A copy of the tentative contract between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) obtained by PubliCola includes raises of 23 percent (retroactive to January 6, 2021 and active through 2023) and offers only minor changes to existing accountability measures in return.

“After my quick read of it, there are barely any changes in here,” said Shannon Cheng, chair of People Power Washington, a group advocating for increased police accountability. Of the 23 percent retroactive raise, Cheng said, “That’s very generous. There’s a giant gaping deficit in our budget coming up and what we’ve been hearing from every other employee—whether it’s firefighters to the coalition of city unions—is that there isn’t money. Everybody is taking smaller pay raises.”

SPOG sent the contract to police officers, who will be voting on whether or not to approve it, on Friday.

Joel Merkel, co-chair of the Community Police Commission, said that the organization has not been formally presented with a copy of the contract. But based on what Merkel read in the document (which was briefly posted online this morning by SPOG and then replaced with a photo of union leader Mike Solan) he believes this may be only an interim agreement meant to address the issue of pay raises and recruiting, since it’s only effective through the end of 2023.

“What’s been posted on the police guild’s website does not seem to address accountability at all,” Merkel said, noting that the biggest changes in the contract concern pay raises—an issue Mayor Bruce Harrell and the new centrist-majority city council have said are necessary to deal with lackluster recruiting efforts and attrition. 

The few changes to accountability in the contract include:

• The Office of Police Accountability (OPA) must provide officers being investigated for misconduct, along with the police guild, with a full “copy of the complaint,” rather than “basic details” of the complaint.
• The tentative contract removes a requirement that OPA inform officers and SPOG about an investigation within five days—a mandate the accountability office has said can cause unnecessary stress for office and unnecessary work for the OPA. If the OPA closes a case without further investigation, the office would now have 30 days to tell SPOG and the officer about it. OPA would also be required to notify the union when an active investigation is being referred to criminal investigation and to supply the union with the case number in that instance.
• The proposal allows for up to a 60-day extension of the 180-day deadline for OPA to wrap up investigations, but only in cases involving “Type 3” force—the most serious type of excessive force OPA investigates—and only if SPD’s force review board refers the case to OPA within seven days after they review it.. 
• The contract adds two more civilian investigators (for a total four) to OPA, which mostly includes sworn officers.
• On the issue of arbitration, which has often resulted in SPD officers who have been fired for misconduct being reinstated, new wording in the contract states that “an appointed arbitrator will give deference to the Chief’s judgment as to the appropriate disciplinary penalty so long as the disciplinary penalty is reasonable and consistent with just cause,” a fairly vague change in wording.

Of these limited changes to accountability, Merkel said,  “If there are no [additional] changes to the accountability section of the contract, moving forward, then we would absolutely have some pretty strong concerns. And we believe that Judge Robart will as well.”

Since 2012, US District Judge James Robart has been managing SPD’s consent decree, which requires reforms to police accountability and use of force. In 2019, Robart ruled the that Seattle was out of compliance with the consent decree after the city approved the most recent contract with SPOG, which failed to incorporate many of the measures that were included in a 2017 police accountability ordinance. In 2023, Robart lifted most of the remaining restrictions from the consent decree, but said SPD still had more work to do on crowd control and accountability.

During negotiations over the contract, which has been stalled for three years, the CPC wrote a letter urging negotiators to fully implement the accountability reforms measures in the 2017 legislation. The letter noted that “the current contract makes it harder to fire an officer for misconduct if that misconduct is … ‘stigmatizing’ to a police officer and makes it harder for them to get another police job.” That provision about officer stigmatization remains in the new contract.

The contract does not go as far in terms of accountability reforms as the Seattle Police Management Association contract, which covers about 80 lieutenants and police captains, and which the city council approved in 2022.

Harrell spokesman Jamie Housen said in a statement, “The tentative agreement we have reached with the union reflects a commitment to our Charter responsibility to create a safe Seattle. We have focused on building an excellent police service through strong accountability measures and staffing, improving the recruitment and retention of officers through fair wages and benefits, as well as building out a comprehensive public safety response system by increasing options for civilian response.”

City Councilmember Bob Kettle, who chairs the public safety committee, and Council President Sara Nelson did not respond to requests for comment. SPOG also did not respond to a request for comment on the contract.

Council member Tammy Morales, who has sought more police accountability measures in the past, said, “I’m not on the negotiating committee, so this is the first time I’ve seen the contract. Due to confidentiality requirements, I am very limited in what I can say before SPOG votes on this tentative agreement. However, I am reviewing it line-by-line and will have a lot to say when it comes before [the] council.”

“When the last contract passed,” Cheng said, “it was made very clear by Judge Robarts that we were out of compliance due to how the accountability system operates. And [this contract] doesn’t make any fundamental changes to that. So in my mind, I don’t see how this gets us out from under the consent decree.”

The contract also gives officers more generous medical and dental benefits, and adds two more paid holidays – Juneteenth and Indigenous People’s Day. 

“Those are two holidays for populations they’ve been biased against in the past,” Cheng noted.