By Andrew Engelson
On Tuesday afternoon, a little more than two weeks after Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office publicly announced a new three-year retroactive contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, the Seattle City Council ratified the agreement 8 to 1, with councilmember Tammy Morales casting the lone dissenting vote. Almost immediately after the vote, Harrell signed the contract, calling it a needed step to advance “our vision for a city where everyone, in every neighborhood, is safe and feels secure.”
Morales, in an amendment that failed, moved to delay the Tuesday vote, noting that the contract was fast-tracked directly to the full council without any public hearings and after just twenty minutes of public comment—nearly all of it in opposition.
“The community deserves a chance to make their voice heard before we vote on it. We shouldn’t be rushing this,” Morales said.
Before the vote, Morales noted that the new contract offers almost no changes to accountability measures for police officers. “I believe this contract as bargained does not protect the city and the lack of accountability measures puts us in continued violation of the federal consent decree,” she said, referring to the 2012 federal agreement between SPD and the US Department of Justice.
In 2023, US District Judge James Robart modified the consent decree to lift most restrictions on SPD, but on the condition that the department make additional reforms to its accountability and crowd control.
Speaking in defense of the new contract, Council President Sara Nelson said, “We have to attack our staffing crisis from both retention and recruitment and hiring angles, and this is an important piece of legislation to accomplish both of those goals – because it will also help attract new officers to the force and facilitate our recruitment efforts as well.”
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The contract, which PubliCola acquired and published in early April, retroactively gives police officers a 24 percent raise – broken down to 1.3 percent in 2021, 6.4 percent in 2022, and 15.3 percent in 2023. The raises will boost SPD’s starting pay, before overtime, to $103,000, making Seattle officers the highest-paid in the region.
According to an economic briefing before the vote by Ben Noble, director of the city’s Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts, the contract adds $39 million annually to the existing annual SPD salary budget of $170 million. In sum, the retroactive cost over three years totals $57 million, and adds $9.2 million to the city’s existing budget deficit, because the city didn’t put enough in reserve to account for the total cost of the raises.
Councilmember Bob Kettle, chair of the Public Safety committee, said before the vote, “Yes, it is expensive. Yes, it is a challenge for our budget. But if we don’t compete in this labor market, we won’t accomplish our goal of achieving a safe base in our city.” T
After signing the bill, Harrell said the agreement “will make meaningful improvements to officer pay and staffing, to accountability so misconduct is investigated, and to new efficiencies through diversified response options.”
However, critics point out that the contract offers only minor changes to accountability for police officers. It allows a 60-day extension of Office of Police Accountability’s (OPA) 180-day deadline for completing investigations into the most serious misconduct; tells arbitrators tasked with reviewing officer firings to “give deference” to the police chief’s decisions; adds just two more civilian investigators at OPA, bringing the total to four; and increases the amount of time OPA has to inform an officer of an investigation from five days to 30. Continue reading “Police Contract Gives Big Raises to Officers, Still Fails to Meet Baseline Set in 2017 Accountability Law”