City Employees Plan Walkout for Police Reform on Tuesday

Part of a flier circulated Friday at City Hall advertising an employee walkout on Tuesday.

Part of a flier circulated Friday at City Hall advertising an employee walkout on Tuesday.

A group of city employees plan to walk off the job for half an hour on Tuesday in support of nationwide police reform. In part, it’s a show of solidarity with Congressional staffers who walked out in Washington, DC, last month. The City of Seattle employees will hold a moment of silence in honor of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others killed by police and then encourage fellow city employees to sign a statement titled, “We Stand For Police Accountability.”

“As in Ferguson and New York, many of us in [the] greater Seattle community know firsthand the baseless stops and searches, violent assaults, and extra-judicial executions perpetrated by police officers,” the statement reads. “We know these are not isolated incidents, but practices that are deeply embedded in the ‘business as usual’ tactics of police work and supported by biased societal values and laws that shield these practices from accountability. … We the undersigned stand in solidarity with individuals, organizations, and communities working to dismantle racism in our society, and in particular in our criminal justice system.”

The organizers are a coalition of city employees involved with employee groups like the City Light Black Employees Association, the Citywide Black Caucus, City of Seattle Native American Employees, and SEqual, an employee group advocating for LGBTQ equality.

“In our own community as we’ve gained our equal rights in recent years to marry, we continually see people of color, especially black men, continue to struggle with equal rights protections from law enforcement and the judicial system,” says Christopher Peguero, a City Light employee, founder of SEqual, and one of the organizers of the walkout. “It’s not a matter of if, but when another black man will be shot and the police officer involved in that shooting will be found not responsible under the current law.”

Peguero says the action isn’t specifically directed at the Seattle Police Department, but that he does think there could more community involvement in the ongoing efforts at police reform. “True, sustainable reform cannot happen in a bubble,” he says.

City employees are required to use their break time or vacation time (authorized by a supervisor) to attend the walkout, according to the city’s human resources department. Peguero says the group expects the event to be “well attended” and no one in the administration has tried to discourage employees from participating. But some department leaders have told him they’re hesitant to walk out themselves because they don’t want to “undermine anything being done by the mayor’s office or the Justice Department that’s positive and going toward reform.”