Fewer than 40% of Seattle residents believe the Seattle Police Department is doing a good or excellent job preventing crime and protecting citizens, with a majority concluding the SPD's performance should be rated "fair" or "poor," according to a new poll.
Nearly half of those asked believe police aren't tough enough on crime. And 75% support efforts to shift some emergency calls away from police to other agencies and unarmed city workers, presumably to free officers to patrol and respond to other more serious incidents.
Despite the racial unrest following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis — and data showing Seattle police are significantly likelier to stop, question or use force against Black and Native American residents — the poll showed 61% of respondents agreed police "generally do a good job and treat people of different races fairly, even if there are a few bad apples on the force."
Nearly three in 10 residents, however, aligned themselves with the statement: "Seattle police are racist in the way they treat people, even if some of them try to do a good job."
The responses were part of a Seattle Times/Suffolk University poll of 500 Seattle residents conducted June 12 to June 16 by phone. The poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
The results come as the city and Police Department are moving to end a $200 million series of reforms brought by the 2012 settlement of a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit alleging Seattle officers routinely used excessive force during arrests. That investigation also found evidence of racially biased policing.
This spring, the DOJ joined city officials in asking U.S. District Judge James Robart to end most of the court's oversight of the SPD, contending the department was a "transformed organization" and in compliance with the settlement agreement in all but two areas: officer accountability and crowd control. Both are issues where the SPD has fallen short.
In 2019, Robart scrapped the city's attempt to end oversight when he found the department had fallen partially out of compliance with the agreement because an outside arbitrator reinstated an officer who had been fired for punching a handcuffed suspect. The following year, another federal judge found it likely that officers violated thousands of peaceful protesters' civil rights while responding to Black Lives Matter demonstrations sparked by Floyd's murder.
Robart took the joint city and federal requests under advisement in May, expressing skepticism about the city's ability to reach compliance in officer accountability and crowd control by the end of the year — a timeline proposed by the city — citing concerns about racial disparities when police use force or stop to question people.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, whose letter to the DOJ in 2011 prompted the investigation that led to the settlement agreement, also questioned whether oversight should end.
Robart could rule on the fate of the SPD's federal oversight structure at any time.
The Police Department was provided a breakdown of The Seattle Times/Suffolk University poll responses last month but declined to address them without reviewing the survey itself. In a statement, the SPD said officers' use of force is at an all-time low, and the agency "maintains a sophisticated approach to monitoring satisfaction" with its policing.
The department said its data, gleaned from roughly 2,500 residents who last year had contact with a SPD patrol officer, showed a 90% satisfaction rate.
Poll respondent Diedre Hummelbrunner's experiences with police while working with low-income residents led her to rate the department's performance as "poor."
"There are just too many instances where police are willing to harass people for minor things. Other times, they don't show up when people really need their help," she said. "I also think they are willing to use force when it's not necessary."
Hummelbrunner thinks the solution is to defund law enforcement — referencing a surge of calls for drastic cutbacks or even the abolition of police in the wake of Floyd's murder — "and then give the money back but only in the areas where it is needed."
"I'm a 50-year-old white woman, and I make more than $250,000 a year, and I don't trust them," she said. "So, I don't see how a poor person of color could do so."
Poll results on homelessness and Amazon's influence on Seattle will be released in the coming days.
