Tentative agreement with Seattle police union makes only minor accountability changes

A tentative contract agreement between Seattle and the Seattle Police Officers Guild contains big retroactive raises but almost no new language to strengthen the department’s ability to discipline officers — a divisive issue that remains under negotiation.

A separate contract for the current year remains under discussion, according to a source familiar with the negotiations who is not authorized to talk publicly about the agreement and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The source said the city’s 2024 proposal contains additional raises and sweeping accountability measures that SPOG has previously resisted.

The negotiated contract — which gives rank-and-file officers a 23% raise — only applies to 2021 through Dec. 31, 2023. That agreement, reached last week, still must be ratified. A date for the union vote has not been made public.

City officials have said they wanted to nail down the contract for past years to provide a boost in pay in hopes of preventing more officers from leaving the city and to help attract new recruits.

The tentative contract was briefly posted on the guild’s website Friday before being taken down. The Seattle Times verified its authenticity. SPOG did not return a call seeking comment.

The news site Publicola first published a link to the posted document on its account on the social media platform X.

A review of the new text shows it contains few changes in disciplinary language from the last contract, which has been criticized by reformers and a federal judge for undermining a 2017 police accountability ordinance passed by the City Council.

Joel Merkel, an attorney with the Washington Attorney General’s Office and a co-chair of the city’s Community Police Commission, expressed disappointment Friday that the proposed contract yet again sidesteps key accountability issues, such as how officers can use arbitration in an attempt to overturn discipline from the police chief.

“From what I’ve seen, this is a retroactive contract, and you can’t impose accountability retroactively,” he said. “I hope the city continues to push the issue of arbitration, but the reality is that this is a state issue that needs to be dealt with by the Legislature.”

In a prepared statement, Merkel joined his CPC co-chairs — the Rev. Harriett Walden and the Rev. Patricia Hunter — in saying SPOG’s abbreviated release of the proposed contract on its website raises “more questions than answers.”

“We remain interested in a future SPOG contract addressing Jan. 1, 2024 and beyond to include strong accountability measures,” they said.

The issue of officer accountability is key to the city being able to get out from under a federal consent decree that has lasted 12 years and cost the city more than $200 million. U.S. District Judge James Robart has been critical of the guild’s reluctance to embrace reforms, which were part of a 2012 settlement between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice following an investigation that found SPD officers routinely used excessive force and showed evidence of biased policing.

Police reformers complained the 2018 contract undermined key elements of the City Council-passed accountability ordinance. That ultimately led to a decision in 2019 by Robart that the city — which at the time was on the cusp of ending oversight — had fallen out of compliance with the settlement after an arbitrator reinstated a police officer who had been fired for punching a handcuffed woman in the face.

While the officer’s termination was later upheld, it took a court fight and raised questions with Robart about whether SPD’s accountability mechanisms were sufficient.

The issue of arbitration, time limits on the completion of Office of Police Accountability investigations, enhanced subpoena power for the OPA investigation and other limits all have been problematic for the city in the eyes of the federal court, and none are resolved in the recently negotiated contract, the source confirmed.

In almost every other area, the court has found the department in compliance with the settlement agreement. Robart has withheld judgment on the department’s use-of-force issues with crowd control and the issue of officer accountability.

The proposed contract does contain new language requiring an arbitrator to “give deference to the chief’s judgment as to the appropriate disciplinary penalty” but does not prohibit them from overriding a disciplinary decision by the city’s appointed police chief.

Arbitrators’ involvement in labor disputes is governed at the state level; lawmakers have mostly shied away from rolling back their role out of fear it would affect other union rights in other sectors.

The tentative contract also doubles the number of civilian investigators at the OPA to four.

In a December assessment of the city’s compliance to the consent decree, a court-appointed monitor listed a number of areas in which the city’s practices and policies remain a concern to the court — with time limits on internal investigations and the ability of an arbitrator to overturn discipline high among them. Under the current contract, most internal investigations must be completed within 180 days.

The Seattle Police Management Association, which represents the department’s lieutenants and captains, reached an agreement with the city in 2022. That agreement focuses on accountability, the city has said, and contains language not included in the proposed SPOG contract.

The top-line takeaway from the tentative agreement is the immediate 23% pay bump it would provide to officers, who have not received a raise since their last contract expired nearly three years ago. The increase would catapult entry level Seattle police officers from the 29th-highest-paid in the state to the best-paid, from $83,000 to $102,000 to start.

The agreement would also increase medical reimbursements for officers, from 80% of the cost of insurance to 95%.

The contract also opens the door to more civilian involvement in certain tasks currently done by police and extends the amount of time investigators have to review the highest levels of force.

Other pieces that previously caused concern remain in the new contract. For example, the standard for discipline remains an elevated standard higher than a “preponderance of evidence” and must take into account whether “the alleged offense is stigmatizing to a law enforcement officer, making it difficult for the employee to get other law enforcement employment.”