Input: Welcome to the August 17th, 2022 meeting of the Committee of the Whole. And I'm King Cole Wells King County Council member and chair of the Committee. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge that the King County Courthouse is on the unceded ancestral lands of the Duwamish people past and present. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish tribe. Today's committee of the whole meeting is the third meeting on the topic of preventing gun violence. Today, we will attempt to build on the momentum from our previous two meetings and utilize the important information and experiences we gathered to develop ideas and the next steps to tackle the endemic of gun violence in our communities. Our panelists will share potential possible ideas for new legislation and funding opportunities, creative ways to implement meaningful policies in light of our state's strict gun legislation, preemption laws, programs that could make a difference. And and also to learn more about what to expect from next year's legislative session. We will close with a discussion among members of this committee on what we can do next as a council that would have potential to meaningfully combat gun violence and harm throughout King County. Before we get to the panel, however, we will begin today's meeting with possible action on the appointment of Alan Nance as the director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. We will follow that with a proposed ordinance relating to bonuses for non-representative county employees who refer candidates who are hired to serve as corrections officers, detention officers and sheriff deputies. And we will now call the role. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Chair Cole's Councilmember Balducci. Councilmember Dombrowski. Here. Councilmember Dunn. Here. Council Member McDermott. Councilmember Perry here. Councilmember up the grove here. Councilmember Council Van Bauer. Member, Zali. Charcoal wells. Here. Charcoal wells? You do have a quorum. Thank you very much. And I would like Vice Chair Councilmember Dunn to approve the minutes from the to make the motion to approve the minutes from our July 20th meeting. So move, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. All in favor of approving the minutes, please say I, I. Any oppose? Say no. The minutes have been adopted. We will now turn to public comment. Madam Kirk, do we have anyone in person or on the line wishing to provide public comment? Thank you, Chair Caldwell. There are two. People signed up in person for public comment and currently. No one is online signed up for public. Okay, very good. So we will have we will hear from two people unless anybody else joins. And a public comment must be related to items on today's agenda only and not be used for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election or any person to any office who is running or for the promotion or opposition to any ballot proposition. It also must not include obscene speech. If a person fails to abide by these restrictions and disrupts the meeting, I will rule the speaker out of order and have the speaker removed from the meeting. You have 2 minutes to speak and will hear your timer to go off. You can finish your thought, but please wrap up your comments as you go much past 2 minutes. You may be muted. So, Mr. Clarke, would you please call on those who are with us in person today? Thank you, Chair Caldwell. Jason Smith, if you wish to provide. Public comment, you may do so at this time. Hello. Speaking on the motion to approve. Could I. Could you speak a little closer to the microphone and identify yourself? Yes. Jason Smith. I represent King County Juvenile Detention Guild, speaking on the appointment of L'annonce. And I'm just asking the council to, before appointing visit detention center, speak with staff, speak with youth. The last three years, we've seen a drastic increase in staff assaults. Youth being locked in their rooms. We're losing staff a rate of almost 3 to 1 when 11 vacancies last year. We have 22 now and it's steadily climbing. There's this process is supposed to lend accountability and transparency. And I think the whole community, especially the youth in detention and staff, would benefit from the council seeing what the situation is there prior to making the decision. And that's all I'm asking for. We've also it's a great area, great situation to address gun violence. We've been asking for a gang intervention specialist to work with the youth for about five years now. Right now, we're locking the kids more in their rooms than we ever have. And it's sad as a worker of 22 years there, the conditions there and I'm I speak for most of my coworkers as well. And I'm just asking that you guys look at juvenile detention and see what's happening. Okay. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much for being with us. Alex Zimmerman. If you wish to provide a public comment, you may do so. Z, Kyle. Damn dirty Nazi fascist branded the in psychopath who speak to us from heaven. My name. I like Zimmerman and I won't speak about number seven guns violence for me very interesting. Two years ago Democrat mafia but in gang revolt revolt revolt this always money is this always dies and 10,000 people will be dead. It's nothing different from American revolt, French rebels or Russian revolt. You're doing this for one particular reason. Is this reason destroying America for the government? That's exactly what this happened in Take Trump out. So right now you want fix it. This problem is nobody can fix is this problem in never before 4000 years only God can fix this problem. Lenski You want this, sir? Thousand. 10,000 people will be dead. Why? Because you want control it. Make money in fast two year, you make a billion, billion dollars. Everybody knows it. So my opinion right now, who's this Democrat? Who's sinking inflation? Zero. You know what this mean in everything? Look very nice causes idiot cause happiness in only one chance But as we come back to our America is elected President Trump again. It's only one chance for all 300 million people. When we're done doing this, America will be disappear. Disappear? Totally. So I speak right now. Stand up, America. You know what this mean in clean this dirty chamber from this Democrat and Nazi branded the mafia what is totally destroy us and killing thousands and thousands of men. Thank you. You did not stick to the agenda, but your time is about it. No, I speak about the agenda gone wild. So we will now see if there is anybody else. Perhaps online. Charcoal wells. No one else is online for public comment. Okay, thank you very much. See no further requests. We will close public comment. The first item on our agenda today is confirming the appointment of Alan Nance as the director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. Mr. Nance served as the Director of the Trades Juvenile Division since November 2019 and has been acting as director designee ADHD Judy since his appointment on June 25th, 2022. We are. So is there a problem with that? I keep hearing these beeps. Okay. We also have with us Leah crackles IP from our central staff to provide the briefing on the site. And we are as well joined by the appointee who is on the zoom call with this, I believe, as well as Dwight Lively, who will introduce Mr. Nance when we after we hear the staff report. Sylvia, thank you for being here. And please go right ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, council members. I'm Leah crackles IP Council staff and the materials for this item begin on page eight of your packet. As the chair said, the proposed motion would confirm the executive's appointment of Alan Nance as director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. King County Code provides for the county executive to appoint the head of each executive department and for the County Council to confirm such appointments. As you know, Mr. Nance has been or have been serving as King County's director of the Juvenile Division of the D.A., Judy, for the last two and a half years. In that role, Mr. Nance was responsible for managing operations of King County's 124 bed secure detention facility, as well as programs for community supervision. Notably, Mr. Nance has served as Project Lead for the effort to close the juvenile detention facility by 2025. Mr. Nance began his career as a probation officer and rose to eventually become chief probation officer for the city and county of San Francisco. In that capacity, Mr. Nance led efforts to expand alternatives to detention and diversion, leading to a record low population in the city's juvenile justice system. Mr. Nance has also served as acting director for the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice for San Francisco Mayor Prior, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. And Mr. Nance has completed the necessary background checks, and his appointment appears to be consistent with King County code requirements. So staff have not identified any issues. This appointment. Thank you very much. Are there any questions of the. Okay. Let's turn now to Director Dwight Di Lee of the Office of Performance Strategy. And that's it. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm wondering if I could ask the question in. Sure. And I'm sorry. If I didn't see you, that might be helpful. Individuals have their hand raised on this because otherwise. It's hard to. Tell. Yes. Thank you, Chair. Sorry about that. My question is regarding the staff member who just stepped up to speak with us and to share the the request that we look further and then and then. Your description. That the the staff have not voiced any. Objections to this. And in information that has been requested. Now, can you talk about that discrepancy? Because I've met Director Nance and really enjoyed him. And yet. This is the. Third time that I have heard from staff. A request to look. More deeply specifically into the center itself. And I'm just wondering if you can help me understand that a little more. Sure. Councilmember Perry, when I say that staff has not identified issues, I am speaking of your council, central staff, your analytical staff, that is 100% nonpartisan. And I'm not referring to any other staff. No internal staff to the juvenile detention center. Correct. So it's just a matter of our role of reviewing county code and what the requirements are for any particular appointment. We have no role in who the actual person being being appointed or confirmed is simply making sure that the appointment complies with the code. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And Councilmember Perry, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of the nominee, too. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Let's turn now to Director Dove Lee. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Can you hear me clearly? Yes. Great. So for the record, Dwight Dave Lee, the director of the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, I'm also the chief operating officer for the county. And it is my privilege on behalf of executive Dow Constantine to bring forward the nomination of Alan Dance, to be the next director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. I was going to go through Alan's background, but your staff has already done that quite effectively. So I'll simply say two things. First of all, as I think all of you know. Alan is an outstanding leader. The department is facing major challenges, unprecedented challenges because of COVID, because of the backlog in our criminal legal system, because of all of the challenges we have faced with staffing and hiring. And Alan is the perfect person to bring forward the leadership. We need to address those challenges. And secondly, Alan is committed. To reform of the justice system. That showed in his work at the city and county of San Francisco and has showed in his work since. He has been with us here at King County. And I am confident that with Alan's leadership, we will be able to move forward with all the efforts that the executive and the council is making to make our justice system fairer and more efficient and more equitable. So that is my absolute pleasure to bring Alan's nomination forward. To the Council today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Director Divya. Are there any questions of Director Divya before we go ahead with Mr. Nantz? Okay. Well, welcome, Mr. Nance and Director Nance, and I appreciate your being with us today and congratulations on your appointment. We, as you know, we are taking up that appointment and will be making I will see a recommendation to the full council for confirmation. So you, our staff already gave you an introduction, but we'd like to hear from you too, in terms of perhaps why you wanted to assume this new position and why you believe you are particularly qualified to do so. Thank you. And go right ahead. Great. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. And I first of all, I'd like to thank Director Timely for the introduction. Jericho Wildes and members of the Council. My name is Alanis and I am humbled and honored to be considered for the appointment as director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. After 33 years of public service, all of which were in positions committed to community safety, stakeholder engagement, and continuous efforts toward organizational improvement and changing lives of those in the justice system. I am excited by the opportunity to advance the quality of the services provided in our institutions and the commitment to partnership with our justice partners and the communities that we serve. I want to thank Executive Constantine for this appointment and his confidence to lead this critical public safety organization. I appeared before you today with a strong focus on equity and inclusion for people in our justice system, and by extension, that same commitment to the amazing men and women who make up the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. I and our team continue to share the essential tenets of our work, which include creating and maintaining an environment where those in custody experience a place that is safe, secure and humane. I also believe that we need to leverage the opportunities we have while people are in custody to provide them with the resources that they need to address the factors that contributed to challenges in their lives that resulted in their arrests, while at the same time promoting and supporting their well-being as they contemplate the next steps in their lives beyond incarceration. I intend to focus our efforts toward building a sustainable workforce that leverages strategies to enhance recruitment, retention, and our capacity to hire and develop well-trained and motivated staff. We will prioritize risk assessment and mitigation approaches focused on reducing self-harm and incidents of suicide. This includes assessing structural, clinical and operational factors and acting with urgency and deliberateness. Our efforts must be trauma informed, grounded in best practices for behavioral health, medical care, and the safety and security required for modern day jail and detention settings. We must facilitate access to community agencies, programs and other resources while folks are in custody in order to effectively lay the foundation for reentry into the community once they have been released from our custody. If confirmed today, I look forward to working with the executive, the council, our legal system partners, the aged staff and community to operate jail and detention facilities, as well as community corrections program that serves the needs of our community and contributes to making King County a safer place to live, work and play. Thank you for this opportunity to make some remarks this morning. Thank you very much for being with us. I guess I should say, director designee designate. Would you please respond to Councilmember Perry's question? Absolutely. Thank you. First of all, I want to acknowledge the public comment that was made earlier today. I also want to acknowledge that we are dealing with some unprecedented challenges in our justice system. We spent we spent the last two and a half years managing COVID 19 in the institutions. We've been particularly successful in having relatively low numbers of our young people in custody at the juvenile facility that have contracted COVID 19. But it has continued to ravage that, and it continues to have additional impacts with respect to the morale of our young people, the morale of the staff. And, of course, it's reduced the capacity to have outside agencies inside the facility to the extent that we normally would. I understand Mr. Smith's concerns. We don't take them lightly. We've taken a number of very proactive steps to address some of the labor concerns. We're working with a workforce that is still relatively new to the juvenile justice system. Those folks require a lot of training, a lot of support before they get really good at what they do. But I will also say that we have a number of really committed, an incredible, tireless every single day to make sure that young people are able to be involved in programing, do have access to clinical supports, psychiatry, social workers, medical care and educational opportunities in our environment. And we'll continue to get better at that and will continue to be invested in improving our capacity to serve those young people up until the very day that we closed that facility in 2025. Our commitment is stronger than ever with respect to having trauma informed care for young people in custody, making sure that we partner with our other justice partners in solving the complex needs of our young people in custody. And with respect to gang interventions, we support strategies. But more importantly, we support partnering with community in solving those complex strategies. That's where our young people live. Those are the folks who can support them once they return to their homes. And therefore, we're committed to making sure that our staff are trained with respect to the dynamics of gang involvement in as you proceed into your conversation about gang violence. Far too many of the young people in our custody are there because they are charged with gang violence. And so targeting the core factors that affect what's happening in the communities where these young people live is in fact the goal for us. So while I would agree that staff shortages have probably created some of the most difficult challenges for our organization, and we're not alone. As we look at hospitals and schools and other institutions that are facing the very same challenges, we continue to work toward finding effective solutions. We've invested in recruitment and hiring strategies that include marketing, that include incentives. And one of the items on your agenda for today focuses on incentives as well. And so I would say that. While we have had some difficulties in keeping sufficient staff to to program our young people in the way that we normally would, I would say that when that when we have sufficient folks who are working from day to day, that is exactly what we do. And we will continue to do that moving forward. Thank you very much for addressing that question. Councilmember Perry, did you want to have any follow up? Thank you, Chair. Well, I can share that and thank you, director designee announce again. Very good to see you. And I've appreciated our conversations and and your interest in stepping up into this as a permanent position. I admit that I have not read the CJC Monitor report and I know that that gave the executives team some clarity around some of these issues. And so I commit to doing that. I also know that we are going to be visiting the center on August 31st. And as I came in and. The new position, I was encouraged. To visit the Seattle facility that I think it's the Kent facilities that it's in Kansas and and then the center, the Juvenile Justice Center. So I I'm interested or juvenile? Yes, I am interested in being able to take a look at their space and to hear the concerns. And my. Question, I guess. Is hearing everything that you've said and understanding that there since I started in January, there is just a huge number, additional number of residents in the Juvenile Justice Center. So I am now, you know, sympathetic to the combined lack of staffing and need for training and increased population and the challenges that that brings. So that said, I'm wondering what those who are bringing forward these questions or these concerns. Might. Say would be the unique. Concerns they. Have, knowing that this situation would impact any director. Anybody coming forward in that circumstance would have an untenable job, a very difficult job. And anybody stepping into that space is courageous, at least. And so so I'm wondering if there are distinctions that are being made specific to you as a director. And I don't know if you can answer any of those. I know that, you know, some sometimes there are politics or personalities or things like that that go into this. But I'm interested in that that question specifically knowing that all of these things are in play and would be in play for anyone. And so I do look forward to the visit and I look forward to doing my job of reading the Monitor report so that I understand more closely where those issues have been addressed and possibly where they have it. Well, we welcome the opportunity to have the council members visit the Family Justice Center. We're very proud of the work that we do there, and I'm extremely proud of the staff who are so committed to our young people. So I encourage you to have conversations with them when you visit. I think you will get a variety of perspectives from the folks who work there. But suffice it to say that I'm committed and my leadership team is committed to making sure that we tackle the challenges that we face each and every day with deliberateness, with urgency , with consistency, because we know that's the right thing to do for the young people that we have in custody. And I often say to my staff, I think about these young people as know you would think about your own child. What would you want for them? How would you want the system to respond to their needs? And that is the commitment that we bring to the work that we do. I remember that from our conversation as well. And it wasn't well. And I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you both. Are there any other questions of director designate Nancy? Dombrowski. Councilmember Dombrowski, go right ahead. Thank you. And as I've raised before, including most recently in our Budget Committee meeting, the smart broker got very serious concerns about the situation at the juvenile detention facility with respect to basically noncompliance with our with our law and state law telling ordinance and state law about making sure youth are not confined in cells. And I understand the cause of that is, is largely the staffing issue. But I. I but I want to understand more about is how it was, how we got to this crisis. Situation. You know, may be kind of the, the parable of the the frog in the boiling pot. The warm water gets warmer, warmer, warmer. By the time it's boiling, it's too late. But I don't feel we. I'd like to understand how we got there, but that we dialog a little bit about that and I won't be joining the visit on August 31st. In addition to the Monitor's report, I've also read the employee search base for the juvenile division of the adult division and the results aren't good. So just put it bluntly, the employees there are not happy. And turning to the adult jail, we recently had a few hour period where we stopped taking bookings. We've had five deaths at least this year, noncompliance with state law and reporting on those deaths as documented in the Seattle Times. And for years now, years later by the Council, our corrections officers have come to us with really what I point to legitimate concerns about forced overtime and some of the very severe and director designee announced. I guess my question to you is what is your plan at the adult facility to make sure we one, keep it open in Seattle and two, with respect to both of them, the catch your mailing a regional nurses center down there and then our Seattle one. What is what is your specific plan to address this chronic problem of mandatory overtime which degrades morale and really is a probably a problem with recruitment, too? I think it's time we really tackle this. Well, thank you for. The question, Councilmember Dombrowski. And let me say that first and foremost, we're extremely fortunate to have an office labor relations that is very engaged and has been working very closely with us and our labor partners, particularly the Corrections Skill Guild, with respect to the challenges we face with mandatory overtime. And we've been able to craft some agreements with our Adult Guild to be able to incentivize our folks to voluntarily work overtime. Unfortunately, we have a number of folks who have overtime restrictions that limits their ability to to work either voluntary or mandatory overtime or both. And since we've been able to craft some agreements to incentivize overtime, we've actually seen more folks voluntarily working overtime for those individuals who are working the mandatory overtime shifts or working multiple shifts in the day. We've created some opportunities for hotel stays so that they don't have to drive long distances to get home, only to turn around and come back again. We've been very committed to facilitating opportunities to ease some of the burdens that these folks have with respect to getting their their uniforms cleaned by creating some opportunities for some dry cleaning services. We've looked at a number of those strategies, and I will say that since we've implemented the incentives for folks to work overtime, that we have more folks working voluntary overtime. So that certainly reduces the need for mandatory overtime. But at the end of the day, we have to grow our workforce. We have to identify folks who are interested and committed to working in corrections as a form of public service to community to make sure that we have sufficient folks in those positions. Right now, we have 92 vacancies at our correctional officer ranks. And as you heard earlier, 22 vacancies at the June. The detention officer ranks. Those are huge holes to fill. And the fact remains that the over 1500 folks that we have in custody in our jail and the 42 young people we have in our juvenile facility, they're there 24 hours a day and we have to be there for them 24 hours a day. So that means we have to have sufficient numbers of folks working in order to make sure that we're fulfilling those obligations. So there is no singular strategy here. It is a combined effort with respect to recruiting, hiring and retaining the workforce that we have. But that also means that we have to find ways to consolidate. So we were able to move some of the folks that we had in custody at Kent down to the correctional facility in Seattle , so that we could also move some of those staff, consolidate and leverage those resources and staffing resources more effectively. And we will continue to look at other opportunities to to address these very vexing, challenging needs that we have in our justice system. But let me just say that. We spent every single day looking at ways to solve these problems. And as you are, director, I intend to make this a high priority, and I've communicated that to the Corrections Guild when I met with them on June 29th in their offices. And I'm committing that to to you and the public today, that we will continue to work on these problems because we are committed to solving them. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments? Okay with that, I. Councilmember Belge. Thank you, Madam Chair. I recognize that there's some interest in getting more information, and I hope that will put those requests on the table here today. I'm sorry. I was a little late, so I don't know if that's been done or not. But if there are requests for more information before we act, I hope that members will state them. In the meantime, I'd like to make a motion to move this out of committee with the do pass recommendation. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Bell Tucci, who did make a request to hear if there are any comments in terms of perhaps holding off. And so, Councilmember Perry, it's hard to see that hand on your background. Is it? Yes. Sir. Go right ahead. Thank you. I am very supportive of director designee dance and would love to see this appointment go through. I also am feeling like, you know, we have. A visit which has been requested. Of everybody that I've visited, different folks in Seattle and they are very appreciative as director Nance is of council visiting and hearing the different positions and I know that different people have different positions about this. Feel differently, some supportive, some some challenging. And so I want out of. Interest in. To support those voices and to participate as council members. In this process, knowing that we already have that visit set up for the 31st. It would be helpful to be able to go through that. But that experience and to do my due diligence, which I apologize for not doing it to this point, I'm reading the monitor report. I'd like to do that and I know that that nine Justice are having a presentation on that. I think it's next week as well. So I just would like to see the possibility of having the opportunity to visit and to have discussions and to read that report and then have the vote for the appointment. Thank you. Councilmember Perez. So the request is to defer action of to our next meeting, which I believe is September 7th. Councilmember Belge. Thank you. I think the the timeline can meet both of these both of these interests if we are willing to be flexible. I would strongly urge my colleagues not to defer moving this out of committee until September. But if we move it out of here today and we can do that without recommendation, we can take it up instead of taking it up in the normal course, which would be two weeks from today. We could take it up the week after that. That's two weeks plus a one week courtesy delay. And that would allow for the August 31st tour to happen whatever discussions and additional due diligence members want to have between now and then and then take up a vote on, you know, on on final passage in early September instead of it being in mid to late September. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember about two g. Councilmember Perry, do you want to respond to that? Yes, I think that's a great idea. Okay. Thank you. Does anybody else have any comment to make? Okay. And I think our councilmembers are. Hello. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Cole Wells. I'm also sorry for being late. I thought we were starting at our usual 930 time. That was my fault for not checking the calendar for the special. For the special time. But I also want to state my support for Director Nance and also validate all of the concerns that we've heard from our union members and the things that Councilmember Dombrowski listed. I think all of those things are true. At the same time, we're living through crisis times right now, the macro environment that impacts our jail systems, that is all very real stuff that is impacting our operations. And I take very seriously the things that we've heard from the Guild and I've met with them multiple times. I've requested an audit. You know, we have independent monitors, reports. We're constantly inviting the director to law and justice to report out the things that are happening in the jails and asking them difficult questions. We're honoring budget requests. We're meeting with the Guild multiple times. We're taking our oversight role very seriously. And so I just want to put that out there so that it doesn't seem like supporting the director is a dismissal of the valid concerns that we're hearing. Those both of those things can be true at the same time. I haven't heard an argument that would lead us to the conclusion that not supporting the director would lead to better outcomes, you know, going through a whole new system of further causing disruption to the operations, going through a whole new interview process and national search and all. To me that sounds extremely disruptive, especially toward a candidate who has been responsive to the requests that we've been making. And so I just wanted to put that out there as chair of law and Justice that we take all of these super valid concerns seriously. There don't seem to be easy answers that are that are just the silver bullet for how do we solve the staffing crisis, how do we solve the macro environment of a behavioral health crisis and a housing crisis and all the other issues that feed into extremely difficult operations in the jails? I don't have the clear answer to that, but I don't think the answer is to cause further issues through this process by not supporting the directors confirmation. So I just wanted to put that out there as a few thoughts. Thank you. Thank you very much, council members. I think that was particularly well stated and really eloquent and I appreciate everything that you said. Any other comments? Councilmember Bell, did she I'm sorry. Councilmember Perry I just wanted to share. Thank you. Chair Colwell So I just wanted to share my appreciation for Councilmember Hill's perspective and usual thoughtful depth of understanding and commitment to many levels of justice in the deliberation of these issues. So I appreciate the response and. And I. And then that carries a lot of weight as chair of Law and Justice Committee and because of the due diligence that that he has shared in that perspective. So I just want to show my level of appreciation for that. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Okay. We will now turn to Councilmember Bell duty. Just before we vote, I wanted to make the change to the motion that we move it out without recommendation. Thank you. So that motion is before us. Is there any comment at this point? Okay with that. Will the clerk please call the RO on proposed motion? 2020 20269. Thank you for your Councilmember Balducci. Councilmember. Councilmember Dombrowski. I. Councilmember Dunn. I Council member McDermott. Councilmember Perry i. Councilmember up the growth. I. Council Member van ryk bauer. I. Council members alkali. II. Charcoal wells. I. Charcoal wells. The vote is. 8i0 nos with Councilmember McDermott excused. Thank you. And with our vote, we have approved proposed motion 2020 20269. We will send this to the full council without recommendation. And with that, we will now go on to our next item on our agenda. Number six, proposed ordinance 2020 20300. And this one relates to referral bonuses for non represented county employees, for referring employees to the positions of deputy sheriff, corrections officer and detention officer. And we have Jeff Mumm from our central staff to provide the briefing on this item. We are also joined by Richard Hayes from the Department of Human Resources. So with that, Jeff, please proceed. And I think it starts on page 16. That is correct. Madam Chair. Thank you. Chair corrals for the record, Jeff, ma'am, chief policy officer for the County Council. So as you pointed out, the STACK report for this item starts on page 16 and this is proposed ordinance 2020 203, 100. This would offer referral bonuses of $5,000 to county employees who refer candidates who are then successfully hired and serve as correction officers, detention officers and sheriff deputies. This would apply to non representing employees and it is substantively identical to the proposals that the Council approved in July for the represented employees. And just as a refresher, the provisions of the the proposed ordinance are that only one bonus would be offered to an employee for referring a successful candidate. Those candidates would have to not only be hired by the departments, but also complete the probationary period before the bonus would be paid out. Employees cannot refer themselves to be employed, to be hired as a as a deputy or corrections officer, detention officer. And also, if it's your job to recruit people for this position, you're not you wouldn't be eligible for the bonus at C at the it expires on December 31st, 2022. So candidates would have to have their applications in by that day and is expected because they would have to be hired and then go through the probationary period that the payouts won't happen until 2023. And there is also a technical strike or amendment to the underlying ordinance, but that's the summary and happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Jeff, very much. Are there any questions? Okay with that. This measure is sponsored by Council Members Bill Dutchie and done. And Councilmember Bill, do you would you like to make the motion and speak to the happy. To move approval of the motion with a to pass recommendation or ordinance for the do pass recommendation. And just as was said, we've already done this for the represented employee. So represented employees who meet the criteria that were just described throughout King County are currently now or soon will be eligible for this bonus and this will add non represented employee. So now we're expanding the group of people who can have this incentive to refer folks. I will just say that as we have been just talking about, one of the root causes, one of the key root causes of the challenges we're seeing in juvenile detention and adult detention and in the sheriff's office is a real large vacancy rate. And what we can do here at the council is we set policy, we set law, we set budgets, and so we can help to provide funding to incentivize filling those holes. I'm very happy to support this. I want to say that as we go into the biennial budget process in September and beyond, we now have hiring incentives in place for these kind of headhunting hiring incentives, but also just incentives for people to take the jobs we may have to. Given what's going on out in the world, we may have to revisit the amounts we may need to make these more attractive. And I really hope that we talk about that during the budget process. But this is a good step for now and I urge your support. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Bowdich. And we we do have an amendment and I believe that's a striking amendment. Or is that a technical? It's a it is both. It is a technical striking amendment. It clarifies some language and then it pulls in language from the previous agreements just to show an example of there's a job fair example, for example, of just to clarify what type of work disqualifies you for the bonus. Okay. Thank you. Jeff. And I should have brought up again that Mr. Richard Hayes is with us from the Department of Human Resources. I don't know if Richard would like to say anything or available for questions. For the record, Richard Hayes, a senior policy adviser in the Department of Human Resources. And no, I don't have anything to add, but I would urge your support. Okay. Thank you. Are there any questions of Mr. Hayes? Have a lengthy series of questions for Mr. Hayes? No, I'm just kidding. Thank you, council member, for your question. For the record, Rick hired me at King County many years ago. Yeah, I've worked for him before, so just a little hazy. Welcome. Thank you. Are there any questions among any of the members of the committee? Okay. With that, we have a striking amendment. Would you like to make the motion councilmember do? Yeah, I'm. Move. Adoption of the striking amendment. Any questions or comments? All. All in favor indicate by saying i. I. I. I any oppose say name could be strike an amendment striking technical amendment or technical striking amendment has been adopted. Any further comments? Anything to close Councilmember Bell, do she or I should say Councilmember Dunn as well? Councilmember Janice ISO is a co-sponsor of this legislation. I agree with everything. My good friend and colleague, Councilmember Bell, she said moment ago, but I'm glad, I'm glad we're doing this and we should revisit the amounts as you saw Seattle that a significant increase in theirs as well as we come up to budget. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. And could I clerk please call the roll? Thank you. Count charcoals. Councilmember Baldacci. Councilmember Dombrowski. By. Councilmember Dunn. Hi. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember Perry. I councilmember up the growth i. Councilmember von Reich Bauer. I Councilmember Zavala. I chair Caldwell's. I. Turco was the vote is eight eyes zero. Noes with Councilmember McDermott excused. Thank you very much. And with our vote we have approved proposed ordinance 2020 20300. As amended, we will send this ordinance with the do pass recommendation for the consent agenda to the September 6th Council meeting. The next item on our agenda is our third briefing on the topic of preventing gun violence. And before we get started, I would like to advise that today's panel, whom will be speaking with us shortly, will be discussing topics that may be upsetting for some people. The panel will be discussing issues related to gun violence, including suicide, domestic and gender violence, homicide, and other disturbing outcomes that happen as a result of the use of guns. If you believe that any of these issues may be disturbing to you, you are free, of course, to turn off the livestream as necessary. If you do decide to participate, please remember to practice self-care. Our panelists today include Daniel Webster, who is director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Kate Kelly, executive director of the Washington State Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention, which is housed in the State Department of Commerce. Renee Hopkins, executive director of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. And Jack Nicholson, director of our council's government relations. And Jeff Bornstein, art contract lobbyist and president of Federal Affairs for Washington to advocates. And lastly, retired judge and Levinson, who is not on the panel and whom we did invite to participate but they were unable to do so, was Councilmember Lisa Herbold from the City of Seattle council and also someone else to represent her. And they just were not able to make that work. Councilmember Herbold has been leading a discussion in the committee she chairs on this same issue. And we're working together. And also, we had hoped that we would have somebody from Children's Hospital who is working on gun violence issues, and we'll hear about that a little later. Kate? Kelly Well, excuse me, we will begin by hearing from Jack Nicholson and Jeff Buehler instead about the recently passed Safer Communities Act by Congress. They will also provide an overview about possible funding opportunities, federal funding opportunities that could be made available to regional and local governments as a result of this legislation that is now federal law . Kelly will present next on the current and future statewide work of the Washington State Office for Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention. Daniel Webster will follow by presenting research based gun violence prevention actions and options for local jurisdictions that would be able to have a large impact. We will then turn things over to Renee Hopkins, who will present the Alliance for Gun Responsibilities, Legislative Priorities for the upcoming legislation. And the meeting will conclude with an Levinson Judge Levinson, about further steps and actions that we can take as a body, as a way to kick start what we we we may be doing in our budget, our biennial budget that is coming up, as well as any policy measures that we would like to take. So with that, we will first turn to Mack and Jeff. Welcome. Thank you. Jericho Wells, councilmembers. Nice to see you today. And thank you for watching. We present some information. With me today is Jeff Lawrence. Dad. As was mentioned, there are federal lobbyists. That's a lot of Washington to advocates. So today we're going to provide just a little bit of information about some of the funding streams that we see through the Bipartisan Support Communities Act. This is the bill that was passed a little bit earlier this year aimed at really gun safety and mental health, about mental health resources. So in the sort of the appropriations funding structure, you really see three federal agencies that get quite a bit of funding through this bill. The Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education and Department of Justice. When we're looking at potential funding sources coming to the county or to our municipal partners or the RPO and other legal programs, we're really looking at the Department of Justice funding grants that that the funding going through the department, Health and Human Services really aimed at sort of the mental health side of of the school, providing students with mental health services and schools and those sorts of issues. Similar programs are funded through public education, but really by the criminal justice side of this, through the Department of Justice. And Jeff, I'll kick it over to Jeff. He's been talking with our federal partners about how they expect to see some of the funding in the Department of Justice grants being pushed out. So. Jeff, thanks. Mayor, Council Member, Staff great to see everyone at the August. Council member Wells Caldwell's I think I'm in your district analytic manner of my uncle, so it's nice to be, I think in your district I don't want to make any sense to him. Belsky Council Member Dean Belsky Sorry. Great to be here. So as Max said, with the bipartisan gun safety bill that passed. We had conversations with our Senate partners, Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell and some of our congressional partners called Smith, others in in King County, just to get a sense of how the funding streams will be enhanced, whether or not there'll be new programs that we can partner with, with the state and with our community partners that everyday do such a good job of trying to reduce gun violence and create safer communities. Where you'll see and what Mac and I are working on the direction of the council and the executive is okay, so there is a plus up. For example, traditionally there are many ways and many there are burn grant burns and grants and the COPS grant programs that DOJ has to help states and communities in this policy area. When I talked to Senator Murray's office, they expect both of those pots to increase, which means that knock on wood, they'll shoot more grants across the country, including for King County, Seattle, Puget Sound region, Washington State. And it's something that, well, we don't know quite yet is does DOJ establish new grant programs that will help enhance what burn and what the cops grant programs currently do not do? And that's to be determined probably later this fall. And we'll keep on top of that from the direction from the Council on the Executive. But I do anticipate you'll see a robust increase pots of funding in that we will have more direction from the Department of Justice and other federal agencies, as Mac articulated well on just making sure there's a bigger pie for us to apply for with our community partners. And it's as we've talked, I think, in a previous call, or at least a g r call, you know, that bipartisan bill was really the first major piece of gun legislation that passed into federal law since 1993 and wasn't, as far as some would have liked, gone after that horrific shootings were all seen. But the additional funding and some of the red flag will be able to help our communities. And so we stand ready to help from the federal level. I'll stop there and take direction and questions from the council. Thank you. I think given that we have a little more time today than we did in our previous two sessions on preventing gun violence. I will allow for questions to be asked after each panelist and then we can have a discussion afterwards. Are there any questions? I have a question. Councilmember Bell. Thank you. Thank you both for this report. I've been wondering what this legislation will look like here. Do you have any sense of the timing or process for the agencies to give direction? It would be really good to be getting ready, right? To be coalition building, making plans, thinking about how we might want to position ourselves to be successful, to get resources to attack the problem in new ways based on this new opportunity. And it's hard to do that when there's sort of a they'll let us know when they let us know. Is there any sort of pre sense of the direction that we might be hearing or things that might be programs or approaches that might be favored based on what's in the law? Councilmember I'll, I'll take a stab at that. Thank you for the question. You know, I think part of the the cops and burn grants, right? That's existing grants that have been around for many years. And so for our partnership with our community partners, I want to defer a little bit to Kate and maybe Rene to talk about , you know, whether or not we've had success as a state and a community on cops and burn and that way. We're grateful to your point, Councilmember. We are already loaded and ready to go on our kind of joint list. Let's not use ammunition, ammunition, metaphors here. Sorry. Thank you. Councilmember Apologies. But, yes, I do think it's I do think, you know, we already know that burn grants and cops exist. We know that new law expanded the use of burn grants, which I think is probably tailor made for the work that we are doing with our community partners. And so we can definitely start that process now, which I'm sure has already begun. And then we're ready. If Department of Justice announces new grants that we can just jump in because we've already done our homework. That would be my strategic suggestion. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions of Marc or Jeff? I would like to say that. And Councilmember McDermott, the chair of of our budget committee, might want to make some remarks. But I do you do believe, Jeff, that by the time we start our budget biennial process, biennial budget process in earnest in the last part of September, the first part of October, that we are likely to hear more. Or are you thinking that this will be further out? I believe we'll have more vision for that times. I think time as well with the King County budget process cycle on calendar. Again, I expect that we will have more for you, council member and council on the staff within the next few weeks in terms of new grant opportunities. At the same time, right, we'll run the second track on existing burning cops and be hopefully very competitive for those given the expansion of working with the burn grants can be used for. Thank you very much. And I should also mention that we did invite Director Dwight Titley with us from performance, strategy and Budget. But the timing was a little off for today because the executive's proposed biennial budget obviously has not come out yet. And so it's not been finalized. But we will be hearing from him before too long on what the executive's budget might include. Any other questions? Thank you very much for being with us, both of you and Mac and Jeff. Okay. Our next panelist is Kate Kelly. And just as a reminder, Kate is the director of the Washington State Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention. And welcome, Kate. And we really appreciate your being with us. Well, thank you, Chair Colwell. I'm delighted to be here and honored to be part of this series of panels that you're having. I will say that I am, as we speak in New York, Washington, D.C. and I've been meeting with federal officials about that potential new funding coming down the road. So I do think we're going to see some opportunities to confirm what you just heard. We are going to be seeing new opportunities coming up soon. We expect mid-September to see a burn JAG grant announced. So if that's any help in terms of timing. Thank you so much. Okay. So I have a slides to share that can share. Be fine. Thank you. Okay. In fact. Okay. Come in. Here. Is that working? Yes. Okay. Perfect. And I did to anticipate perhaps the question, I did send a copy of the sites to staff so they weren't in your packet, but they will be available to folks thanks to that round. Okay. Well, again, I'm with the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention, which, as Chair mentioned, said in the Washington State Department of Commerce, our agency does a lot of work in community and historically have done community safety work through our our Office of Crime Victims Advocate the WHO, which you might be familiar with. And so through the Burn JAG program, which we administer, as well as a number of other community safety programs we administer. So those. Oh, I'm going to actually go back. Back. So those programs are in ministry. Some of them through that, what we call our community safety unit. And as part of the community safety unit, we have placed the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention under that unit and under that umbrella. So so the team that I lead manages all the community safety grants, and in particular, I lead the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention, which is a statewide office that was created by legislation in 2020. We really didn't get started until Director Brown appointed me as executive director in 2021. So we've been up and running for about a year and a half, just to give some perspective there. Again, the hearings that you've been holding and the panels had been so rich with information and really an awesome primer in firearm violence years in King County particular. I just wanted to show this map. It is not super current, but I just confirmed with the Health Department yesterday that it is the most current information we have. It just gives you a little bit of an idea of the spread of firearm violence throughout our state and some ideas about some of the areas where we see particular hotspots. This, again, is is data that from a five year period and only goes through 2020. But it is consistent with what we're currently seeing in trends. Although as we know and as you've heard, there have been spikes in firearm violence, homicides as well as assault during the pandemic and in particular and in 2021, we saw a spike. So but this gives you an idea of the areas of focus for a statewide office. And obviously, King County is right in there. This gives you some relative perspective on the various counties in the state. This is not adjusted for per capita. So as Yakima is way at the top, for example, but in terms of per capita, they are way at the top just because their population is much smaller than King and Pierce County. But they they have a high rate of violence, which we have seen persist in in the years since this data was generated. So again, Office of Firearms Safety and Violence Prevention, created in 2020, we were on the cutting edge of the creation of these sorts of offices statewide. By last count, there are 14 states that have comparable offices, and I work very closely with them and we coordinate and share best practices. And I was just talking to New Jersey yesterday, and they're trying to adopt. So I should probably say 14 and a half programs statewide. But I'm wondering what I thought I would do and what would be most helpful to you is just to kind of walk through the roles and responsibilities of our office and give you an idea of what kind of support we're giving to King County in particular, but also how we're standing up work throughout the state. So one of the main responsibilities of the statewide office in Department of Commerce is to administer grant funds. That's something the Department of Commerce does routinely and certainly something that this office is doing right now and will continue to do. I've identified here a couple of different programs that are specifically in King County that might be of interest to you that we're implementing this fiscal year. So that fund became available July 1st and will expire for the most part, June 30th, 2023. But we've been working very closely with Virginia mason there out of Pierce County, but they're expanding firearm violence, tension efforts that they've been already standing up, but they're now expanding them into South King County. So we're hoping that things from that program. The Department of Commerce currently supports the King County prosecutor's office, their shots fired program, and work closely with the Crime Strategies Unit to implement that program and then make referrals to community based programs, which you've heard about. The Shots Fired program is a state model that we are hoping to replicate in other communities throughout the state. And so we've been in conversations with the prosecutor's office about how we might be able to make that happen. But it's definitely something that that you should be proud of supporting. And then recently we got some funding to work on protection orders and extreme risk protection orders and domestic violence protection orders, which can result in firearm relinquishment. And we've been working closely with the King County Regional Domestic Violence Firearms Enforcement Unit, which you heard from a couple weeks ago. And as you know, that program is a national model and it's a state model that we're hoping, again, to replicate. And they've been super generous in helping support other work across the state in that area, which we hope to continue to build on. When there are some other roles and responsibilities of the office. A Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention. One of the biggest role is to support community based organizations by providing training, technical assistance, evaluation support and just generally capacity building for these programs. One of the things that we've done over the past year is we commissioned a landscape firearm violence intervention program, landscape analysis statewide. We've focused on 15 higher risk communities, both urban and rural, big and small, and kind of to get an idea of what programing is out there and and to also understand better what the needs and gaps are in communities. And those needs are great. And so the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention will have a role in helping to support those communities. And we're doing that right now with some funding that we receive from the legislature. We're working closely with the University of Washington to help evaluate programs and also to give programs technical assistance that we're hearing they need. And now their role for the statewide organization is to convene and connect folks from across the state. And in that way that they can share best practices. But also just in terms of them understanding what else is going on and what the need is, as we know by armed violence, does that stop at jurisdictional boundaries? So it's really important that we're talking on a regional basis and even a statewide based, as we saw from the map, where we're seeing violence issues sort of on the interstate border corridors. And so trying to connect people, it's a big function that our office will have the cooperation. And just again, to praise King County, the cooperation that we've seen between King County public health, the prosecutor's office is just remarkable and something that that sort of model that we hope to build on statewide as we go about helping communities and connecting both state agencies and local agencies with each other. And then public awareness and education is another function of our office, where we see gaps both in the firearm safety kind of space as well as in the community violence intervention space, helping to get the word out, to educate, to provide useful information on on our website. And as we talk about these issues and produce report, consider that a big part of our officers role. And then finally and this is last but certainly not least, the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention has a has an important responsibility in terms of data collection and data sharing, data reporting, in particular with regards to firearm related violence and to include death, but also just injuries. And so we've been working closely with University of Washington, their firearm injury and policy research program, who you heard from also a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Rivera leads that program. We've been partnering very closely and successfully with them with we inventoried over 31 existing Washington firearm related databases, produced a product that describes each of the databases and the pros and cons of them. And then we can be into owners and users of those databases to talk about how we can improve database sharing and access to to better help inform not only researchers, but also policy makers and folks who are implementing programs so that they can do a better job of knowing where to direct their programing, but also measuring how successful it is. So then just a little bit to talk about next step. And I know you've been asking about that. We are that where we're at right now with the firearm safety and violence prevention. We we were very sixties. We received a good amount of money from the legislature to start standing up our grant programs. We intend to allow you to continue to grow those programs and working with the governor's office and legislators to grow our intervention programs, but also to grow our ability to provide technical support to organizations throughout the state, both big and small, and expand kind of our geographic and demographic reach as well, and then continue to facilitate collaboration and communication among our stakeholders. Firearm data related data collection and then focus on outreach and education, but also take advantage of the federal opportunities which you just heard about. It's been extremely fortuitous for us to have this office located in the same office that's administering the project funding, because we will be receiving additional funding from Department of Justice to direct specifically at some firearm safety areas and protection orders and crisis intervention in particular. So we will be able to coordinate that with the other firearm work that we're doing. And also we are looking closely at other federal opportunities, particularly community violence intervention opportunities that are coming down the pike. So we will be working on that and very much welcome partnering with local government on that as well as community organizations directly. As I conclude, I just want to compliment you again for for this focused panels that you've been doing on firearm violence. It's really I mean, just having those resources available to folks to be able to watch the panels that you pull together and learn about the issue. It's just a wealth of information. And thank you. Thank you for taking that time to do that and to raise awareness about these issues and for the work that you've done in King County to support these programs and to provide a statewide and in some cases, national model for how some of these data driven, evidence based practices can be implemented and how we can help to intervene in firearm violence and maybe get out in front of some of these trends that we're seeing. Finally, I just want to acknowledge, which is just the impact of this issue we're dealing with and the trauma that we're trying to get out in front of with some of these efforts. And what we know is that the root causes of this firearm violence is much greater than just any violence intervention program that we're implementing. And again, and one of the advantages of our office being located in Department of Commerce is that we I have colleagues within our agency are working on housing and workforce development and business development and many of the other issues that not peripherally but directly result in the outcome that we're seeing with firearm violence. And so all of this working together, hopefully we can start to get out in front of this problem both by treating this as symptoms in some ways with our firearm by intervention violence intervention programs, but also with with the many other initiatives we're providing to get it to some of the social health determinants of what's causing this problem. So with that, I will conclude. Okay. Well, thank you ever so much for being with us today. I'm really excited about what the work is that started up in this relatively new organization under the Department of Commerce. And I was very excited about the legislature passing the enacting legislation, and it's going to be terrific. To have you as a resource in a clearing house. And I'm sure we will be taking advantage of what you're able to provide to us. Thank you again. And I think it's terrific that you were able to point out some of the great work that the county has done, along with the board of Health, the prosecuting attorney's office and other partners. So, again, thank you. Are there any questions of Director Kelly Kate? Dombrowski. Councilmembers Dombrowski. Thank you, Chair Cowles, and thank you so much for this presentation. I really appreciate it. And I am proud of the kind of comprehensive, thoughtful approach that we in our state and our county are taking to this issue and really drilling down to look for root causes. And I appreciate echo the last sentiment that so much of it is driven by systemic economic disparities, lack of housing, lack of the jobs that these folks believe to sometimes have instability. And so I wholeheartedly agree with looking upstream as far as we can, kind of root causes. I am curious, though, with respect to the powerful database that you mentioned, know one thing we. Have with these wonderful series. Of panels that our chairs put together, which I think is just exceptional. But one of the things that we haven't drilled down as much into is kind of firearm crime associated with folks who have been involved in our criminal justice system. And I wonder if that if there are any trends or things that you could talk to us a little bit from that perspectives. So I want to make sure I understand the question. We. We. And you heard about the shots fired program, which is looking at criminal data and criminal justice involved folks who are either victims or perpetrators of firearm violence in King County in particular, and in fact, King County and Seattle. Yeah. And it was kind of a general sort of joke then. It's a it's fair question. Maybe was a little bit open ended in general. But I guess what I'm wondering, are there any takeaways, statistics that that would help educate me as to with respect to firearm violence, how, how, how what percentage or what kind of numbers are associated with individuals who have a history of involvement in our criminal legal system? I mean, we know that three quarters of firearm deaths are suicides. Right. But so the other say quarter and those are just deaths, but a firearm incidents overall. What element, if we're looking for part of our strategy would be similar to traditional law enforcement focus where we look at folks with a is is there a traceable pattern of folks involved in the criminal legal system where they maybe have a higher propensity. To be engaged in gun. Violence? What does the data tell us about that? Well, the data certainly tells us, Councilmember, that that if someone is a victim or a perpetrator and and there they are back out on the streets, that the likelihood of them being again involved in firearm violence is very high. That is firearm violence in particular in terms of just justice involved individuals and connecting that to firearm violence. I would leave that to the researchers. One of the the frustrations in working in this area is the fact that we did find 31 firearms related databases that are and that's in our state alone that are collecting different parts of information from different parts of our system. And some of them are doing it inconsistently or not talking to each other. It's particularly important that the health system talk to the criminal justice system. And just an example someone presents at an emergency room with a firearm injury and then tracing that individual back to the criminal justice system or or the perpetrator who injured him is can be a very helpful data point. But our systems just don't always talk to each other and obviously want to protect privacy and, you know, a law enforcement system and other sensitivities around our data. But we are trying to track those trends. And I'll leave it to the researchers probably to answer. I think any more the question. Your answer. Well, thank you very much and helpful in Italy with our background check laws, the laws prohibiting sales tell us running firearms. It just I wonder if there might be if we can look at the data some strategies that could be developed in terms of interdiction to get guns that are traded out of the regulated system and sold out of the regulated system. You know, whether we can up our level or our efforts there, if there is a higher propensity for firearms. In those cases to be used in in dangerous conduct. So I look forward to exploring that and hearing more. Thank you to the coalition. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you again, Director Kelly, I really appreciate your being with us. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you. And one of the advantages of having Zoom is that we are able to hear from people who are not able to be with us in the chamber. And one of those is Daniel Webster, director of the John Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions. He was highly recommended to us and I was thrilled that he was able to join us. So, Director Webster, welcome. And we look forward to hearing from you. Go right ahead. Thanks. It's it's been an honor to be with you today. What I want to do is give you an overview of public health strategies and how we think about the problem of gun violence. I'm going to cover a lot of things, not a lot of depth, but I hope leave a space for answering questions. I've been studying gun violence for about 30 years and look at gun laws, enforcement practices, community interventions through the writing of things I can I can address. I do have some slides I'm going to share. So I think I have that capacity. So bear with me one minute. Okay. So what is a public health approach? It's a diverse field, so you might get slightly different answers to this question, but I'll give you the Daniel Webster version. Is anything in public health has to be data driven and very pragmatic. Public health is about solving problems efficiently and in a just manner. And that, of course, is highly relevant when you talk about a complex problem like gun violence. We focus not only on changing unhealthy or unsafe behaviors, but also the really thing that is unique about public health is our focus on environments. We know a lot about environmental conditions that promote violence and gun violence in particular. And I'll talk about some of those. And the way that we address that is through system reform. You got to create new conditions that are that are sort of at these root causes. We need smart laws and enforcement of them. We talk about that briefly. But at the same time, we want to minimize exposure to very costly and harmful criminal justice system. So public health, we tend to try to look upstream to more prevention oriented laws rather than simply after the fact harsh penalties after violence has occurred. And we're going to be very risk focused. I focused on not only on high risk individuals, but also on neighborhoods and spaces and looking for where we can reap the biggest return on investment for these changes on an incredibly costly problem like gun violence. I started with data driven and I just want to hold up what I consider to be a model for local local efforts to have data driven responses to a problem of lethal violence. Roughly 20 years ago, Milwaukee developed a Homicide Review Commission under the leadership of Dr. Mallory O'Brien. I'm very pleased that she has recently joined our center to help us spread this model. It's a very intentional way to collect and analyze data, to look at strategies for problem analysis. It's a collaborative endeavor with law enforcement, community based organizations and social service providers. And it's oriented toward, again, sort of offering data driven solutions to to the problem and also to to direct and prioritize the resources you have available for it. I want to mention a report that was put out in the fall of 2020 that I contributed to called Reducing Violence Without Police. Quite frankly, I don't love the title because none of these things were done in an environment void of police. But what we simply did is we examined a variety of policies and programs not focused so much on law enforcement, but more on these other conditions that drive violence with a set of evidence to guide prevention efforts. And I'm not going to touch on all of these, but I'm going to mention a few of them. Changing the improving physical environment, addressing anti strengthening intervention beyond social norms. These are the things touched upon or addressing substance abuse, financial stress and the gun problem. I'm going to focus more of my comments on that last part, but I want to mention the environmental issues as well. I think they're least understood and appreciated. One strategy that has been studied very rigorously in a number of settings, the data that I'm showing you here are from a study in Philadelphia, a so-called cleaning and greeting , vacant lots that collect a lot of trash, debris and other sorts of things. And you can really transform these into very pleasant green spaces for neighborhoods to help build community and people feel safe. This very modest investment is associated with an 8%. Reduction in gun violence, as well as other public health benefits as well, and particularly with mental health, are a remarkable return on investment for a modest intervention and not more costly, but has a more robust effect, as is really securing and changing dilapidated homes that are vacant and sort of attract. They're sort of magnets for crime. There are ways you can secure and make these entrances look as if they're any occupied home. And a randomized trial in Philadelphia found a 39% reduction in gun violence in the blocks where they focused these efforts on vacant homes. Really, when when there's disinvestment in communities, you have high rates of foreclosure and other residential instability. These kinds of things lead to more violent crime. When Philadelphia developed a program for low income homeowners to help keep up with the repairs and maintenance of their homes, but they don't decrease in value. Those efforts were associated with significant reductions in crime, including homicides of over reductions of over 20%. I won't go into detail here, but it is well known that alcohol abuse and to a lesser extent drug abuse, play important roles in violence, including gun violence. And there's, again, evidence showing that when you address these problems by expanding access to treatment, reducing concentration of alcohol outlets in neighborhoods, and reducing the hours you can sell or serve alcohol into the late evenings and early mornings, these have been found to lead to significant reductions in gun violence. Of course, the biggest environmental thing relevant to the problem of gun violence is guns. And of course, most guns start with regulated sellers, licensed dealers. The data are a little bit old now, and partly because Congress keeps some of the data bottled up to protect gun dealers. But we know that a very small number of gun dealers account for the overwhelming amount of gun crime in the United States. That is that is true in every locality that I've studied. And we know that problematic dealers are perhaps the biggest contributors to the diversion of guns into the underground market based upon gun trafficking investigations with the ATF. We found in a study that we did of individuals active in the underground gun market in Baltimore City, that 31% said that there were certain gun shop employees who sell guns off the books and facilitate straw purchases. And 24% reported that there were gunshots known to make it easier to get guns without a background check. I give that background information because I want to, again, focus on policy solutions. When we studied well, first of all, it should be recognized that the federal regulations and oversight capacity for licensed gun dealers are not nearly up to the task. So states have to step up. States and localities have to step up with regulations and oversight of licensed gun dealers. We found in a study that looked at one metric for the most common metric used for measuring diversions of guns for criminal use. These are guns that move from a retail sale to crime involvement by someone who's not the legal purchaser in less than 12 months. We find much lower rates in places that have strong state or local regulation of gun dealers and regular inspection and compliance compliance inspections. Excuse me. We also have done studies that have shown that when you do undercover stings and and lawsuits against these problematic dealers, that these have those actions have led to significant reductions in the diversion of guns for criminal use shortly after retail sale. There are some federal laws that restrict these prohibitions, but many states are taking actions to change their laws so that basically that these kinds of activities are considered public nuisance violations and therefore not protected by the protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act. We've even found that in in one instance, in the case of the number one seller, a gun dealer of crime, guns in the nation, a gun shop right outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when it was simply publicized, their data on how many guns were moving from their shop into the criminals hands, they voluntarily took measures that immediately dropped the rate at which guns when went from a sale, retail sale to crime involvement. And then perhaps know, not coincidentally when Congress put protections in with the so-called Tiahrt amendment that. Sort of kept this these data available to the public. There was a 200% increase in guns going into criminal use after retail sale from this dealer. So localities do trace guns. They can publish where they're coming from if they choose. And I encourage localities to do this. All right. And in my talk, focusing on the policy that our center has studied the most and with the most promising impacts, this is handgun purchaser licensing. This in these under handgun precursor licensing. Rather than go to a gun shop, you first. Your first step is to apply with the law enforcement agency. Typically, they're going to verify identity fingerprinting, much more rigorous background check process, and often have safety training requirements as well. We've studied in particular what happened in Connecticut when they enacted a licensing and law purchaser licensing law in 1995. And conversely, what happened when Missouri had a similar law in place since the 1920s. Repealed it in 2007. And what we I'm not going to explain all the statistical modeling, but the the solid line here simply indicates the rate of firearm homicides in in Connecticut. And then the dotted line is the forecasted counterfactual. What would have happened had they not adopted this law over a 22 year period? We estimate 28% lower rate of firearm homicides. And while I don't have a graph of this in this presentation, we saw a 33% reduction in firearm suicide. We found the mere opposite. When Missouri repealed their law, we saw immediate increase in firearm homicide rate as much as 47% in this analysis. And again, we saw substantial increase in firearm suicides as well. And it's noteworthy that we did not see these changes when we were looking at firearm and suicides, did not involve firearms over a series of studies. We find it reduces gun trafficking, reduces homicides. Suicides has a very large effect and a protective effect against fatal mass shootings, as well as preventing law enforcement who are shot in the line of duty, as well as law enforcement shooting of civilians. Basically, this law keeps guns out of risky conditions that law enforcement respond to. Therefore, their risk is lower as well as individuals that they engage with. In recognizing that the Supreme Court just put forward an important change to the Second Amendment, fairly profound one that's going to change at a minimum, how concealed carry is regulated. I want to note we'll have a study coming out within weeks now that shows that you do. You can minimize the harmful effects of going from a made to a show issue concealed carry license. When you have high standards for meaning, no prior reckless violent behavior as well as rigorous safety training requirements mitigate the harms connected to that type of policy. And I'm going to end it there. Thank you so much, Director Webster, really helpful and very concrete examples that some of which we may be able to explore here. Are there any questions for Director Webster? Or comments. So council members are. Hello. Thank you. Charcoal Wells. Thank you so much, Director Webster. That was really, really helpful and insightful and just very appreciative of that work. You know, there's a talking point that some of pro gun lobbyists use that says, you know, there are all these cities that have gun restrictions and they have the highest gun rates. You know, that's a talking point that's used. But at the last committee where Councilmember Caldwell's held this discussion, someone presented a chart that shows that the states that have the the most gun regulation have the least gun deaths per capita. It was a chart that would almost look linear in relation. It can you speak a little bit to that? Is that a pretty well founded and understood trend that is pretty well established by the data? Yeah. Thank you for that question. So this is a pattern that's been we've seen in a lot of studies that basic relationship that you just described in the research that I've led and many of my colleagues in my center, we try to delve into which of these laws are really the most important, because there's a lot of laws on the books that honestly don't translate into public safety gains. So we try to really boil it down to among all of these different options, what are the most effective? And in some ways, it's a simple or straightforward conclusion, which is most gun policy boils down to where do you set your standards for legal gun acquisition and caring? Are you allowing people with histories of violence to access and carry firearms legally? And it's it's very misunderstood where people think that our laws cover those bases, but often they don't. So that's that's step one. And then step two is, do you have a robust enough regulatory system to keep guns from those who are prohibited ? We find, as I highlighted in my presentation, the two things that are critical to this is a licensing process for purchasers which greatly reduce the straw purchase and secondly, appropriate regulation and oversight of licensed gun dealers. You know, again, most gun dealers are very law abiding and fine. But there's a there's a small amount that do a great deal of damage without proper oversight and and some threat of, you know, whether it's litigation, losing your license or whatever. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Council members are alive for the question. And are there any other questions or comments? Okay. Again, thank you so very much for being with us. Director Webster for a really exceptionally helpful presentation to us. We will now turn to Renee Hopkins, executive director of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility and who has been part of all of our sessions. And I thank you for being with us again, Renee. And would you please tell us a little bit about what the alliance's legislative agenda is for the next session? Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me here today. And I just want to give an overall thank you to Chairwoman Caldwell's for really being willing to spend so much time on this issue that really devastates communities across our state and definitely within King County. So just a lot of gratitude from me and my organization for your willingness to spend so much time here. I have a really short slide presentation that I will. Attempt to pull up here. 1/2. Excuse me 1/2 year. You would think I would have this down by now, but here we go. Okay. All right. Can everyone see that? Yes. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. So I just want to start today by just I know you have heard this in previous panels, but Washington state has really been a leader in advancing common sense gun laws for the past almost decade now, which have included three statewide ballot initiatives and a fourth that we helped support that really focused on police accountability that is definitely intersectional with gun violence from our perspective. And we've also passed an additional 40 common sense gun laws that address all kinds of gun violence, including the intersection with domestic violence, suicide, interpersonal homicide and unintentional deaths. I want to talk a little bit today about what we're looking at for future legislation in Washington state and really encourage all of you to join us in really continuing to demand change from our state leaders. The first one is to align waiting periods and training requirements. These are two important components that can lead to a successful licensing scheme. As as Dr. Webster talked about just a minute ago and in 2018, when we passed Initiative 1639, we required a ten day waiting period and training for the purchase of semiautomatic assault rifles. In the next legislative session, we'll be looking at expanding those requirements to all firearm firearms. Also mentioned by Dr. Webster, really focusing on the supply side, both manufacturer and dealer accountability, and really holding them accountable for irresponsible practices that put guns in the hands of people intending to do harm. The third area, which I know is of interest to many of you, is to restore local authority to enhance gun laws. I think a really important point here is that this restoration of authority to cities and counties is to implement laws that are go above what is happening at the state. It does not allow for cities and counties to have less restrictive gun laws. The fourth option that I will mention is community protection sensitive places. I know Dr. Webster mentioned the Bruin case and the implications from the Supreme Court decision. They were actually very clear that restricting firearms and sensitive places is, from their perspective at this point in time, is is constitutional. So we have done that in a number of places already in Washington state. But looking forward at parks, libraries, hospitals, community centers, and we've already done in a number of government buildings. The fifth policy I will mention is permit to purchase or licensing in 2018. Washington State. Washington State passed a law that is required centralization of our background checks, which is really much more efficient and less costly for local law enforcement agencies that centralized with Washington state patrol. That process will be done at the end of next year. And we will then be looking to going to a. Full licensing structure within our state for the purchase of firearms. The sixth, I think if I don't count, is liability insurance. So this really would encourage safe firearm practices by requiring firearm owners to have liability insurance to cover damage or losses from accidental use of firearms. And then the final policy that I will talk about today is assault weapons restrictions and looking to continue the the push at the state level to prohibit the sale, trade and possession of assault weapons. I also just want to mention that in addition to our advocacy for specific laws, we are also we will also continue to advocate for investments in programs. And those include the protection or implementation of our bows and orders to surrender weapons. And I know Kate already mentioned this, but I really think it's important to continue to applaud King County and the city of Seattle for your investment in in what has become a national model. You heard from Sandra Shanahan at a panel. I think it was the first of. These series of committee meetings. And continued investment in that work we know is saving lives. The third area that the second area that I will mention is community violence, intervention interruption, which has also been mentioned by both of our previous panels. And we will continue to advocate again at the federal, state and local levels. And again, applaud you and the city of Seattle for your investment in hospital based solutions, as well as community based solutions. And then the final area that I would like to talk to is just public education, and we're so excited for our statewide office. That will play a really significant role here, as well as our partners at Children's who have been playing a really important role here. But looking at safe storage and risk mitigation, which we will be pushing forward a policy or a law next year that will require that information to be shared from school districts to parents annually. Locks Lockbox Giveaway programs, which our local children's hospital has been doing a great job of over the last number of years, and public education about extreme risk protection orders, which are a very evidence. Based. Tool to be used in all sorts of of gun violence, most notably suicide and and mass shootings. So that is what we will be working on next year and really invite you as individuals and as a county to join us in advocating for these really important lifesaving tools at the state level. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very, very much, Winnie, not only for your participation with us today, but throughout the planning for this series of three sessions. Are there any questions or comments for Renee? Do I see Councilmember Dombroski wanting to say something? No. Nope. Thank very much. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Well, again, thank you. And I appreciate your PowerPoint that you provided to us the slides. Are you able to get those to our staff, too, so we can distribute? Yeah, they are. They should have already. Great, everyone, thank you so much. Okay, thank you. We will conclude our meeting. Now our session on preventing gun violence with remarks from Judge and Levinson about further actions that we might take as a body, but also to kind of wrap up everything over these three sessions. She and Renee Hopkins were indispensable to me in planning for these meetings. So I'm very pleased that Judge Levinson is able to join us now. Please go right ahead. Morning. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you all. As is Director Kelly said, I just want to reiterate that I think each of the panel discussions you've had have been so important to better understanding the public health crisis of gun violence and the solutions that are going to be the most effective. Just to recap, you all have heard now from families who have been directly impacted by gun violence, who so eloquently spoke to the scope and the scale of trauma that firearms violence brings, and that you heard from those who've been leading the way on community violence interventions to interrupt cycles of violence by reducing shootings, particularly among young people in communities who are disproportionately impacted by interpersonal and community violence. You heard from those helping to identify and educate across systems about when and where gun violence is occurring and by whom in our region to help us with an informed approach. We heard from those helping to reduce gun violence and enhance survivor and community safety by ensuring individuals who present a heightened risk of harm to themselves or to others are prohibited through civil court orders from possessing, purchasing or accessing firearms and helping make sure those prohibitions are then complied with. Well, you heard from those working on strengthening state, federal and local firearm safety laws, because the data, as Dr. Webster summarized, is so clear that states with stronger gun safety laws that are empirically based have less gun violence. And then you've heard from researchers whose work is so important to all of us in helping to debunk the myths and to identifying gaps in our laws and our systems, to explaining public health approaches, and to educating the public and policymakers about the most effective and empirically based prevention strategies. Together, they reinforced what the research tells us that gun violence is a complex problem that must be met with a range of solutions, and that local government can play a critically important role in implementing multi-pronged, research based approaches to prevent harm that comes from guns, whether guns used in domestic violence and suicide in community based violence, or other types of threats and harm. I think also that your discussions have helped highlight the opportunities for collaborative inter jurisdictional actions and investments, particularly as the county and the city of Seattle are both discussing their budgets and their state legislative priorities for next session. And as you've heard from Director Kelly, the timing is also good for collaborating with the State on implementation of the new Federal Safer Communities Act through the DOJ grants that we expect to see. And those grants will be primarily in our state to help broaden the use of the extreme risk protection under law and to enhance the screening processes for gun purchasers who are under the age of 21. The two prongs of the gun violence prevention work that the City of Seattle and King County both already find present particularly good opportunities for the executives and counsels to work collaboratively in the weeks ahead. Those would be the community violence intervention interruption programs that you find in the Regional Domestic Violence Firearms Enforcement Unit that you heard about it. The first the panel discussion since the units program manager couldn't be here today. Charcoal Wells had asked if she would send a written summary for your review as you move forward to consider next steps and have your discussions starting today. So she has sent it along and I'm happy to review that charcoal wells, if that's helpful. Now we're happy to pause and let you all ask questions and discuss and be available to answers is helpful. Thank you, Judge Levinson. And and well, how about going ahead and referring to the document that Sandra Shanahan sent us? We did get that out to all the committee members. So great. Well, just as a reminder for everybody, the regional domestic violence enforcement unit along Main, the unit was established in 2018. It's collaboratively funded by the City of Seattle and King County, and it's intentionally multi-disciplinary and inter jurisdictional, and it's focused on reducing gun violence and enhancing survivor and community safety by proactively assisting both with orders to surrender weapons. And they're now called orders to surrender and prohibit weapons for clarity for respondents to know their responsibilities. And by assisting with extreme risk protection orders, as you've heard before, it's so important that all parts of. A system worked together to get information as early as possible, as far upstream as possible. And the courts have information they need to effectively issue these orders and that then there's follow up. There's work with survivors, there's local law enforcement, all aspects of the system so that those who pose the most imminent high risk to themselves or to others have these firearms relinquished, as the courts have ordered, and that they continue to comply for as long as the prohibitions are in effect. So program manager Senator Shanahan put together for you some options if you want to expand the capacity of that unit. She highlighted some of the areas where they have seen a real need in the first couple of years. The first is what's called a civilian threat assessment investigator excuse me. This would be to help all the jurisdictions in the region engage in real time threat assessment and in-depth follow up on particularly the most high risk cases because of the nature of the unit's workflow, because they need to handle many cases. And on a very quick turnaround, with new cases coming in each day, they really do need someone who can who has the expertize and can lead in terms of case assessment and investigation, serving as a resource to all the different agencies in the county , as well as the federal and other state agencies who look to us when there's a respondent who's now in King County. So this individual would provide that immediate and ongoing consultation, help triage these cases, track and monitor the high risk respondents across the civil and criminal cases for further investigation where needed that some of the things they would do, for example, the state had adopted in recent years what's now called law and try regulations where there's a report put out regularly about those who are prohibited possessors who attempt to purchase firearms. So being able to follow up on that and work with the agencies now on any actionable information to be able to work on those cases, in particular where there's been a lack of compliance since quick intervention is so important. Conducting interviews, reaching out to those to provide additional information. So for example, when a respondent says, I don't have any firearms, but the survivors saying, in fact, that's not true, here's the risk that we're facing that individual. Now, the investigator could help follow up, get the information from the pawnshop if the respondent is saying that they, in fact, sold it to a pawn shop or gun ranges or retailers, other victims, other individuals and sources of evidence. Sometimes it's video evidence. So there's a number of ways that additional that initial in-depth investigation for the high risk cases would be very helpful in reducing the silos and allow for the cross communication on these types of civil protection orders across the jurisdictions. And this, again, could be would not need to be a sworn person. It could be a formally sworn person or civilian who's got that investigative expertize. The second area that the unit had highlighted as a possible way to expand their capacity. There are additional cases that they haven't really been able to provide the support and expertize on given the current workload. Their focus has been on the Superior Court and some of those Seattle Municipal Court cases, but there are other cases that would be helpful to review at the time of filing and to screen and see if search warrants are needed and survivor planning and help support is needed. Those would be in more of the municipal court cases, the district court protection order cases, and in the specialty courts, in particular, the therapeutic courts that currently don't have that kind of support where loved ones are involved in those court processes. And then there's still a gap in the compliance. And this individual, this attorney and advocate, would help also in particular on compliance review hearings that are set every week in King County Superior Court to help ensure that those firearm surrenders have been as comprehensive as they're required to be, and they're not still dangerous weapons left to be accessed. So they would triage those cases. The third bucket, if you will. So the second one is probably an area where well, let me go back to the first one. I would say the first one is a particularly important area. I think there's county the funding. The second one might be where the city of Seattle would provide funding. And then this third one, which would be a King County Sheriff's Office detective and a non sworn support staff. And this is because that unit has heard from the various interpreters that just don't have the capacity to follow up on. These orders in a timely way, don't have the expertize, don't have the specialized units in the city of Seattle and in some of the other jurisdictions have. And that's to make sure that firearms are, in fact, temporarily removed when the protection orders initially served. As you know, that's a very high risk time and they're removed at the time of that DV 911 response where it's a criminal response. As you all have heard, the research is really clear that that swift and certain removal is critically important. And one of the barriers that we've seen in some of the larger jurisdictions, for example, if you're going to travel across the county, if officers do remove firearms from a scene, but they have to go back to the agencies evidence storage and log those in and package them, do the prep work and the data download there before they can go back out again. That really minimizes the number of chases they can be attentive to in a day. So the idea here that was recommended was a mobile vehicle support person to be working in partnership with the sworn officer to be able to remove those firearms and then be on call across these jurisdictions and not have to go back to the evidence storage after each interaction with the respondent were weapons, so the unit would provide this temporary, secure place to store firearms so that multiple orders can be addressed in a day. That going to be particularly helpful for those agencies in the region that just don't have this capacity or expertize. And then the last, which might be appropriate for either jurisdiction or for foundation funding or from the federal money that might be coming forward, is a capacity increase for training, outreach and partnership. And this is, as you've heard, because the unit has called on frequently to ask for help with education and training, to help with development of laws, to work with researchers. There's just not staff capacity to do all that and handle the day to day cases. So this person would be prioritizing that work. So the information sharing, the replication, the training and the collaboration, and it should be externally focused. It would also help you with the collaboration with the Criminal Justice Training Commission and other state associations for work on ongoing best practices, training and protocols. So that's an abbreviated version of all of that. Those are areas, if you do want to expand the capacity of your specialized unit that have been highlighted for you to consider. Charles there, happy to take any questions or refer to others on the panel. Okay. Thank you so much. And I'm sorry I always say end but Judge Levinson so and I would like to see outstanding presentation really helpful that you were able to go over Sandra Shanahan's document. She did want to be with us today, but could not. So thank you. Are there any questions or comments for Judge Levinson? You were just so comprehensive. We don't have any questions. It was all just very clear. Just to conclude on that charcoal wells that just went for those who maybe weren't on the council at the time, that unit in particular came out of the work of the public health reform discussions starting in 20 1617 and leadership of several of you on the Council. So it's great to see that it has really made a difference. And I think that thank you. And I think Councilmember McDermott deserves a whole lot of thanks for all the work that he led on. Okay. We've come to the end of the panel, but not of our discussion. What I had mentioned to all of my colleagues that I was hopeful that we could have some discussion at this point to go over what we have taken up over these three sessions of the committee, of the whole meetings. But I first would like to thank everybody who has participated today, but also over the three sessions. Some people have participated each time, and there are others who are not with us today, but were invaluable in providing very essential information to us as we take up what I think is a really critical issue in our country. I especially like to thank and Levinsohn and Renee Hopkins, who were just outstanding for me to work with in terms of planning out these three sessions. They were right there with excellent suggestions along the way, and I don't think I know we could not have put this all together without the two of them. So thank you. Also, I'd like to thank our committee of the whole staff and very much in particular, my Deputy Chief of Staff and policy director John Fowler, who really did an amazing job of putting this all together with me. So I'd like to hear from you all now. Anybody who would like to bring up anything that was particularly meaningful to you, and I'm talking about my colleagues on the committee of the whole. And any suggestions that you might have at this point? I think this is an area that we may want to noodle on a little bit, chew on in terms of thoughts about where to proceed from here on. It's it's very helpful that we will be going into our biennial budget time frame and working on a budget, the proposed biennial budget that the executive will come over. We'll be developing our legislative agenda with Jack Nicholson and Simon Ferrata to prepare for the next legislative session, which begins the second Monday of January in 2023. Also, a number of us are going to be going to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., the week of September 19th to meet with our congressional delegation and staff. And so that will be very timely to in terms of bringing out what is important to us as council members individually, but also with regard to our Council. To start things off, I'd like to bring up one thing I mentioned earlier in my introduction at the beginning of the meeting about Seattle Children's Hospital being involved in a program. And it's unfortunate that that we cannot have them with us today. But I had it had come to my attention that Seattle Children's Hospital is has a program that gives away free trigger locks and guns storage boxes at events across western Washington. I believe it's this week that they're doing so up in Bellingham through the city government and the city council. And of course, Children's Hospital has partnered with our Board of Health many times in recent years on this issue. But I'm very interested in exploring a program such as that where this could be a budget proviso that I'm looking at and how we could be able to provide free gun storage boxes and trigger locks to those who request them in our community. But I would like now to hear from you. So I'm looking at any of my colleagues who would like to make any remarks, give us suggestions or whatever. Do I have any takers? I'm sure. Yes, Councilmember. But thank you. I am thinking about your request and I find myself wanting to take on board all of the very detailed and deep information that we've received. Maybe you have some time to think through roles because there have been a lot of really great policy suggestions, and that's been one of the really wonderful things about this series. It wasn't just academic, although we did get a lot of good academic information that underlies the policy suggestions. There were a lot of really strong recommendations for action. I find myself struggling with which are the things that the county does can do alone, which are the things where we need to work with partners and which are things that are really others to do, and perhaps that there are lobbying efforts on our part. So. That's where I sit with this today, sort of wanting to maybe have some kind of a compilation of the various policy prescriptions that we've heard about where they're at in terms of implementation. Because one of the things that came through very strongly in today's presentation was that we're not starting from zero here. There's a lot of really good work going on in the area of gun violence within King County, but what are our best next steps? And then secondly, where we open today with the idea that there's going to be more resource for this activity makes it makes it an urgent activity. I mean, it's an urgent activity anyway, because the problem is so, you know, damaging to people's lives. But knowing that resources are increasing, we should really be working hard at identifying where our actions are best placed, what resources or resources are required, and then position ourselves to go get those resources when they become available. So kind of general reaction to what next question and I want to add my voice publicly to everybody else's. This has been a really remarkable series of panels. Very I can't remember a time when I sat through a series of panels that I took so much away from and want to go back and revisit and really relearned, learn more. So congratulations and thank you for pulling all that together. Oh. Well, thank you. That, I think, is very important endeavor to do. And I understand that this is something that we all need to give a lot of thought to or those of us who wish to anyway, because there's such an enormous impact in our community here, but also across the country. Thank you for your words. And is there anybody else who would like to make a comment and if you have anything specific that you'd like to float out there in terms of ideas for legislation, for policy or for funding, please bring it up if you're able to at this point. Not low. Councilmember Siler. Thank you. I want to echo what Councilmember Belushi said about the value of these discussions. You know, we kind of spent a lot of time on the problem statement and we all know how big the problem is. And we did spend a lot of time on the problem statement, but it was so remarkable that we had concrete lists of solutions. Data driven solutions. What has worked? What hasn't worked? What are the trends? I thought that was such a good use of time and I wanted to thank you as the chair and all of our presenters who came in and presented on that. I would also echo another statement that Councilmember Baldwin, she said, which is a lot of the work that we heard that the county can do, the county in some shape or form is already doing. And so I think it would be really helpful if we, as the council plugged in with our executive branch, see what work is already happening and see how we can add our efforts into there rather than starting new tracks on things I know initiatives like the Regional Peace Keepers Collective, they're doing a lot of the intervention prevention, space activation, integrating different systems like the hospitals with local service providers, and making sure that we have a truly regional, seamless approach where all different levels of society are communicating with each other to respond to the gun violence epidemic and to share data with each other. And so a lot of these solutions are underway, and they have laid the groundwork for engaging different communities that they're doing lockbox events and unincorporated King County. I went to one a couple of months ago. And so I think just making sure that all of our branches of government are in communication and being additive to one another is really important, as always. Thank you, council members. And you mentioned some of our programs. We do have a wealth of programs in our county and we've been presenting some of them, hearing from some of them, but not all of them. And so I'm very proud of what we have managed to accomplish. But there's so much more to do as you've recognized. And we do have the state legislative session coming up in our meeting with our federal partners in the nation's capital. So I'm very encouraged by what we may. Able to accomplish. But as a locality, a local government, we can't do as much as we want without some changes being made at the state level and more funding from the federal level as well. Is there anybody else who would like to make any comments? We did have one measure pass from Councilmember DEMBOSKY. We did that at our last meeting, and I'm really looking forward to that being implemented with the voluntary turning in of weapons. And but and anybody want to venture forth with some other ideas. It appears not at this time. My staffer, John Fowler, will be working with any of your staff if they would like to contact him. And we'll see what we can manage to accomplish in the budget or through legislation that we can introduce. And I really thank you all for participating in this series of meetings and roundtable panel discussions. I think it's been very valuable, at least it has to me. And I think back of not only the progress that's been made, but some of the real difficulties and challenges. Tom Weil's a federal prosecutor and residing in Seattle who was a friend of mine, and he was part of the Washington Cease Fire Organization, which was the predecessor to the alliance that we have now. And there was another group before that which he was involved with then. I don't remember the exact name. It was a lengthy committee for something, but he was murdered in 2001 and I had seen him just a few days on the top of Queenan Hill at Starbucks. I had served with him on the Clean Air and Community Council before I went to the state legislature, and his killer has not been prosecuted, has not been located or prosecuted, and he gave his life to this work that I find is so critical. I wish he was still with us, but he's not. And I, for one, am determined that while I'm in public office and afterwards, that I will do as much as I can to continue progress being made . I look forward to our upcoming budget process and we'll work hard to come up with a provisos that I think could be helpful. I, I am very pleased that we've been able to engage in discussions with everyone at the table, including academic researchers, community members, elected officials. And most importantly to me, we were able to hear from many people who were so brave in sharing their own personal traumas, tragedies and experiences caused by gun violence. I want to always remember what they said, but we do need to be cognizant of what can happen from here, what we can do. And I look forward to being able to continue this discussion that's been very illuminating, but heartbreaking but hopeful. I hope beyond hope that we can have the legislature and act signed into law by the governor, many of, if not all of the priorities that the alliance is setting forth and so many community partners are working on. And I'm optimistic that we are going to be able to get quite a bit of new funding from the federal government. And I. I look forward to working with all of you. Okay. This concludes the action items on our agenda. And I do believe we may have had a couple of members miss a vote. Madam Clerk, are there any. Councilmember McDermott was excused from the meeting, and he's the only one that missed. Okay, great. Okay. With that, we will meet again at our next regularly scheduled meeting, which is on September seven. Thank you again for all who participated in our meeting today. And if there's no other business to come before our committee, we are adjourned.

Output: A MOTION confirming the appointment of Allen Nance as the director of the department of adult and juvenile detention.