-All right. Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Over the last several months,
Aurora Avenue North and adjacent
residential neighborhoods have been facing
escalating gun violence.
Largely driven by commercial sexual exploitation,
aka, the sex trade.
This has included running gun battles
and multiple shootings overnight.
I've heard frequent
and understandable alarm from residents and businesses
since I took office.
We must need to disrupt this activity immediately
in order to preserve the safety of our community
and our neighborhood. An intensive,
multilayered approach is needed to stop the violence driven
by commercial sexual exploitation.
Here on North 101st Street,
we see how environmental design through road changes made
by SDOT at my request can be part of the solution.
As well as recent increased police presence
as part of the solution.
But we also need to give police officers additional tools
to disrupt this violence, to disrupt the sex trade
that is affecting girls as young as 12 years old,
while providing diversion for victims
of commercial sexual exploitation.
Consequently, I am proposing legislation
to disrupt commercial sexual exploitation
and address the correlating gun violence.
The legislation creates a new crime
of promoting loitering for purposes of prostitution,
a gross misdemeanor.
It also includes loitering for the purposes of prostitution,
which clearly applies to buyers in addition to the sellers.
With diversion being the preferred approach
for victims of sexual exploitation.
Survivor groups that I've met with
have emphasized the importance of applying laws
to johns and pimps.
The city's previous law did not include a --
did not do so, and I am determined that we will do so.
The city's previous law also did not include a preference
for diversion, or -- and so we are doing that today.
Our schools have been affected as well.
There has been ongoing solicitation and recruitment
by those engaged in the sex trade, buyers, sellers,
and pimps
of Ingraham High School and Robert Eagle Middle Staff
students near their schools just a few blocks from here.
Cascade Elementary School has also been in the crossfires.
This proposal also includes a Stay Out
of Prostitution Area or SOAP.
Roughly all of Aurora 85th to -- excuse me.
To 145th, and roughly two blocks on each side.
I would note that Shoreline has a loitering law,
and they also have a SOAP area
that has been very effective as a deterrent.
There are, of course,
exceptions allowed for people
who need to access medical appointments
during business hours.
But it is my intent that by establishing a SOAP area,
we will clear this area,
we will make it safe for our neighbors, our children,
our businesses,
and that it will serve as an ongoing deterrent
to this criminal activity.
I want to thank the survivor groups
who've met with me a number of times
to inform this legislation.
As well as the Human Trafficking Unit
of the Seattle Police Department
for their collaboration and assistance.
And also the City Attorney, Ann Davidson,
for her collaboration through this process.
I'm very pleased to be joined here today by a number
of my colleagues and also members of the community.
And so at this point,
I would like to introduce my colleague,
Councilmember Robert Kettle,
who is Chair of the Public Safety Committee.
Thank you.
-Good afternoon. Can everybody hear back there?
-Hard to hear. -Hard to hear?
-It's like the mic isn't doing anything.
-Well, here we go. Thanks. How about that?
-Yeah. -Okay.
First, I want to thank everyone that came out.
It's great to see the community out here,
the business owners, the residents, and,
of course, the press, too.
I'd like to thank City Attorney Davidson for joining us,
and especially Councilmember Moore,
who has been engaged in her D5 community, your community.
And has been hearing your voices and acting.
This community, your community,
is hurting from the crime
and unacceptable surge in gun violence associated
with the sex trade. Especially along Aurora.
This morning,
I noted how other neighborhoods have been struck by gun violence
and how sometimes a sense of, this is how it is, settles in.
We need to fight back.
They -- -- and we are not resigned.
We cannot be resigned to our fate,
and we will also not accept the status quo.
We cannot.
I applaud Councilmember Moore for tackling this problem
that is causing so much pain in presenting a solution.
So oftentimes, there's talk but not action.
It's complicated,
but I'm confident moving forward with her leadership,
along with City Attorney Davidson.
Our strategic framework plan
to address the permissive environment
that underlines our public safety challenges is our guide.
And this effort today shows intent
and provides tools to law enforcement to take action
to help those women, sadly girls,
trapped in abuse and the neighborhoods too.
Your neighborhood. When I say the problem --
the focus needs to be on those carrying out the sex trafficking
and profiting off the abuse of women.
For those caught up in this sad situation,
we need to find diversion and support options.
The goal here is not to punish those who are also victims.
Instead, to offer an opportunity to walk away and get help.
As I've mentioned before, in 2022 and 2023,
we had Councilmember Davidson supporting us in our communities
and our city, along with Mayor Harrell,
working hard on the public safety challenges that we face.
In 2024, the differences our new Council,
with leaders like Councilmember Moore and others
on the new Public Safety Committee.
Yes.
That is working collaboratively in a One Seattle way
to meet this public safety challenge head on.
To close, I want to thank you for being here today,
particularly all the residents.
All of you along there on the fence.
It's so important to have your voice heard.
As we move forward, we need to lead with compassion,
with empathy for the women trapped.
But also the wisdom
to know that we have to look out for the whole of the community.
And this means you who have gathered here.
Our neighbors, our businesses,
to include the businesses around Aurora,
like Emerald Smoothie and the Teriyaki Place.
All these local businesses
that have been impacted by what's happening on Aurora.
And by giving the tools to our police, our prosecutors,
and our courts to take action in what they need.
Thank you very much for having me here.
I really appreciate the opportunity,
and I'll pass it back to Councilmember Moore.
-Thank you very much, Chair Kettle.
I appreciate your being here,
and your leadership on the public safety committee
and the public safety in general.
I'm very please to introduce our city attorney, Ann Davidson.
Who is also leading her charge on getting our city safe again.
Thank you.
-Thank you so much, Councilmember Moore.
I have said to you in person multiple times,
but I'd like to say it in front of many
of your community members.
And I say it with a lot of emotion.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for picking this up.
I have waited for somebody
who would be willing to step into this space
that has been neglected,
and overlooked, and not said out loud.
So I greatly applaud Councilmember Moore
for saying it out loud so we can capture this neighborhood,
and bring it back.
And make it whole and make it safer for everyone,
and say we will not overlook these women and
girls any longer.
We will not act like they are invisible and unseen.
We will say you are worth it.
We care enough to act and to intervene,
and to disrupt this criminal enterprise
of trafficking women and girls.
As Chair Kettle had said,
this legislation takes on a new place
where we are targeting every actor
in this criminal enterprise.
It is the intent to divert women
that are involved in this sex trafficking.
We are there to look for off ramps and exits.
That is the purpose of it,
but we do need to be able to engage with them.
We do need to have a meaningful disruption of people
who have gone to come
and purchase in the sex trafficking industry.
And we definitely want additional tools.
When we cannot have a felony proven case for our King County
prosecutor, that we have additional ways
to target those who are interested in coming here
in an established area of our city.
And we want to disrupt that known market
where they want to come
and profit off the trafficking of women and girls,
and no longer will that be allowed.
We want to make sure we are focused on disrupting that.
And so promoting prostitution and loitering
is an additional tool that was not there before,
that I think is very important to focus on,
that that is not okay to do. All of us are human beings.
We all deserve dignity and respect.
And that includes everyone in this North end.
Thank you.
-Thank you very much.
I am very pleased to introduce Dana Mogillo from Fuzzy Buddies.
Thank you for being here.
-Thank you. Hi.
I've been asked to talk about my experiences
as a business owner on Aurora. I own Fuzzy Buddies,
which is near the corner of 109th and Aurora.
We've been there for 20 years.
It's become a very challenging place to run a business.
And I've definitely lost clients because it does feel unsafe.
It is unsafe.
There's visible signs of crime day and night up there.
We deal daily with the city's inability
to move out the organized crime groups
that have moved sex-trafficked women and girls in,
as well as guns and drugs.
I have too many experiences to even tell you right now.
So I will narrow it down to just the most recent.
Yesterday -- -- there was a sex worker in our parking lot
at six o'clock in the morning,
just as my staff and clients were starting to arrive.
She was dancing in my driveway,
in the bus lane, and in the turn lane.
She was at times preventing my clients from moving
into my parking lot.
And she was approaching my clients in the parking lot.
We asked her to leave three times.
The last time we asked her to leave -- and we were being nice.
The last time we asked her to leave,
she walked up to my staff person and said,
"Go ahead and call the cops."
So this isn't the only time.
This isn't an outlying example of things
that happen in my parking lot.
My clients often get approached by sex workers
in my parking lot.
A male client will turn in,
the sex worker will misunderstand why.
And suddenly a dude
that is just there to pick up his dog from dog daycare,
looks like he's picking up a sex worker.
Johns will come into my parking lot
and hang out waiting for a sex worker.
I don't know why these guys can't park normally
like other people.
But they usually hang out in the middle of my parking lot.
So people can't, kind of, conduct business with me.
Pimps will hang out there as well.
So I frequently have to go out and ask people,
pimps, Johns, and sex workers, to move off of my property.
A couple weeks ago,
one of my staff went out into the parking lot
and she saw a sex worker hiding between two cars.
She said, "Hey, what's going on?"
The woman said that another pimp had brought a girl in
and dropped this other woman off to fight her.
This woman did not want to fight.
So she was hiding, scared, in my parking lot.
My staff person ended up driving her
to another location on Aurora.
And in her car, this woman was hiding,
so that the people looking for her couldn't find her.
I had another woman show up at my door in May
who was terrified.
She was crying.
She had been abducted from another city.
She had been brought to this neighborhood
and told to go stand on the corner and make money.
She was scared.
She ended up hiding in my business for four hours
before someone could drive from her town
over here to pick her up.
This is what sex trafficking looks like.
There was a sex worker abducted from in front of my business.
The FBI stopped by to see if we had surveillance footage.
There was an attempted abduction of a sex worker
one block from me.
There is just -- this is not a safe situation for anybody.
For me as a business owner, for my staff people,
or for these women
that are in this abusive employment situation.
One of my biggest concerns right now goes beyond that, though.
It is the assault on two neighboring business owners.
This is an elderly couple in their 70s
who have run a business on Aurora for 30 years.
They were in April assaulted by several sex workers.
The woman was hurt so badly she had a brain injury.
The man was also hurt trying to protect his wife.
These are 70-year-old people
who are being the victims of retaliation
for speaking out about the sex trafficking,
and the continued work of the sex workers
on that corner of 109th. That is a big corner
where there is almost always a cluster of sex workers.
That makes me afraid.
Because I am someone that goes out into my parking lot
to tell pimps, Johns, and sex workers to move on.
Now I have to worry that I'm going to be the victim
of violence
or that my staff is going to be the victim of violence
as we work to try to maintain our parking lot
as a safe space for our clients.
So look, these women are not women entrepreneurs.
These are women trapped in an abusive employment situation.
We cannot be complacent about this anymore.
We can't continue to just excuse this as regular Aurora stuff.
It's not. I've been here 20 years.
This is not regular Aurora stuff.
This is sex trafficking of women and children.
This is guns. This is gun violence.
This is drugs. This is crime. It's dangerous and it's wrong.
And it's time to do something about it.
Thank you. -Thank you so much.
I think I'd very much like to introduce Mikal.
Mikal? -I'm sorry, thank you.
I was distracted by that --
Sorry, I need a quick second also to pull up my notes in case
I forget anything. I mean, first,
I just want to build off of what she was just saying.
A neighbor a couple of -- well, a few blocks from me,
also a business owner. Lived close to Aurora
and was also attacked by a group of some of the women and a man.
Simply for trying to get into her parking spot
and doing the quick beep to say,
hey, I've been sitting here for a few seconds.
You know, please let me through.
And she's no longer in the neighborhood.
It was difficult for her to move out,
but she didn't feel safe anymore.
Anyways, that aside,
I guess I'm here to hopefully represent myself as well,
as a lot of the other neighbors.
A lot of them couldn't come here today.
I'm surprised to see so many people here.
It's amazing.
And I also know a lot --
And a few of them are scared because they've --
you know, they've tried to do something before.
They stood in front of a camera before
and there's been retaliation.
Most of the time, being in this neighborhood is great.
That's why I'm here.
That's why I want to put roots here.
That's why I want to build community.
But we have lots of problems.
The simple ones, the ones that don't bother me too much
but are still kind of gross, are, I'll say,
balloons on the ground.
I don't want kids to, I don't know, pick up a balloon.
That would be gross. I've seen needles on the ground.
I've seen people going to the bathroom where they shouldn't.
Sometimes as revenge,
but sometimes because that's just where they decided to go.
Sometimes it's a drunk guy.
Sometimes it's the women that are working on Aurora
because they don't have anywhere to go.
I don't know.
You know, really loud cars, all that kind of stuff.
People breaking into mailboxes, cars getting broken into.
The thing that's actually bad, though,
the thing that I really want to talk about is the gun violence
that is a direct result of all the human trafficking,
pimps fighting for territory.
There may be some other reasons as well,
but we know that that's a big part of the problem.
As neighbors, we've gotten together,
tried to figure out who are these people coming in
and out of our neighborhoods, trying to watch them a bit,
working with the police,
sometimes three-letter agencies to reduce the human trafficking.
Yeah, it's hard.
So sorry, I'm a bit more nervous than I thought I would be.
But I'm just going to hit some highlights
of some other bad things that have happened,
like, to really emphasize the seriousness.
I've had tires slashed, verbal threats.
We've had some guy drive by in a really nice car,
stick his hand out of the window at a camera
with what looked like a gun.
The camera wasn't good enough to make it out for sure,
but we're pretty sure that it was.
Regardless, it was a serious threat.
Given that there have been gunshots, especially right here.
You know, for me,
this all started about a year and a half ago.
Just speaking from my own experience now.
I woke up at -- I think it was 3:00-something in the morning
to gunshots literally two houses away from me.
At that point, I was new to the neighborhood.
And boy, I've got to say, there's nothing like gunshots
to really get you to know all of your neighbors very quickly.
It's a great community builder.
But yeah, I've learned a lot.
I guess that's a fun way to put it.
I learned that a bullet hole can go through a garage window,
a garage wall, fly 20 feet, and embed itself in a wall.
In that case,
it almost hit their -- it was very close to
where the grandfather was sleeping.
Thank goodness the garage was in the way,
or that the -- because -- I don't want to say it,
but you get the picture. For me, most of it has been --
my own experience has mostly been one of fear.
You know, I've been warned to talk in front of cameras,
for instance, and here I am being very smart.
Fear and sleep.
I'm tired of waking up at 3:00, or 5:00,
or 1:00 in the morning hearing gunshots and reporting it.
I don't like the fact that I know the difference
between different kinds of weapons.
A semi-automatic, a bump stock, other, I don't know.
I never needed to know that information before,
and I've learned it now just from hearing it.
And then talking to my neighbors and go, oh yeah,
that's this kind of gun, that's this kind of gun.
Great, I don't want to know that kind of stuff.
I don't know. Anyways, I'm sorry.
I think I'm going to stop here soon.
But the thing I want to emphasize is the stuff
that we're doing, it felt pretty hopeless at first.
The gun violence was just ramping up and up and up.
It started with a few gunshots here and there,
near our house, a few blocks away.
It started increasing to the point
where there was -- I remember, a two-month period
where, you know, we would notice a lot more cars driving by.
You see the same car circling every night,
every half hour or so.
They're usually driving fancy cars or really beat-up cars,
all that kind of thing.
You know, after you've seen it enough times,
you realize, oh,
there's probably going to be a shooting tonight.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
You just stress and agonize over it.
You get woken up at 1:00 or 3:00 in the morning.
You can't go back to sleep.
You try to check your cameras,
hoping you can find some kind of evidence
that can somehow help the police or somebody
do something about it.
After getting together with a lot of my neighbors,
and talking with Cathy Moore,
and the police, and other organizations,
we finally started to see some results.
I finally have some hope again.
That's really good, and I just really want to continue that.
There's a variety of solutions.
They're not all perfect. Some are short-term.
Some are long-term.
But collectively, we have felt the difference.
I have been able to sleep.
Maybe someday I will forget what different kinds
of guns sound like. That would be really nice.
Anyways, thank you.
-Well, thank you.
I really want to thank both of you in particular
for being out here.
I know it's a scary thing to do to be public.
And I actually want to thank all the neighbors
who also had the courage to appear here today
and be supportive.
Nobody deserves to live in fear in their neighborhoods.
Nobody deserves to live in fear of retaliation for,
you know, speaking out about what's happening
in your neighborhood.
And so, I just wanted to be clear
that this is really driven about public safety.
We're not here to demonize the women
who are engaged in abusive activity.
We are here to provide them an off-ramp.
But more importantly, we're here to target the buyers.
And we're here to target the pimps.
Because they are the ones who are driving the gun violence.
And it is the gun violence that is the most --
poses the greatest threat to our citizens,
our children, our families, our neighborhoods,
our ability to function as a thriving city.
As the One Seattle.
And that has really been the impetus of my desire
to bring this legislation forward.
And again, I just really appreciate everyone
who's come out here to show your support.
I'm going to open it up now for some Q&A
and be moderated by Jesse.
Thank you. -Hi. Questions? Let's go.
-Oh, my God. You're giving us mics.
Okay. I won't abuse the mic. Councilmember Moore,
the reentry work group recommended against these kinds
of SODA and SOAP areas on the grounds
that they disproportionately end up --
they end up disproportionately jailing
people of color, women of color.
And that they don't work and haven't in the past.
What about this is going to be different
than previous SOAP areas?
-Can I use the mic? -Should we sit back?
-We're professionals. -Thanks.
I tried this mic, and it didn't work.
Yeah, thank you for that question.
I guess the first thing that I would note
is that it's true that women of color, girls of color,
are disproportionately represented in sex work.
So we start from that baseline.
And that really did come into my consideration
in making sure that when we're addressing loitering
by the women and young girls that we see out here,
that the preferred disposition is diversion.
Diversion to services, diversion to safe houses,
diversion to treatment.
In terms of SOAP,
we just have to look north to Shoreline, 145th and above.
They've had a SOAP for many, many years,
and it has been very effective.
Initially, they had to engage in enforcement
to get the message out.
But when I spoke with their police chief up there,
they said, "We don't have to do that anymore.
The message has been sent
that this activity is not going to be tolerated.
And so this activity is not there."
And so it is my hope and intent with the SOAP
that we shut down the track.
The historical track that has been Aurora.
That we send a very clear message that buying,
selling, and promoting is not to be tolerated.
And that people will get that message and,
I don't know, they'll no longer be here.
Which is the main thing that we're looking for,
is to create safety for this community.
-Councilmember Moore, we're standing in a spot
where there have been at least three shootouts
in the last two months.
Where does the investigation stand on those?
You've previously said those were pimps
fighting over turf area.
What leads you to that conclusion?
And where's the investigation on those shootouts?
-As a city,
we don't have enough money for more than one microphone.
Anyway, so that's a very good question.
I appreciate that.
Right now, I'm waiting for an update on that
from Captain Aagard.
I have been meeting with her on a regular basis.
The information came from SPD.
And they are the ones
that have been tracking what's been going on,
really keeping -- you know,
they have a gun violence unit up here.
And so they are the ones that have been telling us
that there's a very strong correlation
between the sex trade and the gun violence.
Because it's very, very lucrative.
That's what's going on. So I'm continuing to be engaged,
and I'm happy to give you an update when I have an update.
-You already just kind of talked about it,
but help me to understand, diversion,
enforcement versus prosecution?
Making people do something. Right.
So the focus -- so if there were to --
so this allows police officers the ability --
the legal authority,
and I might turn to city attorney
to elaborate on this a bit more.
But to actually approach and inquire.
And to also offer the opportunity to participate
in services rather than being arrested.
And that is really the goal with the people
who are selling their bodies, basically.
But for the buyers and for the pimps,
we are going after enforcement.
We are looking to -- perhaps with a first-time buyer,
there might be diversion
to an educational program and counseling.
Because ultimately our goal is to stop the behavior
and to educate people about the incredible amount of harm
that is caused by this behavior. That's what we want to do.
But for the pimps and for the buyers,
there do need to be criminal sanctions.
And that's what we're pursuing.
And I might turn that over to city attorney.
-Sure. Yes, thank you. So -- oops!
Sorry, I'm trying to -- oh!
Well, that's not very -- We are --
-I'll take that for you. -Okay.
Thank you. -Thank you.
-So with the -- for the workers, for the women,
it is, as I said,
in the law, they can request that it's a diversion.
But they have prosecutorial discretion as
to what we do on a case-by-case basis.
But I am saying that that is the goal.
We are not looking to incarcerate or arrest,
and book, and all the things women
who are caught in the sex trafficking trade.
We are wanting to provide a way to intervene with them
and have a communication with them.
In addition to now, we have -- for the buyers,
it is a simple misdemeanor.
so punishable up to 90 days in custody.
But there is, again, on a case-by-case basis,
the ability to maybe divert at the early time, first time.
But after that, you need to understand,
you're contributing to this criminal enterprise,
continuing and growing.
And then aiding to the escalating gun violence
that's associated with it.
And then for those -- as we talked about, for the pimps,
that is a gross misdemeanor up to 364 days.
That is, again, a supplement,
that if there's not enough evidence
that it's not filed at the felony level,
that we can then have a lower crime
that is now the promoting prostitution/loitering,
that we can then pursue somebody who's there to traffic.
And we can come with a larger consequence
for that type of activity.
-Can you just explain the legal threshold?
Because typically, previously,
you needed an offering of agreement for sex
to arrest the John.
So promoting prostitution/loitering,
can you just, kind of, break it down for me?
And also, I guess subsequently, like,
if you're going after a pimp,
don't you need somebody to come forward and say,
I'm a victim -- of prostitution?
And I don't know, gross misdemeanor for, you know,
these guys running around with guns and shooting at each other?
And are jail booking restrictions --
I mean, is this really a big hamper?
-Sure. Go ahead.
-I appreciate your very well-educated question.
So -- I agree with your last point, first and foremost,
that I believe it is felony behavior.
But I'm saying when we don't have that evidence,
when we don't have a victim who's willing to cooperate,
what can we do instead, right? It isn't just to give up.
And what can we do in addition to that?
And so if there is the activity
that is shown to provide the evidence
for promoting prostitution/loitering,
that does not need that, right?
The same with the purchase of it,
it doesn't need the offer and agreement part.
It just needs to have the different type of activity.
So we're trying to provide stopgaps in a way for
when we can't find,
from an evidentiary standpoint,
the things that should be at the felony level,
like I agree with you.
But something that we can at least go
and help with the community
because of the associated violence
that is increasing in this neighborhood.
We have to be able to do something.
So we're providing additional mechanisms
by which we can be responsive and dynamic
with the current events that are happening as they evolve.
-So a police officer goes up to a car,
how does that work where we get to an arrest?
-Well, again, I don't direct the police,
that's at the mayor's level.
But again, it's to provide additional ways
that they can interact with people
that are seen in that type of a space
where -- we all as regular everyday people,
you would kind of understand what is happening.
When there is the beckoning of people
over to the car numerous times.
You know, money may be coming out,
but there's not the actual ability to prove
from an offer and agreement standpoint.
That there's additional tools that we can have available.
-Can I say something? -Yeah.
-I just wanted to follow up on your question
because you make a very good point.
It goes to, hey, why do we do anything?
Because we can't.
We have the booking restrictions.
We have, you know, shortfalls in SPD staffing
and everything else.
That goes to the point that I was saying earlier that,
hey, we were just saying that, oh, we're resigned to our fate.
This legislation shows that we're not resigned to our fate.
We're not accepting the status quo.
We're pushing forward.
And that shows intent.
And that shows what we're doing in the city across the board.
You know, whether it's the SDOT contract,
the recruitment bill, the vacant buildings legislation,
the abatement bill,
automatic license plate readers for our police officers.
And just recently street racing in addition to the score ILA.
It shows our intent.
It shows that we're pushing on all fronts
so we can attack the permissive environment.
So I appreciate your comment
because it really highlights this thing
that oftentimes people say, oh, we have all these hurdles,
so we're not going to do nothing.
Well, all these people here don't want us to do nothing.
We need to do something, and that's what we're doing.
So we're going to hit this in many different ways.
And that's in our intent, and that's what we're going to do.
-We have time for one more question.
But happy to take other questions offline.
-The neighbor. -She's already --
-I'm a member of the press.
Councilmember Moore -- -You don't live here.
-Councilmember Moore, just a quick question.
These -- sex work is already illegal.
Buying sex is already illegal.
All these things are already illegal.
What -- the PDA which does diversion,
put out a statement saying
that the state of drug areas laws and laws
like this basically criminalize a noncriminal activity,
which is just being in an area.
What does adding a gross misdemeanor
to all those other things
that people can be arrested for now accomplish?
-Prostitution is illegal. It's illegal at the state level.
Prostitution is illegal. Loitering is not illegal.
You know, two years ago, the prior city council repealed it.
So what does this do?
This gives police the opportunity
to come back and engage.
Both either to try to work with the women
to get them in services, and treatment in a safe house.
To basically reduce the supply, which is driving the demand,
which is driving the gun violence.
It also gives them an opportunity
to create arrests if they need to.
SOAPs are a way of creating a safe neighborhood,
and they're a way of creating deterrent.
So you have to look at it as a deterrent.
And it isn't that they're not engaging
in just any old behavior. A court order's been entered
because they've been found to have been engaging
or presumed to have been engaging in illegal activity,
and we always set terms of condition
when we release people who've been arrested.
It's no different than that. Thank you.
And I think we have one question here.
-Erica, I just wanted to follow up that answer
by saying as well that, you know,
I recognize what the old council was looking to, you know?
And I agree with the goals, you know?
With the end state that they were looking for.
It's just like how we want to help the women on the street.
But we can't rely on a hope strategy or a wish strategy.
You know, our efforts need to be grounded in reality.
They need to be practical.
So yes, and I respect those around the council
that voted for the bill that,
you know, decriminalized the loitering.
But the result of that bill is what we're seeing on Aurora.
So we have to find new ways -- going to my last question,
to attack the problem, to address the problem.
And give the police the tools
and the ability to access the men that are involved.
And sadly, the women are that, kind of, access point.
So again, this is not about, you know, criminalizing.
It is in one sense,
but it's about offering an opportunity
to get off ramps for the women.
But most importantly,
to get to the men who are responsible for the violence
that we see on our streets,
the crime that we see on our streets,
the lack of sleep for these residents, and all the like.
And we look to go through this process, and we'll do so.
And through, you know,
the legislative process to get to a place
where we can help the neighbors here and along Aurora.
-What can we do as residents?
-Keep recording. Keep recording.
-Thank you. I'm Martha Vandermark.
I live about four blocks that way.
I am a 67-year-old who lives alone in a very small apartment,
backed up to an alley.
Early July, the gun chase shootout
that went down this street,
I listened to that in the middle of the night.
I heard it. I was petrified.
It's not the first or the last time.
I know that many people here are afraid of the gun violence here.
I just want to say it is terrifying.
It is absolutely terrifying. The second thing I want to say
and ask is that I have a history.
I've been a nurse for 37 years,
just recently retired, and worked at Mary's Place,
one of the shelters.
I know a little bit about diversion
and the challenges of helping people
who are on the street for whatever reason
to make a change.
So one of my questions is,
is there going to be some muscle behind the offer for diversion?
And the second thing is when is the timeline for this,
and what can we expect?
Because we need change now.
-Thank you very much. So yes, there is muscle.
There will be muscle.
I mean, there's always the ability for an arrest,
a filing of charges and potentially going to trial.
Again, that's not our intent.
Our hope is that the offer of diversion will be accepted.
And I want to also note that in addition to this legislation,
in this fall I will be making a request
for funding to set up an emergency receiving center.
We have some in the South end.
We have some in the North,
but we don't really have any in District 5.
We need a safe place for women and children to be able to go.
And so, I definitely will be pursuing that.
And then in terms of what can be done,
this bill is going to be introduced
into the Public Safety Committee on August 13th.
I would strongly encourage all of you to come
and provide public testimony.
You can have one to two minutes depending on
how many people are there.
It is going to be exceedingly important to the passage
of this legislation that all of you show up
and make your statement for one or two minutes.
Because there are people
who don't necessarily believe this is a problem.
People who don't necessarily believe Aurora
and our neighborhoods up here deserve the kind of attention
that I know, and you know, you deserve and need.
So it's going to be critically important
to have your voices heard on the 13th
to continue to email the rest of the council,
to email the mayor's office.
And if we have a second committee meeting,
to come to that committee meeting as well.
And make sure your voice is heard at every opportunity.
So thank you very much for being here today.
-Thank you all for being here.