Thread by @DivestSPD

Why is Seattle spending so much on patrol?

(THREAD)

(1/16)

The Defund SPD movement aims to cut the police budget by at least 50%.

A good place to start: Patrol

This division accounts for ~25% of the SPD budget (2/16)

Last year, a patrolman topped the list of the highest-paid SPD officers, with $414k (incl. overtime)

For the same cost, the city could hire 6.7 human services counselors. ($33/hr.) SOURCE: Openpayrolls

(3/16)

Even if you're not a police abolitionist, this just doesn't make sense from a fiscal standpoint.

More cops =/= less crime

And there's a large body of evidence to back this up

(4/16)

Over a 20-yr period, when the No. of police fell, the crime rate dropped 37%.

Police per 100,000
1997 : 242
2016: 217

Violent crimes per 100,000
1997: 611
2016: 386

Source: FBI

(5/16)

usatoday.com/story/news/inv…

In 2014, the NYPD police union did a "work slowdown"—a form of striking on the job—to protest Mayor DeBlasio.

There was a significant drop in calls for all sorts of felony crimes during that period.

(6/16)

washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…

Most recently, there were similar results when the Atlanta PD staged a partial sickout—the "blue flu". The city saw a marked drop in crime. (7/16) wsbtv.com/news/local/atl…

These are just anecdotal, but researchers have been studying the effectiveness of "preventive patrols" on crime for decades.

The consensus: A greater police presence has little to no effect on crime rate

(8/16)

SPD relies mostly on a conventional system of "proactive patrols" of beats + call response. They primarily use cruisers with some on bike or foot.

It has been established since the 1970s that this method is both inefficient and ineffective. (9/16)

The landmark Kansas City Preventive Patrol experiment set up 3 zones: A control, where policing stayed the same, & 2 where police presence was respectively raised or lowered.

They found no effect. The study's results have been replicated several times since. (10/16)

SPD's takeaway was to take the "random" out of random preventive patrols & shift to "hot spots" policing, i.e. using data to identify hi-crime areas & concentrating patrols there.
Ofc "Predictive" and "proactive" policing has ominous implications for communities of color.(11/16)

In copspeak "proactive" means preventing crimes before they happen. In its most sinister form, "proactive" policing means racial profiling and stop & frisk. (12/16)

Likewise "predictive policing," in practice, becomes tantamount to profiling a whole neighborhood.

As an aside, Seattle Police Foundation Board Member Ken Arthur (Microsoft) is a staunch defender of the practice (13/16)

thenextweb.com/neural/2020/02…

And at the end of the day, the evidence for so-called evidence-based strategies like "hot spots" policing is mixed at best.

When displacement (crimes moving to another spot) is taken into acct, the effect is either temporary or negligible. (14/16)

sci-hub.tw/10.1007/s11292…

Just as we've known for half a century that more police doesn't work, we've also known what does.

The Kerner Commission, convened after the riots in the late 1960s, recommended addressing the systemic roots of crime and unrest. (15/16)

smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-in…

That's why we need to reduce overpaid, ineffective patrol staff and reinvest the savings in solutions to the problems of homelessness, poverty, drug addiction and mental illness. (16/16)

#DefundSPD