The Seattle Police Department hopes a new recruitment plan funded in the recently passed city budget will help rebuild the agency's ranks.
Despite their current recruiting efforts, SPD is hiring fewer officers than originally projected in 2022, while more officers are leaving the department than anticipated, according to staffing data.
As of the end of October, the department had only hired 50 officers this year, according to numbers provided to KOMO by Seattle Police. The department's goal was to hire 125 officers by the end of 2022.
131 officers have left the department this year, which is above the 94 that the department projected. 13 recruits or student officers also separated from the department, according to SPD.
“It’s no longer theoretical what happens when hundreds of officers leave a police department, we now see the reality of that. We know a lot of people are frustrated when they call 911. They are waiting for the police, they know that there’s a staffing shortage,” Seattle City Councilmember Alex Pedersen told KOMO News.
Pedersen joined councilmember Sara Nelson in voting not to approve the city’s budget earlier this week over concerns that it didn’t do enough for public safety.
“This is my constituents top concern," Nelson said.
The Seattle City Council also this week voted to eliminate 80 unfilled positions from the Seattle Police Department and re-allocate the money in the city budget.
“I think it is wrong to cap the number of police officers when we are desperately trying to build back staffing levels. That money was already re-appropriated and it was unnecessary to eliminate those positions," Nelson said. “I don’t see why we would do this given the public safety crisis we are seeing right now.”
Other council members who voted to approve the budget pointed out that the department is already failing to meet hiring goals, so eliminating the 80 positions would have no impact on the city’s actual ability to hire cops.
“Some media folks are not putting this in context, they are making it sound like there are 200 jobs out there and we are 'defunding' and I know that’s the elephant in the room here, and I don’t believe that’s what’s happening. We have 200 positions out there - we can’t hire 120, they haven’t hired 120, we want them to hire 120,” Council president Debora Juarez said at a November budget hearing.
The new budget expands the department's recruitment efforts, including financial incentives for new hires and lateral transfers.
“SPD’s hiring plan has been fully funded again in this budget. I think it’s important for us to collectively signal that the departments plan is to hire 125 officers and this council is fully funding that,” Councilmember Lisa Herbold said.
With or without the 80 positions in question, a majority of council members acknowledged the city’s immediate need for more police officers.
“Year after year, with the loss of 400 officers, with the crime rates up, with the response times up it was time to stand up stronger for public safety in this budget. We want to restore all the positions we lost,” Pedersen said.
Mayor Bruce Harrell did not get everything on his public safety budget wish list either. His office provided the following statement to KOMO News in response to an inquiry about police funding:
Mayor Harrell proposed a budget that centered public safety because that’s the City’s core Charter responsibility and it’s what we’ve heard from the public. While many of those investments were included in the balancing package or added back in the amendment process, items like acoustic gunfire locator system technology, enhancements for graffiti efforts, and future SPD officer positions were left out. We recognize the budget is a collaborative process and the final budget will reflect Councilmembers’ priorities. While this is not a perfect budget, it gives us something to build upon. The mayor’s job is to implement the budget and to keep people safe, and we'll continue advocating for these solutions in future budget deliberations.