Speaker 0: Bill passed in Sherwood. Sign it. Please read the report of the Gender Equality Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee. Please read the short title The.
Speaker 4: Report of the Gender Equity Safe Communities New Americans in Education Committee Argentine five Cancer 4119539 relating to the city's Criminal Code, conforming the Mr. Code to state law for crimes that require the submission of biological samples to the state of Washington. The committee recommends the bill pass.
Speaker 0: Castro and Gonzalez.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Council President. This council bill would conform the Seattle Municipal Code to state law for 11 serious or sex related crimes that require the submission of biological samples. In other words, DNA to the Washington State Patrol crime lab. A little bit of history here. Until 2014, the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab Lab had been processing and entering into the Federal Combined DNA Index System database. DNA from offenders convicted of misdemeanor crimes defined as defined in the Seattle Municipal Code. Officials from the Washington State Patrol discontinued this practice in 2014 because they believed that it was not legally required for the state to process those samples from offenders that are convicted of local crimes under local statutes. However, in this last legislative session, and thanks to the leadership of Representative or while she was able to solicit and receive a opinion from the Attorney General's Office that noted that the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab would be bound legally to process Seattle DNA samples and and results if the CMC and municipal code definitions conformed to state law. So the City Attorney's Office transmitted to council this particular bill council bill 119589 in order to bring the city's code into compliance with that Attorney General's office opinion. And then the city attorney's office has also spent much time with me in my office and also joined us at committee last week to walk us through the proposed legislation and made very clear that this legislation does not substantively change the elements of any of the underlying 11 crimes for which DNA samples are taken that would then be placed in the CODIS database. They also clarified that the DNA that would be captured in this instance would only be after conviction. So we're not talking about pre conviction before a conviction. All of this would occur after conviction consistent with the ordinance and with state law. It is really, I think, important for us to make sure that we continue to support these efforts in the advancement of general public safety. Staff from our Seattle Police Department have indicated that this recent change in the state law will shift responsibility from the Seattle assistant city prosecutors to the Seattle Police Department. This burden of collecting the DNA from out of custody offenders. And so this would be really necessary in order for them to continue that work. And Espey has indicated that they can absorb this additional burden within existing budget. So in total, we again have reached out to various stakeholders and who were involved pretty heavily in this issue over the last several years at the state legislature. And none of them have expressed concerns with the underlying components of this bill and feel that is consistent with what the intent was under the state law. So I feel pretty comfortable that we're not creating a dragnet here or taking other punitive action in these in this area. This is purely largely a technical bill to allow us to continue the efforts to deal with both backlog issues related to our DNA samples, which in large part are related to, again, sex crimes. And we've heard pretty clearly from a lot of survivors in this area that this is an incredibly important step to move this public safety issue forward. So implementing this legislation, in summary, will allow the police department and other law enforcement agencies to use DNA evidence to solve crimes, catch perpetrators, and bring justice to victims and their families in the future. So really happy and proud to advance this particular piece of legislation together with city attorney Pete Holmes, who. I'd like to thank for his advocacy in this space. I also want to thank John Choquette and Kelly Harris from the City Attorney's Office for their work on both drafting the bill, coming to committee to present on the bill and making sure that we had all the information necessary to walk some of our advocacy organizations and friends through the various components of this bill. I also want to thank Rebecca Johnson, who joined us at the table last week. She's been really she's represents the city on a variety of public safety related legislative priorities. This was one of the city's legislative priorities last session. And so she was able to join us and walk us through at the committee the varying degree of engagement with privacy concerns and with the public safety concerns at the committee table really appreciated her time and attention to that. And then lastly, just wanted to thank Greg Dodds from Council Central Staff for doing an analysis of the bill as submitted by the City Attorney's Office and to Brianna Thomas for my office for being the policy lead on this issue. So with that being said, the committee considered this last week in a special committee and we recommended the city council pass council bill 119589.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Councilman Gonzales. Comes from a skater.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Mr. President. I want to thank the committee chair for her leadership on this issue, not just in committee, but also with your advocacy at the state level to advance this legislation. In addition to the community partners that you mentioned. And I think that the clarification that you've offered today should help set the record straight. I also want to offer a few pieces to clarify and underscore some of the comments that you just made due to the concerns that the ACLU has continued to raise and have been covered on some of our local media channels, I think it's really important to hear the words that Councilmember Gonzalez just said and to clarify that this legislation creates a mechanism for the state patrol to be able to accept the DNA samples that have already been collected from people who have already been convicted of a serious or a sex related misdemeanor crime. So this bill does not lead to any new process or changes at the city level. And we all are mindful of the unintended consequences, the unintended impacts, especially on communities of color, as we think about individuals from communities of color being disproportionately represented in the criminal legal justice system and are mindful any time it comes to collecting information or DNA, how this information could potentially be misused. We address those questions. Thank you, Madam Chair, for your answer to those questions in committee and to the advocates at the table who addressed that head on. And in addition to the point that this is not seeking to create new changes in our current process, we are also wanting to underscore today that this sharing of information, that of data, DNA that has already been collected could help uplift and underscore our commitment to exonerate people who have been wrongly convicted. So to the extent that we are sharing information and can help free individuals who are wrongly being held and don't have the DNA evidence to yet prove that this DNA may be able to help exonerate some individuals who are wrongly being convicted. So I want to thank the chair again for making that RTI comments really heard last week and again today and to the sexual assault and survivor protection advocates, including Representative Orwoll and our city attorney, again for continuing to work on this . But I think that's an important clarification to right the wrong narrative on this.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Catherine Mosquito. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Again, I want to thank you, Katherine, because Allison goes from a skater for asking all the right questions and getting to the to the heart of it all. So with that, please call the role on the passage of the bill Pacheco.
Speaker 1: So on. I sure. Gonzales I Herbold I was I was together I O'Brien President Harrell I known in favor and unopposed bill.
Speaker 0: Passed and chair of Senate please read agenda item number six.
AN ORDINANCE relating to the City’s criminal code; conforming the Seattle Municipal Code to state law for crimes that require the submission of biological samples to the State of Washington; making technical corrections; adding a new Chapter 12A.09 to the Seattle Municipal Code; amending Sections 3.33.020, 12A.04.100, 12A.06.030, 12A.06.130, 12A.06.155, 12A.06.195, and 12A.10.070 of the Seattle Municipal Code; and repealing Sections 12A.06.010, 12A.06.035, 12A.06.040, 12A.06.180, 12A.10.040, 12A.10.130, and 12A.10.140 of the Seattle Municipal Code.