2018 was a brutal year for the Seattle Police Department’s HR department: 109 officers left the force, but only 68 were hired. This led last year to a task force focused on improving hiring and retention, which mid-year issued a report with twelve recommendations that the Mayor adopted. The Mayor and the Council funded much of those recommendations in the 2020 budget, and this morning Mayor Durkan called a press conference, along with Council member Lisa Herbold and SPD Chief Carmen Best, to reveal the final hiring and retention numbers for 2019, the results for January 2020, and a new …
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Spat over LEAD budget appears to be sorted out
Over the past month an ongoing disagreement over the budget for the LEAD program flared up again, as Erica Barnett has been reporting for the last several weeks, but as of late last week it seems to be getting resolved.
Continue readingSeattle suing King County over inquest process
You may have heard that the City of Seattle is suing King County over recent changes to the inquest process for officer-involved deaths in the county. Here’s what’s going on with that.
Continue readingCatching up on the Consent Decree proceedings
A few things happened this past week related to the city’s Consent Decree over biased policing.
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Here’s what you missed over the holidays
Welcome back! A few things happened in mid-to-late December that you may have missed, so here’s a post to get you caught up.
Continue readingCity submits assessment of police accountability system
Friday afternoon, the City of Seattle submitted to the court its consultant assessment of the police department’s accountability system. The consultant found “not the need for wholesale change but for additional fine-tuning and refinement.” The issues it raises echo those voiced by the city’s Community Police Commission, with disagreement on only a few of the major points.
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Mayor, SPD Chief announce extra holiday police patrols
This morning at a press conference at SPD’s West Precinct, Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best announced that beginning November 30th, SPD will be conducting extra “holiday patrols” in nine major retail locations of the city, in order to make shoppers and retailers feel safer.
Continue readingRobart green-lights city’s plan to assess police accountability system (UPDATED)
This afternoon, Judge James Robart issued an order authorizing the City of Seattle to proceed with its proposal to assess its police accountability system and formulate a methodology to achieve compliance under the 2012 Consent Decree.
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City’s “prolific offenders” task force issues report, Mayor proposes response
You will likely recall that last February a group self-published a report on “prolific offenders” who cause problems for local communities and businesses, and who cycle through the criminal justice system. As I wrote at the time, that report had plenty of methodological issues and other flaws that limited its usefulness, since the authors didn’t have access to most of the relevant government, law-enforcement, and human-services records. However, in the aftermath of that report, Mayor Durkan commissioned her own task force to look into the issue of prolific offenders. That group published their report last week, concurrent with a budget …
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Mayor’s Office rolls out initiative to address SPD hiring and retention in 2020
This afternoon, Mayor Durkan unveiled the first in a series of initiatives in her 2020 budget: a $1.7 million, twelve-point plan to address the Seattle Police Department’s issues with hiring and retention.
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