PUBLIC SAFETY

A Pragmatic Plan To Keep Our Communities Safe

Public safety isn’t a partisan issue. Every neighbor in District 5 — from Lake City to Broadview, from Pinehurst to Maple Leaf — wants the same things: to walk home feeling safe, to know that when they call 911 the right help will show up soon enough to make a difference, and to live in a city that takes care of people in crisis instead of letting them fall through the cracks.

Right now, a lot of District 5 neighbors don’t think the city government is delivering on public safety. 911 response times are far too long. Gun violence is happening far too often in neighborhoods across the district. And some neighbors in distress aren’t getting the help they need.

So how do we fix this? Instead of vague talking points about being “tough on crime” and unrealistic promises to hire huge numbers of police officers that always fall short, let’s focus on what actually works. In the short term, that means properly using a public safety team the city already has in place: CARE (the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department). Using CARE to respond to nonviolent incidents, freeing up police officers to focus on violent incidents, and better coordinating between CARE, SPD, and the Fire Department would almost instantly create more public safety response capacity - shortening 911 response times and delivering the right help to the right people. In the longer term, making people safer means preventing public safety crises in the first place by investing in housing, mental health, youth and connection programs, and better investigative police work.

We’re safer when 911 sends the right responder for the right call. We’re safer when survivors of violence get help fast and know their cases will be taken seriously. We’re safer when people exiting jail, addiction, or exploitation have a real path forward instead of a revolving door. And we’re safer when our police department is well-led, well-trained, and accountable to the community it serves.

That’s what this platform is about: a system that works for everyone.

Nilu's Public Safety Plan delivers real solutions by focusing on approaches that actually work (click below or scroll down for more details):

Make CARE the Department We Promised

Seattle created CARE to send trained civilian crisis responders to behavioral health calls, welfare checks, and people in non-violent crises, instead of armed officers. It’s the right idea. It frees police to focus on calls that actually need them, and it gets people in crisis the help they actually need.

When you call 911 because your neighbor is in a mental health crisis, you don’t need a squad car. You need someone trained to talk them down and get them help. That’s what the CARE Department does, and right now it can’t answer every call. I want it funded to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with enough responders to cover all of District 5. A behavioral health call at two in the morning should get the same trained response as one at two in the afternoon. Full funding means CARE stops being a pilot project and starts being something you can count on every time you pick up the phone.

But CARE is being held back. Under the current police union contract, CARE responders can’t enter most buildings, can’t respond when there’s any sign of drug use, and can’t help people inside encampments, even when no one is in danger. CARE Chief Amy Barden has been candid that her teams are operating at a fraction of their capacity, and Seattle is wasting one of the most promising public safety investments we’ve ever made.

A strong CARE department isn’t a threat to SPD, it’s a partner. I envision a collaborative relationship between CARE, SPD, and the Fire Department where each team is dispatched to the calls they’re best equipped to handle, where information and resources flow between departments, and where officers and crisis responders trust each other to show up. That’s how we build a public safety system that works for everyone in it, including the officers who want to focus on the work only they can do.

As your councilmember, I will:

Push to lift the unnecessary scope restrictions in the next police contract so CARE can actually go where people need help.
Fully fund CARE’s expansion so the department can operate 24/7 citywide, including reliable coverage for North Seattle.
Champion true solo dispatch for appropriate calls so CARE teams aren’t sitting on the sidelines waiting hours for police clearance.
Support Chief Barden’s leadership and her vision of three co-equal first-response departments — police, fire, and CARE — each doing what they do best.

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Take Domestic Violence Seriously

Domestic violence is a widespread, yet severely under-resourced, public safety crisis in our city. Survivors often face their darkest moments alone, and the response they get in those first hours shapes the rest of their lives.

Leaving an abuser is the most dangerous milestone in a domestic violence situation, and it rarely happens at a convenient hour. I will fight for domestic violence teams that pair an officer with a trained advocate, available around the clock, so a survivor who calls at midnight gets someone who can both keep her safe and help her plan for what comes next. For immigrant and refugee survivors, that advocate should speak her language and understand her community, because a woman who fears deportation or shame won’t open up to a stranger who doesn’t comprehend her world. Matching advocates to the people they serve is the difference between a survivor walking away safe, and going back because she had nowhere else to turn.

Seattle has the beginnings of a co-responder model through the Victim Support Team, which pairs trained advocates with police on weekends. This works. Survivors who meet a trained advocate at the scene are far more likely to access shelter, file for protection orders, and break the cycle of violence. But right now this response is part-time and patchwork.

I will fight to:

Expand co-responder domestic violence teams to operate 24/7 across every precinct, so a trained advocate can be at the scene with patrol officers any hour of the day or night.
Develop and scale community-based co-responder models, drawing on the work of Seattle and King County organizations that pair survivor advocates directly with first responders, so fewer survivors fall through the cracks between the police call and the next morning.
Fund culturally and linguistically matched advocates, especially for immigrant and refugee survivors in District 5’s diverse neighborhoods, where fear of the system too often keeps people silent.
Support City Attorney Erika Evans’ commitment to filing domestic violence cases faster, and ensure her office has the staffing and victim-advocate resources to follow through.
Strengthen Seattle’s protection-order infrastructure, including legal aid, enforcement, and survivor-controlled safety planning.

When we get domestic violence response right, we don’t just help one survivor; we prevent the homicides, child trauma, and long-term harm that ripple out from every untreated case.

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Stand With Crime Victims and Survivors

Public safety doesn’t end when the police report is filed. For too many crime victims in Seattle, the support system is fragmented, underfunded, and hard to navigate.

Washington’s Crime Victims Compensation program and Seattle’s victim advocacy services are critical, but they’ve faced ongoing funding pressure even as need has grown. Survivors deserve more than thoughts and prayers.

I will:

Fight for sustained, adequate city funding for crime victim services, including emergency financial assistance, counseling, court accompaniment, and relocation help.
Advocate at the state and federal level to protect Crime Victim Compensation funding, which has been threatened by federal cuts.
Ensure victim advocates are embedded across the system, in patrol response, in the City Attorney’s Office, in the courts, and in community-based organizations.
Center survivor voices in shaping public safety policy. The people most affected by violence should help design the response.

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A Real Exit for People Trapped in Sex Work and Trafficking

Some adults choose sex work, and they deserve safety, dignity, and freedom from criminalization. At the same time, too many young people are trafficked, coerced, or trapped by poverty, addiction, or abuse. The single most important thing we can do is make sure anyone who wants a way out has one.

Someone who was trafficked, or who is working in the sex trade and wants out, has usually survived things most of us can’t imagine. You can’t arrest your way to helping them, and you can’t hand them a pamphlet and call it support. I will invest in services built around what these survivors actually need to leave: a safe place to sleep, treatment for trauma and addiction, and job training that leads to work they can live on. Trauma-informed means the people offering help understand why a survivor might flinch, might not trust easily, might need more than one try. The goal is a real way out for anyone who wants one, not judgment and not a revolving door.

Right now, the path out is too narrow. Survivors of trafficking and exploitation often cycle between the streets, jail, and emergency rooms because there is nowhere safe to go. Specialized shelter for trafficked youth in particular is dramatically under-built in our region.

I will:

Explore and fund community-centered housing and support shelters specifically for young people who are survivors of human and sex trafficking: trauma-informed, low-barrier, and connected to long-term services.
Expand access to drop-in centers, addiction treatment, mental health care, and job training for adults wanting to exit sex work, without forcing anyone who chooses this work into the criminal system.
Reject approaches that criminalize survival. Arresting trafficking victims doesn’t make them safer; it keeps them stuck.
Partner with community organizations already doing this work; they know what’s needed, and they need stable city funding to scale up.

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Treating Gun Violence as a Public Health Crisis

Gun violence spreads like an infection. One shooting leads to retaliation, that leads to another, and the cycle keeps feeding itself. I want to treat it the way we treat a disease, by interrupting it before it spreads. Community violence intervention sends trusted people, often folks who’ve lived that life themselves, into the moments right after a shooting to stop the next one. Hospital-based programs reach victims while they’re still in the ER, when they’re most open to a different path, and connect them to support before they walk out the door looking for payback. Keeping guns out of young hands through safe storage and working with schools stops tragedies before they start. These programs save lives, and they cost a fraction of what the violence itself costs us.

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Restorative Justice: Accountability and Compassion

A teenager who breaks a window and a man who keeps stealing from the same shop don’t need the exact same answer, but they both need to face what they did. Restorative justice brings the person who caused harm face to face with the people they hurt, makes them own it, and builds a real plan to make it right. This isn’t a free pass, it’s accountability that asks more of a person than sitting in a cell, and it works better at stopping the next offense. I support these approaches because locking someone up for a low-level crime often sends them home angrier and no less likely to do it again. Pairing accountability with a path forward is how you actually break the cycle.

Restorative justice isn’t soft on crime, it’s serious about it. It asks the harder question of what caused the crime and what will keep it from happening again instead of the easier one of how long to lock someone up before releasing them with no plan.

The evidence base is strong. Restorative approaches combine real accountability with real compassion. They reduce repeat offenses, support victim healing, and treat people who cause harm as people capable of change. They hold people accountable to the communities they hurt, not just to a court file.

Some people cycle through jail again and again for crimes rooted in addiction, mental illness, or homelessness. Jail doesn’t fix any of that, so they come right back. I will work with City Attorney Erika Evans to build a community court that does something different: it connects these people to treatment and housing while still holding them accountable for what they did. Show up, get clean, get into housing, and you have a real shot at staying out of the system. The point is to stop the revolving door by treating the reason someone keeps offending, not just the offense.

I will:

Support City Attorney Erika Evans in standing up Seattle’s reimagined community court — a resource hub that connects people who commit low-level offenses to treatment, housing, and services rather than just cycling them through jail. Bellevue, Tacoma, Auburn, and Redmond have made this work; Seattle can too.
Fund pre-filing diversion programs like LEAD (Let Everyone Advance with Dignity) that have a track record of reducing repeat offenses.
Invest in community-based restorative justice programs, especially for young people, where harm can be addressed directly between the people involved with trained facilitators.
Make sure accountability is real. Restorative justice requires showing up, doing the work, and repairing harm. When that doesn’t happen, the system has to follow through.

This is where compassion and accountability stop being opposites: both are necessary, and neither works alone.

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Police Accountability That Builds Trust

Most Seattle police officers want to do their jobs well and be trusted by the communities they serve. That trust has to be earned, and a strong accountability system is how we earn it.

Seattle has nationally significant accountability infrastructure: the Community Police Commission, the Office of Police Accountability, and the Office of the Inspector General. The 2017 accountability ordinance was supposed to be the floor. Too often, it’s been treated as a ceiling that police union contracts negotiate downward.

I will:

Defend the independence and authority of the Community Police Commission, OPA, and OIG, and fight to fully fund them.
Push for the next police contract to restore OPA’s full subpoena power, end reliance on private arbitration that overturns chiefs’ discipline decisions, and lift the cap on civilian investigators.
Make sure community voices, not just City Hall and the police union, have real influence on contract negotiations.
Support good officers by ensuring fair, fast, and transparent investigations. Endless investigations help no one, including the officers being investigated.

Accountability isn’t anti-police. A police department people trust is a police department that can do its job.

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Public Safety in District 5: What This Looks Like Here

Public safety in District 5 is a unique tapestry of issues. We have an aging population in some neighborhoods and young families in others. We have light rail stations opening and the Lake City and Aurora corridors with real street safety issues. We also have immigrant and refugee communities who deserve to feel safe calling 911, unafraid of who will show up.

As your councilmember, my D5-specific priorities include:

A reliable CARE presence in North Seattle, including dedicated staffing and response time standards for our district.
Pedestrian and transit safety around the Pinehurst (NE 130th), Roosevelt, and Northgate light rail stations, including lighting, sight lines, protected bike lanes, and good wayfinding.
Investment in the Lake City community after the loss of the Fred Meyer and Lake City Community Center. Public safety is not just about crime, it’s about whether neighborhoods have the basics that help people thrive.
Trusted, multilingual community liaisons so immigrant neighbors know they can access city services and report crime without fear.
Year-round programming for youth, such as community centers, parks, after-school options.The most effective youth violence prevention is connection and opportunity.
Pushing for the SDOT timeline for improvements on Aurora to be moved up before 2030.

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The Bottom Line

Safe, healthy communities don’t come from picking sides. They come from a city that gets serious about what works:

The right responder for every 911 call.
Real support for survivors and crime victims.
A path forward for people in crisis, addiction, exploitation, or harm.
Accountability that holds everyone, including the system, to a higher standard.
Investment in the upstream conditions that prevent harm in the first place.

PUBLIC SAFETY

A Pragmatic Plan To Keep Our Communities Safe

Push to lift the unnecessary scope restrictions in the next police contract so CARE can actually go where people need help.

Fully fund CARE’s expansion so the department can operate 24/7 citywide, including reliable coverage for North Seattle.

Champion true solo dispatch for appropriate calls so CARE teams aren’t sitting on the sidelines waiting hours for police clearance.

Support Chief Barden’s leadership and her vision of three co-equal first-response departments — police, fire, and CARE — each doing what they do best.

Expand co-responder domestic violence teams to operate 24/7 across every precinct, so a trained advocate can be at the scene with patrol officers any hour of the day or night.

Develop and scale community-based co-responder models, drawing on the work of Seattle and King County organizations that pair survivor advocates directly with first responders, so fewer survivors fall through the cracks between the police call and the next morning.

Fund culturally and linguistically matched advocates, especially for immigrant and refugee survivors in District 5’s diverse neighborhoods, where fear of the system too often keeps people silent.

Support City Attorney Erika Evans’ commitment to filing domestic violence cases faster, and ensure her office has the staffing and victim-advocate resources to follow through.

Strengthen Seattle’s protection-order infrastructure, including legal aid, enforcement, and survivor-controlled safety planning.

When we get domestic violence response right, we don’t just help one survivor; we prevent the homicides, child trauma, and long-term harm that ripple out from every untreated case. Back to top ↑

Fight for sustained, adequate city funding for crime victim services, including emergency financial assistance, counseling, court accompaniment, and relocation help.

Advocate at the state and federal level to protect Crime Victim Compensation funding, which has been threatened by federal cuts.

Ensure victim advocates are embedded across the system, in patrol response, in the City Attorney’s Office, in the courts, and in community-based organizations.

Center survivor voices in shaping public safety policy. The people most affected by violence should help design the response.

Explore and fund community-centered housing and support shelters specifically for young people who are survivors of human and sex trafficking: trauma-informed, low-barrier, and connected to long-term services.

Expand access to drop-in centers, addiction treatment, mental health care, and job training for adults wanting to exit sex work, without forcing anyone who chooses this work into the criminal system.

Reject approaches that criminalize survival. Arresting trafficking victims doesn’t make them safer; it keeps them stuck.

Partner with community organizations already doing this work; they know what’s needed, and they need stable city funding to scale up.

Fund pre-filing diversion programs like LEAD (Let Everyone Advance with Dignity) that have a track record of reducing repeat offenses.

Invest in community-based restorative justice programs, especially for young people, where harm can be addressed directly between the people involved with trained facilitators.

Make sure accountability is real. Restorative justice requires showing up, doing the work, and repairing harm. When that doesn’t happen, the system has to follow through.

This is where compassion and accountability stop being opposites: both are necessary, and neither works alone. Back to top ↑

Defend the independence and authority of the Community Police Commission, OPA, and OIG, and fight to fully fund them.

Push for the next police contract to restore OPA’s full subpoena power, end reliance on private arbitration that overturns chiefs’ discipline decisions, and lift the cap on civilian investigators.

Make sure community voices, not just City Hall and the police union, have real influence on contract negotiations.

Support good officers by ensuring fair, fast, and transparent investigations. Endless investigations help no one, including the officers being investigated.

Accountability isn’t anti-police. A police department people trust is a police department that can do its job. Back to top ↑

A reliable CARE presence in North Seattle, including dedicated staffing and response time standards for our district.

Pedestrian and transit safety around the Pinehurst (NE 130th), Roosevelt, and Northgate light rail stations, including lighting, sight lines, protected bike lanes, and good wayfinding.

Investment in the Lake City community after the loss of the Fred Meyer and Lake City Community Center. Public safety is not just about crime, it’s about whether neighborhoods have the basics that help people thrive.

Trusted, multilingual community liaisons so immigrant neighbors know they can access city services and report crime without fear.

Year-round programming for youth, such as community centers, parks, after-school options.The most effective youth violence prevention is connection and opportunity.

Pushing for the SDOT timeline for improvements on Aurora to be moved up before 2030.

The Bottom Line Safe, healthy communities don’t come from picking sides. They come from a city that gets serious about what works:

The right responder for every 911 call.

Real support for survivors and crime victims.

A path forward for people in crisis, addiction, exploitation, or harm.

Accountability that holds everyone, including the system, to a higher standard.

Investment in the upstream conditions that prevent harm in the first place.

This is achievable. It’s already starting. And with the right leadership on City Council, District 5 can lead the way. Back to top ↑

When we get domestic violence response right, we don’t just help one survivor; we prevent the homicides, child trauma, and long-term harm that ripple out from every untreated case.

Back to top ↑

This is where compassion and accountability stop being opposites: both are necessary, and neither works alone.

Back to top ↑

Accountability isn’t anti-police. A police department people trust is a police department that can do its job.

Back to top ↑

The Bottom Line

Safe, healthy communities don’t come from picking sides. They come from a city that gets serious about what works:

This is achievable. It’s already starting. And with the right leadership on City Council, District 5 can lead the way.

Back to top ↑