OPA

SPD officers are some of the best-paid workers in the city

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Election News:

First, the elephant in the room. Last week we had an impactful election.

While the nation elected Republican Donald Trump to be our next president, local results were much more promising for progressives. Interestingly, Washington was one of only two states (along with Utah) who shifted further left rather than right. 

Three of the four Washington state-level initiatives backed by millionaire and hedge fund manager Brian Heywood failed, with Washingtonians voting resoundingly in support of progressive revenue, public education, long-term care insurance made possible by universal participation, and prioritizing the climate and environment. Only the initiative regarding natural gas access succeeded and is now likely to face legal challenges. Initiative 2109, which would have repealed the state level capital gains tax, passed with a resounding 63.91% of votes. 

In Seattle, Alexis Mercedes Rinck decisively triumphed over Tanya Woo. The Council had appointed Woo earlier this year to fill the at-large seat vacated by Teresa Mosqueda, who moved over to the King County Council (where, btw, she is busy working on making their budget process a little more transparent). Rinck currently has 197,428 votes, which is 57.94% of the total vote. The newly formed Progressive People Power PAC spent around $177,000 supporting Rinck.

Meanwhile, Democratic Socialist Shaun Scott, running against Andrea Suarez to be state representative for the 43rd Legislative District, won with 68.53% of the vote. 

Discussions now abound about what these local results could mean for the 2025 elections, when Seattle will be voting for the positions of mayor, city attorney, and the two at-large councilmembers, including Council President Sara Nelson’s seat. 

Budget News:

The second and final Seattle budget public hearing is tomorrow, Tuesday, November 12, beginning at 5pm. Sign up for public comment here. That hearing is followed by three full days of budget meetings to discuss councilmember amendments, so you know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the week. 

Councilmember Cathy Moore proposed a 2% capital gains tax to go into effect at the beginning of 2026. Her co-sponsors are Councilmember Tammy Morales and Councilmember Rob Saka. Her proposed “spending plan” is expressed in a single sentence: “Proceeds of the capital gains excise tax are intended to support rental assistance to rent burdened households, down payment assistance to low, moderate, and workforce households, and food assistance to food insecure households.”

Meanwhile, Budget Chair Dan Strauss’s proposal regarding changing the JumpStart tax legislation would, just as the Mayor’s original proposal did, do away with required percentage allocation of the tax revenue to pay for affordable housing, Green New Deal, and equitable development investments, a policy move I continue to oppose.

Morales has proposed amendments to the Mayor’s proposed JumpStart legislation. She has also proposed two statements of intent (SLIs) regarding progressive revenue, investigating a professional services excise tax and a digital ad tax.

A city budget tracker tool that provided increased transparency to the budget process has been removed. I will say as someone who has followed Seattle’s budget process closely since 2020, there has been a marked difference in reduced transparency this year, especially as key documents aren’t being shared publicly until the very last moment.  

Seattle criminal legal system news:

Andy Engelson reported there was another death in the SCORE jail in August, meaning 8 people have died there in the past 2 years. Seattle has been actively working on a contract with SCORE.

SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden sent an email to all officers last week celebrating the end of the King County Jail’s booking restrictions for misdemeanors and instructing officers to increase arrests. 

The Office of Police Accountability (OPA) sustained allegations against SPD Officer Kevin Dave, who ran over and killed Jaahnavi Kandula with his patrol car on January 23, 2023. The next step is for discipline to be decided.

Interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr is apparently clashing with the OPA and its civilian director Gino Betts. She has overturned or modified more disciplinary recommendations from the OPA over the last six months than had been done by former Chief Adrian Diaz and former Chief Carmen Best during the last five years. 

Meanwhile, Jamie Tompkins, who was Diaz’s former chief-of-staff who was put on leave from SPD recently, just resigned. There were rumors that she and Diaz were romantically involved.

Ron Willis, an SPD officer, was suspended again (for 90 unpaid hours) for filing excessive overtime hours. PubliCola reported he “reported working 133 hours in a single week, including 93 hours of overtime, plus 10 hours of vacation.” He was first suspended for the same offense back in 2021. Willis has appealed his punishment, saying it’s “excessive.” It’s worth clicking over to the article to read excerpts from Rahr’s report on the matter, in which she sounds quite exasperated by how unrepentant Willis appears.

DivestSPD revealed that five other SPD officers reported more overtime than Willis last year, meaning “it’s mathematically impossible that they didn’t violate the same rules as he did.” However, they do not appear to be under current investigation by the OPA.

Finally, new census data for 2023 shows that in Seattle, law enforcement workers have the second highest level of compensation, with median earnings of $124,600. The highest level of compensation is enjoyed by tech workers (specified as computer and mathematical workers), who earned a median of $157,200. 

As The Seattle Times reports: “While the median earnings for law-enforcement workers was $32,000 lower than that of tech workers last year, the gap could shrink. In May, the Seattle City Council approved a new contract with the Seattle police union that includes significant increases in compensation, and which will make Seattle officers the highest paid in the state.”

The new SPOG contract also meant significant backpay for SPD officers, which would be reflected in their 2024 earnings.

Meanwhile, for 2023, legal workers (aka lawyers) were ranked fourth with median earnings of $116,061. And community and social service workers had median earnings of $58,810, less than half that of the median law enforcement wage.

Recent Headlines:

 

SPD officers are some of the best-paid workers in the city Read More »

Permanent SPD Hiring Bonuses and Expanded SODA Zones

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Budget Talk:

Looking for last-minute plans for tomorrow afternoon? Hosted by the 46th District Democrats, I will be joined by Ron Davis tomorrow, Saturday 9/14 at 2pm to give a presentation about the Seattle city budget and the upcoming budget season. We’re meeting at the Northeast Public Library, 6801 35th Ave NE, and the program will be 90 minutes long. Feel free to come on up and brush up on budget basics!

Seattle News:

On Monday morning, the Seattle City Council is holding a special Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee meeting to discuss legislation that would make SPD officer hiring bonuses permanent. It would also increase the lateral hiring bonus from $30,000 to $50,000. Officers would be eligible for these bonuses if they left SPD for a period of at least two years and then elected to return. Any officer receiving a bonus must then serve at SPD for at least five years. The annual estimated cost of this program is $1.5 million.

Last Tuesday, the Public Safety committee met to discuss the SODA and SOAP legislation, both of which they unanimously passed. You can read my live tweets of the meeting here.

Several new SODA zones were added to the legislation: Pioneer Square, Belltown, Capitol Hill, and the University District, and some added blocks to the CID proposed zone. The SOAP zone ordinance was changed so that the SOAP zones will no longer apply to sex workers, only to buyers and promoters. However, the prostitution loitering law is still part of the ordinance.

The Stranger reported that in an initial draft of the SOAP bill, Moore tried to include funding for The More We Love, a one-year-old nonprofit organization that is mostly known for conducting sweeps. As such funding would be required to go through a competitive bidding process, Moore later retracted that part of the legislation. Currently no additional funding for services is included in the ordinance.

The final vote on this legislation will be on Tuesday, September 17 at 2pm. 

In a graffiti case against SPD, a judge has ordered the city to pay over $750,000 in legal fees for the plaintiffs, who won their jury trial back in June. 

In the case of the death of Black Lives Matter protester Summer Taylor, a jury ruled that the state was not negligent, and that the driver who struck Taylor must pay their family $6 million in damages. 

The family of Jaahnavi Kandula is suing Seattle for $110 million plus $11,000 in a reference to SPOG VP Daniel Auderer’s cruel comment about Kandula’s life having no value. PubliCola reported that attorney Vonda Sargent said Officer Kevin Dave should have never been hired, and the fact that SPD knew about his history and still hired him points to a systemic problem. 

The Seattle Indian Health Board is walking away from working with SPD to improve how officers track cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people and behave with Indigenous communities. In doing so the organization is walking away from a contract of $87,500 per year. 

Abigail Echo-Hawk, the organization’s executive vice president told The Seattle Times, “I’m tired of sitting on committees while people die. We’re going to work with entities that want to change, and I hope SPD will eventually be an organization that wants to meaningfully help.” 

PubliCola has given a rundown of the OPA’s current investigations on former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz. There are currently 14 intake investigations on the former Chief that are pending at OPA.

Recent Headlines:

 

Permanent SPD Hiring Bonuses and Expanded SODA Zones Read More »

Former SPD Chief Diaz remains in the news

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We’re playing a little bit of catch up, so in this issue we’ll review the news from the first half of July.

Seattle News:

The City Auditor’s Office released a report last week on how the city should optimally respond to overdoses and crime: namely, by implementing a place-based approach to addressing the fentanyl crisis. It suggests measures like activating sidewalks, SPD investigating fatal overdoses, doing more in line with the Rainier Beach: A Beautiful Safe Place for Youth project, and using evidence-based approaches to drug use like medications, harm reduction, and recovery housing and wrap-around services.

Four female SPD police officers have filed a lawsuit against the city and SPD, alleging a pattern of sexual and racial discrimination, harassment, and a hostile work environment, specifically naming former Chief Adrian Diaz and Lieutenant John O’Neill. They had originally filed a tort claim but are now seeking a jury trial. They say “recent revelations by the former police chief are “inconsequential” to the case.”

According to payroll documents, Diaz is still listed as “chief of police” making a salary of $338,000 per year while he remains on personal leave. His successor, interim Chief Sue Rahr, is making $349,000 a year. 

A profile piece in The Seattle Times reported that Rahr “made two demands of Burgess: First, that she’d be paid like a permanent chief, even though her tenure would likely only last for six months; and second, that neither Burgess nor Harrell nor the City Council would dictate how she ran the place. She must be free to hire and fire.”

A request for help: former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz threatened to sue PubliCola and journalist Erica C. Barnett about an article covering his interview with Jason Rantz in which he came out as gay. As a result, PubliCola has incurred significant legal fees. PubliCola is one of the foremost local news publications in our region, and I encourage you to donate to help them pay their legal fees if you can afford to do so. As Barnett wrote, “If public officials can silence journalists by threatening them with baseless lawsuits, it isn’t just one publication that’s vulnerable—it’s any journalist who makes powerful public figures mad by reporting on them, providing analysis, and holding them accountable.”

The three police accountability partners–the Office of Police Accountability (OPA), the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and the Community Police Commission (CPC), gave their mid-year reports to City Council last week.

An anonymous letter to the city council, written by a whistleblower from within the OPA, alleges that the OPA and OIG deliberately ignored complaints of harassment and workplace discrimination against former Chief Adrian Diaz. 

The vice president of SPOG, Daniel Auderer, who was taped joking about the death of Jaahnavi Kandula last year, had his Loudermill hearing with interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr last Wednesday. Rahr has 21 days from that date to decide what discipline he will be receiving.

Pierce County prosecutors are deciding whether to charge SPD’s Deputy Chief Eric Barden for domestic violence. They are also looking into the serious allegation that Barden asked a Pierce County deputy to include false information in a police report, relating to a different domestic violence incident. Barden has been provisionally added to the Brady list, and after an internal investigation by SPD, Pierce County will decide whether he will remain on the list. The Seattle Times reports that “the court documents reveal a bitter back-and-forth breakup between Barden and the woman, with allegations of abuse on both sides.” 

Seattle appears to be pushing forward with a deal with the SCORE jail in Des Moines, so expect more news about this later in the summer. 

King County and Washington State News:

I don’t think I can put it any better than King5’s headline: Washington sees overall decrease in 2023 crimes despite worst officer staffing rate in US. 

Washington decided to suspend intakes at two juvenile rehabilitation facilities: Echo Glen’s Children’s Center and Green Hill School. Instead of entering these facilities, children will be held at county facilities until population numbers drop. We can expect to see this decision have impacts at the King County youth jail, as the facility is already at pre-pandemic population and suffering from understaffing. The youth jail was not designed with extended stays in mind and has already come under fire for over-using solitary confinement to deal with its staffing woes. 

On Friday, forty-three men over age 21 were transferred from Green Hill to adult prisons. In May, the King County Department of Public Defense filed a petition that conditions of confinement at Green Hill had reached the point of being “unconstitutionally cruel.” According to Washington State law, the forty-three men should have been held in juvenile detention facilities (such as Green Hill) until age 25. Columbia Legal Services sued the state department back in 2022 for unlawfully transferring three men without due process and are currently looking at their options for enforcing the settlement agreement. 

Last week King County and Seattle announced the beginning of their 100 Days of Action against gun violence. King County has pledged $1.6 million to be spent during the 100 days on community-based violence intervention programs and the Harborview hospital-based intervention program. King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay announced a proposal to allocate $1 million for a longer-term gun violence prevention strategy; this legislation will be voted on by the King County Council on Tuesday. More on this from me soon.

Recent Headlines:

Former SPD Chief Diaz remains in the news Read More »

Does SPD Staffing Impact Crime Rates? Looks Like Not So Much.

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Seattle News:

My piece on police hiring bonuses and incentives was published in The Urbanist this week. Of particular note are the following:

  • The Council is discussing several potential incentives and perks for SPD officers, including housing subsidies. In spite of the backdrop of the $230 million budget deficit for 2025,they do not seem concerned by how much this might all cost. I’ll be interested to see how much SPD’s total percentage share of the General Fund grows in the next proposed budget.
  • The Councilmembers do not seem to want to explicitly say they’re looking into lowering standards for becoming a police officer, but they are discussing measures that have the potential to do exactly that, even before the consent decree is entirely closed out.
  • Chief Diaz said the robustness of Seattle’s accountability system is having a negative impact on officer morale, and he wants to move more minor offenses away from the OPA.
  • Last week’s public safety forum poll showed community most wants expanded addiction treatment and gun violence reduction. The latter of these would require further investment in gun violence prevention programs. 
  • Both SPD and most of the Council seem happy to ignore the report on the poor and discriminatory treatment of women officers that came out last year. In further updates, Publicola reported that SPD has lost its sole female command staff member to retirement. The article includes this interesting tidbit: “Last year, Cordner reportedly left SPD’s Before the Badge program, where she was one of the program leaders, because of one of the instructors’ views on what he called the LGBTQ “lifestyle,” including his opposition to same-sex marriage.”
  • You can read the Stranger’s take on this issue here.

While both Seattle City Council and governor candidate Bob Ferguson want more cops (more on the latter in a moment), Guy Oron of Real Change ran some numbers and found that SPD staffing and crime rates don’t correlate at all. This is critical information to understand given how many other programs Seattle may defund at the end of the year in a desperate attempt to hire more officers.

The deadline for folks to turn in their comments about the three new surveillance technologies being considered in Seattle is today at 5pm. Marcus Harrison Green wrote an op-ed for the Seattle Times entitled: ShotSpotter: Why waste money we don’t have on technology that doesn’t work? 

He says, “Demanding a technology proves its effectiveness before we purchase it does not mean we are any less outraged about the gun violence in our city. It means we very rationally would rather allocate funds toward something with demonstrable efficacy.”

On Tuesday, City Council un-did 20 out of the 36 budget statements of legislative intent (SLIs) passed with the 2024 budget. As Publicola says, “For the council to reverse most of the accountability and transparency measures imposed by a previous council is an extreme move that may be unprecedented.”

Next Tuesday’s Public Safety committee meeting will feature introductory reports from Seattle Municipal Court and the City Attorney’s Office. 

The Urbanist published a new review of protest-related events from 2020, with new footage showing SPD kettling protesters. SPD’s commander in the field was later promoted and also served on the OIG’s sentinel event review of the 2020 protests, which meant he had influence over the report’s findings. Per the article:

“Only four out of 133, or 3%, of investigations completed by the Seattle Office of Police Accountability (OPA) into SPD’s 2020 protest conduct have resulted in officer suspensions without pay, according to a review of OPA files.”

WA State News:

Bob Ferguson, who is running for WA governor, unveiled his public safety plan this week. It includes boosting funding to hire more WA State Patrol troopers and give $100 million in grants for city and counties to increase police staffing. He wants to achieve universal adoption of body-worn cameras for police and improve and expand access to law enforcement data, although he doesn’t say if he’d consider using real-time crime centers to achieve the latter. You can read more about concerns about real-time crime centers here. 

From his website: “As Governor, Bob will build upon his work within the Criminal Justice Training Commission to expand and improve training for community-based policing, expanding co-response and non-armed responders rooted in de-escalation and behavioral health training, and improve data collection and reporting to improve public trust. He will also use the bully pulpit of his office to highlight good works by law enforcement across the state.”

He also wants to implement a crisis response plan to the fentanyl epidemic.

The Washington Observer says Ferguson’s biggest vulnerability in the governor’s race is public safety, hence this plan.

 Recent Headlines:

 

Does SPD Staffing Impact Crime Rates? Looks Like Not So Much. Read More »

2024 Has Not Been Kind to Seattle Protesters Thus Far

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Lots to cover from the last two weeks! Let’s get right into it. 

Seattle News:

First off, King County prosecutors declined to prosecute SPD Officer Kevin Dave, who ran over pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula going 74 mph in a 25 mph zone last year, killing her. The case was referred by SPD as a felony traffic case last summer, and now the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has said they would be unable to prove felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt. The Stranger reported that “Dave joined the department in 2019 and received a hiring bonus. He previously had his Arizona driver’s license suspended in 2018 for unpaid traffic fines and failure to appear in court, according to reporting from DivestSPD.” The OPA will now re-start their own investigation of Dave: “the formal complaint against Dave accuses him of behaving unprofessionally and violating the emergency driving policy, among other potential violations.”

This week, six protesters were arrested at the full City Council meeting on Tuesday. Council President Sara Nelson limited public comment to 20 minutes, in spite of there being many present to ask for help funding housing for asylum seekers currently camping outside a Tukwila church. CP Nelson called for security to clear the room, and then when protestors continued to bang on windows from outside, CM Cathy Moore asked for a police presence to arrest the individuals. You can read more about her remarks here.

As a result, six protesters were arrested and booked into the King County Jail, where they were each required to post $1000 for bail. Given the current booking restrictions at the jail, this is particularly noteworthy. This follows the case pursued by the Seattle City Attorney brought to trial about the Stop the Sweeps protester who tried to prevent an RV from being towed for a few minutes while its owner obtained a spare tire. 

Also taking place this week was the “final” hearing on the three new surveillance technologies being proposed for SPD: AGLS, CCTV, and RRTC software. Seattle Solidarity Budget submitted a letter opposed to these technologies signed by over 70 community organizations and 1,200 individuals. At the end of this hearing, it was announced the public comment period for these technologies was being extended until March 22. You can fill out feedback forms about these technologies here, and you can find talking points to help you here. You can also read more about the final public hearing here.

In accountability news, the two SPD officers who waited 20 minutes to respond to a shooting call, first reported on by DivestSPD, were given a day off without pay as a consequence. The SPD communications office has been experiencing turmoil lately; since its head, Lt. John O’Neil was appointed in August 2022, the division has experienced turnover of “more than 100 percent,” per Publicola, and an office that previously had 3 men and 3 women is now all men, with one of the women leaving SPD and the other two accepting demotions of rank and now working in patrol.

SPD Officer Mark Rawlins is being investigated by the OPA after throwing a handcuffed 58-year-old Black man onto the ground, an action that was reported by King County Jail supervisors. Rawlins has been investigated by the OPA in 8 different cases since he joined SPD in 2017.

Washington State News:

A bill might be passing the legislature this session that would allow DACA recipients to work as police officers and firefighters. Many supporters of this legislation say it would help hire more police officers.

This week the legislature is also looking into significantly reducing the rules around police pursuits, even though studies show these sorts of chases have been killing 2 people per day in the US the last few years. The new initiative would allow police to start a car chase if they had any reason to believe the person violated any law, which could include traffic infractions and other low-level, non-violent offenses (or no offense at all). This represents a significant rollback of reform initiated in previous sessions.

The Seattle Times ran an in-depth piece examining the current crisis of public defenders in Washington State. There aren’t enough public defenders, which causes a vicious cycle of absurd case loads, burnout, and long wait times to receive free legal advice. 

Recent Headlines:

2024 Has Not Been Kind to Seattle Protesters Thus Far Read More »

Seattle’s 2020 Violent Police Response Worse Than Responses in Any Democratic Country

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Seattle News:

First off, the City of Seattle settled in an excessive force lawsuit involving 50 protesters who were injured during the summer of 2020, paying them $10 million. In addition, the City spent around $30 million on legal costs defending the case. And in a year when the City is facing a huge budget deficit to boot! I covered this story here at the Urbanist. A particularly shocking quote:

“Dr. Clifford Stott, an expert hired by the City to analyze the early days of the protests, said he had not seen that level of aggressive violent police response against protesters in any democratic state.”

The law firm who represented the plaintiffs says they’d like to release the hundreds of hours of depositions they took from figures such as former Mayor Durkan, former Chief Best, current Chief Diaz, and a bunch of other police. If they’re able to make good on this promise, we might see some further interesting information emerge.

Today the closing arguments were delivered in the case against the Stop the Sweeps protester currently being tried at Seattle Municipal Court. The protester is being charged with misdemeanor obstruction in the sort of case that usually doesn’t make it to trial. The protestor allegedly tried to prevent an RV from being towed by standing on its roof while a spare tire was being obtained. The delay was only 12 minutes. 

This follows what might be becoming a disturbing national trend of an attempt to criminalize people for helping other people, either by making sure their home doesn’t get towed or by trying to give them food. You can see Ashley Nerbovig’s live tweets at the trial today here. We are now awaiting a verdict.

Also this week, the OPA found that the remarks of Officer Daniel Auderer about the death of student Jaahnavi Kandula, which took place about a year ago, were “inhumane,” “biased,” and “callous.” A disciplinary hearing was supposed to be held this Tuesday, and we are now waiting for Chief Diaz to announce his decision as to what discipline Officer Auderer will receive. 

The officer who struck and killed Jaanavi Kandula with his vehicle, Kevin Dave, was fired from the Tucson Police Department in 2013. Meanwhile, as reported in Publicola: 

“SPD has not released information about what discipline, if any, Dave has received, and the King County Prosecutor’s Office has not revealed whether it will prosecute him.”

In what many (including myself) were calling a foregone conclusion, the City Council voted 5-3 to appoint losing D2 candidate Tanya Woo to the open city-wide seat on the Council. 

And Mayor Harrell announced the City is facing even more significant fiscal challenges now than was forecast a mere few months ago and is therefore instituting a hiring freeze. The hiring freeze will impact almost all city departments, except for–you guessed it!–the Seattle Police Department. The Seattle Fire Department and the CARE department will also be exempt from the hiring freeze. The city would have likely hired 800-900 regular employees and over 1,000 temporary employees in 2024. 

This move illustrates the human impact of austerity in the city. More jobs are likely to be lost to address the $229 million deficit for 2025, and basic city services are likely to be impacted. 

King County News:

King County held its first Law and Justice committee meeting of the year this week, now chaired by new CM Jorge Barón. The committee heard a presentation about the County’s gun violence prevention efforts, which are partially funded by American Rescue Plan dollars that run out at the end of the year. Given the program only has a $13 million budget over the biennium (which means $6.5 million per year), this isn’t perhaps an insurmountable gap. My understanding has been that part of this $6.5 million is already being covered by the City of Seattle. In fact, this highlights how gun violence prevention programs are already underfunded in our region and how much they urgently need further investment. 

You can look at the list of current legislation in process that is likely to be heard by this committee in 2024. 

King County also held its first Budget & Fiscal Management committee meeting of the year this week. The committee is now chaired by CM Girmay Zahilay. You can read my live tweets here. It provided a good overview of the King County budget process.

The most important point to highlight is that if you want to share your budget input and priorities, you should reach out to departments and councilmembers very soon. The committee will pass a budget priorities motion in March or April.

WA State News:

It’s hard to believe that we’re already at the end of Week 3 of this legislative session. The first cut-off date is Wednesday, January 31, so we’re going to see a lot of dead bills next week.

A companion GBI bill has now been introduced in the Senate and will receive a hearing on Tuesday, January 30 at 10:30am. You can sign in PRO for the bill now. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle’s 2020 Violent Police Response Worse Than Responses in Any Democratic Country Read More »

Court Ruling Yet Another Example of SPD’s Racial Bias in Action

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Personal News:

We’ll dive into the news of the week in just a moment, but I did want to take the opportunity to mention I had a book come out last week! I was supposed to write about it in last week’s newsletter, but I was so distracted by learning that the new drug criminalization legislation was almost exactly the same as the previous version that I forgot to include it.

Book cover of TO TRAVEL THE STARS with a couple dancing in close embrace with a starry space background

TO TRAVEL THE STARS is a Young Adult science fiction novel that is a retelling of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in space. If that sounds appealing either to yourself or a teenager in your life, I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy.

Seattle News:

The Seattle Times reports: “A federal judge has found evidence Seattle police stopped and detained a Black delivery driver at gunpoint because of his race, then illegally searched his trunk in a 2020 incident detailed in a civil rights lawsuit now headed for trial.” Incidentally, SPD doesn’t have a policy for what is known as a “high-risk vehicle stop” as took place in this incident, and when the OPA suggested SPD develop one, Chief Diaz refused. This ruling means the City has been found liable for the illegal search, and the trial would determine the amount of damages owed.

Captain Brown, one of the officers named in the case and the new acting commander of the South Precinct, recently wrote a letter of his expectations to his officers and supervisors. Erica C. Barnett at Publicola reported that this letter “included an exhortation to “take care of our own” by handling “minor misconduct” internally, rather than reporting it to the Office of Police Accountability. The letter also said officers should view themselves as forces of “good” whose job is to “intervene and stop evil” in the world.” When questioned about the letter, Brown said he didn’t intend to disparage the OPA. 

Brown has been the subject of 14 complaints since 2015. The OPA investigated the case involving the Black delivery driver detailed above and dismissed the racial bias complaint against Brown as unfounded, a decision the federal judge obviously disagreed with. This discrepancy between the OPA’s findings and the Judge’s ruling is another blow to the legitimacy of Seattle’s accountability system.

Seattle’s three accountability bodies all sent representatives to the joint Public Safety and Human Services committee and the Labor Relations Policy Committee (LRPC) public hearing on Tuesday night about expectations around a new Seattle Police Management Association (SPMA) contract. The purpose of the meeting is for the LRPC to consider the public’s input before establishing bargaining parameters. The old SPMA contract expires at the end of this year, and a public hearing must be held at least 90 days before the City and the SPMA enter negotiations.

The public meeting was sparsely attended, with many commenters noting the insufficient amount of notice they received that the meeting was taking place and one commenter suggesting the hearing was “performative and pointless.” The Community Police Commission (CPC) had a few requests for the Council to consider, including details around the 180-day clock for OPA investigations, how long and in what situations personnel files should be preserved, and reform to secondary employment of officers, while also noting their concern about the biased culture prevalent within SPD. 

Still centered in conversation was the 2017 police accountability ordinance that has never been fully implemented due to conflicts with the SPMA and SPOG contracts. Unfortunately this failure has sometimes meant a continued focus over the past several years on trying to implement this ordinance instead of pushing for greater gains or other ways in which public safety in Seattle might become more equitable.

There will be a special meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services committee on Monday, August 14th at 2pm to discuss the new drug criminalization legislation. Now is the perfect time to email your councilmembers or plan to give public comment. I’ve already written at length about some of the problems with this legislation the last time it was introduced in early June. BJ Last has a new op-ed in The Stranger about some of the budgetary concerns with this bill.

The bill won’t be voted on in Full Council until sometime in September after the City Council’s two-week summer recess from August 21 to September 4.

The Revenue Stabilization Workgroup has issued a final report on options for further City revenue and will be delivering a presentation on Thursday, August 10th to the Finance and Housing committee. Among the options identified for revenue are increasing the Jumpstart payroll tax, instituting a city-level capital gains tax, and instituting a high CEO pay ratio tax. 

I particularly recommend you check out the Transit Riders Union’s Revenue Options Report, which outlines 26 different revenue options and how to make them more progressive. For example, the City could institute a flat 1% income tax, which would not be inherently progressive, but by pairing this tax with tax credits, rebates, or a basic income program, it could be made more progressive.

The mid-year supplemental budget passed out of Full Council yesterday. The package includes $1 million to expand opioid addiction treatment in Pioneer Square and $1.6 million to the Community Safety and Communications Center (CSCC) to hire new staff for their dual dispatch pilot.

A state appeals court issued a stay that will allow Seattle to continue its practice of no-notice sweeps–for now.

The Public Safety and Human Services committee met this week and heard reports from the Seattle Community Safety Initiative (SCSI) and the King County Regional Approach to Gun Violence. The Regional Peacekeepers Collective (RPCK) is expanding into Skyway, as well as adding service hubs in Kent and Burien.

Recent Headlines:

Court Ruling Yet Another Example of SPD’s Racial Bias in Action Read More »

Another Egregious Example of SPD Culture in Action

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Seattle News:

Some shenanigans late last week in Seattle in preparation for All star week, as reported by Ashley Nerbovig:

“Meanwhile, the City so highly prioritized the removal of unhoused people around the stadium that on Friday morning SPD had two detectives from the department’s Special Victims Unit—one of whom investigates domestic violence cases—standing around waiting for one man to pack up his tent and move along. A police lieutenant with SPD’s Directed Outreach Unit, which typically works with the City’s Unified Care Team, stood around waiting as well.”

And what’s going on with Seattle’s drug criminalization task force? Well, it’s been broken into three different groups (court system issues, treatment, and enforcement), and only the court issues group has met so far. The group appears to have agreed that the best course forward involves expanding the Vital program and LEAD, since the Seattle Municipal Court has no additional capacity for more cases and the King County Jail would be unable to increase bookings. Erica C. Barnett with Publicola reports:

 “Lewis said that now that the work groups are meeting to discuss the best way to respond to public drug use, the legislation making public use a gross misdemeanor in Seattle is “almost a Macguffin”—a device that gets the plot going, but isn’t particularly significant in itself.”

On Wednesday, Mike Carter at the Seattle Times broke the story that in January of 2021, a breakroom in the SPD’s East Precinct featured a mock tombstone marking the death of Damarius Butts, who was killed by SPD officers on April 20, 2017. The breakroom was also decorated with a Trump 2020 flag and a protestor’s sign saying “Stop Killing Us.” SPD has so far refused to apologize to Damarius Butts’s family. As Mike Carter reports:

“Ann Butts, the young man’s mother, said his family misses him every day. “I can’t express how hurtful it was to learn that SPD endorsed joking about the killing of my son by displaying a fake tombstone with his name on it,” she said in a statement through her attorney, former King County public defender La Rond Baker. “I didn’t think SPD could take more from me,” she said. “I was wrong.””

At Tuesday’s Public Safety and Human Services committee meeting, the three accountability bodies–the Office of Police Accountability (OPA), the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and the Community Police Commission (CPC)–gave their mid-year accountability presentation. Of particular note, thus far in 2023 there has been a 46% increased in cases sustained by the OPA, from 13% sustained in 2022 to 19% sustained in 2023. Allegations of use of force have increased slightly in 2023. And if you were wondering what ever happened in response to the infamous Proud Boy ruse of 2020? OIG recommended a new SPD ruse policy in October of 2022, and the draft was submitted to SPOG for review in December 2022. Seven months later…nothing has moved forward. 

There was also a discussion about the CPC’s recent move to no longer allow public comment at its twice-a-month meetings. Co-chair Reverend Harriet Walden said this change was made because she feels threatened by the presence of public commenters, and she referenced their loud voices. She said the commenters are not interested in building the CPC, which seems to imply a resistance on the CPC’s part to hearing criticism from the community. She also said she will call SPD the next time the commenters come to a meeting if she feels threatened; one of the regular commenters is Castill Hightower, the sister of a man who was killed by an SPD officer during a mental health crisis, who could suffer additional trauma if forced to interact with the police in this way. 

CM Lewis said getting rid of public comment altogether goes further than what is generally expected of government practice and suggested the CPC instead develop new policies and procedures to protect commissioners as necessary.

The bill changing certain aspects of the governance of the CPC was also up for discussion and vote. It was confirmed that adding a new Deputy Director position would require an additional $191k to be allocated to the CPC beginning in 2024. Activists oppose passage of this bill without a public forum on its impacts and an audit of the CPC; they are also calling for the CPC to divest itself of involvement in the new Affected Persons Program. The bill passed out of committee with an unanimous vote, with CM Mosqueda being absent, and will be voted on in Full Council on July 18. 

Finally, People Power Washington has released their Voting Guide for the Seattle City Council primaries. Check it out!

King County News:

On Monday, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs released its annual crime report. As Amanda Zhou from the Seattle Times reports: “In King County, officials saw most violent crime slowly trend downward the first half of 2023, dropping from a high point during the height of the pandemic. But the county’s homicide rate was relatively steady through the first quarter of 2023, with a slight rise compared with the same period last year.”

Washington State

The Office of Independent Investigations, a new state agency, is now ready to begin reviewing past cases where police officers used deadly force. Members of the public can submit previous cases for review here. The office has not yet started investigating new incidents of deadly force.

Recent Headlines:

Another Egregious Example of SPD Culture in Action Read More »

Seattle’s Alternate Response Pilot a Far Cry from 2020 Demands

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Seattle News:

Yours truly was quoted in a recent Urbanist article about the recent shakeup at the Mayor’s Office, which reports that Tim Burgess will be promoted to Deputy Mayor in Monisha Harrell’s wake. Former OPA Director Andrew Myerberg will also be receiving a promotion to Chief Innovation Officer, which will put him on the executive team. It appears that current Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell will be staying until the end of the summer.

Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell appeared at Tuesday’s Public Safety and Human Services Department committee meeting to deliver a presentation on the City’s much-delayed dual dispatch response. The City is hiring six mental health professionals and one clinical supervisor; the mental health professionals will be dispatched in three teams of two, with two teams working at a time. When the new program launches, theoretically in October, it will respond to calls such as welfare checks and person down calls, and it will not provide 24/7 response. Monisha Harrell spoke to the potential of alternate response programs to act as preventative measures that address situations before they become emergencies. 

However, this new program ultimately won’t deliver on the hope to have a new non-police emergency response in Seattle, which has been consistently blocked for the last three years by SPD, SPOG, and former Mayor Durkan. As Ashley Nerbovig at the Stranger succinctly summarizes: “A lot of questions about the direction of the program remain, and part of the pilot program includes collecting data to learn what types of calls don’t require police. That data basically already exists, though. The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform’s 2021 analysis showed that 80% of SPD calls for service involved non-criminal matters. The report also found that about half of all calls did not require a sworn response.” 

She reports that the main difference between this pilot program and the already existing Crisis Response Team is that with the new program, police will be allowed to leave the scene if they decide their presence is unnecessary. This might reflect a recent change in the pilot design as in the past, the dual dispatch plan has been described as having police staged nearby in case backup was needed, which is a key difference as police being directly on the scene can have an escalating effect. In any case, it seems clear the new pilot deviates from the model proven by the successful CAHOOTS and STAR programs.

Meanwhile, the overdue white paper was not mentioned.

On Tuesday the Mayor held a press conference to discuss his downtown activation plan, but he was interrupted by a small group of protesters demanding a ban on sweeps during the winter and extreme weather events. According to The Stranger, he got “incredibly flustered” and stated that the press conference “had them outnumbered at least.” Expect local groups to take notice of the Mayor’s discomfort with protestors and increase their direct actions in response.

Publicola reported on the substance of the proposal, which is mostly a repeat of what the Mayor has announced before: “And, of course, it assumes a heavier police presence downtown—a mostly unspoken, but bedrock, element of the proposal. “Make Downtown Safe and Welcoming” is actually number one on the plan’s list of seven priorities, starting with arrests of people “distributing and selling illegal drugs” (and, presumably, using them—Harrell mentioned that a bill criminalizing drug possession and public use will likely pass in July).”

Mayor Harrell’s office has released a memo on OPA findings about former SPD Chief Carmen Best. Because Best refused to participate in the investigation, the OPA said they were unable to find sufficient evidence to determine whether several of her statements in the summer of 2020 were “knowingly false.” The Mayor’s memo acts as a toothless rebuke, as Best will suffer no repercussions for her actions, even as the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reports that “Best’s use of information and inaccurate statements fits into a pattern of disinformation and “improper ruses” used by SPD during the protests.”

SPD Officer Constantin, who was fired for his social media posts, had his appeal dismissed after he failed to appear. Former SPD Officer Adley Shepherd’s appeal (he was suing the City after being fired for punching a woman he’d arrested and handcuffed) has also been dismissed.

County, State, and National News:

The King County Sheriff’s Office has been ordered to reinstate a deputy they fired in 2021 for killing an unarmed man who was wanted for the theft of a vehicle and a poodle. (The poodle survived.) King County later settled with the man’s family for $2.5 million. Deputy George Alvarez, who already had five shootings under his belt at the time of the incident, will return to the department, although he will not be reinstated to the SWAT team. As Publicola reports, Tamer Abouzeid, the director of OLEO, hopes the outcome of this case could lead to changing the burden of proof of administrative investigations to a preponderance of the evidence, which is a lower burden of proof than the current standard used of clear and convincing standard. 

In the last three or so months, nearly 400 inmates in the King County Jail have been moved to the Maleng Regional Justice Center (MRJC) in Kent. MRJC  now houses about 40% of the average daily jail population, up from around 25%, while the population of the downtown jail has been decreased by about a third. Right now, SCORE is housing 30 jail residents for King County. 

Meanwhile, Larch Corrections Center in Clark County will be closing this fall. It is one of twelve prisons in Washington State. Apparently the Department of Corrections is also finally developing a plan to reduce the use of solitary confinement in Washington prisons, after strong grassroots advocacy for legislation that would ban such use entirely, given that solitary confinement that lasts more than 15 days is recognized as torture by the United Nations and various human rights organizations.

Scott Greenstone at KNKX recently published an excellent piece outlining the lack of drug treatment facilities in Washington state and consequences of the new Blake fix drug law. While legislators and the governor insist the new law is meant to help people get more treatment more than it is to increase incarceration rates, there is a serious lack of treatment facilities in the state, and the existing facilities often have wait times of several months. We don’t know the full extent of the problem because “it’s unclear how many beds are actually sitting empty right now in Washington: The system is so complicated and poorly tracked, neither the governor’s office, nor the Washington Department of Health, nor the Healthcare Authority could provide those numbers.” And the urgency of the problem is increasing: while the number of people getting treated for substance use disorder has stayed relatively flat, the number of overdoses has skyrocketed in recent years.

The article also features noted addiction expert Caleb Banta-Green, who spoke to his feelings of discouragement after the new law was passed, as well as his worries that it will “make it easier to shut down clean-needle exchanges, and force people into an ineffective treatment system.”

Nationwide, we’re seeing a drop in the murder rate, as reported by Radley Balko: “If trends continue, 2023 will see the largest percentage drop in murders in U.S. history. The drop will be driven primarily by large declines in big cities. This would seem to undermine the argument that the 2-year rise in homicides during the pandemic was driven by criminal justice reform, George Soros’s favored prosecutors, or policing shortages.”

Housekeeping:

I’ve received a few pledge requests through Substack, so I just wanted to give you a reminder that if you want to support Notes from the Emerald City via subscription, you can do so through my Patreon.

Recent Headlines:

Seattle’s Alternate Response Pilot a Far Cry from 2020 Demands Read More »

Seattle to Decide Whether to Launch a New ‘War on Drugs’

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Seattle News

As a result of the new state level drug legislation, the Seattle City Council is on track to vote on a bill giving the City Attorney the authority to prosecute drug possession and the new crime “public use of drugs” as soon as Tuesday, June 6, without running the legislation through committee. Drug possession is currently prosecuted by the King County Prosecutor, and in practice, King County has stopped prosecuting cases involving the possession of small amounts of drugs. Criticized by opponents for reigniting a new War on Drugs in Seattle, this legislation would further criminalize poverty while turning away from evidence-based strategies of drug treatment. Furthermore, because this is the first time Seattle would be prosecuting such crimes, the City currently has neither a drug court nor prosecutors and judges with experience in these matters. There is also the open question of how much putting new structures in place, as well as increasing prosecutions and jail use due to the new legislation, would cost the City. 

Opponents of the bill, including the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, ACLU Washington, SEIU 925, Real Change, Collective Justice, and VOCAL-WA,  are hosting an Emergency Teach-In virtually on Tuesday, May 30 at 6:30pm. You can register for the webinar here to learn more about the legislation and how to take action.

Carolyn Bick has uncovered yet more SPD chain of command confusion regarding the use of tear gas during the 2020 George Floyd protests.

SPD has announced they are beginning their pilot use of the BOLAwrap, also described as a high-tech lasso, a less-lethal weapon that “uses a Kevlar rope aimed at the legs or arms of an individual to detain them.” Its design was inspired by a hunting technique of nomadic peoples in Latin America and has been criticized for being cruel and dehumanizing. Guy Oron at Real Change News reports that we don’t know how much these BolaWrap weapons cost and writes: “In a 2020 Human Rights Watch report, researchers found that the BolaWrap and other weapons like stun guns could result in increased police violence against populations who are stigmatized by society, including mentally ill, poor, Black, Brown and Indigenous people.”

The OPA released its 2022 Annual Report this week. Some highlights: 454 cases were opened (compare this to 929 cases opened in 2019), and 13% of investigations had sustained allegations. Force allegations were down 36%. 411 SPD employees had at least one complaint in 2022, 94% of whom were sworn officers (385), and 142 employees received more than one complaint. 945 sworn officers were in service during Q4 of 2022, which means about 40% of sworn officers received at least one complaint.

This week’s Public Safety and Human Services committee meeting featured a presentation about overdose trends and harm reduction programs in the city and the Q1 2023 SPD staffing and overtime report. In the first quarter, SPD had 26 hires and 28 separations, with 2023 estimates of the force having 928 deployable sworn officers out of 1028 total sworn officers (the difference are those on long-term leave, such as disability, parental, etc.). CM Herbold reported that police hiring is picking up across the country but still not able to keep up with the number of officers leaving. That being said, the rate of separation at SPD does appear to be slowing.

SPD is expecting around $3m in salary savings this year, and they’re also expecting to exceed their overtime budget, possibly by more than their realized salary savings. Not very much of the money allocated (with much fanfare) for recruitment and retention has been spent, but the Mayor’s Office says they’ll start spending much more in the second half of the year, probably mostly for their big new marketing campaign that is supposed to launch around August. Stay tuned!

King County News

The quarterly King County Firearm Violence Report is out, showing gun violence in King County is continuing to decrease from its high in mid-2022:

“Compared to the average of the previous five quarters of data, shots fired incidents in Q1 (348) were down around 3% (-12) and the number of shooting victims (50) were down 34% (-35). More specifically, the number of fatal shooting victims declined almost 17% (-3) and nonfatal shooting victims declined 41% (-35) over those averages.”

Recent Headlines

Seattle to Decide Whether to Launch a New ‘War on Drugs’ Read More »