By Erica C. Barnett

The new attitude of the city council’s public safety committee, headed by former Queen Anne Community council public safety chair Bob Kettle, was evident from the first slide of Councilmember Kettle’s presentation on the scope of the committee, titled “Public Safety Vision.” It read: “We envision a future where families feel safe sending their children on the bus to school, businesses can operate without paying for private security, and the city can respond in a timely and appropriate manner to people experiencing acute crises.”

The implication—that Seattle is so dangerous that businesses need security to operate, buses are so unsafe that kids can’t take them to school, and police are so understaffed they can no longer respond swiftly to crises—went unquestioned throughout the two-and-a-half hour meeting. Instead, council members lavished praise on the police department, asked what they could do personally to “improve officer morale,” and assured Police Chief Adrian Diaz, who talked at length about the “trauma” police have experienced “after George Floyd,” that they would—as Councilmember Cathy Moore put it—”allow police to police.”

“I think we’ve had a lot of micromanaging in the prior councils,” Moore said. “I think there was a sense among rank and file that we are constantly micromanaging and that we’ve taken their power away to police.” Additionally, Moore said, she wanted to “have [a] hard conversation about the jail space” that the city is paying for, but not using, “because we do need to be able to send a message that people are going to be held accountable. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to run them through the system and create long records for them, but you need a place to go police need to feel like the work that they’re doing matters.”

Other council members emphasized how much friendlier the committee would be toward police. “Doesn’t this feel different?” Council President Sara Nelson asked Diaz, smiling broadly, before diving into questions about how the council could support the police department.

During her two years on the council, Nelson has advocated to keep vacant police positions open and funded, and to provide bonuses of up to $25,000 for new police hires. The previous chair of the public safety committee, 27-year City Hall veteran Lisa Herbold, also supported police hiring, but she also focused on accountability, frequently requiring the police department to report back to her committee on the results of initiatives the council agreed to fund.

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Without regular reports on things like SPD’s use of overtime, the efficacy of the overdose response program Health 99, and the cost to staff up the new CARE Department to take over some police calls (to name just three reports that will be required this year thanks to Herbold’s budget “meddling”), the council would have significantly less information to help it judge the job police are doing. Which, perhaps, is precisely the point.

As public safety chair, Kettle has transferred his key campaign message—that Seattle has a “culture of permissiveness” that has allowed crime to flourish—directly into the mission of his committee, whose official mission statement previously highlighted police accountability, alternatives to arrest and jail, and “programs to reduce the public’s involvement with law enforcement and decrease involvement with the Criminal Legal System.” Now, the mission can be summarized in a single slide, which defines a “permissive environment” as “the underlying factors behind crime tied to the lack of deterring structures that allow people to endanger themselves and our city.

The slide includes six “pillars of public safety.” “Public health” appears fifth, after “graffiti remediation.” Police reform, alternatives to arrest and prosecution, and human services appear nowhere on the list.