AN ORDINANCE relating to the Seattle Police Department; banning the ownership, purchase, rent, storage, or use of less lethal weapons; and amending Section 3.28.146 of the Seattle Municipal Code.
Report of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee Agenda Item six Council Bill 120105 relating to the Seattle Police Department banning the ownership, purchase, rent, storage or use of less lethal weapons and amended sections 3.20 8.1, four and six of the Seattle Municipal Code. The committee recommends the bill pass as amended. Thank you so much. Councilmember Herbold, you are the chair of the committee, so I'm going to hand it over to you to provide this report. Thank you so much. So much of what I'm going to say now is a repeat of this morning's comments. But for the public record and the viewing public, just want to go through the background and the the outcomes of this of our many months policy discussion around the ordinance that amendments to the ordinance that the Council passed back in June. So as context, there are currently no restrictions in the Seattle Municipal Code on the use of less lethal weapons. The Public Safety and Human Services Committee voted for one asset at our meeting on July 13th. At that time, I moved to hold it so that we would not hear it in full council until after the consent decree status conference that occurred last week. We wanted to make sure that in case the court weighed in at that status conference, that we would be informed by by the discussion happening at the status conference. The Court had no comment on the legislation in the status conference. And so I'm looking forward to our discussion and vote on it today. The legislation itself includes a full ban on acoustic weapons, directed energy weapons, blast balls, ultrasonic cannons and water cannons. The use of noise. Flash devices, otherwise known as flash bangs, are banned in demonstrations. The bill conditions, the use of pepper spray and pepper ball launchers on instances when the risk of serious bodily injury from violent actions outweighs the risk of harm to bystanders and separately from the conditions on pepper spray and pepper ball launchers. Tear gas is used allowed in even more narrow circumstances. The legislation does not regulate the use of non chemical launchers, for instance, beanbag rubber bullets, blue tip launchers. And so the there is there is no regulation in the code as relates to the use of those particular type of less lethal weapons. And that's important for folks who have raised questions about what less lethal weapons are available in instances where there is a threat of property damage. When we were in deliberations around this legislation, myself and Council President Gonzalez met with the consent decree monitor and the Department of Justice out of respect for the consent decree process and in with the objective of getting their feedback in advance of final cut council action. This was informal feedback to the formal consent decree process, which is yet to occur. The committee first did back in February after several months of discussion to recommend a draft bill that was used for those discussions. During the conversations about the draft bill, we heard from the Department of Justice concern that restricting the use of certain less lethal tools and of management circumstances could actually lead to officers using higher levels of force, putting both assault of protesters and the surrounding nonviolent protesters both at higher risk of harm. Judge Robert expressed similar concerns. The DOJ likewise inquired as to whether the draft bill allowed for relevant CPD officers to be trained in changes to policy again to avoid the unwanted impact of having untrained officers resort higher levels of force than necessary. This was an issue that Judge Robert also raised. So by submitting the draft legislation for this informal review. Receiving this kind of feedback. It allowed us to make further amendments to the legislation before the legislation itself was referred. And in order to help address those concerns, the Council, the legislation added a definition of a control and provided 60 days to allow for training. After the court approved the legislation. Another update after hearing back from the the the monitor and the Department of Justice was to make clear that in narrow circumstances as it relates to pepper ball launchers, that they they can't be used for the purpose of crowd control. But if there is a large group of people and the purpose isn't crowd control, but it's the risk of avoiding serious bodily injury from violent actions and that outweighs the risk of harm to bystanders. So again, the purpose isn't to move people, but is intended to to mitigate or limit the likelihood that somebody is seriously hurt in a crowd, that the pepper ball launchers are permitted. Again, it's not only is in response to feedback we've received through this informal review process, but it also recognizes that a district court ruling just very , very recently specified that approved policies for the use of our pepper ball launchers. And Judge Roberts specifically authorized the use of pepper ball launches in late February as part of Speedy's Court manual mandated annual update to use of force policies. So given that just in February, Judge Robert approved the use of pepper ball launchers in this narrow, narrow circumstance, we can't very well. Ask him to review a new policy that revokes the allowance that he's just approved. Reminder that all started back in June of 2020, with the Council's unanimous adoption of legislation sponsored by Council member. The want and use of nearly all less lethal weapons and. The the response from the court was to almost immediately issue a restraining order on that bill in July of last year. And in its ruling, the court stated in the temporary restraining order that the legislation itself did not. Public safety. In August 2020, the CPC, the OIG and the EPA. A commented on the the legislation that the council passed. They sent us recommendations for how we might consider changing it. And we shared that feedback from our accountability partners in our committee that that feedback was also sent to Robert as well, because he also had requested that feedback. This bill has consumed much of the time and efforts of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee over the last year. We've discussed this policy, including roundtables with our accountability partners in seven separate Public Safety and Human Services Committee meetings since last September. While not perfect, my overall goal is to adopt the strongest legislation possible, building on the consensus recommendations of the three accountability bodies within the context of the consent decree. I just want to note that the CPC did write to the committee in support for the legislation, while noting their perspective that they believe more needs to be done . They wrote to say. The Seattle Community Police Commission writes today to offer its Support Council Bill 12 0105. The Commission believes that the bill's inclusion of clear delineations of when less lethal weapons can and cannot be used and limitations on who can use them is a significant first step in ensuring the safety of community members when they engage in First Amendment protests. I've heard concerns in past committee meetings. Then we heard some of this today about the right of action contained in in the ordinance. And this is the right of action for members of the public to pursue what they perceive as violations of the ordinance. I want to be clear that the language in the ordinance allows the city to offer a firm, an affirmative defense that the violation did not occur. The language will not make anyone accused of a crime ineligible from using the right of action merely because they've been accused a crime. A person accused of a crime can file suit under the right of action. It is not accurate, as some have suggested, that if the affirmative defense was used, that the judgment of a reasonable person, a crime was committed, that the city, in order to prevail, would only have to prove that an officer said they thought a crime was committed. That is not the legal standard of the affirmative defense just closing out before calling for the vote. Just so folks understand what the the next steps are. If the legislation passes today, the Seattle Police Department will draft policy revisions that reflect the ordinance. They'll do so within 60 days provided by Section four of the bill. The DOJ and the Monitor would then review the policy revisions, and this is when their formal review under the consent decree takes place. Then the court would review the policy revision. And then finally, if the court approves the policy revision, the revised policies and substantive provisions of the bill will take effect as provided by Section five of the bill. So I really want to thank my colleagues on the Public Safety and Human Services Committee for sticking with this for many, many months and meetings and hours. Appreciate all of the engagement with our accountability partners throughout the process, as well as the feedback that we've received from the DOJ, the consent decree monitor and the general public who has come out to every single meeting where we've discussed this and given their feedback to the legislation. And I hope we can all count on your vote in favor of this legislation today. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold. Are there any additional comments on the bill? Consumer redress, please. Thank you. Council president. Council member. Her. Well, I just have a couple of questions, mostly repeating back to you what I heard you just say to make sure that I got this clearly since I don't sit on your committee. This morning was my first real formal briefing from you on it, and just hearing that the court had no comment on these bills during last week's meeting, is that to be interpreted as they have no issues or is that to be interpreted as they may have issues, but they made no comment? The latter. That they may have issues. We held. We held the bill from being heard in full council. We delayed it because we thought that it might be a topic that the settlement conference was scheduled really without any information about what the topic was going to be. The OR we had some information about what the topics would be. We didn't know if it was going to include this. And so the settlement conference occurred. It was a quarterly settlement conference that the that the city regularly has. This did not come up as a topic. Okay. And I heard clearly that the city is in favor of this. Did the monitor or Judge Robert, have concerns that have not been addressed? So we'll find out whether or not there are concerns that have not been addressed when we go through the formal consent decree process. We have worked to address the concerns that were raised in the informal process. Thank you. And then the last question that I have is what I think I heard you say, just to put it very clearly focused, that after this has passed and before it goes into implementation, the DOJ and the Monitor will have time to review and decide what is implemented and what is not implemented. My question here is just ensuring that we're not at odds with the process and that we are in tandem. Is that a correct understanding? That is absolutely correct. Thank you, Councilmember Strauss. Thank you. Councilmember. Who will double them? Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for those questions. And I do want to sort of emphasize, I've been participating with Councilmember Herbold in the background on many of these process related issues. And just want to emphasize my fervent belief that we have really done everything we can as a city council to protect the integrity of our legislative authority while also complying with what we think are legal obligations under the consent decree. And so don't think that I really do believe that moving forward on this legislation now is the next step in that process to allow us to enter the bill into the more formal review process. But I think we have done everything we can in the informal process to try to identify, suss out many of those issues that we think the court and the DOJ and the federal court monitor might have. And I think this is the next special step to allowing for perhaps a more official, fuller review of the bill. That doesn't mean that the bill that they won't identify additional concerns. But I think at this point, those concerns would be related to the policies as opposed to whether or not the council complied with the process. That's where most data. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to weigh in and say thank you to come from her role as chair of public safety or stewarding this conversation through. Also wanted to thank customers Salon who is not here today but I know has spoken to this issue many times. And I also heard Councilmember Herbold note their efforts, their leadership on this as well, who brought forward the legislation initially. I think all of us here today, by considering this legislation, are really showing that we think that this legislation in this amended form is an important component to making sure that we're moving our commitment to accountability forward and doing so in partnership with our accountability partners along the way. I think the importance of this legislation cannot be understated, especially as the memories of last year's response to the protests are still relatively fresh in many of our minds. We all remember the stories. We all remember the public testimony, the hours of calls that we received as people expressed their frustration and many times their surprise and shock about the response to the protests that were standing up in support of Black Lives. We also heard a number of reports, and this was covered in the press, as well as people calling our offices to note that members of the national press, legal observers, medics had been pepper sprayed or been hit by projectiles like glass balls and launchers. We saw video of a child being sprayed in our streets in downtown Seattle at short range in the face. And we heard the testimony of the father of a nine month old baby who was calling for an end to the days of the use of tear gas in our most dense neighborhood in Seattle on Capitol Hill. The father of a nine month old who had woken up to their baby foaming at the mouth, I think it's fair to say we believe that nobody deserves to be afraid of physical harm when doing their job, whether they're members of our officers, police officers or members of the press, medics, legal observers, everybody who was doing their job and also standing up to express their First Amendment right has a right to be safe. We also want to make sure that bystanders, like the many people who called in, are also free from harm and want to make sure that the tools that are used by our public officers are first prioritizing public safety. I think this legislation puts in force and put in place important side rails for how our police department interact with crowds and demonstrations. And I'm also hopeful that these policies can help de-escalate the response to make sure that it's not continuing to escalate when we see tools that are causing harm to folks. I look forward to voting yes on this legislation. And though it's been through a long process that was just summarized here today, I appreciate the hard work that's gone into this and the importance of this legislation today. Thank you for your work on it. Thank you so much. Service, get it? Are there any additional comments on the bill? So before I handed back over to because we were able to make final remarks, I also wanted to echo my gratitude to Councilmember Herbold as the chair of our Public Safety Committee. This has been a long and arduous process. I think it's been almost a year long process, if not just slightly, a little bit longer than that. And so I think I have a high level of confidence in the process that has been stewarded by Councilmember Herbold. And do you think that it is now time for us to coalesce behind this particular bill and to enter it into the formal process that is the review of the consent decree process, and to allow for there to be a final judgment of sorts on the policy choices that the City Council has determined are appropriate and that are reflected in this particular version of the Council bill, which is different than the first Council bill, which was subjected to a temporary restraining order and was in effect blocked from implementation. And so I think this is a good threading the needle and appreciate the good work of Councilmember Herbold. She managed to thank everyone else of the city. But but it's our responsibility to thank her for the good work that she's done on a very important issue with a lot of really tricky challenges and a lot of stakeholder engagement that needed to happen. So my thanks to you, Council, for all of your your good work. And I'll hand it back over to you for closing our debate so we can call this bill to a vote. Thank you very much. I did think a lot of the external stakeholders, but I would like also to close out with my appreciation for the many folks internal to the city who have been helping on this on this bill, including Lisa on council central staff, Noel in my office, Carol in the City Attorney's Office, as well as our own legal counsel that has been assisting us on this on this legislation as well. I know people have spent a lot of of hours, and really it's because I think we believe in the intent of the bill, which is to to create some travel restrictions where none currently exist, so that we can do everything that we can to ensure the safety of community members engaging in First Amendment protected protests. It's really important that we continue our work in this area protecting civil liberties during protests, but also recognizing that we are we are we are doing so within the context of the consent decree, as Council President Gonzales put it. It is it is a bit of a threading of the needle. But I do look forward to the next step in this process where we go into the formal policy review and having this legislation still, again, perhaps not as as broad as the legislation that we all voted in favor on in in June last year. But still, I think it's it is a historic effort for the city of Seattle to to to take this this this position, regulating these weapons in the goal of preserving civil liberties and the rights of folks to protest. So thank you. All right. Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold, for those closing remarks. Will Clark, please, for the role in the passage of the bill. Let's gather. I. Petersen. I. Strauss. Yes. Herbold. S. Juarez. I. Lewis. Yes. In Council President Gonzalez. I. Seven a favor and and opposed. The bill passes material sign. It will fix my signature to the legislation on my behalf. Thank you so much. Everyone will please read item seven into the record.