During the summer budget deliberations Councilmembers Herbold, Juarez, and I passed a resolution to start the process of developing a civilian "Department of Public Safety" to take on a variety of duties currently done exclusively by armed police. Among other recommendations, the resolution called for putting Parking Enforcement Officers (PEOs) into this new department. In her budget, Mayor Durkan has proposed removing PEOs to the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), but there may be an opening for these public servants to fill an even greater role in a Department of Public Safety.
First, a little background. PEOs are a uniformed, but unarmed, unit with the authority to issue citations for parking infractions. Currently, 60% of POEs are people of color and half are women, making them one of the most diverse units in Seattle government. Moreover, many POEs fluently speak second or third languages, including Amharic, Tigrigna, Soninke, Swahili, Luganda, Cantonese, Spanish, French, Malay, and even Bulgarian and Swedish. Without a doubt, they are representatives of a new generation of leaders in Seattle ready to fundamentally change our system of public safety.
The Council recently received a letter from Nanette Toyoshima, the head of the Parking Enforcement Officers' Guild, laying out a variety of different roles PEOs could fill. These include citation-level traffic enforcement, reports and investigations for car prowls, traffic direction at major events, non-injury collisions, and minor thefts. This may seem like a small list, but as much as 20% of current SPD calls fall within these categories. This mirrors a similar effort in Philadelphia, where city voters recently approved a charter amendment to create a new class of Public Safety Officers to provide similar services.
It is great to have a diverse workforce representative of the community ready to take on a greater role. Let me ask you this, when was the last time someone responded to take a report in-person when your car was prowled? Why should an armed and sworn officer be the only person who can direct traffic at a Seahawks game? Of course, all of these service expansions are subject to bargaining with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, who currently have a contractual monopoly on all of this work. A stipulation readily acknowledged by the separate POE union. But still, fighting for POEs to take on this work as the nucleus of a new Department of Public Safety is something warranting discussion during the budget cycle.
You can read more about this in a recent article in Publicola by Paul Kiefer.
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