With Justice Department lawyers in town today to tell City Hall how Seattle must reform its police department, Mayor Mike McGinn and Chief John Diaz released a plan they say will overhaul SPD and address issues over use of force and the department’s relationships with minority communities. Below is a round-up of coverage, the full “20/20” plan and a few items of note about the proposals. We looked at the extremely critical DOJ report on Seattle’s police department here in December.
There are already signs of trouble for the Seattle plan. The Seattle Times reports that an effort by city officials to present a unified front in responding to the DOJ reforms has unraveled and that the city is preparing for possible litigation against the federal intervention.
More from the 20/20 plan coverage and the full plan, below.
The reforms are broken down into five areas—protecting constitutional rights; “training for Seattle’s values”; earning public trust; using data-driven practices; and partnering with the public.
–snip–
“The reforms described in this document go far beyond the reforms suggested in the DOJ report,” McGinn said. “We are committed to completing all of these initiatives in the next 20 months, whether or not they are included in the consent decree.”
–snip–
Unanswered questions about McGinn’s proposal include how much the reforms would cost (McGinn said he didn’t know), and which of the proposals would be subject to collective bargaining with the police union, the Seattle Police Officers Guild.
- Seattle Times: Seattle mayor announces broad initiative to improve police force:
The initiative includes some controversial proposals, such as the use of body cameras on officers under a proposed pilot project.
The mayor said some of the initiatives will cost money and will be hard to achieve in such a short time frame.
Others, he acknowledged, will likely involve negotiations with the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild.
…the city has one set of last-minute, scattershot proposals and the DOJ has its own set of recommendations (we don’t yet know what they are). Rather than fusing the ideas before they are public, now the two proposals will probably clash.
I don’t see “get the small number of cops who create nearly all the problems out of the department” on this list. What’s up with that?
so a bunch of people are going to talk at cops about sensitivity and the cops are going to treat it like a joke because they think they know their job better than anyone that would presume to teach them a different way.
Cops believe they are at war with the citizenry, this initiative by the mayor will only just reinforce that mindset.
bunch of motion, no progress.