At city council candidate debates, questions about police reform usually get scripted, noncommittal answers about how trust has been eroded, cops should be more invested in their neighborhoods, and, oh, by the way, we’re under a federal consent decree from the Department of Justice. No shit.
Part of this is the result of broad, vague questions from moderators. It doesn’t have to be that way. With the recent news of Mayor Ed Murray’s tangle with the Community Police Commission, it’s time to find out where the candidates stand on making that civilian-oversight group permanent and where they land on a few other particulars in the police-reform push.
So we put a few questions to the incumbent council members who’ve been thinking about police reform for years and to the candidates running against them. Plus we surveyed the people running for a citywide seat in which there’s no incumbent running, since one of those people will soon be representing all of Seattle in the ongoing police-reform debates. Question number one was should Seattle’s Community Police Commission (CPC) become a permanent body?
