By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department has hired Epic Productions, an Arizona-based police recruiting firm, to “spearhead” its hiring campaign at a potential cost of nearly $6 million, according to internal documents.

In an email seeking volunteers to sit for portraits to create a “deep vault of photographs” for future recruiting campaigns, Assistant Chief Yvonne Underwood said the company “leverages a unique four-step process encompassing strategy, production, website design and management, as well as digital recruiting through online campaigns and social media management.”

Epic has produced recruitment campaigns for agencies across the country, including the Newark, Delaware police, the Virginia State Patrol, and the Chino Police Department. Like many other police recruitment ads, Epic’s videos highlight an array of dramatic scenarios and specialized units that most police officers will never experience and that are inaccessible to new recruits, rather than a realistic view of what it’s like to be a police officer day.

In the ads, officers operate bomb-defusing machines and drones, bust down doors, fly helicopters, and SCUBA dive as members of specialized marine units. It’s macho stuff—most of it performed by men, a strategy that seems at odds with the city’s purported commitment to have a 30-percent female recruit class by 2030.

At a time when other departments had to cut their budgets to help address a more than $250 million budget shortfall, SPD’s spending on ads has only ramped up. Since 2023, the city has spent more than $3.6 million on ads by the firm Copacino Fujikado, including a series of stylized cartoons that showed scenarios where specialized police officers—all men—saved two women who had been taken hostage, rescued someone who was drowning, and saved a bus rider’s life with CPR.

Another Copacino ad series, currently running on social media including Facebook and LinkedIn, features more male officers dramatically saving lives and training at the gym over a soundtrack that might be captioned “musical gunshots.” “THERE IS NO NO AVERAGE DAY,” the tagline says. The latest amendment to the Copacino Fujikado contract, issued in January, includes $25,000 a month for a “women-focused campaign.”

As we reported earlier this month, new police chief Shon Barnes (whom mayor Bruce Harrell recently credited, via press release, with a “record-breaking” first 100 days, citing no records) has already added at least four new staffers to his team, bypassing the ordinary hiring process to appoint his new staff directly. Barnes’ inner circle includes a new deputy police chief, a chief of staff, an “Executive Director of Crime and Community Harm Reduction,” and a “Chief Communications Officer”; at least two of the new staffers worked with or for Barnes in his previous jobs in Greensboro, North Carolina and Madison, Wisconsin.

Barely a week after expanding the new police chief’s personal staff, the department announced an internal hiring freeze for all civilian positions and a freeze on new consulting contracts. informing managers that they’ll need to seek approval from the mayor’s office for any new hires and that they should only seek to fill “positions critical for core service delivery.”

The email describes the limited spending freeze as a “temporary pause” that “[w]e anticipate … will be lifted later this summer.” Meanwhile, the most recent revenue forecast predicted the city will bring in $241 million less than previously anticipated over the next two years, a situation that could lead to steep budget cuts in most city departments.