Mayor Durkan denounces council plan to cut SPD budget

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has pushed back against the Seattle City Council budget committee's plan to eliminate or reduce several SPD programs this year.

This is an edited transcript of the conversation between Zaki Hamid and Mayor Jenny Durkan on Wednesday, August 5, 2020.

What specifically are you opposed to in the [Seattle City Council budget] amendments [regarding the police budget] that are being discussed today?

Obviously, the really easy political thing would have been for me and [Seattle Police] Chief [Carmen] Best to say, yep, we could cut the police department by 50% and we'd be fine -- because there was such political pressure coming from some quarters of the city to do that. You saw 7 of the 9 city council members jump on that bandwagon right away.

But we said number one, we thought it would be irresponsible to do it because there was no plan involved and in addition, to have that kind of drastic reduction in the context of just the five months that's left of 2020, is not the way to go about reimagining, reconfiguring a police department.

And some of the cuts can't be made because of either labor contracts we have with a range of labor unions, or because of the administration of certain things like the 911 center that requires federal certifications. So the bottom line is it's complex.

I am heartened that the city council now recognizes that. And the cuts that they are proposing are the exact cut that we proposed after a very thorough process where Chief Best looked at it and made recommendations on what could be cut, what could be moved, and we'd still preserve what we needed for public safety. The one thing they're doing on top of that is to lay off 100 officers between now and the end of the year, and we will lose our most diverse and our most recent hires that are the exact kind of lifeblood we want in the police department. And I believe and Chief Best believes that that is the wrong way to go.

The City Council says that the police chief can request something called "out of order layoffs." Is that not the case?

It's a smoke screen. And I hate to use that phrase and description. But yes, technically, there's a law that allows that. But in reality, as the head of our labor relations department indicated to them, and which our own counsel indicated to them, you can't get that done by November 1, which is what their budget assumes.

What it essentially means is, under the law, you have to keep the most experienced and lay off the most recently hired. And those that are probation or new recruits would be the first to go. The only way you can get around that is if you say, I'm skipping over Jenny, and we're going to keep Jenny and instead layoff the person who was number 101 on the list. Well, number 101 on the list gets to challenge that. And you have to show a basis by which the new recruit is better, more experienced, more valuable to the department. And so there's a managerial reason. You can't use race. So in effect, it can't happen.

And I think that people know it can't happen. And we should just be honest about that. If you lay off 100 officers, you're going to lay off our most diverse class that we've ever had. Not just racially diverse, but with backgrounds and experiences that really will transform the Seattle Police Department.

So yesterday, you said 2020 is not the best playing field to discuss further reductions to SPD and reinvestment in the community. So I'm wondering if you can take me through your thinking a little bit about what is the benefit of delaying these discussions?

So it's not delay, it's actually doing it in a methodical way. Just cutting cops will not make communities safer. I think we have to look at all the components that I've heard from community, and the number one thing that we need to be thinking about, not just in conjunction with how we reduce SPD, but regardless of what happens with SPD, we have to make bigger investments in the community.

We know and I have pledged that we will make $100 million of new investments in the Black and BIPOC communities so that there's better health and better resiliency in those communities. We want people not to have to call 911. And if you invest in things like affordable housing and health care, and economic opportunity, you're going to build communities that are more resilient and self-sustainable.

And then when it comes to SPD, we shouldn't be playing it as a numbers game. What we have to be doing is, what do we want police to do? And what do we want other people to do? Who are those other people? How do we hire, recruit and train them and have them available 24/7, so if someone calls 911, we can send them the help they need. Sometimes that will be a traditional armed police officer, sometimes they need a different kind of help. But we don't have that resource available right now.

So it seems that some of the stuff that you're talking about is similar to what the council is talking about. You say you're willing to work with the council. What kind of consensus are you hoping for?

I actually think that there could be broad consensus between the council and myself, but also in the community -- that as we start to engage now more deeply in the communities throughout Seattle, that people will, I think -- almost everyone I have talked to agrees we need to reimagine what police do.

And police now end up doing things that frankly, are because all the other systems have broken down and it ended up on their plate. There's no better example than people experiencing behavioral health issues that lead to so many of the criminal justice interactions that we've had.

So when I came in as mayor, for example, I looked at the data and said, how come so many of the people we're arresting downtown, are people experiencing homelessness that have behavioral health issues. And a criminal intervention is never going to break that cycle. So we together with the fire department started a pilot called Health One. So instead of a police officer coming to such an event, where they either have to arrest them and take them to jail, or take them to Harborview, and we saw that didn't work, we now have a trained medic and social worker who can roll to the scene, talk to the person, get them what they need to be stabilized. It might be connecting them with their case manager or taking them to the hospital. It may be getting them someplace, they can get some kind of treatment. It's a range of things. And so we need to be able to expand that kind of program, so that when we have those kinds of cases -- I've talked to police officers and community, everyone thinks those cases could and should be handled differently.

Becca in West Seattle: I was really disappointed in how you and Chief Best chided the city council as being reckless for their commitment to reducing the police department's budget by 50% to reallocate those funds to much needed public services. My question is this: Isn't it more reckless to have a police department with a documented track record of brutalization against BIPOC individuals and protesters, revolt, resulting in a severe distrust in police. I guess what I'm not hearing is urgency around this issue. I guess I need to hear that y'all recognize things as is is not only not working, but that this brutalization is equally dangerous, if not more long term, than police staff layoffs.

First, over the last 35 years, I've been very deeply involved in police reform issues in Seattle: the creation of the Office of Police Accountability, the investigation at SPD that I led as US Attorney, the consent decree which I signed, and now continuing to reform the police department. So I am absolutely committed and will say every day that we always have to be evaluating what's happening in Seattle Police Department and police departments across the country.

And there's no question that the murder of Mr. Floyd really showed people in such a stark way, what generations of African Americans have already felt themselves. And the urgency of change is absolutely today in this moment.

The recklessness that I refer to is, if you really want to reimagine policing, you have to make sure that you have a plan in place, that not only has ability to create a police department that's wholly accountable to community, but to create these other resources that can respond when police aren't needed. Those two things have to go together.

And I think the council now has basically admitted and acknowledged that Chief Best and I were right, because they've admitted and acknowledged that they can't cut the police department by 50% this year. That doesn't mean we shouldn't urgently be thinking about, what should a police department look like? And how do we make sure that they have the trust of the community and act responsibly to community?

I'll add just one thing, very early on in the protests, when we saw the police response, I called OPA, Office of Inspector General and CPC and said, look, I think how we're doing crowd management, it was approved by the court, but we need to rethink it. We need to rethink it in the First Amendment protest setting. And so there is right now a review going underway by those independent accountability partners that will come back and make recommendations on how we change things. And I think we can get those kinds of recommendations from them and have the court look at them and approve them probably in the next two to three months.

Andrea in Ballard: I just wanted to voice support for school resource officer programs. It's just kind of appalling to me that the pendulum has swung so far in this direction that we're taking officers out of schools. Kids aren't the ones that are voting on this. They're an unspoken population. If we're going to be voting out so much at the police budget, I would be far more in support of where it's actually going to hit the voters -- if it's going to make priority response calls from five minutes to eight minutes, OK. But next time we have an incident where a school resource officer could have stopped it, that's going to be a bad situation. It will be on our hands. And I just wanted to speak out for the SRO program and ask you what your thought is on that and why the pendulum has swung that far and why that's on the chopping box.

This is also one where I've got to call out the unbelievable reporting of KUOW that also showed that school security officers are something we need to review. I think it's totally appropriate to be thinking about in a school setting, what kind of adults do you want there that send a message to kids in terms of whether it's positive and negative.

And the school resources officers, I think provided some positive things over the years. But I also think that for many populations, it sends the message to those kids, we need a cop here in order for you to be a good student. And I don't think we should be sending that message.

So again, though, as you cut them, what is that thing you put in place that can really retain the kind of continuity and order and accountability that you work on as a community together, and that's a small community, the school community.

I know that Superintendent Denise Jueanu is very keen on examining those issues together because there are times that you have students act out in a school where you need that student removed from a classroom. And you've got to find ways to do that. And I think we have to reimagine how that happens as well. So I think it's a really good point.

Your other question, I think is, look, pendulum swings different ways. But I think this is more than a pendulum swing in terms of how we reimagine policing. We've come to a place in our culture now, and our country, that we have to acknowledge the role that systemic racism has played in every institution, but in policing in particular. And we as a country, if there was one institution or system that we've invested in, that touches the Black community most, it's the criminal justice system. And that's wrong. We need to show that we will invest in those systems that provide health: affordable housing, health care, childcare, access to good quality education. And so that's the kind of commitment I think we have to make. Policing's an issue but it's got to be a broader scale look at how we really invest in community.

Jacqueline in Seattle: You mentioned earlier you'd like to keep the younger, more diverse, different backgrounds and training, newer police hires. But we're stuck with the older police because of the contracts that they have with the police union. I'm wondering why you can't take this very bold move as did Camden in New Jersey, where you, in the arc of 24 hours, dissolve what is currently the Seattle Police force. You rename it and because you rename it, there is no longer the Seattle police union. Those contracts are voided and you can keep on with the police that we need to keep on and anybody who has a bad record, they are just simply put into retirement.

I want to talk about Camden specifically. I think people don't appreciate how Camden came to be dissolved. It wasn't because community felt their police department wasn't responsive. It was because Republican Governor Chris Christie got in a fight with the union and they wouldn't take certain reductions. And so he just dissolved them.

What then happened in Camden was bad. And universally recognized now, the replacement police force was poorly trained, counts of force went up. There was lack of supervision and consistency. And then community really raised their voice and demanded that things like deescalation training and better supervision happen. Once that was in place, Camden now is a better police department, but they actually have more officers today then when they were dissolved.

And that goes again, it's not just a numbers game. It is, what do you have police do? How do they do it? And what are some of the duties police have that somebody else or some people like trained social workers or crisis intervention specialists, or family therapists that might be a resource available. And you've got to have that resource available 24/7 so that when someone calls 911, you can get a response right away. No one wants to wait 15-20 minutes after a 911 call to get whatever help they need.

Demonstrators are marching right now from King County Youth and Family Justice Center to City Hall in support of police defunding, and protesters have also showed up to residences. They showed up to your house, the houses of several city council members, King County Executive and of course police chief Carmen Best. Do you support or condemn these marches?

I think that's a too simple framework.

I believe strongly in the First Amendment right to protest. I've done it myself dozens and dozens and dozens of times here, and Washington DC. I also believe that you have to be able to hold your elected officials accountable. I think that there can be a difference in opinion on whether when protesters come to a person's home, the disruption it causes for the neighbors, as well as the elected officials' family members, whether that's appropriate and fair. There can be healthy debate about that.

What I think there cannot be any debate about, is when it goes beyond protesting to actual malicious conduct. And at my home and other council members' home, there has been repeated acts of malicious hate speech and paint on pillars and walls, in the streets, that have nothing to do with Black Lives Matter. In fact, those messages are antithetical to Black Lives Matter. And so the march to the homes is one issue. But I think what really has crossed the line and what we've seen, particularly we saw it with Deborah Juarez, is it was also the destructive behavior and the very hateful messages that were left in spray paint. And that's what I think -- I disagree that that is effective. It's actually a crime. But more than that, I think it really distracts from and undermines the central message of Black Lives Matter.

How is the transmission of Covid looking in Seattle right now?

We've stabilized a little bit. We saw a really alarming increase week over week in the county and in the city. And almost all of it centered in our younger population. It's leveled off some. But we're now starting to see that transmission go to more vulnerable communities and people of older ages, which leads to higher hospitalization.

And so the governor, the County Executive Dow Constantine, Jeff Duchin the health officer, and I talk regularly, as is Patty Hayes, who is our head of Seattle/King County Public Health, to really think of some strategies.

And so I just want to say to everybody, we are not only not out of the woods, things have gotten worse. And the last thing we want to have to do is go backwards and start shutting down businesses again and isolating ourselves from each other. So we really need people -- the only intervention we have is the acts that each of us take. Please, please, please, please, please, if you go out wear a mask, it helps protect you and it protects other people. Wash your hands frequently. These kind of non-pharmaceutical interventions are all we have to fight this virus.

If you're out in our parks, enjoy the parks, but please keep moving, don't congregate. I've seen more and more people having backyard barbecues with dozens of people or people in the parks, gathering on beach towels close and no one wearing masks. The virus is still a threat and deadly. So take care of yourselves and take care of the people around you.