The West Seattle Chamber of Commerce held a Public Safety Roundtable discussion at ArtsWest Theater Monday Feb. 27 with Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz, King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion and District 1 City Councilmember Lisa Herbold. Questions were solicited from member of the chamber to be merged and posed to the panel members. The discussion was moderated by Dan Austin, owner of Peel and Press and Co-Owner of The Bridge restaurants. The event was hosted by Whitney Moore, Executive Director of the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

 

 

Dan Austin 

We understand the priority of SPD is responding to violent crimes over property crimes. What is being done to deal with the seemingly escalating number of break-ins? 

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

Well, you know, I know that everybody's been impacted by a lot of the break-ins. And over the last couple of years, we've seen that escalating type of crime from burglaries to car prowls to a lot of theft that has been occurring so last year we read kind of the all time high when it came to overall crime, but specifically roughly that property crime. 

We have seen a drop and we're really trying to make sure the businesses report crime because when we see it, a massive drop that we're seeing over the last several months and really this last two months, we've actually seen probably about just in the month, 1400 less reports of general offense reports. So it's really hard to put a strategy together when we're not getting maybe sometimes all the accurate data that we need to be able to put that strategy together. 

So one of the things that you know, we're really first and foremost, you always start off with crime prevention. So Jennifer Danner in the audience right there. She actually does a lot of stuff as far as crime prevention. Whether it's CPTED, which is crime prevention through environmental design, they're offering, you know, stuff related to motor vehicle effect which are the club type of objects to secure vehicles, but they also offer just suggestions on how to secure your business. The second part is really about making sure that you know, we established what type, what types of crime people are the burglars, what types of crimes are involving. So a lot of people are involving sometimes property damage by people that are escalating behavior and people, you know, people in crisis. And that is a challenging issue for a lot of businesses. 

We were just chatting prior to this where somebody came in and threatened employees. And, you know, officers eventually responded. 

We were able to actually, involuntary treat the person to actually get resource services, but that's a very common theme that isn't just happening in West Seattle. It's happening all over the city when we're dealing with people in crisis. 

They could stem from a burglary or a theft or harassment and and it's escalated into a situation where employees are starting to feel a little scared to come to work. 

And so part of that is, is we want Personal Safety workshops as well, we want to make sure that you know, people feel safe in their business. And it's also them working with the prosecutors office. So when we do have the cases that we’re actually prosecuting on many of these cases, we've been running operations on motor vehicle theft and made a number of arrests on that. 

Working with the prosecutors office, hopefully you know that is really trying to make sure that they get charged because you're trying to change behavior. 

And then the second element is we're doing a lot of stuff on organized retail theft. Businesses that are impacted. Westwood Village is a great example, getting impacted by a lot of Organized retail theft. Captain Rivera is actually in the audience as well, and I know that he's really trying to set up processes to make sure that we're doing a lot of operations to address those issues. 

And so in general it's really trying to make sure that we're pinpoint targeted to the issue that we're we're experiencing.  

What businesses that are impacted? When we also find is repeat locations. 

What is a location that's generating multiple calls for service such as burglary? 

So when somebody says like I've been burglarized like three or four times. Is there a reason why that business is being targeted? Is there something that's in that business of how they're how they have  laid out that is actually making people say I want that item, right? You know the cash register is close to the door or whatever that might be is trying to find those processes and trying to figure out how to work with those businesses to reduce that potential. 

Dan Austin 

Like redirects here, how do we get in touch with those programs? Like the environmental design. And, you know, personal safety for employees, workshops like that, that I see a hand wave for the audience here. 

What's what's our best resource to go around in engaging with that? 

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

So there's two things and so if you're in the audience, like I said, Captain Rivera is is the is the precinct captain. 

He's one part of the precinct in getting a lot of the sworn resources, but also the crime prevention coordinator Jen Danner is also really great for just getting the SET TED, you know, doing assessments, getting the women's personal safety workshops, so there's a variety of different things that she can offer. And really to businesses or to just even people, just not associated with businesses. I would suggest if you can, reach out to both of them, we also have other crime prevention coordinators. 

So we have six crime prevention coordinators that are throughout the city and Jen Danner is just the Southwest precinct coordinator here, so she can focus on this area. 

 

Dan Austin 

So when we have something like a person in crisis or tagging or smaller violation that back in the day, people might have called 911 about at this point, resources or lights. 

Sometimes we don't think that maybe the police are the best to jump in with a mental health situation or whatever. 

What is the best way to make sure that we get you that information? And you can track the data without maybe tying up 911?

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

So we actually have an online reporting system. Let me tell you, it's a little archaic, so. Councilmember Herbold heard me say this a little bit. It is right now the system that we have. However, we're actually working to rebuild a a system. So we're working with the company, also working with two companies, one to actually do it in translation, so being able to be more responsive to a variety of different languages, but also do it where I'm hoping to have the system up and running by June. As you start to think about in the summer months, right now, our system currently operates about 40% of our general offense reports. So that's it's a good way of of being able to report stuff and being able for us to be able to track it and be able to have a good targeted plan to address those issues. But the idea is that in the summer months, we're going to have a variety of different events that are that are attached to the city. 

So we've got the Major League All Star game that's going to come into town. We've got Pride. We've got 4th of July, we've got Torchlight. We've got Seafair. And so that is going to limit a lot of our resources. So we're trying to make sure that we're still capturing the crime data and being able to still be responsive to what the needs are that are going on in our communities, and so hopefully we'll have that operating by before June. So we can go live and be able to be more responsive in different languages as well.

 

Councilmember Lisa Herbold 

Yes, thank you so much. So glad to hear Chief Diaz talked about the online reporting system that is one of the things. And he said June. That was one of the things that's really important to me that we get fixed before the end of 2023, so it's on my high priority list of things to do. I really appreciate the opportunity to work with the department in helping to define the scope of what's most important to the community, I did want to mention as it relates specifically to organized retail theft that you may have heard me talk about, the fact that Council member Lewis and I asked the city auditor to do an audit of both the cities approach to organized retail crime as well as other jurisdictions throughout the country, and we are expecting a report back the end of first quarter and hopefully it will have some actionable recommendations for things that we can work together with the department to put into place as best practices. One of the things that we see with organized retail crime is that people are fencing goods and sometimes fencing goods online. And so that's one of the issues that we're trying to look at is how to reduce that market element of organized retail crime. 

 

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion 

If I just add something you know pre pandemic we had a Seattle police officer come and do one of the women's personal safety classes for women in our office and hands down women who attended found it very valuable. I also attended in my life partner is a retired Assistant Police chief and I also found it very valuable. There is a lot that can be learned just even by how you use your voice. And while everyone is aware of situational awareness, having like very specific things that you can do to kind of really put a fine point on that is really powerful. Also with regard to the audit on organized retail theft. Both the city attorney's office and my office participated in that, and one of the things that I appreciate about the audit is that look, not just that the organized retail theft that we all see, we kind of go in, smash and grab and some kind of organized way, but also the fencing. So it's really important to tackle both of those, and I'm sure I'll get a question on organized retail theft. 

 

Dan Austin 

Between COVID restrictions and sentencing guidelines, the common narrative right now is that we're kind of in a catch and release release situation. Can you explain sentencing guidelines? I know when we had a conversation it was enlightening, and how other agencies in different levels of government have authority over that process. 

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion 

Sure. So our sentencing guidelines are essentially our state laws on sentences for crimes. It's created by the Washington State Legislature and we in the prosecuting Attorney's office are bound by it. But we don't make the decision on sentences. Those are judicial decisions. 

Judges make those decisions, now how it interplays with the jail and some of the things that we were seeing during the pandemic, we did have to reduce jail population, not just for the safety of the people who were incarcerated and detained in the jail, but also because our Corrections Officers Guild demanded it in order to keep officers safe, so we are coming out of those restrictions. 

When I was the chief of staff, I did spend the early part of 2022 working with our Mayor and our King County Executive and our City Attorney's office and Police Department to get the executive to ease up on some of the jail booking restrictions and he agreed to do that. 

It was a great help to the city attorney's office as they were addressing their high utilizers initiative. 

So that was that's how those two things in our play in the broader scheme of things, when someone is arrested, they are entitled to a hearing within 24 hours and it is the judge that makes the decision on whether to issue bail and whether to release someone or to keep them in detention. We make arguments, we make recommendations, and we're always very candid about that. Judges have to follow different rules and they look at different factors and they don't always make decisions that we agree with. 

 

Dan Austin 

Thank you for that, and I would like to point out a lot of judges run unopposed, so if you are upset about people getting paid or whatever to look at who you're electing to be a judge…we should pay closer attention to who we're having make those decisions. 

The staffing shortages we have with SPD and the dialogue we had in 2020 around defund and subsequent Council actions, which I will, yes the vote happened and then never really took place came. 

Back so the 50% of the fund didn't happen. Do you believe that? Had a part of recruiting issues with the SP officers and retaining officers and What role does the? Council have in getting. The city's police force back to an appropriate staffing level. 

 

Councilmember Lisa Herbold 

Yeah, just to be clear, we never voted on a 50% reduction. There were two motions, One by my colleague, Councilmember Sawant. That motion failed for getting for even getting a second. The second motion there was a vote on it. 

But it was just an amendment and it failed eight to one, so there was no successful vote to reduce the Seattle Police Department by 50% ever at any time.There's a lot of factors that go into the fact that we have over the last 2 1/2 years, almost three years now, lost 500 officers at the Seattle Police Department. The fact that we were talking about reductions in the Seattle Police department, I agree, was a factor and the difficulty for police officers at that particular time during the protests was a factor. But this is a national issue. The issue of separations from department and the difficulties around around recruitment. A police employee research forum has has found that every city across the country has had large numbers of officers either retiring, in some cases retiring early or or quitting and the recruitment numbers again in every city across the country are down. 

I think the the numbers are like they don't have them in front of me and I've quoted them in my blog on many on many occasions. I'm happy to provide them, but it's it's really surprising it’s eye opening we've had we had for every industry both public and private workforces. It's called the great resignation again every part of the workforce has experienced it and we have to be nimble and creative on how on how we're going to address filling vacancies that that have been created over the last almost, three years now and we have been working with the department Chief Diaz in passing, mentioned the Council enacted incentive program that actually provides a financial incentive for new officers coming to the department and an even larger incentive for officers coming from another another department. So one of the questions that was sent not to be jumping the gun, but  whenever somebody has a good idea, it's always wonderful to be able to say we did it. 

One of the ideas that I think was submitted by members of the public is, well, why not pay officers for referring successful candidates to the department and so part of the recruitment and the recruitment bonus program includes not just for police officers but inclusive of police officers, a $1000 bonus for anybody who successfully refers somebody who then becomes an officer in the Police Department. 

There's a lot of other things that the department has been doing, both in the in the area of changing its recruitment practices, how people are screened, how we process applications to speed up that process, because often one of the things that happens is when by the time there's an opportunity to to join the Academy, sometimes people have found other other opportunities because of the length of time that it often takes to screen people's applications. So there's been a lot of work that the department's been doing in conjunction with the mayor's office, using the funding that the City Council provided to to do this work, I also wanted to say in each of the budget years for 2021, 2022 and 2023, the City Council, each of those three years fully funded, the staffing plan for the Police Department and this with the staffing plan the hiring plan is to fully fund it means to provide the maximum number of dollars that SPD believes it can spend to hire as many people that they believe that they can hire based on past practices, so I think it's really important that we're clear about the facts around the department. 

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion 

So just last Thursday I was with the Association of  Prosecuting Attorneys, the 35 most populous county elected prosecuting attorneys and the police staffing issues are in every major jurisdiction in the United States. What Seattle has going for it is Chief Diaz and I have one another on speed dial. We reach out to one another all the time, and I know that he is also on Natalie Walton Anderson and Ann Davison's speed dial. And here's an example of why that matters. 

When you're down resources, you need to have a single point of contact or single points of contact where you can reach out and get immediate response. And Chief Diaz and I were in a meeting and he came up to me when they had arrested two prolific taggers in the city of Seattle. And the first thing he said to me is. We need your office to work hard to keep these individuals in jail and we successfully did that. We coordinated with the Seattle City Attorney's Office. 

Most of those tagging crimes are misdemeanors, but because these two individuals had created so much harm, we were able to aggregate the value of damage, and we filed felonies against both of those individuals.  

So that's kind of the important thing that has changed in our community when resources are down, we have to be more coordinated. 

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

Actually, I couldn't agree more, and that that's that's a great example, you know, especially when when people go, oh, you know these these are might be smaller price but they have so much of value to or they have so much impact in our community you know and one of the things that we've you know I've done a lot more. 

Is leverage our federal partners. So I have actually on speed dial with all of our federal partners, whether it's ATF, US Marshals and we're really being able to to utilize all those resources, especially to address the Fed and all that's been impacted in our communities. And that is is such a huge issue when you look at it you know just literally five years ago when we would cover around 500 pills for the year and last year over 1.1 million pills…enough to kill this entire city. 

It is just amazing just on how much influx of drugs… and that that creates a huge impact for the community because we're not just dealing with sometimes people in crisis, but adding the fentanyl on top of that is a whole other dynamic that's reason you find people in a very in a different kind of state where they're not able to sometimes control Sometimes they become more assaultive and. So and we've had ups and downs with this, you know, when you look at about 10 years ago with meth really kind of came up on the on the market. 

It was really very difficult to really deal with people that are experiencing the use of meth. 

And you know we figured out how to deal with that, but now fentanyl is the new drug and I'm sure in a couple years we'll end up finding some new drug that you know people will either mix with with another drug.

So it's really trying to make sure at the end of the day that we're getting certain resources and services, but also being able for us on the federal or on the partner side is really utilizing all of our our federal partners to be able to help us, you know, really tackle the problem with sometimes those that are really just trying to harm our community as well. 

 

Dan Austin 

How do you think the Black Lives Matter movement has impacted the culture of SPD? Relatedly, since you've taken over the helm, the department, how have you addressed the core issues of the movement around officer mistreatment of citizenry? 

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

So that's actually really a great question because you're really trying and when I took over people were talking a lot about culture change and you know, really, how do you figure out how do you impact the level of the department. 

You want to make sure that the department’s accountable. You want to make sure that it's doing its job by, you know, addressing crime and disorder. 

You want to make sure that it's also, you know being responsive to the community's needs because you know a lot of our community wants to make sure that it's it's being, you know, given resources, and that arrest isn't the only avenue. to address the issues. So one of the things that I had done is a lot of work in the community and spent a lot of time in South Park. I actually lived in West Seattle for probably about a good decade just over by Fauntleroy Church and so when I was living there, I actually spent a lot of time in, in the community. 

So Denny Middle School, Chief Sealth High School, I was actually a coach at Chief Sealth High School for wrestling. And so when I was doing that work, I learned a lot from the schools, really understanding trauma, informed care and. 

I took a lot of the knowledge that I had and built a program called SPD Before the Badge. So we actually take brand new recruits prior to the Academy, bring them in for 45 days and infuse them into one area of building up the resiliency of them, the wellness of them. But it's also having community conversations, difficult community conversations with communities that have been impacted by police violence, so we, we intermix them with, you know, the black community. We intermix with native communities. We intermix them with the Asian community and really have very, very difficult conversations. 

And it really helps them understand like this is a community I want a place in. Then you become more mindful. 

So we should also focus on social, emotional learning and brain development. 

And this is the first of its kind in the country, and it really has already kind of taken off since May is when we first launched it, we've actually had every recruit. 

Since then, that has gone through… I think we're like the 15th cohort of our officers, but it really is the way I look at it is every officer will go through this. 

If we have a higher 125 officers over the next five years, that's 600 per personnel. That means that over half this department will have been infused with this type of expectation of what we want from our police officers. 

But what's really important out of this is. We focus on that level of culture change, but it has to start at the very beginning when you start to look at right now if you talk to London, you talk to Ireland. Talk to Scotland, Peru. 

Whatever country you can imagine, their academies are one year to three years long. And they don't give them a gun. Our academies are 4 1/2 months and we give a gun hoping that we'll have a better outcome. It's just not possible. And so for me it was like, OK, we're going to bring in SPD Before the Badge. 

That's 45 days. That's a month and 1/2 extra. Then they come in for 4 1/2 months of an Academy. Then they're going to come in to post, wait for another couple of months. So it's really trying to extend the amount of time that they have. And what my expectations are. People will talk a lot about, you know, the Academy training people will be Guardians versus warriors. 

But the problem is that the Academy still grades people on use of force, still grades people on defensive tactics how to shoot. How to drive fast. How to  do all those different elements of it. But what if it is to grade people on how to interact with the community?

And so that's where I asked before the badge really takes takes that place. And so this is really to me this is going to end up shifting the way culture looks.  When I look at just over the last couple of years from 2019 to 2022. Last year, we made more arrests than we had when we had full staff. We actually had recovered the second most guns that we had in the 13 years that we started tracking. We actually, reduced our use of force from 2015 by half, by 48%. So that is a great marker. 

So it's great work by officers, but then I looked at complaints and we had about 900 and some complaints about 960 complaints in 2019 and we were about 450. So we've reduced our complaints by half. 

And so that's really where you're trying to figure out how do you get that culture change? You want to make sure you hold monsters accountable, but you know, when you're making that arrest, you're recovering that many guns and seeing the complaints drop like that?

That's the hope that you're actually trying to drive. This is that officers are going to do it right. They're going to do it in the most thoughtful manner, and they're using less force. And so that is really where we end up heading in at least in the direction and so far it's been positive. We're already starting off 2023 in a good place because we're seeing violent crime drop. We've actually over the last six months have seen like close to about 26 to 30% drop every single month in violent crime and so if we continue to see those outcomes where crime is, you know, maybe potentially especially violent crime is dropping, that officers are doing it better, it's going to have an impact over the next couple of years. 

 

Dan Austin 

This question was actually for the city attorney's office, but I think I could pass it to you since you. 

Could you explain how coordination between the city attorney's office and King County's office works?

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion 

Sure, this is a great question for both offices. So the relationship between city attorney's office and my office has never been stronger. 

So not only do Ann (Davison) and I talk and meet on a regular basis because we're setting the culture and the expectation for the affice we also have the lead of their high utilizers or high utilizers initiative and our high level prolific offender team that meet and talk every single day. 

They pick up the phone, they call each other and we're trading information not just on individuals who are committing repeat crimes, but also the individuals who are cycling in and out of our care and treatment facilities because we need to know what's going on there. 

Running there, I started this partnership with Ann, who's been great partner when I was chief of staff in 2022 and from January until the early part of fall, we actually drove down organized retail theft in the downtown core by 20%. We've all seen the video footage of individuals who walked in and they're sweeping perfume bottles and other merchandise into bags. A lot of those crimes are misdemeanors, but when we trade notes and we aggregate the value of the loss we can take this to felony as additional accountability. 

The other thing we did, both offices work together to train our loss prevention officers. A lot of the larger retail stores and chains have them, and while they can do a great job on the investigation, the final part of it, The referral actually has to come from police, from law enforcement because they have to sign…It's called the Certification of Determination of Probable Cause, and that's where that single point of contact became so critical. 

Officers needed to know who, in the prosecuting attorney's office do I call when I have a question or I want to know if this person received it in my office? It's Nicole Lawson and Susan Harrison, so police officers know that. 

And so we started with the downtown core and now we trade notes on all parts of City of Seattle. 

It's been a great partnership. We also know because Ann Davison shared this, she inherited with an office of unfiled charges. 

We know that during a lot of the pandemic, misdemeanor crimes weren't being reviewed and they weren't being prosecuted and she had to dismiss a lot of cases that had either reached the statute of limitations or very near the statute of limitations. So that was just an additional challenge. And we saw that we saw that in our community. But our office’s coordinating the relationship’s never been stronger. 

Councilmember Lisa Herbold 

About Before The Badge I wanted to just flag for folks that the first of the Southwest community conversations that is actually part of Before the Badge is I think it's, I don't want to say Monday for that. So I think it's today. 

Whitney Moore 

That's right now.

Councilmember Lisa Herbold 

It's right now there but there will be more though I think there's another another one southwest later on in the spring and I just really encourage folks to get along, it's that. You can go to Publicsafetysurvey.Org to sign up. 

Dan Austin 

As the Council of Public Safety Chair, do you have any planned legislation or budget items for 2023 that would support security or preventive measures against property crime for suffering small businesses? And I do want to thank the support we've had for the window recovery. 

I know I've lost a lot of windows. But are there ways to you know, maybe not get those windows broken in the 1st place? So is there any any planned legislation to help out?

Councilmember Lisa Herbold 

You know, I know one thing that I mentioned earlier is that we're getting this ee're going to be getting a report from the auditor on on retail theft. And so there will be some recommendations in that report and some of those recommendations might require legislative or budget act, so that's sort of in the hopper. 

And we'll see on that. As far as things that Councilmember Nelson, who chairs the Committee on Economic Development, what she she might have planned for increased support of businesses that are are victims of crime I'll certainly support support that effort if there are more initiatives planned there. One of the things that I. know a group of hotel businesses have recently come to me about is about the difficulty associated with insurance increasing and they have expressed an interest in using Visit Seattle and Visit Seattle is it's sort of like a BIA Business Improvement area and they're looking at using that business improvement area as a way to provide basically as a capacity for peoples Insurance that has increased. 

I don't know if that's something that this particular BIA I would consider.

Another thing I know that the DSA is doing in depth or the Downtown Seattle Association we were talking earlier about about personal safety. They are making available their safety ambassadors to walk people, employees to their vehicles or their transit. So folks feel more safe coming, coming back to work because particularly in downtown, personal safety is it's a real chicken or the egg thing. We need people to come to work in order for it to be a more safe environment. I don't know if the issue of personal safety is such here that people would be interested in having somebody help them get to their their vehicle in a safe way. But again, we could always look at using the BIA as a mechanism to direct funding to the needs that this community identifies. I'm open, open to do so. 

 

Dan Austin 

That's awesome…

I just had a mental health issue. I mean, someone in my business the other day. I know we've talked about creating, you know, was it the the response from the fire department, we have kind of as a test launch right now, but where are we in in legislation or programs moving forward and getting some mental health folks out on the street to help address some of these issues? 

 

Councilmember Lisa Herbold 

So since 2020, the Council has repeatedly provided funding to stand up and alternate 911 non armed response for low level acuity calls. We do. You're right. We do have Health One that is part of the fire department. But that is really for physical health responses and not so much when somebody is purely has behavioral health issues. The Council has worked with the mayor's office as part of a work group to identify an objective of focusing on a particular subset of behavioral calls, health calls as a pilot and then focusing on what are person downfalls and wellness checks. And we actually have a briefing in my Public Safety Committee tomorrow with the Community safety and Communications Center, formerly known as 911, for them to come and talk to us about their development of their new dispatch protocol, which it has to serve, which is basically the foundation that makes it possible to to refer a call to somebody other than SPD or the fire department. There's basically a decision tree that has to be part of the dispatch protocol, so they're going to come present tomorrow. But I will say I am very, frustrated. We have every year since 2020 we've been sort of socking money away in the executive departments to stand this up. I am very frustrated that we are not further along than we are. 

There are other cities who were able to stand up alternative responses during pandemic, Denver took its STAR program, which was used to be… looked a little bit like our Co-responder program, which was you'd have an officer and a social worker going out together in a car which we you know, we currently have that model, but they evolved that model to a model where only the non uniformed response is occurring with responded to thousands of calls and not needed an officer to to come for back up. 

It's always important for our officers to have situational awareness of these calls, so in case they are needed but Albuquerque is another city that has already stood up a new third department,  I'm hoping by having these periodic debate, periodic briefings in my committee, that we can continue creating some of these departments to get this up and running. 

 

Dan Austin 

So if I would recognize the funding you put forward that's been pushed forward constantly. So it's in the executive’s hands at this point or for there for negotiations between departments and that's where we're at? OK. A lot of us been waiting and thanks for keeping funding it. 

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion

Can I talk a little bit about mental health and mental health challenges that are facing our community? 

So, you know, there are kinds of three levels of our mental health crisis as I see it, as a leader in this community, one are the individuals who are mentally ill and definitely need treatment so that the behavior stops and we must figure out a way to meet the need and the size of the need in our community and offer treatment on demand. 

It shouldn't have to be someone brushing up against the law or committing a crime to get services. 

So that's one kind of important component piece and funding will definitely help with that. Capacity will help with that. 

Another area is our involuntary treatment at court. This is something that is a long term goal of mine. It's not something we can address right now that may require changing state law.  

Right now, when a crisis responder is called to the scene, they make a determination of whether to refer someone for involuntary treatment acquisition for 72 hour hold. That is right now a very contested proceeding, I have prosecutors who are working with hospitals and mental health specialists to keep someone in treatment against their will, and I take that very seriously, but on the other side of the table I have public defenders that are fighting for the release that is often to nothing. Into the streets. 

My goal is to change our state laws, which haven't been updated in a very long time and make that a more collaborative court where we have mental health professionals, judges, prosecutors, police and defense attorneys working together to get someone help in the least restrictive means possible before they de-compensate and commit a crime.

The other benefit of having it there in court is we have our mental illness for dependency tax, which is therapy courts aren't authorized to expense, so if we could work together to change those laws, I think we would have better impact and better outcomes. 

And I think it's more humane to people who are in need of treatment. 

The final area, and this is these are people who have committed crimes, sometimes very serious crimes, and either the city attorney's office or our office has charged them with either a midemeanor or afelony, but they have been deemed by a judge incompetent to stand trial, which means they don't understand the charges against them and they are unable to participate in their own defense, which are both required constitutional requirements. 

Western State Hospital Restoration of Competency is a wholly state responsibility, and the Department of Social Health Services is simply not accepting people for competency restoration. Beds at Western State Hospital are full and it has been, I will be honest, hard to get the attention of our governor and some of our lawmakers, and it could be very well because we're in session. 

But this is something that should be a priority for our state lawmakers, happy to be a good partner and happy to be at the table and work towards solutions. But I don't control state dollars and neither does the city. 

And this is something that's impacting all of us so it's just something to have on your radar screen. 

 

Councilmember Lisa Herbold

Didn’t the County just sue the state?

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion

We did. We have sought sanctions and that's to bring attention to the issue, but it's not going to resolve the issue. What we really need is an increase in capacity and one thing that was stated.  We want people to be aware of the issue, but, you know, we also want to come with a solution. So one of the things that state lawmakers could do is we think saw the article a few weeks ago that there are 400 individuals who are waiting to be licensed mental health professionals in our state.  And their licensing is just kind put on pause. And can we expedite that till we get those individuals licensed that would increase capacity, could we bring in or offer incentives for out of state workers? 

Could we act with the same type of urgency that we saw in the early days of the pandemic. 

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

So before when I was assistant chief and I had the crisis response unit. We actually did a full flow chart that that really looked at the competency to stand trial component. It's roughly about 1500 to 2000 people on any given time, that kind of fit that criteria. And so this does become part of that high utilizer. 

What ends up happening is is when they're released from the jail.  If after we make an arrest, there's no services to them. And so this is really and it's trying to figure out like it comes back to even setting up an alternative response. I was just meeting with DESC, a downtown emergency service center, and they don't have, they haven't been able to fill all their positions. 

Even though you know there and right now it takes a DCR, Designated Crisis Responder six weeks to be able to evaluate somebody that is in need now, and so they're even though we've got like funding that's coming in many of the services aren't able to actually meet their capacity because I think to this point like, how do we actually get people that are are trained and ready to be able to respond now? So trying to figure out how do you incentivize, whether you bring people out? 

I met with the UW School of Social Work and they're like, we're struggling to find people to take practicals so you know and you know, could you, you know be able to take some people and We're like, yeah. We'd love to, you know, because it's a need for us, you know, finding people to be able to do social work in our department and being able to respond out to service, we already have a history of it.  We have crisis for our crisis response to that has mental health professionals we have actually been working with law enforcement, assisted diversion or LEAD. We've been working with REACH and just care in many of our different programs. 

We have critical incident responses that you know having groups that are actually responding out to shootings that are community based groups. I mean we've got victim support groups.

There are so many things that we've actually already doing so, I don't want to not say that there hasn't been work done in alternative response because there has been so much work that has been done. And right now, some of the organizations are just struggling to meet their own capacity to be able to build those programs up because they need people. But trying to find the right the right fit in those organizations are just not there as well. So this is going to be a long standing problem, not just now, but I mean when people say like you know, unemployment is 3 1/2% or 3% or whatever it is. I'm like, where does everyone go? Like I don't understand it because there's so many jobs out there and I just and you know, whether people are working from home, but there's so much need in the community. And I just, you know, that's really just trying to find out where those people are. That, you know, we have jobs.There's so many areas where we can employ people. 

But it's just trying to find, you know, people. 

Dan Austin 

It's. I'm glad you mentioned the people either waiting to get their licensing or transfer from out of state. 

My wife works for a large medical organization and they have nurses trying to transfer in and they’re short staffed on nurses and mental health folks in there. 

And Washington state doesn't directly accept licenses from a lot of other states, and so people to come through and get relicensed, and it takes months and months and months right now, while people need treatment now. 

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion

Yeah, well, every jurisdiction may have their challenges. I mean, I just heard about this last week from Salt Lake, Mecklenburg County, which is in Charlotte, NC, heard about it in Dallas. I've heard about the Ramsey County. 

I mean, we are all kind of struggling with some of the same issues maybe for different reasons. 

That's not reassuring to folks, but it's honest. 

 

Dan Austin 

Well, I'd like to throw out same question to all of you guys. With this audience businesses as we have here, we all struggled through COVID, the broken bridge and more. So many of us have just called it quits or feel like we're about to call it quits. What advice do you have that we could do to support these issues and to move these things forward? Some of these headwinds that we're still feeling right now, you know continued break Ins after surviving COVID and economic loss from the bridge being. Is there light at the end of the tunnel. are we moving in the right direction? And what can we do to be part of that solution. What do you need from us as a business community?

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

You actually hear a lot from me about it because it if we can get businesses to be able to operate in every one in our communities, you're going to get more people out and about walking the streets and it actually helps reduce crime. You know, being able to be much more present and visible in this huge. When I start to think about, you know, people were talking about the downtown recovery and I just had to had the opportunity to attend the Convention Center opening up and you know, it's millions of square feet of people coming in and you start thinking about like, it's such a huge economic boost to the downtown, people go, gosh, you know, downtown is, you know, businesses are shutting down. It's quiet. No one's going to open up. 

So there's 7000 rooms that are all within several block radius restaurants will start opening up. When you start having you know a bunch of events. In four years, we're going to have a World Cup and it brings in close to 100 million dollars worth of revenue. |In the city this summer we're going to have All Star Week and that is going to bring huge levels of revenue into the city. People are going to visit all areas, they're going to come to Alki because it's just a huge attraction. 

I mean right now there's a movie industry really trying to highlight what Seattle has to offer and show this and highlight movies so people can come and visit all sorts of areas of Seattle. All of that is really a part of just inspiring people to actually come and visit and actually spend money and being able to open up businesses and being able to do it there. 

Just to me, it's just such a huge opportunity right now, but we're at the ground level and right now, I know it sucks just because, you know, everyone's had to endure for the last couple of years. But this is really an opportunity to really be able to grow something that's even bigger than us. And I think we just got to just be able to hold on for just a little longer. 

I mean, the way I look at it, we're hiring. You know, our hiring has been, actually really, really good. Our crime rate is starting to look a lot better. When it comes to crime people have been expressing to me that they feel safer when they're walking down the street. I know it's still rough. I know that it's still challenging for people, but it's like maybe there's a glimmer of hope that we'll maybe we're going to get through this, you know, and it's still going to be rough roads ahead, but at least maybe we'll be able to achieve what we want to achieve for the city. 

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion

You know, much like the Chief. Yes, I think there is a lot of hope I think. 

Our communities look very different than they did a year ago. I know that we have fewer people living in vehicles and those who were in tents in our streets and in our communities. And I also know that we've all come through something really hard, and sometimes it's really hard when, I'm downtown a lot, and I will say the state of downtown looks different from day-to-day. Some days I go down and I think 'Well, things look good" and other times I go down and I'm like, oh. "What's this? Are things creeping back? "

And that's just me acknowledging that maybe I have my own kind of reflexive kind of concerning fear that things are going back downward or spiral when we get so I want to recognize that it is very real and it's very human. And it's also true that I feel like the next day I come back and and someone has moved that community into services.Right? When we moved the tents from the streets and and then maybe two days later it looks a certain way, again. So we're in a state of flux, but I carry a lot of hope. I also carry a lot of hope because we have as leaders in the community been cooperating a way that feels very different as someone who's been in the Prosecuting Attorney's office for 27 years so I give that a lot of hope as well. 

Councilmember Lisa Herbold

Thank you. So for the last 2 1/2 years, I've often referred to one of the best things I've heard as an explanation for the challenges that we've that we've been experiencing. Chief Diaz used to say that 'social interaction is a perishable skill.' Just think about that. Think about being in your house for two years and not having the opportunity to practice social interaction and how that affects people differently. 

It doesn't affect the people in this room that differently, but there's a reason why we've had a spike in mental health crisis. 

It's the reason why we've had a spike in domestic violence in road rages, in suicides and gun violence, and a lot of that is attributed to just, you know, not being able to practice how to be together. 

And I really do believe that we as have our regular twice monthly meetings we sometimes say what we don't say public the first time I'll say in public, but I feel like we are turning the corner. I'm the Council Member representing District 1, not downtown, but I'm only going to refer to something I saw in a downtown report just to again to illustrate how that could function in a in a similar way for our West Seattle and South Park businesses. As has been mentioned, downtown crime has the data showing a fairly significant decrease, both in violent crime and in property crime over the last few months. 

The Downtown Seattle Association reported in at the end of January that foot traffic was at 90% of pre COVID levels, so it shows that there's a relationship there, as I think you've heard from all of us, there's a relationship between people getting out and using our public spaces in a productive or a non destructive way. 

Relationship with reduction of crime, relationship with the survival of our business districts. 

And so I think if we we continue with the collaborative approach and trying to address this sort of, again a little bit of a chicken or egg situation we are going to see that light at the end of the tunnel. 

 

 Dan Austin 

Well, just do a light wrap up. I will start with Councilman Herbold And that is. 

As the West Seattle Chamber has worked with you for years. So thank you, I know you're stepping off council at the end of this year, but thank you for working with us and and chatting with us and keeping the communication open. We still got about 9-10 months left of the chance to chat, but I just want to thank you. For your years of service with the city so. 

Leesa, congratulations on the election. Did have a quick question for Leesa on how's the staffing levels in your office? 

Are you guys able to move through things appropriately right now and with good speed, are you guys still picking back up from from the pandemic? 

 

Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion

Well, we actually have some attorney vacancies, just like every other major jurisdiction in the United States. 

We're having a hard time like bringing in lateral hires. We are having better success with our administrative service professionals. We did receive some additional COVID relief funding to help tackle that backlog. 

We are steadily working through it. While things aren't perfect, I feel like things are manageable and I also am really proud of the professionals in my office who are really leaning into the work? I'm working on it. 

 

Dan Austin 

Welcome to new position. So they work with you as well. 

Chief Diaz, Officers have been lost. Morale's been down a little bit. We've lost a lot. We're having trouble recruiting. And we all, I think as a community we want the best officers available and I know you guys are working to make that happen. How do we, as citizens, help hold the police accountable? 

What's our route best route for communication on that and also, what's the best thing for us to do to thank our officers when we see them and what's going to make them feel some love?

 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

I'll start off with the second first, so honestly it's just a thank you. 

You know, officers that have stayed with us over the last couple of years. They're committed to this city. They want to see the city thrive. They want to see what's best for the city. They're already seeing really good numbers. 

When it comes to just, you know, officer complaints being down, use of force being down and still their their work ethic is still achieving many great things, gun recovery and just the amount of arrests that they're doing and I'm also being more responsive to you know to getting people into services I mean I'm watching like stuff it's I've been putting out different video clips of officers and just how they've deescalated situations that literally maybe 10 years ago, it would have, it would probably result in an officer involved shooting and death and It's just the patience that our officers are doing now is so much more than when I first started. 

I tell you that right now it's literally just it. 

It's mind boggling, but you know we have a new generation of officers that I feel like are coming in this area, they're so much smarter than when I was, you know, coming into this job. They're technology savvy and one of the things is really just trying to build their ability to communicate because they've used technology to communicate and so really just trying to like, you know, really just get down to the dirty and just say, hey, this is how we talk to people. This is how we interact with people and as Councilmember Herbold had noted, talk about this as being you know, this perishable skill. If you don't have it, you could learn how to develop it. 

You just got to make the conscious choice to be able to do that. 

And and part of that comes into accountability, like when officers know that you know how they interact with somebody. And they're going to treat people that much better. 

And so and when they know that there's a level of discipline that's going to end up happening they are going to make sure that they're mindful about what they say and how they do it. 

And we've seen it just based on the reduction of complaints. 

And I hope that to keep that trend going and you know, I hope. That even when we hire more officers that still stays low. And I think that the best backup for the badge will be really that. That first onset of really teaching officers what we value in the city. 

So I think again, it's still going to be a work in progress, but as we build up our ranks that's huge.  And I I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to my mayor. I mean, he has really been a godsend and just trying to say you know you 'Chief,I need you to address some of these areas and need to address at 12th and Jackson I need you to address 3rd and Pike and you address some of the different things that are going on throughout this city. And he's, you know, giving me the latitude to be able to do it in in a very thoughtful and mindful way. 

I've done a lot more stuff when it comes to, you know, really targeting operations rather than just saying, OK, arrest everything that that moves and because that really creates a huge issue with disparities in our stops. 

And so really being mindful about behavior and what we're doing to address that behavior is, is a lot more productive in the way we do policing rather than you know, making it US versus community kind of mentality and so it's just a change of philosophy that I think will hopefully permeate over the next several years. 

 

Dan Austin 

Where do we send in either compliment or complaint? Like if we had a great interaction with a police officer or a concern, where's the appropriate you know? Where do we send that to? 

Chief Adrian Diaz 

So we when it comes to a complaint  we we suggest people to go to the Office of Police Accountability. 

And they do take commendations. We actually are running a new system through the Spider Tech that actually is when you call 911, it's actually a set of follow up questions that you'll get a system that will actually automate. 

This is to call you back and actually get information. We've been running it for over a month now and our rating is actually better than Delta Airlines and a lot of different companies that are like literally, you know, Fortune 500 companies. But like we're at 9 out of 10 when we're getting good, you know, feedback and positive accolades for our officers and that's, you know, we're actually trying to put out different information just so the officers just show, hey, like, this is the feedback that you're getting from community that, hey, they highlighted your people were compassionate or empathetic. And I think that that really helps the officers feel like, OK, my work is being valued. 

And so first and foremost, say thank you, but also commendations also will resonate really well with officers.