Dear Council Members,
Like so many Seattle residents, I was appalled and disgusted by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25, and I have been further appalled and disgusted by the Seattle Police Department’s treatment of those protesting for racial justice in the days since. The SPD has repeatedly responded to peaceful protests with violence, escalating and attacking without provocation, using chemical weapons that would be banned in warfare against unarmed and peaceful Seattleites — and then attempting to cover up, deny, and evade responsibility for their conduct. And why has the SPD done this? Because citizens have dared to hold them and other police departments across the country accountable for their ongoing and deeply ingrained racism, brutality, and callous disregard for Black lives and humanity.
As a white person, I was brought up to believe the police were there to help — and that they were obviously necessary to “fight crime” and keep our cities safe. Immigrants, people of color, indigenous people, and especially Black people, have of course never had the luxury of these illusions. In truth, the police use violence and the threat of violence to maintain and perpetuate the unjust racial and class hierarchies embedded in our society. They are more concerned with maintaining their own power and autonomy than with serving the citizens supposedly under their protection.
The institution of police as we know it cannot be meaningfully reformed. In Seattle and elsewhere, we have tried this. We have had a federal consent decree enforced on the SPD for two years. We have tried giving officers more training in conflict resolution and de-escalation, we have tried body cameras, we have tried use-of-force guidelines, we have tried increasing transparency and accountability procedures. We have tried removing so-called “bad apples” now and then who had the misfortune to get caught on camera doing something really egregious.
These measures have not been effective, because they do not address the fundamental nature and mission of the police. They do not address the us-versus-them attitude pervasive amongst officers, their conviction that they are entitled to total obedience, their habit of resorting to violence and intimidation to get their way, their contempt for the communities they work in, their racism that allows them to treat Black people so much more brutally and unfairly than white people, and their culture of silence that allows them to evade any consequences for their actions.
It is time to admit that piecemeal reforms will not succeed. Instead, we need to reset and rethink how we approach law enforcement and justice from the ground up. While law enforcement in some form will always be necessary, the SPD as it exists today cannot continue; and its current members must no longer be allowed to wield state power — not any of them. We cannot afford to give them the benefit of the doubt. The harm that they are doing must be stopped first.
That is why I am asking you, as a member of the Seattle City Council, to use your power to move toward defunding and ultimately disbanding the SPD. Instead, we should redirect the SPD's budget to create or expand non-police, non-coercive, compassionate social support and crisis intervention programs. We should put our money and attention into meaningfully addressing the root causes of crime, such as poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of social support, and cycles of violence. We must stop criminalizing homelessness, drug use, and mental illness. We must stop criminalizing Blackness. We need to build systems that recognize people's essential humanity, and work to understand and give them what they need — rather than trying to control them.
The SPD has proven that it is not willing or able to be part of the work of building a more just society. Therefore, we must leave it behind.
Sincerely, Nathan Reed