On Friday, the Seattle police union posted the tentative collective bargaining agreement it struck with the City earlier last week. The agreement, which runs through the end of last year, includes a 23% pay increase for officers and very few changes to accountability measures. Local police accountability advocates have long expected the police union’s new contract to result in a huge payout for cops, but the biggest surprise surrounds how little the City has gotten in return for something that will likely add tens of millions of dollars to its projected $230 million deficit in 2025.
SPOG doesn’t want you to see this. The massive payday for SPOG’s membership will break the city financially.
At 4.5 years, beat cops will be making $136,000
plus overtime
plus longevity pay
plus premiums for wearing body cams
plus 95% of healthcare premiums paid by the city https://t.co/J44Sd2XL1R pic.twitter.com/dUiTdPITOw— DivestSPD (@DivestSPD) April 5, 2024
The contract addresses basically none of the priorities the City outlined in March 2023, including a provision to end the 180-day time limit for Office of Police Accountability investigations, which has allowed cops to skate by without punishment on serious offenses. The City also talked about the need to secure subpoena power for police misconduct investigators, reduce the high level of proof needed to discipline a cop on serious offenses, and create a more transparent appeal and arbitration process. None of that appears in the contract.
Instead, the City scored two milquetoast reforms. The first reform directs arbitrators to defer to the chief of police on officer discipline so long as the punishment aligns with “just cause,” but that term has no clear definition in the contract. The second reform allows the OPA to add two civilian investigators, bringing the total number up to four.
Though police accountability advocates want to see changes to the way the City handles arbitration and civilian oversight of police misconduct, neither of the new measures substantively changes either process, said Shannon Cheng, chair of People Power Washington, a local police watchdog organization. The City basically picked out the buzzwords people throw around about those issues just to be able to say, “‘We did something about arbitrations, we did something about civilianization,’” she said. “But the change is so minimal that it’s almost like they did nothing,” Cheng argued.
The agreement’s lackluster accountability measures do not appear to align with the significant changes the City needed to make to escape the grip of federal oversight that has cost taxpayers more than $200 million dollars over the past decade.
The Seattle Police Officer’s Guild (SPOG) ratified its previous contract in 2018 after four years of negotiations, which resulted in a 17% raise, $65 million in backpay, and other pay enhancements, including extra money for cops who wear body cameras while on duty. But, despite the City giving cops all those benefits, the contract backslid on police accountability since it did not include the landmark police reforms the City passed in its 2017 Accountability Ordinance, which promised more civilian oversight of the department.
The federal government took issue with the way that contract forced Seattle to forego major parts of the accountability ordinance. More than a decade ago, the City entered into a consent decree with the US Department of Justice, which gave US Federal Judge James Robart oversight of SPD policy changes. After the City passed the accountability ordinance, Robart ruled the City in compliance with the decree pending the results of police union contract negotiations. When the contract failed to include the City’s 2017 accountability measures, Robart ruled the City out of compliance with the decree and kept the fed’s eye on the department. In response, the city council essentially called for a do-over, saying they’d fix issues with the accountability policies in the contract during the 2020 negotiations.
Last year, the City tried to convince Robart once again to lift the consent decree before a finalized SPOG contract, and Robart said he would wait until after the City finalized the newest SPOG contract, as he was old enough to remember what happened in 2018.
A federal report in December of 2023 laid out what the City needed to do to come into compliance with federal expectations regarding police accountability. The big ones, which Robart mentioned back in 2019 and the City outlined in March of 2023, surround the City’s need to give civilians more power over police misconduct investigations, remove the strict 180-day timeline on Office of Police Accountability investigations, and to no longer use private arbitration attorneys to review and overturn disciplinary decisions by the chief of police.
Cheng said she wondered for a long time how much the City would have to pay to force SPOG to allow the City to implement the accountability ordinance and say goodbye to the police department’s federal babysitters. This Friday, when Cheng read the tentative agreement, the biggest surprise came from the lack of any even nod to what Robart wanted to see.
“The big paycheck is there, but the other side seems to be missing,” Cheng said.
Community Police Commission Co-Chair Joel Merkel said the City has not shown them any official information about the next SPOG contract, but the commission knew about the documents temporarily posted on the SPOG website.
Merkel entertained the idea that the City may have made some progress on accountability stuff in mediation with SPOG over the next contract, which, according to PubliCola, is underway, but if the City has only made as much progress as shown in the contract published Friday, then, he acknowledged, the City gave up a lot of leverage by agreeing to huge pay increases without requiring all the accountability measures the CPC requested.
Defend the Defund Organizer BJ Last said he doubts that the City plans to drop any significant accountability improvements in some secondary contract update. SPOG won the pay raises it wanted, and now it has no incentive to return to the bargaining table on accountability issues until the next time they feel like they need a raise.
A spokesperson for Mayor Bruce Harrell said his office would be able to speak about the contract in more detail should SPOG members choose to ratify the tentative agreement. He said the agreement reflects a commitment to creating a safe Seattle.
Looks to me like Seattle is recruiting new officers at the market price.
@1 well above market price. City gave the cops money for nothing. How can I get a job as contract negotiator for the Mayor’s office? Seems like the type of job where you can show up one day a week and take a nap in your office before heading home at lunch if this contract is any indication.
In a city with revolving door justice (meaning violent offenders are let loose without serving time), police attrition is a real thing. Naturally, fiscally conservative Seattle feels that throwing money at the problem through higher salaries will combat the issue. However, nothing is further than the truth.
@3 The revolving door justice refers to the cops themselves.
“In response, the city council essentially called for a do-over, saying they’d fix issues with the accountability policies in the contract during the 2020 negotiations.”
Instead of doing that, the Council wallowed in “defund” nonsense, which drove police officers out of Seattle, necessitating expensive hiring efforts now. Seattle’s need for more police also inhibits efforts to reform SPD. Of course, the Stranger simply refuses to recognize the role of “defund” in scuttling police reforms, and even here quotes pro-defund activists as authorities on something other than causing collapse of Seattle’s police reform efforts.
Taking “defund” activists seriously has terminated the political careers of CM Herbold and wanna-be CM Oliver, both darlings of the Stranger’s writers. How many more of the Stranger’s favorite politicians have to be forced out before the Stranger recognizes the absurd folly that was “defund”?
@5: “necessitating expensive hiring efforts now”
Expensive hiring of sworn officers is not at all necessary now. Sworn staffing is about right sized relative to serious crime. If the Mayor and Chief Diaz would get with 21st Century policing and emulate what other departments have been doing for years the city could backfill vacant sworn positions with civilian staff to offload the 49% of calls for service and 66% of office time spent on non-criminal matters that the city has known since 2021 fit the bill for civilian response.
@6 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/tentative-agreement-with-seattle-police-union-makes-only-minor-accountability-changes/
“The increase would catapult entry level Seattle police officers from the 29th-highest-paid in the state to the best-paid”
And before you talk about cost of living NYPD starts at $58k
https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-benefits.page
‘plus premiums for wearing body cams’
no.
Dock
’em if’n
they Don’t.
secret police
comin’ for
YOU?
we’ll
never
Know
@10 because they’re being paid with my tax dollars out of a finite City budget, obviously
@13 you gonna keep that same energy for discussions about investments in homelessness solutions, or affordable housing or transit? Or do you only believe in stifling debate about local government spending when it’s spending on cops?
anyone who chases on foot fleeing violent criminals over fences and around blind corners in the middle of soggy february nights should be paid at the top end of aspirations, minus budget realities.
paying public safety personal more makes it easier to fire the bad cops.
What a waste of money.
@16 this contract puts SPD starting salary at or very near the absolute top nationwide. Comparison with similar cities in arbitration might not have resulted in all the reforms progressives wanted, but it sure wouldn’t have resulted in this much money for the cops either
@17 “paying public safety personal more makes it easier to fire the bad cops”
No, changing policies and disciplinary procedures makes it easier to fire bad cops. Better pay could have been used as a bargaining chip to implement such changes, but instead the City inexplicably gave them the money without getting anything in return.
@8: “Can you link to any data sources that support that statement? You can’t.”
Yes, I can. According to SPD budget data & FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, in 1991 SPD handled 51.2 serious (UCR Part 1) crimes per officer. In 2022, the latest year like for like data is available, SPD handled 40.6 serious crimes per officer. In 2023 we only have SeaStat data from SPD (which should approximate UCR data once it is finally reported) and the lowball “deployable officers” number, but even by those metrics in 2023 SPD handled 47.9 serious crimes per officer.
Eh, 1990 in @20
@20 so who is handling all the non- serious crimes that are impacting people? I’m guessing in your world it’s just so sad too bad. That ain’t gonna work either and don’t give us the you need to solve poverty bullshit line.
@22: “so who is handling all the non- serious crimes that are impacting people?”
Traffic: Civilian traffic investigators like in Wilmington & Fayetteville NC
People in crisis: Civilian specialists like in Denver, Albuquerque, New York, and Eugene (and more)
After the fact crime reporting & basic investigation: Civilian Report Technicians like in Denver
Missing, sick, or injured persons; noise complaints; and stolen, lost, and recovered property or vehicles, graffiti premise checks and a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t require a gun and powers of arrest: Some variation of “public aides/community service officers/police services representatives” like in Anaheim, Santa Cruz, and many more cities
The point of civilianization of the the things that don’t require a gun and the power of arrest is in fact to enable police officers to spend their time focused on the stuff that does in order to prevent or solve serious crime. Burning their time on all this other stuff is both a waste of taxpayer dollars and nerfs the effectiveness of the department vis a vis crime (SPD has many other problems too, but this one is crystal clear and 100% solvable the mayor and chief).
@23: “I put public safety as a higher priority than police accountability”
Yet a department that is not accountable for either outcomes or professionalism is going to be chock full of slackers, clock punchers, hotheads, clowns, and pervs, and pretty much stink at public safety
@26: Yet if management sucks and there’s no accountability, the ones that are good people who are good people and do want to a good job are stuck working alongside and compensating for the slackers, clock punchers, hotheads, clowns, and pervs. That’s the situation we have in SPD.
@23 police accountability IS public safety. Police need to be held accountable when they themselves make people unsafe otherwise what’s even the point. I’m sure we all remember the case of the cop who punched a handcuffed teenage girl in the face in the back of his vehicle, and how difficult it was to fire even that scumbag. Having to fight tooth and nail to get rid of a hothead asshole is not “public safety”
SPD has long been problematic, with a history of corruption and violence. Yet it’s unrealistic that we go without some sort of public safety force. $136k doesn’t seem all that unreasonable, considering the job (which, contrary to Our Dear Raindrop’s assertion, is not all that dangerous, but certainly has more than its share of unpleasent moments. After all, no one calls the cops when the news is good)
It’s also not unreasonable to expect more accountability to go along with a higher wage, but I don’t know how that will happen, given their ingrained culture.
OTOH, I’ve noticed that the younger breed of city employee seems much more earnest, open to change, and hard-working than the generation that held sway through the early 2000’s, so maybe these things just happen. Front line city employees of the 1970’s were openly hostile to women and minorities, to the point of sabotaging safety equipment in some instances. That is unheard-of today, so maybe there’s even hope for the police.
In closing, allow me to quietly murmur that utility employees, unlike police, are not paid through the general fund. The utilities are more akin to businesses that are owned by the city and are, as the old slogan went, “Tax-paying and self-supporting”, so a salary comparison there is akin to apples and oranges. But I don’t know of any utility financial analyst who makes $136k as a starting salary.
@31 “$4,800 a month of comparable housing and standard of living in El Paso costs $7,833 here”
Ok well the El Paso PD starting salary is $54k so adjusted for COL using your numbers SPD’s should be $88k.
https://www.joineppd.com/salary
@7 The City can’t simply “offload” the SPOG bargaining unit’s body of work to others, it’s protected work under their bargaining unit and to just move it elsewhere would be skimming and illegal without an agreement from the union or a ruling from a labor administrative judge that certain work belongs in an other bargaining unit.
@34: Yes of course getting rid of those silly provisions should be job one for city government – and police officers with integrity & a commitment to preventing and solving crime should be 100% onboard for eliminating distractions that burn time they could spend on doing that. The Los Angeles Police Officers’ union, their equivalent of SPOG, for example, has proposed 28 call types for civilian response, of their own accord, so officers can focus on serious crime.
@36 the problem is you, like many people, dramatically overestimate how often those things happen to police. Google “most dangerous jobs” and you’ll see that police officer is well down the list, below garbage men as I recall. The reality is they don’t face actual danger anywhere near as often as the naive and uninformed think. The idea that they do is propaganda designed to get people who don’t know better to argue vociferously that they need more pay and less accountability, like you’re doing here.
@38: A big problem with the profession – which is a huge problem in Seattle – is that police leadership all too often chooses to deploy police in a way that isn’t very valuable (or in some cases also too actively harmful). That’s the problem we have here with Harrell, Diaz, and SPOG. (Yes I was in the profession I know how it can do done well, what we have here ain’t it, it’s as bad as any department I’ve ever seen.)
More happy horse pudding from inept progressive and or socially regressive City of Seattle leadership.
The pay increase is more than well-deserved, considering the necessity of law enforcement in this great city of ours.
In conjunction with pay, give the police more latitude in stopping crime, including the use of deadly force and aggressive arrest and detainment strategies.
It is permissible to take out a criminal’s teeth with a night stick while preventing harm to law-abiding citizens who are in fact the taxpayers who pay for all this stuff, including Mayor Harrell’s astonishing salary, even though he’s a wimp and should be shown the door.
Come on Seattle, let’s cease being dumbo leftists and throwing money at problems and ballooning the deficit, while handwringing and saying “pass the shrimp” over lunch with fellow weak leaders at the Rainier Club.
Hire and promote tough, results oriented law enforcement leadership with proven histories, and give the police and prosecutors the discretion to detain, incarcerate and eliminate crime, at least to a reasonable extent, rather than playing hide the salami with your cohorts in the executive suites while Third Avenue becomes a zombie death zone.
Allow law-enforcement to perform their necessary function, which dovetails with this generous pay increase, which you and I are paying for, and police should justify with increased arrest and deportation rates.
Also, let’s take another look at the use of military surplus munitions in a municipal setting, which are offered free of charge from the Pentagon.
Anti-tank weaponry and full auto machine guns are an excellent way to combat crime and take out a carload of illegal drug-smugglers who just tiptoed across the southern border, murdered a family, and burned down their domicile.
Remember, the taxpayers are taking it in both ends, what with astronomical inflation, taxation, and loss of life and property from criminal activity, so an effective and robust police force to support civil order and public safety is of paramount importance, and something diligent, law-abiding citizens deserve.
It is no wonder Seattleites are buying firearms for personal safety, particularly women, who are a favorite target of street vermin, and voting for Donald Trump for President, to bring back a sense of orderliness and security to the American cities and Lady Seattle.
Additionally, let’s outsource these overpaid bureaucrats at City Hall who get paid generously, particularly when you factor in benefits, for sharpening pencils and beating off in the restrooms.
Everyone is in a tizzy over these homeless encampments which dot the cityscape.
Back in the old days police threw them all in paddy wagons and dropped them off in a warmer climate like Yakima or Moses Lake.
If you don’t want to work and choose to use drugs and steal stuff, get the Hell out of here.
How great to hear from pollysexual!
The pay scale shown in the graphic moves quickly to $120K and above. That’s arguably the minimum a household would have to make in the Seattle area to survive. $140K in the Bay Area is considered poverty level, and Seattle is almost as bad.
@38 I agree protecting people from harm is valuable. Unfortunately that’s very little of what modern police departments do, which is why I at least “vilify” them (or, put differently, demand they be professional and accountable to the public)
@42: ‘or,
put differently,
demand they [Po-po] be
professional and accountable to the public’
that’d make Sense
‘specially if WE
Paid them for
their Services.
@44 hence our disappointment about the new contract that’s the subject of the article you’re commenting on
Raindrop dear, the nice thing about being a cop and “being shot, killed, maimed, stabbed, bitten, or having projectiles like bottles and bricks thrown at you” is that you have a gun and can pretty much kill anyone you want without serious repercussions.