Monday, the City Council is set to hold its final vote on a 2021 budget for Seattle that will leave both #defundSPD and pro-police spending activists along with Mayor Jenny Durkan mostly unsatisfied. That is the nature of compromise.
In the city, this will bring a nearly 17% cut to the city’s 2021 policing budget along with important changes to reduce the size and power of the department by moving 911 and traffic enforcement operations outside of Seattle Police and spending more money on social, community, and BIPOC services and programs. Even amongst the loud cries of concern from business groups and pro-policing organizations like the Seattle Police Officer Guild, 2021 will actually see new SPD officers hired as the council is on its way to rejecting “No New Cops” proposals.
Looking forward, more progress in changing policing in Seattle could come from Olympia. Seattle-area state lawmakers say they are working on a suite of legislation that would look to improve police accountability across Washington through a more stringent officer decertification process, a public use of force database, and several other bills.
Local legislators, including Capitol Hill’s Sen. Jamie Pedersen, have been working since the summer and the protests over the police killing of George Floyd on the package that includes an overhaul of a rarely-used mechanism to decertify officers. The state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission decertifies 13 officers per year on average, according to a Seattle Times investigation. Across Washington, there are over 11,000 officers.
“When people violate that trust that we have placed with them, then we’re going to say ‘You no longer have the right to carry a badge and a gun on behalf of the taxpayers and enforce our laws,’” Pedersen, a Democrat who chairs the state senate’s Law and Justice Committee, said in a virtual panel last week.
The new legislation Pedersen is floating would remove roadblocks for the commission to take away officers’ certification, which he calls the “death penalty.” One of the biggest aspects of the bill would be changing the makeup of the commission, from one dominated by law enforcement officials to one with more citizen representation. Continue reading
