The Seattle Police Department will not see a 50 percent budget cut this year following a Wednesday vote by the Seattle City Council, despite seeing a number of cuts across the board.
A proposal by Seattle City Council member and Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant sought to immediately cut $54 million from the Seattle police budget and another $34 million for affordable housing.
The proposal saw seven council members voting against, with Sawant being the sole vote in favor. Another council member abstained.
The department’s proposed 2020 budget is over $400 million total.
A number of other police budget cuts were still passed by the council on Wednesday, including laying off 100 police officers this year.
“The Council is a co-equal branch of government to the Mayor,” Seattle City Council member Tammy J. Morales said in a statement. “It is our job to make these public safety decisions, specifically the city’s investments through our budget process. To hand these duties off to the executive branch would be irresponsible.”
In a vote of 6-3, city council members also cut police executive pay for the rest of the year and directed nearly half a million dollars to community services. The cut applies to Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best and senior department deputies.
In addition, the city council voted to defund the city’s Navigation Team in a narrow 5-4 decision, redirecting money to nonprofit service providers. The team consisted of police officers and city employees tasked with removing homeless camps and telling homeless individuals to seek housing.
The city council unanimously voted to add $4 million to the Human Services Department for a community safety program substituting “traditional policing.”
Additional cuts included putting $36,000 from the police department’s remaining 2020 budget towards implicit bias training.
Sawant fired back at her Democratic colleagues on Wednesday for not going far enough.
“The Democrats’ vote today shows that they are not prepared to fight for the interests of working people, especially communities of color,” Sawant said in a statement. “They are instead only willing to make minor shifts to the status quo, which fundamentally seeks to maintain the police as a tool of the business and political elites to repress working people, especially those in marginalized communities.”
Data from a 2019 SPD report showed a disparity in the use of force against Black subjects.
Black men made up 32 percent of cases involving men, up from 25 percent from 2018. Black women made up 22 percent of incidents in cases involving women, up from 5 percent in 2017. Black residents made up 7 percent of Seattle’s population in 2019, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report.
Durkan and Best railed against city council members during a press conference on Tuesday for making “hasty” decisions, urging the council to hold off on budget negotiations until next year.
“We should make right decisions,” Durkan said. “That doesn’t mean slow; it just means thoughtful.
Best once again slammed the council during the conference for making “reckless” proposals without input from the Seattle Police Department.
“But what is problematic is these are approaches without any clarity on how they will become reality,” Best said. “The push from Council and some of our community is to do these large-scale changes in 2020 with no practical plan for community safety. And I believe wholeheartedly that is completely reckless.”
Durkan and Best have argued a city Public Safety Civil Service Commission rule mandates that no-cause layoffs be issued based on length of service. Mass layoffs, they said, would hit officers of color hardest, many of whom are newest to the department.
The rule does allow for the city to waive such protocol should circumstances dictate “the purposes of the Charter and ordinances of The City of Seattle would be better served.”
The department currently employs 1,433 sworn officers and 631 additional employees.
President of the Seattle Police Officers Guild Mike Solan has claimed defunding the department will allow for higher crime rates. The guild was expelled from King County’s biggest labor organization earlier this year.
A live-telephone survey of 500 Seattle residents conducted by EMC Research from July found that 53 percent somewhat or strongly supported defunding the Seattle police department by 50 percent.
The survey also found that 61 percent expressed trust in Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best. Just 49 percent said they trusted Durkan. Seattle’s “Defund the Police Movement” and the Seattle City Council were tied at 47 percent while 42 percent said they trusted the Seattle Police Department.
The poll’s overall reported margin of error was 4.4 percentage points.
Durkan is facing a potential recall election in the fall should a petition advance to the ballot.
Seattle police are contending with a growing number of lawsuits from activists and legal observers who have accused officers of using indiscriminate force on peaceful demonstrations.
Final votes by the city council on Wednesday’s cuts are slated for Monday.
