Tag: 30 by 30 Initiative

Police, Women

In 2025, 90 Percent of New SPD Hires Were Men
Social media image for SPD’s ongoing “Come As You Are” recruitment campaign.

“We acknowledge we must do better to meet the 30×30 commitment but as we move into 2026, we will continue our work to resemble the community we serve,” a department spokesperson said.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department hired just 17 women in 2025, according to figures provided by the Seattle Police Department—just 10 percent of 165 new hires last year. That’s a significant dip from SPD’s already dismal numbers in 2024, when just 14 percent of the 84 people SPD hired were women. It’s also less than half the average for police departments across the US, according to stats from the 30X30 Initiative—a pledge, which SPD has signed, to work toward a recruit class that’s 30 percent women by 2030.

The 17-woman total was bolstered by relatively strong hiring of women—six total—in the fourth quarter of 2025; in the two quarters encompassing April through September, SPD hired just 6 women, and the total percentage of female hires dipped to less than six percent in the second quarter of the year.

SPD, in other words, not only isn’t improving its lopsided gender balance—it’s backsliding. To achieve the goal of 30X30, SPD would have needed to hire an additional 33 women last year. Put another way, they’re currently two-thirds shy of their hiring goals.

It’s unclear how many women are leaving the department, which is currently the subject of several simultaneous gender discrimination lawsuits and allegations. In the past, SPD has provided a breakdown, by gender, of the number of men and women who left the department on numerous occasions in the past—an important data point that shows how many women are leaving the department compared to men. The department did not provide this information when PubliCola requested it, citing unspecified data issues.

However, they did provide the total number of people who left this year—69, down from 83 in 2024. We also know that as of April, 21 percent of the people leaving SPD were women. If that departure trend stayed consistent for the remaining eight months of the year, it would translate to about 14 women leaving SPD in 2025, for a net gain of just three women. We’re hoping SPD will eventually provide these numbers, which would give a clearer picture of SPD’s gender makeup.

Former Mayor Bruce Harrell said that he chose Barnes, in part, because he “brings proven experience advancing the Madison Police Department’s inclusive workforce initiative that has resulted in 28% of officers being women.” But Seattle’s new recruit classes have only become more overwhelmingly male since Barnes took over at the department.

In a statement to PubliCola, a spokesperson for SPD said, “The Seattle Police Department remains committed to increasing the hiring rate of women. We acknowledge we must do better to meet the 30×30 commitment but as we move into 2026, we will continue our work to resemble the community we serve.”

Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police

SPD Can’t Find Funds to Recruit Women While Spending $3 Million on Macho Ads; Affordable Housing Tax Will Pay for Police Surveillance Instead; Pro-Harrell PAC Goes Low

1. Bruce Harrell for Seattle’s Future, the business-backed political action committee headed by Harrell’s deputy mayor Tim Burgess, sent out a condescending and misleading mailer featuring a résumé that his opponent, labor leader Katie Wilson, submitted as part of an application for a city transit board more than a decade ago.

The document, which includes Wilson’s former home address as well as the address and partially visible phone number of a long-ago employer, purports to show that Wilson has no experience. Ten years ago, Wilson included jobs going back to when she was 24 years old, including a stint at Julia’s Bakery in Wallingford.

At the time she submitted the résumé to the city, Wilson had just started her role as general secretary ot the Transit Riders Union, an organization founded in 2011 to fight for better transit. Since then, as the head of TRU, Wilson led three successful campaigns for higher minimum wages, helped craft the JumpStart payroll tax as a leader of the city’s progressive revenue task force, fought for free transit passes for youth, and led campaigns for stronger renter protections in Seattle and several other cities.

You wouldn’t know that from the misleading mailer from the Burgess-led PAC, though, which doubles down on Harrell’s strategy of pretending his opponent is an ineffective know-nothing. If one were eliminate the last 10 years from Harrell’s resume, his own most recent experience would include “two-term city council member (2007-2014)” and “failed candidate for mayor” (2013).

2. The Seattle Police Department’s budget for this year includes funding for a $3.3 million, two-year advertising contract with the firm Epic Productions of Phoenix, LLC aimed at recruiting new officers through online ads through the end of 2026.

This is just the latest of several recruiting contracts the city has funded amid annual deficits in the hundreds of millions of dollars. As of this year, the city is hiring police at an unprecedented rate, according to a city council central staff analysis, a fact that almost certainly has more to do with new six-figure starting salaries than macho Youtube videos about “what gives us a rush.”

Interestingly, SPD’s budget counts those videos as part of its “30 by 30” effort to recruit more women, perhaps because there are women in the videos. The “30 by 30” initiative is a commitment by police departments to boost recruitment classes to 30 percent women by 2030 and to retain women through initiatives focused on improving police culture and meeting women’s specific needs. So far this year, SPD’s recruitment class has been less than 9 percent female.

While SPD was able to find $3 million for the Epic ads, they have not hired anyone for a position created in 2024 to oversee its 30 by 30 efforts, despite the fact that the city assumed funding for this position last year for both 2025 and 2026 would come from “salary savings that would accrue from vacant, funded civilian positions within the department.” According to a central staff memo, SPD chose instead to use this money for “civilian salary savings.”

“In response to the pessimistic revenue forecast in April, as well as threats of federal funding cuts, the Executive took immediate action to proactively prepare for significant negative impacts to the City budget. Additionally, given the unexpected increase in officer hiring, the department has had to take on an increase in expenses and has had to use the remaining civilian salary savings to balance the GF budget.”

SPD will also get nearly a million dollars from the JumpStart payroll tax to pay for live CCTV camera surveillance in the Stadium District, part of a permanent police surveillance program, and for unspecified equipment and security costs for the six FIFA World Cup games happening here next year. JumpStart was passed explicitly to pay for equitable development projects, affordable housing, and other programs to benefit low-income people and underserved communities. Last year, the council voted to remove all restrictions on the fund, allowing the city to use it as an all-purpose slush fund for any budget purpose.