Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr says she supports a new kind of secure detention for drug users, while City Attorney Davison blames jail booking restrictions for persistent problems downtown.
By Erica C. Barnett
Members of the Seattle City Council outdid each other calling for more police, more jail, and harsher punishments for people, like those who sell drugs, who “need to be contained,” as Councilmember Bob Kettle put it, during a meeting of the council’s public safety committee Tuesday morning.
Rob Saka, for instance, blamed the city’s current public safety issues on events from four years ago (and the fact that the King County Jail isn’t booking people for most misdemeanors, but more on that in a second). “The public safety challenges that we’re experiencing today are a shameful legacy of the Defund the Police movement,” Saka said. “And that was wrong then and it’s wrong now. And you know, from my perspective, defund is dead. It is not the dominant, controlling policy narrative dominating our policy discussions.”
After describing his “disadvantaged background,” Saka suggested that school closures during the COVID pandemic were also partly to blame. “There’s no way I would be here the dais right now if I had to rely on remote learning, adding that schools needed to be “the last to close and the first to reopen” during COVID.
Maritza Rivera, not to be outdone, said it made her “really angry” that people selling drugs in Magnuson Park, in her district, aren’t being arrested and jailed. “We need to be booking drug dealers, who are causing the most harm, and then diverting the users who actually need services,” she said. (Research indicates that nearly nine in ten people who sell drugs are also drug users.) “There’s a high school, there’s an elementary and a middle school off of Aurora, and these kids are getting solicited” by sex workers, Rivera added.
Not to be outdone, Council President Sara Nelson said she was “shocked” by the fact that the average daily population at the jail is currently about 80, down from a pre-pandemic average of around 180 to 280. The jail imposed booking restrictions during the pandemic, and has kept those restrictions ever since because there are not enough jail guards to maintain safety standards with a higher inmate population. “I want my money back, basically,” Nelson said.
The purpose of the briefing was for interim Chief Rahr, Davison, and CARE (911) Department Chief Amy Smith—who had just received the committee’s unanimous vote for appointment as permanent chief—to update the council on the “criminal justice ecosystem.”
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Rahr, who has identified hiring more police officers as her primary goal, said the city should help applicants make it past the initial hurdles by adopting a police hiring test that’s more “low-barrier” than the one the city currently uses. Rahr’s comments seemed like an explicit swipe at the Public Safety Civil Service Commission, which has strongly supported keeping the current test, which was designed to help weed out people who are temperamentally unqualified to be officers.
“I know that [the PSCSC] believe deep in their soul that the test they’re using now is extremely important,” Rahr said, but “my experience in police hiring is the first initial screening test doesn’t need to go that deep, because we’re literally just trying to make sure people have the minimum qualifications, [and then] we have a deep backgrounding process.”
In the competition for police officer applicants, she continued, “the agency that makes that removes the most barriers to get in the door is going to have a larger pool.”
As we’ve reported, the PSCSC supports the current test, developed in collaboration with SPD in response to the 2012 federal consent decree, because it was designed to help weed out candidates who would have problems adhering to Seattle’s constitutional policing requirements. Last week, the PSCSC announced that more people applied and passed the exam in June than in any month since 2019.
Davison said that in her view, the reason crime has gotten so bad downtown is that poliec—who now have the authority, thanks to a law adopted last year, to arrest people for misdemeanor drug use—still can’t book people into the downtown jail for misdemeanors like drug possession, smashing windows, or animal cruelty.
Wait—animal cruelty? Davison said she brought up animals because animal cruelty is often a precursor to domestic violence*, and it’s important to catch it early to prevent young people from becoming abusers in the future. Davison did not explain how being locked up in the King County Jail rehabilitates people who commit misdemeanor animal abuse (harming animals is also a gross misdemeanor and a felony, depending on the extent of the abuse), although she did say she was specifically referring to “early interventions” for young people.
Saka called the booking restrictions “a real head-scratcher,” and said that without the threat of jail, there is “no deterrence whatsoever to any crime—zero.” Criminals, he continued, “can violently smash a business’s window without fear of being booked, to spend a night in jail to think about that. … And animal cruelty—they locked Michael Vick up for years for animal cruelty, and in the city of Seattle, someone can’t spend a night in jail? They can freely abuse an animal. We need to do better.” (Vick was convicted of multiple felonies stemming from his involvement in a dog-fighting ring, and served 21 months in federal prison.)
Rivera said she was “super angry that we’re paying for service that we’re not getting,” referring to county jail beds. “We are not trying to jail folks that have addiction—we need to help these folks—but we need to get the people that are causing the most harm, that are taking advantage of our vulnerable populations, and these people need to be in jail.”
Davison did point out that people who wind up in her “high-utilizers initiative” can be booked into jail under an agreement between Seattle and the county.
On Tuesday, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed a new contract with SCORE, the regional jail in Des Moines, to incarcerate people accused of misdemeanors in Seattle.
The potential contract is controversial. In May, members of the union that represents staff for the King County Department of Public Defense sent a letter to city officials, including the council, opposing the contract, arguing that the regional jail makes it difficult for people to speak to their attorneys and get to court hearings in Seattle, diminishing the quality of representation they receive. As we’ve reported, six people have died in custody at SCORE in just over a year, including at least one from malnutrition and dehydration; SCORE contracts its medical service out to a private company, Wellpath. King County halted its own pilot program to transfer inmates to SCORE last year.
Rahr said she would also support a “third” kind of secure detention facility for people who commit drug-related crimes, including public drug use, separate from jail or diversion programs like LEAD.
“There are some people who are too medically fragile to be booked in jail, but they’re also too dangerous to be left in an emergency room or be left in a community,” Rahr said after the meeting. “If we had a place to take them that was secure, where they could get the medical intervention they need, particularly for people who are on fentanyl… we could significantly improve the conditions on the street” while also getting people “stabilized and connected with the services they need.”
Asked, after the meeting, about her comment that she wanted the city’s money back, Nelson said, “I do want to make sure that the terms of the contract that we have with the jail are being fulfilled. If we are paying for jail services and we are not getting them, what’s the deal? We need some place to take the people who are perpetrating crimes against my constituents.”
In previous years, the city has clawed back funding that would otherwise have paid for empty jail beds and repurposed it for community-based health and housing programs. During the 2022 budget process, the council voted to place a proviso, or hold, on $3 million the city would have otherwise spent on jail beds it wasn’t using, with the intent of putting that money toward inflation on future jail beds or to other, non-jail purposes. Nelson voted against the amendment.
*And certainly not, as we cynically assumed, because Seattle residents care more about dogs than human beings trapped in the carceral system.
Sigh. If I had faith that the police would carefully vet candidates (e.g., not hiring Officer Dave, who got canned from the Tucson Police force), I might support an easier test. I’ve written this before, but in an ideal world, we get new police who protect and serve. I’d settle for not costing taxpayers money in civil judgments from police excessive force/running over civilians, etc. lawsuits.
I’m willing to give the other side a try. The worst that could happen is it would end up like we’ve been ending up the last many years. I just wish everyone would stop hitting at each other and unite to fix things.
I wholeheartedly support samm and Benjamin’s comments.
Sounds like they want to bring back a police force with no accountability, cops murdering people whenever they like (i.e “they didn’t comply”), and rule by mass violence. So an exact return to the conditions that brought on the protests they blame in the first place.
They are just inviting the protests to happen again and will be directly responsible for bringing them down on their own heads. If these fascists drive us right back into a police state then they will get exactly what they deserve. A police state is an illegitimate form of rule, and if they want to invite chaos in the wake of the heavy hand they worship then they will surely have it.
ah, progressive Seattle, where more cops who are less “temperamentally suited” and more jail beds is the answer to everything, where property rights outweigh human rights. These people have been in office for quite a while now and still don’t seem to know what they’re doing. Elections matter, is what I hear. But all I see is a lot of posturing and gloating over the former council being gone.
If the Feds have had to step in and supervise a local police department which is still run by the same structure (not a union), over 12 years ago, why is nothing changing there? If you’re having trouble recruiting people to any other job, especially one that pays as well as SPD, maybe the organization is where you look next? As someone said, other cities have fired their force and started over. Instead SPD takes other cities discards, like Kevin Dave.
Living in a city when the ruling class is characterized by extremes at both ends is so frustrating!
Yes, we do need more cops (sorry Lefties)… but hired with higher standards and far more accountability (sorry Righties).
Yes, we need more enforcement (sorry Lefties)…. but with better access to a more equitable court system, less ‘warehousing’ of criminals and better ‘rehabilitation’ and re-entry services (sorry Righties).
People who live near Aurora Ave are being terrorized by the pimps and gang members having open gun battles at random times and locations with no regard for the public. We shouldn’t have laws only to protect those doing the bad in society that let bad-doers stay out of jail even if they make entire neighborhoods unsafe. They must be held accountable and be locked up to keep the community safe and for the greater good!!!
Sure they have. Don’t believe you one bit because you are a known pro-police state agitator.
Your ignorance of what’s been going on on Aurora the last few months is stunning. Actually, no it isn’t – the lefties never want to admit when they are wrong. The assholes starting shootouts on Aurora need to be in jail. Deny it all you want, you’re still wrong.
I know it’s unfamiliar, but this is what it looks like when people in government work to perform the functions we expect of them. No they don’t have it all figured out. That doesn’t mean they’re heartless bastards to discuss actual processes to implement.
The prior administration’s definition of action was to develop position papers and vision statements that did not include implementing anything. In the real world that meant they were giving up, leaving people on the streets that should either be incarcerated or in treatment programs. That they had years and accomplished nothing while downtown disintegrated was forgiven, because they meant well. Let’s worry about that after everyone has affordable housing!
But eventually, the citizens realized the emperor’s new clothes didn’t exist.
Example – a drug dealer may also be a drug user (a victim), and so shouldn’t be arrested as a criminal.
Prior administration: So we do nothing, leaving open drug use on our streets with addicts commiting crimes to finance their addictions, sleeping in front of businesses…
Current administration: Arrest people that commit crimes, and figure out the downstream processes to channel those arrested in the appropriate pathways. If those processes are faulty or not accomplishing that…. let’s fix it!
Giving up while polishing your self granted halo is not kindness. It is in fact a greater cruelty. Saying every problem is lack of affordable housing, versus addressing criminal / addiction / mental health needs… we’re done with that. Elections are supposed to matter.
You are mixing a lot of different issues into one pot and what has come out is pure nonsense. Issues don’t get fixed in this city because people like you want to make take all problems afflicting our city and pile them onto one plate, serve it to politicians you don’t like, and then say “look who’s eating”. And when by hook or by crook you get rid of these politicians and nothing is still solved, you say “this is what it looks like when people in government work to perform the functions we expect of them.”
“Elections are supposed to matter.” Your police state fascists won’t win elections for ever (for some moronic reason people like you seem to think this slate of garbage human beings currently in the council won by overwhelming margins with the most massive turnout in Seattle history, but you are very, very wrong). If people like you aren’t willing to be conciliatory over your temporary win, then I see no reason whatsoever to care one whit what your fate might be when the shoe is on the other foot.
Is the council blind to the fact that the Seattle Police Department is run by the racists and misogynists in the Seattle Police Officers Guild? SPOG is wholly responsible for insuring that the current contract allows its officers to be under-responsive and unaccountable. No good person in their right mind would join an organization in the midst of extreme turmoil and represented by a pack of MAGA racists from SPOG.
It’s time Seattle does exactly what Camden NJ did and fire the entire force and start from scratch, with higher standards and complete accountability. No one wants to join the Seattle Police Department as is. As for the jail? Same thing, and assign jail staffing to the King County Sheriff’s Office, like all other counties in the state do.
All right city council and Hizzoner – who’s got the cajónes to do the right thing?
That’s what defund the police did and it caused more crime and chaos in Seattle. We don’t want that Seattle. We want safe streets that aren’t ruled by drug dealers, pimps and gang members.
Police were not ever “defunded” in Seattle – their budget was never cut. And certainly we did not have a mass firing at SFPD. You’re making that up from whole cloth.
The police were never defunded, it was police violence that caused the chaos.
Hahaha… sure, samm. It was the police that created the CHOP! Otherwise taking over a part of the city and letting the anarchists run wild would have been a utopia!!!!
Revisionist history from the lefties, per usual.
Policing would be so much easier if there weren’t all these people running around.