Officers leaving Seattle Police Department in record numbers amid protests, report says

As demonstrations against police brutality continue in Seattle, the police department saw a record-number of officers leave in September, according to a report released by the city.

Report’s findings

Typically, the department loses five to seven officers in September, the report said. But this year, 39 officers left the force.

The department lost 36 fully trained officers and three trainees, the report said. The next highest month on record was June 2018 and June 2020, when the department lost a little over 15 officers, according to the report.

In total, six officers were fired in September 2020, including four who worked for the department less than five years.

The majority of officers who left in 2020 were white, according to the report.

Policing re-imagined

Seattle plans to lay off 70 officers as a part of police reform that included a significant cut to funding for the department’s 2021 budget, KOMO reported in September. The layoffs are just one portion of the city’s plan to “re-imagine” the role of policing, according to the Washington Policy Center.

“We will continue to improve policing and re-imagine community safety in Seattle by shifting some responses to community-based alternatives and civilian programs like Health One or Community Service Officers,” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said in a statement, according to KUOW. “But the City also needs a sufficient number of officers who can respond to the most urgent 911 calls in all parts of our city at any time of the day.”

Ongoing protests

The changes are being made in response to ongoing protests in the city, which started in June following George Floyd’s death in May.

Floyd, 46, died while in police custody on May 25, and his death sparked an avalanche of protests across the nation. He died after now-fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes, as three other officers didn’t intervene.

Some of the demonstrations, which spread from Minneapolis to across the nation, have included clashes between protesters and police, thefts, fires and other unrest.

The violence and thefts involve much smaller groups at mostly peaceful gatherings, authorities say. The vast majority of the protesters across the nation have been “peaceful demonstrators calling for change,” law enforcement officials told ABC News.

Impacts on Seattle

The police department is in the midst of a hiring freeze, according to KUOW. The mayor’s office worries that if retention rates continue this way without the city being able to hire new recruits, there could be serious consequences for public safety, KING reported.

“If we don’t act now, we’ll soon see undeniable impacts to 911 response times and investigative services. It could also impact the department’s ability to sustain the gains and meet the requirements of the federal Consent Decree,” said Kelsey Nyland, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, according to KING. “The mayor is deeply concerned by the fact that some of our youngest officers – those who joined the department knowing it was under a federal consent decree – are leaving at an extremely high rate. These are the exact officers we want to keep as we transform the department. They’re the ones who entered the department with an emphasis on de-escalation training and community-based, constitutional policing.”

The report from the city suggests as officers quit and the hiring freeze remains in place, the time it takes to respond to 911 calls will increase.

“As the number of officers for 911 response decreases because of attrition and/or a hiring freeze, we can expect service response times to go up again,” the report said.

The report projects that the department will have little more than 60 officers per 100,000 residents for 2021 — and just under 60 officers per every 100,000 residents the following year. In 2013, there were about 80 officers for every 100,000 residents.

“[Fifty] officers is the minimum number needed to efficiently maintain a single precinct,” according to the report.

This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 1:56 PM with the headline "Officers leaving Seattle Police Department in record numbers amid protests, report says."