2 Groups Present 'Roadmap' To Defund Seattle Police By 50 Percent

SEATTLE, WA — Two community organizations presented a joint plan to the Seattle City Council Wednesday, outlining a "roadmap" for cutting police funding in half and redirecting money toward community-led safety solutions and public housing.

"The call to defund policing is clearly here to say," said Angélica Cházaro, a law professor and organizer with Decriminalize Seattle. "It's clear to us more training, more accountability measures are not going to cut it."

The four-part framework detailed Wednesday is the result of a partnership between Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now, a coalition of Black-led community organizations.

"We're asking you to help us build a world that Charleena Lyles deserved," Cházaro said. "We're asking you to help us build the world that John T. Williams deserved. We're asking you to help us build the world that protester Summer Taylor died for this past weekend."

The presentation identifies several areas to reduce the police department's $409 million budget, including an end to overtime pay, cuts to recruitment and public relations budgets and a reduction in patrol staff, beginning with officers who have earned the highest number of misconduct complaints.

"We know that in order to transform the way the city does public safety, we need to shrink the current police force," Cházaro said. "In order to move toward changing how we approach our public safety, we need to stop the growth of SPD."

Presenters pointed to a police budget that has steadily risen over the last decade.

"Even accounting for inflation, SPD's budget has grown 43 percent since 2010, from $243 million then to $409 million today," Cházaro said. "We're asking for council to halt this momentum of growth and actually pull money away from the police budget and toward supporting our communities and defending Black lives."

Organizers detailed four ways they would see money repurposed throughout the community:

Defund SPD to replace current 911 operations with a civilian-controlled system

The plan calls for moving 911 dispatch responses out of the police department's command structure, creating a fully-civilianized service where calls can be referred to non-police responders as needed, including trained mental health workers and crisis specialists.

Presenters and city councilmembers referenced a recent New York Times article that reported just 1.3 percent of Seattle 911 calls involved violent crimes.

Later in the meeting, city and police department staff presented an analysis of the most commonly dispatched calls in 2019, many of which may not require the response of an armed police officer with arrest powers.

Defund SPD to scale up community-led solutions

Another area or reinvestment the plan identifies is for existing community-led organizations, to help scale up their work in violence interruption and violence prevention, outside the traditional law enforcement model, while addressing the root causes.

Defund SPD to fund a community-created roadmap to life without policing

The plan also asks the city to fund a community-led research process, seeking input from groups most impacted by policing to identify the needs they see in their neighborhoods.

Defund SPD to invest in housing for all

Presenters say their reimagined approach would fund solutions for housing, giving all unhoused people a place to live, and access to basic resources like food, rather than criminalizing homelessness and continuing a cycle of poverty.

Organizers said the plans presented Wednesday are a starting point, and will continue to evolve as discussions continue and with community input. To date, four of nine city councilmembers have publicly supported a 50 percent defunding of the police. The remaining councilmembers have signaled support for defunding at some level. Mayor Jenny Durkan presented a plan to cut funding by 5 percent this year, but the city is working on proposals that would account for cuts at 20, 30 and 50 percent.