“If rock bottom was ever a thing, we’re probably there.” That’s how District 1 City Councilmember Rob Saka described the first statistic presented during this morning’s Public Safety Committee briefing about Seattle Police hiring and recruiting.
The briefing (full slide deck here) was focused more on recruiting/hiring processes than on specifics of where staffing stands now – aside from that one overall stat – so we don’t have, for example, a precinct-by-precinct breakdown of current staffing – other updates are given on that periodically. But the council did hear a lot about how recruiting and hiring works, and doesn’t work, right now.
The briefing was presented by a team led by Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess (a former police officer and city councilmember). One long-running factor, the contract negotiations with the officers’ union, is “very close” to agreement, Burgess said toward the briefing’s end, without elaborating. But many other factors affecting recruiting and hiring were discussed. “The problem of recruitment is not just a Seattle problem,” he and others at the table – including SPD Chief Adrian Diaz – stressed.
This group followed a briefing earlier in the meeting that included some revelations about what Councilmember Cathy Moore observed was a “clunky” process of moving candidates along through various stages of screening and testing – the length of time it takes to provide SPD with lists of qualified candidates, for example. “I don’t get a sense of urgency,” Moore said.
The process moves faster than it used to, councilmembers were told, but still could move faster. But the SPD and mayor’s-office team listed other factors – like starting salary, in which they said Seattle ranks 15th on a list of jurisdictions with which it competes for officers:
There was some discussion of incentives offered by other jurisdictions, such as take-home vehicles and housing subsidies (none of which are being currently offered or proposed by Seattle), Meantime, among the applicants SPD is getting, the ethnic diversity outstrips the city as a whole, but the gender diversity still lags far behind:
Councilmember Moore called out the low percentage of female applicants, noting that women said child care was a factor in their decisions, and saying she’d like to see “a plan” for addressing that. Scheduling challenges too. She also voiced concerns about problems such as sexual harassment that were raised in the recent “30 by 30” report – addressing SPD’s efforts in a nationwide initiative toward 30 percent female officers in sworn law enforcement. Chief Diaz said there’s a “women’s workgroup” and also noted that two-thirds of the SPD civilian staff is female.
Much time in the briefing was spent on the million-dollar-plus marketing/advertising plan for which SPD hired an outside agency; Burgess said its debut was followed by an “immediate uptick in applications.” Saka suggested later, though, that “we’re not going to market our way out of this,” but also offered that in addition to featuring the mayor and others, the marketing campaign should call attention to the changed council as well.
Besides spending money on advertising, SPD reps said they’re also strategizing with recruiters from private-sector companies and have meetings scheduled next month with firms including Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Nordstrom; they also talked about software programs they’re using to communicate more responsively with candidates. And they thanked councilmembers for their shows of support, such as attending roll calls at precincts. But they acknowledged that overall, the department lost more officers than it hired last year, so there is more work to do if they’re going to build back the numbers. (We’ll add video of today’s meeting when it’s available on the Seattle Channel website later.)
ADDED: Here’s the meeting video – this discussion starts 1 hour, 12 minutes in.
WSB, do you know who came up with this chart on the slide deck?
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