In 2011 the Department of Justice (DOJ) conducted an investigation into the use of excessive force, particularly against people of color, by the Seattle Police Department (SPD). They found “a pattern of practice of constitutional violations regarding the use of force that result from structural problems as well as serious concerns about biased policing.” As a result, in 2012 the DOJ and the City of Seattle entered a settlement agreement, or Consent Decree, which requires the City to implement required improvements and corrections to SPD policies, practices, and training. To date Seattle has not met the requirements and the SPD is still under Consent Decree.

In May 2017, Seattle City Council unanimously passed a Police Accountability Ordinance that was heralded as historic and groundbreaking as part of efforts to achieve compliance with the 2012 Consent Decree. The legislation overhauled the City’s police accountability system, but required collective bargaining with Seattle’s two police unions to take full effect.

The 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance established the current SPD accountability system, made up of the Community Police Commission (CPC), the Office of Inspector General (OIG), and the Office of Police Accountability (OPA).

The Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract is the collective bargaining agreement between the City of Seattle and SPOG, the police union representing the officers and sergeants of the Seattle Police Department. This negotiated agreement governs wages, hours, working conditions, and has also included provisions affecting police officer discipline and accountability. The most recent contract expired at the end of 2020.

The SPD budget constitutes nearly 25% of the City’s General Fund, making it the largest line item in the City’s flexible, taxpayer-derived funding. The SPD budget is larger than 36 other City departments and more than the bottom 25 City departments combined, demonstrating that Seattle prioritizes policing above all else. The call to “Defund” and “Re-invest” looks to shift money from policing which is largely reactive and unable to fix all societal ills, to proven solutions that proactively address the root causes of the issues the City faces.

At the end of 2020, the Seattle City Council allocated $30m to research and implement a participatory budgeting process in Seattle, which is expected to take place in 2022. In participatory budgeting, citizens are directly involved in the process of deciding how public money is spent. The Black Brilliance Research Project (BBRP) was contracted to do qualitative research in Seattle about the public safety and community health priorities of Seattle residents.

A new vision of public safety includes divesting monies from SPD’s bloated budget to community services and resources that more effectively address mental illness, homelessness, substance use disorder, et al, by providing an unarmed intervention with skilled and experienced professionals to address the situation more appropriately than a confrontation with police and/or arrest.

During the 2020 Summer of Protest SPD responded to the mostly peaceful crowd with violence. This reaction resulted in thousands of complaints to the Office of Police Accountability against SPD. Many of these complaints were rooted in the crowd control techniques used by SPD, which included blast balls, flash bangs, kettling and tear gas. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. SPD has a history of abusing crowd control weapons. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of Black Lives Matter against SPD’s indiscriminate use of crowd control weapons.

The Mayor is the Chief Executive of the City and implements legislation passed by the City Council. The Mayor proposes a budget to the City Council each year with their vision of what priorities to fund and support. The Mayor also has hiring authority over the Chief of Police and takes part in setting bargaining parameters with the City’s police guild and association.

The City Council creates the City budget. This authority means that they make decisions about how much money is allocated to which City programs, including SPD and community safety, e.g., alternate crisis response, mental health, and housing. The budget is on a 2 year cycle and was recently voted on for 2021.

The City Attorney is in effect the City’s legal counsel. Their role and responsibilities are to advise the City authorities and officers in all legal matters pertaining to the business of the City and shall approve all ordinances as to form. This authority would include civil claims against the City, including those against SPD.