Even though Seattle is much safer than our peer cities, Mayor Wilson recently unveiled one of the most ambitious violence reduction plans in the nation.
Mayor Wilson leans into a “believe the science” and “throw the kitchen sink” ethos - doing the things that have actually been shown to work, and not waiting for permission to get stuff done.
Wilson’s approach is a stark contrast to the playing-dress-up-as-a-tough-guy approach of Seattle’s former Mayor Bruce Harrell and Council President Sara Nelson, and Bob Kettle, the council’s current public safety chair.
The Plan has 7 major parts. The first six are evidence-driven and the seventh knits them all together.
Finally, actually use our civilian response team!
In recent weeks, the Wilson Administration has doubled our non-officer crisis responder utilization from about 40% under Harrell to 80% now! Responders are now available 18 hours a day, up from ten.
This is Seattle’s CARE department. CARE’s Community Crisis Responders de-escalate folks in crisis, do welfare checks, and connect people to shelter, treatment, transportation, food, water, and clothing.
We have spent millions on them, but Harrell, Bob Kettle and others worked out a corrupt deal with Seattle’s Police Union to give officers veto power over CARE responders. But clearly Wilson’s push to remove the Chief, and push to move SPD forward, are making a huge difference.
This department already runs Seattle’s 911 Communications Center and coordinates thousands of emergency responses every day, connecting callers with police officers, firefighters, medical aid, and the City’s Community Crisis Responders.
Move Community Violence Intervention inside our emergency response system to bring violence prevention to emergency situations much faster.
This is genuinely innovative. It gets a powerful last-minute prevention mechanism to crises faster, so interrupters can stop the shooting before it starts.
Community Violence Interventions impact comes through its work on those “most at risk of being a victim of or committing an act of gun violence.” Pioneered in Chicago and with a later version also studied by Johns Hopkins, it’s a public health approach where violence interrupters build relationships with at-risk folks, work on conflict resolution, and offer alternatives to violence for addressing these conflicts. This includes hospital-bedside interventions, post-shooting follow-ups–whatever they can to break the cycle.
Find and fill in the cracks that lead to homicides and learn from each and every death so we can stop the next one.
Patterned after a very successful program in Milwaukee (52% reduced homicides v 9% for control area), Wilson is launching “formal homicide reviews to identify where systems and services failed and correct them so similar homicides don’t occur again and create shared metrics to keep us focused on success.”
This is no “committee to study x.” These reviews are deep dives into what went wrong in individual cases with direct access to power so they can work with those in charge to rapidly address what led to the violence.
Bring “focused deterrence” to Seattle through a joint operation between Seattle Police, CARE, and trusted local organizations and community leaders.
Focused deterrence concentrates effort on the small number of folks responsible for most of the shootings and offers them an “easy” way (options and support for forgoing violence) or the hard way (“decisive legal consequences”).
Studies suggest it is very effective at first, with some declining impact over time.
Ramp up SPD emphasis patrols on bikes in hot-spot neighborhoods.
Hot-spot patrols can be ineffective (when they are simply aggressive and create a sense of aggrievement or injustice), or they can work quite well when they focus on relevant individuals who frequent the hot-spot areas.
Bike patrols also create more police contact with the community, which builds a stronger relationship between communities and officers.
The Harrell Administration (and plenty of others before it) did emphasis policing too, and lots of security theater, but not much else. He seemed to have almost no real strategy. Emphasis policing can have good impacts in the targeted area, but at least anecdotally, criminal activity also tends to reappear elsewhere (like from 3rd and Pine to 12th and Jackson).
But the Wilson plan doesn’t just drop the ball like Harrell did - it does all the other work to focus on the individuals, the causes, intervening just before violence, learning after violence, and more.
Invest in medium-term prevention
Wilson does this by expanding “youth and after school programs, and Teen Nights at community centers, while increasing free in-person and virtual mental health services for 13 - 24 years old to keep youth from reaching a crisis point.”
Studies show investment in mental health and programming that keeps young people engaged in positive activities when well-designed, are effective at reducing violence.
Knit it all together by centralizing and coordinating the effort through the CARE department, which already handles front-line work and 911 management.
If this program sounds like a lot to juggle, it is!
But the good news is that CARE already does a lot of work pulling together complex services for challenging individuals, while managing 911 and working alongside police as well. CARE is best positioned to deliver rapid responses, to coordinate services for complex individuals, and to implement takeaways from the homicide review teams. I love that those who own the response determine what the response looks like.
In CARE Chief Amy Barden’s words, “CARE is ready to fulfill its legislated role as the coordinating entity of this collaborative strategy.”
Following the release of this comprehensive strategy, Wilson’s recently proposed budget also ramped up spending to cover officer salaries at a higher head count, since the department is growing faster than predicted. I’ll save my analysis of the budget and the tradeoffs between this line item and other line items for another day. Suffice it to say, it’s clear she’s keeping her foot on the gas when it comes to capturing the recruiting momentum.
Throwing the kitchen sink like a boss.
We face real problems in this city. We are indeed much less likely to be murdered here than in other American cities. But American cities are not an impressive standard, and safety is more than not being murdered. Mayor Wilson has a big task ahead of her.
But wow, is she throwing the kitchen sink at it. This is the best program I’ve seen from a mayor in Seattle in recent memory–a mix of the best of what’s been done (filling gaps, emphasis patrols), what the evidence says should be done in terms of acute prevention (stopping violence when it is about to flare), and longer term prevention.
As a husband, father, and community member, I feel safer.
Message received - Let’s do this!