Seattle police chief Kathleen O'Toole had some startling news to share with the city council.

For years, the police department has been artificially lowering its purported response time to 911 calls—telling the public that police were meeting their goal of arriving on the scene in an average of seven minutes. In reality, according to the latest figures, it takes 9.2 minutes.

At a city council committee hearing on January 27, O'Toole and Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey revealed that SPD hadn't been hitting that seven minute mark, despite claims the police department made in the past to be achieving or exceeding that goal. The SPD artificially reduced their response time numbers by including so-called "on views," which is when an officer on patrol comes upon the scene and the response time is effectively zero.

"It's very frustrating that it went on for so many years and that the police department was messing with the numbers to make them look good," said City Council Member Tim Burgess. "We took them at face value."

Council Member Lorena González, the newly-elected former civil rights attorney, said the admission from the SPD represented a "refreshing and new tone of transparency." She said the deceit went on from 2010 to 2013, but "they have now recognized that it's not an appropriate practice and will abandon it."

Burgess pointed to the 2011 Department of Justice investigation of the SPD that led to the ongoing, federally-supervised reform process. "The message that runs throughout that whole report from the beginning to the end is that SPD has not been managed well," he said. "And I think this is another example of that."

Officials at the SPD discovered the discrepancy after an article by Gene Balk in the Seattle Times examined 911 response time data in detail.

"I do understand Council Member Burgess' frustration," said SPD's Maxey. "We've corrected the error and we're not going to do it going forward."

Maxey, who called the purported seven minute response time a "misrepresentation," said no one will be held responsible for misleading the public.

"I suppose we could refer this to OPA [Office of Professional Accountability] for investigation," Maxey said. "I'm just not sure what the value is in that... There's many ways for us to be accountable. The best way to be accountable is to be open... Let's show our cards, and if we're making mistakes, we'll find out. I think that's a much more effective way, than trying to figure out how to retroactively punish people who may have made a mistake."

"I don't have any reason to believe that anyone here was intentionally messing with these numbers," he said. "I don't know if they were confused. I can't attribute any motivation one way or the other."

González had called for the January 27 hearing on 911 response times to dig into the issue and as "a way to send a clear message that I'll be actively paying attention to these policing issues... My approach to police reform and accountability in general is not going to be a sideline approach."

To focus on community safety, González got rid of the phrase "Public Safety" from the council committee she now chairs, replacing it with "Safe Communities." The committee's full name is the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, and New Americans Committee.

"I want to be an active part of creating solutions to move the city forward," González said, "not just through compliance with the consent decree, but beyond that."

Another problem, first uncovered by Balk, came into sharper focus during the council hearing: the SPD takes, on average, two minutes longer to respond to 911 calls reporting domestic violence than to calls reporting regular assaults.

"It appears that there is a systemic problem that is leading to that disparity," González said. "I have asked the SPD to further analyze the data and root causes. My expectation is that they will come back to committee and report on what those root causes are."

"That's a problem, and that's a concern, for domestic violence advocates," she added. "That's a concern for me. I think it's important for victims of DV to still call 911 if they are experiencing an assault... I don't want people to be discouraged from calling 911."