to you today.

Today's presentation is an update from the last time that we gave a presentation like this to council last May.

There have been many changes in the CPC.

There have been changes on your dais, and so I'm really excited to connect back with you and talk about that.

Before I get started into our prepared presentation, I do want to say that our presentation this year is titled Community at the Heart.

And I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that today in council, I believe we saw the heart of community.

And while I had a presentation prepared and certain things I want to say, me and my team, we are very impacted by what happened today in chambers and the words that were shared from community members that are impacted by police violence.

And so I just wanted to start with that and acknowledge that today because that is absolutely what drives the CPC.

We can roll into the next slide.

CPC was built by community.

What happened today in council and community members sharing their outrage, their grief, the trauma that they've experienced based on an unacceptable level of police violence that was occurring, is exactly what happened back in 2010.

The fatal shooting of John T.

Williams, who was an indigenous blind and deaf woodcarver, who was killed tragically by Seattle Police Department, caused 33 community-based organizations to write a letter to the U.S.

Department of Justice asking for an investigation into the Seattle Police Department.

That investigation was completed, and DOJ acknowledged the concerns of communities.

And in doing that, Seattle then entered a period of 13 years of federal oversight under a consent decree.

And as we saw last September, just days after the 15-year anniversary of the killing of John T.

Williams, the consent decree was lifted.

CPC was in support of that decision.

Not because the police department had reached a level of satisfaction in terms of the community concerns that were originally brought forward, but because the CPC did not believe that continued federal oversight would be effective under the current administration.

And today, CPC is a permanent civilian oversight body within Seattle's police accountability system.

We do that through a partnership with Office of Inspector General, Office of Police Accountability, and also Seattle Police Department, who is part of that police accountability system, and we work with them as well.

You'll see our statutory authority at the bottom of the slide, and you'll also see a picture to the right.

That's John T.

Williams.

He's posing with one of his carvings.

Right next to me, I have the story totem.

This was carved by his brother Rick Williams, who is now one of our commissioners.

And I'll show you the next slide.

Now we have 13 out of those 15 seats filled.

There are three appointing authorities, the mayor, the city council, and the CPC itself.

We have a few seats that are earmarked for specific roles and representatives.

For instance, we have uh two seats that are earmarked for Seattle Police Department.

Um, one is the SPMA and the other is a representative of SPOG.

We also have uh two attorney seats, one is public defense and the other is civil liberties.

Um those two attorney seats are currently vacant, and we are looking for commissioners that are able to serve and contribute uh to the work of the commission.

Um our commission at large is community leaders.

It is folks that have a demonstrated track record of advocating for police accountability work and are representing their communities.

We continue to engage with not just these representatives, but members of the broader community.

And I think that you know, as some of the conversations that I had the privilege of having in council chambers today, really center me around the need for our continued work with survivors, which is some of the work that has already begun under our community engagement director, Celia Jackson.

And then you'll see the staff.

Last year when I gave this presentation, there was less of us.

At this point, CPC is fully staffed.

We have 10 FTEs and we have 10 talented people serving in those roles.

Our staff is multicultural, our staff is multilingual.

Our staff all have a demonstrated track record and also a passion and a talent for connecting and engaging with community members.

As we heard in council today from Castile High Tower, and I agree with the statement that she made, community is the voice.

There are some times where organizations like us talking about uplifting the voice of community or being the representatives of the community, being the voice of community.

Community is the voice of community.

And I think that our job is to use our role in government to make sure that community has a seat at the table.

And I think that was a lot of the theme of what we heard from community today.

That is part of the evolution of CPC.

I think CPC has not always been successful in that regard.

And the work that we're doing seeks to be transformative in that we are looking more and more to center those voices most impacted in a meaningful way.

Next slide.

Our 2026-2027 strategic plan.

This is a regular theme that CPC does and is looking at very differently this time around.

We used to do three-year strategic plans.

They used to be huge, organized by consultants, and then they sat on a shelf.

Now we're doing something that we are hoping is going to be much more actionable, much more measurable, and much more validated and led by community.

Our strategic plan now is being led by our deputy director, Dr.

Keith Wheeler.

It is a two-year plan and it coincides with the biennial budget cycles.

Why?

Because a budget is a policy document that talks about the priorities of government.

And so the work that we're able to do is based on the resources that we are provided.

And so we have aligned our strategic planning cycle with the budget cycle in order to be able to do work that is both within our mandate and within our resources.

And later in this presentation, I'll talk a little bit more about the resources part of it.

But the spoiler is the CPC is drastically under-resourced to do the work that it needs to do.

Here you'll see four goal areas.

I won't read them all to you, but you will see us moving in several different operational areas that are part of our work.

Our work starts with community.

It starts by what we are hearing from community.

That goes directly into our policy advocacy, and then our communications work tells all the story.

The infrastructure at CPC, its leadership, its executive operations team is all about making sure that we are using our resources appropriately in order to put the infrastructure, the processes and the systems in place to make sure that this work is successful.

Next slide.

Being led by community means we've got to listen to community.

We do that in a number of ways, and this that you'll see here are two different examples of how we do that.

We have a community survey, you'll see on the left-hand column, some of the reoccurring themes that we're hearing from communities that are coming in through our community survey.

That community survey is translated into a QR code, so it is digital, and we invite folks to participate in the survey in a number of different opportunities that we that we have out in community.

Some of the themes that we're hearing through the survey are concerns about safety and neighborhoods, a lot of concerns about immigration and ICE, concerns about bias on the part of SPD, concerns about surveillance technology, and also about SPD response time, which I shared with council last year as well, that we've heard from many groups and particularly some of our indigenous residents here in Seattle.

On the right-hand side, you'll see information that we collect when we're in the field.

What does that look like?

Well, we go to community engagement events, meetings, and other settings with community.

And we complete what's called an after-action report after that.

After action report lists the event, the time, the number of people, the demographics of those folks, the feedback that we heard at that event about SPD and recommendations and synthesis from S from CPC staff based on analyzed and not feedback.

We also tag a number of themes as at the end of that after action report.

It's similar to hashtaging.

We have things on that list like immigration response time, the kinds of categories that you see on the left hand.

And so that allows our policy team to have a powerful tool that they can use to search for information based on what we've heard from community.

If there's a question about immigration or there's a directive from SPD around immigration, the policy team can type the word immigration and pull up the different areas and settings, opportunities where CPC heard feedback about immigration directly from community members, and that helps to guide and inform our work.

But we also engage with our commissioners through community engagement committee and our police practices work group.

We often invite subject matter experts to meet with those folks and share answers to their questions.

I think one of the things that's been really important for CPC is that we don't want to be loud and wrong.

So when we are opining or when we are lifting up what we have heard, we want to make sure that we're fully informed.

And so CPC makes really regular meetings with subject matter experts to learn more about their work.

I'll talk about that, I think, in an upcoming slide here.

We will take tours.

We've toured the RTCC along with the RTCCs in two or three other cities.

We've toured the RTCC in New Orleans and in Greensboro as well.

So that we have kind of a global or national view on what we're seeing in terms of surveillance technology.

And so what we hear across the board from community members is, you know, there are some really common themes.

Community members, they want to see visible safety in their neighborhoods, but they also want to have meaningful constraints on how policing happens.

One really good example is the conversation that we've been hearing around surveillance.

I think that you know, about a year ago, I was talking with council member Kettle yesterday.

About a year ago, we were seeing community members very strongly and almost unanimously, especially in public settings like in council public comment against surveillance.

We're seeing an evolution of that conversation now.

Communities are not monoliths, and so when we talk to black communities about what they want to see in terms of surveillance, they're not speaking with one voice.

The folks that are for surveillance also do not want a blank check on surveillance.

They've asked for certain guardrails and protections against you know concerns around civil liberties and other harms that could come if the technology is used in ways that are not beneficial to communities.

So I think that one of the things that I've really seen evolved with the CPC is a nuanced understanding of what community members are saying.

These are complex issues, and advancing community perspectives doesn't mean that you just advance the loudest, it means that you recognize the complexity of the conversation and you lift up all of the voices in that conversation, and when possible, give them direct access to the conversation.

And there are examples of us doing that as well.

Next slide.

Here's a case study about CPC's translation of community voice directly into policy.

At last year's council meeting, I shared a picture of myself and Sany Paloca.

She is an elder in the Tongan community here in Seattle.

She worked for the city for decades and retired recently.

I met her at a community event.

It was actually an event from one of our commissioners that leads a nonprofit called Oceana Northwest that focuses on supporting Pacifica community members.

At that meeting, I learned from Sany about experiences that she had with the crisis response team in SPD.

She talked about having to call SPD several times to respond to her son who was experiencing mental health crisis.

This was a terrifying experience for her.

She was basically caught in the balance between wanting to get help and fearing that the help was going to come and cause harm instead.

She said on a number of occasions when that crisis response team responded, that she experienced an empathetic, gentle and loving response from SPD, and specifically from this team.

And she was wanting to make sure that that was heard.

She wanted to make sure that her experiences were also getting back to SPD.

And I told her I'm gonna make sure that we elevate this.

But a concern she had is what about other families?

Are they able to access the same response when they have crisis or when they need help?

And so our team engaged with CRT staff.

We met with them to understand the program better, and in that meeting, we actually invited our accountability partners to the table.

And so, you know, OIG attended to learn more about the CRT as well, and we had a really robust conversation with their team.

But one of the biggest things we learned is that they didn't have the sufficient staffing or positions to be able to cover all of the SPD precincts.

And especially with a co-responder model where an officer responds along with a mental health practitioner, this is something that you know it requires a certain amount of capacity, because as we all know, a number of um of calls that require this type of mental health response require that level of expertise as well.

Um so we advocated.

We were engaged directly by council member Rink's office during a budget development process, and they asked us for feedback specifically on SPD's budget.

So we lifted up the concerns of SAINY Poloca and we lifted up what we'd learned about the CRT team.

Um and based on our advocacy and our recommendations to council members, they were able to secure agreement for funding for two additional FTEs in SPD's budget to be allocated for CRT.

And so I just wanted to show that through line.

There are many other examples of this, but I wanted to show that through line of hearing directly from a community member and then being able to translate that into results.

The day that our team was able to talk to the CRT and share with them that this was something that was going to be coming to them, some additional resources and staffing, it was a phenomenal conversation.

The day that I was able to tell Sani Paloca that this was something that we were able to advocate for based on your feedback, was a beautiful conversation, and so this to me is what it looks like when we're able to use our access to share information directly from community members to decision makers to be able to give them a seat at the table to be able to share what matters most to them.

Now, in addition to our continued advocacy for resources like CRT, we are also really interested in an alternative response based on the same type of feedback that we're hearing from communities.

There is a need for a response that is outside of law enforcement and that comes with a different set of skills.

I think that this is something that even at our last CPC meeting, we heard SPD acknowledge this very specifically.

And so we are experting ourselves on alternative response in order to learn more about how we can support communities, especially considering some of both the expansion to care and also the limitations to care that are placed within the SPOG CBA.

Next slide.

Quantifying translating community voice into policy.

You can see here some of the numbers.

You know, we uh we don't always stop to count our work, but um when we do, we are able to kind of look back at a picture of of things that are different because of CPC's involvement.

Our flagship case in 2024, beginning in 2024, was really I think part of CPC's reactivation.

At that time, when I came on board in August 2024, and as many of you know, CPC was in a huge time of transition.

There was leadership turmoil, there was turnover within the organization, and communities largely felt that CPC was not serving its needs.

At that same time, a crowd management ordinance had been proposed by the executive, and CPC activated really quickly with about three or four staff members at the time to be able to gather community feedback on the proposed legislation.

I think we met with almost every single council member on that dais.

And when that final ordinance was passed, nearly every single amendment had incorporated feedback from community that was presented to the council by the CPC.

So this is powerful.

And in the city's motion to exit the consent decree, CPC was named specifically for this work as well.

And again, you'll see on the bottom the authorizing ordinance for this type of work.

Next slide.

Looking forward, we're both learning but leading into partnership.

One of the things that you know has been a huge part of my leadership in government now having worked for the second time for the city, for the county and for the state of Washington, is the journey that government needs to make to truly become anti-racist.

And so, as a part of that journey, we've partnered with the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, also known as PSAB.

They have a training that is called undoing institutionalized racism.

A lot of folks know it.

It's been used in and outside of government for many years.

We're hosting professional development.

Some of you have already received invitations to that, as have our partners, and even some of our partners outside of the city, like the Seattle Public Schools.

We want to work together in partnership to become the type of city and the type of system that is truly anti-racist.

And in moving through training and professional development like that together, we have an opportunity to learn those skills, but also to practice those skills in the way that we work with each other.

Also leaning into partnership, we have a number of initiatives that we're really excited about engaging with our partners.

You heard from OPA earlier, our opportunity to lean into the work around the complainant impact statement, would be amazing and also is really relevant again to the comments that we've heard from community members in council today.

We are advancing policy development, and I've spoken already about alternative response.

We are looking at centering youth voice and strategic engagement.

There is a pro equity principle that says that the people most impacted should be the ones that are at the table to be able to develop solutions.

In some of the most recent tragedies that we've seen in our city that involve youth, and those that council member Kettle referenced today in his comments, we know that youth are the most impacted by some of the recent and regional gun violence that we've seen in the city.

And so to that end, we are looking to partner with local youth organizations.

This past March, we hosted a town hall with the Rainer Beach Action Coalition.

It was shortly after the double homicide that occurred in Raynor Beach outside of Raider Beach High School.

And I think that just continuing to look at uplifting the youth voice.

We're doing some work now, specifically with Rainier Beach and with Seattle Public Schools to hear more from the students about what they need in terms of safety.

And we've been having a number of discussions around different practices that the Seattle Public Schools is considering right now.

On that bottom right column, we have some examples of that.

That is the school resource officers conversation, metal detector technology, which we've toured other cities to see how they have implemented this in both middle and middle schools and high schools.

It's actually beyond metal detectors, they are using systems that are called evolved scanners that look at the shape and density of weapons rather than just anything that dings metal.

So we're learning a little bit more about that and the both the cost and but but some of the concerns and risks versus benefits of implementing systems like this in Seattle, and also just looking generally at student centered safety practices through SS safety plan.

Next slide, please.

This is our final slide.

When it comes to budget, and I recognize the city's current budget deficit scenario, uh, community engagement work is often the first thing that's cut.

We sometimes don't think of it as mission critical.

But when we look at Seattle's civilian-led oversight system, um, we see the need for a system that makes space for community voices.

We cannot do it by ourselves in government.

We cannot sit inside of concrete towers and decide what is best for communities, particularly when it comes to policing.

The CPC is historically under-resourced.

We have 10 people to deliver on a mandate that is far broader than our partners.

Um, and so equity principles dictate that we invest in the things that are important to us, and I believe that that is community-led police accountability work.

I have some ideas that I'll engage council members in as we move further through the budget development process about how we can shift existing resources within this government in order to be able to meet those needs.

I think that when we are looking at budget deficit scenarios, CPC is in a public safety bucket, and I believe that it is not a matter of um us being under resourced uh as a public safety bucket, but just how we're using those resources.

And so I'd like to share those um ideas with you, council members, as we move forward in that process.

When it comes to sustaining what we've built, it is really important that a civilian-led police accountability system has teeth, has the ability to back to be able to actually impart consequences if we are not seeing the outcomes that we are expecting to see in community.

But the accountability ordinance as written sets the CPC up by design to fall short of the expectations of the community.

For instance, if the CPC disagreed with OPA's findings, say, for instance, the CPC disagreed with OPA's findings with respect to the May 24th protest, hypothetically, CPC would be constrained from being able to comment on the results of those closed cases, on the sufficiency of those closed cases, and that falls short of what communities are expecting.

What we heard in council today is when we hear comments on a body cam that are outrageous to communities and fall short from the expectations that they are that they are rightfully looking for, um, they are expecting our government to react.

Right around the time that we learned about some of those comments, there were it was it was shortly after the killings of um of residents in Minneapolis by ICE.

I watched their politicians losing their minds, outraged, and I didn't see that reaction in Seattle.

There was a point at which I was I was I was I was meeting with folks and saying, why is CPC the only one that's made a statement on this?

Why haven't we heard earlier from SPD?

And so I guess what I'm saying is that in order for us to be effective, we can't be hand handcuffed by the ordinance that was meant for us to actually be impactful in this system.

When it comes to our relationship with our partners, we are not stakeholders, we are not a community organization, we are accountability partners, and we expect to be able to lend our expertise and our involvement to the issues that matter to communities.

That is why we exist.

Um I appreciate the support from all of you council members.

I appreciate the support of our accountability partners, um, all of you, and most of all, I appreciate the support of community and continuing to push this system into something better because it's what the people of Seattle deserve.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Ame.

Uh, really appreciate uh to conclude yesterday's meeting with you, also um Deputy Director Wheeler, um, I believe the policy director um Darling was there.

Um, forgetting terms of the staff, but I'm definitely as well.

Co-chairs Wes, very important to hear from her and um and uh and Merkel uh joined in as well.

Um appreciate your briefing.

Um we'll add that um you know, and your comments regarding alternative response, that's an area that we're gonna be working in the very near future, and also gun violence.

Um you mentioned uh, you know, gun, you know, the uh near beach, so I appreciated Commissioner Nasimbi from the CPC being on the ground with me and Councilmember Lynn as we walked around uh the whole circle, three schools, a park, and and you know, these different areas within in the community that have been infected by gun violence and continue to be as I mentioned with today's um earlier chair comment talking about the 18-year-old uh who was shot, uh, who was a Renier Beach High School senior.

So colleagues, uh thank you uh for um persevering.

I I know we're well past our time and we're running up on other meetings probably canceled, and then we have full council.

So I just want to thank all of your participation, um, you know, in terms of the colleagues plus uh council member rink and foster for joining in, and then and then most importantly for our accountability, well, two pieces accountability partners um that were able to join us OIG uh OPA and CPC that we just heard from, and to include and sometimes uh you know um some mentioned SPD, and it's in a sense it's true in terms of being a partner on accountability, and uh so it's very important to hear that and and to have the public comment um that we heard at the beginning of the uh of the meeting.

Um, unfortunately, that after public comment created a situation where we had to go remote, um, but here we are at the end of the meeting.

So, again, I want to thank everybody for having this opportunity because I do think it's important to hear from our accountability partners on the issues that they're facing to include budget, so thank you for those budget pieces and um and then how we can improve and then having as we did with the first item having SBD um be there speaking to the Sentinel Review Um that OIG um oversaw.

So again, thank you uh for running and uh we got two minutes to one, so we're well passed, and so we've reached the end of today's agenda meeting agenda.

Um, is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Um don't think so, but I look forward to following up with my colleagues and everybody uh involved.

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

So thank you so much.

I appreciate it.