As the Chief of Police, I will not participate in political theater occurring days before an election. My commitment to this job and this city have been obvious to anyone taking part in our efforts to make SPD a national leader and to keep Seattle one of the safest cities in the country. The successes of the hardworking women and men of the SPD speak for themselves:
- Achieving compliance with respect to all of SPD’s obligations under the Consent Decree, as evidenced by the Monitor’s outcome assessments.
- Increasing transparency by sharing numerous new data streams and information with the public.
- Successfully managing thousands of demonstrations across the city with minimum arrests, uses of force, or damage to property.
- Decreasing response times for high priority 911 calls from the highs of 2013-2014 by almost 2 minutes.
- Reducing incidents involving use of force by 60% since 2011.
- Lowering overall crime, year-to-date, in Seattle by 5% compared to 2016.
- Accounting for population, there were fewer major crimes per capita in 2016 than in 2013.
SPD is not focused on the past. Every member of this Department is committed to achieving new successes with innovative strategies:
- The City and SPD participate in numerous county and regional programs designed to address violence, particularly involving young people. Current efforts such as the Seattle LINC (Comprehensive Gang Model), Rainier Beach – A Beautiful Safe Place for Youth, and the Puget Sound Regional Crime Gun Task Force, unlike many prior efforts, are evidence-based programs.
- SPD continues to increase its use of data to ensure we deploy our resources in an effective and efficient manner, and is even sharing much of this data publicly. We have enhanced precinct resources by establishing robust bike squads to handle street-level issues, proactive patrols to intercede with problems before they become extensive, and we continue to devote significant resources to support emphasis patrols in all precincts to address both emerging and persistent problems.
- We developed and deployed the Micro Community Policing Plan program to ensure that our priorities and strategies are guided both by objective data and the concerns and input of everyone we serve.
- Working with our City partners, we launched the Navigation Team, with a lieutenant, sergeant, and officers, and they are achieving engagement results beyond anything this city has seen.