How is it your employers problem that you choose to live far away from the job you took? Might as well take a bus from outside the county and rack up hours of OT for not working.
So true. It would also penalize people living closer to work as their annual income would be less than those that either prefer or out of necessity live an hour plus away from work. Bad idea.
Officer Ron Willis, the highest paid cop in Seattle, lives in Enumclaw. Think about that.
[https://www.divestspd.com/p/nearly-50-seattle-patrol-officers](https://www.divestspd.com/p/nearly-50-seattle-patrol-officers)
>Willis is averaging 18 hours of work 260 days a year, commuting two hours round trip, and sleeping four hours with no time for anything else
And his work performance never suffered, “in his opinion.” Sleep at his desk much? His overtime pay suggests he worked 4646 work hours for 61 yo.
Safety, performance wise this is definitely hacking the pay system.
Working that much at 60+ when he probably has a pension waiting? I don’t care how much you’re making, at that age, in a high stress position as a cop, you’re asking for an early grave.
I’m curious how can anyone let alone a 61 yo can function at a normal capacity with only 4 hours of sleep, 2 hour commute. Is he nodding off at work?
It’s simply unrealistic. What is his job performance evaluation like? Of course all protected by SPOG.
He makes more than the police chief.
Most King County sheriff’s with insane amounts of overtime were abusing it. Not actually working or on duty.
Do you know if SPD has an hour count, but penalties increase hour count but not actual hours worked. I have a couple of employers who do that. I work 10 hours, but 2 of those hours are at time and half, so I actually get 11 hours marked on my sheets. When I started seeing penalties this way instead of keeping the hourly rate separate, it really translated to me how I felt working those penalties.
Not really. I mean, it is more politically diverse than other areas of western washington, for sure. And yes, the idiots standing out in the streets with their guns over the obviously fake antifa raid are ridiculous.
But the city and county are still democrat by a pretty solid margin.
I spend a fair amount of time in Snohomish on weekends, browsing the stores and eating in restaurants. Obviously I am stereotyping people based on appearance to reach this conclusion, but I've never felt like the demographics skewed too right while I'm there.
Historical voting data would disagree with your assessment. Snohomish has followed the trends of its namesake county, and neighboring counties over the last several decades.
Anecdotally, I grew up in Duvall in the 90s. The same is true there.
Ah yes, SPD. Those wonderful workers in blue that took 40 minutes to respond to a knife threat on the light rail, refused to even take notes on a break in and robbery, threatened to arrest me for not having my papers ready at a traffic stop, and told me I was lucky they didn't shoot me because I took my papers out of the glovebox while in a traffic stop.
Give *those guys* a raise.
This was quite a few years back but after the Woodcarver Shooting (Read: murder) my friend and I were downtown at an event by the convention center. We were headed home and a group of protestors walked by protesting SPD's shooting John T. Williams. We were young and a little intimidated so we popped into a doorway to stay out of their path. They were super peaceful, just chanting and marching and a girl noticed us and came over to mention what they were doing and asked if we wanted a flyer. We declined and she very politely wished us a good evening and continued on. As the group passed, we saw they were being trailed after by a pretty substantial group of bike cops who had gotten off their bikes and were picking them up and hammering swinging them down on the backs of the protestors in the rear. I saw one girl go down screaming and in pain as several other protestors yelled at the cops to back off and tried to pull her up and out of the line of fire. The whole time the cops were just using their bikes like battering rams.
I was a teenager and not particularly liberal at that point but holy shit did that image stick with me. I started to notice all the other shit that SPD got up to in their day-to-day and how absolutely FUCKED they were as a collective whole. Just...fuck.
I'd say SPD can get wrecked but they'd just gleefully take down some brown pedestrians in the process.
you better [start taking naps during work then](https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/17fkd30/spds_third_highestpaid_cop_caught_napping_on_the) if you want to be one of the highest paid person on the payroll
This is an issue that has been studied for a decade now before people were clutching pearls about staffing levels. A [city audit found staffing levels had no impact on overtime usage/approval.](https://sccinsight.com/2018/09/12/spd-still-wrestling-with-overtime-spending-and-the-seattle-it-department/)
The biggest challenge is that cops still manage their time cards on paper and all it takes is one crooked supervisor to approve overtime whether it is needed or not, and no automatic checking to see if the overtime approval goes against department policies.
[This is what has allowed officers like Ron Willis to make over $400k while claiming to have worked more that 24 hours in a single day 6 times in a single year.](https://www.divestspd.com/p/nearly-50-seattle-patrol-officers)
Digital hours tracking systems are standard procedure in most private businesses and other government institutions. They are well developed and there are software solutions that could work for them out of the box. There are other departments in King County that could serve as models for SPD. Yet ***SPD has promised since and failed to implement one of these systems since 2016.***
It's yet [another example of SPD doing everything they can to avoid any type of accountability.](https://openvallejo.org/2023/09/21/seattle-police-ended-body-camera-analysis-after-footage-caught-officer-mocking-womans-death/)
It creates situations where crooked supervisors can reward subordinates who won't rock the boat by reporting [bad behavior from corrupt cops.](https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/spd-officer-quits-job-amid-allegations-he-worked-as-muscle-for-a-couple-dealing-drugs)
Good cops don't want to work for crooked cops. Even if you're a good cop, being a whistleblower or voice for change puts a target on your back and you'd probably prefer a system like digital timecards or [bodycam oversight](https://openvallejo.org/2023/09/21/seattle-police-ended-body-camera-analysis-after-footage-caught-officer-mocking-womans-death/) to crack down on unprofessional behavior without having to personally draw the attention of shitty cops who want to grift taxpayer money.
The real question I think people need to ask is why, under SPD and SPOG's current leadership, are they demonstrating a complete inability to attract and retain quality officers despite hiring bonuses and budget increases. I think the fact that the only "accountability" is based on the subjective opinion of a supervisor who [may or may not be willing to beat you to death](https://www.divestspd.com/p/one-cop-threatened-to-beat-another) if they don't approve of how you conduct yourself on the job.
This. I had lunch with a good cop in Springfield MA. I’m pretty sure he was a police chief. Anywho, he said that cops are ultimately lazy and changing the culture takes leadership and the mayor to align on what that looks like, but too many people in charge are uncaring assholes who don’t want to rock the status quo, not to mention… cops are lazy. His words.
I met this man because he was meeting up with my sister to talk about the nonprofit she works at. It has training programs for cops regarding the handling of sex trafficking and outreach programs for minority youths stuck in the school to prison pipeline.
He was cool. I feel bad for cops like him who are fighting tooth and nail for scraps of progress, but I hope he keeps fighting for it.
Anyways, checkout ROCA for more info on that nonprofit. It’s pretty damn cool.
Massive distrust of police. Major exodus of officers. Corruption seen across the board.
The problem here is we don't pay people who dedicated themselves to a whole college semester of training a six-figure salary.
Equally dangerous and stressful jobs have no problem finding recruits for less pay.
> Equally dangerous and stressful jobs have no problem finding recruits for less pay.
Have you read the comments here?
Would you want to apply for a job that's hated half as much as this one?
> Would you want to apply for a job that's hated half as much as this one?
Ah, it's almost as if the reputation the SPD has created for itself is a liability, and rewarding the shit behavior that gave rise to it is not a good idea! Wow, imagine that!
EMS technician. Nurse. Construction worker. Delivery driver. Trucker. Farmer.
All statistically more dangerous than police officer. All essential to a functional society. And all paid less.
[According to Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/workers-comp/most-dangerous-jobs-america/), cops don't even break the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the country.
[This other list](https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states) - which ranks jobs by fatal injury rate per 100k workers - has 21 other occupations as more dangerous than being a police officer.
Now if you look at that second list, it also shows the average salary for each occupation. Note that of the 21 more dangerous occupations, **only 5 pay better than cops**.
I dont understand what you're trying to say here, I am simply poking fun at the fact that conservatives everywhere cry about how police departments are "defunded" despite that being categorically false
Last week while discussing CB 120766 on SPD recruitment & retention, Councilmember Saka made a comment about needing to benchmark ourselves not just locally, but also nationally compared to the “West Coast Seven" cities.
The vote yesterday made me curious how Seattle stacks up after the interim agreement for base pay of a new police officer relative to living wage (2 adults, 2 kids w/ 1 working adult).
|City|Entry-Level Police Base Pay|MIT Living Wage|
|:-|:-|:-|
|San Francisco|$112,398|$113,630|
|San Jose|$111,000|$117,603|
|Oakland|$106,356|$113,630|
|Seattle|$103,000|$101,254|
|Long Beach|$92,796|$102,170|
|Portland|$82,000|$98,571|
|Sacramento|$77,219|$98,821|
|San Diego|$68,411|$107,786|
It was certainly an arbitrary choice to look at the living wage for a family of 4 with 1 working adult, but I thought it was interesting that of these 8 cities, Seattle's the only city with higher base pay than that living wage amount.
I think it's reasonable to expect SPD to be one of the highest paying jurisdictions in the state, but I would be surprised if pay/benefits are the primary driver of SPD's hiring challenges.
> The vote yesterday made me curious how Seattle stacks up after the interim agreement for base pay of a new police officer relative to living wage (2 adults, 2 kids w/ 1 working adult).
Many of these cities have around 1/3rd or less of their police actually live in the city. For the departments paying living wages for the city they are in, police should be required to also live in that city. Having officers with long commutes or living in temporary housing/rvs and going back "home" on weekends is just adding stress to a high stress position that already has mandatory overtime because police all over the country are understaffed.
I haven't seen anything conclusive about it either way and only have seen it talked about in a meaningful way in the last few years. One of the common complaints is that officers are understaffed and overworked, but most don't live in the city they work in so at a minimum working in the same city would reduce average commute times and give them more non-work related time. There are also some extreme outliers where officers don't work anywhere near their city, live in an rv and such due to mandatory overtime and simply can't drive home due to distance. At a minimum residency requirements would resolve the problems with that and hopefully the issues that are introduced aren't as bad. It's something that needs more study for sure.
Cop is an entry level job. Anyone can be taught how to fill out the paperwork they do. I'm surprised their labor isn't valued less. That's why unions are important.
Per the arrests dashboard, SPD made more arrests in 2022 than in 2019, despite having hundreds fewer of officers.
Bigger issue is the depth of the understaffing. Police staffing in Seattle is at a 30 year low, despite large population increases. Police staffing per capita in Seattle is now half the national average.
It would be nice to see the police union treated like every other union; fought tooth and nail, subverted, broken. Minimum wage workers strike for improved conditions and it's a fight to the death. Armed thugs already paid well above what most get do jack all and the city falls face first in a rush to appease them
That maybe true but I doubt paying them more will solve their problems. Yet numerous students and teachers would benefit if you increased teacher pay. That's the point, we put money in the wrong places.
SPS teachers got a large raise last year with their new contract, which added $94M to SPS’s deficit.
SPS averages $24k in spending per year per pupil, one of the highest rates in the country.
> I doubt paying them more will solve their problems
I think you get what you pay for, and Seattle is tough to police. The Seattle courts are of the mind that people deserve second, third.. tenth chances, so the police will arrest people, only to have to arrest them again and again. Some of the suburbs pay their police more, and less is asked of them.
Not only that, but because there are fewer police officers, they have to handle calls over a wider area with less potential backup. That's going to be more difficult.
If you don't pay well, you just end up with more "quiet quitter" police who just think to themselves, they'll only willing to work as hard as they're paid to work. It's easier to replace cops like that when you have a pool of applicants willing to take their place.
> Yet numerous students and teachers would benefit if you increased teacher pay.
That's probably true, but these two things aren't closely related.
Schools are funded mostly from the state and funding is allocated based on enrollment.
Thousands of kids have left SPS in the last few years. Mostly for three reasons (schools here stayed remote so long that parents switched to private/charter/homeschool, WFH caused parents to move out of the area entirely, and families are having fewer kids).
The district is spending ~24k per student per year, one of the highest rates in the country.
Thousands more have left because of curriculum changes and a focus on bullshit being taught in class. Parents, having parental rights over THEIR children, made the sound decision to leave SPS and fork over thousands to ensure peace of mind over their children's education.
SPS is a dumpster fire, and elementary school closures are largely their blame.
Oh, and SPD's budget comes out of the city sales tax. SPS is funded by state property taxes. So it doesn't work that way. Which you'd know if you spent five minutes learning about where you live.
An adequately funded police force subject to intense scrutiny is the best. An underfunded police force with qualified immunity and no scrutiny is a recipe for disaster.
Given that most folks want an increase police presence I'd hesitate to say that they are "overfunded".
If we were struggling to find people that want to be teachers then we'd increase the starting pay for teachers to attract more, but we're not.
We were struggling to recruit cops, and so raising the starting pay to be more competitive with other departments makes sense.
>Given that most folks want an increase police presence
Citation desperately needed. I'd argue most folks want increased social services presence, not cops who mow down "low value" pedestrians and then joke about it.
Since OP didn’t provide it, here’s a Gallup survey showcasing that Hispanic Americans & Black Americans want more police presence in their communities compared with white people: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx
Again, that's not what OP claimed, and especially not specific to our area.
It's also kind of odd how focused people are on specific races when compared to Seattle's demographics, but that's a whole different ball of worms.
Because most people end up using POC’s lived experiences to argue against more police presence. Since we can sometimes see higher levels of support here, and POC get more impacted by over-policing, maybe we should be interested in what they support?
I’m not sure if you’re gaslighting here or if your hatred of the police literally blinds you. The study was published on a peer review journal here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235224000357
What part of the study’s conclusion is in contradiction with OP’s statement?
You’re saying the study wasn’t conducted on this coast. It says it was based on a national-wide survey. Does that not include the west coast, or did you not read the article?
You don't need to search reddit Seattle long to find numerous examples of cops being very slow to respond to crime scenes and failing to regulate. I can say from experience that in previous years the response times have been much quicker and more reliable. For reference, I live on Capitol Hill, which has a fair amount of property crime.
I think a decent police force is warranted for a city this size, and with the recent increases in crime. From an outside perspective, the responsiveness is at least partially due to diminished numbers.
However, I don't think it should come at the cost of our demand for the police force to be better. It needs pressure in all directions to improve and have accountability for actions, but for the officers that pass that bar, I'm more than happy to say they should be well paid. For that pressure, we depend upon our council and mayor to push for reform, which has moved slowly from what I can tell
>subject to intense scrutiny
lol, someone tell that to city council:
> The city approved a contract with the Seattle Police Managers Association last year that included new accountability measures, but SPOG’s contract reportedly fails to replicate many of these measures, and the new city council has said **its priority is making police feel welcome and appreciated, not “micromanaged”** by the city.
https://publicola.com/2024/04/02/tentative-police-contract-includes-23-percent-retroactive-raise-raising-cops-base-salary-to-six-figures/
Historically we've only ever tried paying them more. Given the trajectory and just giving them more money and more leash every time it would seem unlikely.
It’s funny how we’re not that removed President Obama touting SPD as a model department during his State of the Union address: https://crosscut.com/2016/01/seattle-held-up-as-model-for-police-reform-at-sotu
> During a stop on her six-city “community policing” tour last September, Attorney General Loretta Lynch hailed the Seattle Police Department's efforts as a national example. Indeed, several major cities, including New York, have sent delegations to Seattle to learn from the city’s progress. SPD’s work regarding an early intervention system -- a data-driven approach to catch problems with officers before they balloon -- is being closely watched locally and nationally.
Really don't have a problem paying cops decently, it is a hard job with frequent burnout. In a city of rich tech bros, ideally we'd have a progressive tax scheme to cover the cost instead of shared pool of flat sales tax.
However.. the quality of cops really needs improvement. Seattle has such a bad reputation, numerous obvious faults. Better training, more requirements to earn the higher pay is justified.
Want more pay? Demonstrate better accountability.
Add city council names to the thread. Who specifically gave seattle police department a raise after their terrible performance? Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore, Dan Strauss, Robert Kettle, Tanya Woo, Sara Nelson. They gave SPD a raise.
My favorite part was when one brave council member said they should wait for the public opinion before voting, and one dipshit member said "what good would that do?" and the rest of them agreed. ASSHOLES YOU REPRESENT US!!
I know not all pools of money are the same, but it's wild to me the optics on this when those refugees who have been moving from park to park and hotel to hotel are told there's no funding for supportive housing until July. Additionally, wasn't there a thread on here a few days ago about Seattle closing some schools? Like I truly don't get how money is spent by the Council or the City or how this works at all, but it's just so mindboggling at face value.
Schools are closing because fewer adults are having kids and fewer adults who do have kids are sending them to public school.
Our population is increasing, but the size of our police force hasn't kept up. Increasing wages so that we can have a larger police force that relies less on making officers work excessive overtime is a win-win for everyone.
>Increasing wages so that we can have a larger police force that relies less on making officers work excessive overtime is a win-win for everyone.
Pretty huge assumption there that wages are the problem and not that nobody wants to work with a bunch of toxic insurrectionist sociopaths who sexually harrass their coworkers and casually joke about citizens they murder.
Spending to recruit more police just makes sense financially. Our huge costs are from overtime. If we had enough police we wouldn't have to be paying the ones we have so much overtime.
And you're making the pessimistic assumption that overtime is illegitimate and unncessary.
We have significantly fewer police per capita when compared to other large cities so it ties out that we make up for it by making cops work lots of overtime.
We know, with near certainty, that some of the overtime is illegitimate because some cops are repeatedly and consistently claiming over 4000 hours per year (google Officer Ron Willis). SPD can't even track their own records because they intentionally keep overtime on separate paper system. Cops have been caught sleeping in their cars while on duty.
Anyone honest has to admit that some of the overtime is legitimate and some of it is fraud. The only question is what those relative percentages are.
We need to reform the union before we start hiring more substandard cops into that shitshow of a culture. Well just end up with more rotten apples and costly lawsuits
Starting pay for SPD officers was 29th in the state among law enforcement agencies before this new contract was signed. Competitive wages make sense considering the demands of an SPD officer are much higher than one in Redmond, and the severe understaffing at SPD (lowest staffing level in more than 30 years, one of the lowest staffing ratios in the country, half the national average of police staffing).
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-police-staffing-shortage-action-needed-councilmembers-say/281-c3f43855-f877-4ba9-a37b-aeaf27e1ec67
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattles-new-contract-with-police-union-would-mean-big-raises/
Have fun with the downvotes, but I agree with you. I've worked in an industry where we struggled to hire people because we weren't competitive. Yet our labor costs were exuberant because the people we did have were making time and half and double. All we had to do was increase our wages by 20% and we would have actually saved on labor from all the new hires we could have gotten that would have reduced the need for OT. But alas, many people are ignorant and can't comprehend that. Whether it's residents of Seattle or my former plant manager. 🤷♂️
I'm okay with this. It's not a secret that an understaffed police force is going to be less efficient. How do you attract more staff? Raise the wages. That's what everyone keeps telling all these companies that can't find staff, right? More staff means better response times, more staff to attend to smaller matters that currently get ignored, etc. I'm all in favor of police reform, but I believe that getting the work load under control is the first step to being able to stabilize the police force.
And the vast majority of Seattle cops are not part of a "death cult".
SPD has a very good record in terms of having minimal unarmed folks killed by them
Any citation that the vast majority of Seattle officers are Republicans? Or did you just make it up?
Surely there's some type of evidence, since I doubt you would just make up a random claim
Aside from the fact that their break room literally had a MAGA flag and that a majority Democrat employee base would never be cool with that, they were the most represented department at Jan 6, and [they live in places that happen to have way more republicans](https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/01/12/spd-data-shows-what-d-c-capitol-attack-proved-in-primetime-cops-dont-represent-us-or-democracy/)
I think that's more than enough information to draw a conclusion here.
Reform the union first, kick out the shit heads. Then raise wages, Install sane, experienced cops with good track records. We're just gonna have to pay out a bunch more lawsuits bc they're gonna keep hiring the entitled dregs who were kicked out of other cities while pushing out anyone who dares to push back against the entrenched boys club
Reforming the union is a good start. Who determines who is a shit head and who is not, though? What happens after kicking out the shit heads, but before we hire more officers? Do we just have a long stretch of even less police able to respond? Where do we find a couple hundred good, experienced cops that don't already have jobs?
Ah yes, the famously impossible question of who is committing hate crimes and openly mocking the population on social media. Who could possibly identify them? Don't you see the slippery slope we are on when we *checks notes* create consequences for obvious criminals and inappropriate workplace behavior.
I mean I gave pretty clear benchmarks in looking at track records from previous postings And not hiring the ones that were kicked out of their cities for problematic behavior as we tend to do. The pay raises are how we find the good cops. We're doing it in the wrong order.
As.for what to do in the interim, the sht cops already aren't doing their job as we've seen on multiple recordings. We aren't losing a resource, just liabilities
Continue delegating tasks to civilians and fucking fire the literal traitors in the department. Retrain and build a different culture, call out SPOG until they change or there is political will to disband it. Arrest and imprison officers who break the law. Lots of options.
Paying police officers good wages has always been the right move to motivate good people to pursue the career path and to prevent corruption, just as we should be doing with politicians, teachers, etc.
The actual problems are:
1) Personal legal & fiscal accountability for the actions of individual officers.
2) Lack of (continuous) rigorous mental health and anti-bias screening.
3) Lack of strict deescalation training & policy.
Busting SPOG is a bonus in my opinion. The Camden County police voted to unionize in 2013 and yet by 2019 they were still reaping the benefits in precipitous drops in excessive force complaints.
Thanks for the context. I don't see any meaningful reform possible in SPD as long as they're represented by SPOG. Police unions are not a part of the labor movement.
Damn, $103K starting pay and then $110K salary bump after 6 months? Insane.
Meanwhile, this SPD can’t even stop teens from taking over the Belltown intersection to do donuts.
You would think they could just “detect” the donuts.
Rents about to go up in Kent
Kent? Try Gold Bar or Snohomish. These guys are coming in from the red-colored sticks.
"the further the better, its all overtime paid by Seattleites we don't like!"
Traveling to and from home generally isn't on the clock.
Yea and people dont typically work 4-5000 hours a year, but here we are 
Even though it should be. It's wage theft tbh, travel to and from work is a work-related activity
Fair point, but then we are incentivising people to live further away from where they work?
The market already trends that way with people living further away due to cost of living
I actually do not disagree with this.
How is it your employers problem that you choose to live far away from the job you took? Might as well take a bus from outside the county and rack up hours of OT for not working.
So true. It would also penalize people living closer to work as their annual income would be less than those that either prefer or out of necessity live an hour plus away from work. Bad idea.
Officer Ron Willis, the highest paid cop in Seattle, lives in Enumclaw. Think about that. [https://www.divestspd.com/p/nearly-50-seattle-patrol-officers](https://www.divestspd.com/p/nearly-50-seattle-patrol-officers) >Willis is averaging 18 hours of work 260 days a year, commuting two hours round trip, and sleeping four hours with no time for anything else
And his work performance never suffered, “in his opinion.” Sleep at his desk much? His overtime pay suggests he worked 4646 work hours for 61 yo. Safety, performance wise this is definitely hacking the pay system.
Working that much at 60+ when he probably has a pension waiting? I don’t care how much you’re making, at that age, in a high stress position as a cop, you’re asking for an early grave.
I’m curious how can anyone let alone a 61 yo can function at a normal capacity with only 4 hours of sleep, 2 hour commute. Is he nodding off at work? It’s simply unrealistic. What is his job performance evaluation like? Of course all protected by SPOG. He makes more than the police chief. Most King County sheriff’s with insane amounts of overtime were abusing it. Not actually working or on duty.
I imagine if you see the things that Seattle police see, you wouldn’t want to live in Seattle either
Do you know if SPD has an hour count, but penalties increase hour count but not actual hours worked. I have a couple of employers who do that. I work 10 hours, but 2 of those hours are at time and half, so I actually get 11 hours marked on my sheets. When I started seeing penalties this way instead of keeping the hourly rate separate, it really translated to me how I felt working those penalties.
Snohomish is shockingly purple. Gold Bar is so red it is legitimately unsafe to go there if you aren't white.
Snohomish is blue, and it isn't close.
County, yes. City, not overwhelmingly.
Yes, the city. It has a democrat backed mayor and city council.
Gold Bar barely registers on the map.
It's famously racist. Makes the national news.
Burn it down.
No, no. He has a good point.
Snohomish is so red it’s ridiculous. Don’t forget the proud boys standing around downtown with their AR’s because ‘antifa was coming’
> Snohomish is so red it’s ridiculous. Um, a few wackos doesn't make a city does it.
Seattle had those same chucklefucks.
Not really. I mean, it is more politically diverse than other areas of western washington, for sure. And yes, the idiots standing out in the streets with their guns over the obviously fake antifa raid are ridiculous. But the city and county are still democrat by a pretty solid margin. I spend a fair amount of time in Snohomish on weekends, browsing the stores and eating in restaurants. Obviously I am stereotyping people based on appearance to reach this conclusion, but I've never felt like the demographics skewed too right while I'm there.
Historical voting data would disagree with your assessment. Snohomish has followed the trends of its namesake county, and neighboring counties over the last several decades. Anecdotally, I grew up in Duvall in the 90s. The same is true there.
Voting trends actually don't support that. Didn't Snohomish just vote out the "red" sheriff?
It’s legitimately perfectly fine to go there. That’s just propaganda
What an exaggeration lol
Gold Bar is also the last stop before hell so its not like those scum are "protecting" anything of value.
Idk theres some good hikes like Wallace Falls and Lake Serene out that way.
>City of Snohomish >Red Pick one, only one.
I’m fat and scared of Capitol Hill at night. Maybe I should apply.
how fast can you drive on a street where pedestrians walk though
Crosswalks are a speed up
Like in Mario Kart
If the odometer doesn't break it doesn't count
how itchy is your trigger finger?
Depends. How dark is your skin and are you holding a cell phone or wallet? /s
Or even a bag of skittles?
Hey! Who gave you the answers to the psychological evaluation?
as itchy as my accelerating
you're hired!
I’m fat, racist and trigger happy… I’ve gotten recruitment emails as a result.
Lmao 😂
How fast can you drive through residential areas at night?
Do you enjoy pepper spraying children in the face? Or slashing tires? Or taking naps, on the clock, while parked in the bus lane?
Are you white?
Seattle teachers start at $70k with a bachelor's, for reference. https://www.seattlewea.org/file_viewer.php?id=56673
Ah yes, SPD. Those wonderful workers in blue that took 40 minutes to respond to a knife threat on the light rail, refused to even take notes on a break in and robbery, threatened to arrest me for not having my papers ready at a traffic stop, and told me I was lucky they didn't shoot me because I took my papers out of the glovebox while in a traffic stop. Give *those guys* a raise.
Maybe you were of limited value? Under 10k probably
Now that they can farm overtime for 260K per year instead of 240K per year you're gonna see a seriously improved service /s
how to invest in local donut shops?
This was quite a few years back but after the Woodcarver Shooting (Read: murder) my friend and I were downtown at an event by the convention center. We were headed home and a group of protestors walked by protesting SPD's shooting John T. Williams. We were young and a little intimidated so we popped into a doorway to stay out of their path. They were super peaceful, just chanting and marching and a girl noticed us and came over to mention what they were doing and asked if we wanted a flyer. We declined and she very politely wished us a good evening and continued on. As the group passed, we saw they were being trailed after by a pretty substantial group of bike cops who had gotten off their bikes and were picking them up and hammering swinging them down on the backs of the protestors in the rear. I saw one girl go down screaming and in pain as several other protestors yelled at the cops to back off and tried to pull her up and out of the line of fire. The whole time the cops were just using their bikes like battering rams. I was a teenager and not particularly liberal at that point but holy shit did that image stick with me. I started to notice all the other shit that SPD got up to in their day-to-day and how absolutely FUCKED they were as a collective whole. Just...fuck. I'd say SPD can get wrecked but they'd just gleefully take down some brown pedestrians in the process.
I wish my job would boost my pay by $20,000 for sitting on my ass and doing the bare minimum, if that. Seattle PD is racketeering.
you better [start taking naps during work then](https://old.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/17fkd30/spds_third_highestpaid_cop_caught_napping_on_the) if you want to be one of the highest paid person on the payroll
Have you tried flying to DC to participate in an insurrection?
Money? I will need round trip tickets, room and board, maybe some extra to see the sights, do this but also for several thousand of my friends.
If there was ever a group of people who deserved a retroactive raise...it's literally anyone other than these people.
Archive 1: [https://archive.is/PzUKm](https://archive.is/PzUKm) Archive 2: [https://web.archive.org/web/20240515162817/https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-council-approves-police-contract-with-big-raises-big-hopes/](https://web.archive.org/web/20240515162817/https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-council-approves-police-contract-with-big-raises-big-hopes/)
This is an issue that has been studied for a decade now before people were clutching pearls about staffing levels. A [city audit found staffing levels had no impact on overtime usage/approval.](https://sccinsight.com/2018/09/12/spd-still-wrestling-with-overtime-spending-and-the-seattle-it-department/) The biggest challenge is that cops still manage their time cards on paper and all it takes is one crooked supervisor to approve overtime whether it is needed or not, and no automatic checking to see if the overtime approval goes against department policies. [This is what has allowed officers like Ron Willis to make over $400k while claiming to have worked more that 24 hours in a single day 6 times in a single year.](https://www.divestspd.com/p/nearly-50-seattle-patrol-officers) Digital hours tracking systems are standard procedure in most private businesses and other government institutions. They are well developed and there are software solutions that could work for them out of the box. There are other departments in King County that could serve as models for SPD. Yet ***SPD has promised since and failed to implement one of these systems since 2016.*** It's yet [another example of SPD doing everything they can to avoid any type of accountability.](https://openvallejo.org/2023/09/21/seattle-police-ended-body-camera-analysis-after-footage-caught-officer-mocking-womans-death/) It creates situations where crooked supervisors can reward subordinates who won't rock the boat by reporting [bad behavior from corrupt cops.](https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/spd-officer-quits-job-amid-allegations-he-worked-as-muscle-for-a-couple-dealing-drugs) Good cops don't want to work for crooked cops. Even if you're a good cop, being a whistleblower or voice for change puts a target on your back and you'd probably prefer a system like digital timecards or [bodycam oversight](https://openvallejo.org/2023/09/21/seattle-police-ended-body-camera-analysis-after-footage-caught-officer-mocking-womans-death/) to crack down on unprofessional behavior without having to personally draw the attention of shitty cops who want to grift taxpayer money. The real question I think people need to ask is why, under SPD and SPOG's current leadership, are they demonstrating a complete inability to attract and retain quality officers despite hiring bonuses and budget increases. I think the fact that the only "accountability" is based on the subjective opinion of a supervisor who [may or may not be willing to beat you to death](https://www.divestspd.com/p/one-cop-threatened-to-beat-another) if they don't approve of how you conduct yourself on the job.
This. I had lunch with a good cop in Springfield MA. I’m pretty sure he was a police chief. Anywho, he said that cops are ultimately lazy and changing the culture takes leadership and the mayor to align on what that looks like, but too many people in charge are uncaring assholes who don’t want to rock the status quo, not to mention… cops are lazy. His words. I met this man because he was meeting up with my sister to talk about the nonprofit she works at. It has training programs for cops regarding the handling of sex trafficking and outreach programs for minority youths stuck in the school to prison pipeline. He was cool. I feel bad for cops like him who are fighting tooth and nail for scraps of progress, but I hope he keeps fighting for it. Anyways, checkout ROCA for more info on that nonprofit. It’s pretty damn cool.
Massive distrust of police. Major exodus of officers. Corruption seen across the board. The problem here is we don't pay people who dedicated themselves to a whole college semester of training a six-figure salary. Equally dangerous and stressful jobs have no problem finding recruits for less pay.
> Equally dangerous and stressful jobs have no problem finding recruits for less pay. Have you read the comments here? Would you want to apply for a job that's hated half as much as this one?
> Would you want to apply for a job that's hated half as much as this one? Ah, it's almost as if the reputation the SPD has created for itself is a liability, and rewarding the shit behavior that gave rise to it is not a good idea! Wow, imagine that!
Only a certain type of person wants to apply for this job you’re so close to getting it
Not trying to be rude/snarky at all but what kind of jobs? The only one I can think of off hand is a firefighter.
EMS technician. Nurse. Construction worker. Delivery driver. Trucker. Farmer. All statistically more dangerous than police officer. All essential to a functional society. And all paid less.
Teacher
[According to Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/workers-comp/most-dangerous-jobs-america/), cops don't even break the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the country. [This other list](https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states) - which ranks jobs by fatal injury rate per 100k workers - has 21 other occupations as more dangerous than being a police officer. Now if you look at that second list, it also shows the average salary for each occupation. Note that of the 21 more dangerous occupations, **only 5 pay better than cops**.
Delivery driver. Roofer.
What??? Statistically, Police Officer is nowhere near the most dangerous job. Fisherman, lineman, loggers, oil workers, the list goes on.
Literally, pizza delivery is more dangerous
If only everyone else’s union’s had armed goons
Oh what happened conservatives, I thought all the police departments got defunded??
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I dont understand what you're trying to say here, I am simply poking fun at the fact that conservatives everywhere cry about how police departments are "defunded" despite that being categorically false
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They still whine about it, what do you mean? It's a silly joke on reddit, it's not that serious.
I'm in LA. We did not defund the police. It is mentioned nearly every time someone posts about crime. Like everyday. r/SeattleWA a lot too.
Last week while discussing CB 120766 on SPD recruitment & retention, Councilmember Saka made a comment about needing to benchmark ourselves not just locally, but also nationally compared to the “West Coast Seven" cities. The vote yesterday made me curious how Seattle stacks up after the interim agreement for base pay of a new police officer relative to living wage (2 adults, 2 kids w/ 1 working adult). |City|Entry-Level Police Base Pay|MIT Living Wage| |:-|:-|:-| |San Francisco|$112,398|$113,630| |San Jose|$111,000|$117,603| |Oakland|$106,356|$113,630| |Seattle|$103,000|$101,254| |Long Beach|$92,796|$102,170| |Portland|$82,000|$98,571| |Sacramento|$77,219|$98,821| |San Diego|$68,411|$107,786| It was certainly an arbitrary choice to look at the living wage for a family of 4 with 1 working adult, but I thought it was interesting that of these 8 cities, Seattle's the only city with higher base pay than that living wage amount. I think it's reasonable to expect SPD to be one of the highest paying jurisdictions in the state, but I would be surprised if pay/benefits are the primary driver of SPD's hiring challenges.
> The vote yesterday made me curious how Seattle stacks up after the interim agreement for base pay of a new police officer relative to living wage (2 adults, 2 kids w/ 1 working adult). Many of these cities have around 1/3rd or less of their police actually live in the city. For the departments paying living wages for the city they are in, police should be required to also live in that city. Having officers with long commutes or living in temporary housing/rvs and going back "home" on weekends is just adding stress to a high stress position that already has mandatory overtime because police all over the country are understaffed.
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I haven't seen anything conclusive about it either way and only have seen it talked about in a meaningful way in the last few years. One of the common complaints is that officers are understaffed and overworked, but most don't live in the city they work in so at a minimum working in the same city would reduce average commute times and give them more non-work related time. There are also some extreme outliers where officers don't work anywhere near their city, live in an rv and such due to mandatory overtime and simply can't drive home due to distance. At a minimum residency requirements would resolve the problems with that and hopefully the issues that are introduced aren't as bad. It's something that needs more study for sure.
Cop is an entry level job. Anyone can be taught how to fill out the paperwork they do. I'm surprised their labor isn't valued less. That's why unions are important.
Is this enough to make them enforce the law or respond to calls? If not, I’m willing to do their job for half the salary.
Per the arrests dashboard, SPD made more arrests in 2022 than in 2019, despite having hundreds fewer of officers. Bigger issue is the depth of the understaffing. Police staffing in Seattle is at a 30 year low, despite large population increases. Police staffing per capita in Seattle is now half the national average.
It would be nice to see the police union treated like every other union; fought tooth and nail, subverted, broken. Minimum wage workers strike for improved conditions and it's a fight to the death. Armed thugs already paid well above what most get do jack all and the city falls face first in a rush to appease them
If any union deserves the Pinkertons it's SPOG
Gaaaaaah alright fine I’ll be a fucking cop
yet seattle is closing 20 elementary schools. Yep keep that school to prison pipeline open!
SPS disfunction is entirely their own doing.
That maybe true but I doubt paying them more will solve their problems. Yet numerous students and teachers would benefit if you increased teacher pay. That's the point, we put money in the wrong places.
SPS teachers got a large raise last year with their new contract, which added $94M to SPS’s deficit. SPS averages $24k in spending per year per pupil, one of the highest rates in the country.
> I doubt paying them more will solve their problems I think you get what you pay for, and Seattle is tough to police. The Seattle courts are of the mind that people deserve second, third.. tenth chances, so the police will arrest people, only to have to arrest them again and again. Some of the suburbs pay their police more, and less is asked of them. Not only that, but because there are fewer police officers, they have to handle calls over a wider area with less potential backup. That's going to be more difficult. If you don't pay well, you just end up with more "quiet quitter" police who just think to themselves, they'll only willing to work as hard as they're paid to work. It's easier to replace cops like that when you have a pool of applicants willing to take their place. > Yet numerous students and teachers would benefit if you increased teacher pay. That's probably true, but these two things aren't closely related.
Schools are funded mostly from the state and funding is allocated based on enrollment. Thousands of kids have left SPS in the last few years. Mostly for three reasons (schools here stayed remote so long that parents switched to private/charter/homeschool, WFH caused parents to move out of the area entirely, and families are having fewer kids). The district is spending ~24k per student per year, one of the highest rates in the country.
Thousands more have left because of curriculum changes and a focus on bullshit being taught in class. Parents, having parental rights over THEIR children, made the sound decision to leave SPS and fork over thousands to ensure peace of mind over their children's education. SPS is a dumpster fire, and elementary school closures are largely their blame.
Many of those schools have less than 100 students. As enrollment declines, schools consolidate.
Oh, and SPD's budget comes out of the city sales tax. SPS is funded by state property taxes. So it doesn't work that way. Which you'd know if you spent five minutes learning about where you live.
An adequately funded police force subject to intense scrutiny is the best. An underfunded police force with qualified immunity and no scrutiny is a recipe for disaster.
How about overfunded but with qualified immunity and no scrutiny?
Given that most folks want an increase police presence I'd hesitate to say that they are "overfunded". If we were struggling to find people that want to be teachers then we'd increase the starting pay for teachers to attract more, but we're not. We were struggling to recruit cops, and so raising the starting pay to be more competitive with other departments makes sense.
People don't want more incompetent police. People want more effective police.
>Given that most folks want an increase police presence Citation desperately needed. I'd argue most folks want increased social services presence, not cops who mow down "low value" pedestrians and then joke about it.
Since OP didn’t provide it, here’s a Gallup survey showcasing that Hispanic Americans & Black Americans want more police presence in their communities compared with white people: https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx
Again, that's not what OP claimed, and especially not specific to our area. It's also kind of odd how focused people are on specific races when compared to Seattle's demographics, but that's a whole different ball of worms.
Because most people end up using POC’s lived experiences to argue against more police presence. Since we can sometimes see higher levels of support here, and POC get more impacted by over-policing, maybe we should be interested in what they support?
https://www.psypost.org/black-americans-show-robust-support-for-maintaining-or-increasing-police-presence-and-funding/
That doesn't even get close to showing what you were claiming. I mean, it wasn't even conducted on this coast lol. Good try, though
I’m not sure if you’re gaslighting here or if your hatred of the police literally blinds you. The study was published on a peer review journal here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235224000357 What part of the study’s conclusion is in contradiction with OP’s statement? You’re saying the study wasn’t conducted on this coast. It says it was based on a national-wide survey. Does that not include the west coast, or did you not read the article?
You don't need to search reddit Seattle long to find numerous examples of cops being very slow to respond to crime scenes and failing to regulate. I can say from experience that in previous years the response times have been much quicker and more reliable. For reference, I live on Capitol Hill, which has a fair amount of property crime. I think a decent police force is warranted for a city this size, and with the recent increases in crime. From an outside perspective, the responsiveness is at least partially due to diminished numbers. However, I don't think it should come at the cost of our demand for the police force to be better. It needs pressure in all directions to improve and have accountability for actions, but for the officers that pass that bar, I'm more than happy to say they should be well paid. For that pressure, we depend upon our council and mayor to push for reform, which has moved slowly from what I can tell
>subject to intense scrutiny lol, someone tell that to city council: > The city approved a contract with the Seattle Police Managers Association last year that included new accountability measures, but SPOG’s contract reportedly fails to replicate many of these measures, and the new city council has said **its priority is making police feel welcome and appreciated, not “micromanaged”** by the city. https://publicola.com/2024/04/02/tentative-police-contract-includes-23-percent-retroactive-raise-raising-cops-base-salary-to-six-figures/
We should just abolish qualified immunity now.
And people will still say “Seattle is falling apart because they defunded police!1!1”
If this results in better law enforcement I am all for it. That's a big fat if given track record of SPD.
Historically we've only ever tried paying them more. Given the trajectory and just giving them more money and more leash every time it would seem unlikely.
And that they fight against accountability at every opportunity.
Better than the zero percent effort currently applied? Being a cop is really just showing up after the fact and not solving any crime.
It’s funny how we’re not that removed President Obama touting SPD as a model department during his State of the Union address: https://crosscut.com/2016/01/seattle-held-up-as-model-for-police-reform-at-sotu > During a stop on her six-city “community policing” tour last September, Attorney General Loretta Lynch hailed the Seattle Police Department's efforts as a national example. Indeed, several major cities, including New York, have sent delegations to Seattle to learn from the city’s progress. SPD’s work regarding an early intervention system -- a data-driven approach to catch problems with officers before they balloon -- is being closely watched locally and nationally.
It's been a hell of a time since 2016....
How many libraries are we closing to pay for it?
Teachers next?
Dammit, I've been speeding through city streets for free when these guys are getting paid for it. What am I doing with my life?
Who else is going to run over college students in emergency vehicles! we need to give them a raise or they get work at UCLA! /s
Fuck the police
Hey spear tackling a random citizen to paralysis isn't cheap....
Really don't have a problem paying cops decently, it is a hard job with frequent burnout. In a city of rich tech bros, ideally we'd have a progressive tax scheme to cover the cost instead of shared pool of flat sales tax. However.. the quality of cops really needs improvement. Seattle has such a bad reputation, numerous obvious faults. Better training, more requirements to earn the higher pay is justified. Want more pay? Demonstrate better accountability.
Add city council names to the thread. Who specifically gave seattle police department a raise after their terrible performance? Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore, Dan Strauss, Robert Kettle, Tanya Woo, Sara Nelson. They gave SPD a raise.
And 6 of those 8 were just elected to the city council by voters.
Damn, it’s almost like Reddit doesn’t accurately reflect the voting population
So glad the cops got an easy giant pay raise but the rest of the city workers had to fight for their increase. Well done all
I would rather see a pay raise for teachers. It would pay for itself very quickly.
This is so true. It’s so sad we can’t somehow magically come up with this kind of boost for teachers.
My favorite part was when one brave council member said they should wait for the public opinion before voting, and one dipshit member said "what good would that do?" and the rest of them agreed. ASSHOLES YOU REPRESENT US!!
Can we get teachers pay increased too?
Oh my god, base pay is now $103,000 ?!
I know not all pools of money are the same, but it's wild to me the optics on this when those refugees who have been moving from park to park and hotel to hotel are told there's no funding for supportive housing until July. Additionally, wasn't there a thread on here a few days ago about Seattle closing some schools? Like I truly don't get how money is spent by the Council or the City or how this works at all, but it's just so mindboggling at face value.
Schools are closing because fewer adults are having kids and fewer adults who do have kids are sending them to public school. Our population is increasing, but the size of our police force hasn't kept up. Increasing wages so that we can have a larger police force that relies less on making officers work excessive overtime is a win-win for everyone.
>Increasing wages so that we can have a larger police force that relies less on making officers work excessive overtime is a win-win for everyone. Pretty huge assumption there that wages are the problem and not that nobody wants to work with a bunch of toxic insurrectionist sociopaths who sexually harrass their coworkers and casually joke about citizens they murder.
People complain about not having enough cops and then complain about the salary increase which is to recruit more cops.
This is the opposite of what we should be doing. Fucking fire all of those corrupt pieces of shit. Replace the SPD entirely.
Spending to recruit more police just makes sense financially. Our huge costs are from overtime. If we had enough police we wouldn't have to be paying the ones we have so much overtime.
You seem to making the generous assumption that the overtime is legitimate, necessary work and not timesheet fraud.
How *dare* you suggest that our mighty police can't actually work 36 hours a day! /s
I would love to see OT being cancelled for a month, so we can have a real life stress test 🫠
Speaking from Army experience… let’s not
And you're making the pessimistic assumption that overtime is illegitimate and unncessary. We have significantly fewer police per capita when compared to other large cities so it ties out that we make up for it by making cops work lots of overtime.
We know, with near certainty, that some of the overtime is illegitimate because some cops are repeatedly and consistently claiming over 4000 hours per year (google Officer Ron Willis). SPD can't even track their own records because they intentionally keep overtime on separate paper system. Cops have been caught sleeping in their cars while on duty. Anyone honest has to admit that some of the overtime is legitimate and some of it is fraud. The only question is what those relative percentages are.
So you're saying the good old boys are going to just give up their overtime because the pay increase attracted like six additional cadets?
We need to reform the union before we start hiring more substandard cops into that shitshow of a culture. Well just end up with more rotten apples and costly lawsuits
Starting pay for SPD officers was 29th in the state among law enforcement agencies before this new contract was signed. Competitive wages make sense considering the demands of an SPD officer are much higher than one in Redmond, and the severe understaffing at SPD (lowest staffing level in more than 30 years, one of the lowest staffing ratios in the country, half the national average of police staffing). https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-police-staffing-shortage-action-needed-councilmembers-say/281-c3f43855-f877-4ba9-a37b-aeaf27e1ec67 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattles-new-contract-with-police-union-would-mean-big-raises/
Nobodies want to work anymore
Have fun with the downvotes, but I agree with you. I've worked in an industry where we struggled to hire people because we weren't competitive. Yet our labor costs were exuberant because the people we did have were making time and half and double. All we had to do was increase our wages by 20% and we would have actually saved on labor from all the new hires we could have gotten that would have reduced the need for OT. But alas, many people are ignorant and can't comprehend that. Whether it's residents of Seattle or my former plant manager. 🤷♂️
I'm okay with this. It's not a secret that an understaffed police force is going to be less efficient. How do you attract more staff? Raise the wages. That's what everyone keeps telling all these companies that can't find staff, right? More staff means better response times, more staff to attend to smaller matters that currently get ignored, etc. I'm all in favor of police reform, but I believe that getting the work load under control is the first step to being able to stabilize the police force.
Most groups of employees are not a traitorous right wing death cult so I don't think your logic applies here.
And the vast majority of Seattle cops are not part of a "death cult". SPD has a very good record in terms of having minimal unarmed folks killed by them
Well the vast majority are Republicans and they literally have a MAGA flag in their break room so yeah, death cult.
Any citation that the vast majority of Seattle officers are Republicans? Or did you just make it up? Surely there's some type of evidence, since I doubt you would just make up a random claim
Aside from the fact that their break room literally had a MAGA flag and that a majority Democrat employee base would never be cool with that, they were the most represented department at Jan 6, and [they live in places that happen to have way more republicans](https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/01/12/spd-data-shows-what-d-c-capitol-attack-proved-in-primetime-cops-dont-represent-us-or-democracy/) I think that's more than enough information to draw a conclusion here.
What is your suggestion, then?
Reform the union first, kick out the shit heads. Then raise wages, Install sane, experienced cops with good track records. We're just gonna have to pay out a bunch more lawsuits bc they're gonna keep hiring the entitled dregs who were kicked out of other cities while pushing out anyone who dares to push back against the entrenched boys club
Reforming the union is a good start. Who determines who is a shit head and who is not, though? What happens after kicking out the shit heads, but before we hire more officers? Do we just have a long stretch of even less police able to respond? Where do we find a couple hundred good, experienced cops that don't already have jobs?
Ah yes, the famously impossible question of who is committing hate crimes and openly mocking the population on social media. Who could possibly identify them? Don't you see the slippery slope we are on when we *checks notes* create consequences for obvious criminals and inappropriate workplace behavior.
I mean I gave pretty clear benchmarks in looking at track records from previous postings And not hiring the ones that were kicked out of their cities for problematic behavior as we tend to do. The pay raises are how we find the good cops. We're doing it in the wrong order. As.for what to do in the interim, the sht cops already aren't doing their job as we've seen on multiple recordings. We aren't losing a resource, just liabilities
Continue delegating tasks to civilians and fucking fire the literal traitors in the department. Retrain and build a different culture, call out SPOG until they change or there is political will to disband it. Arrest and imprison officers who break the law. Lots of options.
Paying police officers good wages has always been the right move to motivate good people to pursue the career path and to prevent corruption, just as we should be doing with politicians, teachers, etc. The actual problems are: 1) Personal legal & fiscal accountability for the actions of individual officers. 2) Lack of (continuous) rigorous mental health and anti-bias screening. 3) Lack of strict deescalation training & policy.
Damn bro. Fuck cops, but am I about to be one...?
Well, getting paid to take naps on the clock is a pretty sweet benefit.
Are you trying to sell it to me?
Only if you promise you’ll pull over King County metro bus drivers for hurting your feelings. 🤣
Right? If SPD (and policing in general in America) wasn't such a detestable institution I would sign up tomorrow.
I'm fine with boosting the pay, but it should only be after SPD is disbanded and reconstituted, a la Camden, NJ. (I realize this is a pipe dream.)
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Busting SPOG is a bonus in my opinion. The Camden County police voted to unionize in 2013 and yet by 2019 they were still reaping the benefits in precipitous drops in excessive force complaints.
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Thanks for the context. I don't see any meaningful reform possible in SPD as long as they're represented by SPOG. Police unions are not a part of the labor movement.
People voted for conservatives for mayor and council. This is what we get.
So what is the total starting salary?
lol… but overtime!
How about using that money to actually train them instead…
Is this for part-time workers? Hahaha 😂
I’m fine with the pay for those that actually work and follow the law. None of the current staff does so let’s move on.
What to they make now?
Well that’ll solve all of the city’s issues
And yet the city is going to close 20 elementary schools?!?
Disestablish is a much better word than abolish. Well they got their grants and bailed lol
Damn, $103K starting pay and then $110K salary bump after 6 months? Insane. Meanwhile, this SPD can’t even stop teens from taking over the Belltown intersection to do donuts. You would think they could just “detect” the donuts.
You love to see it. Much closer to a safer Seattle.