Mayor Durkan responds to criticism over Seattle police chief selection

Mayor Jenny Durkan has responded to ongoing criticism over the city’s selection process for the new Seattle police, noting her extensive history in SPD reform efforts.

RELATED: Commission requests Seattle halt police chief selection

The Seattle Community Police Commission sent a letter to Council President Bruce Harrell on June 20. In it, they requested multiple records related to the police chief selection process. The commission has previously asked the council to halt the police process over its concerns. Durkan’s letter does not indicate interviews will be paused anytime soon.

Concerns largely stemmed from the snubbing of Interim Chief Carmen Best. More than 60 people applied for the Seattle police chief position. Best made the list of the top five finalists as selected by a committee. But as Mayor Durkan explains in her letter to the commission, the interim chief did not make the final list of three. She backs her reasoning for this by citing the city charter and a finalist exam.

Seattle police chief selection process

Mayor Durkan writes that there were a couple phases in the Seattle police chief selection process as ordered by the city’s charter. The first phase involved a 25-member committee to come up with a handful of finalists. They produced five — including Best.

“To comply with the City Charter and maximize community input, the search had two initial phases,” Durkan writes to the commission. “The first phase was to conduct deep community engagement and to review all candidates to reduce the list to finalists. The second, as required by the City Charter, was a competitive exam process that was to select three candidates from which I select the final nominee for Chief of Police.”

Durkan further explains the second phase:

As the Police Chief Search Committee was informed at the beginning by the City Attorney’s office and again at the end of their role, the search then proceeded to the second phase, the Competitive Exam. As required by the City Charter, a police chief “shall be selected by the Mayor from among the three highest ranking candidates in a competitive examination to be conducted under the direction of the Mayor.” The Competitive Exam Process then selected the three finalists. The Competitive Exam Process was conducted by: Mike Fong, Senior Deputy Mayor; Shefali Ranganathan, Deputy Mayor, Ron Sims, former King County Executive and previous Co-Chair to the 2014 Police Chief Search; Ian Warner, Legal Counsel to the Mayor and a former member of the Monitoring Team to the Consent Decree; and Barney Melekian, former Director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services under President Obama.

…. The Competitive Exam Process decided on three finalists to move forward to me, as required by the City Charter. This includes: Eddie Frizell, Cameron McLay, and Ely Reyes as the three finalists for permanent Chief of the Seattle Police Department.

Mayor Durkan’s letter

Durkan’s response also details how the process included 50 community stakeholders, 14 neighborhood meetings, and an online survey posted in 15 different languages over the course of two months prior to the comprehensive exam. All that information was used in the exam phase of the selection process.

The mayor also notes her history working on Seattle policing issues, dating back to 1985 when she was appointed to oversight roles by three mayors. She then writes that as U.S. attorney, she was involved in the Department of Justice consent decree which required the Seattle Police Department to reform.

“I worked with community groups — the ACLU, El Centro, One America, Mothers for Police Accountability, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project — to deeply reform the Seattle Police Department and enter into a federal consent decree, which I signed as U.S. Attorney,” Durkan notes.

Read Mayor Durkan’s full letter here.

Follow @http://twitter.com/Mynorthwest