-I want to welcome all of you.
Thank you for coming tonight.
This meeting is really, really important to Councilmember Saka,
our team, the panelists here.
You've spent a lot of time to come here,
and we really appreciate it.
So my name is Elaine Ikoma Ko.
I'm the Chief of Staff for Councilmember Saka's office.
I'd like to also introduce Eric Schmidt.
Some of you know him.
He's our District Affairs Director.
Spends a lot of time working with you all.
And in the back, we have Logan Duling.
He is our newest Legislative Assistant.
He's our office scheduler.
So this is the team.
I'd like to first start thanking Erica with Neighborhood House,
Ella McRae with Seattle Housing Authority.
You all really helped to make this event happen last minute.
It was very late breaking,
as you all know, pulling this all together.
I want to also thank the Seattle Channel as our media partner.
They're here tonight.
Now, I want to also say it's really important
that that will be shown on Seattle Channel.
So anyone who has missed this will get to also see it,
and we'll make sure we have the link on our newsletter as well.
Okay.
So given the lateness in planning this event,
I want you all to know that we really tried hard
to get some translation and interpreters tonight.
And we wanted to use the professional ones
that are the city vendors,
and we were just not able to line it up tonight.
So we're very regretful about that.
It does take time to line it up.
So that's one thing I do want to mention.
And also,
I'd like to start really clearly what
we want to accomplish tonight.
We are focused on three neighborhoods,
and you know those neighborhoods,
and those neighborhoods have really been experiencing
a spate of gun violence.
Now, I want to say a couple things about that.
We know that this is not the first time.
It's been going for a long time in a lot of these neighborhoods.
So we acknowledge that.
We just thought that this is the time
when it's really hit a point where we really need to bring
the community together to discuss this.
Now, the second thing I want to say
is that there are other people.
I see some of you from other neighborhoods, which is great.
We are all one big community.
Just know that tonight we're going to focus
on the three neighborhoods and the gun violence in particular.
Not to say that you might have some similar concerns
in your neighborhoods.
We know that.
It's going on throughout the city.
So we're happy to take your questions afterwards,
talk to you one-on-one.
Eric and I, we have our cards out front.
You know how to reach us.
We'll continue to connect with you all.
And just tonight,
know that that's the focus of our meeting tonight.
For example,
you know, some people have said in the online survey
that they want to talk more about encampments.
That's great. We know that those are issues.
But again, we're going to be focusing
on a very specific topic affecting
the three neighborhoods.
Now, our agenda. Saving some paper here.
This is the agenda lined up on the whiteboard.
Councilmember has spent a lot of time
getting input from constituents. We spend a lot of time.
I know that because I'm in the office every day.
We spend all day long getting and trying to respond
and doing our best to respond to constituent concerns.
Last week, there was a North Delridge neighborhood meeting.
And I want to just commend -- I don't know if Doug is here,
but a lot of you attended.
Thank you, Doug.
Really pulled off a great meeting.
We got a lot of good information.
I took tons of notes. We also did an online survey.
Granted, the survey was done pretty quickly.
We've got some really good input from that.
So with that, we have tonight also,
some of you didn't have a chance to really provide input.
So we have note cards out there.
Please put questions down.
We're going to do our best to call through them,
Eric and I, tonight.
We're going to allow us to be able to ask
the panelists questions.
Now, the format, if you can see,
is that we have the executives here.
And thank you very much.
And I'll have Councilmember talk in a minute.
I don't want to take up too much time here.
But they have pre-prepared questions
that we got from you all.
So they are going to be prepared to give you
the best, most responsive.
And we felt that is the best way
to really answer because we heard it all.
We know what some of the top questions are.
Now, I also want to say that there were a lot of specific,
location-specific, really good questions
that came through to our office.
I want you all to know this is not a one-off.
We have taken down those questions.
Unfortunately, we don't have all the e-mails.
But if you put down a question for us and have the e-mail,
we will be looking at those and doing our best to do follow-up.
And finally, I hope I don't have to say this,
but I do want to commend the North Delridge
residents group and Doug and the people who pulled that together.
I have to say that that meeting was not only very informative,
it was very constructive, and it was very respectful.
And I was very, very impressed with Captain Bair
and the response.
And why I'm saying
that tonight is that that's what we are asking for tonight.
We're asking for just respectful interaction,
not interrupting.
We know there's a lot of emotions there.
We just ask for your cooperation.
And I actually am expecting that.
So tonight, this is the format. We're going to follow it.
And, again, like I say, this is not going to be a one-off.
And finally, is that just a little bit of housekeeping,
is that the restrooms are outside and around the corner.
And I think that's all I have to say.
Okay, and let's turn it over to our sponsor,
who has really led this effort, is Councilmember Rob Saka.
[ Applause ]
-Good evening.
I am Rob Saka, and I am your Seattle City Councilmember.
I work for you in City Hall, representing District 1,
which includes West Seattle, South Park, Soto,
Pioneer Square, and Georgetown.
And it is an honor to serve you and represent you.
It's also an honor for me to be able to organize
and host this event here tonight.
I want to thank each and every one of you
for carving out the time to be here.
You could have been anywhere in the world,
but you chose to be here with us tonight.
For that, I thank you.
Some special acknowledgments and thanks to the Mayor's Office,
Chief Public Safety Officer, Natalie Walton Anderson,
Seattle Police Department, Chief Barnes.
We have Seattle City Light CEO, Dawn Lindell,
and our Seattle Parks Department Superintendent, AP Diaz.
And last but not least, one of my peer elected officials,
Councilmember Sara Nelson, who is our council president.
You all have me as your sort of primary representative
in City Hall on the legislative side.
You also have two citywides.
One of them is here tonight.
So I want to thank and acknowledge, and in a moment
we'll hear from Council President Nelson as well.
So I just want to quickly level set on a few quick things.
I think we all understand the basic civics 101 of government.
But recall earlier, I said, I mentioned,
I am your elected representative in City Hall,
working in the legislative branch of government.
I am your legislator.
And as your legislator,
I have three principal powers, three of them.
The first two are expressed,
contained in the charter and our laws.
I write laws and I write checks.
That is my principal authority in representing you.
Now there's a third implied power.
Right here we're seeing a tangible embodiment of that.
It's the power of advocacy.
I advocate, me and my office work hard every day,
advocating on your behalf,
whether you realize it or not.
And I see a few serial e-mailers in our office.
We work hard, working to build a responsive,
effective government that represents everyone.
So why are we here?
We're here because of a troubling rise in gun violence
in three specific neighborhoods.
North Delridge, Snake Hill, and High Point.
Those three neighborhoods. To be honest,
yes, there is a notable increase in gun violence this year.
I think the data supports that based off what I've seen.
But if we're being honest,
we know that those neighborhoods have experienced gun violence
at a rate disproportionately higher
than any other neighborhood.
I know that for a fact
because I happen to coincidentally live
in the neighborhood.
I still remember vividly in 2020, 2021,
after the RV encampment was closed on Andover by the pool,
some migrated to North Delridge.
And I remember one of my own neighbors describing to me
how she heard a man scream out for help
after being fatally and mortally wounded, struck by gunfire.
Shootings in these areas are not new, sadly.
And I've received my briefings from the police department,
and they'll share here today some of the reasons why.
High-level gangs
and the surrounding neighborhood and environment
lends itself to, particularly the green belt space,
lends itself well to people taking pop shots and
shots of opportunity.
And I know the pain that that has caused.
Some of the more recent high-profile incidents in 2025
alone, we had 130 gunshots,
130 gunshots near Cottage Grove Park and Greg Davis Park
where children play.
We've had a young child's car seat stricken with gunfire.
And among the other higher-profile incidents,
we had a child's room
where they sleep and rest their heads at night,
hit with a bullet.
And I've had the chance to meet many of you all
and shake a few hands,
give a few fist bumps to some of the youth in our room.
But the youth in our room are exactly why we are here today.
People are fed up.
Because when that 130 gunshots incident happened, I've seen it.
Again, I'm a neighbor.
My 10-year-old daughter was not yet asleep
and came running down the stairs, scared, traumatized.
I honestly had a good faith belief at the time.
I thought it was just fireworks, a lot of them.
And I told her and I assured her, sweetheart, you are safe.
You are okay. Don't worry.
It's just some knuckleheads lighting off fireworks.
And I consoled her.
And she eventually went back to sleep.
Then I checked the reports online and learned
that it was actually gunfire.
So I went immediately to my son's room.
Two young boys, woke them up, ages 5 and 6.
And woke them up -- excuse me, 6 and 7.
A lot going on.
And they were sleeping peaceably,
slept through all the gunfire.
And I woke them up for the sole purpose of checking to see
if they were safe.
And that is a very specific set of pain and anguish
that no parent, no member of the community,
no grandparent, auntie, uncle,
neighbor should ever have to experience.
I want to thank Phil Brandt, I think.
He's right here.
He's the father of the child
who had a bullet struck through his car seat.
Again, SPD will share why. Those are some of the reasons.
But as your councilmember, I'll tell you the candid truth.
I think what we're seeing in these three neighborhoods
in particular are the direct results
of historical underinvestment in these neighborhoods.
We have a 27% missing sidewalk gap across the city.
Some of these neighborhoods, especially in Delridge,
some of the worst off compared to other parts of my district,
street lights don't work. Broken. They're dim.
They're not as good quality compared to other parts
of the city, compared to other parts of my own district.
We saw outage maps of the street lights and High
Point in particular.
High concentration of broken street lights
in High Point in particular.
Just want to name that. These are the facts.
But I want you to know that as your councilmember,
since I've been in office in a year,
almost a year and a half now,
we've been hard at work trying to right some
of those historical wrongs.
For example, just a year and a half,
I led the funding and investment
to double the number of sidewalks,
of new sidewalks constructed in our city.
Double the amount the mayor originally proposed.
Double. Why?
Because it's the right thing to do.
Securing a guarantee as part of that investment for the city
to build at least 350 new sidewalks over the course
of the next eight years. And guaranteeing,
guaranteeing at least 22% of those new sidewalks
are going to be constructed right here in District 1.
And by the way, because of the --
I wrote that into the voter-approved
transportation levy.
So thank you all, the generous voters, for approving that.
And by the way, because of the equity framework
that we approved in our recent Seattle transportation plan,
District 1 can expect more than 22%.
That's a floor. Since I've been in office,
we also secured a commitment working collaboratively
with our Seattle Department of Transportation,
specifically for this neighborhood,
to ensure 10 blocks of new sidewalks
go to these neighborhoods, these three neighborhoods.
Ten blocks of new sidewalks
in these neighborhoods totaling at least $8 million,
including two sidewalks in front of disabled American veterans
on Delridge, on Hudson Street.
We've done some work, but when we're reminded by --
when we have kids' car seats getting hit by gunfire,
we're humbly reminded that there's plenty more work to do.
Tonight, we're going to announce three things
that our executive department leaders are going to expound
upon and provide a little more detail,
but three new investments that essentially build
upon and align with some of the things
that I announced in my newsletter from two weeks ago.
So, number one, we're going to deliver --
our city is going to deliver some much-needed
streetlight upgrades,
and we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment.
Our Seattle City Light Department,
in partnership with SDOT, going to make some upgrades
and trim some trees around these core areas.
The second thing is,
our Seattle Police Department team of expert
crime prevention experts,
they're going to conduct an analysis of specific hotspots
in these three neighborhoods.
They already did Snake Hill last week, I'm told,
and going to come up with a set of recommendations
of additional steps.
What more can we do? Advancing crime prevention
through environmental design principles.
CPTD, if you're curious, I've got a briefing,
I geek out about that stuff. That's coming.
The third and final thing, parks.
Parks Department. So the mayor has a --
I don't want to spoil the mayor's announcement,
but they're hard at work.
They have a great plan,
and they're working in partnership with me
and other council offices
to advance a summer action safety plan for
our parks and strategy.
Details will be announced later.
But because of the advocacy of me and my office,
we're able to add two parks to that list.
Greg Davis and Cottage Grove Park.
And I want to thank the mayor's office
for accommodating my request.
I spoke with the mayor just yesterday about this,
and we are fully aligned on these issues.
I want you all to know there's a lot of people hard
at work to do better as a city for you.
We have $3.1 billion in this room, guys, believe it or not.
Rough math before I arrived.
At least $3.1 billion in this room,
as reflected by the various department heads.
Now these department heads have direct decision-making
responsibility and authority to determine where,
when, and how our council investments are spent.
$3.1 billion of decision-making authority
in this room, at least. That's 40% of our city budget.
Folks, I want you all from these historically marginalized
and historically disadvantaged neighborhoods
to normalize that kind of response
and that kind of shepherding and marshaling
of resources and advocacy,
because you all deserve it.
And my commitment to you all is no different
than my commitment to any other parts of the district
or any other parts of the city. Here to help keep people safe,
because everyone deserves to feel safe
in their own neighborhoods and their own communities.
So thank you all for being here today.
I want to take a moment to allow my colleague,
Council President Nelson,
to say a few words, and thank you for being here as well.
[ Applause ]
A little toasty in here.
-Just dating myself. Always fun to go after you.
Hello, everybody.
Thank you so much for being here.
So my name is Sara Nelson, and I am a citywide councilmember.
There are two citywide councilmembers,
and I'm in position nine.
I was elected, well, I took office in 2022,
and I've got to admit it was a little rough
the first couple years coming in as someone
who ran to really focus on recovering our city
from the pandemic,
but also from some years of failed policies.
And so I was elected,
was able to do some cool things my first couple years.
But, man, what a difference a new council makes.
Well, first of all, they made me president,
so that was pretty cool.
But I have to say that having this new council,
we have got a council that is coming to work
every single day fully staffed. They answer the phone.
I brought the legislative department back four days
a week, and this is a supermajority,
I would say supermajority or majority
pro-public safety council.
We have passed -- the number gets, you know,
it's either 15 or 16 or 17,
but let me just say a record number of
public safety-related bills in our first year, year and a half.
And you might think, well, what good is that?
Well, it only matters
if you're feeling a difference in your daily lives,
and I will say that, you know, we've got a ways to go,
but we did reverse for the first time since 2019
the trend of losing more officers than we can hire.
And that's significant.
That was a net positive of one last year,
but still, we'll take it, right?
And you might have read the news that we're hiring even more,
500% increase up to this year.
So our efforts are bearing fruit, like I said.
But it only matters if you feel a difference
in your daily lives.
And public safety isn't just about, though, guns and a badge.
You have a badge, badged up, and guns and stuff like that,
but I'm going to need a stretcher pretty soon.
It's also about, in my opinion,
it's also about the drug crisis, the fentanyl epidemic.
It's about addiction.
Now, I have a bias towards seeing
that all the time in policy and focusing on it,
because I myself am in recovery.
But you don't need to be in recovery
to have a sense that drugs and addiction
is inextricably linked to both our chronic homelessness crisis
and our public safety crisis.
So that's what we've been focused on a lot,
or at least I have,
getting more access to different kinds of treatment.
That's complicated in itself,
but I love the more simple things.
It's things like what you have done,
Councilmember Saka,
really focusing on street racing in the city attorney's office
and the mayor's office.
Focusing on street racing,
that doesn't just harm people potentially in the roadway,
but it also creates an environment
where troublemaking can happen.
It's also lighting, things that are
so simple that can discourage bad behavior, let's just say.
And so what I want to say
is that you got the sort of the Schoolhouse Rock version of
how government works.
It's, you know, council passes the laws,
the mayor implements, et cetera.
Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back at all.
Far from it. We're just getting started.
I know that, you know,
you could go home
and see that something was stolen out of your front yard.
It's everybody's individual experience.
So we are not patting ourselves on the back.
This is a moment for humility,
and it's also a moment of working together
with the other side of the schoolhouse.
And I have to say that this is an opportunity now
that there is an alignment.
And I go way back
because I worked for Councilmember Richard Conlin
starting in 2002 to 2013 with the small,
you know, gap there to start my family business.
It is rare that the council and the executive
get along so well and that we are aligned so well.
For years, you know, over Murray's administration,
Jenny Durkan's administration,
there wasn't a great alliance between council
and the executive.
So I am trying to say that we have an opportunity,
and it only works if we are told what to do
because we represent you,
council does, and make the most of it.
Be heard.
You cannot write off council anymore
as really not paying attention or focused on public safety.
We are focused on public safety in every form of public safety
we're talking about, traditional,
community crisis response,
and everything having to do with how we deliver basic services.
It all comes down to creating a safer,
more livable city for everybody.
So I just want to say that that's my focus,
which is everything.
But in any case, your voice gives our action legitimacy.
That's what we're supposed to do is follow what you say.
So be heard, and we'll work with you.
[ Applause ] -Thank you, council president.
And at this moment,
I want to take the opportunity to pass the baton, the mic,
so to speak, to my distinguished guests.
I hope one of the takeaways from all this is,
like, we are here in lockstep.
There are so many dependencies and partnerships.
We're here to solve these issues on your behalf
for the benefit of everyone.
So this is chief public safety officer,
Natalie Walton Anderson.
Please pass the mic down the line when you're done.
-Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me?
[ Applause ]
Would it be better for me to stand?
Okay. I can stand. I think, first of all,
thank you, Councilmember Saka, for convening this group.
The first thing I want to say
just briefly is that this is my district.
I've lived in West Seattle for approximately 20 years.
And this area in particular,
in terms of High Point, Delridge,
I have three boys, and they play basketball.
And so safety in every neighborhood
is incredibly important.
But this neighborhood, this area of West Seattle,
is deeply personable to me.
And I'm struck, again,
by the demonstrative car seat that has a bullet here.
And so I just want you all
to know that this work is deeply personal.
And when we're talking about violence in our community
and our neighborhood, it affects all of us,
including our children.
And so I just wanted to start with that.
I am the mayor's Chief Public Safety Officer.
And I, like Councilmember Saka said,
I am here to serve all of you.
And I have been in public service in some realm
in terms of the criminal legal field for the last 28 years.
This is not easy work or challenging work,
but I am happy to be here in this work
because my job is to work --
my goal is to work myself out of a job
where we have crime eradicated.
And we are obviously,
as Council President Nelson said,
we are not there yet, and this is not the time
to step off the gas.
The mayor's top priority is public safety.
He wants every single neighborhood in Seattle
to be safe for the residents that are there,
for the people that visit,
for the people that go to and from work.
And so that is his top priority.
And I want to make sure that that is known
because there are short-term and long-term actions that we can do
and we are in the process of doing,
and you'll hear a little bit about that tonight,
that we can do to improve public safety.
The mayor has said
that public safety is every single department's
responsibility, and I think I say
that almost on a daily basis.
The One Seattle approach is not just a punchline.
It is truly how we are all working together.
We take councilmember feedback, constituent feedback,
and turn that into some action plan to say,
what can we do to address that now and with urgency?
So I just wanted to share a little bit about some
of the things that we're doing together to work together
to really push and provide what we can do in the moment
now urgently as we continue to rebuild
and work on long-term strategies to address public safety.
I think, first of all,
and you're going to hear from many of our department heads
and leads soon,
but the first thing I want to say is the one thing
I'm very much proud of in this role
that I've been in for 10 months is the ability to recruit
and hire our new police chief, Chief Shon Barnes,
who we'll be hearing from lately.
And there are many members of the Seattle Police Department
that are here,
and there are many members of other departments that are here.
And we truly are working in the same direction
and rowing in the same direction,
as the council said,
to ensure that public safety is all of our focus
and we are working with urgency.
The mayor released in October
his One Seattle Restoration Framework,
and it laid out six strategies of what is the priority here.
The first one, and I know that this is one of the reasons
why we are all here, is to reduce gun violence.
And we're going to be hearing specifically from Chief Barnes
and some key members of the Seattle Police Department
that do this work tirelessly,
sometimes 24 hours a day straight for weeks on end,
to really address and figure out how we can solve cases
and address gun violence shortly.
But that is one of the mayor's top priorities
in this One Seattle Restoration Framework.
The other one is to prevent and reduce high-impact crime,
and the other one is to respond to 911 calls effectively.
I want to call out when we have things that we can work on.
I've heard from many of you in this room
and in other parts of Seattle where they say,
I call 911 or the non-emergency line,
and I am on hold or I don't have a response,
and that is something
that we are tirelessly working on currently.
I just went to visit the 911 center
where I went to all three roll calls at 7, 3, and 11 p.m.,
and there is a new class of call takers.
For almost the last year,
the 911 care center has been working on hiring.
Hiring was key.
We lost a lot of people, not just officers in 2020,
but we also lost a lot of call takers and dispatchers.
More than half of the call takers
have been working for less than two years.
So we are constantly looking at data,
and we are constantly looking at call times
and working to improve that.
Our care chief is not here tonight,
but that is something that we are looking at.
I look at the data every week to what comes to make sure
that we are actually making improvements.
We have this class to hire,
and there are a few more positions
before we are fully staffed up for 911.
So I am just going to say,
on behalf of all of us here, please call 911.
If you are unclear if it is an emergency, please call 911.
The call takers and dispatchers
are trained to identify what is a true emergency
and what is a non-emergency.
So if you have doubt, please call 911.
You can text 911.
But we need you to report,
and we need that data and that follow-through.
So that is one thing I can just say.
The other piece, of course, is confronting the opioid crisis.
A lot of the activity that is in this area,
and we have been with Councilmember Saka
in this district addressing, trying to address the RV issue.
And there is a lot of behavior that comes from those RVs,
drug trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation trafficking,
visual disorder, theft, property crime.
We are working diligently to come up with a short-term
and long-term solution.
And we are joined by that by, again,
all of the departments and SBD
to come up with some short-term and long-term solutions
to address some of our problematic RVs there.
But one of the biggest issues is obviously the opioid crisis
that has hit our city and hit our region and hit our country.
And so we have to get to the underlying issues of that while
we still try to address things in the short-term and long-term.
Tackling the root cause of violence
and also trying to activate
and enhance our neighborhoods is key.
Councilmember Saka mentioned CPTD,
crime prevention through design.
There are ways that we can address environments right now,
and some of you have talked about that.
The lighting is one, and I know that Dawn,
our CEO of City Light, is going to talk about that.
Tree trimming.
We have our SDOT representatives here.
How can we address the parking issues?
All of those things we are doing together,
so when you raise those concerns,
those are things that we can actually do
to address the environment,
to make it less inviting to those
that would engage in crime.
And it is something that does work,
so we're working on that as well.
The other thing is that our police force,
as Chief Barnes will say, we are a thousand strong.
And as Councilmember Nelson said,
it is the alignment of both the mayor's office,
city council, the city attorney's office,
all of our departments, the new contract that was signed,
where we have seen record-breaking
numbers of applications.
And we are on trend to hire more than we've budgeted for.
But please do not worry.
The mayor has said we will pay,
and we will find the budget to hire all the officers
that we need, and what the chief needs and SPD needs.
What I want to say there is that is one of many strategies
that we need to address crime,
because we cannot rely on SPD alone.
But in terms of hiring, we also need to retain our officers.
And I thank many of the people here in this community
that reach out to specifically our Southwest Precinct
on a regular basis to thank them.
So I just want to share with you some of the things
that we are working on there.
In terms of technology,
we have our real-time crime center,
and we are currently hiring up for that.
We have our automatic license plate readers on a lot
of our patrol cars,
and that has led to the apprehension
of a homicide suspect, hit and run.
Those are technologies that are really going to help,
especially as we continue to staff up,
to address crime, including our gun violence.
So there are many things
that we are working on in terms of the mayor's office,
and I really want to just kind of highlight a few of those
before I pass this on to Chief Barnes.
I also want to thank all of you
that have come out from the community.
Seeing you out here means that you care about our community.
There are challenges that we urgently need to address,
and we don't want to stop hearing from you,
and we don't want to stop hearing the feedback.
So please share that. That's why we're here.
If everything was okay, we wouldn't be here.
But please continue to share that.
I know it's frustrating.
We are rebuilding, we are revitalizing,
and we are moving forward, and there is hope.
And it's difficult when we have setbacks,
such as has been demonstrated with some
of the recent gun violence that has been in this community.
But just know that we are working tirelessly to try
and address that, and we know that more is needed.
So thank you.
I'm going to go ahead and pass that on to Chief Barnes.
[ Applause ]
-Good evening, everyone.
-Good evening. -Good evening, everyone.
-Good evening.
-Thank you for being here.
My name is Shon Barnes,
and I have the pleasure of being a public servant.
I have the pleasure of working for one
of the finest police departments in the country,
the Seattle Police Department.
I want to thank you all for taking time to be here,
to be concerned citizens, to be concerned community members,
to be a part of one of our priorities that we set,
which is community engagement, community partnerships.
I certainly want to thank Councilmember Saka
for putting this together and for that great civics lesson.
I appreciate that.
As someone who is a former history teacher -- see,
I taught high school -- I was checking you.
He was on point. So I think he's good.
So I wanted to say thank you for being here
and to my distinguished panel.
I also want to thank the men and women
of the Seattle Police Department.
Thank you for being here,
Southwest Precinct does an amazing job.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
I know that you care about this community.
I know you care about the people that you serve.
I know that I get on your nerves from time to time, Captain,
but you're so gracious whenever I call,
and we have Zooms or Teams. But I know you can handle it,
and I have full faith and confidence in you,
and I want to let you know that in front of everybody right now.
No one deserves to live in a community
and feel unsafe or be unsafe.
I got into policing because I truly believe that.
But once I got into policing
and start learning actually how to do that,
I found that the answer is quite simple.
We have to work together in partnerships.
I found out early on in my career
that the police are the tip of the spear
when it comes to public safety,
but we're not the entire spear.
The most important part is the community
and how we support each other.
I learned through 25 years of policing
that there are a lot of things that have gone
and come when it comes to public safety.
But one thing that has held constant
is that we have to be committed to working together
to solve our problems.
We see each other as allies and as part of the solution
and not part of the problem.
So let's talk about ongoing challenges that we're seeing,
not only in the Southwest Precinct,
but in Seattle and in our country.
That is young people with guns,
indiscriminately firing guns, making victims out of people
and making people feel unsafe.
Now, me and Phil talked before this, and he gave me permission.
I told you I was going to do this,
and I was going to say that I'm sorry for what happened to you.
You joined a group that you should not be a part of,
and that's someone who has experienced
or been affected by gun violence.
And we agreed that we're going to work together.
We're going to listen to each other,
and we're going to talk about what we can do to make sure
that no one else has to go through that.
So I wanted to acknowledge you
because we said we're going to do that.
Immediately after we saw this increase in gun violence,
there are some things that we changed,
and I want to talk about those
because I'm going to talk about action.
The first thing, obviously, is that we increased patrols,
and not just increased patrols randomly, but specifically.
We call them directed patrols, and what we're aiming for,
what we're aiming for is 20 minutes of every hour
of directed patrol in the areas that we mentioned earlier.
We call those K-O-P-E-R, or Koper patrols
because what we know is if we can do that,
we normally get about an hour to an hour and a half of efficacy,
and then we have to return.
So not only are we doing directed patrols,
but we're trying to measure the effects of those
so that the resources that we have
can be properly distributed.
Usually, it's been my experience that some communities, they say,
you have a problem, we're going to increase patrols.
What does that mean? What does that mean for anyone?
We're not going to do that here.
We're going to be very specific and strategic
and laser-focused in how we deploy our officers
who are being proactive
because there's a difference between officers
who are riding through your neighborhood
on the way to something else,
and that's important, too,
and those officers that are specifically assigned to ensure
that crime and disorder does not happen in your neighborhood.
And that was the first thing that we did.
We're trying to measure for that.
The second thing that we did was I authorized some overtime
so officers can come together with the supervisor
and do what we call gun violence reduction units.
Now, in the spirit of transparency,
that's voluntary, and we haven't seen the number of officers
that we would like to,
but we're not going to give up on that.
There's a lot of competition for our resources,
but we're not going to give up on that.
We authorized that, and that is an option,
and so the captain can solicit volunteers from her group
to come in on overtime and proactively police your areas
or patrol your areas to prevent people
who may be looking to do damage to other people
in their property.
So that's very important.
The third thing that we did
was we increased the number of gun violence meetings
we had from one to two.
We were having one meeting on a Thursday
to talk about what we may see on the weekend.
We increased that to two,
so we have a meeting now on Monday
to talk about what we may have seen over the weekend.
We need information.
We have to figure out why this is happening.
We have to figure out if there is intended targets
or if it's indiscriminately firing off weapons.
What is going on?
We can't do that if we're not communicating.
So one of the things
that I'm very proud of with this police department
is that we are sharing information,
and there are no silos. We come together as one.
We have partners from across the criminal justice spectrum,
from the district attorney's office, from our federal folks,
from our crime scene investigators.
We're looking at shell casings,
trying to match those to other shootings
to see if we can find a connection
because we have to be able to connect the dots.
And we're doing that on a daily basis,
but with two strategic meetings every week,
and I'm very proud of that.
The second thing that was mentioned
is we do have a real-time crime center that's coming up now.
I think the official grand opening is on the 20th.
That's a big part of our strategy
because at some point we do want to have cameras in your areas,
but we also have a program
where you can register your cameras with us.
So if you have a ring camera
or a surveillance camera on your home or your business,
we will know where that is.
So if there is an incident of shots being fired
or someone sees something that doesn't look right,
we can ask for your permission to see if we can narrow it
down to determine who may be responsible.
Because the truth of the matter is,
we want to prevent people from gun violence,
but we also want to hold people accountable
who want to hurt other people.
And we can't do that without information.
And so that's one of the things
that we're certainly looking forward to doing.
One of the things that we're also looking at
is noise detection,
which is some software and some equipment
that we can deploy as a pilot
to determine noise levels to see if that is indicative of
when we're going to see violence.
See if it's indicative of we can predict
if there is parties or people
are hanging out with their cars
or whatever it may be to see what comes next.
And so what we're trying to do
is use every tool available to us to, number one,
to see if it's a good fit for Southwest,
if it's a good fit for Seattle,
and to see if we can do something
to prevent gun violence. The next thing that we're doing
is we are implementing our crime reduction plan.
It's called Seattle-centric policing,
and I'll give you probably the 30,000-foot overview of that.
But we're going to be looking at
how crime behaves in each precinct.
We're going to be identifying things
that are significant to you.
Your captain will be doing that.
We're going to be looking at things that are repeat calls,
repeat places,
so we know where to put our officers
and be more strategic about preventing things.
And then we're going to look at things that may be a pattern.
And so the idea is if you can figure out
when do patterns start,
you can also figure out when to stop patterns.
And that's what we're going to be doing
on a daily, daily basis.
Crime analysis will come in, and when the captain gets in,
she'll have information about what has happened,
and we'll look at that
as it collects to see if we're seeing a pattern.
We have to get better.
We will be better at understanding
how crime operates in each of our precincts.
I think we have the captains that are certainly willing,
and they have all the tools.
My job is to give them the tools that they need
in order to be successful and to hold them accountable.
Lastly, what can you do?
We need you to help us be our eyes and our ears.
If you see something that looks suspicious,
we need you to call 911 first, right?
We need you to call 911 first.
I know that you all have relationships with our officers,
with our precincts,
but the phones are not always manned,
and that's something that we can certainly do a better job of.
But some of you have relationships with officers,
and I love that, but I can't make them work all the time.
And sometimes they take off, and you're calling them,
and you want to tell them what you saw, and they can't answer.
And I know that's frustrating
because you want to be a good partner, and I appreciate that.
But if you would just call 911 first
so we can start tracking when and where we're seeing problems,
it helps us be more proactive at that,
and that's what we're encouraging.
So just in summary, we will be increasing directed patrols.
These are proactive directed patrols
where officers are not subject to leaving
because there is a call for service.
We're going to make sure
that our real-time crime center can work for you
just like it works for every other part of the city.
We're going to be tracking with data things
that may be a pattern that may be indicative of other things.
We're talking to each other now.
We're having meetings trying to understand
why this has happened.
And then the last thing that I will say
before I pass the mic is we know
that some of the people involved are young people.
And I really mean it when I say it takes a village
to raise a child.
Most of you have heard me say that before.
But you've also heard me say
that it takes a village to raise a child,
but the child who is not embraced by the village
will burn it down just to feel its warmth.
It's the second part of that.
And what I mean by that is
if you have an opportunity to embrace someone
that's younger than you,
if you have an opportunity to embrace one
of these young folks,
if you have an opportunity to give someone a part-time job
or to be a mentor, please do that.
Please do that because you could be changing someone's life
just like someone changed mine a long time ago.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
-Thank you, Chief.
And good evening.
I'm Dawn Lindell, and I am the CEO for Seattle City Light.
And I'm always inspired when I come to these
just by the people that I get to listen to
that help remind me how proud I am to work for this city
and to try to make a difference here.
I want to thank you for inviting me here into your home.
And I welcome the feedback and appreciate the opportunity
to share some information with you.
So I'm really passionate about electricity.
And so I'm in the right job. And I think it's really,
really vital to almost everything that we do.
We literally keep the lights on. I know not all the time,
and I know not as well as you would like,
but we do work very hard to keep the lights on.
But to keep that power flowing,
that really underlies everything we do at home and at work,
almost everything.
If you have a phone, it doesn't work if you don't charge it.
You know, if you want to watch a show,
you can't do that if you don't have electricity.
And for most of us, with the work that we do,
that requires that as well.
So it's really, really a critical role,
even if it's generally a quiet role.
And I want to acknowledge my team members who are here.
These folks, when it's bitterly cold and storming,
these folks are out in it to help restore that power.
So if you work for City Light,
can you raise your hand here,
and so we can just say thank you?
[ Applause ]
So let's talk a little bit more about street lights,
which is key to public safety.
City Light maintains about 90,000 street lights.
And at any one time, I'm embarrassed to tell you,
we have thousands out, and they're all over the city.
We work very hard to restore those as quickly as we can.
And sometimes that works,
and sometimes somebody steals the wire right out of them
within a few days, and they're right back out.
So I want to talk a little bit about what we see here
on this side of town.
In terms of total District 1 street light stats,
we have repaired since January of 2024,
so in the last, what is that, 5 and 12, 17 months,
501 different instances of a street light being out.
We've got 179 that are out right now.
The neighborhoods with the highest amount of street lights
that have gone out are High Point, Alki, and North Admiral.
The neighborhoods that have the most currently out
are North Delridge and Highland Park.
So I wanted you to get a feel for what that looks like,
because, again, it is something that happens all over.
But I have some good news.
One of the asks by Councilmember Saka,
who I think is just great, he asked,
can we do something in terms of helping to brighten
up the street lights
and provide more light with the street lights that we have?
And the answer to that is yes. So right now,
we are preparing to upgrade existing
residential-grade street lights on Southwest Brandon Street
between 26th Avenue Southwest and 30th Avenue Southwest.
[ Applause ]
Yay. So what does that look like?
Well, we're going to put in 10 longer bracket arms
with higher output arterial-grade luminaires.
So what does that mean?
It means that it's going to be 135-watt LEDs
instead of the 52-watt LEDs that are in there now.
And they'll be designed to significantly improve
nighttime visibility in that particular residential stretch.
So Councilmember Saka, being the accountability guy that he is,
asked me for dates, and so we have those dates.
The work order will be issued by May 30th,
beginning June 2nd through June 6th.
We are going to trim trees along Brandon Street
to provide clearance for the street light improvement work.
And then by June 13th -- oops, wrong page.
By June 13th,
we will have the extended bracket arms in,
which will broaden the light coverage,
and we will have those luminaires replaced.
So those are the dates that we've got that work planned for.
With the installation of the brighter luminaires
and the vegetation management,
we achieve the lighting goal without having to raise
the street light height. And that's important.
I will tell you, Mike Haynes, who is my number one,
he's the Chief Operating Officer right here,
when we got the ask from Councilmember Saka,
he was in his vehicle driving over in the night
to see what it looked like.
And in the day to take a look at,
is it possible for us to raise those lights?
Because we wanted to see about the suggestion.
But knowing the ultimate goal,
I believe we found a way
to meet it without causing an engineering issue.
When there's overhead wiring,
it becomes very dangerous to have anything
that comes close to that wiring, especially metal,
conductive metal.
The power is contained in those lines,
but only loosely contained.
And it can leap out of those lines
and go to another source to ground.
And so we want to keep everything as safe as we can.
Also, we want to keep the tree canopy.
It's beautiful, and it provides the shade
and the cooling in the summer.
And so that also provides some challenges with lifting those.
But, again, I think we found a solution.
So awesome work, engineering. And we've got, you know,
engineering quietly sitting here, Andy, behind Mike,
who leads the group working on that.
We had a couple of other questions come in,
and that I wanted to address those.
And one is,
how is Seattle City Light prioritizing areas
for improved lighting,
especially in neighborhoods with high crime rates?
So what we do is we triage the street light outages based
on public safety impact, geographic concentration,
and the ability of crews to take actions.
So we work with our partners at SDOT and at Parks
to identify the areas
where more attention and evaluation is needed.
And that's because nothing is ever simple.
And at Seattle City Light,
we take care of a lot of street lights,
but we don't take care of all of them.
Those that are in the parks are managed by the parks.
Those that are on more main arterials are managed by SDOT.
Those that are on the really big arterials
are managed by Wash DOT.
So if you have a street light issue,
we can help you find the right group to solve
that if it isn't us.
And we're working really hard to partner well.
I think that's important to all of us
to make sure we get these taken care of.
So this targeted approach with the triaging ensures
that the most critical
and ready-to-complete work is addressed first,
while longer or non-actionable tickets may wait.
So let me explain that.
When we get a request in for a street light that's out,
it's marked as green.
We use green, yellow, red.
So green means go out, check on it,
and replace the bulb if you can.
And most of them, that takes care of most of them.
We go to yellow when we have parts missing,
there's an engineering problem with them,
and we've got to do a longer fix.
We go to red when we've got to completely rewire.
And unfortunately,
that is our biggest issue is the theft of the wire.
So we have gone out and we have worked with recycling, yeah,
recycling owners to say, don't take the wire.
Like, you paid for the wire.
That's incenting them to steal it.
So we'd like you not to do that.
Call us.
And so we've got some that are doing that,
and we've got others
that we haven't had as good of luck
with in getting them to stop buying that.
But that's one approach that we're taking to do that.
Also, by the way, those lights that we are replacing,
I want to let you know we are going to have to rewire
because of age in some of that area.
We will do our best to let you know
and take an outage that you're aware of to do that,
and that will be coming up.
The second question of two -- so not very much longer here.
The second question of two is -- all right,
I've lost the second question. Oh, here it is. Sorry.
Can you provide a timeline for the most critical improvements
in High Point, Snake Hill, and North Delridge?
And that's that piece I talked about first.
So you've got the timeline as well.
And with that,
I think I'll stop talking just to give people some more time.
[ Applause ]
-Thank you so much,
Chief Lindell and Chief Barnes and Chief Anderson.
I'm following three chiefs here in a row,
but I am your parks superintendent.
I'm blessed to lead a cadre and a department
that is so community-facing
and so integral to the life of Seattleites.
People in Seattle love their parks,
and I think you all adore and love your parks.
And the challenge that comes in the provision of public space
comes to light in public parks.
It is a blessing and a challenge
to have 500 parks in the city of Seattle.
That's tremendous.
That says a lot about our initial founding
and our dedication and our love of open space
and the environment that we have provided
and thought and dedicated 500 spots and places
to be dedicated parkland,
which means they can never be developed
for any other purpose than a park purpose.
And that's wonderful.
And we use our parks.
Some of us in this room
and some of our community members
use their parks as their front yards and their backyards,
the sites of children's parties, weddings,
engagement proposals, children's events.
In fact,
one of our biggest markers in our park department
occurred this last Sunday.
So Mother's Day is one of our sort of park countdowns
where we know that by Mother's Day
we're going to have hopefully a little bit of better weather,
although Seattle likes to surprise us
with the fake springs.
But we know people will be generally filling our parks
at Mother's Day,
and so we prepare for that milestone each year,
surge cleaning, preparation, maintenance,
getting ready so that you can enjoy your parks.
And it dawned on me
when we were talking about all of these other things,
and you heard about the summer safety plan,
which I'll talk a little bit as it relates to parks,
that we use a lot of milestones in the city
as it relates to parks.
And we'll push out on social media.
Oh, 31 more days until 9 o'clock, sunsets, right?
Two more weeks until Mother's Day,
parks are going to be filled.
Summer solstice at 0 o'clock p.m., right?
We know these things.
Yet I know you and community think, hmm,
31 more days until loud parties,
31 more days to more vandalism, shootings,
loud music, rowdiness,
parks being overrun with good behavior
and not-so-great behavior.
So when the sun comes out,
we know that people are going to recreate in positive ways,
but also, unfortunately, in negative ways.
But it shouldn't take us year after year
to realize that these markers are going to come.
So what can we do about it?
When I first got here, we were doing a lot of pilot programs.
Let's pilot these new hours at this one boat ramp.
Well, let's maybe go out and have a meeting about
should we change the hours.
Okay, well, let's make it temporary
because some people might -- okay,
well, let's go back in a couple of months.
We went through about four iterations
of pilots and meetings in true Seattle fashion, right?
Let's not make a decision,
even when common sense is sometimes staring us
right in the face.
And so I think the things
that Council President Nelson were talking about
and the other members here is that we have to come together
with common sense approach to government.
That's what you expect of us, especially in Seattle.
We're known for being innovative and smart
and talented and resourcefulness,
but why cannot we make -- cannot we make?
Why can't we make sometimes these simple choices
to improve the quality of life?
And when it's happening in your backyard,
we all know at this table what that means to you.
We have big departments and portfolios,
and we're focused on every part of the city,
trying to do our very best.
But at the end of the day,
what matters to you are the neighborhoods
that we're talking about.
So we'll focus on that right now because that's your backyard
and that's your living room.
And also in the spirit of One Seattle, you know,
when I look around this room
and I look at the people in the room,
I work with some great colleagues in this room,
and they all have titles and names.
But to me, they're Dawn and Catherine and Jennifer,
Eric, Natalie, Sara, Jasmine, Mike,
because they're colleagues.
Rodney, I can call them when I need collaboration.
They can call me,
and we can strategize and figure out together
how we're going to solve things and come together
and do a common-sense approach.
So in the spirit of common-sense approach,
and we were talking about it,
and Chief Anderson has been stewarding this for the mayor
in partnership with the council and other people
at this table to come together with a summer safety plan.
We know things are going to happen,
so let's prepare and act on it.
So some of the things that we're doing,
we're coming together to enforce some new strategies
to law enforcement.
You heard about CPTD.
There's many different things that we can do.
Lighting is so key.
Keeping even your own home lit up at night is so important,
right, because the broken windows theory,
as Chief Barnes knows, tells us that if you let one thing go,
other things will follow.
One light is broken on a street, sends a message.
Graffiti shows up,
it's not painted over or eradicated,
sends another message.
Pretty soon places and spaces become,
oh, it's that street, don't go there.
For you and I, we say don't go there, so we don't go there.
But other people say, great, let's go there,
because people won't be there,
and we can do things that we shouldn't be doing, right?
So it's really important to illuminate and come together
and patrol and do some law enforcement
with our community partners.
It's okay to say law enforcement, too.
I was told when I first came here,
oh, you shouldn't say that word in Seattle.
It's not a bad word. Law is not a bad word.
Enforcement is not a bad word,
if they're done right and correctly.
We have very smart, talented leadership in this room
who have been doing this work for a long time.
We may not always get it right,
but we're committed to do the things that are right,
because that's the expectation.
So it's okay to have public safety partners,
law enforcement partners,
and to come up with common-sense approach.
Okay, what are they, superintendent?
One of the things that we're going to be doing
is adjusting our hours.
That's something that I can do under my authority
as the park superintendent.
And so I can scale back in some of our most problematic areas,
reduce the hours.
There's very generous hours in Seattle,
because sometimes it is light until late.
People like to be in the park,
doing good things, being with family,
running, exercising, having picnics,
all the fun things we want to do in parks.
So we like to allow citizens to do that.
But in our most problematic areas,
that's informed by crime and calls for service,
which is why it's so important.
Almost everybody up here has said,
please call in those calls for service.
Even if you think in your mind, well, no one's going to come,
or no one's going to answer the phone right now,
or what's the point.
There is a point.
We use that data so that when I call the captain
or I call the chief or I call the mayor's office,
we can pull the numbers and say, you're right,
we need to put attention here.
So we need that information and data.
And because of that, we know at certain locations,
particularly in West Seattle,
around the water, boat ramps, viewpoint areas,
we know those are going to be problematic.
So we're rolling back the hours
and closing the parks from 10:30 until 4 in the morning,
allowing early morning for boats and other things
that need to take place.
We're also going to install gates at certain locations,
as you know. Just like copper wire theft,
people also love to break our gates,
ram our gates, break the locks, steal the stuff.
Doesn't mean it's going to deter us.
It means it's just going to take some time and more resources.
So know that if you think and see, well,
why isn't there a gate there?
They said there was going to be a gate there.
Chances are that gate might have been broken,
busted, torn out, ripped out.
So we're coming up with new strategies,
but we're going to keep on it because they're our parks.
Clearly, we can't be at every location 24 hours in the park.
But where we can focus together, we will do that.
So that's one strategy
to then allow our police department to come in.
We have revised coordination agreements with them
to do extra enforcement patrol and work with our park rangers
to get data and information
so that they can respond in a manner
that Chief Barnes was talking about
and do directed patrols and get to areas
where needed informed by data from community.
That's really key, and it's really important.
So new agreements, new directed patrols,
collaboration with our park rangers,
reduced park hours, increased gates at locations
where feasible are some of the strategies
of our summer safety plan that we're putting in place.
We're putting them in place in other parts of the city too,
though, but I know we're focused on West Seattle, Best Seattle.
And so to be Best Seattle, we really need to come together,
and that's what we're doing. And I just want to,
again, I want to thank all of the hardworking folks
at Parks and Recreation.
They work all the time, day and night,
early hours, late hours, rainy days, cold days.
They're out there.
And it's no loss to me
that you as a community
entrust us with your most precious cargo,
and I remind our staff of that every single time.
You entrust us with your children every single day.
That's an awesome responsibility.
But you also have an expectation that your peers,
yourself, are going to be safe in parks,
that your elders are going to be safe in parks, right?
So we get that.
All of those people
that I just named by their first name, we get that.
We're committed to making this better.
And I just want to end on one note.
We talked about this at the last town hall
where we were unfortunately called together
with gun violence,
and I would be remiss if I did not say again,
we're going to keep trying,
but here's where we need community voice and action
to keep pressure on your representatives in Olympia.
It is still legal,
it is not illegal to bring a gun into a community center,
into a teen life center, into a park site.
Every year it gets up there, and every year it's pulled.
And so with fanfare, we applaud,
yes, now you cannot bring a gun into an aquarium,
cannot bring a gun into a library,
cannot bring a gun, of course, into a hospital or a school.
All make sense, common sense, right?
But parks, community centers, teen life centers,
as we know in this community, right, there's been a shooting.
So please, please help us in that effort
to make this community safer.
Thank you, thank you for loving your parks.
[ Applause ]
-Oh, man, old man syndrome.
I think I stood up to you too soon.
So first off, let me just quickly --
you talked about gun violence and some solutions.
I want to just make clear that the comments you just heard,
those were directly responsive to some community questions
that we pulled together, curated,
and provided them directly.
A few of them, including CEO Lindell,
were very express about the questions that they addressed,
but every last person up here,
whether you understood it or not, was responding,
sharing out their work of their respective organizations
that were directly in line
and responsive to the community questions we received.
Gun violence,
I want to acknowledge Seattle's first homicide in 2024
when I first took office.
We're in High Point right now.
High Point has a lot of thriving,
mixed income community.
Proud to be a neighbor down Snake Hill in Delridge.
Vibrant immigrant and refugee community,
particularly folks from Africa, East Africa.
And as the son of a Nigerian immigrant,
I know firsthand the immigrant struggle.
The most difficult time and experience for me
since being in office in a year and a half
as your councilmember, Seattle's first homicide victim,
in 2024, was 15-year-old Mubarak Adam,
lived right here in the neighborhood,
went to Chief Sealth International High School.
And he was murdered,
tragically lost his life at the Teen Life Center
right across the street from Chief Sealth.
And the most difficult moment
that I've had so far was joining the mayor and a few others
and visit the grieving mother and family
of the late Mubarak in their home
and explaining to them what we're doing as a city,
how we're committed to doing better,
the status of the investigation, et cetera.
These issues keep me up at night, just like this.
Keeps me up at night. I experience it, too.
Anyways, I want to pivot,
allow our Department of Neighborhoods --
these are three neighborhoods.
They're all connected.
Snake Hill connects High Point and Delridge.
And so I want to quickly introduce Director Chao
to allow her to talk a little bit
about their department's efforts and how they can best serve you.
We are all here at the end of the day to serve you.
Director Chao.
-Thank you so much, Councilmember Saka.
[ Applause ]
I'm going to try to do this without my reading glasses.
As we all get older, our body fights it.
So, oh, I will try, but thank you, Elaine.
So I just first want to just say thank you, Councilmember Saka,
for the opportunity to be in community.
This is what we live and breathe for as public servants,
right, is to serve you.
And we know for sure the Department of Neighborhoods
does not exist without community.
Because that is
why the Department of Neighborhoods was created.
It was for community engagement, for civic engagement.
It was created to make sure
that people were connected to government
for access and resources,
and that neighbors would be connected to each other
because we know that thriving communities create
and result in safe neighborhoods.
So that's how it starts.
And I just want to thank you again for this opportunity and
Councilmember, Council President Nelson
for supporting collaboration
through the One Seattle approach.
As Chief Barnes mentioned, it does take a village,
and this village requires a large ecosystem,
and that includes our community-based organizations,
our neighbors, our small businesses, our families,
our government, right?
That includes the city, the state, and the county.
So with that, I got a question, and before I get that,
it actually goes right along with what is
Department of Neighborhoods doing in connection
and partnering with community-based organizations
to make sure that there is longevity and sustainability
in supporting the community for young children
and for young people because that is the generation to come.
So before I go there,
I just want to share that this work is really close
to my heart,
and this calling for this role is really purposeful for me.
I also worked at Neighbor House at the Green Bridge site
before I joined the city in 2009.
Gun violence is also personal
because I've lost family members to gun violence at White Center
when my family lived there,
and that is a neighboring community to West Seattle
and to South Park in this area.
So with that said, I just want to share that,
again, the Department of Neighborhoods
value relationships.
We don't know how to move without it.
We rely on community.
We have to co-create with community because
community-forged solutions are the ones that know.
But we also have to resource you enough,
and we're not just talking about financially.
We're talking about our time.
We're talking about relationships.
We're talking about trust, and that has to be sustained.
And that also means an honest conversation about what we can
and cannot do so that you know then the power of community,
right, of gathering together and knowing
that if we need to gather resources,
how we can support one another,
what the government can provide, and that what you all can do,
if that is the case
that the government can't provide the resources
that you may all need,
but that the solutions is right here in this room, right?
When we say it takes a village, we took care of each other.
In my community,
when I was born in Thailand and came here as an immigrant,
my aunties and uncles were not my blood relatives.
They were my neighbors, right?
So that means all of us.
So it's not just positionality, right?
It means relationship.
So Department of Neighborhoods has a large
and active presence in D1.
Our works intersects with a lot of city departments.
Again, as I mentioned,
we were created for civic engagement
to support our department partners and our community.
With that,
we have granting programs called
the Neighborhood Matching Fund and Food Equity Fund.
I think folks are familiar.
These are some of the community-based organizations
that the question asked about, how are we partnering?
So I'll name a few.
And I know this is not -- it's a limited list.
There's many more.
But I know that we have supported
the West Seattle Junction Association,
the Highland Park Improvement Club, Duwamish Tribal Services,
and forgive me if I misread this,
Alimentando al Pueblo,
African Community Housing and Development,
South Park Senior Citizens, Southwest Teen Life Center,
White Center Food Bank, and Via Comunitaria.
They have led,
community-led work that we have supported through grants.
And I think the most powerful is our
community engagement coordinators.
I don't know if Rosa Garcia is in this room.
You may have worked with her.
But we have community -- thank you.
We have four
community engagement coordinators across the city.
We need more. We know we have a tight budget.
But I'll still say we need more.
But we have four, and they are in community.
And they serve the South Park.
So for Rosa, she serves South Park.
And she attends your meetings.
She is the voice and the conduit.
And she is the one who relays
and makes a connection and bridges to city departments
to make sure that your voices are heard,
your concerns are addressed,
and if it's not working and you need more,
then we convene community meetings.
I'll end with this. Some of the community meetings
that we have supported with the Department of Neighborhoods,
around safety,
is through the SPD Crime Prevention Coordinator
that Rosa works with,
South Park Public Safety Coordinator,
and the SPD Southwest Community Liaison's Office.
The Department of Neighborhoods
has also hosted a series of community safety meetings
in South Park
to empower community-led neighborhood watch groups.
So, again, community asks for this,
and our role is to respond.
The UN also partners with the SPD Community Service Officers,
and I see them around the room.
Can we give them some love and some --
because, right, because they are from community.
They were selected, and they also add to the village.
We also work with them
for community safety outreach and neighborhood events.
And we also work with SPD
on issues of community safety in our Pea Patch Community Gardens.
As you know, there are 12 community gardens
across this neighborhood.
And it is not just about growing food,
but it is about breaking bread and harvesting together.
That is what builds community.
And when I get to come out,
when I'm invited in the summer and people are harvesting,
that's my favorite time of the year.
And I get to enjoy and be in community,
I see people breaking bread together,
and I see communities connecting.
So that's where community organizing and place-based
strategies really happen also is in our Pea Patch Gardens.
So it's not just about gardening.
It is about the connection that's being built.
And last but not least,
the Southwest Precinct Advisory Council for Community Updates.
Rosa is also a part of that.
And she works very closely with the Mayor's
Office External Engagement Team and Public Safety Team.
So I'll end with,
it is critical that the Department of Neighborhoods
maintain a rooted presence in D1 through all of our services.
This allows us to continue bridging resources,
elevating concerns, and minimizing gaps.
We thank you, community,
for your trust in co-creating with us.
We look forward to continuing to deepen our relationships in D1.
Please stay connected with Rosa.
Thank you, Councilmember Saka.
-Thank you, Director Chao.
How do they contact Rosa? Rosa's great.
I've worked with her. She's awesome.
-I would just give you her phone number right now.
No, there is a website,
and I can share if I can do that through you, Elaine.
I don't know if the constituents here,
if there's an email,
but it's on our website at the Department of Neighborhoods.
It will list all the community engagement coordinators.
That's what you would look up
is just community engagement coordinators,
and it will say the Southwest area.
So we have Southwest, Southeast, the North,
and all of Central area, and it will break it down for you.
So if you are from communities in those neighborhoods as well,
please look on our website.
Thank you. -Thank you so much. Okay.
We're very aware of the time.
We do have some questions
we really want to get to before the closing.
I know Councilmember Saka would like to close for us
some action steps.
So I'm going to ask a couple questions
that we got from the audience,
and please, I don't think they're that complicated.
Maybe keep it brief.
This came up at the Delridge meeting numerous times.
The community wants to get involved.
They have evidence.
They have videos, and you talked about that.
How can they share information and evidence in particular?
Because they're boots on the ground.
They're the eyes and ears.
How can they do that more specifically?
-That would be there. Sure.
I think, number one, obviously you can call 911.
They can get you connected to an officer
that can come to you with that information.
A lot of times people may not want to share it that way.
I would suggest calling the precinct
or one of the community service officers.
Do you have anything to add to that?
-Yes, hi. Good evening. I'm Captain Bair with SPD.
I would have to say what Chief Barnes is saying as far
as reaching out to us,
we are working on better communications,
better avenues of communications.
As you know, the lobby sometimes is not always open.
It just depends on our staffing.
But we try really hard to ensure
that we have somebody in the front
that can answer those questions.
And if not, there is ways of going about it
on the website of how to also make these reports.
But we also have our crime prevention coordinator now is
able to receive this information as far
as something called Axon Link.
It's a database that's evidence.com.
But you'll have officers
and you'll have the community service officers are
also able to give out this link,
which is basically, for instance,
if Officer Barreto German here, this is his name,
if he were to give me something saying, hey,
I have a video
and I want to be able to give it to you based on this incident
that just occurred, I give him a case number and he basically,
this link, he can upload his video footage for that.
It will end up going to the central database of evidence.com
and the detectives follow up on this.
The officers,
the patrol officers in that area
also follow up on seeing additional information
that they might not have had at the initial time of the report.
So these are also really great ways of getting that evidence
because I know it's not always something
that you discover at the time. Sometimes you'll get home,
you'll look at your Ring camera
and you'll be able to see something there
that might be of value
and you'll be able to follow up at that point as well.
But it is not just patrol officers,
it's also our community service officers who,
we have several of them at the South and Southwest precinct.
They're at other precincts as well,
as well as our crime prevention coordinator.
-And I think that's something that we can follow up on.
We can do a very nice, succinct postcard
that the councilmember can put on his blog
so that everyone can see.
This is a question that people want to know.
How can I give the information with the links?
I know that's a lot to remember,
but there is an avenue and a way to do that.
And I think we can do that by creating a nice blog post
that you can push out to your constituents.
Thank you.
-Okay, along those lines, a couple of questions
were community-based public safety initiatives.
Are there ideas on
how the community can get more involved
in public safety or community-based
public safety initiatives, projects?
-Yeah, I think coming to meetings like this
is certainly a start,
making sure that there's advisory councils.
I know that Southwest, in fact,
one of my very first meetings with the community
was in Southwest.
So making sure you're getting involved there with the captains
who's involved with the neighborhoods
I think is very important.
And, you know, we want to do more out in the community,
so please invite us.
We don't want you to always have to come
to the police department.
You know, that's great.
We do have space,
but I do think it's also important
that as a police department,
we come to the community and that we meet you where you are.
And so invite us. We will do our best to be there.
If I can be there, I'll be there.
But I can assure you that someone from Southwest
will be there in your community.
-One other question now -- -May I add to that?
-Sure.
-I think there's a couple of other things.
One thing that I know in many communities,
but in particular here, is your neighborhood crime watch groups.
That is a great way to be involved,
and typically in a lot of those groups,
there's usually one spokesperson
that can also help to connect with SPD,
but I think that would be one of them.
The other thing is, and this has been done,
I think it really helps,
is just neighborhood walks together as a group.
I will join. I'm going to commit right now.
I will join Southwest.
I walk a lot at night, so I will come anywhere and join you all.
Maybe not every night,
but I'll commit to at least once or twice a month.
But I think that's another thing.
We forget about the power of us in groups
and the ability to walk as a group and walk the neighborhood.
And, you know, we always have every summer,
I think it's the second Tuesday of August,
where we have our, you know, our night out.
And if we could do that on a regular basis,
especially in the areas to the extent of our parks and things
like that and to see the pro-social behaviors of us
coming together in terms of our neighbors
and take a break from our phones and screens
and walk with each other.
But I'm going to commit right now
that I would be happy to walk anywhere
in the Southwest precinct at least twice a month.
You can hold me to that.
And I think that would be another way
that we can get involved and just try
and do something more positive to connect with each other.
-Okay, great.
Only two more questions, and I think we can get this done.
This has come up numerous times in the various meetings
and from constituents here a lot.
The non-emergency lines are not being picked up.
This one person said they've called all of 20-plus
times with no answer.
I know you've spoken to that with staffing,
but what would you say to that? Should they just keep doing it?
What's your thought on that?
-So just twice in the last week we have been addressing,
I think, some of the -- I'll stand up.
I'm sorry. Okay. So that's perfect.
So I think -- it's not actually perfect.
It's horrific. So I'm sorry.
So again, I'm going to say this again,
and, you know, I'll say this again.
Call 911.
The same call takers that call 911
or answering the 911 emergency line
are also answering the non-emergent line.
And like I said, there is a class right now that is training
as we continue to staff up.
There are hold times, like you said.
That is happening.
I'm going to acknowledge that right now.
So call 911.
If you suspect a crime, something suspicious, do that.
That's what I'm telling you.
We are staffing up,
trying to staff up to be able to staff
the non-emergency line better.
But the priority, as it should be, in my opinion,
is for the call takers to answer 911.
So if you are experiencing those delays,
it is because they are answering 911.
Yes, sir.
-By posting numbers online
that citizens are supposed to call
and they're not answering discourages people from calling.
This is communication 101. -Absolutely.
-You want data? You want the community's help?
-Absolutely. -Give us an option.
Right now, you're not giving us an option.
-And just for that, I'll just say a couple things.
You can also text 911.
But your frustration is absolutely warranted and right.
It is not that they are not answering.
It is that they are answering something else at that point,
the 911 emergency line.
And as we continue to staff up -- here's the other thing.
I'm always recruiting. I will always be recruiting.
We need call takers,
so please apply,
just like we still continue to need SPD officers.
But I hear you.
We post that non-emergency number.
It is not that it's not being answered.
But when you are calling --
and I will take back that frustration directly
to our chief and our deputy chief of 911.
I will do that immediately after this meeting.
But it is incredibly frustrating.
I know, because I've heard this not only from you,
but from others within the last week.
That non-emergency line is being staffed,
but not as consistently to be able to pick up with that.
-Thank you.
-And I'm accepting applications as well.
-Okay, hold on. We're going to close.
Okay. Now, it's 8 o'clock. I've got one more question.
Councilmember is going to close out
with a summary of action steps. Please stay around.
I want to say a couple things,
because this might be the only time for me to say this.
This is not a one-off.
You know, we brought the community together.
You spent a lot of time.
A lot of you were out in the back there
standing up the whole time.
We want your input.
We're going to keep the online survey open.
We've gotten some very, very good information,
information that we didn't have before in terms
of your concerns.
And some of them are very specific to a particular area.
We want to hear that.
Please leave your e-mail
if you can so we can follow up as necessary.
I just want to say that.
-When you lead this meeting again, can we actually talk?
-We will talk. Okay, now this -- hold on.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Okay. Stay around afterwards. Excuse me.
Stay around afterwards.
We have a whole half hour to talk more one-on-one.
We do have one question that -- We do have one question.
Maybe, Councilmember,
you could answer this as part of your closing.
Excuse me. Excuse me.
There has been questions as --
can you explain a little bit more
about the $2 million funding
that you've set aside for the Delridge Road changes
that have come up a lot?
Maybe you can do this as part of your closing,
but this has come up.
-Sure. Gosh, not that.
Well, we're here to talk about gun violence
in these specific neighborhoods,
but since it was asked, I'll quickly address.
First off, as your councilmember,
I have failed to provide you
with sufficient clarity and transparency
around that investment and what's going on.
And in the absence of my clarity and direction,
there's been a lot of myths, very egregious myths,
by the way, swirling, primarily on the Internet.
And the Internet is undefeated.
And it's easy to make things about inanimate objects,
curbs, politicians.
We're easy punching bags. But at the end of the day,
that investment is designed to protect immigrants and families,
keep all users of our roads safe.
So failed to provide appropriate clarity.
Stay tuned. More information will come.
And I'll also just share,
I've been working very collaboratively
with the mayor's office
to find a more truly compromise solution on that investment.
But we're here to talk about gun violence,
so I will close this out.
That's all -- okay. So close this out.
I want to thank everyone again for taking the time
to be here tonight, sharing your concerns, sharing your feedback.
What I heard tonight
was a desire for more urgent action on these issues.
What I heard tonight was a deep concern, a shared one,
for the troubling rise in gun violence in these neighborhoods.
What I heard tonight that people are fed up
of the persistent outages in our streetlights,
primarily in High Point. District 1, I'm told,
has the worst outages across the city in terms of streetlights.
-Who's here and worried about this light?
-Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. Ma'am, we're closing out.
But I also heard a commitment from each one
of these department heads, these leaders,
to make better progress,
to make more urgent progress on these issues.
We heard the importance of calling 911
on the non-emergency line, by the way.
You should know, remember, I write laws and write checks.
A little-known item that we passed during last year's budget
in the fall was an investment to hire more
and increase the capacity of more 911 call operators.
Because we know the wait times
for the non-emergency line are long.
So we funded an investment to do that.
It takes time, of course, to hire people.
That's why we're hiring.
But I understand that frustration firsthand.
But call 911.
If you see something, say something.
That's another thing I heard.
Don't worry about, like, is it reportable, not reportable?
Firsthand experience.
When those 130 gunshots were fired,
and about an hour before that incident happened,
me and my neighbors were like, oh,
a lot of cars here abnormally at night in these neighborhoods.
Not normal, not normal. Should we call?
No, no, no, no. We're not, no. I wish, I wish, I wish,
I wish I could go back in time and just call 911.
Call 911.
Don't worry about being a Karen or Ken or none of that.
Let someone figure it out.
And we need to collect that data.
A kid's bedroom was struck by gunfire that night.
Just call 911.
And on the copper wire theft, I heard that.
It's a rampant issue. Just as an FYI,
legislatively, I've been working with the city attorney's office,
asked them to do an analysis
to see if there's a there there, so to speak.
From a local code perspective,
the state legislature took action on this same issue
on the sales,
on the retail sales component of stolen copper wire theft.
Very recently, there is express preemption in state law
that limits municipalities like Seattle,
our ability to take further action.
But we're exploring that right now.
In any event,
shared responsibility is the final thing I heard.
It is all of us, all of us,
our individual responsibility to do more.
You can elevate these concerns to me,
my office, especially the executive departments.
We just reach out to them anyway about these issues.
It is a shared responsibility to provide mentorship,
as the chief mentioned.
If you see something, say something.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be to the city.
Stand up for members of this community, of our community.
It is all of our responsibility.
And I also heard reaffirming of commitments
for the neighborhoods,
for the city to do more, to invest in our neighborhoods.
You all deserve it. We've done a lot.
My office has done a lot in a year and a half.
Clearly more to do.
And by the way, if you think some of those,
like the 10 blocks of new sidewalk construction,
$8 million of new sidewalks,
350 blocks of new sidewalks across eight years,
if that happened by happenstance or just coincidence --
I've seen Snake Hill.
I've seen the city's 30-year commitment.
Oh, we'll fund more sidewalks here along Brandon
when we get some more funding.
And it just always magically falls below the cut line.
So if you think all that happened by accident
or just pure happenstance, talk to me offline.
I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you at fire sale prices.
It's because of you all and the advocacy
that you all provided to me and my office
that we were able to secure those investments.
In any event, thank you all for joining us.
I want to keep on time here.
Really appreciate you all for being here today.
Thank you.