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Like many of you, I have watched with dismay as the SPD has failed to demonstrate restraint or exercise the de-escalation principles that should be the hallmark of a truly reformed law enforcement department.
The culture change we are pushing for, and have been since 2010, has failed to materialize. The City Council has taken the initial votes to begin the process of transforming how the City of Seattle ensures community safety for everyone, particularly our BIPOC communities.
Meanwhile, the Mayor insists on sowing seeds of fear, intimidation and misinformation from a bully pulpit, further dividing our community in a time of unprecedented crisis. All the while, she calls for unity.
Claims that acts of violence, particularly rape, will go unanswered under the Council’s plan are irresponsible. And if this were true, the accountability for that outcome would be squarely on the shoulders of the SPD.
I recently received a letter signed by over 600 advocates and survivors of sexual violence stating they want investments for community-based healing and solutions, like housing options and living wages.
These are things that help domestic violence and sexual assault survivors heal and rebuild after their trauma.
Furthermore, in this letter, they reject being used as justification of a policing model that FURTHER traumatizes people when they are most vulnerable.
Furthermore, in this letter, they reject being used as justification of a policing model that FURTHER traumatizes people when they are most vulnerable.
It is time for a change.
First, we as a Council have committed to listening to, not dictating to, community.
First, we as a Council have committed to listening to, not dictating to, community.
This is in direct response to the calls of communities MOST impacted by police brutality: The people who should be central to any and all changes brought forward in the coming days and weeks. The Black Community.
We are putting money back into community, where it belongs.
The Council also proposes to invest $14 million in the scaling up of community-based violence prevention models and the expansion of direct-service interventions (housing, diversion programs, sex worker mutual aide programs) to ensure they are prepared for the journey ahead.
We have seen these programs work, when we give them the resources they need TO work. We have done this but as only check-mark investments.
Instead of buying bullets, violence and intimidation, we are investing in peace and restoration of communities ravaged by generations of racism.
We are going to cut “gun and badge” positions. It’s no secret that 82% of SPD’s budget is personnel. There is no way to right size the SPD budget without this step.
We, in this effort, want to center our strategies on making sure the Chief and Executive are empowered to look at officers with histories of misconduct and the elimination of specialty units.
Instead the Mayor says Council would lay off diverse recruits. This is simply untrue. Her position is disappointing but not surprising.
It WILL be harder, and it will mean taking on the Seattle Police Officers Guild at the bargaining table, but it will not impossible for out of order layoffs.
The majority of people in Seattle believe we can - and must - do better. I spent years working on, well over a decade, and believing in, police reform, I fundamentally believed reform was possible.
but what we saw earlier this summer and what we’re seeing across the country has reframed my perspective on that point.
You cannot reform something that is fundamentally broken.
Despite these many differences in ideologies and values, we remain open to working with the Executive. We are standing at the ready to work with the Mayor and Chief Best to can show leadership by finding a pathway forward
that will uproot the harmful systems that have continued to oppress Black and Indigenous communities, and lay the foundation for new systems to be built that center the humanity, healing, and growth of BIPOC communities.
