Seattle elected officials and police brass are celebrating a boom in officer recruitment numbers that has the city on pace to rebound from the drop in staffing wrought by anti-police protests in 2020.
Interim Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes said 60 new officers have been hired this year, and more than 160 prospects are currently undergoing background checks.
Mayor Bruce Harrell, a Democrat, added that the 83 new officers who joined the force last year were the most the department had seen since 2019.
Chief Barnes said total department staffing is hovering at just over 1,000 officers, which is about 260 fewer officers than Seattle had in the final full year before the pandemic.
But the top cop said current trends indicate the city is “headed in the right direction.” He expects Seattle to fully recover from the exodus of officers that hit departments nationwide after George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis ignited mass protests against police brutality.
“We’re on pace to hire more police officers this year than any other time in our department’s history, illustrating the city’s renewed commitment to public safety and to community engagement,” Chief Barnes said Monday.
It’s a far cry from where the department was last year, when staffing dipped to its lowest level in 30 years.
Officers began leaving the department after the Seattle City Council slashed the police budget in 2020, just months after police helped dismantle a lawless “autonomous zone” in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood where a teen boy was shot dead.
More than 700 officers turned in their badges between 2019 and 2024, leaving the city with 913 total officers.
“I think if rock bottom was ever a thing, we are probably here,” City Council member Rob Saka said in March 2024.
The chief said reversing that trend started with upping the pay and is offering signing bonuses for new recruits so they wouldn’t be lured away by suburban departments.
He said streamlining the recruitment process also helped bring in more new talent.
Hiring wait times were cut down from nine months to five months, entrance exams are offered bi-weekly rather than every two months, and candidates can now complete fitness tests where they live instead of having to travel to a central location.
The uptick in officers is helping lower emergency response times for crime, the chief said, all of which is helping expedite the drop in crime.
Officials said violent crime is down roughly 11% from where it was at this time last year, with killings down 28%. But Mr. Harrell said that, while people are optimistic about the city’s future, they are still somewhat on edge from years of high crime.
“Those numbers mean absolutely nothing until I have everyone saying that they feel safer,” Mr. Harrell said. “People are feeling really good about the trajectory where we are on. This is good news for them.”
