Lester writes: "The contract was immediately criticized by the Community Police Commission (CPC)."
Not true: the CPC had the contract for 16 days before discussing & voting on it. During the first 14 of those 16 days they refused to release the SPOG contract, hiding behind the City Attorney's office's frivolous claim of a public records exemption. This prevented individuals and organizations from weighing in on the contract weeks before the mayor launched her disinformation campaign. See: https://www.realchangenews.org/2018/10/17/community-police-commission-was-hiding-police-contract-public.

Lester notes that SPOG voted down a contract in 2016, but fails to note that SPOG leadership prevented a 2015 negotiated contract from even being considered by its membership (unquestionably because of police reforms). The pity narrative that highlights that Seattle police have gone nearly four years without a new contract (and the consequent pay raise) ignores the real reason this has happened: police know they will always win back wages in newly negotiated contracts, hence it is a way for them to financially blackmail the City when they choose to fight contract provisions around police reform. This is why many police reform organizations have suggested limiting back-pay in newly negotiated police contracts to reduce the incentives that police unions have for fighting police reforms and delaying contract negotiations.

Because Seattle no longer has any reporter doing investigative journalism on policing (e.g., Ansel and Dominic who consistently challenged official narratives), no one has actually bothered to find out who sat across from SPOG at the negotiating table and hammered out the minutiae of this new contract. That information was accidentally leaked at the October 30th special meeting of the CPC, revealing there were two people who, over the long term, consistently sat across from SPOG: Ian Warner (General Counsel to Mayor Durkan) and Otto G. Klein III (private labor law attorney who for three decades has worked for the management/boss side). This is the real story: two unelected bureaucrats, the first a well known dissembler and prevaricator, the latter a gun for hire, have negotiated away the rights and protections for Seattleites. Ian Warner is best remembered for falsely claiming last fall that arbitration hearings for police would be open to the public, and misleading people on the current contract with false claims about what arbitrators can do and the meaning of contract "re-openers." Warner is nothing if not consistent in his role in police reform as chief dissembler: on May 4, 2017, and again on October 25, 2018 (both at public forums), Warner has repeated the false claim that the SPD has entered a new era of transparency by making publicly available its "Use of Force" reports (the only police reports that can be considered as sworn statements and be the basis for questioning an officer's honesty).

Seattle's 2017 police reform legislation was a "floor," or maybe more accurately a basement when compared to police reform in Newark, New Jersey. To further chip away at that is unconscionable. Seventeen months ago, at a public hearing on the murder of Charleena Lyles, City Council members spoke loftily about how that hearing opened their eyes and changed them. I guess, as with the head tax, they weren't changed enough to fight for change when confronted with economic or political power that pushes back.