Rantz Exclusive: Year-end Seattle Police staffing is dire, but union warns of new looming crisis

Seattle Police Department staffing remains historically and catastrophically low. Recruitment remains a challenge. And it may get worse in the coming months.

The city of Seattle has only 848 deployable officers after 75 officers left the department through Dec. 4, 2024, when the latest data is available. A city of this size needs between 1,400 and 1,600 officers, according to experts and the city. To put the current staffing crisis in perspective, there were 918 deployable officers on Jan. 1, 1958, according to a staffing document obtained by “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH, when the population was roughly 550,000. The population is currently closing in on 800,000. What’s worse, the deployable staff data is lower now than it was at this time when compared to the last two years.

Concurrently, Seattle Police recruitment efforts continue to trail separations. The city hired just 68 new recruits and re-hires through the same time period.

Based on projections, the city of Seattle is presuming more officers will leave the Seattle Police Department (82) than will be hired (73) by the end of the year. But is there reason to hope things will turn around?

More from Jason Rantz: Socialist Tammy Morales quits Seattle city council because it wasn’t extreme enough

Will Seattle Police Department staffing improve in 2025?

In an interview on KIRO Newsradio, Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson celebrated one particular recruitment achievement from the third-quarter data that the city has compiled so far.

Nelson noted the quarter saw a net increase of four new recruits and re-hires at 19, compared to the 15 separations. Though she didn’t have the data at the time of the interview, the fourth quarter (Q4) is more promising with 29 new recruits and re-hires and 8 separations so far.

While it’s obviously good news, there is important context.

Separations typically slow in Q4 in relation to the rest of the year, so it’s not necessarily a reflection of what’s to come in 2025. Still, there’s been an obvious bump in new recruits and re-hires in November and fewer separations than we saw last year.

But it’s not a time to celebrate yet. There are three imminent threats to the tepid progress.

Onslaught of retirements and the ‘right’ kind of people?

Roughly 20% of the Seattle Police force is 53 years old or over. These numbers are not much better than what they were in 2023, when roughly 20% of patrol officers were over the age of 50. Seattle Police Officer Guild President Officer Mike Solan says this “is cause for concern” because they’re “eligible to retire at anytime.” Combine that with the current low levels for patrol, and it’s bigger crisis in the making.

“It’s drastic. It’s it’s horrible for our community safety,” Solan explained.

Recruits are also requiring more time for training than would normally be the case. As alarming? The new recruitment numbers may be a bit of an illusion.

Seattle Police may be hiring new recruits, but there’s concern that standards have been lowered and the wrong type of people are becoming cops in a post-Black Lives Matter world.

“When those students/recruits are met with that (an ideological motivation) and then seeing the reality of the training that they go through, and then what the reality is during their field training, some of those (experiences) don’t align with some of the ideology that you described,” Solan explained.

More from Jason Rantz: Court smacks Constantine’s blocking violent criminals from deportations. He owes us money

The wrong kind of recruit isn’t just a Seattle problem

Politically-inspired recruits are not a problem unique to Seattle.

Snohomish County Sheriff Susanna Johnson said some applicants are hoping to become cops to join departments they think were dismantled and rebuilt after the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement. In other words, they’re motivated by their ideological views.

“They don’t realize that yes, we need compassionate and intelligent people, but we also need people that are able to defend themselves, and in cases where force is necessary to affect an arrest or protect another person, we do find that some people are not capable of that,” Johnson explained to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH. “That is kind of eye opening, even though we try to insulate and we try to vet and we do training before the Academy.”

More from Jason Rantz: Seattle man sings cringey song at city council in favor of SODAs

Seattle is broke. How will they afford to fix the Seattle Police staffing crisis?

One final hurdle in the way of the Seattle Police Department is that the city entered the budget season facing an estimated $251 million budget deficit starting next year.

While there have been cuts and reallocation, fundamentally, the city still has a spending problem. Recruiting police and settling a new contract is expensive. Can Seattle afford to hit adequate staffing levels?

“Really, the only things that are advantageous for anybody that wants to be a police officer in the city of Seattle now is not to have gratification enforcing the laws and supporting the Constitution and protecting public safety. Right now it is (also) you got to get people paid.'”

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3-7 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on X, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz