On November 20th, The Seattle Times published an editorial written by Scott Lindsay, an attorney who has been very diligent about collecting data about crime and chronic offenders. The article suggests that the Seattle City Council is ‘willfully’ ignoring the data available about the Seattle Police Department’s ability to respond and address crime.
The article contains data on police services in Seattle, available as the Seattle City Council voted on the 2021 City Budget. The data shows that currently the Seattle Police spend most of their time responding to prioritized calls for service, and Lindsay provides specific numbers of the crimes they attended.
The data also shows that while the number of incidents has steadily increased over the past decade, the number of police officers available to respond will be decreasing. The data also confirms that while there may be some minor matters that could be shifted to non-profit case workers and service providers, over 94% of the calls Seattle Police answer are high priority matters.
Read more about the data, and the City Council’s lack of response to this data, in the article by Scott Lindsay in The Seattle Times. Click here to read the Op-Ed piece directly.