Police and Public Safety

With a 24% raise and backpay, Seattle police officers are collectively earning an extra $96 million in compensation from the City in 2024. City leaders hope to spur hiring, but the contract did little to increase police accountability and blew a bigger hole in the City's quarter-billion-dollar budget deficit.

Mayor Jenny Durkan promised to disperse the Capitol Hill Organized Protest and reinstall police inside East Precinct "in the near future" at a press...

Seattle is still struggling for justice and constitutional policing 12 years into federal monitoring via the consent decree. More than 12 years ago, 34 Seattle...

StarChase consists of GPS tracker launchers attached to police patrol cars that can deploy a GPS tracking tag onto another vehicle. The Seattle Police Department contends that acquiring this technology will help apprehend criminals without dangerous high-speed chases, but critics argue StarChase’s efficacy is low and deployment would expand the scope of warrantless surveillance.

With election season already around the corner, cities that want their residents to vote on November ballot measures are moving to finish necessary planning...

Last year, Uytae Lee of About Here discussed why point access block (single-stair) residential buildings are so good. But a common reaction to the...

Mayor Harrell is seeking to quickly roll out gun-shot detectors and closed circuit cameras to feed into real-time crime center software, raising privacy concerns. Claims that this major expansion of the surveillance state will curb serious crime are largely unsubstantiated.

Ray Delahanty of CityNerd goes through a litany of reasons why car dependency makes American society worse off from public health and environmental quality...