After greater than a decade, Seattle’s experiment with addressing police violence by way of federal intervention is winding down. In 2010, 35 neighborhood organizations wrote a letter to the Division of Justice (DOJ), asking the company to “promptly examine whether or not the Seattle Police Division has engaged in a sample or observe of violations of civil rights by pointless and extreme power towards residents of Seattle in violation of federal regulation.” The feds complied, and after a nine-month investigation, found that the Seattle Police Division (SPD) engaged in extreme power and that discriminatory policing was a critical concern. Because of this, in 2012, the DOJ and the Metropolis of Seattle entered a settlement agreement, and a decade-plus experiment in confronting native police violence by way of monitoring by a federal courtroom started. Because the hurt endemic to policing tempts communities throughout the nation to request DOJ intervention, Seattle’s consent decree expertise (together with these of Oakland, New Orleans, Albuquerque and Baltimore) ought to function a lesson to different jurisdictions: Nobody is coming to save lots of us from our native cops.
To start, let’s contemplate the federal company that cities recruit to deal with police violence. Within the years since neighborhood teams in Seattle made the request for federal intervention, it’s turn into extra clear than ever that federal police companies (together with the DOJ’s personal police companies, the FBI and the DEA) have interaction within the same kind of violent practices as our personal native cops. As abolitionist organizers Andrea J. Ritchie and Wesley C. Ware remind us, “the federal authorities is as invested in policing as a device of racialized surveillance, criminalization, containment and management — together with racial profiling, police violence and criminalization of Black, Indigenous, migrant, disabled, low-income, and queer and trans individuals — as state and native governments.” Looking back, it appears naïve to anticipate a special outcome from an company made up of the federal model of cops and prosecutors.
So, what outcome did Seattle get? Our expertise in Seattle clarifies that consent decrees don’t cease police from killing and harming our neighborhood members. We noticed this half a decade into the consent decree, when SPD officers shot and killed Charleena Lyles, a pregnant Black mom of 4, in entrance of her youngsters in 2017. She had known as 911 herself, believing she was experiencing a housebreaking in her residence. We noticed it once more in 2020, when a broad swath of Seattleites skilled SPD’s collective brutalization of protesters through the rebellion following the police-perpetrated murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. We noticed this once more in 2022, when SPD officers shot and killed a man experiencing a mental health crisis after attacking him with a police dog.
In truth, SPD killed more people, not fewer, through the consent decree years. Between 2013 and 2019 (the years publicly obtainable knowledge is obtainable) 1 out of 10 homicides in Seattle have been carried out by SPD. Police killings of non-white individuals elevated throughout these years as nicely.
Deadly police violence is what catalyzed neighborhood members to request the consent decree within the first place, after the 2010 homicide of seventh-generation First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams by SPD officer Ian Birk. And but a 2020 examine, utilizing knowledge offered by SPD, discovered that the division remains to be nine times more likely to cease a Native American particular person, per capita, than a white particular person. In the meantime, Black individuals, who make up solely 7 p.c of the town’s inhabitants, are focused in a 3rd of all police stops. Black youth fare the worst in terms of use of power: Fifty-nine percent of all police violence against 15- to 21-year-olds is against Black youth.
In truth, by encouraging sure staffing ratios (i.e. extra individuals on the sergeant degree to oversee officers), Seattle’s consent decree led to promotions for the very cops engaged in probably the most blatant acts of brutality as middle-management. A sergeant who was successfully sued for police brutality was promoted to a task reviewing use of power studies. Earlier than being assigned to the “wellness unit,” a desk job unit tasked with improving cop retention, one other sergeant was successfully sued twice for beating individuals with a flashlight whereas investigating noise complaints. Due to the roles that sergeants play in triggering police misconduct investigations, the consent decree has created a state of affairs the place the foxes are guarding the hen home.
The consent decree additionally elevated police energy by drastically growing the police division’s price range. Each greenback from the town price range spent on consent decree reforms was a greenback not spent on assembly individuals’s fundamental wants. SPD’s budget ballooned by 48 percent since the beginning of the consent decree, consuming up one quarter of the town’s normal fund. The mayor’s workplace has estimated that consent decree-related reforms cost the city $200 million. Monitoring prices alone have been $1 million a yr.
Seattle’s expertise reveals consent decrees to be a lure … which leaves untouched the violence on the coronary heart of policing.
This funding in policing has had dire penalties for the survival of the very communities most weak to police violence. A metropolis in an inexpensive housing disaster — with a declared state of emergency over homelessness and a record number of deaths among people living outside in 2022 — defunded inexpensive housing to present cash to SPD for positions the division had no plan nor capability to fill in 2023 and 2024. When the town confronted a price range shortfall this yr, Seattle Metropolis Council selected to raid “Jumpstart”— funds from a hard-won payroll tax that had initially been statutorily designated for desperately wanted inexpensive housing and Inexperienced New Deal investments. This resulted in $40 million going from these pressing must the SPD’s bloated coffers.
Outdoors of the police contract, the consent decree has been one of many largest obstacles to neighborhood advocacy efforts and makes an attempt by the Seattle Metropolis Council to lower the SPD’s price range. Within the midst of the 2020 rebellion, when neighborhood organizing pushed the town council to make promises about chopping the police price range by 50 p.c, the consent decree acted as a barrier to these demands. The council’s follow-through eroded when the decide assigned to supervise the consent decree scolded the city council for failing to increase SPD’s budget. Concurrently, on the request of the DOJ, the decide blocked much less deadly weapon laws handed by the town council to attempt to cease the relentless tear gassing of protesters on the peak of the rebellion. The consent decree required the town to spend cash on know-how that advocates opposed, together with the Early Intervention System (EIS), an costly device meant to flag dangerous habits amongst cops that was recognized to have no predictive power.
The failure of a hard-fought invoice to lower police funding in 2021 exemplifies this dynamic of SPD acquire and neighborhood loss. In August 2020, following intense neighborhood stress, Seattle Metropolis Council unanimously handed Resolution 31962, which said that the town wouldn’t backfill SPD’s coffers if SPD overspent its additional time price range (as it does every year). As a substitute, in December 2021, SPD got here to the town council asking for the additional cash it had spent on additional time. The council, urged by neighborhood members who meant to carry them to their guarantees, proposed a bill taking the $5.4 million overtime overspend out of the SPD’s 2021 budget, and placing these funds in direction of participatory budgeting. The consent decree monitor chimed in together with his displeasure, claiming this 1 p.c discount to the SPD’s 2021 price range may put the city out of compliance with the consent decree. This assertion successfully killed the invoice, together with any try to carry the SPD accountable for its overspending.
In the end, Seattle’s expertise reveals consent decrees to be a lure — one which ends in dearer police departments, however which leaves untouched the violence on the coronary heart of policing. Consent decrees first provide communities validation for the hurt police have brought about them, together with a promise of another person coming in and “fixing” the police. In observe, they minimize off neighborhood voices, inflate police budgets on the expense of all the things else, and legitimize the very police power that continues to hurt the neighborhood. Oakland, New Orleans, Albuquerque and Baltimore are among the many cities whose experiences with consent decrees match Seattle’s.
Cities throughout the nation ought to keep away from falling for the false promise of a consent decree. Native organizers and neighborhood members are already the specialists on the sort of modifications wanted to foster public security. Lowering contact between the police and the general public — by shrinking police budgets and transferring duties out of police departments — will yield extra dividends than DOJ intervention ever will. Native organizing in Seattle has yielded such wins, however these hard-won advances have been achieved regardless of the consent decree, not due to it. The large 2020 protests, which prolonged nicely into the autumn months in Seattle, made it clear that the individuals of Seattle have been interested by exploring public security with out police, likely contributing to greater than 400 officers exiting the power. Relentless, cross-movement budget advocacy resulted in Seattle being the only city to reduce its police budget two years in a row following the 2020 rebellion. Partnerships with organizers preventing to #StopShotSpotter in different cities successfully halted an effort to incorporate “Shotspotter” — a racist and harmful acoustic surveillance tool — from the town’s price range this yr.
The individuals of Seattle deserve a metropolis the place Charleena Lyles and John T. Williams would nonetheless be with us at present, the place Black and Indigenous communities don’t must reside in concern of fixed police harassment, and the place these communities have all the things they should thrive, not simply survive. That metropolis will solely be received by way of relentless organizing by the individuals most invested in that consequence, not by the intervention of a federal company. As cities together with Columbus, Louisville, Memphis and Phoenix contemplate the potential impacts of federal intervention, we invite them to be taught from Seattle’s expertise and double down on native organizing. Nobody else is coming to save lots of us. As June Jordan reminded us, we’re those we’ve been ready for.
