This evening the City of Seattle submitted its proposed methodology for evaluating the city’s police accountability system, as required by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart who oversees the SPD consent decree.
Continue reading City submits plan to evaluate police accountability, DOJ on board
As a footnote to my earlier post on Mayor Durkan’s proposed plan to get the consent decree back on track, there has been one particular troublesome issue that has generated more heat than light: whether police officers should be able to appeal disciplinary actions to arbitration. The CPC had a few thoughts on that in their letter yesterday.
With a rapidly approaching August 15th deadline for the city to submit to Judge James Robart the plan for how it intends to evaluate its police accountability system, the Community Police Commission has reiterated its rejection of Mayor Durkan’s proposed plan.
Continue reading One week before Court deadline, CPC rejects Mayor’s police accountability proposal
At her press conference yesterday, Council member Lorena Gonzalez showed a”subway map” diagram of the complex disciplinary process for SPD oficers and supervisors as defined under state law, local law, and its contracts with the two unions representing officers and supervisors.
Here are the diagrams — both high-level and drill-downs. Kudos to the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety for taking the time to make and publish them.
Of particular interest are the grievance and arbitration processes, which are one of the reasons that Judge Robart recently found the city out of compliance with the Consent Decree. The arbitration process allows for “forum shopping” by officers between the Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC) and an outside arbitrator, and allows the arbitrator to overrule a disciplinary decision by the Chief of Police (something Robart found particularly problematic). However, under state law public safety officers have the right to arbitration as a path for appealing disciplinary findings, in part to compensate for the fact that they are forbidden from participating in labor strikes. The 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance removed arbitration as an option, forcing all appeals to go through the PSCSC, but arbitration was reinstated as part of negotiating the SPOG contract (because the city can’t unilaterally take it away if the officers don’t want to give it up).
Last week, when it became known that Mayor Durkan had hired an outside consultant firm to develop a Court-ordered methodology for assessing the city’s police accountability regime, there was near-instant backlash from 24 community groups as well as the Community Police Commission. Today, three City Council members jumped on that bandwagon.
Continue reading The war of words over police accountability heats up in City Hall
This afternoon, the City of Seattle filed a motion in U.S. District Court asking for a one-month extension to its July 15th deadline to tell Judge James Robert how it intends to assess the police accountability regime and how it will come back into compliance with the Consent Decree after Robart found it out of compliance in May.
This morning Seattle Police Department Assistant Chief Adrian Diaz briefed the City Council on the plans to reintroduce the Community Service Officer program after a 15-year hiatus.
Continue reading SPD preparing to reintroduce Community Service Officer program
Last week the Seattle Police Department published its annual report on stops and detentions, with numbers for 2018. It begins by noting that Terry stops are up substantially over 2017 numbers — but then it provides another 25 pages of text, tables and charts that offer little help in understanding why. In fact, SPD itself admits in the report that they don’t know what the increase means:
SPD conducted 18.5% more Terry stops in 2018 than in 2017. However, statistical trend analysis shows that this increase appears to be an anomaly. Our analysis next year will indicate whether a pattern is developing or whether 2018’s data are a one-time increase.
But the data tells a clearer story than SPD is letting on. It took a few days of work to reverse-engineer and otherwise piece together the data that the department left out of its report and to follow the bread crumbs through it, but here’s the story that the data tells.
This morning Judge Robart ruled “from the bench” that he has found the City of Seattle to be partially out of compliance with the 2012 Consent Decree between the Department of Justice and the city regarding biased policing.
Continue reading Robart finds city partially out of compliance with the SPD Consent Decree
Last week, Mayor Jenny Durkan announced that during the month of May the city would conduct “emphasis patrols” in seven neighborhoods across the city “to improve public safety and address community maintenance needs.” This left many people — including most of the City Council members — confused about what this program was about. Council member Lorena Gonzalez sent Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best a letter, asking over a page of detailed questions. After some back and forth, it was agreed that representatives from SPD and other participating city departments would present at Gonzalez’s committee hearing this morning to shed further light on the program.
Continue reading What’s up with the city’s new “emphasis patrols”?