Seattle’s City Council will tomorrow morning consider cutting more funding — approximately $5.4 million — from police services; it's part of their plan to shrink the size of the police department. This new reduction would come on the heels of the approximate 20% cut the Council imposed last fall through direct budget cuts and by moving some functions, such as parking enforcement and 911 services, elsewhere in the city budget.
See below for how you can share your opinion on this important subject directly with the City Council.
If adopted, these additional cuts would have significant negative consequences, including degradation of response times to 911 calls for help. If you think this is just some overdue belt tightening or a direct response to the crucial racial reckoning underway in our country, please read on.
It’s important to understand the lenses through which we view the police.
The history of policing in America is riddled with long-term harms — grinding racism, rampant corruption, and the violence of excessive force. There’s also a history of ineffective crime prevention and a low crime solving rate, a double-whammy failure for people who rightly yearn for safety and protection.
But none of this history, nor the poor policy choices made around policing, justifies ignoring or minimizing city government's paramount duty to ensure public health and safety.
It’s also true that we often experience high-quality police services. There are many police officers who consistently demonstrate high standards of professionalism and fairness, treating everyone with respect and affirming their humanity.
It’s through these lenses that we must examine our City Council’s efforts to reform police services. What’s their plan to improve public health and safety while also addressing the significant issues surrounding policing today?
There’s the question of just how many police officers Seattle needs, and the equally important, yet often overlooked, question of how officers are deployed and what they do. I’ve written on this here and here.
But here’s an even bigger and more fundamental question: what problems are the Council’s cuts intended solve?
Would reducing the number of police officers curtail racist behavior?
Would the cuts reduce the use of excessive force?
Would the cuts lead to safer communities?
Would the cuts improve the lives of Black and Brown people?
Or would the cuts make all our lives less safe and secure?
I don’t believe the Council has seriously considered these questions. If they had, and especially if they understood the negative impact of their cuts, they would have taken a more thoughtful, more deliberate approach. But in their rush to cut, the Council is responding to the loudest voices urging action, including abolition of police services in favor of “community responses” that remain undefined, unplanned, and unready. (To be sure, alternative community responses may be very appropriate in some situations if carefully planned, organized, and deployed.)
The Council's actions to reduce the number of police officers has even sparked a warning from the federal judge overseeing the consent decree between the city government and the U. S. Department of Justice. Judge James Robart has told the Council to tread carefully.
What facts would help the Council understand the consequences of their actions? Here are a few they should not ignore.
In 2020, 186 police officers left our police service, the highest number for any year on record and about twice the projection for the year. Seattle now has the lowest number in decades of police officers trained and available for service. We taxpayers paid to recruit, train and deploy those departed officers. That investment is now lost.
Last year, at various times, the police department could not deploy an adequate number of officers on the street, so dispatchers at the city’s 911 communications center had to impose tight restrictions on which calls police would respond to. They took this drastic action on 221 days — 61% of the year. At times on those days — a few minutes to hours on end — police officers across the city only responded to what the 911 center classifies as Priority 1 and Priority 2 incidents, the most dangerous and urgent life-threatening situations or those that could escalate if not handled quickly; everything else had to wait. Think about that the next time you call 911; depending on the specifics of your call you may be told you’ll have to wait a long time or call back later.
Priority 1 incidents involve life-threatening crimes in progress such as shootings and stabbings and other assaults, serious injury vehicle collisions, and other highly dangerous situations requiring police immediately? The performance standard is to have an officer on the scene of these highest priority events, on average, within 7 minutes — a very long time if you are seriously injured in a collision, or you’re awakened at night by someone breaking into your home.
In 2020, citywide, Seattle officers needed an average of 9 minutes and 41 seconds to arrive on scene for Priority 1 dispatches. As shown in the chart below, Priority 1 average response times failed to meet the 7-minute standard in every police precinct throughout the city.
It’s worse for Priority 2 calls that involve events such as threats of violence, disturbances, property damage, and people detaining someone committing a crime. If these events are not policed quickly, they can sometimes deteriorate into more serious incidents. The Priority 2 response standard is an officer on scene, on average, within 15 minutes; in 2020, the actual average response time was 40 minutes and 59 seconds. The Priority 2 response time standard was not achieved in any police precinct.
The City Council should be keenly in touch with these real-life, on-the-ground facts about response times. They are directly related to the number of police officers on patrol duty at a given time. Does the City Council want longer response times for this essential city government service?
This issue and the discussion around it could take a different and much more productive course.
Rather than just cutting the number of officers without a plan, the City Council could chose to focus its energy on better ways to prevent crime — such as investing early so children get a strong and fair start, addressing poverty, and the lack of economic opportunity — and solving a higher rate of crimes that do occur, seeing fewer people caught up in the criminal legal system, and eliminating systemic racism in law enforcement.
The City Council could also focus on improving the quality of police services. Here are a few specific actions that would do just that:
- increase police officer minimum hiring age and education requirements in order to recruit the most mature and best educated;
- raise training and promotion standards;
- set city policy for officer deployment and priorities (and what they shouldn’t focus on), including a requirement that a minimum 60% of officers be assigned to 911 responsive patrol units;
- understand and follow the science of policing on what works best to prevent crime and then partner with the natural guardians of neighborhoods — residents, workers, students, shop owners — to improve safety; and
- equip officers with the tools and support they need to do their jobs well, like being paired with mental health professionals and expanding the unarmed Community Service Officer program.
The City Council should also set policies that guide police actions such as insisting on a razor sharp focus on those individuals causing the greatest harm to our most vulnerable residents — children, the elderly and physically impaired, those with substance abuse disorder and mental health challenges. Reducing violence against our vulnerable residents should be a top priority. The Council could set this priority; it would quickly gain the public’s approval and gratitude.
Finally, the City Council should follow the wisdom of Barry Friedman in his excellent book, Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission, and require a policy and rulemaking process to guide and shape police services as government does with other important services — such as food and workplace safety and environmental regulations — by hearing and fulfilling the public’s reasonable desires. This would lead to policing firmly rooted in the democratic principle that the people should decide the role and reach of government services. Doing this collaboratively — Council and police together — could also lead to a real plan to reform policing, a plan with clear objectives, measurable outcomes, timelines for implementation, and a budget. A plan that didn’t cut first and plan later. A plan that didn't put at risk the health and safety of the people of Seattle.
So, what do you think? Should the City Council impose further cuts to our police services and reduce the number of officers?
Let your voice be heard at City Hall. Share your opinion with your elected representatives on the City Council via email or a telephone call. Here’s their contact information:
Lisa Herbold (District 1) [email protected] 206-683-8801
Chair, Public Safety & Human Services Committee
Tammy Morales (District 2) [email protected] 206-684-8802
Member, Public Safety & Human Services Committee
Kshama Sawant (District 3) [email protected] 206-684-8803
Member, Public Safety & Human Services Committee
Alex Pedersen (District 4) [email protected] 206-684-8804
Member, Public Safety & Human Services Committee
Debora Juarez (District 5) [email protected] 206-684-8805
Dan Strauss (District 6) [email protected] 206-684-8806
Andrew Lewis (District 7) [email protected] 206-684-8807
Member, Public Safety & Human Services Committee
Lorena Gonzalez (At-Large, Position 8) [email protected] 206-684-8809 Council President and vice-chair of the Public Safety & Human Services Committee
Teresa Mosqueda (At-Large, Position 9) [email protected] 206-684-8808