Seattle City Council District No. 7

Additional Comments:

Andrew J. Lewis: I have been the biggest champion for this very necessary service on the City Council. We have a pilot launching this fall and I am hoping that is just the start for this critical service.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: Increased pay for human services workers was my top budget priority in the last biennium and we were successful in getting a higher increase than what was originally proposed by the Mayor. I will continue to push for this critical resource.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: I co-sponsored JumpStart.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: If there were a “maybe” option, that would better reflect my position. Our goal should be based on the JustCare model I have championed that resolves encampment locations by created a bespoke housing or shelter plan for every encampment resident as part of the resolution. Constant improvement in how we do outreach and encampment remediation has been a big focus of mine, and will continue to be so.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: I do not support abrogating the positions. But, on a budget by budget basis, I do support taking the funding from positions that are certain to be unfilled and putting them to a different public safety purpose for that particular biennium. This is essentially the strategy the Harrell administration proposed and the Council majority rejected. I think abrogating the positions entirely is unnecessarily distracting and polarizing.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: Yes, and I have consistently been an outspoken advocate for harm reduction strategies, including supervised consumption.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: Yes, and I am proud to be endorsed by Dominique Davis at Community Passageways. One of the best advocates in our region for violence intervention.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: <No additional comments>
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: I am open to it, but do not as of this moment have a specific proposal to implement it or pay for it.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: I do not categorically oppose the addition of new crimes to the Seattle Municipal Code. During my time on Council I repealed two outdated and problematic loitering laws, drug traffic loitering and prostitution loitering. Those repeals represent the only time in the last 30 years that I am aware of that we have repealed a criminal statute. I have also sponsored legislation expanding our obstruction ordinance to include firefighters. For me, it depends on the construction and use of the statute. So, I will not categorically commit to opposing future statutes.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: Again, if there were a “maybe” that would better reflect my position. Contract negotiations are a bargain. There are lots of things I want to see in a new SPOG contract. I am not going to make a categorical statement and box myself in.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: I am not going to make categorical statements on individual components of a contract vote. I am happy to state the overall package I would like to see as an individual, including civilian investigators, but I cannot approve these one-by- one on an al a carte basis.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: See the above answer.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Andrew J. Lewis: We lose thousands of service hours a year to moonlighting. We need to get rid of it.
Aaron Marshall: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Olga Sagan: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Wade Sowders: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Bob Kettle: <Did not complete questionnaire>
Isabelle Kerner: <Did not complete questionnaire>

Andrew J. Lewis

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Free Response Questions

Public safety means building a community where everyone can seek self-actualization and wellness without fear. Fundamentally, Seattle’s public safety problem is a disorder problem. Inequality in Seattle has created a significant and visible population of people in extreme poverty engaged in a large volume of low-level criminal activity. Overwhelmingly, our system to manage that visible poverty is geared toward a punitive and surveillance-based model. That model is not capable of solving, or really significantly mitigating, this problem.
We need a robust public health response to complement enforcement. On-demand access to treatment and enhanced shelter in the short-term, with a long-term scaling up of permanent supportive housing and social housing to provide more permanent stability. We have programs that show the proof of concept. LEAD, REACH, and We Deliver Care have done amazing work with limited resources to show there is another way. I will continue to build on that work!
We need a contract that emphasizes short-falls in our accountability system. If officers are not held sufficiently accountable for misconduct the entire legitimacy of the system is undermined.
We also need to create alternative services based in public health to take on roles the police do not need to do. This may, in some respects, be the most fundamental problem we face. While accountability is a huge problem a large volume of the situations leading to police abuse come from calls they shouldn’t have been on in the first place.
It stands to reason that the strain on the accountability system, and the reputational challenges faced by police, would be well addressed by a clarifying of roles and a standing up of these alternative services, like Denver STAR.
As I alluded to in my above answer a big part of this could potentially be solved by removing officers from a significant percentage of calls entirely. I have not done a data analysis of one of our largest categories of complaints, “professionalism”, but I would be really interested to know the types of calls where residents are leveling that complaint. The reality is, the police respond to lots of calls they really can’t do much to resolve. My suspicion is this leads to an impression, either real or perceived, that the officer doesn’t care, is shirking, or is otherwise being flippant. While that may be the case in many cases, on the whole my suspicion is there really isn’t much the officer could do anyway.
There is significant utility to training officers in de-escalation, professionalism, and cultural sensitivity. But, we need to face the practical reality that removing officers entirely from certain categories of calls, overwhelmingly non-criminal in nature, is probably one of the best strategies to address concerns around disproportionality.
My personal favorite of the national alternative models is Denver STAR. This is a model where the city contracts with a provider to send out mental health clinicians to respond to non-criminal public health-based calls for service. It has been overwhelmingly successful and the model is nimble and has developed a unique culture that has been embraced by community.
That said, the Harrell Administration supports the similar, but different, model used in Albuquerque. Under this model, all the people working for the response service are within the city and are official city employees. It is a good model and I am happy to support it, and I appreciate the Harrell Administration embracing it. But, I have long-term concerns about the culture of a government entity versus a provider-based entity. The culture of these response services is really important for their credibility with the populations they serve. So, we need to be vigilant to make sure our model reflects that, regardless of how we organize it.
Regardless of how the service is organized, all of them have the same fundamental mix of equipment and personnel. Typically, a mental health clinician teamed up with an EMT or a nurse, in a van, and not in an official uniform. I expect our model to reflect that.
Scale and expand services based in public health, housing, and wellness to meet the demand of the disorder crisis we face in Seattle.