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The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee Tuesday will hear details of a 2023 report on the Seattle Police Department’s use of force that shows police have been reporting fewer total incidents while “the use of force increased with Black people, Hispanic / Latino people, and other racial minorities,” according to a council brief on the session.
The Seattle Office of Inspector General report (PDF) covers a three-year period — 2021, 2022, and 2023 — and documents a shift that recorded some of the overall “lowest use of force since 2015” for the department even as incidents reported involving Black and Hispanic/Latino people jumped.
The report also shows that Black people in Seattle are disproportionately more likely to have a cop point a gun at them. “Black subjects are still most likely to be subject to pointing of a firearm, despite not being subjects of force as frequently as white or unknown race persons,” Tuesday’s presentation reads.
The report comes as the public safety committee chaired by downtown representative Robert Kettle is awaiting the debate on approving new labor agreements with Seattle’s 1,200-member police union.
CHS reported here on efforts to strengthen accountability priorities in the negotiations included adding a representative from the Community Police Commission to the bargaining process.
Advocates have called for reform amid waves of Office of Police Accountability actions that have resulted in reprimands and training but few instances of demotions or terminations. Also powering the call for reform are findings from analysis of the SPD response to the 2020 protests that centered on a lack of accountability over ineffective and irresponsible crowd control strategies and communication failures by the department’s leaders.
The report also documents the final years of Seattle’s policing under a federal consent decree. 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.
Meanwhile, the city continues to struggle to hire and keep enough cops. Thursday afternoon, the council’s Governance, Accountability & Economic Development Committee will consider legislation hoped to improve the recruitment and retention of police officers by creating a new position “to be more responsive to SPD applicants,” according to a council brief on the proposal. The proposed legislation would roll out a simplified test for applicants and create a recruitment and retention office in SPD “that would be responsible for increasing the number of sworn officers.”
CHS reported here on federal recommendations handed down to help SPD boost its ranks. The federal report attributes Seattle’s police staffing issues to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shifting labor market, officer safety concerns, and community response to issues like use of force and biased policing.
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