A MOTION confirming the appointment of John Diaz as the director of the department of adult and juvenile detention.
With that, we'll move to our first business item on the agenda to this motion 2019 371. It is consideration of the executive's appointment of John Diaz to be director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. We'll begin with a discussion from with the staff report from Mr. Cory of our central staff, and then we'll hear from the executive branch, Mr. Keller and Mr. Diaz himself. Good afternoon, Mr. Curry. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, members. I'm Clifton Curry of Council Staff. The staff report for the signing begins on page nine of your packet today. And again to some very brief background. The King County Department of Adult Juvenile Detention operates one of the largest detention systems on the Pacific Northwest. It operates two adult facilities, one here in King County, one in Kent, the Baling Regional Justice Center. In addition for adults, the county operates a community corrections program with a variety of services. Those services include a day reporting program known as Sea Camp or the Community Center for Alternatives Programs, Work Release and a variety of other programs. In addition, since 2002, the county's Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention added the J to its name and began operating the juvenile system right now up at 12th and Alder. In addition to those programs, the department staff also operate the alternative programs for juveniles, which include work release excuse me include electronic home monitoring and a series of other programs through the department's court detail. Staff from the department escort inmates throughout this building and other courthouses in the county will also guard inmates while they're at health facilities for appointments such as dialysis or for emergency medical care and will transfer to Harborview and Valley. It's also one of the largest departments in the county. Its 20 1920 biannual budget is just over $323 million, and the department has over 900 FTE ees as required by King County Code. Mr. Diaz is confirmation of his appointment as director has been transmitted to the Council for your review, and I believe I'll defer to Mr. Diaz to describe his background. However, I've had the pleasure of working with him for almost 20 years now, both in his work for the city of Seattle and since he's taken the position acting prior to his designation for the permanent appointment, he was the interim director of the department. So I've had the pleasure of working with them and I'm joined. Mr. Shaw. If there are no questions for me, I'm joined by KC Keller from the executive's office and then also Mr. Diaz. Thank you, Mr. Gray. Mr.. Six. KELLER Good afternoon, Counsel. Wonderful to be here. I'm delighted to be here today on behalf of Executive Constantine to introduce John Diaz as the executive executive's nominee to lead the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to speak and for scheduling the meeting today. You all know John Diaz have his back in front of you, so I won't spend a bunch of time retelling his story. I'll let him do that for you. But what I do want to convey is our deep confidence in John Diaz, his ability to lead. This is not an easy job. As it turns out, it's not an easy job to recruit for. When Director Hayes announced his retirement last fall, we conducted two national searches. Neither search produced the candidate or candidates that we were looking for. Executive Constantine is not looking for a jail director. He's looking for a change agent, a leader who shares our values and vision for transforming how we approach detention and community corrections. And someone who has the experience expertize and frankly, the thick skin necessary to lead the department through this period of change and isn't afraid to tackle difficult operational challenges, particularly around staffing in both the adult and juvenile facilities. John Diaz is that person. John brings three decades of senior management, law enforcement and labor engagement. Experience to this job. His leadership style reflects advanced study and by his own career, rising through the ranks of the Seattle Police Department, where he began as a patrol officer in 1980. After serving in the United States Army. John believes strongly in engaging directly with employees to inform decision making. He's now with staff during successive shift changes at our facilities. He leads our regular labor management meetings and is known for simply walking up to line staff to introduce himself and engage in conversation. And that may seem like a trait we want for all of our leaders, but when you have 950 employees, it's easier said than done, especially in an operation that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I want to just touch on two quick items, which I know John will expand on as well. One is mandatory overtime. And just to underscore that, in the six months that John has been interim director trying to address mandatory overtime, a longstanding issue for the department has been a top priority for him. And I'm proud of the work that he's doing. So far we have cut the time to hire and have with the support of the council. We've hired two new recruiters, which is allowing us to pursue more aggressive hiring strategies, including the hiring referral bonuses that the Council also approved as part of the budget. And we've increased wages for the latest corrections officer contract. These efforts are bearing fruit so far this year. We are on pace to hire. So far we've hired 52 corrections officers and 17 juvenile detention officers, which is remarkable when you think about the fact that we're competing against SPD, the sheriff's office and every law enforcement agency north and south of us. But I do want to underscore that hiring alone will not solve this issue. The fact is, nearly 20% of corrections officers have overtime restrictions and the department is currently processing three or five new restrictions per week. The average annual leave use of a corrections officer is nearly 500 hours, including scheduled unscheduled and unpaid leave. This equates to about 60 days off a year. Additionally, other contract provisions on work rules contribute to vacancies on ships. We continue to discuss with Labor how contract provisions contribute to overtime and look for ideas for reducing our vacancies. But John knows that staffing for today and the future is his top priority and that to be successful we must approach this effort in partnership with Labor and our workforce and with the Council. Lastly, I want to touch briefly on the Juvenile Division and Ordinance 18 637. I'm proud of the work that John and his team has achieved over the past six months to advance our shared vision for how we engage with youth in our care, including implementing new restrictive housing policies at both the juvenile and adult facilities consistent with Ordinance 18 637. These changes are reducing the use of restrictive housing, as our most recent quarterly report to Columbia Legal Services demonstrates. Later this week, we'll be interviewing finalists for the Juvenile Division Director position. So we have a lot going on. But one of the characteristics I so appreciate about John Diaz is that he sees each of these challenges as opportunities because that's what they are opportunities for us to improve, to partner, and to demonstrate to you and the community our commitment to continuing efforts to be an industry leader in taking a more progressive therapeutic approach going forward . Thank you so much for the opportunity to offer some opening comments and I urge your support of John Diaz to be the director of the HPD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Question for Mr. Six Color. I can't explain the fourth quarter. Questions for our staff and Mr. Keller. Councilmember Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Cliff, what year was it that we as a government research discussed and implemented the job and oh, job and for the lift in audience purpose. Tell them what those two terms mean. Certainly, Mr. Goss at the Juvenile Justice Operational Master Plan was the first effort. This effort was undertaken in order to ensure that the county did not have to build a expansion of the then existing juvenile detention facility with 200 beds. At that time, it looked like the county would need at least 80 new beds. Rather, the the council promulgated the requirement to develop the operational master plan, which would emphasize the use of alternatives and efficiencies, etc.. That was done from 1998 through 1999, and the Council adopted the documents related to the Juvenile Justice Operational Master Plan in 2000. For the consideration of the 2000 budget, the Executive sent over a request to begin a jail planning office that would build a third county jail on East Side property that the county then owned. And at that time, the Council chose instead to begin an adult justice operational master plan. Following on the success of the Juvenile Justice Operational Master Plan. That document was ultimately adopted in July of 2002 with again providing policy for how the county's secure detention facilities would be used. At the time, representatives from the National Institutes of Correction noted that we were only the 11th county in the United States to adopt a policy for how secure detention would be used in the county. Mr. KELLER, you mentioned the challenge of overtime, and I wanted to ask you, because I think it's an achievement that I think you said we've hired 60 plus officers in the last 6 to 7 months. What impact has the hiring had on the outstanding challenge of doing something about overtime hours for our regular staff? Mr. Gonzales. I would prefer to defer that to Mr. Diaz, who is close to the operation of the programs. With that. Mr. Diaz, welcome and good afternoon. Thank you, counsel. I first of all, I want to say that I'm honored to be considered for the permanent position as the director of the aged. It was not a job I was planning to go to. I was asked by by the executive and and Mr. Six killer here to come in and take a look at the operation and do it on an interim basis. My my whole effort was going to be really toward seeing what I could do to stabilize the operation and then help them move. What we're trying to look for, for that next jail director and also gave me a chance to not only work closely with the executive and I had a chance to meet with virtually all of you, but also meet with the rank and file with them and meet with the different stakeholders throughout the organization. And what I was really looking for is seeing if, a, if I was going to be the right fit for this organization. I think that's incredibly important to me. I'm at that stage of my career where I only want to work on things that I think I could solve problems on. And and if I could go and just talk very quickly about my background and then maybe just go right into questions, I think that won't be helpful. So very quickly, I think, you know, a little bit of the story. I was. My family was from from Mexico, from a town of our clients and the state of our clientele as it's kind of northern Mexico. They moved to San Francisco, and that's where I lived most of my life, a pretty progressive city. And but at the same time, I was able to see racism. And it's probably at its worst at times. And I then went into the U.S. Army. I was a criminal investigator, and I spent the first eight or nine months for a variety of reasons over in the Deep South and down in Alabama in the late seventies . So that was an interesting time from somebody that came from from a different part of the country. I had a few days vacation between the time I left. I left the Army and started with Seattle PD. That was poor planning on my part. I was planning on taking a few months off and it turned out that I had an opportunity to start earlier. So I had a four day hiatus and then I started with S PD, worked my way up through the ranks as a patrol officer, then as a sergeant working in mainly the Central District that I became one of the first community police team sergeants at a time when no one knew what that actually was, including me. And we were able to see and it was really our first attempt as in policing, at least in the city of Seattle, really trying a different way of working with the community, working closely with them, and really working on a problem solving approach. I spent a couple of years in Internal Affairs, which was quite the education, and then I continued to move up through the ranks. I was a watch commander, which was maybe in charge of approximately 50 patrol officers, once again, mainly in the Central District East Precinct. I then was promoted to captain, spent time as precinct captain, and then during kind of some of the worst times in our city with a gang violence, I, I then became in charge of the, of the gang section I spent there. I spent a couple of years there. I learned incredible amount from the men and women working in that organization, working with other people in the system, and working with some of the gang members themselves and trying to find different ways to try to keep them out of the system. Eventually, I did spend a couple of years running the homicide and robbery section. Once again, it gave me the opportunity to at times to work with with the victims families and just seeing the role of gun violence had in this in the city and the things that we needed to do to change. I was then moved to the deputy chief of administration. We had a new chief that had this idea that I needed to learn about budgets and all these human resources training, all these areas that I pretty much tried to avoid and spade, you know, stay on the operational side. So I spent five years there running the budget, which was around $250 million at the time, and which I'm very good staff and some really good ideas. We were the first time in in in our history that we actually stayed within budget in the in our with our budget, which was very unique because we had this crazy idea that we didn't need to. Actually stand back and usually over time was a driver. So we did work through that. Eventually I became the chief of police toward the end of my career, and we worked on a consent decree. We worked on a variety of other issues. But I guess more importantly, what I want to say is I just didn't hang around for those 33, 34 years on the department. I really tried to do is every place I worked. I was always looking at, you know, the status quo was unacceptable. It was always looking at what can we do to make the place better? And invariably, the only way to do that is you have to engage your staff. You have to turn and turn that culture into one problem solving, looking at trying to experiment and realizing that times you're going to fail at those experiments, and that's okay. People that know me know that it was a great idea. They would always get credit if it was a bad idea. I would always take the responsibility and I would continue to ask that here. Also, we're going to try some different things, and sometimes they're going to fail. If they fail, blame me. But if they're good ideas, please, you know, give credit to the staff and the different people that were involved in working on that. And that's how you get people to change from just treading water to really trying to improve the organization. I've had a chance to meet a lot of people in this organization and we're lucky. We have a very talented group of dedicated people doing a very difficult job. I'm kind of used to being in that environment and I really look forward to trying to continue to improve this organization if given the chance. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Diaz. I had wanted to began by asking you a question about over time. I was impressed by Mr. Keller. I said that just in six or seven months we've hired quite a few officers here and King County in our jail facilities. I know it's two of them. And my question to you is, has that been enough to put a dent and the challenges around over time? Yes. No. And why not? The answer to that. Councilmember Garcia, there's no PBA. We have made some great headway in that arena. However, I think what we've what many of us have done being included is when we talk about mandatory overtime, we use shorthand is saying it's staffing and staffing is just one piece of it. It's a big piece of it and it's an important piece. And I have to be and I'm very proud of the of our h.r. department. Peter, you in central h.r. I want to thank all of you for the the bonuses that that you authorized that kept us in the running when everybody in this area, every agency is offering bonuses. We've done incredibly well. I want to thank you for that and for those employee referral bonuses. Those have been incredibly helpful also for the use of two people from central H.R.. One of them is a marketing specialist, and we're trying a lot of different things. Sometimes they don't always go well, and I won't talk about the backpacks and how badly that went. But but we are trying some new things and they are they are bearing fruit. We need to continue to do that. And we will will do so. They know that we need to at least hire that many and probably more this coming year. But staffing is just one piece of it, you know. And like I said, we tend to use it as shorthand. There's a couple of other things that we need to look at, and one of them is our work roles. You know how the management occurs prior to this recent arbitration, that award that just occurred. You could walk in an hour or you could call an hour before your shift was going to start and take a day off . Now, that makes it incredible, incredibly difficult if you're trying to manage it, manage a workforce, and it's different than it was. And we're going to propose what I could sometimes we could make make that work. When you have actual policies that have to be have to be managed, have to be staffed, that makes it incredibly difficult. So our current changes in the contract now require a 72 hour notice before you're going to take a day off. That's going to be helpful. The other thing that the award could help us in is there's now a cop on. I mean, there's a cap on compensatory overtime on comp time. It used to be that there was no cap on comp time. So basically you could continue to earn it throughout the year and take it as you need it. I understand it. And it's a yes. And I understand how this would be fantastic for the employee. And but we needed to put reasonable limits on that. And so currently now there's a cap of about 82 hours for a certain type, another 40 total. So I think it's a total of 122 hours. So now there is a cap on our comp time. That's just an example of some of the work rules we need to change. The last piece of that is culture. Mr. Six Killer talked about we have a percentage of our employees right now have FMLA restrictions on using on on mandatory overtime. And I understand it perfectly. Men and women of the organization want to have predictability in their lives. They don't want to work double shifts if if without being given a heads up. And once again, that's a that's been a problem with not being able to give them predictability. I understand it. If what we need to do, though, is become one team, we really as a as organization, we truly need to become a team. And if it all would take just a little of the overtime, we wouldn't be in the situation where we have so much mandatory overtime. So that leads to those are some of the problem. But other solutions to that, we we've met with the with the unions and I'm I want to thank our adult corrections staff or looking at a variety of different ideas. We have floated one of them that they just recently had said that they would be interested in looking at is having an auxiliary workforce of retirees that could come back in and fill gaps as needed. That could only work with both both sides having a shared interest. Finding an MLA where there'd be appropriate language that both sides would be able to ensure that their interests were being met there. Frankly, there need to be also an escape hatch if it turns out that it's not working the way we want it to. So currently, as we speak, we have a survey out to retirees in the last two years to see if that's something that they would be interested in. Another area that the labor was interested in and once again, we have a shared interest in trying to solve this would be are there different areas where we'd be able to try some different shifts that might be more efficient and effective and reduce the use of overtime? So we're putting together some workgroups where you to sit down and frankly, you know, we have to be willing to kind of open up our minds in our hearts to try to to try these different things. We will we will work closely with our with with labor on this. We will will together some potential employees. And then we'll work through to see if any of these are worth pursuing, to see if they meet some of our goals. And at the end of the day, if they don't, then we need to stop them. The other thing that we're we will plan on, if any of these members of understanding that we're looking at doing, there's going to be a hard cap to them. So there'll be a timeline where at a certain point they will end. And if they're the best thing that we've ever seen, then it's something that we should put in a regular as we go through and we negotiate our next contracts. But to me, this is an example of it's three things. I know it's been a very long answer, but it's three things. It's staffing. It's looking at our work rules that make sense for all. And it's really it's also changing culture and having the spirit of innovation. Spirit of innovation, as you say. A spirit of innovation. Yes. Thank you. Council member of the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your willingness to serve. I know it's a thankless. Job and we're lucky. To have someone. With your experience. And reputation being willing to step into the hot seat. And I appreciate your comments about when you try something big and bold and it doesn't work out, you take the blame and then you. Share the credit. But what. You missed was when you do something big and. Bold and it works out, we, the politicians take the credit. So. Yeah, my my question is, and it's. Kind of two pieces, but they're. Related. It obviously a. Large portion of in particular the chronic offenders that are housed in the facilities have behavioral health challenges. And do you have any. Plans or thoughts as. To how we can speed up programs such as medically assisted treatment with addictions? And secondly. Ways to improve our release and transition programs to better integrate those behavioral health programs either into the facility or that kind of seamless handoff into services. So I feel like that policy area is ripe for also for innovation and new. Ideas and. Bolder ideas. And I wonder if you have any thoughts in those areas. Yes. Sorry. Yes, I kind of said it better myself. These are the these are two areas that you touched on that we're something that I'm very interested on. When I first came, when I was asked to come and talk to to Mr. Six together into to the executive, I'm frankly, I think they read me like a cheap novel . They realized that there is certain things that I was very interested in. I've spent my whole life trying to work on problems I've seen. I spent my whole life watching arrests, people, and he had all sorts of issues. And then we would bring them in through the court system. We walked them into the jail and then, you know, shortly thereafter they're back out. And, you know, all you have to do is see that and say, what could we do differently? We must be doing something different. That's why I was a big proponent of lead when that was started by you know, was started by Lisa Desjardins and members of the Seattle Police Department. That was now it seems probably something that we, of course, we should do, but it was a big deal when we started it. There was a lot of tension about whether that was going to work. But that was just an example of here's a better way of doing business. I talked to Dr. Sanders here with your health and he knows and I'm a a big supporter of what we could be doing in medical assisted treatment. And I don't like playing defense. I like working on our bench. Just recently, I was at a large jail network meeting. That's some of the large. The Steelers in the country. They met in Columbus and there was a big, big section or a session. It was all about medical access to treatment. It's coming our way. It should come our way. This is an area that we should be working closely with. Yale Health. All of this isn't as easy as we would think. The delivery of the medication, as an example, is is is an issue that we need to continue to refine the type of. When they use Bute, it turns out that that's something that they could that they could sell within the jail system. They can sell when they go out of the system. So that means somebody has to sit there and watch them as far as they're taking the medication for a period of time. There's different delivery system that we're going to have to take a look at, and that's just a little example of how my agency, Joe Health, needs to be working together on how do we make this a better system. And one way to do that is we still get ideas from other places. For instance, right now on state of Massachusetts, the legislator required they were going to require all the jail systems to go to a to match treatment and a medical assisted treatment that jails came back and said, you know, we're not ready for prime time. So four of them decided to do a pilot program and they moved ahead on some of these areas and some of the areas that I think we're going to have to work on. They've already had some answers. Now, the other thing that's music to my ears is because I ran budgets and I'm incredibly, incredibly I use the word frugal about the about the money of the taxpayer, is that there's some technical assistance money where we could send send teams out to Massachusetts. There's four counties right now that are kind of moving pretty far ahead in this area. And we should, frankly, if any good policy they have, we should take it and use it. You know, there's a I, I was pleased to see that this large scale network was very similar to a major city chiefs that I've spent 15 , 20 years going to, where we were very good about stealing each other's ideas and everybody actually revels in it. And we make it a point to try to see how we could do things better. But of course, it's a treatment. It's something that we will certainly be working very hard on and trying to trying to work on. The other area that you talked about is those people, those high barriers group that goes in and out of the system over and over again. It doesn't make any sense to me that we have people that have substance abuse problems, mental health issues and homelessness. And then on a Friday at 4:00 in the afternoon, we're walking them out the door and assume they're going to make it to some appointment on Monday. The chances of that happening are are pretty poor. What we should be doing is having that warm handoff. And that means probably more caseworker, more caseworkers needed a better triage of who needs that kind of help and working with our outside community programs and such to make that happen. So that's another area they will certainly be working hard on. When I say me, it's really going to be just one I'm pretty good at doing is tapping the talent of of a very smart organization. It's a it's a, you know, we have 900, 950 PhDs in this organization. And it's really tapping into that, into their innovation and ideas and making it okay for them to want to come up in and try new things. Because I remember Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I wanted to follow up on your FMLA comment earlier. So do you know what percentage of your workforce is on FMLA at this moment, and how often do they have to be there by their FMLA documentation? You know, I know. I think currently we have and I'm sorry. My. Math today won't be great, but we have approximately about 140 people, I believe, on FMLA. Because that's 140 at 950. Yeah. And that's between the the juvenile and corrections. And I think there's and once again, I'm just going by memory at this point so I could give you a more detailed review and I could send that to you as far as how often they're supposed to do it. I believe that they're supposed to go in every six months, but I will verify that. I know that we're not doing as good a job as we can. Once again, it just comes down to the amount of staffing that we have. When we talk about staffing, there's also staffing issues we have up in the administrative side of the house as well as in the corrections officers side. We need to be doing a better job of managing the people that have FMLA restrictions at the other. Too bad. It's as I said before, I could perfectly understand why why people are getting FMLA restrictions. We have an aging workforce and what we're asking them to do is difficult. And being that I'm on that end of the spectrum, you know, there's a variety of different experience headaches, knee surgeries, you name it that people go through . And I think that's one piece of it. But I can't give you those. I can't get back to you on the actual percentages. Looks like about 14 and a half percent, so six months seems a little long to not have to revivify, especially with that high percentage. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Bell duty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Apologies for being late. I am empathizing with you a little bit right now, having sat in that exact chair in this exact meeting once upon a time. And if I can start by just offering thanks for your willingness to take on that, it's such a big challenge to run our jail system the right way. It's you don't get to choose who comes in the front door. You have to deal with whatever comes to you. There's always not as much in the way of resources as you could use. You certainly could always use more. And it's one of those operations that it seems that a large percentage of the public just sort of assumes they know how to do it, just as well as the people who are doing it. And so there's a lot of criticism that comes your way and and yet it's very hard to do well. And on top of that, it's something that we should rightly be judged for if we don't do it well. So it's just a challenge. It's a real challenge. And I appreciate that you're willing to take it on. My second thing is just a piece of advice. If you're able to, after all your years of being involved with 24 seven operations, to find a way to put your phone away and get a full night's sleep at night, that's a highly recommended. Yeah, but my question for you is this. So when I was working as the jail director, I, I got some very good advice myself that was about always having a a principle or a goal to that. You were sort of chasing after that you're trying to challenge the organization to be better in some way, as opposed to just dealing with the problems of the day . Because the problem of the day are going to they will fill the whole bucket and then some. But so one of the things that came to me, it wasn't my idea, but it was just sort of an issue of the time when I was the jail director. And it was something that we heard from the Department of Justice in our own jail health people and others was to really limit the use of of isolation housing in the adult jails. And so we worked at that. That was that was a big major initiative when I was the jail director. What sorts of things do you see as being the initiatives of the next few years, aside from dealing with the things that just present themselves on your plate because they're there? And if you don't have those because you're coming from a different kind of line of work, where do you find those those sorts of things to keep us pushing into the high end of the practice? Yes. Thank you, Councilmember and Baldacci, I think you've just explained the ongoing issue that you have when you have these kind of jobs. You know, I would just put your the quote by Marcus Aurelius, but basically it was you have urgent things and you have important things. You know, we have the day to day urgent things that we have to get done. We have to keep this place running. It's a it's a daily population of about 2000 daily adult secure population of about 2000. You know, we are blessed. You said 900 people and all that entails when you're just doing the day to day work. So what are the urgent things that have to happen? But and the bigger thing is the important things. And that's really the area that I want to focus on is on those important things. One of them is and will continue to be restrictive housing with the ordinance that Councilmember Dombroski and Councilmember Wells. This is this is an area that we're going to continue to move forward on. And I'm pretty pleased on where we going with that. As an example, we have a MDT multidisciplinary team that's made up of a sergeant, a classification specialist and somebody from psychiatric services, and they are going systematically on the Adobe side as an example, working through each floor, trying to find different ways to reduce restrictive housing. Our biggest restrictive housing, as an example, is or people that are in restrictive housing, almost probably 60, 70% of them are people that are refusing housing. So what I mean by that is you walk in the door and you have a you know, as you're going through classification, they decide. You're going into the general population and people said, no, I won't, you know, who do I have to hit? You know, what do I have to do to stay out of out of that? So these are people that kind of self-imposed, restrictive housing. So what this team is doing is basically kind of putting together groups of people that are like minded so that we keep them out of restrictive housing. So that's just one example of what they're doing. They, you know, I sent them to the national conference once again, we should be stealing good ideas. We should be saying what? What what are the best practices around a nation. On the juvenile side of the house? What's come out of that ordinance? You know, the eight six, 637 has really been, as we've been looking at, really reducing and ultimately trying to eliminate the need for restrictive housing and trying a different and different approach as we've we've been trying some new things, such as Restoration Hall. So basically, instead of putting somebody into a youth into restrictive housing, they're doing one on one. I mean, they're trying to help. This helped his kid be able to manage working day to day. When you have those, you know, those general difficulties in life, these are the same kids that I saw out on the street all the time. And what usually would get them in trouble would be lack of impulse, you know, impulse control. You know, they'd see something, something would get them upset and they would react. So we're trying to do different programing to try to help them as they get out and go back out into the community. And I think that's an area we're going to have to continue to move forward on. We talked about Mattie. That's another big area that we need to continue to work on. The other big area for us is succession planning. We have a we have a large group that could retire, you know, in the in the coming years. And currently, I have some of my top people could retire today and active might come back. They might have already retired but so it's. That. So it's really we need to do a better job on getting our future leaders out there. That means identifying training, you know, making sure that as we try some of these new ideas, having our rank and file involved in not only coming up with the ideas, but being involved in those workgroups of trying to change things and getting them ready, coming to these kind of a, you know, coming to council hearings as different issues are coming up so that they understand how to continue to work collaboratively with people. In the last the last piece of that would also be is getting our workforce to understand that our our world is changing, the world of corrections continues to change, and that we really need to be involved with so many other disciplines as we continue to do this work in the future. I mean, it's one thing that I started seeing on on the statehouse for the probably the last decade or so is more and more we were at tables that had so many different other disciplines involved. And that's where really that's where you started to see some real solutions. That's what I want us to continue to do here, and that's what I'll be moving forward with. Councilmember Dombroski he was. CHAIR And thank you, Mr. Diaz, for Cheetos, like the guy for being willing to serve the people of King County in this very difficult role. I appreciate the multiple opportunities. You and I have had a chance to talk over the issues, and I'm just done a great degree of confidence in your ability to lead this department in a way that is aligned with the community's values and and continuous improvement. I'm pleased to join today as a co-sponsor of the motion confirming your appointment. I wanted to give you the opportunity to share with the Council today a little bit about your work on a national level with juvenile population and your background and experience there that you've engaged on to reform the systems around juvenile offenders. And then maybe just looking ahead, whether you see an opportunity to explore whether or not in due time and with appropriate planning, there might be an opportunity to take our detention for young people. And rather than have that be a part of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, where we have a kind of a corrections approach to be consistent with the general push, to be restorative in nature, to bring that public health perspective, as the executive has talked about, to really take that opportunity when we have young people that are justice involved and wrap them with support to get them going in the right direction. And whether that should maybe be it could be benefited by being out of kind of a detention department, if you will. Wow. Okay. It's a I. You. Can you can give us the executive summary. I know there's a lot there. We're running on the juvenile side of it. You know, I have for quite a few years, I was part of the a group run by Justice Bridge looking at kind of the big picture items as far as, you know, what are some of the changes that we should be looking at? And the juvenile side of the house also for many years, as you saw and you've just seen it in the in the reduction of population in secure detention is when I first started and with speedy I mean the we were we probably had five or six times the number of of kids up in the youth service center . I mean, there was no screening or triage. And I think all of the studies have shown that that is, you know, the more we keep them out of the criminal justice system, the better the higher likelihood for success. So there's been a lot of work, I think, done by a lot of people with once again, with the right heart, the right mind to to change that. And now you've seen that. I think today when I look I think our our current population up there right now is 40, 41, I believe. And it's been fairly consistent now that I would say that all of us would say that's 41 too many, but it's a significant reduction in what's been happening. The approach to public health is one that we've already have embraced and are going to continue to move forward on. It's going to be now how do you how do you implement that change? Currently, we are working closely with the University of Washington, with Dr. Trump, and we're working with King County Health and Dr. Carrie and really changing the way that the those juvenile detention officers, how they're, you know, how they do their work, it is really changing significantly. In fact, if I was going to mention juvenile, you know, that division in general, I use one word, it's change. They're changing how they do their their business and they're moving into a new facility. They're ultimately they're moving to a completely different public health approach and one that is sorely needed. So that's going to require immense amounts of training. It's going to be picking the right juvenile director. That's going to be incredibly helpful, that wants to continue to move forward in that and that arena. It's understanding where we are with restrictive housing in the fact that we're going to change that significantly. And we already have started moving, I think, in the right direction and I've been pretty pleased by what they've been doing. So I guess what you what I would say is you're going to continue to see change in how we do things. And I would ask that you continue to observe what we're doing. I you know, I'm sure there's going to be direction and advice is always going to be needed and how we continue to speed that up. But it's going to be it's going to be interesting change in how we do business. Councilmember Caldwell's. Hi, I thank you, Mr. Chair. John, congratulations on the appointment and why you're here today. Obviously, I think you've done a terrific job in the six months you've been here with us. And so. The City of Seattle. You commented when you first spoke about having been in San Francisco and you saw a lot of racism when you were there. And that was quite a long time ago. Also commented that had been involved with the consent decree in Seattle. And you've also commented about the world is changing and so you're trying to stay up to speed on that and be able to bring our center into those changes. But I'd like to hear from you just a comment now coming full circle, in a way, starting off your career, going to San Francisco, being at Seattle, and now being here with us at King County. Any observations on discrimination, racism, how things are changing? To what extent do they still need to be changed and so forth? Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, the world is changing. I mean, in my time in and in my career, I saw a sea change in how we were doing business, how we are continuing to move forward. I wish I could tell you, though, that it's enough and it is. And we know that the issue of race and disproportionality is one that continues to plague our country. It's it's an area that we need to continue to focus on trying to fix. It's a it's a you know, you look at every one of our social structures and you see it where it doesn't matter whether it's education, whether it's economics. Your job, as I in the medical field, I can't think of an area, any large system where we don't see it. And I think we've gotten better in many ways, but it's one that sometimes we take a step back and language matters. You know, our leaders talk matter, whether we're willing to take a stand on things that maybe aren't maybe aren't popular, but are important to try to move forward, I think it matters. And so I feel very fortunate that I came from a progressive city and I still go to my family still there. I worked in a very progressive city here in Seattle, and now I've been very pleased by what I've been seeing in the county's approach to equity and social justice. And so I think it's a I tend to be optimistic by nature, and I think we're moving in the right direction. But this is an area that there's still so much work to do. The area that we've been focusing on is ensuring that we have the most diverse workforce that we can. So we started a recruitment team made up of juvenile detention officers and corrections officers, and we've been sending them out to different community and ethnic events and and really with the whole idea of trying to continue to do that, to hire. And, you know, that's been a big change from when I first came here. I came and worked for the city, you know, way too long ago where, you know, it was you know, you just didn't see the diversity that you see now, that diversity and not only in and race, but in gender. And and and just just seeing the openness that that you see in this area. I could tell you, though, that even now, you know, as I travel across the country, it's it's not the same everywhere. And it's one that we're going to have to continue to work on. It's one that I feel deeply committed to. As he as I said, I've seen it firsthand. You know, I've seen it how they you know, even to this day, my mother, who's 87, who who's English, isn't the best yet, and and how she's treated at times. And, you know, you just you know, when you notice it, when you when you see it in your own family and then you notice it everywhere. So it's an area that we need to continue to work on. And that's something I'm committed to work with here in this agency also. Thank you very much, Mr. Diaz. You've been introduced by Mr. Six Killers as change agent, and you've spoken yourself about not being satisfied with the status quo, both in your written materials that you submitted to the committee ahead of time. In our conversation today, you've talked about integrating into the division's work, the principles of equity and social justice that King County truly is trying to champion at every level and have already demonstrated that in your work as interim director, by reaching out to communities of color in particular, as you try to recruit a workforce that looks like the community we're serving, that and your dedication to staff training is all exemplary and I look forward to that continued work. And with that, I'd encourage continued attention to best practices around persons that are transgender or gender nonconforming to make sure that King County is always on the front edge of making sure that we are we are committed to those communities in the best way possible. Yes, sir. In fact, one thing I was very pleased about was director Dr. Sanders from Geo Health just came back from a national conference on correctional jail health and it was ace one of the sessions was on transgender policies in the jail and I was pleased to see that they highlighted King County's policy and I could send you a copy of that email. So I was very pleased to see that they were they liked the approach that we were taking in this arena as an example. Once again, we'll continue to work on that. We're going to be on the leading edge. Exactly. Thank you. Other questions seem that I would entertain a motion. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilwoman Lambert and I were very pleased to be the initial sponsors of this motion. Therefore, I would like to have the honor of moving that. We confirm the appointment of John Diaz as the director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. Councilmember Gossage moved adoption of motion that we give a do pass recommendation. The motion 2019 371. Is there discussion, Councilmember Lambert. I'm very pleased that even after being interim, you want to stay on. So that's a good thing. And I really appreciate your accessibility, how you're really involved and teamwork, and that you make our 745 minute meetings each week and the planning that goes into that and that that's stressful. And yet you're very calm about the decisions that need to be made. And so I appreciate that and your compassion for the people that work at the jail as well as the people in the jail. And both are important. So I look forward to continue to work with you and I'm excited about voting yes. Thank you for the discussion. See? None. I'd ask the court to please call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember about the tie councilmember did last year. Councilmember Dunn. All right. Councilmember Bassett, I. Councilmember Colwell Councilmember Lambert, I thank the member of the Broward County. Something on record. Mr. Chair. Hi, Mr. Chair. The vote is 90 zero no's. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation motion 2019 371 and without objection, we'll place that on the consent agenda before full council as well. What day will that be coming before a regular. Course of business? Or a week from Wednesday. Thank you very much. Thank you. I would say congratulations, but you still have to make your way through the nine member council. Thank you. Thank you. That takes us to our last item on today's agenda, which is a briefing B 162 on district court vacancies on process update and to present is Sam Porter Chair.