1. The Seattle Police Department recently released a set of recruitment ads featuring cartoon versions of police officers in various heroic scenarios—saving a bus rider’s
life with CPR, saving a man from drowning, and saving two women from a hostage situation—each based on “a real story of the Seattle Police Department,” according to the ads.
Last year, PubliCola reported that SPD had signed a $2.6 million contract with the Seattle-based marketing firm Copacino Fujikado to produce a marketing campaign, including video and radio ads, aimed at boosting recruitment. Copacino Fujikado was able to procure the contract without competitive bidding because it was structured as a “piggyback” onto an existing contract the company signed with Sound Transit in 2018.
The ads each feature what appears to be a white, male officer rescuing people from various scenarios. Over each, a female narrator describes the scenario in a tone of deep, almost reverent concern. “On a weekday afternoon in Seattle’s Lake City neighborhood, an emergency dispatch went out on the radio. A man on a bus wasn’t breathing,” the narrator intones on the first ad, titled “First On the Scene”:
“The first to arrive was the newest officer in the North Precinct. Just weeks out from the academy. He approached the bus. … The officer could see the man’s face was pale. Even from afar, he knew that he had to take action quickly.” The ad continues in this overwrought style until the final scene, when the man—rescued by CPR—looks into the officer’s eyes and says “Thank you” before the image dissolves into a blue SPD badge on a white background. “A job with impact. From the first second,” it reads.
The other two ads are similar, each featuring what appears to be a young, white male officer in the hero role. (SPD has struggled to recruit officers who don’t fit this stereotype, particularly women, amid widespread complaints that the culture of the department is unwelcoming and misogynistic.) In one video, an officer saves a man from drowning; in the other, he rescues two women, one of them weeping and bound with rope, from a man holding them hostage in an apartment.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s mid-year supplemental budget includes $800,000 for Cupertino Fujikado to produce additional ads and marketing materials for the recruitment campaign. In an announcement last month, the CEO of the firm, Scott Foreman, said, “We are proud to share these untold stories, which demonstrate the depth and richness of a career in the Seattle Police Department and the diverse opportunities available within the department.”
A spokesman for Harrell noted that SPD recruitment has increased since “we’ve ramped up our advertising,” increasing to 16 applications a day, on average, in July. However, most of that increase occurred well before the current ad campaign. According to a June 16 announcement from the Public Safety Civil Service Commission, applications increased to an average of 15 a day in May and June. While the PSCSC noted SPD’s marketing efforts, a more influential factor might be the 24 percent raises that went into effect under a new police contract adopted in May that raised the starting salary for a brand-new officer to $103,000 a year—more than any other police department in the region.
2. On Monday, Mayor Harrell informed thousands of city and county employees that they will be required to return to their offices or work sites three days a week starting in November. King County Executive Dow Constantine sent a similar email to county employees, saying he was asking department leaders to come up with a return-to-office plan by next year, and Sound Transit is expected to follow suit.
The city, Harrell told employees, is “committed to learning the best lessons from the pandemic—and that includes recognizing the benefits of in-person work.
According to Harrell’s “return to worksite” email, working in physical offices has already “improved collaboration, a strengthened ability to foster conversations and explore new ideas, enhanced community and relationship building, and a real commitment to mentorship and employee growth, while still allowing flexibility that remote work can provide.” This is a common, if largely unsupported, argument for traditional office arrangements: Get everybody back at the watercooler, and those creative juices will really have a chance to flow!
Surveys of US workers have shown over and over that employees greatly prefer remote work because it provides better work-life balance, allows daytime flexibility (particularly for caregivers, who tend to be women), and gives people more autonomy over their own time. Working from home can also reduce distractions, allowing people to work in a more quiet and controlled environment than a busy, noisy office. It also eliminates commutes, which can add hours of stressful unpaid time to every work day, clogging freeways, and contributing to climate change, a problem the city of Seattle is constantly claiming it wants to address.
And while Harrell has suggested it is the obligation of workers, including government workers, to save businesses in downtown Seattle by coming back to the area and spending money there, working from home benefits businesses in neighborhoods outside the downtown core, which are also part of Harrell’s “One Seattle.”
Harrell’s email does not cite any data or examples of concrete benefits from office work.
After Harrell’s announcement, City Councilmember Maritza Rivera released her own statement, saying Harrell’s order was inadequate and that city employees “can’t provide” the “most complete and highest quality services” unless they are physically located at desks in downtown Seattle. Rivera said she supports an immediate four-day-a-week in-office mandate.