Sawant, critics tour Seattle police precinct; remain opposed

A controversial proposed new Seattle police precinct is one of the city’s biggest political hot potatoes heading into the fall.

After getting a tour of the old precinct that it would replace, council member Kshama Sawant made clear she and other critics don’t see the need for the $149 million project.

“There are many urgent needs to address: the lack of affordable housing, other problems that will be socially beneficial if you address them (instead),” Sawant told Brian Maxey, chief operating officer for the Seattle Police Department.

The fate of the new precinct will ultimately be determined by the Seattle City Council during budget deliberations this fall. If Friday’s tour was any indication, the police department will have a difficult time convincing both the council and public of its need — especially after seeing the locker room, where some of the posted stickers included the cartoon kid from “Calvin and Hobbes” urinating on a President Obama logo.

Maxey says the stickers were ordered removed following the tour. But it all left a sour taste in the mouths of Sawant and others present. While we were prohibited from taking pictures in the locker room, Sawant said it showed just how far the department needs to go in changing its culture — which she argues has nothing to do with a new building.

Seattle police precinct tour

Sawant led a hand-picked contingent of activists and alternative-media journalists critical of the proposal — and police in general — on the tour Friday.

From the beginning of the tour, they peppered SPD brass with far more questions and diatribes about racial bias and use-of-force issues, rather than talk about the north precinct or the need for a new one.

“In my mind — as a lay person —  firearms training is not where the police are lacking,” Sawant told Maxey in response to his argument the new precinct accommodates a variety of training spaces including a new firing range.

“It’s more of de-escalation and race sensitivity and how you treat homeless and the poor and that sort of thing,” she said. “In my mind that’s not necessarily related to space.”

The proposed new precinct at 130th Street and Aurora Avenue would replace the existing north precinct next to North Seattle College.

A new precinct has been on the drawing boards since the late ’90s. The mayor and police officials say the existing building is overcrowded and badly outdated. Officers are forced to share desks and computers, storage rooms have been converted to offices and locker rooms.  A total of 254 cops work in the building that was designed for 100 less.

With no space for personal vehicles, officers are forced to park on neighboring streets in the tree-lined, residential area.

But on our tour Friday, there were few people working and plenty of empty cubicles just ahead of shift change. While looking dated and faded, the building isn’t falling apart and the need for a new one was far from apparent.

But Doug Carey, assistant director of the city’s Financial and Administrative Services Department, insisted the building was badly overcrowded.

“The area that’s served by the north precinct has 40 percent of the population in the city of Seattle. South of the Ship Canal are four precincts that are served out of four different stations,” Carey said.

The new Seattle police precinct would include community meeting spaces and an open design that increases transparency and fosters a culture that embodies what Maxey says is a model of 21st century policing.

And Maxey says while he’s admittedly surprised by the high price tag, he argues it is not out of line with other large-scale new construction around Seattle, including the Central Library.

“I know this has been referred to as a bunker, as it’s being divisive from the community. Honestly, if we were going to make a bunker, we would not have built it with a huge glass front and glass wall which clearly drives the price up,” Maxey said.

Our tour of the current precinct went through the basement area, which had flooded repeatedly in past years. Currently, a sump pump runs constantly.

We saw a dilapidated firing range with spent casings on the floor, and a cramped workout room with basic treadmills, exercise bikes, free weights and other equipment paid for by officers themselves through a membership. Neither were in use during our visit by late morning.

But Sawant argued the department needs a major cultural shift rather than a new building to accomplish its goals.

“It seems to me, from my understanding, that most of the training that the (DOJ) consent-degree requires is related to the substance of policing — meaning do you escalate or do you take your bikes and shove them in the bodies of peaceful protesters?” Sawant said.

“In my mind, those substance-based training sessions are not so much space intensive as what you actually teach the cops,” she said.

Ultimately, SPD leaders failed to really answer the question of why they couldn’t make do with upgrading the existing space. And with critics ranging from Sawant to the Seattle Times Editorial Board, the project clearly faces an uphill climb.

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