Letter to Jenny A. Durkan, City of Seattle Mayor, and Carmen Best, Seattle Police Department Chief of Police - Seattle's Elected Officials of Color Urge Mayor and Police Chief to Enact Transformative Changes

Letter

Dear Mayor Durkan and Chief Best:

We write as elected officials of color who represent various parts of the City of Seattle
and are deeply committed to honoring the lives of the many Black brothers, sisters and siblings
who have been killed by police violence and are currently experiencing the triple threats of a
global pandemic, pervasive anti-Blackness and police violence. We believe this is the moment to
enact meaningful and transformative change in the very nature of policing at the federal, state
and local levels. We also believe that law enforcement's response to people exercising their First
Amendment right to freedom of speech and demonstration must shift right now. Specifically, we
call on you to:

1. Immediately end law enforcement's violent response to ongoing demonstrations, by
ending the use of the National Guard; stopping the use of all forms of chemical
substances for crowd control; ending the use of rubber bullets and flash-bangs; and
demilitarizing police on the streets who interact with protestors.
2. Completely rethink policing to create a model for public safety that truly upholds the
safety of all communities and re-direct law enforcement spending and investing into
essential services.
3. Immediately institute serious accountability and transparency measures into police
contracts.

We have watched in horror as the National Guard has been called into our city and law
enforcement has responded aggressively to people protesting police violence inflicted upon
Black people in Seattle and across the country. The methods used by law enforcement, such as
deploying tear gas and pepper spray, are not only dangerous as these tactics could increase the
spread of COVID-19, but they are also counter-productive. We are extremely disturbed that
immediately after your declaring a 30-day halt to the use of tear gas by police, just last night we
saw the use of tear gas by Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers. We are also appalled by
video footage taken on May 31 showing an SPD officer using the same knee-on-neck tactic that
killed George Floyd on a protestor, and reports that this same officer was seen kneeling on the
necks of multiple people. In under a week, people have filed over 15,000 complaints against the
SPD. It is not enough to commit to a "proportional" response to protestors. It is not
"proportional" for the police to respond with rubber bullets or chemical agents when they are in
full riot gear, many with rifles, while people in the streets have no protective equipment. The
onus should always be on law enforcement to de-escalate, stand down and above all, protect the
lives of the people they are sworn to protect and serve, including those that are protesting.

We see this moment as an opportunity to begin the modeling of a new and
transformational relationship between law enforcement and community. The immediate fallback
to the very same behavior that protestors are protesting--"domination" with militarized police,
large numbers of troops and dangerous crowd dispersing techniques--is not only wrong, it is
likely to escalate the protests when what we need is a complete de-escalation and standing down
of the police. Instead, we call on the City to immediately send back the National Guard, reduce
the police presence and allow protestors who have been largely peaceful to continue their
protests, and immediately stop the use of military crowd dispersing tactics including rubber
bullets, pepper spray and flash-bangs.

Simultaneously, we believe it is critical to immediately commit to building a
transformative new model of policing. We are a community that has led the country on
everything from a $15 minimum wage to gun safety--now we must do the same in designing a
model of public safety that protects everyone in our community, and does not have Black parents
instructing their children at an early age to always avoid the police or worrying if they will come
home if they have an interaction with the police. We believe it is time to do the same with a
transformative new model of policing.

It is a horrifying reality that law enforcement in the South began as slave patrol and then
moved to enforce Jim Crow laws. That culture of violence is deeply embedded in the very
notion of law enforcement as it has been created. Today, across America, police
disproportionately use force against Black people and Black people are more likely to be arrested
and sentenced.

That is why our re-imagining of community safety must begin with shifting police
funding to community-based alternatives and investing in essential services like healthcare,
mental health, domestic violence, homelessness and housing, and other basic needs. No amountof spending or changes to law enforcement can ever substitute for investment in these essential services; we need a public health response to public health problems. Budgets are moral
documents. It is past time that we make significant investments in people and the systems they
need to thrive.

We also ask that you immediately institute accountability and transparency measures,
including through contract negotiations with the Seattle Police Officers Guild. We were
heartened to see the call from the Martin Luther King County Labor Council to ensure that
"contracts do not evade legitimate accountability." We agree. This is past due.

This week, the House Judiciary Committee in Congress will have a hearing on a
sweeping police accountability bill that the New York Times has described as "the most
aggressive intervention into policing by Congress in recent memory." It would make it easier
for the federal government to successfully prosecute police misconduct cases, ban chokeholds,
end racial and religious profiling and eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement. It would
also prevent the movement of dangerous officers from department to department, specify that
lynching is a federal hate crime, and end no-knock warrants and the transfer of military weapons
to local police departments. Finally, it would provide a new stream of federal funding to
community-based organizations to reimagine how public safety could work in a truly equitable
and just way to drive real policing reform from directly within communities. This is critical work
being done at the Federal level. We must have similar transformative policies implemented at the
state and local levels, and we must finally deliver on reforms that local advocates have
championed for years, including changes to police contracts and implementing civilian oversight.

Thank you for your attention to these important matters.