Mayor Again Targets Police Watchdog in Budget Cuts

Mayor Greg Nickels seems to have it in for one particular police watchdog.

On Friday, Nickels proposed cutting $13.3 million from the city’s budget, which would include eliminating a key position in the Seattle Police Department’s internal investigations unit, the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA).

Nickels has recommended cutting about $86,000 from OPA’s budget, which would force the OPA to lay off its associate director, John Fowler. This is the second time in five years that the mayor has tried to cut Fowler’s position.

In 2004, the city council and the mayor scrapped over a similar budget-cutting proposal, which drew criticism from the ACLU and the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board (OPARB)—the council’s civilian police oversight board—which sent a letter to the city council stating that the cut “sends a clear message to Seattle’s minority communities that police accountability is not important in lean economic times.” The council later restored Fowler’s position.

Currently, Fowler compiles reports and statistics for a number of OPA reports, performs community outreach and and oversees the OPA’s citizen/officer mediation program.

According to OPA director Kathryn Olson, if Fowler’s position is eliminated, all data tracking and analysis would be outsourced to an employee in SPD’s human resources department and legislation passed last year has tasked OPARB with taking over community outreach.

WIth more officers coming on board at SPD in the next year—which will likely mean a greater number of police contacts and arrests—it seems like a strange time to eliminate a police oversight position. According to Olson, police/citizen contacts have already slightly increased, although there’s been a dip in the number of OPA investigations.

While Fowler isn’t directly involved with OPA investigations, it’s unclear what effect his departure would have on daily operations. “It’s…very difficult to project,” Olson says. “You can’t lose a person without some difficulty even quantifying the support that’s provided.” Undoubtedly, Fowler’s departure would at the very least remove one more layer of oversight and analysis of policing trends in the department.

Tim Burgess, who oversees the council’s public safety committee and the OPARB, is aware of the proposed cuts at OPA, but had no comment.

A spokesman for Mayor Nickels office has not yet responded to a request for comment on why the mayor is again targeting Fowler’s position.