Recruit Class 872 being sworn in (Image: SPD)
Despite complaints that the vote is being rushed without adequate public debate, the Seattle City Council is set to approve a new deal Tuesday afternoon with the city’s cops that will bring big raises, some new oversight, and more police work moved to “civilian resources.”
The meeting of the full council is set for 2 PM and includes a mandated opportunity for up to 20 minutes of public comment. Expect there to be demands for much more.
District 2’s Tammy Morales has called for the vote to be delayed.
“This contract with SPOG is an incredibly important vote about the future of police accountability and civilian public safety alternatives in Seattle,” Morales said in a statement. “The community deserves a chance to make their voice heard before we vote on it. We shouldn’t be rushing this.”
Council president and citywide representative Sara Nelson said this week the vote cannot be delayed, adding that it is urgent the city puts a new deal in place that she hopes will begin to address the city’s dwindling ranks of sworn officers.
Critics and Morales say the tentative agreement doesn’t address needed accountability reform at the department and fails to implement reforms already approved five years ago. Morales said the vote coming “at a time when we have not had resolution on several high-profile cases of police misconduct” also needs to be addressed.
“We need a transparent process. All information regarding long-awaited police accountability decisions should be made public ahead of the vote,” Morales said.
CHS reported here on the tentative agreement between the city and the Seattle Police Officers Guild shaped to meet major salary increases that Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief Adrian Diaz say are necessary to help grow the Seattle Police Department’s ranks. The agreement also adds increased some new oversight and accountability, and opens the door for City Hall to move more of its work around public safety like automated traffic tickets and property damage to teams outside the department.
The deal retroactively covers 2021, 2022, and 2023 with a series of raises that will give officers an immediate 23% boost in pay. The Harrell administration said negotiations for 2024 “are ongoing with the assistance of a mediator appointed by the Public Employment Relations Commission” and suggested more reform measures “proposed by the City based on input from community partners and the federal judge overseeing the City’s Consent Decree with the Department of Justice” will be included in the final agreement.
The deal will mean nearly $60 million more spending than planned in retroactive payouts this year, the city says. That will add to the city’s ballooning budget which is already facing a growing $230 million-plus budget hole.
The tentative agreement includes new and increased accountability measures including requiring an arbitrator in discipline appeals, improving timelines for officer misconduct investigations, eliminating the 5-day notice currently required in some serious misconduct investigation, and adding two additional civilian investigators in the Office of Police Accountability.
The new agreement will also further open the city’s ability to move work and public safety assistance currently restricted to the police force to “use civilian resources,” Harrell’s office said.
In September, CHS reported on the launch of Seattle’s Community Assisted Response and Engagement department hoped to provide better, more direct response to issues around homelessness, addiction, and mental illness while allowing police to focus on more serious crimes.
The deal comes as the city is moving out from under years of federal oversight. Last year, SPD ended 12 years of federal controls and oversight after a civil rights investigation found evidence of excessive force and biased policing at the department. A 2023 report showed SPD’s use of force has dropped and that officers were reporting fewer total incidents — but not for “Black people, Hispanic / Latino people, and other racial minorities.”
The vote also arrives amid increasing calls for more to be done to address public safety across the city. Neighborhood business groups are asking for more public safety help including the Pike/Pine and Broadway Safety Coalition which is asking the city to do more to address drug dealing and street disorder in the areas around Cal Anderson and the Broadway/Pike QFC.
We’ve asked District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth for her position on the tentative agreement but have not heard back. In community public safety meetings in recent months and on the campaign trail, Hollingsworth has called for more to be done to increase pay and improve the working environment for Seattle cops while also increasing civilian oversight of the department.
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Hopefully this helps the city hire more officers to dig out of the hole created by the 2020 riots and hysteria. Police officers take on a lot of risk and put up with a lot of toxicity from anti-police leftists in this city so we need to pay them well or no one is going to serve in these essential jobs.
You could have a career writing right wing propaganda for the IDF
Um…the hole wasn’t created by the 2020 riots. The police budget has already increased 6% since 2019*, and police weren’t fired for their participation in The Gassing of Capitol Hill(TM).
The reason there’s a police staffing crisis is due to cops being anti-vaxxers and quitting en masse after the city put in a vaccine requirement.
Additionally, the contract doesn’t put the accountability measures signed into law in 2017.
* https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/05/city-council-gets-its-audit-showing-inflation-wages-at-center-of-seattles-ballooning-budget/
Exactly right! Urgent action is needed to increase salaries to compete with nearby jurisdictions, and to add many more officers to decrease the deficit of some 500 officers compared to a few years ago.
If even more accountability measures are needed, that can still be done at a later date.
Here’s a radical idea… Maybe SPD should try to not disproportionately harass, arrest, and use excessive force against racial/ethnic minorities. Imagine a job where you were under federal oversight for being so bad at it, not improving at some of those primary issues that were pointed out, performing work slow downs if anyone even starts to complain, and then somehow still gets a 23% raise!!! This is some mafia protection racket BS and it’s wild to me how many people just see it as just the way things must be…
An extra $60 million for cops, while SPS is closing 20 elementary schools.
SPS is completely unrelated to this. If you have kids in school attend an SPS meeting and you’ll understand why they need to close schools. They are a mess.
The only mess is the meager budget SPS is forced to deal with, which is directly caused by the incompetent centrists and right-wingers on city council passing unnecessary budget increases for SPD. We could also increase our tax base by taxing the richest citizens more and stop using any looming budget deficit as a cudgel against progress.
‘Let’s talk’ just doesn’t understand how city government works…
There was not one single public comment that supported the contract. Still, the only councilmember that asked for more time or voted against the contract was Councilmember Morales.
Joy Hollingsworth sat back and said nothing for the whole meeting. She simply voted to confirm a contract that even the supporters acknowledged was a shitty contract.
This city council is the absolute worst council and it needs to be voted out before even more damage is done to this city.
Fucking travesty.
Good for this council. Morales helped create the problem and she wants to keep creating chaos. This contract has been in negotiations for 6 years and everyone is up in arms that it is “suddenly” passed.
How did she help create a problem caused by cops leaving en masse because they’re too dense to understand vaccine science? They’re babies who cried until they got fed, at the expense of everyone else in this city. Homelessness will increase and you will suffer from this too.
It’s not accurate to claim that all of those exiting cops did so because of the vaccine requirement. Certainly some did for that reason, but there have been other factors too, such as the constant disrespect that they get from members of Seattle’s leftist minority, and the salaries that have been below that of nearby jurisdictions.
Citation and statistics needed.
“Your performance reviews are resoundingly, repeatedly negative. Your track record is worse this year than last. You flagrantly disdain those you’re intended to serve. Here’s a raise.”
In what other line of work does this reverse-logic exist?? Cops are a scam.
Additionally, there were 3 speakers who spoke in support of the repeal of the Pay Up act. Later, they were speaking with attorneys from Door Dash in City Hall. They got very cagey when I was eavesdropping on the conversation they put on speakerphone.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the city is being astroturfed.
Wow. “SeattleGeek, j z, Not Suprised,” et. al.Yes, you have a point! And: Get off the internet, get out more, roll up your sleeves & lean in. What have you done lately to improve the real situation on the ground in Seattle besides comment with your awesome expertise here? Have you been a cop? Have you been an elected commissioner? Have you been any kind of a public servant and understood what those people are wrestling with? Again, each of you makes a point – but you offer no solutions. You could, but that takes actual work. You are just whining. Prostitution is not the world’s oldest profession – being a critic is. It’s complaining about a situation while not participating or doing anything to improve the situation. Thanks for sharing your opinion but doing absolutely besides that. The rest of us will take your impressive comments seriously and act on them, starting tomorrow at 6am. Be well!
Here’s a solution: cut the SPD budget, cut the SPD’s wages, move SPD to a salaried position instead of hourly so we stop wasting so much goddamned money on overtime, and stop giving the SPD raises without accountability. If SPOG can’t agree to accountability tactics, then SPD shouldn’t get raises. It’s that simple.
Take that savings and invest in the underfunded CARE budget, invest in Schools, invest in after school programs, or invest in affordable housing.
I love when people decide not to even engage with the topic in the comment (which was about astroturfing public comments for the anti-Pay Up bill) and just decide to launch right into a flame war.
Have the day that you deserve.
DAMN! And that’s coming from THE Andrew David — professional online “critics” critic.
The projection is incredible here.
I wonder how many of these new cops would storm the capitol if given the chance? https://www.kuow.org/stories/police-departments-search-for-political-extremism-in-ranks-following-capitol-riot
Answer: Which ever ones can be identified with “cop skull phrenology”
You know, when their head is so fat, their Oakley sunglasses leave indents above their ears, and the back of their neck looks like a pack of hotdogs. It’s the one actually true fact from the fake science of phrenology.
But if I had to quantify, I’d say 90%.
As someone who voted for Joy Hollingsworth this is disappointing. To the best of my knowledge, the public is not hearing why more accountability wasn’t pushed for. Especially if the chief, who himself is under investigation, has the final word regarding misconduct. Happy to be corrected by someone following this more intensely than myself.
At the meeting, they were all saying “well, we gotta take what we can get.” They kept saying something about stuff they can’t legally talk about forcing their hand, but that seemed less like an actual reason and more like an easy out.
Rob Saka, who ran on a campaign of Justice Reform over in West Seattle, was positively giddy over this contract. He repeated the mantra that the whole council was repeating this was an “interim” contract – meaning that it only covers years 2021, 2022, and 2023, but not 2024.
If I had to guess by reading between the lines, I would guess that SPOG threatened a strike (or worse) if it didn’t pass. Or, they were bribed to vote to affirm it through their donors – https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/11/04/campaign-cash-pours-in-for-centrist-seattle-candidates/ . But, that’s pure conjecture on my part and is in no way shape or form to be taken as gospel.
I think we should be doing a records requests for any and all electronic communication that mentions police, SPOG, or contract from the city councilmembers and Mayor Harrell.