Mayor Durkan on police shooting, the NHL, and reopening Seattle

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan joins us for our weekly check-in.

This is an abbreviated and edited transcript of Bill Radke's conversation with Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan on May 28, 2020.

George Floyd died after a white officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. Four police officers have been fired. The mayor of Minneapolis is calling on the county attorney to charge the officer who knelt on Floyd's neck. And I wonder, would you have made the same statement?

Yes, I would have. I also would have asked the Department of Justice to do a civil rights investigation on this case. We've all seen the videos. I've not heard the audio. But what happened was reprehensible, did not seem to be demanded by any circumstances. The justifications for it were clearly made up after the fact and the public has to know that police officers will be held accountable in those situations.

And there is a county attorney investigation going on. But the mayor of Minneapolis says he has not seen the footage captured by the officers body cameras. He's only seen the cellphone videos. Would you get out ahead of such an investigation by going ahead and saying this officer needs to be charged?

In this type of extreme circumstances, I would. I think that the video that we have seen justify charges being brought. And clearly the chief of police felt it demanded immediate firing. That's very unusual in any police department. People have to know that police officers can be held accountable. And we've seen this play out way too many times on too many American streets. Eric Garner, his last words were the same, I can't breathe. It's just not acceptable.

Seattle has had its own problems along these lines. The Department of Justice found that 20% of Seattle Police Department's serious uses of force were unconstitutional. You helped design the requirements for the court ordered police reforms when you were US Attorney. Have you as mayor -- I use the phrase getting ahead of an investigation and calling right away for someone to be charged, an officer to be charged -- have you ever done that?

We've not had that circumstance while I was mayor. While I was US Attorney, I obviously was in the investigation role and we did investigate police officers for violating civil rights in such cases, including [Seattle police officer] Ian Birk and the shooting of the Indian woodcarver. So I think if you're the person charged with the investigation, obviously you have to be very careful. And if you're a mayor, you don't want to make statements not based solely on the facts. But sometimes facts are so evident. You know what you see and you know it is wrong.

Governor Inslee has said that the earliest King County could move to Phase 2 of his reopening plan is June 1. So I asked the King County Executive this week, Dow Constantine, are King County residents going to be able to dine in at restaurants and go to barber shops and salons starting on Monday? And he said probably not. Have you spoken to the governor about when Seattle's going to see Phase 2?

The governor, the county executive and I, we are always consulting with one another including the other leaders of Snohomish and Pierce County. I have to give Governor Inslee, again, tremendous credit for leading on this, following the science and the data, and really making his decisions based on that science and data. And we'll continue to talk to him about, you know, what the metrics are showing.

The one metric that he cited yesterday, that there's not been a long enough trend line where new cases are below 10, is accurate. And we want to make sure we're looking at all the relevant metrics, but we'll continue to work with the governor and again, I have nothing but respect for the way he has handled this crisis.

When you say we should follow the science -- science can tell us about transmissibility and we can track numbers of infections and model numbers of deaths that are possible. But science can't tell you how to weigh that against economic consequences and can't tell you how to manage public opinion etc. That's elected officials' job, that would be your job. So I wonder, you're seeing the same numbers that the governor's seeing, but would you make exactly the same decision?

I think you're right, that there's a number of factors you have to look at and the governor is looking at a range of factors and I would encourage all your listeners to go to our website, King County and we publish dashboards showing the various factors that the governor and we are looking at on a regular basis. And unlike other areas of science, there's not a test for the economy, you know, positive, you're ready to go negative, you're not. You have to look at the range of what's happening here.

And I think the governor has he is he has been consulting with all of us regularly, we are all talking to the scientists, the public health officials and epidemiologists. I understand that everyone's weary and people are ready to start coming together again, to get to work again, to be earning a paycheck. We all want to start reopening our economy and our society, but people also want to do it safely.

Joan: I'm wondering if she has any thoughts on how our area is ever going to get out of phase one because of the heavily weighted deaths in care homes.

I think if you look at the metrics now we're starting to see that we've gotten those outbreaks in senior centers, starting to get them under control, which doesn't mean there's not still work to be done and doesn't mean that those aren't high risk populations.

But one of the things that the governor, the county executive, and I look at is, not just what are the rates of deaths or new cases, but where are they happening? And what does that tell us about whether there's broad community spread, or whether that spread is isolated to a particular workplace or facility. And so we're looking at both of those things to see what's happening with a virus in our community.

The Seattle Times wrote about Skamania County, which is in Phase 2, and how some people there worry about residents coming from places like Seattle and flooding their towns because of cabin fever and spreading disease. Do you want right now to tell Seattleites to stay home, to not go holiday on the Columbia Gorge right now?

We are a mobile society and that's why it's so important to have national and state standards. We don't know exactly how the disease was introduced into Washington state. There's varying theories about what was the first case. But it's clear if you look at the other cities around the country, that they had cases introduced from Europe, from Asia, from other states. And so there is no city that can erect a wall around it and think it's going to escape this virus. And so that's why it's very important for us to be consistent in our approaches, and really fight this virus together.

Carey in W. Seattle: I have a friend here in West Seattle who is a nurse in the COVID room at Harborview and they have a one hour response time when they're on call to get into Harborview from their home. And with the bridge down she can't make it within an hour. They won't let her underneath on the Spokane Street Bridge because you have to be an emergency vehicle. To make that trip. I'm wondering if the city would consider a sticker, a permit on her car or something that would allow her to keep her job.

The answer is absolutely. The head of the Seattle Department of Transportation Sam Zimbabwe and I have already talked about that exact situation. There's obviously a whole range of people who would like access to the bridge but our emergency healthcare workers and our frontline first responders, I think fall in a particular category during this pandemic. And so they're looking at whether there's a way to work with the hospitals and the other areas that need that emergency help to provide those kind of passes or decals. I don't have the answer of when it can happen. But I think that if we're going to get through this pandemic, we got to make sure that the people who are frontline people can get to the hospitals to keep the rest of us safe.

Paul in Beacon Hill: You're encouraging people to get out and use the local parks but the parks are not being mowed. And it makes it difficult to socially distance when the grass is a foot tall. Is there any way to get the grass mowed?

I'm going to call the head of our parks department when I hang up and talk to him about that. We've talked about the maintenance and mowing.

In some parks it's harder like Genesee because of the topography and because we actually don't want people to use that as a field for gathering, sports. But the parks you've mentioned, let me look at that, because we do want people in the parks, we want them to be able to socially distance.

It's gorgeous weather today, it's supposed to get, you know, maybe nice this weekend. Get outside, but please keep moving. And we want to keep the parks in a way that you can keep moving.

By the way, will you be mowing crop circles as they're as they're being called? Circles that help you

If it means that aliens will come with help and vaccine and PPE? Absolutely.

Does Seattle do that? Mow the spots where you're supposed to be, picnicking or whatever, six feet apart?

We've looked at a whole range of things, different cities are doing it differently. And I think as we get through the summer, we're going to have to be innovative and creative just to give people a break.

Rob in Pioneer Square: The homeless population here in Pioneer Square. It's extreme and it's heartbreaking and nothing seems to be happening to rectify the situation to help these people. I've called non-emergency police and they say they aren't doing anything about it.

Radke: Mayor, do you think that's true that police are telling people they're not doing anything about what Rob says he's hearing?

Durkan: I certainly hope not. We know that with Covid, the city of Seattle changed its policy in terms of removing encampments. For example, in the last quarter of last year, we did about hundreds of encampment removals, including obstructions which was most of them, in a three month period. We've done only four since the pandemic because we focused on doing outreach to people experiencing homelessness.

We've distributed about 2500 hygiene kits. We've handed out 900 meals, we've been trying to clean up garbage and waste. We've provided hygiene facilities. We've done a lot to de-intensify our shelters and created new shelter places. Moving encampments is always a difficult balance between making sure that we protect the health and public safety of the people in the encampments as well as the adjoining community and pay attention to what the public health guidelines are with regards to hepatitis A or COVID-19. So please do call.

We've recently removed two encampments in and around Chinatown international district that became significant public health risk both to the residents of those encampments and to the adjoining areas. Significant amount of crime. Yesterday there was a hearing where a police chief said, we have we have had a number of fires we've had to respond to so we know the issue is there. But if you hear that type of thing, police should be responding. And please do continue to call. It's another thing we'll look into.

We've been working with the Pioneer Square Alliance and the residents there because we know that there's a significant amount of services in/around Pioneer Square which contributes to the density. So we want to continue to work with the residents and business there. To address the issues.

Advocates are calling on the city to provide individual shelter space, like a hotel room for people in encampment so that people living outside won't just scatter to other neighborhoods if a camp is removed. What plans does the city have for individual housing options for people who are willing to come inside?

So we already do support a range of tools, Bill, and I think it's one of the things not well understood is our tiny homes generally are individual units.

And King County when it decided to move people from a downtown shelter to the hotels, they could only front the amount of money for the hotel rooms. But you can't just put people in hotel rooms you've got to provide the services that go with it. So the city of Seattle is paying for all the services to support that move.

We also moved to have our congregate settings have less density, according to the CDC guidelines. There are CDC guidelines, specifically for congregate settings. So we will continue to have a range of tools. Right now, the city of Seattle, now that we're into the epidemic, the estimate is this year, we will spend about 140 million dollars on providing direct homeless services. Given our revenue losses, that translates to roughly 10% of our general fund budget. Not all the money's from the general fund, but it's about 10% -- just so people know from scale -- on less than 1% of our residents. So we are doing a tremendous amount. And we know it's not enough, everyone would like to do more.

I'm very looking forward to finally getting some regional solutions. We had our first meeting of the regional homeless authority. And I think that we now need to make sure that there's affordable housing in every part of King County, and that there are services in every part of King County. Because our latest data shows that of the people that the city of Seattle is paying money to support and help, only about 40% of them were living in Seattle when they became housing insecure. So we continue to do more than our share for the region. We need the region and the state to step up more. And all of us have to find a way to solve this problem.

Finally, on the topic of the city council bill -- this was the one to restrict camp removals -- is there a specific change you would need to see in order to get on board with that?

The bill is unnecessary. The things people say that they want in the bill is what we're already doing. Even some of the sponsors have walked away from the bill itself because it prohibited removals for public safety or public health reasons, like communicable diseases.

So I meet with council members regularly, every council member almost on a monthly basis. I talk to them regularly after that. We get their input on a range of things. And I'm always willing to hear ways they think that we can improve what we're doing. Their decision's going to come in soon because we have a really difficult budget. And each one of the solutions or additions we want to do in this area is going to require us not to do things in other areas. I'm always willing to listen to the Council on any topic, including this one.

Mayor, final thing, the NHL says it's coming back. They're going to go straight to postseason playoffs later this summer or fall. What's happening with our Seattle team? We still don't have a name. Are you still backing the Seattle Kraken?

I think we're gonna get a name soon, I hope we will.

I had the opportunity to go down and look at the arena, it's going to be amazing. I mean, one of the things people will love is that when we finally emerge from this dark, dark period, there'll be some things that are new and fresh, that are going to bring us back together.

And that new arena is going to be great. We'll be able to watch the Storm, hockey, and listen to some of the greatest music in the world. So there's something to look forward to folks, it's going to take us a while to get there, but when we do, it's going to be awesome.

Awesome and spread out, I assume.

Awesome and spread out. And hopefully, by that time, we won't need to social distance anymore.