Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Okay, great to see everyone.
I'm delighted to be here today welcoming Mayor Durkan, Councilmember Gonzalez and Chief Best and you all to be here this morning.
My name is Paulina Lopez and I am a South Park community member and I am the executive director of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.
I'm very delighted to be here also because we have been as part of one of the main strengths that we have in the community working with the youth voice, representing, so we're bringing back something that we've been hearing a lot and so we're delighted that you're all.
I serve as a co-chair for the Latino Advisory Council and I've been doing this for the past 10 years.
This, what we're going to be doing today is music to my ears as we have been working on issues that public safety affecting our Latino community, as well as promoting open and respectful dialogue that builds trust between the Latino community and the Seattle Police Department.
Encouraging officer training with emphasis on cultural competency, and fostering community engagement with the advisory council, events, workshops, raising awareness around public safety.
It means so much to me and to our community, all the work that you've been doing together.
Council Member Gonzalez, thank you for moving this legislation, and Mayor Durkin and for all your leadership, Chief Best.
It does not to be said, our South Park community has been going through a lot of different incidents on the past, heartbreaking, tragic incidents that had involved some youth.
So it is very important that we work on this and that we understand the deep-seated need to have trusted police officers in the community with rich and diverse community background who can protect, but who can be mentors, who can lead our different community members.
We just this Saturday graduated a lot of little kids in this same court.
And the police department was here working with them.
And I was just thinking, you know what, my kid was one of the people who was playing soccer.
And they've been engaged for the past two months with police officers.
Our youth also have been doing some coaching in the soccer.
These are great ways to engage with youth, to engage with children, and to be here in peaceful times and to make sure that these building relationships are growing.
So I really want to thank you for allowing for this legislation to be passed.
Our police department needs to be a signified at the way that the community looks.
So I now want to thank you again for the efforts and honor the ceremony to be here and welcome.
The microphone is yours.
Thank you so much, Paulina.
I want to thank you for everything that you do in our city and our community.
And I saw Carmen Martinez here as well.
South Park is one of the most vibrant communities in the city of Seattle.
And I've had the great, great, good fortune to have the honor of being here many times, working with youth, listening to community.
And we know that it is only by working with and listening to community, empowering community, that our city can become the best city as possible.
We've also heard from communities throughout Seattle that they want a number of things from the City of Seattle with regards to public safety.
We're here today because we heard them.
We know that our police officers have been showing up every day doing the hard work of reform and that our community has been working alongside of them to make sure community voice is heard.
We have met the challenge of delivering on reform and making our city safer.
We've seen progress firsthand and the cultural shifts.
We filed with the federal court in the last several weeks a number of reports that show the sea change when it comes to crisis intervention.
and policing like that.
But at the same times, we know that it has been difficult to recruit officers recently for a variety of reasons.
One of those reasons is because our police officers were earning 2014 salary dollars in a 2018 Seattle, and that did not work.
A second is we were not competitive with other local law enforcement agencies.
Since 2015, applications from our officers serving in other law enforcement fell by 67%.
And we were not offering hiring bonuses, as a number of local ones were.
So this took urgent action on a number of fronts.
First, we needed a new, fair contract into the future so our officers would know that they would have fair compensation.
working with Councilmember Gonzalez and Council to be able to put through another contract was important, and also to make sure that that contract did not take us backwards on reform, but continue to move forward.
The legislation that we transmitted to Council asked for hiring bonuses of up to $15,000 to help ensure that we could draw those lateral candidates.
Working with Councilmember Gonzalez, who has a deep, deep history, not just in representing community, but in public safety issues and chairs that committee, No one is more committed to reform of the police department as well as giving the police department the tools it needs to do true community-engaged policing.
than Lorena Gonzalez and our Chief of Police.
Working with them together, I'm very happy to sign this legislation.
We know that under Chief Best's leadership, we will continue to build the best community police department anywhere in the country.
We know that our officers will continue to show up like they have, day in, day out, in every part of this city.
The story you heard about them coming to South Park is just one that I hear from throughout the city.
of police officers and community police officers showing up in community to work with them and provide with them.
I also want to thank my friends from the various business improvement areas, whether it's Pioneer Square, Soto, West Seattle, or the like, to be here today who have always stood for the importance of both having strong community engagement between our police department and our communities, and make sure that we continue to go forward on reform, but to give the men and women of the Seattle Police Department the tools that they need to do what they need to do to keep our community safe and become those trusted community partners.
And that starts with making sure that we give them fair wages and benefits, and that we make sure that we can remain competitive with every city in the area.
So with that, I'd also like to turn it over to Councilmember Gonzalez, who has a few words to say, and I again want to thank her for her partnership not just on this legislation, but has been a true partner with the Chief Best and I to make sure that we are always mindful of both the importance of listening to community and providing police officers with the tools they need to do that community engagement and keep our community safe.
I think it's still morning.
Good morning, everyone.
I am Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez and I'm really happy to be here with all of you today and on this momentous occasion where we get to see the mayor sign this legislation.
into law.
I want to thank the mayor and her staff for their cooperation and coordination on this really important piece of legislation that I believe is going to make a big difference for the department to be able to recruit qualified, diverse candidates who are going to be committed both to delivering public safety and being protectors of our community, but also individuals who are going to be staunchly committed to the work that we have been doing as a city on police reform and constitutional policing.
I believe in a world where both can coexist and be happy with each other.
And I think that our work collaboratively with the mayor's office is a testament to what we can get done when we understand that this is not an either or, but a both and.
We can have constitutional policing and safe communities and a diverse police department coexist with each other and really serve our community even better than what we are already doing.
So I want to express my gratitude for an opportunity as the public safety chair to be able to work with the mayor and the chief and her department on crafting this policy.
I was really excited to be able to modify the legislation to not just have a hiring bonus for lateral hires, but to also add a bonus for those new recruits where we are seeing the police department having some success in attracting even a bigger volume of individuals to the department.
So I think it's really important for us to make sure that we acknowledge the values and the skills that our new officers and new recruits could bring to the department, in addition to those who want to transfer to the Seattle Police Department.
I continue to believe that this is a department that is truly committed to the core values of the city of Seattle, to equity, to justice, to fairness.
and to real meaningful community policing.
And I have seen that really come to fruition and really bloom under Chief Best's leadership as the chief of this police department.
I'll tell you, I've been blown away by the amount of officers who have been really getting deeply connected into communities in ways that I have not seen this department do in the past.
And I want to commend not only the chief for her leadership and prioritizing that principle under the mayor's leadership, but I also want to thank the men and women of the Seattle Police Department for really taking that seriously and getting into community and getting to know people in our neighborhoods.
That's how we begin to achieve cultural reform.
That's how we begin to make sure that there is true, meaningful, long-lasting trust between our neighbors and the police department.
And that is what we want to see more of.
And I believe with this legislation, we will be able to accomplish that.
We'll be looking at it very closely to make sure that it's doing exactly that.
And, of course, we know that this is just a short-term solution.
We have long-term work to do to make sure their existing officers feel that they're being invested in and that they are being developed to have all the opportunities they want within the department.
And to that end, I'm excited to work in the task force and work group that we are coordinating with.
the mayor to look at those long-term solutions in making sure that we recruit and retain and develop officers in a way that's consistent with not just department policy but what our community expects of our department.
So thank you so much for the support and I really again want to appreciate everybody's efforts to help us as a city address the recruitment needs of the police department.
Thank you.
Well, good morning everybody.
I'm really glad to be here.
I first just want to thank Mayor Durkin and of course Councilmember Gonzalez for they are being shy about and they're not normally shy people but they're being shy about just how much work went into making this happen.
We are eternally grateful for passing this very important piece of legislation.
We know that this incentive is going to help us make sure that we continue to recruit and retain the best police officers, people who want to work in a great city for a great organization like the Seattle Police Department.
And this incentive will make us more competitive with other agencies in a very competitive market that we're dealing with right now.
This is a great city and a great agency.
from the care and compassion shown by our navigation team during the recent winter storms, to the proactive work of patrol officers such as Matt Saul, who recently recovered two stolen vehicles and arrested two suspects within a span of six hours.
The men and women of the Seattle Police Department continue to serve with dedication, and we look toward the future, building a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
We're going to continue to grow this department.
I've been here 27 years.
My blood, my life is within this organization.
You know, I believe in it.
I believe in the men and women here, and I think it's going to be really important that we make sure that we're competitive to continue to bring the great, quality people that we want to this organization.
such as the people standing right behind me right now.
So I'm very thrilled to be here to sign this legislation.
Very grateful to the mayor and to Council Member Gonzalez.
And I think with that, we can get ready to do it.
All right.
All right.
So I'm now very proud to be able to sign this legislation.
That's right.
Let's go get more.
Thank you, ma'am.
It's like a lever.
All right, you can take some questions.
OK.
Obviously, a great step forward, ma'am.
This is something that you guys are just working on.
But I have to ask, if you look at Bellevue, there are over 16,000 more lateral fighters, 50,000 here.
Is this enough to attract the officers that you need in the numbers that you need?
We think it's not going to be any one solution.
I'm going to let Chief Best address that as well because she's been working nationally on this issue.
Every major city is facing the same issue of declining people signing up to be police officers.
She's looked at it and I'll let her address it, but I think that this together with the other things we're doing This is the best police department.
If you want to be a police officer in a major city doing really interesting work, this is the place to be in Seattle.
And this will not only help us attract people, I think, but also help us retain people.
But Chief, do you want to address this at all?
Yeah, well, like I said earlier, I think it just makes us more competitive.
It's a very competitive market.
As the mayor mentioned, there's agencies all across the country that are struggling in a very good market to get people to come on the force.
And so we want to make sure that we're competitive with other organizations.
And this is one more step that will allow us to do that.
As the council member mentioned, there's a whole group that's working on long-term long-term solutions to some of these staffing issues.
So we want to do everything we can.
We will leave no stone unturned.
We are going to do everything we can to make sure that this department is competitive and we get the best men and women to work in the Seattle Police Department.
We are hiring, by the way, so get that on video.
Chief, while I have you, I wanted to ask you about going to other cities.
I believe in one of the council meetings it was discussed, I think it was Atlanta, Honolulu, a couple other cities.
Why choose those cities and how has the recruiting been going in those cities?
Well, we're making progress.
The cities that are chosen are chosen through our human resources department.
They figure out where there might be a good market to get good candidates, and then they obviously use that information to choose which areas they're going to go to and recruit.
And we have brought on other people.
We'd like to bring more, of course, but they're doing a really good job, and they are working extremely hard.
In fact, our human resources, our executive director, Mike Fields, he's here today, he has been championing this and making sure that we're doing all that we can to get the most qualified candidates from everywhere we go.
I have more questions.
I'm just trying to defer.
The chief also, she is, again, understating her role in this.
She has been very forward leaning, not just in how we recruit, but I think one of the most inspiring things to me has been is she has a very high standard of what she wants for police officers in the city of Seattle.
And we will make sure that we're not just recruiting anybody, but we're recruiting the most qualified people who can actually police in a very complicated urban situation, that we're adding to diversity, that they understand the importance of community policing, and that they will move us forward on reforms.
So every time I meet with the chief here, she's saying, look, we're going to go hire people, but we are going to make sure we get the very best.
And she thinks this is a tool that will help us to get the very best.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Council Member Gonzalez, I had a couple questions for you about some of the additions specifically clawbacks in terms of ensuring that once officers get this bonus that they stay and they invest and they grow with the department.
Can you talk about sort of what keeps the officers there once they get this bonus?
Yeah, one of the key components of the legislation is making sure that once we offer the bonus that people are going to actually stay and be part of this department and be part of this community.
And so one of the key provisions in the legislation is requiring that officers who leave before three years to pay back the bonus, whether that be the $7,500 bonus for a new recruit or the $15,000 bonus for a lateral.
In addition to that, we are going to do an initial payment of 50% of the bonus upon hire, and the remainder will be paid to the recruit upon completion of their probation status.
Okay.
And so if it is before three years that they leave, it would be the 100% of the bonus would have to come back?
That's correct.
And again, it's really important for us to look at this tool as a real opportunity for us, not just to recruit people for the sake of recruiting them, but to make sure that we're recruiting officers who meet the standards of the chief and who are willing to commit.
to this city and this department in delivering public safety in the way we expect it to be delivered.
And so those accountability pieces of the legislation are critical to being able to fulfill that intent.
And I know ensuring that diversity in this department has been a priority.
And when you were looking at those numbers, I remember you saying, okay, well, we're looking at laterals and we're looking at new recruits.
A lot of the new recruits, you know, have a lot of diverse backgrounds.
And so I was wondering if you could talk about the importance of having that bonus for new recruits as well to keep that sort of track record of increasing diversity in the department.
I want to really commend the leadership of the police department for their strong commitment towards recruiting individuals who look like the communities that they are hired to serve.
The police department has shown a tremendous amount of improvement.
as it relates to diverse candidates being recruited to the department under the chief's leadership and under the prior chief's leadership as well.
And so I think that where we are seeing a significant number of diverse recruits coming through, whether it be women or racial diversity, is in that new recruit hiring class.
And so I wanted to make sure that we had a policy that allowed and supported the police department to continue to show success in their ability to recruit people from diverse backgrounds and to make sure that there wasn't any slippage in terms of the really tremendous progress that the department has made to being able to hire diverse recruits, whether it's based on gender or race.
I just want to add one quick thing on the You asked a question on laterals that I think that's really important that sometimes gets missed is with the passage of initiative 940, every police department across the state now is going to have to start training their police officers on what we have already implemented.
And so Seattle Police Department is ahead of many of the state in this regard.
So this addition to have us is while other people are developing their policies, procedures, and trainings, we're well underway.
And the proof that they're working is clear from the reports.
If you look, for example, at the most recent crisis intervention report, The number of calls that police officers are called to has skyrocketed, yet the use of force is very minimal.
So our police officers are shown up every day, but we've made that investment, a very expensive investment in both personnel cost, and training costs in our department.
So we're poised right now to do a lot of really great things.
And again, what I really want to commend Chief Best for looking at recruitment as a way not only to just keep the department at strength, but to improve the department and its mission.
This is from the union.
They were saying they're hoping that the city will look at exit interviews as well and take a look at why officers are leaving.
It's a great question and I think it's we do very robust exit interviews and how and why people leave.
To be clear, Leaving because of reforms is not a reason people cite.
This police department has done what they needed to do to meet the terms of the consent decree and more.
They see the benefits in engaging in community and de-escalation work and crisis intervention training.
So the chief best has been, since I've been mayor, has been very committed to seeing not only who are we attracting, but when people leave, why are they leaving?
And so we, as Council Member Gonzalez said, there is no conflict between good, strong community policing and constitutional policing.
In fact, I don't think that good, strong community policing can exist without constitutional policing.
Thank you.
Mayor and Chief, I think they were just saying that they hope that there's more review of those exit interviews to figure out exactly why officers might be leaving, to include that sort of in how changes might be made to keep them there.
100%.
I think you've got to look at why do people come, and when they come, who are the people that stay and are your best officers?
And the ones that leave, if they're the ones you wanted to keep, Why are they leaving so that you can calibrate?
So I think that they're, you know, it's like any other human organization.
You've really got to see from the people you recruit how you get not just the best coming in the door, but how you keep them there.
Thanks very much.