The city of Seattle filed motions in U.S. District Court on Tuesday asking to end more than 13 years of federal oversight of the Seattle Police Department.
The Seattle Police Department has achieved and sustained compliance with all requirements of the consent decree," the city wrote in the motions. As a result, the city claims, "the pattern and practice of unconstitutional force alleged by the U.S. Department of Justice have been eliminated."
In 2012, the city reached a settlement agreement under threat of lawsuit by the Department of Justice following a scathing investigation the year before that found Seattle police officers routinely used excessive force, most often against people in crisis. The investigation also found evidence of biased policing.
In the ensuing years, the department adopted sweeping changes to many of its policies, including stringent guidelines on when officers can use force, and created a trio of outside accountability agencies to investigate and monitor those changes. Mayor Bruce Harrell, in a written statement Tuesday, said the city has asked the court to end its oversight "based on SPD's strong record of improving training, policies, practices and accountability."
The motion notes the Police Department saw a 60% reduction in the use of serious force by officers between 2011 and 2017, as mentioned in a report by a court-appointed monitor.
Along with the motion to terminate the settlement agreement -- often called a consent decree -- the city in a separate filing is also asking the court to accept the latest revisions to its crowd control ordinance, which had been the final stumbling block the city faced in ending oversight of the Police Department.
No hearing date has been set to consider the motions.
Harrell said ending federal oversight "does not mean the work is done."
"We are committed to being a learning, growing organization," he said in a statement. "What it does mean is that it is time to fully restore local control of our police department to our community."
Since entering into the agreement with the DOJ, the Police Department has been under the scrutiny of U.S. District Judge James Robart and a court-appointed monitor. Along the way, the court has had to approve each and every major change within the department dealing with management, training, use of force and accountability.
It has not been smooth sailing.
At the outset, the city and department rejected the findings of the Department of Justice investigation and questioned its conclusion that roughly 1 out of every 5 times an officer used force, it was excessive and unconstitutional. City officials, including then-Mayor Mike McGinn, angrily disputed the findings and were threatened with a lawsuit unless they agreed to negotiate a settlement.
The police chief at the time, John Diaz, joined McGinn and proclaimed the department was "not broken." That was disputed by former Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, then the head of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, who concluded the department's ability to ensure accountability and public trust had failed and that the only sure fix was through court-ordered, long-term reform and an outside special monitor to oversee it.
The Seattle Police Officers Guild, which represents the rank-and-file, has never accepted the findings of the Department of Justice's 2011 investigation and has fought against many of the reforms. In 2014, after sweeping revisions to the department's policies on the use of force were announced, more than 100 officers filed a lawsuit claiming the new policy -- eventually adopted by the department -- put officers in danger and restricted their right to protect themselves. That lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
The union has continued to resist the city's attempts to increase officer accountability and has fought attempts to reform officer discipline requirements which Robart at one point said needed to be put in place before he would release the city from the consent decree.
However, those issues have been part of the city's collective bargaining with the union, and last year the judge concluded that the city's negotiations with its police union were outside the court's purview. At a hearing, Robart said he remained deeply concerned over the department's policies on crowd control and the twin issues of officer accountability and discipline.
In the filing asking for approval of the new crowd control and management policies, passed earlier this year, the city said the department has addressed issues that led to a court injunction in 2020. The injunction was issued after the Police Department's violent and questionably constitutional response to large Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
A deep-dive review of the police response to those protests ended with a panel of police, citizens and accountability experts concluding the Police Department needed to offer a "sincere, public apology" to the thousands of peaceful protesters who were caught up in the violent police response.
The motion states that, since then, the Police Department "has safely and effectively managed hundreds of significant demonstrations over the past four years, the most recent being the 70,000-person strong 'No Kings' march last month."
A particular issue for the court has been the ability of officers to appeal a chief's disciplinary decision to an outside arbitrator. It was such an incident in 2019 -- involving the forced reinstatement of an officer who punched an intoxicated, handcuffed woman in the face, fracturing bones -- that resulted in Robart finding the city had fallen partially out of compliance with the consent decree in what was a significant setback at the time.
But Robart has said the court cannot involve itself in collective bargaining and has left it to the city to negotiate accountability and discipline issues with the police guild. Those issues are at the heart of ongoing contract talks.
In a statement Tuesday, Harrell and his staff said the motion to end federal oversight highlights progress that has seen a drop in the number of times police use force during arrests.
Newly appointed police Chief Shon Barnes said in a statement that an end to the consent decree would mark "a major milestone, while also serving as a reminder that ensuring public safety is an ongoing responsibility that demands transparency, commitment and collaboration."
"I can say with confidence that SPD is not the same department that it was years ago," said Barnes, who came to Seattle earlier this year after serving as police chief in Madison, Wis.
Data proves that point, he said.
"Of the 8,305 crisis incidents that Seattle's police officers responded to in 2024, only 1.33% involved any use of force," he said. Force was used in .17% of all dispatched calls, he added.
The court-appointed monitor noted in 2022 that use of force by Seattle police officers had reached an all-time low, but pointed out that the data revealed sharp and disturbing evidence of racial disparities when officers resorted to their hands, Tasers or guns.
Two years later, the Office of Inspector General likewise noted disturbing and persistent racial disparities in Seattle police use of force data.
Robart has also raised questions about racial disparities. Even so, in 2023, Robart concluded the Police Department had achieved "full, sustained and lasting compliance" with most of the provisions of the agreement.
"After more than 12 years and countless reforms within the Seattle Police Department, this step of requesting the consent decree be lifted marks a major milestone for both the department and our community,"
said Councilmember Bob Kettle, chair of the Public Safety Committee>. "My hope is that Seattle can soon move forward, turning our full attention to the future of policing and better serving our residents."