At today's Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting. We've had some stirring public comment, and now they'll be working through all the appointments. Then we'll move onto the decision agenda on less lethal weapons recommendations, which is why I'm here.

Meanwhile I'll use this opportunity to suggest attending next week's CPC meeting on Wednesday the 19th at 9am to support them as they work for justice re the SPD officers in DC last week and Mike Solan's inflammatory and false remarks.

It is our job as residents of Seattle to show that we care about what happened in DC last week and give the CPC our support in this matter. So please consider making the time to attend their meeting next week.

CM Sawant says the CPC has been the only accountability partner we've seen consistently defend the rights of people brutalized by police officers.

She says this summer only the CPC talked about the harm done to ordinary people in the BLM movement during the convo about less lethal weapons.

She believes we need an elected oversight board with powers of hiring/firing but that is not intended as a commentary on the work of the CPC and their work has been much appreciated.

All right, we've made it to the recommendations on less lethal weapons from the CPC, OIG, and OPA. CM Herbold says their goal is to have the strongest possible ordinance and to regulate the less lethal weapons.

She says after they submitted the ordinance to the Court, Judge Robart issued a temporary restraining order on the ordinance in July. In August CPC, OPA, OIG gave their recommendations.

Sept 11: the 3 bodies presented their recommendations.
Dec 17: the 3 bodies and SPD had a roundtable discussion about the content of the recommendations

Today they will identify the consensus items and then a decision tree for the places where the 3 bodies do not agree. They may vote on this new legislation on Jan 26. Anything committee passes must be reviewed by the court b4 the full council vote.

Under the consent decree Judge Robart has the final say, and she says it's worth looking at the clues he's given in previous rulings etc. In his restraining order of the summer he said he was concerned that the ordinance wasn't increasing public safety.

The Judge also wanted to hear recommendations from the 3 accountability bodies, hence their full participation. She is reminding us that whatever the Judge decides goes, there is no overturn the Council can do about his decision.

Lise Kaye from Central Staff is presenting. She's showing a chart showing each accountability agency's recommendations. The base bill reflects the four areas of consensus.

This would allow for specific non-crowd control uses for pepper spray, the 40mm launcher, and noise flash diversionary devices, and it would ban tear gas use for patrol officers.

It would maintain the ban for 40mm launchers and noise flash devices, and pepper spray, for crowd control purposes.

They're talking about the five less lethal weapons, and giving the options per weapon to affirm ban, exempt from ban, or exempt from ban with specific policy conditions.

CM Sawant says the events of last Wednesday were ominous and the far right mob were greeted with kid gloves while they've seen the weapons deployed against left wing protests, which is why the ban shouldn't be weakened.

She acknowledges the process with the consent decree etc but is also quite concerned because after the ordinance passed, the DOJ, the City Attorney, and then Chief Best tried to defuse this legislation while there was no representation in court for the protesters.

She doesn't want to see loopholes. The base legislation doesn't create these loopholes but there are options they're about to discuss that would create such loopholes.

CM Herbold says she wants to make sure they have a bill the consent decree can review alongside the recommendations the SPD is making for review of their policies. She's concerned they could have a situation where the Court could only have the SPD policies to review.

She wants the Court to know what the Council preferences are as well as what the SPD preferences are.

Ok, first we have blast balls. Options:
1. Retain total ban of blast balls
2. Specify exceptions to ban for patrol, SWAT, and/or crowd control situations
3. Specify exceptions to ban with conditions

CM Herbold reminds folks that in 2016 the CPC called for the SPD to stop using blast balls after several injuries. The CPC continues to recommend a complete ban, whereas the OPA and OIG do not agree with a complete ban. In June 2020 a protester was almost killed by a blast ball.

The CPC still believes in the full elimination of indiscriminate weapons like blast balls and tear gas. The I James report has an action step re blast balls too.

There's been a long-standing expectation for SPD to change their application of blast balls and they haven't addressed these expectations. As such she recommends retaining the total ban of blast balls.

CM Morales agrees with retaining the total blast ball ban. They are supposed to be rolled but instead are thrown overhead. There have been repeated requests for better training and repeated disregard for that. Therefore they should continue the ban.

CP González is also inclined to retain the total ban on the use of blast balls.

She notes that in early December, Judge Jones considered the use of blast balls and mentioned in the order he was most concerned with SPD's use of blast balls, which he called the most indiscriminate of the four crowd control weapons he examined in the case.

CM Sawant supports maintaining the total ban on blast balls and welcomes the three statements who also support this. She points out the grievous harm caused by blast balls and how injurious they are.

It's been four or five years since the CPC's position on blast balls and the data of harm has been available and yet the SPD keeps using them. There's little enforcement of the use of these weapons by the police department.

CM Lewis says he'd have trouble voting for an ordinance without a complete ban on blast balls. Re Judge Jones finding, he can't imagine more notice the SPD could be under regarding proper deployment of these weapons, and yet in the fall officers were still throwing these overhand