Seattle City Council to vote on proposed SPD contract

The Seattle City Council is expected to vote on a new contract with the Seattle Police Officer's Guild, but one council member is pushing to postpone the vote.

SEATTLE - Seattle City Council is expected to vote on a new contract with the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild on Tuesday, but one council member is pushing to postpone the vote.

The new contract focuses on hiring and retaining police officers in Seattle, and improving how the department operates. The last contract expired in 2020, and the department has gone without one ever since.

About 950 sergeants and officers working for the city would be impacted by the new contract.

Here’s what to expect if the Seattle Police Department’s new contract is approved by the City Council

If Seattle City Council approves the new contract, officers will see a 20% increase in pay. Officers have not seen a raise since 2020, so they would get retroactive pay for the time spent in contract negotiations.

Entry-level salary for officers would also go from $83,000 to $103,000 per year. This is important because Seattle Police have admitted they have sat at crisis-level staffing during the last few years.

Since 2020, the SPD has lost nearly 340 fully trained officers.

Though 911 response times are up, more people are being killed in Seattle, and fewer homicides are being solved.

The SPD is struggling to hire. There were only 61 hires last year out of more than 1,900 applicants. 61 is only half of their annual hiring target.

The new contract would also work to increase accountability when it comes to police misconduct investigations. Additionally, this would enhance how Seattle Police officers can respond.

In their words, it would ‘civilianize’ certain jobs, so sworn officers wouldn’t be necessary for lower stake tasks; things like low-grade property damage reports, traffic safety camera citations, assisting on missing children and runaway cases and more.

Part of the new contract is still being worked out when it comes to raises, and Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales believes the vote on all of this should wait.

Morales says the community needs to have a chance to weigh in. She says the tentative agreement falls short when it comes to accountability reforms – especially as they wait on other high-profile cases of misconduct.