At its Feb. 20 work session, the Lynnwood City Council received a request from the parks department to purchase 4.48 acres of land being offered to the city at a discount from its owners. It is adjacent to city property referred to as Lund’s Gulch Open Space.

The land was appraised at $1,190,000 and is being offered for $750,000, most of which will be covered by a Snohomish County Conservation Futures grant. The grant stipulates that the land must be used for conservation and environmental preservation. Staff expect the final cost to the city to be no more than $50,000.
Councilmember Patrick Decker asked what the city would be able to do with the land if Lynnwood could not build a park or develop on the property. Senior Park Planner Monica Thompson said that the city could expand the city’s trail system, perhaps adding an informational kiosk and new paths through the area. Decker continued by saying that the land would have no public use, a statement that was rebutted by Deputy Parks Director Sarah Olson. Olson stated that the space, aside from assisting Lynnwood in its conservation goals, can be traversed and explored by individuals already in the area.

The council is scheduled to decide at its next business meeting Feb. 26 whether to authorize the mayor to enter into an agreement to purchase the land.

Bob Scales, CEO of Police Strategies, joined Lynnwood Chief of Police Cole Langdon for a presentation on the use of force in policing. Police Strategies analyzed Lynnwood Police Department’s use-of-force cases from Jan. 1, 2018 through Dec. 31, 2022 and compiled a summary report. Langdon stated that the information will be made available to the public using a user-friendly dashboard in the future, although a 46-page document detailing the results is available here.

Use of force is defined as “action that can cause injury.”.
Scales explained that data is collected using police incident reports and narratives. Information extracted from this self-reported data is then fed through algorithms that extract various pieces of information such as type of force used, races of arrestee and officers, location, number of officers present and underlying conditions for the arrestee such as mental illness or anger. Individual cases were analyzed by a grad student who scored the incident using a “force justification” scoring rubric. Langdon later mentioned that every use-of-force incident in the LPD continues to be reviewed by a sergeant who has access to body cam footage.

Key findings are as follows:

• Less than 2% of Lynnwood arrests involve the use of force.
• 54% of use of force cases occurred with non-resident subjects.
• Force is used on average less than 50 times per year.
• Officers used “body force” such as grabs and tackles more than other types of force such as guns, tasers or dogs.
• Between 2018 and 2022, officer injury rates fell from 19% to 9% while subject injury rates increased from 45% to 60%.
• Between 2020 and 2022, the percentage of force incidents occurring at a business rose from 13% to 52%.
• Use of force incidents that occurred in ZIP code 98036 fell from 64% in 2018 to 40% by 2022, while they rose from 30% to 46% in ZIP code 98037.
• 72% of officers who used force were responding to a dispatched call for service.

Police Strategies compiles information from about 20 agencies in the Puget Sound region and about 100 agencies nationwide. Using that compiled information, comparisons can be made to other police departments. Scales noted that nationwide statistics gathered from police databases are somewhat unreliable as different agencies report differing information. Further, since the majority of use-of-force cases involve nonresidents, comparing information on racial disparities compared to Lynnwood population data is less conclusive. Data is most internally useful when used to evaluate force related to the Lynnwood Police Department and individual officers.

During the arrest process, males were twice as likely as females to be involved in a use of force incident. Hispanic and Black arrestees were 50% more likely to be involved in a force incidents than expected based on their share of arrestees. Both the sex and race ratios are consistent with local trends, and Lynnwood is not an outlier.

As a large portion of the conversation was focused on explaining methodology, Councilmembers asked Langdon to return for another conversation on his thoughts. Councilmember Josh Binda, who clearly did not even skim the packet, asked about race statistics. Councilmember Josh Binda voiced his support for the data collection and asked if Police Strategies would be returning soon with updated data. Scales replied that Lynnwood, as a small agency, did not have the same data collection needs as places like Memphis, so updates would not be timely but instead a look back at trends.

In other business, Human Resources Director Annie Vandenkooy requested that the council raise the pay range on the assistant court administrator position from $46.72- 60.16 per hour to $56.54-72.79 per hour. The highly skilled position has been vacant for over a year and other judicial staff have been handling the tasks, but Vandenkooy explained that a large workload and an impending retirement could cause work to back up quickly. She described Lynnwood’s salary as non-competitive and not equitable.
Council President George Hurst requested that Vandenkooy connect with the city’s finance director to detail the impact this would have on the city’s budget.

Community Planning Manager Karl Almgren delivered a presentation to the council about the city’s Housing Action Plan. The city is required by the state’s Growth Management Act to plan future growth, and Lynnwood Business and Development Services staff are in the process of creating a Unified Development Code.
Almgren said that the team’s plans for the code are to make it easier to read and fully comprehensive, so that Lynnwood can maintain and strategically update the code. In what was described by Almgren as “a pre-pre-draft,” several zone categories have been consolidated. The changes are designed to adhere to recently passed state legislation such as HB1110 and ongoing projects, including city center plans that would focus on commercial and mixed-use zoning districts for the Lynnwood Regional Growth Center.

DBS staff are working on a plan for public outreach that will include preparing a series of web maps and explanations for proposed zoning changes before soliciting community feedback. Staff expect to have a list of property changes by mid-March for public noticing in April. Final adoption of the zoning consolidation will occur in November/December 2024.

–By Jasmine Contreras-Lewis