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Seattle City Council President Lorena González along with Lisa Herbold, chair of the Public Safety & Human Services Committee, and Tammy Morales, chair of the Community Economic Development Committee, held a press conference yesterday to define City Council’s vision for defunding the Seattle Police Department (SPD).

In her opening remarks, Council President González acknowledged the initial votes City Council has taken this week in favor of defunding SPD and investing in community-based public safety. She also reiterated her dismay for SPD’s lacking use of de-escalation principles, saying those tactics “should be a hallmark of a truly reformed law enforcement department.”

González continued, “The culture change we are pushing for and have been pushing for since the [federal] consent decree has failed to materialize. Meanwhile, it is unfortunate that we are faced with the reality that we have an executive who insists on sowing seeds of fear and misinformation, further dividing our community in a time of unprecedented crisis. All the while, calling for unity.”

Mentioning that we have seen community-based prevention programs work when we give them the resources they need in order to function properly, she stated the Council’s proposal to invest $14 million in expanding those programs, including housing diversion, sex worker mutual aid, and others.

González spent over a decade working on police reform prior to her tenure as a councilmember but says her perspective changed after the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath that continues today. “I have said before and I'll say it again, you cannot reform something that is fundamentally broken.”

She then offered Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best an olive branch, acknowledging the City’s legislative and executive branches can still work together despite current differences in ideological values and practical approaches. Given that City Council unanimously passed the majority of amendments and ultimately the entire package to begin defunding SPD, she requested that the Mayor and Chief help the Council chart the path forward.

Councilmember Lisa Herbold began her opening statement by referencing her 30 years in public service, saying that she has never seen the status quo be shaken up by limiting action to what seems realistic. “In this instance, reimagining policing means imagining what may not at first seem realistic,” she said.

“We've shared information about the very real barriers to our goals in real time with the community as we were understanding those barriers ourselves. In doing so, I hope we’ve begun to build trust and made an investment in the leadership infrastructure of the people who are so critical to this important moment: the activists and advocates, and the people who experience harm at the hands of our criminal justice system.”

Herbold said that instead of trying to find a way for the Council and Mayor’s office to work together in their shared goal of reducing the footprint of armed police responses to social and mental health issues that do not need armed police, the Mayor and Chief are using structural barriers to hinder real progress.

Fifty-six percent of 911 calls are noncriminal and only three percent of 911 calls result in arrest. Herbold thinks we are asking SPD to do too much and in doing so we are making our community less safe.

In response to Mayor Durkan and Chief Best’s claim that they will have no other choice but to lay off the newest and most diverse class of officers first, Herbold affirmed that the Council understands the rules and that is why they are asking the executive branch to work with them so that their common interest of maintaining diversity within SPD is accomplished.

Councilmember Tammy Morales, a freshman on the Council, claimed the Mayor and Chief have sought to undermine the Council’s credibility, “It's disrespectful. It's not collaborative. And when we're talking about the safety of Black and brown neighbors, it's downright dangerous.”

The legislative and executive branches of government are co-equal and Morales reminded the Mayor and Chief that it is the Council’s responsibility to legislate as well as to determine the priorities for how public dollars are spent. Handing those duties off to the executive branch would be “irresponsible.”

She believes it is time to shift power away from systems that have failed to invest in Black and brown communities towards those very same communities that have been exploited by systemic racism within law enforcement and public policy in general. She thinks the package passed by City Council this week will support the effort to shift power now, “so that when a significant restructure of community safety happens, we have the infrastructure in place to support our neighbors.”

When seven out of nine councilmembers signaled their support to defund SPD by 50% more than a month ago, people were skeptical given the Seattle Process and the Council’s history of backtracking their support for major legislation. However, this week’s unanimous vote is a big win for the Defund SPD movement as the Council has begun to put their money where their mouth is.

Now that City Council has also had their press conference after this week’s rebuke by the Mayor and Chief, it remains to be seen if the executive branch is willing to change course in its rhetorical and practical approach to meeting the demands of the Defund SPD movement, or if the Mayor will continue her seemingly half-hearted platitudes.

What the full press conference here:

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