A Seattle City Council committee will look to take a step Tuesday toward making good on moves made last year to move operations out of the police department after mass protests in the city called for a vast defunding of law enforcement.
The city’s 2021 budget brought a cut of about a fifth of Seattle’s more than $400 million annual outlay in police spending along with changes to reduce the size and power of the department by moving 911 and traffic enforcement operations outside of the Seattle Police Department and spending more money on social, community, and BIPOC services and programs.
Those 911 and parking enforcement positions would officially go into the new Community Safety and Communications Center (CSCC) under a bill coming before the council’s Public Safety and Human Services Committee Tuesday morning. In total, about 260 positions would leave SPD — 140 from the 911 side and 120 on the parking enforcement side.
The 2021 budget, passed in November, originally said the CSCC would begin handling these functions by June 1.
The new center is seen as central to Seattle’s broader reimagining of policing, a conversation largely set off by protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and subsequent clashes with police.
While the Seattle Parking Enforcement Officers’ Guild (SPEOG) has pushed to join the CSCC, Mayor Jenny Durkan and other city leaders pushed for these employees to be funneled into the city’s Department of Transportation instead.
“SDOT has experience in managing large, frontline-focused work units with significant fleet and communications needs and a complex labor force working multiple shifts,” SDOT Director Sam Zimbabwe wrote in a letter to the council in November, before the budget was passed. “We would be able to effectively fold the Parking Enforcement Unit into the operations side of our house in a way that could provide the necessary support for the unit.”
Durkan and Zimbabwe have both noted the prior collaboration between parking enforcement officers and SDOT’s Curbside Management Team, which they say would allow for an easier transition out of SPD.
SPEOG union president Nanette Toyoshima, on the other hand, wrote in a letter to council last year that parking enforcement officers could take over some duties usually handled by sworn police officers, like responding to minor car crashes and enforcing red light violations, if they were in the new CSCC, according to PubliCola.
“The City would realize substantial savings in recruitment, the hiring process, training, deployment locations and vehicles, and gain an already trained and highly capable workforce,” Toyoshima wrote to the council in September.
The second piece the council will be examining Tuesday is the long-awaited move to cut a few million dollars from the SPD budget to even out the department’s overspending on overtime in the wake of the protests. The council originally called for cutting $5.4 million and putting that money toward the participatory budgeting process for the future of police spending.
In late March, however, the council decided to shrink that cut to about $3 million amid concerns over any budget cuts that could hamstring a department that lost a record 186 officers in 2020. Police Chief Adrian Diaz has said more reductions could lead to even longer 911 response times.
This is an issue the independent monitor of the police department, appointed as part of the federal oversight of SPD, has pointed out, as well, according to Crosscut.
This $5.4 million tug of war between SPD and the council began last year. The police department wanted money to cover what it had to spend on overtime during protests and the council agreed to dole out the cash but said they might look to cut that same amount from the following year’s budget. So the money the council wanted to cut this year would basically be paying back those extra overtime dollars and would be covered with money SPD is no longer spending given the attrition in the department, meaning fewer salaries to pay.
SPD instead said the council should route those salary savings back into the department.
“Without any additional resources or relief, the City must prepare for further, more drastic service impacts, such as increased response times, absence of police presence at City events (permitted and unpermitted events and demonstrations) and more instances of priority call handling,” SPD’s executive director of budget and finance Angela Socci wrote in a January memo to council staff.
The council acquiesced to these demands, voting 3-2 in committee in March to reduce the cut to just $3 million from $5.4, despite loud calls to retain the original from some advocates. Councilmembers Tammy Morales and Kshama Sawant were the two votes against the capitulation.
A month and a half later and the proposal is back in front of the same council committee.
Tuesday’s meeting, which is set to begin at 9:30 AM, will include 20 minutes for public comment.
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The time to Defund police is long overdue. We simply need to reappropriate city funds out of glorified ticketers who make 300k a year. And with many of them using that salary to assault politicians at the capitol and harass POCs and citizens over an umbrella they don’t like. Long overdue!! Defund now!
You do realize that the defund movement’s agenda/demands goes against the wishes of many (most?) prominent Black leaders in Seattle, right?
Yes…but still…does our police force need military style accessories? Defund the police to the point that staffing isn’t affective. Provide sensitivity training…like I said “have a plan.”
Wrong. Nikkita Oliver, Omari and Wyking Garrett (and all of Africatown), Jaidyn Grayson all support defunding or abolishment. What mythical leaders do you mean?
Victoria Beach was the most recent name I’ve heard in the last month or so. And, it’s worth mentioning that Omari Salisbury chastised your darling Sawant on several occasions over her actions over the past year, so don’t conflate sane people like him with Sawant and Oliver.
Salisbury is an unbiased journalist that never said he was anti-defunding. You’re making things up now.
And the leaders I mentioned have a way higher following than any of the ones you said.
Omari Garrett is not the same as Omari Salisbury. You are the one conflating here.
1) You’re right, I did mistakenly conflate the two. But, that’s only because I never would have guessed someone would actually look to an anti-sematic lunatic like Omari Garett for leadership.
2) If by “way higher following” you mean more followers on Twitter, then maybe you’re right. I tend to look to people with actual credentials, with a track record of leadership. Not Twitter shi*t-posters and failed mayoral candidates.
I won’t over-estimate you next time, Derek.
Omari Garrett participated in many sit-ins and helped save the Colman school for the black community. An inexcusable racist statement made one time during Ian’s provoking of an old man shouldn’t discount all the great things he’s done for the black community in Seattle. Umoja fest anyone? Come on, stop disrespecting Garrett and whittling him down to one moment. And his son is one of the best black businessmen and organizers in the city.
One moment… have you conveniently forgotten about Garrett assaulting Paul Schell with a bullhorn? When he was banned coming near two School board officials because he threatened them telling one who was Asian that the Wah Mee Massacre could occur again? or how about the time he told an Asian maintenance worker at the Key Bank building to go back to Asia?
black businessman = capitalist
Why are you discounting so many voices? Jaidyn Grayson is one of the top organizers to come out of CHOP/George Floyd protest era Seattle. She’s all about holding cops accountable and build a big following on it. And already tremendously respected in the black community. But I get it, you only like white-approved black people. I think you need to look in a mirror.
“When asked whether they want the police to spend more time, the same amount of time or less time than they currently do in their area, most Black Americans — 61% — want the police presence to remain the same. This is similar to the 67% of all U.S. adults preferring the status quo, including 71% of White Americans.
Meanwhile, nearly equal proportions of Black Americans say they would like the police to spend more time in their area (20%) as say they’d like them to spend less time there (19%).”
But who cares right, whatever the white kids from the suburbs says, goes.
That poll was already disproven on Reddit, please spare it Karen
Really? Parking enforcement officers were at the Capitol, and they’re making 300k? You’re not just regurgitating the factless propaganda you hear, you’re vomiting it.
According to Glassdoor, “police officer” pay in Seattle ranges from $68k – $110k. I’m pretty sure the average for parking enforcement is going to be lower still, on average.
Yes defund the police…but let’s also be proactive and have a plan in place to meet our community’s needs and to provide appropriate services. This can’t be something that gets processed to death while in the meantime things slide into chaos and disarray. Once again…YES, defund the police…but let’s be proactive rather than reactive by having a plan.
Tell me, who will you call when your house is being broken into?
We are lucky to live in a reasonably low-crime country and city, but that can change quickly. Defunding the police and making their response times slower will encourage the rich to get more private security and leave the poor less protected.
The last thing we should want are more people feeling like they need to own a weapon to protect themselves (or pay a poorly-trained private security force to have them). But that’s where we’re heading if crime continues to rise and our cops are hamstrung.
BTW, I’m not suggesting we don’t get rid of all the _bad_ cops, but saying they’re all bad is unproductive.
You call upon yourself. What you gonna do, wait two hours for cops? That’s how long it’s always taken…since 60s.
so what happens if there’s an actual issue? Like a SWAT issue or gang issues? Considering the wait times and how shit the response is from the already strained cops, the hobos they hire for “Downtown Ambassadors” at that shitty Uplift NW in downtown Seattle place have no training so how will they stop anything or help? The ambassadors have to get food from the same place homeless people do, you can go there any day and see them ride through and sit and eat. So that’s where our tax money goes?
Fun Fact: if a car ding happens and they send an ambassador, insurance companies still make you wait for a cop to come….
There’s a better way to do this, like bring back the NAV team and hire more social workers to get police training, and get officers to train with social workers to learn how to interact w/ people instead of gutting the police
ffs people.
This is just so funny. Moving the 911 and parking enforcement budget lines and reporting structures may or may not be the right thing to do, but it has nothing to do with police accountability for violence.
This is a bureaucratic rearranging of the deck chairs that will accomplish very little. Is this really what activists are pushing for??? 8 Can’t Wait was centrist selling out, but reorganizing department functions is cutting edge deep change? Give me a break.
I mean, I guess I should be happy it doesn’t endanger anyone further. But it also won’t make anyone safer, so there’s that.
Even has someone who opposes police defunding I’m offended by this bureaucratic non-maneuver.
If this counts as “defunding” you could “defund” it even more if you transferred ownership of every SPD vehicle to the Seattle Center and increased its budget commensurately, then had the Seattle Center lease them all back to the SPD for a $1/year fee. Voila, you’ve just “defunded” $50 million and increased spending on the Seattle Center!
Anybody who is not a teenager and/or doesn’t have their head up their a-s knows Seattle’s police were underfunded going into 2020– their budget should be expanded, and has not kept pace with population growth over the last decade. I’m all for re-thinking responses to non-violent incidents, and increasing funding for social services outreach in lieu of cops, but the simple fact is that SPD’s resources should be enhanced, not plundered so Lorena Gonzales can placate the far-left Twitter lunatics.
The entire defund conversation is still a game of whack-a-mole. It wasn’t long ago when cities like Seattle wanted cops from the communities they served, instead of ones driving in from the suburbs. Now the Utopians think community “police” are soothsayers ready to defuse conflicts before they begin. That is until the first Kalashnikov shows up. Then the “good” paramilitary has to confront the “bad” paramilitary and Seattle is no different than Tijuana or Kabul. Reform the f@ck out of SPD, but please don’t assume this city (or any city) can “police” itself. That’s straight up naive.
We saw this happen last year in CHOP. The police left, the protesters had their own armed vigilantes patrolling the area and two young black men ended up shot and killed, one of them by the armed patrol. They were more violent and more corrupt than the police. Given the choice, I want police and so do most sane, rational people who aren’t extremists.
Protesters didn’t support those armed. Have you listened to actual CHOP leaders (Grayson types?) or only what KOMO reports? People cannot operate in good faith on these comments at all lmao
If police should take responsibility for their bad apples, why shouldn’t the protestors?
Are my tax payer dollars giving them a six figure salary? No? Then no, ping me when the cops actually start taking accountability and my tax payer dollars don’t go towards law suits.
The thing is that anarchistic utopian social experiments don’t have leaders or leadership with any actual power to do squat – anyone can claim to speak for the group, but no one really does- it’s an anarchy after all, so it matters not that some of the people at CHOP may not have wanted the self proclaimed armed CHOP security there or not. What matters is that they had zero way of stopping the whole thing from devolving into the post apocalyptic shit show that happened in a matter of days and people died.
Correct. Thank you.
People died outside of CHOP before during and after. What’s your point?
I live in the CHOP area bro. I experienced all first-hand.
Whoever is for this, I hope you never have to call 911.