Issue 16: Overwhelming Evidence
Defunding SPD and the municipal court in 2022
There is overwhelming evidence that police violence can only be prevented by eliminating the conditions that lead to police encounters with the public in the first place (see below). The most direct way to do this is by defunding the Seattle Police Department during the city’s regular budget process, currently underway.
Council members (CMs) have been looking at the mayor’s budget since September 27 and will be making changes to it over the next few weeks. Learn about the full budget process here: Select Budget Committee - Council | seattle.gov.
Any CM can push for money to be removed from the SPD. They can propose an amendment if they can get two other CMs as co-sponsors. Each CM is more likely to propose defunding SPD (and more likely to vote to support other amendments that defund SPD) if they hear their constituents tell them to defund SPD.
The Solidarity Budget defunds SPD
If you or your council member are unsure of where SPD’s funds should go, you can learn about many community-supported priorities in the Solidarity Budget:
Defund SPD and the municipal court by 50%
Housing for all
Seattle’s Green New Deal
Participatory Budgeting
Indigenous Sovereignty
Digital Equity
Transportation
Childcare
Food Sovereignty
Make your voice heard
A (non-exhaustive) list of ways to reach your council member:
Send an email
Call their office
Ask for a small group meeting
Speak at one of three public hearings (starting tonight, Oct 12 at 5:30 pm)
Speak during public comment before any city council meeting
Show up in the street (Oct 12, 5-7pm at City Hall)
If you are doing one or more of these things, great! Keep up the good work. If not, consider asking a friend to join you to take one of these actions together.
Join us in the street tonight:
The evidence
Many people have first-hand experience of violence at the hands of SPD. If you have capacity to tell CMs about your own encounters with SPD, that can be very powerful.
The SPD commissioned a study [National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (2021). Seattle Calls for Service Analysis] to investigate whether some of the calls they are currently responsible for could be offloaded to community-led entities. They found that an “alternative non-sworn response” could receive over 70% of calls for service (Tier 1 and Tier 2).
Share this study on Instagram:
The SPD commissioned a study [Center for Equity in Policing (2021). The Science of Justice] to “analyze the department’s policing practices” between 2014 and 2019. They found persistent structural racism:
Black people are 5 times and Native people are 9 times more likely to be stopped by SPD than white people.
Black people are the most likely to be searched by SPD and the least likely to be found with weapons.
SPD uses more force against Black people. 7% of Seattle’s population is Black, but 35 to 42% of all people subjected to force were black. It’s even worse for Black teens. When force is used on a 15-21 year-old, and race is identified, 59% are Black.
Share this study on Instagram:
A recently-published study [Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980–2019: a network meta-regression] exposes rampant under-reporting of police violence in the US. They conclude that “fatal police violence is an urgent public health crisis.”
Deaths at the hands of police have been under-reported by 55%
Black people are 3.5 times more likely to die at the hands of police than White people
Reform has not been working
“Recent reform efforts to prevent police violence in the USA, including body cameras, implicit bias training, de-escalation, and diversifying police forces, have all failed to further meaningfully reduce police violence rates. As our analysis shows, fatal police violence rates and the large racial disparities in fatal police violence have remained largely unchanged or have increased since 1990."
People have known for years that police don’t prevent crime. Earlier this summer, Interrupting Criminalization published Cops Don't Stop Violence, which summarizes many relevant studies:
“Repeated analysis has consistently failed to find any connection between the number of police officers and crime rates.”1
A study in Newark, New Jersey found that “neither adding nor removing footpatrol affected crime in any way.”2
A Kansas City experiment examined police response times and found that efforts to increase rapid response times were not effective. Researchers found that crime victims usually called someone else first — a friend, relative, or insurance agent — before calling the police, and that police virtually never made an arrest at the scene, no matter how quickly they responded.3
“Few if any studies reporting net positive effects from policing actually show it is specifically the police that reduce crime. Instead, results indicate that having someone present reduces crime,” and while police can be that someone, police do not have to be that someone.4
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David Bayley, Police for the Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3.
Kenneth Novak, Brad Smith, Gary Cordner and Roy Roberg, Police & Society, 7th ed. (Oxford University Press 2017), 105.
Kenneth Novak, Brad Smith, Gary Cordner and Roy Roberg, Police & Society, 7th ed. (Oxford University Press 2017), 98.
John Jay College Research Advisory Group on Preventing and Reducing Community Violence (2020). Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence. New York, NY: Research and Evaluation Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.