By Erica C. Barnett
The most notable thing about the tentative contract between the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild and the city of Seattle is how little it has changed since the most recent contract, signed in 2018; that contract superseded key provisions of a police-accountability ordinance adopted and signed into law in 2017. The proposal, which (as PubliCola reported exclusively on Tuesday) includes retroactive wage increases of 23 percent, includes almost none of the accountability measures from the 2017 ordinance, which was, at the time, considered a baseline for future contracts, not a goal to work toward in a piecemeal fashion in future years.
The Seattle Police Officers Guild posted the contract, which Mayor Bruce Harrell’s labor relations team negotiated with the police union, on Friday morning, then removed the document after PubliCola posted it exclusively on X. The contract, and an accompanying summary, were replaced by images of SPOG President Mike Solan and the message, “Thank you for your support.”
The contract includes some gestures at reform, though it makes none of the major changes demanded by police accountability advocates back in 2018. For example, the contract removes a requirement that the Office of Police Accountability, which investigates police misconduct allegations, notify an officer within five business days that they are under investigation for misconduct. It also clarifies that when an officer takes a discipline decision made by the police chief to an outside arbitrator, the arbitrator is supposed to give “deference” to the chief’s decision.
Some of the changes that were included in the 2017 law, but are still not incorporated into the police contract seven years later, include:
The elimination of arbitration as an option when officers disagree with a disciplinary decision. Arbitration, conducted by randomly chosen attorneys from across the country, often results in a reversal of discipline, undermining both OPA and the police chief.
Giving the Office of Police Accountability subpoena power in investigations and more say in criminal investigations into officer misconduct. Under the tentative contract, OPA will continue to have no authority to conduct investigations into possible criminal activity by officers—the most serious allegations; instead, SPD will continue to conduct criminal investigations into its own officers without oversight from the accountability office.
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The “purpose” section of the contract, which outlines the reasons for the contract between the city and the police guild, includes no references to accountability; instead, the section refers to pay and working conditions for officers without any reference to what the public gets in return.
Officers can still present “new” evidence after the OPA has determined that they committed misconduct and recommended appropriate discipline, even if they were aware the evidence existed earlier but did not disclose it.
Firing an officer over misconduct still requires a vaguely defined “elevated standard of review”—as opposed to the lower “preponderance of the evidence” standard— if being fired would be “stigmatizing” and make it hard for a former SPD officer to get a job as a police officer elsewhere.up
The standard for proving that an officer was dishonest—a major violation of SPD policy—includes proving not just that they lied, but that they did so intentionally. The 2017 legislation would have required officers to be truthful in all situations, whether or not OPA or a court can prove that they did so intentionally, including when testifying in court, filling out police reports, and reviewing use of force incidents.
The tentative contract, which runs through the end of 2023, is dated retroactively to January 6, 2021—the day of the national insurrection and attempted takeover of Congress by rioters attempting to overturn the election for Trump. SPD officers made up the largest known contingent of police who attended the January 6 rally; police chief Adrian Diaz later fired two officers who participated directly in the insurrection.
The ordinance still requires requires the OPA director—a civilian—to use sworn investigators to conduct any investigation where the alleged misconduct could result in termination. The accountability ordinance would have given the OPA director the ability to decide who investigates these cases.
The 2017 law also called for an internal office to manage secondary employment because of the potential for conflicts of interest and persistent problems with officers abusing their authority during off-duty work—for example, by using companies they control to fix prices for off-duty work directing traffic at parking garages.
The city and SPOG reached the tentative agreement on Saturday, starting a 30-day countdown for the city to file an update with the federal judge overseeing a consent decree between SPD and the Department of Justice, informing him how the new agreement impacts the city’s accountability system, if at all. The city council has repeatedly identified hiring more police officers as their top priority, even pushing an independent commission to adopt an easier test for police recruits so that fewer potential officers will be disqualified during this initial weeding-out phase.
The federal, James Robart, lifted most of the consent decree last year, but found the city still had work to do on accountability, along with racially biased policing and crowd control. The vice president of SPOG, Daniel Auderer, was recently caught on body-worn video joking with SPOG president Solan about the death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was struck in a crosswalk by a speeding officer in 2023. Meanwhile, as PubliCola reported last month, the department has ignored a 2021 law that restricted their use of certain “less-lethal” weapons for crowd control.
It makes sense that the new (republican) city council & mayor would want to encourage and support solan and his currupt cadre of SPOG officers.