Police and Public Safety

City leaders are weighing laxer hiring standards rather than improving SPD's culture and accountability systems. But SPD's bad reputation could be the bigger drag on hiring – not to mention safety outcomes.

Research has showed the promise of guaranteed basic income programs to interrupt the cycle of poverty, and participants in King County's pilot program told The Urbanist that it had helped them improve their circumstances.

Vacant building fires have become increasingly common in Seattle in recent years. In response to the threat that these fires can pose, Mayor Bruce...

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

Mayor Harrell's contract would make Seattle police the highest paid in the region, but no more accountable. The long-awaited new proposed contract between the City...

Seattle Police Department had a net loss of 36 officers in 2023 as recruitment efforts have yet to bear fruit. This has the Seattle City Council pondering more desperate measures.

New footage shows how police kettled protesters, trapping them in a corridor of violence in the early days of 2020 protests. Despite the historic magnitude of financial costs to the city across multiple legal settlements, in the three-plus years since the summer of 2020, the department internally has rarely found any of its conduct to be worthy of punishment beyond a handful of oral and written reprimands.

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.