Despite citizen votes, and mayor promises to increase police
numbers and staffing, Seattle Police continue to lose numbers.
Once you badly hurt morale, it is real tough to improve.
This is really going to cost Seattle.

from
https://mynorthwest.com/3911436/rantz-seattle-mayor-didnt-complete-start-70-of-police-recruitment-plan/

Rantz: Seattle mayor didn’t complete, start 70% of police recruitment plan
Jul 26, 2023, 5:55 PM

Seattle police recruitment...
(Photo from the Seattle Channel)

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BY JASON RANTZ
The Jason Rantz Show, 3pm-7pm on KTTH
In July 2022, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced to the community and
press his “robust and multi-pronged approach” to officer recruitment and
retention. He’s accomplished almost nothing, despite a controversial
move giving his office control over recruitment and retention efforts
from the Seattle Police Department (SPD).

Of the 38 programs or initiatives Harrell said his administration would
tackle by the end of 2022, roughly 70% either haven’t been completed or
even started. Some of the ideas didn’t appear to ever be vetted with the
SPD or the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), even though Harrell
said the plan was developed with officers. Some initiatives have been
deemed implausible, with no city announcements explaining the failures.
Other aspects of the plan, if accomplished, haven’t even been publicized
to the officers who were meant to benefit.

Meanwhile, SPD staff continues to dwindle this year, with 61 total
separations as of June 30, with just 41 hires.

More Rantz: Seattle Times leads charge in transparent anti-police hit piece

All talk, virtually no action on Seattle police recruitment
Harrell announced his “comprehensive plan” to recruit and retain
officers at a press conference on July 13, 2022, flanked by SPD chief
Adrian Diaz. He said the plan came from conversations with officers and
community members, vowing to address a growing public safety crisis,
with homicides surging.

While many of the action items didn’t even commit to fully implementing
new programs, little work was done.

Harrell only promised to consider “exploring” whether some ideas can be
implemented. For example, the mayor promised to “explore the creation of
a pipeline of potential recruits through a college/university-based
program centered on public safety careers.”

By January 2023, the city was supposed to “evaluate the feasibility of a
program covering tuition for individuals seeking an undergraduate
degree” and to “design a cadet program” to bring younger recruits into
the SPD. None of this appears to have been accomplished, and the mayor’s
office won’t explain if this is still being considered or how far along
into the process they are.

While Harrell’s office fulfilled a plan to offer possible recruits
“ride-alongs,” The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH has failed to find a single
officer who has heard of the “recruitment ‘ambassador’ programs” that
were promised. And by November 2022, the Mayor vowed to “create a
recruiting speakers bureau of respected individuals in the community who
can inspire interest in a law enforcement career and a position with
SPD.” There’s no evidence this occurred or was even started.

What recruitment plan?
If the mayor’s office taking over recruitment was supposed to accelerate
recruitment efforts, it’s failed.

SPD has only hired 41 recruits as of June 30, 2023, representing a net
loss of 20 officers this year. Harrell committed to hiring 500 officers
by 2027. That goal was never possible: there were 153 separations in
2022, the year he promised he’d fully staff the department, putting us
on pace to exceed 600 separations since 2020. Complicating matters is
the fact that the hiring goal of 500 was based on getting the department
to roughly 1,500 total officers. He now needs to hire more than 500 to
get that ultimate goal.

Though hiring 500 officers is an audacious goal, there’s been no robust
recruitment plan or strategy.

While the city spent the first three to four months of the year
finalizing a digital recruitment strategy (which was supposed to be
completed in 2022), their efforts have focused primarily on running a
handful of social media ads (Instagram and Facebook) to potential
recruits. They have not been fruitful.

Since the recruitment plan was announced, even simple commitments, like
creating and implementing “a new branding and marketing campaign” for
recruitment, failed to fully materialize. Between the press conference
and July 25, the SPD recruitment website has removed recruitment content
from the front page, such as videos declaring Seattle “one of America’s
greatest cities.” Instead, some photos have been updated to remove
officers in masks, which were posted for COVID.

Of the $1.8 million given to the mayor for these efforts, his staff
spent less than $330,000 in 2022. The 2023 budget will likely go unspent
at this rate.

There’s little being done to retain officers
The mayor’s plan offered only ten initiatives to retain current
officers. Almost none have been implemented or promoted.

The action items include instituting an “assignment rotation policy” for
current officers so they can “develop skills across various
responsibilities.” He vowed to create “bureau advisory councils”
allowing officers to “elevate their perspectives, experiences, and
opinions to command staff and City leadership.” Most of the plan was to
be completed by October 2022. But these ideas were quickly jettisoned
after the announcement.

“Both were ideas that were floated – but neither were actually
implemented,” an SPD spokesperson confirmed to The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

By August 2022, the mayor promised “regular roll-call visits by senior
SPD command staff, elected officials, and senior staff from the mayor’s
office.” This never became a regular occurrence. While the mayor
promised senior command staff “office hours” so that officers could
share thoughts or concerns, officers have never heard of it.

One achievement from Harrell was the promise to “establish a leadership
academy to prepare officers, detectives, and sergeants for promotion by
fostering management and leadership skills.” But it appears this is a
reference to a pre-existing program under then-chief Kathleen O’Toole.
It was paused during COVID.

They’re not even trying
If this is what an urgent plan to recruit and retain officers looks
like, it’s no wonder the city has failed to meet its recruitment goals.
That the mayor’s office is leading recruitment efforts for the SPD, to
begin with, should be a sign that the staffing crisis will get worse
before it gets better.

One significant issue that could help with both recruitment and
retainment is a new contract for SPOG. But there doesn’t yet appear to
be significant progress in negotiations between the two sides.

A Harrell staffer that was reportedly making things worse, senior deputy
mayor Monisha Harrell (the mayor’s niece), was pushed out in late June.
Behind closed doors, she was reportedly clashing with Harrell’s top
staff, who have urged the mayor to take a more aggressive stance on
public safety and police support. But the mayor continues to vacillate,
often showing support for cops before immediately undercutting them by
pivoting to comments on systemic racism and excessive force to placate
the activist community. In private conversations, Harrell tells cops he
unapologetically backs them, but in public, he downplays his support.

The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH gave Harrell’s office a specific list of
action items from his plans that are believed to be uncompleted or
abandoned. But spokesperson Jamie Housen continued his strategy of
ignoring requests for comment.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3:00 p.m. –
7:00 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). He is the
author of the book What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s
Tragic Destruction of Our Cities. Subscribe to the podcast. Follow
@JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently
for more news and analysis.