1. Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes, responding to a question from PubliCola, said the police department does not plan to slow down hiring, despite a city council presentation this week that concluded, “SPD may need to slow hiring to live within its budget” because the speed at which it’s hiring new officers is outpacing the department’s spending capacity.
“I have not been notified that the police department will slow down on our current hiring plan for this year. We’re moving forward,” Barnes said. “I think we all share [the belief] that we need more police officers, but we also understand the constraints of a budget, and until I hear anything differently, we’re going to continue moving forward.”
A planned briefing of the council’s public safety committee, which was postponed due to time constraints earlier this week, found that SPD hiring will outpace the department’s budget by a projected $1.7 million this year. Recruitment has been up ever since a new police contract raised starting salaries, after training, to $126,000 last year, and the number of highly paid late-career officers leaving the department has declined. SPD is on pace to have just under 1,200 officers by the end of the year.
Mayor Katie Wilson has asked all city departments to come up with cuts of 5 to 10 percent to help close a budget gap of at least $175 million. The police department, whose nearly-$500 million budget is by far the city’s biggest general-fund obligation, was reportedly asked to come up with $20 million in potential cuts.
2. Barnes made his comments during an announcement about the city’s latest efforts to address gun violence and sex trafficking on Aurora Ave. N. City Attorney Erika Evans announced she would use Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a tool typically used to take guns away from domestic violence offenders, to remove guns from people accused of committing gun-related crimes, whether or not they have been convicted. (Violent gun-related offenses are typically prosecuted by the King County Prosecutor.) Evans also said she would seek funding for a full-time prosecutor to pursue the orders.
At the same press conference, Mayor Katie Wilson announced the Seattle Department of Transportation will install barriers on four streets that intersect with Aurora Ave. N to block traffic from getting through; residents who have demanded the city do something about increasing gun violence in the area have installed makeshift barricades in recent weeks.
City Attorney Evans broke with council members on one key issue, saying that she did not believe banishing men who pay for sex from the area around Aurora, which is designated as the city’s Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) zone, are an effective way to protect women and girls from pimps and traffickers. (Former Councilmember Cathy Moore, who sponsored the SOAP legislation, then skedaddled off the council, was in the audience for yesterday’s event.)
Noting that the city has had SOAP orders off and on for 30 years, Evans said, “If they were effective, Aurora and other areas of Seattle, including Little Saigon, would be safe, and they’re not. … SOAP orders don’t work. ERPO orders work.”
3. The press conference, which took place on the same day Wilson announced internally that she was reorganizing her office and that her communications director, Seferiana Day, was leaving, featured some internal drama of its own. According to sources, councilmembers frustrated with what they viewed as inaction on Aurora planned to hold their own press conference without Wilson at which they would criticize her lack of action on gun violence and sex trafficking in the area.
After a flurry of discussions, the mayor and council agreed to hold the press conference in the awkward, narrow space outside council chambers, rather than outside Wilson’s office. Councilmembers have repeatedly refused to participate in the mayor’s press conferences, despite being invited—an indication that council-mayor relations still have a long way to go after some dramatic early missteps by the Wilson administration.