Editor’s note: This morning in a Seattle City Council public safety committee meeting, Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington preceded two agenda items — a $12 million spending plan for community safety investments, and a $5.4 million cut to SPD’s budget — with some powerful and blunt comments that speak directly to the tensions in balancing the needs to improve community safety, reform SPD, address long-standing issues of racial equity, and continue to deliver essential services in the city. I asked Washington for a copy of her remarks, in order that we may all reflect upon them — not necessarily to agree …
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Black Brilliance Research Project wraps up with allegations, recriminations, but no city investigation
In the final days of the $3 million Black Brilliance Research Project, the wheels came off the wagon. King County Equity Now, the organization that fought for and spearheaded the project, found itself on the outside looking in, and despite making allegations that its fiscal sponsor had committed financial improprieties and contract violations, it was unable to convince the City Council to intervene before the clock ran out.
Continue readingBlack Brilliance Research final report delivered; attention turns to rolling out Participatory Budgeting
Last Friday the final report of the Black Brilliance Research Project was delivered to the Seattle City Council. As with the preliminary report delivered a few weeks ago (from which there are only a few substantive changes), it contains some interesting insights and has several shortcomings. It does, however, fill out more details in the project organizers’ recommendations for launching the next phase: a $30 million “participatory budgeting” program for the city.
Continue readingInterview with OPA Director Myerberg in aftermath of Tuesday’s police shooting
Tuesday evening SPD officers shot and killed a man wielding a knife along the Seattle waterfront. Last night SPD released officer bodycam footage of the shooting, which raises substantial questions about the officers’ actions and generally how SPD officers are trained to respond to an individual with a knife and to crisis situations. Today I spoke at length with Andrew Myerberg, Director of the Office of Police Accountability, to explore those questions and related issues.
Continue readingCouncil postpones consideration of $5.4M cut to SPD budget
On Tuesday morning, Councilmember Herbold postponed, potentially for several weeks, consideration of a bill that would cut another $5.4 million from the Seattle Police Department’s 2021 budget.
Continue readingCouncil sends revised crowd-control weapons ordinance to DOJ and police monitor for review
Today the City Council’s Public Safety and Human Services Committee polished off a draft of a revised ordinance placing restrictions on SPD’s use of so-called “less lethal” weapons for crowd control, and sent it off to the Department of Justice and the court-appointed police monitor for comments. In so doing, the Council is signaling that it still feels the need to legislate in this domain while it also recognizes that the terms of the 2012 Consent Decree constrain its ability to do so.
Continue readingBlack Brilliance Research Project effort fractures
Back in December SCC Insight reported on the dubious contractual structure underlying the Black Brilliance Research Project: how the Seattle City Council bent over backwards to avoid bidding out a $3 million contract and instead awarded it to King County Equity Now, using the nonprofit Freedom Project as a “fiscal agent”; the lack of detail in the contract as to how the money should be spent or what the deliverables would be; the challenges King County Equity Now would face in maintaining a rigorous standard for the research as it enrolled and trained hundreds of contributing researchers; and questions as …
Continue readingBlack Brilliance Research Project releases its preliminary report
(updates below re: rescheduling the second half of the presentation — it will now be on February 26 instead of next Monday) Over the weekend the City Council published the preliminary report of the Black Brilliance Research Project, a $3 million effort commissioned by the City Council and led by King County Equity Now. The contract calls for KCEN to do research in advance of a community-led “participatory budgeting” program to invest $30 million of public funds in creating community safety. The 1045-page report, originally submitted to the city on December 21, has spent a month being hammered into shape …
Continue readingJudge holds city in contempt for violations of crowd-control injunction
This morning U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones issued a highly anticipated ruling in the contempt charges against the City of Seattle for SPD’s alleged violations of the judge’s injunction restraining the police department’s use of crowd-control weapons.
Continue readingCatching up with the Mayor’s task force and the Black Brilliance research project
As you may recall, over the past few months two parallel efforts were created to guide multi-million dollar investments in community safety: the Mayor’s Equitable Communities Initiative (ECI) task force to guide $30 million of investments; and King County Equity Now’s “Black Brilliance” research project, commissioned by the City Council, to identify priorities for community investments and make recommendations for a participatory budgeting process to allocate another $30 million of investments. There have been some recent developments, so it’s time to check in on both efforts. (I also encourage you to read PubliCola’s recent coverage of the Black Brilliance research …
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