Ad Hoc Committee on Police and Community Relations - Regular Meeting

Alright. Hello, and welcome everyone to the Wednesday, 09/24/2025 regular meeting of the community livability and public safety committee of the Olympia City Council. For the record, we do have a quorum with all committee members present. First step, we'll have approval of tonight's agenda. So I do invite a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

Some up. Second.

All right. All those in favor, aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. K. The agenda is approved. Next, we have public comment. Don, did we have anyone sign up for public comment?

No. We have not.

Oh, okay. So moving right along to approval of the minutes. We have two different minutes to approve tonight, so we'll do them separately. So first, I'll ask, for, if we'll approve, the meeting minutes for 07/23/2025 community livability and public safety committee meeting. We'll need a motion and a second. So

moved. Second.

All right. Any comments or corrections? Okay. Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. The minutes are approved. So moving on to meeting minutes for the 08/27/2025 Community Liability and Public Safety Committee meeting.

So moved.

And a second.

Any comments or corrections for that one? No? Okay. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. And the minutes are approved. That takes us to, six, which is committee business. And I feel like we just, like, we just kinda shook it all out with that exercise. Yeah. Now we're ready. So we have just two items for a committee business tonight. I certainly don't mean to rush anyone, but I anticipate maybe getting out before our usual time of 07:30. We don't need any motions for both of these. They'll just be discussions.

So first, we start with item six a, city council appointed advisory body analysis and 2026 advisory body recruitment process update. This will be presented to us by two folks, assistant city manager, Stacy Ray, and consultant, Genevieve Consego Chan. And so I'll yield the floor to you too.

Alright. Thank you, chair, committee members. Good evening. For the record, I'm Stacy Ray, assistant city manager. I'm also wearing a hat right now as our strategic communications director, so that's why I come before you tonight to talk about advisory body recruitment process for 2026.

And as you mentioned, Cher, I anticipate this may be a fairly brief item tonight. I'm not asking for any action or formal action or motions on anything. It's really a discussion. The intent is just to share two updates around advisory bodies. One is to talk about the work that, as you introduced Genevieve, that Genevieve is doing with us around the analysis of the advisory bodies and ensuring that they're meeting your goals as a council around public engagement.

And the second is to include just to really kind of kick off or talk about our recruitment, interviewing, and appointment process tonight. Let's see. In a moment, I'll turn it over to Genevieve so she has a chance to introduce herself and talk a little bit about the project work that she's doing. I also wanna add that, Dawn Carvalho is here tonight. Dawn from the city manager's office does a lot, a ton to support our advisory body recruitment, interview, and appointment process.

So Dawn is here to provide the expertise and has also shared some data with me in terms of what we may know about appointments at this point in time, and I'll I'll talk about that in a bit. So the city, we have as I mentioned, the staff report, we have 13 standing advisory bodies. They really engage over a 100 community members as appointed participants in those bodies. Last year, Kelly Perce, Brasseth, and Debbie Sullivan both worked on a comprehensive analysis of advisory bodies with the goal being to evaluate the effectiveness of how those bodies are, and, again, meeting your goals on community engagement. Debbie shared a deep analysis with you back in May, and now we've contracted with Genevieve to kinda continue doing that work for us.

So I have invited her here tonight to just speak a little bit about, you know, what how she's kicked off her process, kinda her scope, and how she'll go about doing the work. So, Genevieve, I'll just turn it over to you.

Hi, everyone. I'm Genevieve Kenseiko Chan. I also wanted to share a little bit of background regarding my familiarity with the advisory bodies in the city of Bolivia. So as many of you know, I most recently was part of the first cohort of the Social Justice and Equity Commission. Really enjoyed my work with that commission and also got my first taste in terms of how community is engaged with the critical issues around our city.

And then I'm currently on the Cultural Access and Advisory Board, a very different kind of advisory body. So I'm excited to see the differences amongst all of our different advisory bodies and some and see where we can have potentially potentially shared practices across those different advisory bodies, how people are supported via the staff, but also in terms of the work plans and scopes for those different advisory bodies. As Stacy Ray mentioned, I'm continuing some of the the work that Debbie and Kelly had started a long time ago. So thank you so much for sharing all of that information, the presentations that were given in May with the with the CLIPS committee as well as the committee of with the chairs, I believe, that which which is held in July. So I've been going through some of those notes, the survey responses, starting to compile any shared observations, and starting to formulate some recommendations.

I've also initiate and those have actually informed my set of questions that I've put together. I'm reaching out to the individual staff liaisons to, to do some individual interviews. These are informed by the the notes and the, some of the findings that Debbie and Kelly had presented in the the presentation to CLPS earlier this year, but I've already started talking to several staff liaisons about their individual experiences, and then I also hope to reach out to a few chairs. I'm also looking at other municipalities to see how they're using their advisory bodies, including a city of Lacey, and also some I have some contacts in Bellingham and Tacoma and also some out of state as well just to see how other similarly sized, municipalities are engaging with their community and how how they approach advisory bodies in general. I look forward to giving you updates throughout the process.

I think Stacy, Ray, and I are going to be in regular touch as I make as I complete interviews and and formulate more recommendations and ideas. I'm also wanting to make myself available, as Stacy mentioned, as I see if there are things that we can potentially immediately adopt in terms of the recruitment process, there are things that are coming to light, some shared practices that I think that we could already implement with little lift, I I'll make sure that I reach out and be proactive about that.

Great. Thank you, Genevieve. So I don't know, Cher, if you wanna pause for any comments or questions for Genevieve. Otherwise, I'll kinda move into our recruitment cycle that we're anticipating for '26.

Yeah. Thanks so much. Yeah. Let's go ahead and do that. Any comments or questions from, committee? Alright. I see committee member Gilman.

Thank you, chairwoman. I I just wanna say it I've appreciated the year and a half or so long discussion about advisory bodies and and how we might best perform. And just to say again, I'm I'm very proud that our city attracts more applicants than there are openings when some of our surrounding jurisdictions struggle to fill their their mandated bodies. I'm very proud of having over a 100 community members weighing in. And so I have strong feelings about that.

And I also understand that change is the only constant and that while it used to be the path that you would serve on an advisory committee or an ad hoc committee, then planning commission, then maybe city council, you know, that that's not certainly the only or even the predominant path today. So I'm open to hearing what Genevieve learns, and I'm also very proud of the bodies that we have right now. So I'm kind of torn but open to to to hearing the new wisdom.

You, committee member Gilman. I'll just share that, you know, I am also have been very engaged, interested. So we all have things that we're particularly interested on council. Advisory bodies is one of my things that hit the interest list. And yeah.

And it's been it's been about a year and a half of of conversations about it, and I'm really excited to have Genevieve. I also really appreciate sharing your background for especially for folks that are in this virtual space or maybe might be listening in later that that don't know you, right, and they don't have that context. And so it makes you even more well rounded for this position of consultant. And, also, I'm feeling a little antsy. Not in this moment right now, but just in general, it's like, like, I want the analysis.

And, I mean, don't I want you to rush, but I want the analysis to be over, and I want us to moving into, I'm not sure what it'll look like, but into something that, just works well for us, works, well for the city staff. Right? But then also, volunteer community members and for council and for just just all work well. And, committee member Gilman, I don't imagine I'm not sure what it's gonna look like, right, what the recommendations will shape up into, but I don't imagine it'll be a, you know, a clear sort of of anything that we've had established. That's that's definitely not my goal with it.

And I also don't think that it's gonna look the same for all of the advisory bodies. So I'm looking forward to kind of seeing how, you know, I'm sure that our consultant, Genevieve, will look at what are the goals of the advisory bodies, and how are we gonna get there, and how we're gonna get there, I think, can look a little different. So appreciate the openness and and having you onboard, Genevieve, to to take us to the finish line. With that, just before we'll let Stacy and Jenaviv continue on, any other questions or comment?

Yeah. I'll just I'll just take a moment just to say thank you, Genevieve, for lending your expertise and experience, on our advisory bodies to this process, and it's, very much appreciated. And thank you for once again stepping up and and helping out the city in in in this way. It's much appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. I think, again, what's driving me and my commitment in this work is, again, I've always been so passionate about open communication and quality of communication experience. So I hope that, once I as I go through my evaluation and make recommendations that we are finding ways to improve the experience overall for the community members, for council, for the staff that support on both of those. Thanks. Well, great to start off all on the same page. I will, take it back over to you, Stacy.

Okay. Thank you. So, alright. So we are really close to moving into October. October is when we typically launch our annual recruitment cycle where we look to up, appoint our returning and new advisory board members.

So, tonight, I just wanna reintroduce at a high level the typical recruitment and appointment process. And as Genevieve mentioned, of course, her and I are gonna be in regular communication and with you as well, Cherilyn, to make sure that if there's anything coming forward that we may wanna integrate into the process sooner rather than later, we'll be keeping an eye out for that. So what you'll see tonight is a more typical process because that's where we are today. And, again, this will just be a high level overview. So let's see.

So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. Okay. Let's see. I need to make you bigger. There we go.

Okay. So just as a brief reminder, Dawn is actually doing the work right now, which is happening in the September time frame of trying to determine who from our current advisory bodies is interested in stepping down, where we'll have vacancies, and any folks that are wanting to continue who don't have terms that are expiring. So, and I'll come back to kind of what what Don has learned thus far in terms of how many potential spots we might be trying to recruit for. Do we start our recruitment in October and then wrap it up in December. In January, is when we ask our advisory bodies to assist with the initial kind of screening and putting forward recommendations.

You've typically asked for twice the amount of vacancies so that you have some options in front of you. February, March, we look at scheduling for this committee to interview the candidates, and then we go through the formal appointment process with full council in that March time frame. And our new advisory body members or continuing advisory body members start their term in April. So that's our typical process. And again, as Genevieve talked about, this time frame, this timing, and the elements of this process are all kind of on the table in terms of looking for opportunities to best align this with the council's work, you know, and the really, also just the workload and capacity that's involved in moving through this process every year because we know it's a it can be a big lift.

So I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing this unless there's any thoughts, questions, or comments on okay. I'll go ahead and move. So now I'll just talk a little bit about in terms of what we know thus far. Let me come on over here. And I'll share the other handout that I have that Don created.

This one has a lot going on, so I'll just I'm gonna hit the high points. Okay. So these are our advisory bodies for which we're recruiting. So what we know right now is that we have five known existing vacancies. We know that we have we've gotten word from two folks who are not seeking reappointment.

We have 16 advisory body members that would like to return. And then we have we have 10 that we're still trying to track down whether or not they want to come back or not. So they're an we're calling them undecided at this point. So that leaves a total of seven known vacancies at this time. So this is, like, a bit of a snapshot in time.

We try to get this information wrapped up right around this time period so we know kind of what your interview schedule will look like. I know there's a lot of information on this, so I and it gives you a visual representation to kind of understand where we have current vacancies. Those are that's the red and the green is where we have members that are seeking reappointment, and yellow is where we have terms expiring.

I have a question, Stacy. Or do we have the that, like, almost like a light blue, the hold for future filling that I'm maybe I'm not seeing it.

So there are two there are two appointments or Hold for future billing. Oh, I think you're referring to I may need Don to hop on for a second, but I think if I don't answer this correctly. But I think we're talking about, for example, the social justice and equity commission. We're holding two spots that we are choosing not to appoint members to. Dawn, is that correct?

Those the holding for future billing, actually were held for what used to be the use of force board. There was a couple Oh. Sessions in there that we weren't filling because we knew that we were coming forward with the community policing board.

Oh, okay.

So that's what that light blue is. It just doesn't happen to pertaining to this group this year.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Yep.

Okay. I I wonder if I might ask, I guess, it'd be a question for Dom or Dom, Dom, you can hear me. Okay. There you are. So you you've been through this process quite a bit.

And so whether it's something that you wanna tell us right now or you wanna think about it, And, you know, we can talk about it at a future clip as it gets closer. But we know that the that getting these these folks sort of onboard I mean, it's not even their onboarding, but just the interview process and all that. It is wild. Significant. Yes.

It's it's a big a big lift, and it's an even bigger lift in some ways for folks like yourself that are coordinating everything. Right? Teaming it up, making it seem seamless so that, us committee members can just kind of hop on and, do the interview part. And so, I had hoped that this is sort of me coming with my tail between my legs too. I had hoped that it would look different, especially for staff that was coordinating this and for my committee mates that would be a part of this process because it is kinda grueling.

It's for a few days, but it's it is a lot. And so if you have recommendations or ways that it could be streamlined, things that would just, you know, make it work better, It seems like we always have ideas about how things could work better, but please know that I think our committee really well reads that.

I appreciate that. Thank you. And, certainly, we'll keep that conversation open with Stacy and have been very transparent with Genevieve as well as what the what the reality of those logistics look like in the current recruitment process. And right now, as it stands, I think this is of where we're at. I'm not really sure how we could streamline it anymore aside from really locking down dates as quickly as possible, getting feedback as quickly as possible, and just kind of lean forward from there.

Right now, as as Stacy said, this is a snapshot of where we're at. Our typical path has been the individuals whose term is expiring. So the folks indicated in yellow on this slide, we assume that they're going to come in as a reappointment until we hear definitively otherwise. I have it on good good authority from some of the liaisons that a couple of these yellows will most likely be reds, but I I don't like calling it until I actually have a definitive on that. So as it stands right now, we're looking at 17 to 20 interviews, which, you know, is not as many as we've done.

So but but, certainly substantial, especially when you're pumping them through it ten to fifteen minutes apiece in the course of

Yeah.

Days. So, but I appreciate the support, and I appreciate the willingness to listen to ideas. So thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Could we make a note that, committee meets, do you, I hope to serve with you all again. But do you think that the January the first January clips meeting, you know, that's usually the time when we're talking about our work plan anyways that we could lock down just plan to lock down some dates so that staff just already knows? Maybe that's one easy thing that we could commit to. Yeah. I'm seeing some nodding. Okay. Dawn, you got that?

Then just for your edification, that is Yeah. Typically the March, or as close to the March as as we can get it. So that's the ideal timing.

Okay. Yes. But in in January, we could give you those dates so you don't have to chase us down through email for them. And if there's something else that you don't wanna have to chase folks down for, let me know.

Noted and appreciated.

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Well, thanks for, a little bit of grace, Stacy. I'm sure you are flowing there, so I'll just hand it back to you.

That's actually yeah. That's pretty much what I had planned to share for tonight because I really the intent was to give Genevieve a chance to talk about kind of where she is in her scope of work and to update you in terms of what we what we know around advisory bodies in the process right now. But, again, I just wanna reiterate what you mentioned earlier. We're going to be looking you know, actively looking for ways to kind of improve the process as we get into it. So we're we're gonna be looking for those opportunities. So yep. But thank you for the conversation.

Thanks so much. Anything in closing from the committee mates? I see committee member Gilman.

Thank you. Put that back down. Put that back down. There it goes. I I understood when we did the last debrief that that we were interested in changing the time of year of of this happening.

And and so I'm okay if it happens as Don and Genevieve work, and it's for the following year. But I do think one particular issue was having the the applications really coming in between Thanksgiving and the beginning of the winter holidays and then trying to do initial screening of those over the holiday break so that groups in their January meeting it's anyhow, it's that that particular part of the annual calendar, I thought we decided was was challenging enough that it that we shouldn't do it that way. So, anyhow, so I I look I I'm not I I don't see particular value in the time of year that we do either the interviews ourselves or have the application right now. I know we wanna have it avoid our busiest time of budget work in the fall, but, otherwise, I I hope that recommendations will come back to adjust this schedule.

So Thank you. Committee member Paine?

Thank you, chair. Couple things come to mind. The first is that it was mentioned that there were we know of two members that are gonna be coming off their respective bodies, at least as of now. I guess my question or more like proposition would be, you know, as they're coming off, how are we engaging them, in in the sense of asking them about how they're utilizing their personal networks to recruit more people. I know that we don't have necessarily a shortage, as the committee member Gilman mentioned earlier of people who are willing to serve.

But, you know, that's not something we should take for granted. We should be thinking about, are there people, that they have in mind that could, ultimately take their place and not necessarily that they'll be appointed, but they could at least apply an interview and be up for consideration. Yes. And the chair just sent me a message that sometimes we do have a shortage. So it it would be great to have options.

And so thinking about how to utilize their personal networks as they're preparing to leave the body, I think is is a good thing. And then also thinking about, the diversity of our advisory bodies. We talk about this a lot, not just in a sense of representation, but what are what are the gaps or what are those lived and professional experiences that we could be missing by having less diverse bodies. So just thinking about how we might leverage those opportunities to to work on diversifying as well.

Mhmm. Thank you. Alright. Well, Genevieve, the committee really cares about this. Can you feel it?

Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Oh, I just say, I I I I appreciate all of these comments. It's really helping me understand how far along or how how much, of these topics have come up in the past. And I know that a lot of the things that I'm asking myself about too is regards to the type a lot of that, the timing and the cadence of of recruitment, how that it affects, you know, implementation and onboarding of those those new members and their and their ability to participate in the work plan.

Right? So I think all of these are all of these topics are linked terms of making this a better a better experience. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Genevieve. Thank you, Genevieve, and, assistant city managers, DC Ray. With that, I guess we'll go ahead and move on to the next one. Alright.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Alright. So our next and final business item for tonight is a public safety update, and that's being presented to us by interim police chief, Shelby Parker, and also with lieutenant Paul Braley. Good evening, everybody. I will work on sharing my screen here. Yeah. Take your time. Do you see the large blue slide or do you see the notes slide? We do see the notes slide. Perfect. I will change it. How about that? Great. Alright. Excellent.

Thank you so much for your patience there. Alright. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to provide this update on behalf of the Olympia Police Department. For the record, I'm Shelby Parker, interim chief of the Olympia Police Department. Copresenting with me this evening is lieutenant Paul Fraylin.

We have a packed agenda this evening. Next year, I will ensure that we appear in front of you more frequently and so our presentations are shorter. This evening, we will provide a midyear review of department data and crime rates, an overview of the Nisqually Jail, its utilization and budget, information about our approach to public demonstrations, we'll review current staffing challenges and recruitment strategies, and finally, we will provide an update on plot camera technology. We'll pause after each topic to allow for questions. A data snapshot talking about activity in the police department.

So this slide provides a snapshot of the data collected this year through the June. The data is consistent with last year at this time, except for community engagement, events, and activities. Unfortunately, staffing challenges have presented excuse me, prevented OPD from being as present as we would like to be. This number should increase in the fourth quarter as staffing improves and OPD engages with the community around holiday events. Our Make Your Crime Against persons data shows that most crime categories are either lower or steady compared to last year.

This is encouraging and reflects the hard work of our officers and our partnership with the community. One area of concern is sexual assaults. In the first six months of this year, we've already had 24 reported cases. For context, 36 cases were reported last year. These incidents include sex crimes against children, acquaintance rapes, and sexual assaults involving known offenders.

Many of these reports come in through internet crimes against children. Patrol officers are the first to respond to these cases and every report is forwarded to our investigations unit for further specialized follow-up. We recognize that sexual assault is significantly underreported in most communities, including ours. That's why we're working closely with community stakeholders to improve support for survivors and lower barriers to reporting. To strengthen this effort, we are joining the Seek Then Speak reporting portal.

This web based platform allows survivors to seek information and complete a report without contacting law enforcement. The SEEK portion allows survivors to gather information and explore options for medical care, supportive services, reporting. It explains the roles of victim advocates, medical professionals, and law enforcement and addresses common questions about forensic exams, crime victim rights, and more. The speak portion is a self guided interview where survivors can share as much or as little information as they are comfortable with. At the end, they can download a PDF report to keep or forward to law enforcement.

For privacy, the system prompts them to clear their data after downloading. If the survivor chooses to forward their report to OPD, our department will review it and may open an official investigation. Our Mid Year Property crime data shows that most categories are significantly lower compared to last year, except for trespass. Trespass continues to be a challenge in our community due to the limited availability availability of crisis beds, substance use disorder treatment beds, and supportive housing. We anticipate the end of year totals for property crimes will rise somewhat since crime typically increases during the summer months.

Even so, when projecting annual totals by doubling the first six months data, the following can be assumed. Auto theft is on track for a 42% reduction, commercial burglary is on track for a 30% reduction, and residential burglary is on track for a 43% reduction. Property crime may be down because of several factors. Many prolific property crime offenders are currently serving time for offenses committed in previous years. Legislative changes have strengthened accountability for repeat offenders of serious crimes, the deployment of flock safety cameras across the community, the creation of the Special Investigations Response Team.

I'll speak a little bit about that team. I have a lot of excitement about it. This is a joint investigative team. It's comprised of commission members from the Olympia And Lacey Police Departments. The team was formally launched in July.

However, an OPD sergeant has been leading investigations with officer support for about nine months. In that time, the team has dismantled multiple sophisticated property crime rings. They are currently leading the largest property crime and fraud investigation in recent memory involving dozens of victims, dozens of arrests, and thousands of dollars in recovered property. Because this case is active, details are limited, but I look forward sharing more information when the investigation concludes. Before we move on, I would offer the group any questions that they might like to ask.

Council member Gilman?

Thanks, chief Parker. First, I I'm not familiar with let me get the phrase again here. The Internet crimes against children. I don't know what that means.

Absolutely. So it is a national investigative group that works on tracking depictions of minors and engaging explicit sexually explicit conduct. And how many of those images are being shared in the community. The images are monitored and tagged. And so when they are found in Internet environments, they are reported to this network.

They then share that data with the jurisdictions that the police departments that have jurisdiction, and we launch very extensive investigations into those reports. And it's it's been a significant change in law enforcement about the last ten to twelve years. These investigations take a significant amount of time and resources, but the outcomes are exceptional.

Wow. Thank thank you for amplifying that. That's I'm I'm glad we're engaged as as part of that community. So and I had emailed you a couple of questions. I'm just gonna state them, but I realize that you don't have other statistics ready at hand.

I'm I'm especially interested in trying to separate out there's a lot of public discussion about stranger danger, and specifically about an increased risk of walking downtown and an increased possibility of experiencing violence from an unhoused person. So it would help me if we we have misdemeanor assaults broken out by domestic violence, if if felony assaults were also broken out by domestic violence, that would help to change that that toe I mean, you know, to consider that total as as two separate totals. And then I know in the in the police blotter sort of reports we put out, they're they often use the phrase known assailant. And so I'm assuming that that's tracked when a crime is reported, whether or not the victim and the assailant know each other. But it but whatever estimations or measures we have of known assailant versus random, unprovoked stranger attack, I I think would help me in my conversations with the community.

Thank you, council member Gilman. I I can appreciate that's an important data point, and I will work on getting that for you. I think it's important to note that the data does not bear out that crimes of violence involving strangers is typical in Olympia. That is not the case. The majority of the crimes against people involve individuals who know each other, whether they're acquaintances, friends, or family members. Many of these situations are connected to underlying challenges such as substance abuse or folks in personal crisis. As you know, we work closely with a number of stakeholders in the community to to work towards helping folks experiencing these situations.

Thank you, chief. And I I don't mean to diminish that it's any less awful for the victim in in any of those situations, but but for the conversation about the relative safety safety of a random person moving through downtown or through the city, I I'm interested in exploring that. So and thank you for your answer.

Absolutely. Committee member Payne?

Achieve, thank you for this. It's it's good to hear, you know, how we're doing. I, I think, in part, the numbers are are well, in whole, the numbers are are looking the way that they are because of our department's response, even as you talked about, you know, the numbers going down because of folks being held accountable from crimes committed in previous years, and that's thanks to the work, that you all are doing. And, also, it's it's kinda hard to, you know, capture data on other crimes that you're preventing just simply by being present. So it is that proactive policing that, you know, who who knows what the that number looks like in terms of of contributing to the whole picture of of how, you know, these incidents are decreasing in the city.

So thank you for that to all of you. I am curious, though, about why so we we see you know, we we understand that drug use is is a health issue, but there's also the the usage of of drugs in open public spaces, right, which is illegal. And then there's also those who are selling or distributing drugs, and which is a crime. So I'm just curious about why we don't see that in these, snapshots of of what we're looking at here. So is there a reason, or is it separate data for a separate reason?

Or, I know it's something that many people in our community, are concerned about and rightfully so.

Absolutely. Later in the presentation, we'll talk a little bit about narcotics. It will come up in the portion of the presentation as we're talking about corrections. It is work that the Olympiad Police Department is doing, is holding folks accountable and trying to support them with alternatives to corrections for narcotics use. And we'll also talk about this in an exciting portion of the presentation where we talk about one of our patrol dogs, Arco, who is trained to detect narcotics and the significant amount of narcotics that he has assisted removing from the community, the larger community of Thurston County, not just Olympia.

Okay. I'll stay tuned then. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Should we move on to the next section? Okay. Thank you for being patient with me for a moment here. Okay. So now we will talk about corrections. So I'll move through the history quickly. I'm aware that the committee members are familiar with why we decided to make this change, but I did wanna review it for the public at home. So our our old facility, it was built in 1960.

And in 2023, we did decide to close it, and that was due to a number of reasons. It was beyond its useful life. It, like, map modern features, and it presented operational and financial challenges. The Namsquale facility, opened 2014, it provides South Sound communities with a more modern alternative to corrections. It has greater capacity, outdoor recreation, community garden space, technology for folks in custody, and on-site medical services.

At the Nisqually Jail, people in custody have access to 20 fourseven health care, behavioral health, detox services, and in person programs like AA and NA and religious services. There are also self paced programs about life skills and job readiness, and there's some Medicaid reentry programs that we'll talk about shortly. And Esqually detox services are focused on self withdrawal management for opiate and alcohol use disorders, step down detox programs that help smooth transitions into longer term care, medication assisted treatment that combines medication and counseling for best outcomes, and referrals set up before people are released to reduce the risk of relapse. Nisqually has several in person programs including, as mentioned previously, the AA and NA meetings, the religious services, treatment assistance and referrals through Northwest Resources, access to care and coverage support through UnitedHealthcare. They have a Narcan program which of course provides lifesaving overdose responses and they also have connections with the Department of Children, Youth and Families to support families.

Their self paced programs are primarily through tablets that are made available in the dorms to folks in custody. They can learn about domestic violence, they can continue their education, they can engage in some spiritual support, life skills, resume building and even obtain a CPR first aid certification. Medicaid reentry at Nisqually can assist folks when they're being discharged in planning to build a better foundation as it relates to their healthcare. This is through UnitedHealthcare, Molina, MultiCare and Virginia Mason. These connections help ensure smoother transition back into the community with support in place.

So that's a bit about the facility. Now we're going to really transition to how we're utilizing it. It's gonna talk about population as well as some budget challenges. So this particular slide shows the city's quarterly population at the Nisqually facility. You can see that the number of individuals housed at the jail has increased quarter after quarter.

This is in part because several individuals are or were serving lengthy sentences. The numbers you receive, you see rather, reflect the number of beds per quarter occupied by individuals associated with City of Olympia charges or cases. So we're currently budgeted for 39.83 people a day to be in custody. We can round that to 40. And the custody rate per day for this year was $130 a day per person.

This speaks a bit to council member Payne's question about narcotics and it definitely shows that the Olympia Police Department is enforcing that crime in the community as it is one of the top crimes that folks are in custody from the city of Olympia at Nisqually in quarter two. Possession of controlled substance is number one, followed by criminal trespass, theft, assault, and driving under the influence. Here, we're comparing correctional expenses from 2024 to '25, and you can see that steady increase quarter after quarter. The budget this year for corrections just for housing was approximately $1,900,000. Here you can see the actual expenses each quarter compared to the budget in orange.

You can see that the city is projected to exceed its 2025 Nisqually budget. The city's budget assumes the average rate of just about 49 housed individuals per day. The city has been maintaining an average closer to 50 individuals per day, which has placed a significant strain on the police department's budget. To address this, the department is requesting a budget enhancement in 2026 that reflects the actual cost of custody at the Nisqually Jail, budgeting for an average daily population of 50 misdemeanor offenders. It's reasonable to ask why is our jail population higher now?

At the old facility was built in the 1960s, capacity was very limited, averaging about 16 people per day and even fewer when individuals need to be held separately from the general population due to being in crisis. When the city transitioned to a contract with Nisqually, capacity constraints were removed. This allowed us to hold individuals accountable in cases where alternatives to custody weren't appropriate. Importantly, this also gave us the ability to better protect public safety. That said, there is a strong commitment to diversion.

We recognize that custody is not the right solution for many people. Our sincere hope is that with the city's upcoming transition of court services to the Thurston County District Court, we will see more individuals diverted into alternative programs rather than held in custody. We will be monitoring this data closely as we move forward because our goal is not just accountability, but long term community safety and healthier outcomes for everybody. I will open it to questions. Council member Bernie? Not

council member, but city manager.

City manager.

They have a much harder job. I just wanted to comment on the the jail budget because we talked about this last year when we did budget balancing. In fact, council member here, when you asked about, are we gonna make modifications to the budget? And we didn't last year because we wanted to just see if this was a one off or how another year was gonna happen. And it's clear to me that although I agree with the chief that we've got more work to do and my hope is that in our transition to the county, we're gonna see more engagement in alternative diversion programs and not jail as the only option.

We are I'm gonna bring you a budget this year that reflects a higher budgeted amount for jail costs so that we're planning for it. And I hope that we come in under, but I don't think we can live in another world where we hope that it comes under and we don't plan for it. So you will see that as part of the budget that you see coming forward for 2026.

Thank you, city manager, Bernie. And committee member, Ping?

Yes. Thanks, chief. If you wouldn't mind, could you go back to the slide where you mentioned the narcotics, where that is?

Yes.

Okay. One moment. I'm just taking a look at some

Does it does it show for you, committee members?

I see it.

It it does? Okay.

Yep. Thank you. Mhmm. We just moved really quickly, so I just wanted to take a moment to look at it. And I I do have a question about, possession of controlled substances. That data and the information that we're tracking, do we know, so for example, of the 39, how many of them would be unhoused people? Would we track something like that where we know we have data?

We we do. Both some of our unhoused individuals, they do use mailing addresses of fixed residence and so that can make it a bit tricky. But the officers who are making the arrests, they know and the majority of the folks that are being arrested for this offense are unhoused.

Majority, okay.

Yes. Council Member Payne, I would offer that that doesn't mean that housed individuals aren't using narcotics, It just means that it's more visible when our our unhoused population is using them.

Absolutely. Yeah. They're they're the ones that are getting caught, unfortunately, because yeah, they don't have four walls and a roof to hide behind. Makes sense.

Yeah. And there's many crimes that that rings true with. Domestic violence, sadly, is absolutely one of them as well. When folks are living, close to one another, whether that be unhoused or maybe in a multi family scenario, those crimes are more likely to be reported where folks who are living in single family homes, those crimes are significantly underreported.

Thank you very much. I think it just demonstrates, you know, how tragic it is that those who who have the least among us in our community are are struggling with this this health crisis. And, to the city manager's point about redirecting people towards, alternative services versus jail, this is a prime example of why we have that. So, thanks for for going back to that.

Absolutely. The goal is that while folks are in custody, that this is a moment where we can have a connection point with them, with service providers, and hopefully try to change the trajectory once they once they're released from custody, but it it's incredibly challenging work to do. It's it's very resource intensive.

Mhmm.

And committee member Gilman?

I've I'm I'm intrigued with this conversation, and I it it makes me wonder about the Northwest Resources. See, I feel like the president is trying to say acetaminophen. But the medically assisted treatment, do people have to be at Nisqually for a certain duration? Or I'm assuming it's voluntary, but beyond that, you know, what sort of engagement do you think we have, and what sort of rules are there around who can engage in medically assisted treatment while they're incarcerated at NISQALY?

You bring up an excellent point. In order to stand up services, it does take time. And so many of those programs are for folks who are in custody for longer periods of time than just the the typical twenty four or forty eight hour stay where the folks are gonna be back out into the community before we've had an opportunity to connect them to resources or peer support.

Thank you. And I mean, first, I'm super glad to hear that that is a resource and an opportunity available to people while they're incarcerated. I think that's great. The number on your slide you're showing, the number two is criminal trespass, and so I I don't know how criminal trespass leads to jail and how that's different from on my ride alongs of helping negotiate somebody who's blocking a business's doorway or something. What what is criminal trespass, and what sort of a bar does it have to reach to lead to jail time?

So often criminal trespass is going to be where our businesses are incredibly frustrated with people repeatedly being in a space. And there's typically other associated behaviors, whether it be a significant amount of refuse that the individual is bringing with them and leaving every morning. And a significant amount of relationship building has been attempted, and and folks aren't changing their behavior. And so at some point, we do need to hold folks accountable in order to try to change that behavior moving forward. Often, it it'll start in steps.

We'll start with relationship building, connection to resources. When that doesn't work, we'll we'll move on to a citation to really show there there is a consequence to this behavior if it if it if it's not changed. And then at at some point when folks accrue enough of those citations, then we have to take it to another level, which is an arrest to try to really drive home the point that the behavior it's not sustainable in our community. Really trying to make downtown a a place where feel people absolutely feel safe. To our earlier point, downtown is safe, but visible homelessness does erode that feeling of safety.

Sure. And I'm assuming that the criminal trespass category also includes domestic violence situations where people are violating a no contact order. Is that or is that different?

That is different. That becomes a felony crime, and so it wouldn't be able to collect it in our NISWALI data.

Alright. Thank you. And just my my last question is a a broad one. The 20% more jail nights that do you do you feel like it's assisting OPD in doing your job? Is I I I know we've had different conversations over the last ten years about whether or not you're charging recommendations, see any action from the prosecutor, or see jail time. Is does does this feel connected to what OPD leadership and your officers are trying to accomplish?

Absolutely. I I believe that the ability to hold folks accountable in jail when all of the rest of the work that I've described has failed is critically important. It does help the department ensure public safety. Also, until we have enough treatment beds and substance use substance use disorder treatment beds in our community, it it can provide folks with that space where they do have access to some resources that otherwise they don't have access to.

Good. Thank you, chief. I I I appreciate that. And I I agree with the mayor that I I'm glad to see more alternatives standing up, more other diversion to other sorts of services short of incarceration, but I also appreciate that the jail is evolving into a place that delivers services. And and I appreciate that officers just need a place to tell somebody they can go to when when they're having a hard time. So thank you.

If there aren't any other questions, we will transition to public demonstrations. And at this point, I'll turn the presentation over to Lieutenant Paul Fraley.

Thank you, chief. Again, I'm lieutenant Paul Fraley. I'm gonna talk a little bit about our demonstration response here. This is kind of a broad overview of what we'll talk about our goals. Obviously, our goal is to protect, the people in our community and the participants in these events as well as property.

And in doing so, also balance the constitutional rights of everybody participating in our community as a whole as well. And deescalation of any conflict is always gonna be our first priority in achieving that goal. We train every year as a group. We also invite our neighboring agencies to participate in that training with us so we're all on the same page for these big events where we all come together to respond. Every event starts off with planning, and communication and coordination with our partners, both in the city, be that the streets department and the fire department, and also with external partners like the Department of Enterprise Services, and the Washington State Patrol, and any other neighboring agencies.

So our planning process, the very first thing that we do is an assessment of what we know and what we have. So we have a form. It's an Excel sheet. It has a whole bunch of questions. We answer all of those, and it assigns points based on what we know. Less points, lower resource and risk, more points, potentially a higher risk, more resources involved. And that kinda just sets a baseline to help us move forward in the planning process and make sure we have everything that we need to be successful for an event. One example of that is is this a recurring event? Have we had interactions with these groups before? As you all know, we have a lot of events that are recurring.

Many of these event organizers are really collaborative. They work with us. They apply for permits through the city, and that gives us a lot of information. We have a point of contact. We can talk to them ahead of time, plan together, and know kind of what we're in for and how to prepare for that. We can also get information from the Washington State Fusion Center. They're the statewide organization that looks into large events. This is mainly for the really big ones where they may have information about public safety risks or counter demonstrations or things like that. Then it also gives us a point of contact for organizers. Often, comes from a city permit where we'll have a phone call ahead of time.

We can make suggestions based on our experience for groups that are coming to our city that may not be familiar with our community, things like route safety concerns. And it also gives us someone to follow-up with on the day of the event so we can have that face face to interaction before everything gets started to make sure everybody's gonna be safe. So the communication collaboration is mostly done by a lieutenant ahead of time. So like I mentioned, we're going to speak with them. A great example we had of that was this past weekend. We had a group that wasn't very familiar with our community. They wanted to gather a marathon park. They said they'd have one to 400 people, and they were gonna march up Columbia. Well, unbeknownst to them, Columbia is a pretty steep hill. So we let them know things like, hey.

If you have folks with no mobility issues, that might be kind of a challenge. Parking on a weekend around a lake might be an issue and things like that. We're able to kind of share information that we've gained from our experience with them to help them have a successful event. Public Works is another great resource. A lot of groups plan to take the roadway, and as we all know, cars and pedestrians mixing is a recipe for disaster.

So if we can have the streets department set up signs, that's really helpful. We designate traffic officers to make sure that the cars and the people don't interact with each other and everyone can get to their destination safely and express their First Amendment rights. For smaller events, we'll have maybe even just one sergeant and a couple officers for traffic control if we know from history that it's going to be very small. In larger events, we might have several sergeants overseeing teams, like bicycles, traffic control, potentially arrest teams, and things like that with one or two lieutenants, as incident command. So, again, the staffing levels are really determined by the size of the group and geographical area.

If we know it's going to be a really long March, we might need more officers. We might need more traffic control. If we know it's gonna be on the capital campus, we know we need to collaborate with the Department of Enterprise Services and the Washington State Patrol, and get those jurisdictions involved and share information. A lot of times, we'll have these groups that don't know how many people they're gonna have. For instance, this last one thought they might have one to 400 people. They had 20. So we have to prepare just based on the information we have and kinda balance that out, with the history of that group if we know it, what we're seeing on social media as far as people interested in an event, and try to match our numbers that we're prepared when the day comes. We also have oops. Sorry. One more back.

There we go. Just to talk a little bit more about our training, officers that are involved in crowd management, do receive specialized training in crowd management tactics. We have some officers that use our impact munition to receive specialized training. And we do have hard equipment like you can see right here. One thing we learned from 2020 is that when we do feel there may be a need for officers and better protective equipment, we do try to keep those officers out of sight until they're needed, just to make sure that officers showing up and, you know, dressed like they're there for a violent assembly.

Don't instigate that violent assembly just by their presence. And deescalation, again, communication has been talked a lot about a lot already. That's really key. Communication with the event organizers. Even when we do have an event where we haven't been able to track down an organizer ahead of time, we will try to make contact the day of. Oftentimes, they don't wanna communicate with us, but that's always an effort. And we're also showing that, hey. We're here. We have a presence. We know what's going on. We're prepared. We have standardized verbal instructions. Every one of us carries a card in our pocket right here. We have one that tells people, hey. Thank you for coming to express your rights.

We're here to protect your rights and your ability to do so. But if you intend to commit acts of violence or property damage, please go home. We also have a standardized announcement for dispersal. If the event does turn to the point where there are several acts of violence, acts of vandalism, we will order the crowd to disperse multiple times, give multiple warnings so anybody that doesn't want to be involved in an arrest or involved in a violent event has ample opportunity to leave. And those are all recorded both on in car video and body worn cameras.

Go ahead. And then after the event. So after the event, we'll have a meeting for the very large ones. We'll bring in all of the lieutenants and team leaders and kinda go around the room and talk about what really worked, what didn't work, what did we see maybe that was unexpected, any arrests that were made, any use of force will be followed up with later documented according to policy through our multiple tiers of review. For the really small events, that might just be a phone call.

If I have a sergeant and two officers that monitor an event, everything goes fine, everyone gets along, they get to their destination, they'll just call me. We'll talk about it. And then, again, we give a summary out to, city leadership to let everybody know that we did staff for this and it did happen and what the outcome was. Any questions? And I cannot see the audience, chief Parker, if you could help me with that.

Or just go ahead and take yourself off mute because I'm only seeing my

I I'm off mute, so I'll share with you. So is city manager, Bernie.

Hey. Thank you, chief. Hey, Paul. Could you for a minute you had a picture there that had a medic on it, and I know that you guys have started to embed OFD in your response as well, and that's something that's new over the last few years. Could you maybe just talk for a minute about that partnership and how you utilize OFD as part of your responses?

Absolutely. So we call that our tactical emergency medical teams. We've got several members of the Olympia Fire Department who are specially trained to assist us. One of the things we found was that when we have these really large demonstrations, if something does turn violent or even if somebody, you know, trips, falls over, sprains an ankle, it's really hard to get emergency vehicles to the scene, when traffic is blocked in every direction and lined up, you know, all the way to the fire department. So we found it's really beneficial to have emergency medical on scene, both for participants of the event and our officers as well. If one of our officers is injured and needs to be treated, we have that on scene right there ready to go. Did that answer your question, sir?

Yeah. Myself, Bob. It did. And thanks, Paul. I just really wanted you to that because I really appreciate the innovation and the partnership, of embedding OFD and, though you those two groups coming together. So just thanks for that.

Thank you, sir. Yeah. A great partnership.

And committee member, Payne.

Sure.

Thank you, chief. Lieutenant, thank you. It's good to see you. I I I guess my question for you is is I'm assuming you would have put it in the presentation, if you have any challenges, that you can at least express, you know, publicly without showing your hand, in terms of response. But are there challenges that you're having at all? And, and do you have any particular ask of of us, you know, in in this particular arena of public demonstrations?

Yeah. Really, the only challenge we have right now, of course, is, staffing as I think the chief will talk about here in a minute. Many of these events are very resource intensive, and requires a lot of officers to respond. So and it's important to us to to, you know, balance, the welfare of our officers as well with this. That's something we realized in 2020. We got people working around the clock every single day. That really takes a toll on officers. So I'd say the staffing of it is a bit of a challenge. I'd say in recent years, we've been very fortunate. We we had a lot of struggles in 2020 and 2021, but also a lot of opportunity to kind of work out the bugs as far as our policy, our training, our equipment.

And we learned a lot, and we've implemented a lot of changes, in tactics and equipment and how we train. Our policy, was completely revised, and is fantastic at this point. So I would say, really, just the challenges, you know, wanting to respond in a way to make sure our community is safe with the appropriate number of officers. And one way to mitigate that again is a partnership with the streets department. Public works has been fantastic in helping us out with things like signs and barricades, the Washington State Patrol and Department of Enterprise Services as well. So we'll we'll never show up to an event, you know, unprepared with not enough people, but sometimes it takes a little bit of creativity working with some of our partners to do that in a way that ensures our community safety.

Great. Okay. Thank you.

If if I could, answer a piece of that as well, committee member pain. I just really wanna thank our community. We have been showing up as a community. We've been expressing our voices. We've been doing it peacefully. We have been marching but organized and moving to a location, not stopping and, blocking traffic for extended periods of time, and I'm it just makes me very proud of our community. So thank you.

Yeah. And, again, the level of collaboration with our community members who are organizing these events has been exceptional. When we can have advanced notice and have a conversation about the best way to keep everybody safe, that that works better for everybody. And that has been fantastic as of late.

How do you think, Clark?

Paul, this is Clark. Hey. I I every everything you just said about the the use of force review, the or the crowd control review and the new policies, training, all of that, I think, has been terrific. And I I thank God that we haven't had violent interactions in this this recent time. That's a really good thing.

It it it's I think two two things, the presence of firearms and then in that twenty one twenty twenty one time, discharge of firearms really were a huge concern for the community, separate from the response sorts of issues that we reviewed. Has anything changed over these three or four years in terms of, rules or ways that OPD might respond to, both, display of weapons and discharge of weapons during protest events?

Yeah. One thing that did change, that helped us a lot. So most of these or many of these demonstrations, tend to kind of incorporate the Capital Campus as well as our city streets. And the Capital Campus no longer allows the open carrier firearms. So, in recent years since then, we've seen far fewer firearms.

In instances where we know there may be two competing groups, that are large in size and there could be conflict, we've utilized, the assistance of our SWAT team just to stand by. In some of those incidents, I believe we did have a SWAT team at that time. But they're just better equipped to deal with incidents like that where there are firearms, displayed or used. The officers responded to these demonstrations. Really, their goal is to protect First Amendment rights, keep people safe from traffic, and interrupt, you know, acts of physical violence where it's safe for us to, you know, intervene and do that.

So when firearms are involved, our our SWAT team is a great resource for that. And, again, we haven't seen as much of that, but that is an instance where, you know, all of our officers are armed and would take appropriate action as necessary during these events. But, fortunately, that isn't something we've seen recently. But that's how we prepare for them is to have our SWAT team available.

I appreciate the update. Thank you, Paul.

Committee member Payne?

Thank you, chief. Committee member Gilman, that inspired me to think about is it isn't it illegal according to state law now to have a firearm within, I think it's a 100 feet of a demonstration, if I'm not mistaken? Are we enforcing that law?

So we haven't seen it. I'd have to look at it again, but I believe it's, the open carry in a demonstration. That's not something we've seen, but that's an instance where we would wanna be very careful and plan out how we're going to contact that person. We would absolutely wanna enforce that law. Whether or not we send officers into the middle of a crowd to grab somebody out of it and potentially escalate things, likely not. But with the body worn cameras we have now, all the video evidence we have, that's certainly something we would follow-up on, and we'd wanna absolutely pursue criminal charges in those matters.

Thank you.

Okay. Dave, hello for a check out of the street.

Other questions, chief Parker? I

do see one more question that just came up from our chair. Yeah. I just don't know if it's a this is for Paul, I think. I don't know if it's a a question or a a little miniature venting. I am I find myself very frustrated when people are take the opportunity to do property damage.

I don't see how it furthers any sort of goal. I really don't. Sometimes I'm in the minority that way. Though and I've I've understood that, you know, there has been times where I've seen city city police with with the crowd, sort of just watching the crowd. And and members of the crowd are very openly doing graffiti on businesses or, you know, wherever they can.

And I've asked before how come police don't seem to intervene. And my understanding is that because not wanting to not wanting to sort of rile the crowd up even further. So please correct me if I'm if I'm wrong there. And, also, I think it's really tough to catch people after the fact. Of course, you know, act it's just an active vandalism can be done really quickly, wearing a rock or doing the PD or whatever it is.

And then it can be tough to to catch folks. We're also seeing more people masking, I think, than we we had seen in the past. And and, you know, people are allowed to wear a mask, but it also does make it difficult for us too. And so anything that you can share, or is it just one of those things that where you're just trying to catch a boogeyman?

No. Absolutely. We actually we have had some success in in some of these in making arrests, after the fact. And a lot of it depends on the factors present at the time. If it's, a largely, you know, peaceful demonstration where folks are, you know, exercising their first amendment rights, we don't wanna prevent that from happening anymore and declare it an unlawful assembly and send everybody away for the actions of one person. So what we'll often do, we you know, we're all in constant communication during these events. When an officer sees that occur, they communicate, hey. This is the person I'm looking for. I've got probable cause to arrest them for this crime. And if we can safely grab that person, again, if it's a crowd of 500 people and we've got, you know, four officers on scene, it may not be safe for them to intervene right at that moment.

But we do keep an eye on these crowds throughout the entire event. And it can be more difficult when people are all wearing exactly the same outfit. But, you know, clothing is generally there's distinctions that we can make. I mean, we can find these folks as people are breaking off at the end of the day. An arrest, you know, an hour from now is still an arrest, and we can still hold that person accountable.

We do have, again, great body worn video. We've got car video. We've got businesses that share video with us, and we have had some success in making arrests after the fact. But it's absolutely our goal to hold these these folks accountable who are committing acts of vandalism in our community. We also, again, wanna, not disrupt a lawful First Amendment assembly, just to go on and get that one person when we can potentially find them later and make that arrest. Does that answer your question, kind of?

Yeah. Thank you. And to piggyback on on that, sometimes it's not an hour later that the arrest happens. Sometimes it's a week later or two weeks. We know that we're looking for the individual, and when our paths cross, the person's held accountable. That does sometimes, hinder our storytelling because it is it is a distance from the event at the point at the time that it happens. I see a question from committee member Ping.

Thanks, chief. Not a question, just a comment. And I'm really appreciating this discussion, by the way. I just fact checked myself and just wanted to offer that the restriction on firearms near demonstrations is 250 feet, not 100.

Thank you for that. Alright. Seeing that we don't have any other questions, I will take us to our next topic, and that is OPD staffing. So we are experiencing a significant staffing challenge right now. And to understand why the challenge exists, I'd like to explore explore some of our full time employees.

So the department is comprised of 88 commissioned individuals. Somebody who's commissioned is a peace officer. They may just be at a different rank. So we have one chief in Olympia, two deputy chiefs, six lieutenants, 13 sergeants, and 66 officers. Now these are positions, not actual individuals.

The officers are divided into patrol, detectives, walking patrol, neighborhood police officers, and traffic. The department has not staffed the traffic unit or swing shift walking patrol for quite some time due to the staffing challenges. Currently, we are operating with 14 officer vacancies plus one chief and one deputy chief vacancy. 10 actually, as of Monday, we appointed a deputy chief so I stand corrected. No deputy chief vacancies.

10 officers are currently unavailable. And these next two data points are really significant and they haven't been brought to the equation before. So 10 officers are currently unavailable and that's due to being either in the academy or they're waiting to get into the academy or they're currently in field training. From the time that we hire a brand new officer, it takes about one year until they are successfully through the program and operating as a solo officer, positively impacting staffing. We also have nine officers that are on various forms of leave, whether that be family medical leave or paid family medical leave, light duty, or various other, types of leave.

So when we do the math, this leaves us with 23 deployable patrol officers. In order to meet minimum staffing requirements, we need 16 officers per patrol team. The department is comprised of two teams while one is theoretically resting, the other is working and then they switch, teams. So 16 officers is needed, to staff each team for patrol response, and that's responding to 911 calls. We currently, with all of those vacancies, we have 23 deployable patrol officers.

So that's certainly short of the 32 that is contractually required. It leaves us with twelve and eleven per team. This slide really drives on the same point. So 32 officers are needed for the patrol staffing, 16 per team, and we're currently nine short. So of course the question is, well, then who's working?

Well, we're taking care of staffing by using folks who should be filling spaces in our specialty units and that's primarily walking patrol and our neighborhood policing units. So a reasonable question in my mind would be how did we get here? And so we we've had a number of folks leave the organization due to retirements. Some folks have left and transferred to other agencies, and we've seen a higher rate than we ever have before of people leaving the profession. This has to do with 2020 and 2021, but it also has to deal with a generational change.

Folks aren't as inclined to spend thirty years in one career field anymore. So we have to make some temporary changes in order to fully staff the police department. And so in order to bridge that gap, we've temporarily assigned the community policing officers and sergeant to the patrol division. We hope that by December, several of those officers, those 10 who are in training or waiting to go to training, that they'll graduate and be ready to return to the patrol division. So in the meantime, the patrol division remains committed to serving the community.

Though response times may be somewhat longer than they traditionally were, And that's because when the patrol division is fully staffed and all those specialty divisions are staffed, response is just it's much faster. We have more people to disperse throughout the community and respond to those emergencies, Especially when we reduce those specialty positions in walking patrol and community policing, it's gonna take longer to get to some of those reported offenses because they may not be presenting an active threat to an individual's safety or to property damage. We are also covering this gap to our community policing divisions by posting overtime positions in the in the downtown core. So officers can sign up to work extra hours engaging in morning, shall we call them greetings with some of our folks in the community or in a position where they're sleeping outdoors. We're also hiring folks on overtime to assist with housing and homeless response as they respond to to community priorities.

So how how do we move through this and how do we navigate the the staffing challenge? So to address the long term staffing challenges, OPD has just recently implemented two new programs. One is a lateral hiring incentive for certified police officers who've completed both an academy recognized by our criminal justice training commission as well as field training. So this is a tiered incentive that includes a total of $25,000 It's $10,000 in the first year, excuse me, upon hire, dollars

5,000

upon successful completion of field training, and then another $10,000 at the completion of probation which is eighteen months. Officers will have to pay back at a prorated rate if they leave within a three year period of time. So there's a three year commitment that comes with this lateral hiring incentive. It also, comes with a lead bank that's, two weeks is, is about a hundred and seven hours on our patrol schedule. And we're also collaborating with, our police guild to be able to grant some bidding rights to folks coming into the organization who have previous experience.

So we are negotiating what we hope to be one year of service credit for every three prior years of service that lateral officers have served in the community and this would also be matched with longevity within the police department. Our second piece is an OPD member recruitment incentive. We feel that our staff, our commissioned and non commissioned staff are the very best people who know who would be an excellent police officer in Olympia, who would up hold our values and would be a good partner. So we wanna reward those members for going out into the community and bringing new people into the organization. And so this is another tiered incentive where OPD members can receive up to $5,000 when an individual moves through the tiers of hiring, completion of field training, and then completion of probation.

So I'm excited about these initiatives and I'm confident that they're gonna help us move forward with closing our vacancy rates. And I will turn it over to the group for questions. Committee member Ping? Yes. Chief, I just have a question about the vacant the two vacancies in the walk in patrol.

So we we still have four. I think there were there's six. So we still have four, but there are two vacant. So we had to move them to for another purpose. So are we are we looking to to to make up for those two losses, in the short term, or

are we thinking that they will be, filled when, those other 10 officers are out of training or or how are you looking to

fill those vacancies? So I'd like to extensively answer that question. So starting at the beginning of this year, staffing was challenging to the extent that our two swing shift walking patrol officers who work until about 9PM had to be absorbed into the patrol division. So we haven't had those individuals assigned in those positions for for the year. We have had the day shift walking patrol positions filled.

And, unfortunately, due to the staffing challenges starting yesterday, we had to remove folks from the the walking patrol position. So there are, as of yesterday, no walking patrol officers, and I should say commission staff because I'd like to punctuate the fact that we still do have our two walking crew members downtown, and that will not change. But for right now, we have had to bring those walking patrol officers, those four day shift, and the one sergeant into the patrol division because the hours that our members were working mandatory overtime to cover all of these shifts were no longer sustainable. And I I walking patrol is near and dear to my heart as is our our downtown community. And so naturally, the the question is, so what are we doing?

And that's really where, two pieces. Number one, the overtime posted positions where officers can come in during those critical times where we really need some help in the community. They are voluntary. I just can't mandate any more hours for our staff to work right now, but I am seeing people sign up for them and engage in the work. And then the second piece is to remember that we still have officers assigned to the downtown core. So our city for police response is broken down into five geographic regions. And one of those regions is downtown. So there is an officer in a patrol car patrolling downtown and responding to calls for service in that area and that has not nor will it change.

Thank you. That's helpful. I I mean, I will say that, I won't pretend that that's not, the best news to hear because it's unfortunate, that we have to take two folks off of off of the walking patrol. I I know that our our businesses, that operate downtown, especially really appreciate having them. And so, yeah, whatever we can do to restore them as soon as we can, I think, is, most critical? And I know our businesses would appreciate having them back.

I I absolutely agree, committee member Payne. And it's it's our first order of business, and it was an incredibly hard decision to make to remove the folks from that unit. But, unfortunately, when when we're working the math of our our contractual obligations to both the community and to our officers on patrol response, and when you're looking at 32 officers needed and we have 23, we were forced to make hard choices and they are temporary and that's the most critical thing that I would ask the community to understand is this is temporary and we hope that by late November, early December that we're able to staff those units again. City manager Bernie?

Just wanted to echo, Mary, your comments. I mean, the chief and I had, you know, a really hard conversation here about the numbers. And sometimes the math does a math. Right? And and this is just one of those moments in time when to meet contractual obligations around minimum staffing, we're just stretched to the point where we have to make these hard choices.

And chief knows where I'm at on this as well. The moment we can restore it, we wanna restore it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, I want us to be just kinda pay attention to what's happening downtown and make sure we're not letting things that we've worked really hard on slide back to situations that we don't want to see. And so that's gonna be incumbent upon the officer that patrols the downtown to keep an eye on those things. And when we think we need some extra assistance on something, we'll have to deal with that when the time comes. So I have a lot of trust in the chief here and her team. I know we'll get these back as soon as we can, but I just I know how hard this is in the moment to hear the news.

Committee member Gilman.

Thanks. Just yes. I mean, all all three of you have just beautifully described how important the downtown walking patrol is to us and and what a an important service they provide. So I share that. And I'm wondering if you might speak for a minute about your the you gave us sort of the bonus plan or the incentive plan for lateral transfers. Tell us a little bit about the recruitment and how you tell the story of the vision and values of OPD and why somebody should switch.

That is an excellent question. I almost wanna answer it in reverse. And and I'm going to because there's a piece that is really critical. Though we find ourselves in a staffing, dare I say crisis, and we've had to remove officers from critical assignments in our community, we are not going to reduce our standards. We are absolutely going to hold firm to screen folks who should not wear our badges out of the process and we're going to really hold strong to that and I am so proud of that.

I will just be bold and say that we have turned away applicants who we have seen become police officers elsewhere in the state. And I'm prideful that we've held our standard. We cannot, as a profession, reduce that standard. So I think that's paramount and thank you for giving me a moment to get on a soapbox. Regarding recruitment, we will be having a social media post that's going out explaining what our incentives are.

We have it published with public safety testing. That's the testing avenue that we use in Olympia. So that reaches a very large number of individuals. And then as we engage folks at our recruitment efforts, we do a lot of work around various educational facilities, colleges. We will also be sharing that information, Less about, of course, that entry level hire that we're speaking with, but they all have friends.

Any other questions on staffing? Okay. We will transition to o'clock. So this is our last topic of the the evening, and, we have we have some important updates for our community to hear about this platform and how we're responsibly using it in the community. This camera is just really an entry slide, but I like that it really points out the pieces that make up what we are able to search for in FLoC.

It's, the vehicle make, unique alterations, color, body style, and, of course, license plate. You see nowhere in that description is a person's identifiable information nor a description of an occupant or a driver. And that's a really critical piece of the way that this technology works. So when we started our exploration of ALPRs and selected flock, it was because we had a very large increase in crimes involving stolen vehicles, organized retail theft and armed robberies. And so to help address this trend, OPD implemented flock safety cameras.

And the outcomes have been really exciting. Our approach was to put cameras, a total of 15 of them, at the edges of our community. We're not interested in monitoring folks as they're navigating through our community, but we do have an interest in seeing who's coming in and out. So we secured a grant from the Department of Commerce and formally contracted with FLAC in March 2024. It's a two year program and it launched in July 2024.

And the current contract expires the end of two thousand twenty six July. The total cost for the the two years of the program is just under a $100,000. And again, that was through a grant with the Department of Commerce. So here's the locations of the cameras. We have not tried to be covert about where they're located and anybody and everybody can know.

And they're strategically placed at entry and exit points in Olympia. And this ensures coverage where stolen vehicles and organized retail theft folks are likely to travel. It's important to understand what FLAC cameras are and also what they are not. So the cameras recognize license plates and capture objective evidence about vehicles, not people. There's no personal identifiable information in the FLAC database, just vehicles.

The cameras provide real time alerts on stolen or wanted vehicles to help solve crime. They are not facial recognition cameras, not connected to personal data, not used for immigration or traffic enforcement, and not shared with out of state or federal law enforcement. Block can be used both proactively and as an investigative tool. Officers receive real time alerts when a stolen or wanted vehicle enters the city. Officers do not receive any alerts associated with civil immigration warrants.

This function has been intentionally disabled by OPB since the very beginning of our program. Officers can search for thirty days of data to aid in investigations. As people committing prolific property crime are held accountable, the crime rates rapidly decrease and we have seen that. We recognize the importance of balancing technology with privacy. All footage is owned by OPD and never shared or sold by FLAC.

Data is retained for only thirty days and is automatically deleted unless linked to a crime. All OPD members using the system must be properly trained before using the system and all OPD members are required to acknowledge and follow OPD's ALPR policy. Access requires a case specific search reason, creating a full audit trail which is regularly reviewed. This is not predictive policing and not tied to the Department of Motor Vehicles or third party databases. On 05/15/2025, the city amended its contract with Block Safety to strengthen safeguards around the use and disclosure of data.

Under this amendment, may only access, use, preserve, or disclose camera footage if it is legally required to do so or if explicitly authorized by the Olympia Police Department. If disclosure is legally required, FLAC must notify OPD in advance whenever possible or otherwise as soon as reasonably possible after disclosure. Importantly, FLAC may not access, use or preserve data without written consent from OPD except when necessary to address security vulnerabilities, protect privacy, prevent fraud, or resolve technical issues within Flock's operating system. At the same time, OPD updated policy four twenty eight which governs the use of automated license plate readers. The revised policy establishes firm guardrails on how this technology may be used.

Specifically, ALPR shall not be used for immigration enforcement, surveillance based on a protected class such as race, religion, or gender, the monitoring of First Amendment protected activities such as protests or public assemblies, or the tracking of travel to or from healthcare facilities. Together, the contract amendment and the policy update reflect OPD's commitment to transparency, accountability, and protecting the rights of our community while reasonably deploying technology to support public safety. Transparency is a key part of how we use FLoC technology. We want the community to confidence in both the purpose of these cameras and the way the data is handled. On OPE's website, we maintain a transparency portal.

This includes general information about how FLoC works, which agencies have access to our data, and a public audit tool so searches can be reviewed. We also post usage statistics so the public can see the scope of how the system is being used. You see an example of June block report. One of these reports each month is loaded to the transparency website. When OPD first adopted flock cameras, our primary goal was to address prolific property crimes, particularly auto thefts and organized retail threats.

We knew these were areas where license plate technology can make a real difference, and it has. Since August 2024, Flock has assisted in 29 stolen vehicle recoveries and burglary and theft investigations. These cases confirm that the technology is doing exactly what we hoped, helping us reduce property crime and hold offenders accountable. But what has surprised us is just how effective FLoC has been in solving crimes against people. In fact, the single largest category of FLAC assisted arrests has been assaults and domestic violence, with 39 arrests directly tied to camera alerts.

We've also seen arrests in cases of robbery, homicide, human trafficking, and kidnapping. Are crimes where quick identification of a suspect vehicle can mean the difference between further harm and community safety. So while our original expectation was that Flock would help us tackle auto theft and property crime, it has proven to be an essential tool in protecting community members from violent offenders as well. I'd like to review a few success stories. One example is where officers received a flock alert on a stolen vehicle from Columbia County.

They quickly located the car and arrested the driver. The suspect was also in possession of approximately 28 grams of fentanyl. This case highlights how quickly flock can turn a stolen vehicle notification into a significant arrest that directly impacts public safety. Another case involved a violent road rage incident where a suspect attacked vehicles with an axe. Lacey B.

E. The suspect's license plates, information, and asked OPD to enter it into the flock system. Days later, flock cameras alerted OPD when the vehicle entered Olympia. The suspect was safely taken into custody for both assaults. Lastly, officers were alerted to a stolen vehicle.

They located the vehicle in a West Side parking lot and safely recovered it. Inside, they found a stolen firearm, over $7,300 in cash, and a large quantity of narcotics packaged for distribution. The driver also had an active felony warrant. At this point, I'll welcome any questions about how flock cameras are used, their effectiveness, and any concerns we might have about privacy. Committee member Gilman.

Thanks, chief. First, could you I'm I'm trying to understand just in broad terms how the identification of a vehicle coming in through either the East side or West side freeway off ramp or our our big intersections there, how that assists with the the violent crime. Just I'm thinking about response time. And if somebody's three minutes away from Harrison and Division, how do how do you make that connection with a half a dozen homicides and attempted homicides?

Excellent question. So as as we discussed, there's two pieces to the technology. One is the media alerts, and the second piece is that thirty days worth of data that we can search. And so when we respond to a really horrific crime in our community where maybe a witness says the the suspect got into a red pickup truck, and it had a roof rack. And the first three of the license plate, it was ABC.

We can enter that information into the thirty day dataset, and we can see which vehicles match that. And it has been incredibly effective at helping us identify suspects in those really serious cases and and hold them accountable.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I yeah. I just I I didn't see that, but I've seen enough TV murder mysteries to to understand that that path. Yeah. That makes sense.

I I don't know if I'm gonna overshare, and and so I'm gonna do my best not to. There was a very serious crime in Thurston County. It it it's a homicide. And the the suspect provided a statement, an initial statement, where they were very clear that their vehicle would not have left their home. Wouldn't have left their home.

And so part of the investigation that was done by this law enforcement agency was to contact Olympia and have us check the database. Their vehicle was caught on the cameras. It was the first piece of breaking down the suspect story that ultimately resulted in a I believe a full confession for the homicide. Really profound piece of information.

Great. Thank you for that explanation. And I just want to acknowledge and appreciate that I've raised a number of concerns, and both you and your team and Annalise Harkin from our legal team have really worked to negotiate strengthening the contract with FLAC and strengthening our internal policies and protocols. And I so I'm grateful for those changes. I remain concerned about the possibility of data sharing and continue to track other jurisdictions around the country that are having issues with federal or out of state agencies accessing to use that community's cameras as a tool.

So I'm going to continue to watch that, but I just wanted to acknowledge your willingness to work to address these privacy and data sharing issues and and the strengthening of the contract that's that's happened to date. I I appreciate that very much.

Thank you. Committee member Payne.

Thank you, chief. I just wanted to say thank you for sharing this data. This is very impressive, the the kind of, numbers that we're seeing here, as a result of installing these cameras and clearly is contributing to, the numbers that we saw earlier in that are are trending in terms of prime reduction, that these arrests are being made, and holding people accountable. So I I just thank you for that work. And, committee member Gilman, thank you for your work in ensuring that the, that our contract is strengthened, you know, in in that sense of making sure that we, that our values are intact as we, utilize this equipment.

And, yeah, it's just, job well done. And in in terms of being concerned about data sharing, I I did see in your slide that it says, that they must have written consent in order to do so. So looks like there's some legal recourse there, if that's not what happens. So thank you.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of our presentation. So I just wanna thank you for your attention. That was long. Again, next year, we will do a better job of coming in front of you more frequently with smaller presentations. Well, thank you so much, chief Parker. I'm just gonna keep it short. I'm gonna call it chief Parker. Okay? And you all really delivered.

You know, we had I a you know, there's always some planning before these things come across, of course. And this committee had, you know, some some topics that we're really interested in, and you did well to cover all of those and answer our many questions. And so no apologies necessary. Yeah. We certainly got a public safety update that that we've been asking for.

And so many of the topics actually are long standing ones that inside the committee and outside the committee, I'd hear from committee member Gilman and Payne about, hey. Where are we with that? So thanks for giving us a much clearer picture. I really appreciate you all taking the time. Any other comments or questions for OPDs are still with us other than just lots and lots of gratitude, it sounds like? Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, chief. Thank you, lieutenant.

Alright. Well, well done. So, that takes us to item six c. Just kidding. That takes us to reports and update. So I'll just ask if there are any committee members that have any updates. Feel free to raise your hand. No? Okay. That brings it over to city manager, Bernie. Any reports and updates from you? No? Assistant city managers? No? Stacy Stacy on the call. Stacy, speak now. Forever, hold your peace. Oh, she wow. She's there. Okay.

I love that. She's like, check me. I'm still here. Okay. So, well, with that, I think that, we're adjourned for tonight. Thanks so much for everyone's engagement and participation. See you next time. Bye.

Thank you, everyone.