Imagine a sports team with twice as many players on the roster as rivals, but the players have to spend half their time cleaning lockers and laundering uniforms. The best athletes who are most eager to win on the field will be seen playing elsewhere.
It’s similar to the situation that puts the Seattle Police Guild contract at risk as the city tries to recruit police officers who are most committed to reducing serious crime through proactive police work.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s team rightly stated that “increasing the types of public safety duties of civilians can respond to reducing the workload on police officers and increasing the officers’ time to focus on the types of crimes that can be done.” And it’s true that the new contract “expands the City’s ability to use civilian resources to assist public safety services.”
But the administration has got the goal post wrong. Seattle is not competing with the “Ghost of Seattle Past” to recruit the best officials. It competes with departments in other cities. And we are friends.
For example: The contract limits the department’s ability to release calls from sworn officers to civilians for about 18 types of calls. By comparison, the Los Angeles Police officers’ union has proposed 28 types of calls for alternative responses. Here’s what the union director had to say about the reason: “Police officers are not psychologists. We are not psychiatrists. We are not mental health experts. We are not social workers, doctors, nurses or waste management experts … I’m sure many people think that we should be everything , but no. We need to focus on responding to emergencies, saving lives (and) property, and of course involving community policing.
The contract also limits when civilians can conduct health checks on mentally ill people. response to the civil crisis other regions lags Seattle. To understand the risks posed, here’s what officials in Denver said about the city’s successful program, in a report by NYU’s School Legal Policing Project:
“All of us in the police force, you know, most of us get this job to catch bad people, to arrest bad people, to keep our community safe. And going to someone who’s having a mental health episode, standing naked on the street, like, is that person a person bad? I didn’t go into this project to deal with naked men because it caused a disturbance.
Critically, the contract does not allow civilians to take crime reports after the fact and investigate non-injury accidents as is allowed in San Jose, California, or Denver (among others). According to the department’s SeaStat dashboard, 88% of serious crimes by 2023 will be burglary, robbery/theft, or motor vehicle theft, most of which are reported after the fact when the “bad guys” are long gone.
Only sworn officers are trained and equipped to deal with the bad guys if necessary. It makes him uniquely able to prevent and worry.
But unlike proactive foot patrols and targeted investigations (think fugitive task forces or gang units), taking reports of stolen bikes, issuing written warnings to drivers who neglect to cause fender-benders or check their welfare. the neighbor wastes that potential.
Optimizing time for proactive police work is a win-win for officers and communities. In Seattle, funding for vacant sworn officer positions that the department knows won’t be filled for years — if at all — can hire another role at a (conservative) ratio of three full-time equivalents for every two officers.
Instead of a long slog at the expense of other departments during a national police shortage, Seattle can immediately reduce officer workloads and shift their time to proactive policing.
The bad guys don’t want it, but everyone in Seattle has to.
The city is still negotiating contract terms for 2024. The Mayor and City Council should make that a top priority.
