Coalition lays out fresh demands for Mayor Durkan, council in ‘defund SPD’ vision

“The question is when and how, and the voices present are saying when is now.”

That’s how King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle organizer Nikkita Oliver described the tenor of the coalition of groups demanding to defund the Seattle Police Department by half, and reinvest those dollars in a new community-led public safety system.

The description came in a rare public discussion about the effort that has been at the heart of ongoing, sometimes volatile, protests across the city since May.

“This is a fight for civil rights for Black lives,” said organizer Sade Smith, an attorney with King County’s Department of Public Defense. “SPD has a long belated history of devaluing Black lives and taking money from community. They started and continued to be a predominately white institution with 65% of the pieces being individuals who are non-BIPOC. This is a dangerous situation for our community. But even if there were there was more BIPOC representation in the police force, it still will not be safe, policing is inherently dangerous.”

Smith said the movement is now focused on getting resources out of policing and focusing it back into community, and addressing the harm that has been caused by policing, offering examples, such as the deaths of Charleena Lyles and Shawn Fuhr.

“We can’t have this kind of harm being done in the community anymore, so engaging in a conversation that moves past that is extremely important,” Smith said. “Our vision would be to have resources that were put into SPD and have them reinvested in community. Four-hundred million dollars would go a long way, and in many programs — not just programs with creative justice — but Community Passageways and CHOOSE 180, they could be very well funded for a significant amount of time if they had access to the resources that are being taken up by SPD.”

Community Passageways is a Seattle nonprofit that helps keeps youth out of the criminal justice system through opportunities, a blueprint they plan to continue moving forward, but with a much larger scope, according to community liaison Rev. Martin Lawson.

“We will create community hubs throughout the city,” Lawson explained. “These hubs will be Black, indigenous, people of color-run; the hubs will have case managers with access to necessary resources in every area of need, employees will be from the community in which they reside, [and] employees will be trained in community safety methods and social service advocacy.”

“To be honest, we understand the need for police in certain situations and we are willing to work with a fair and just SPD that ensures that all citizens are served and protected equally,” he continued. “However, due to the trauma that we have endured at the hands of the police for centuries, we would hope that these officers who responded to these situations and our communities have true relationship with those communities, and they are not just functioning in some work capacity.”

CHOOSE 180 is similarly focused on keeping youth away from the criminal justice system through an unconventional diversion program, which has seen success working with King County and Seattle’s young people.

‘This is not a new movement,” said CHOOSE 180 Executive Director Sean Goode. “We are all on a journey toward justice that our ancestors began almost over 400 years ago when we were stolen and brought here in chains. This is a journey that did not end with the Civil Rights Act of 1968; it didn’t end with the LA riots in 1992; it didn’t end with the murder of Mike Brown in 2014, and it still continues today as we protest and riot in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and so many others in our community who have died at the hands of law enforcement. Now I’d also want to say, as a community, it is imperative that we begin to honor the prophetic voices of King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle, instead of vilifying them for their willingness to envision what is possible.”

“Our organization exemplifies what’s possible when we begin to rely on community as an alternative to the criminal legal system,” Goode continued. “When 90% of the youth and young adults we serve don’t return to the criminal legal system within 12 months of participating in our program, it has to make you ask the question should their behavior been criminalized in the first place to end up on our at our organization’s doorsteps as a result of a referral from the prosecuting attorney’s office.”

“Or it could very well be possible that these very same youth and young adults that are engaging in our program could have been referred to us by community members who saw them at a time of crisis in a pivotal moment, and helped to redirect their behavior by getting them connected with organizations like ours.”

It is for all of those reasons that the coalition targets the police budget to reinvest in BIPOC communities that say they’ve been shortchanged and under-invested in for decades, in turn causing generational damage.

“SPD’s ballooning budget has done nothing for their communities,” said activist Emijah Smith. “The budget is larger than any other department compared to human services, education, early learning, housing, arts and culture, immigrant and refugee affairs. These are all the things that are necessary to have healthy communities.”

That’s why the coalition says it will insist on the full 50% cut to SPD’s 2021 budget, which would total roughly $200 million.

How that gets spent would have to lie in the hands of BIPOC communities, according to new demands the groups issued Monday to Mayor Durkan, noting while she had committed to investing $100 million in communities of color, they claim it was a vague commitment that did not ensure communities of color would get a voice.

“We are demanding that the mayor commit to the distribution of $100 million through a participatory budgeting process, one that is designed with BIPOC priorities in mind, and one that is focused on creating true community safety and community health,” said King County Equity Now Research Director Shawn Glaze. “It’s not enough to invest in our communities. If you’re not allowing communities who are most impacted by disinvestment to direct those investments, what will keep us safe and what will make us whole?”

“We’re going to start with the creation of a steering committee. That steering committee allows us to build a model of collaboration. So it’s important that the steering committee not be just some like group of political appointees disconnected from the community. We need a transparent process. We need something where community members can make their case for the expertise, wisdom, and leadership they bring to this role, and where the criteria for the steering committee is informed by the priorities outlined in the research process,” Glaze added.

Overall, this entire process involves the creation of a steering committee from within communities of color and a lengthy research process to eventually come up with a proposed BIPOC budget to be presented to the city council.

Their message to city leaders:

Defunding the Seattle Police Department by 50% remains our goal. We expect the City Council and the mayor to meet that goal. All of the participatory processes in the world won’t truly generate true public safety and public health for black community members, for black and brown community unless we are divesting from the Seattle Police Department, the courts and the jails at the same time that we take that money and we reinvest in community, we reinvest it where we know the solutions are.

A full 13-page blueprint of the plan can be found here.

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