Aside from anything else, sworn officers burning their time handling don't require an armed officer with the power of arrest means that is time they cannot spend on proactive police work that actually can prevent and solve crimes.

It's a stunning testimony to lack of professional integrity and commitment to reducing the impact of crime on citizens' lives.

And, btw, it's a big retention and recruiting problem: the officers that we want on the force are officers who want and love to do proactive police work. Officers who are going to ask why the hell am I being pulled off my beat for something someone else can do. The best candidates will pass in favor of departments who maximize their ability to do their best work and make a difference.

Pie-in-the-sky dreams die hard at the Stranger. The city will not save money in the short term by starting alternate-responder programs. Such teams will need to coordinate closely with the police, until several years’ worth of data can be collected and analyzed, so as to develop guidelines for when the police need to accompany the alternate responders.

“Defund” was an incredibly stupid idea, and the Stranger needs to let it, and everything expected from it, just go already.

@2L No, when the police need to accompany alternate responders is a solved problem. Other cities have been deploying various forms of alternative responders for anywhere from years to decades.

All Seattle needs to do is copy what and how they do it (or maybe hire some away some people from those departments if our staff aren't competent to handle the job).

I wish the activists in this town would focus more on winning and less on pissing everyone off so we get the current crop of electeds.

@3

had you not posted
@1, @2 mightta
persuaded tS's
dear Readers
his narrative
has Value.

now
we can
See it for
What it IS:

reich-wing
talkin'
pts.

they
Never
met a Po-po
they didn't wanna
excessively Weaponize:

you want
Fascism

you gotta Have
Brute Force.

and don't Forget
to PAY 'em like
there's NO To-
morrow.

thanks!

If they let civilians do civilian jobs it'll be harder for them to blame staffing shortages for their failure to do the police jobs. Can't let that happen!

@1: “…it's a big retention and recruiting problem…”

Hey — you’re making “defund” jealous!

@3:

“All Seattle needs to do is copy what and how they do it (or maybe hire some away some people from those departments if our staff aren't competent to handle the job).”

That’s it! Who needs local data? It’s not like Seattle has hundreds more homeless encampments than almost any other American city, or that said encampments have many residents with substance-abuse problems, or said inhabitants have been known to become violent when in crisis. One size fits all!

Thanks for helping support my point about unrealistic expectations.

@6: Bargaining unit bargains on behalf of bargaining unit’s members. The Stranger is shocked — SHOCKED, I SAY! — at this bizarre turn of events.

“Defund” has done such deep and lasting damage to the causes of police reform and alternative responses, Seattle may just as well wait until the next round of police-contract negotiations to introduce the issue of alternative response programs.

@7: Civilian crisis responders would actually represent the smallest number of calls offloaded relative to civilian report technicians, civilian traffic investigators, and some flavor of police aides or community service officers. So if Seattle wants to needlessly pretend civilian crisis response is harder here than places it has already been successful like such small towns as (checks notes) New York City it doesn't need to wait on all the other roles.

@8

but wormmy
Lives in or around
NYC -- why on Earth
would he want Seattle
which he long ago aban-
doned -- to waste its Precious
Officers' TIME (& Seattle's precious
& LIMITED Resources) on Unnecessaries?

there
may be
More than
meets the eye here.

@8: "@6: Bargaining unit bargains on behalf of bargaining unit’s members."

Yes, so one would expect a police officers' union whose members choose the job to do proactive police work and make a difference on serious crime would bargain to free up office time to do just that - like, for example, the LAPD police officers' union which has proposed of its own accord 28 call types for alternative response...so the officers can focus on preventing and solving serious crime.

Sad to see that's apparently not what most SPOG members seem to care about.

@6: 100%. And the officers who are content to drive around shuttling found property and taking after the fact larceny reports instead of (say) tracking down felony warrant fugitives aren't the officers we want. And the ones we do want who wouldn't put up with spending their shifts like Uber drivers and clerks aren't going to stay or come here if the department is going to burn their time on stuff they didn't choose the job to do.

@8: “Civilian crisis responders would actually represent the smallest number of calls offloaded relative to civilian report technicians, civilian traffic investigators, and some flavor of police aides or community service officers.”

But of the groups you identify, civilian responder calls would have the most potential for becoming SPD calls, and therefore require the tightest coordination between civilian responders and the SPD. That means more cost overall.

“So if Seattle wants to needlessly pretend civilian crisis response is harder here than places it has already been successful like such small towns as (checks notes) New York City it doesn't need to wait on all the other roles.”

Snidely ignoring Seattle’s reality doesn’t exactly provide confidence you care about what might happen to civilian responders in Seattle. Without data, you’re the one pretending a one-size-fits-all approach is valid. What if it isn’t, and civilian responders get assaulted or killed at rates far higher than elsewhere, especially early in the program? That’s a formula for having the program discontinued entirely.

@12: "What if it isn’t, and civilian responders get assaulted or killed at rates far higher than elsewhere, especially early in the program?"

Are seriously making the claim that people filing after the fact theft reports in Seattle will be more prone to assault and kill community service officers than people filing after the fact theft reports in San Jose?

@13: My comment @12 responded to your comment @8, by directly quoting your term, "Civilian crisis responders," so I thought that context was clear. I apologize for lack of clarity. I was not referring to, "people filing after the fact theft reports," but rather to the "civilian crisis responders," you'd mentioned, which I understood to mean alternative responders to police calls for individuals in crisis, etc. So no, I don't think persons filing "after the fact theft reports" are at any great risk anywhere. I believe that other cities simply do not have the large homeless population Seattle now has. This population seems to have a very large number of persons who frequently go into crisis, and some of whom may react violently to civilian crisis responders.

So, again, "What if ... civilian responders [in Seattle] get assaulted or killed at rates far higher than elsewhere, especially early in the program?" Given that Seattle already has a small program underway, providing alternate crisis responders, why should Seattle not give that program some time, then analyze the results, and decide whether or not to expand it, modify it, or both? Would that not be a wiser course of action than blithely assuming "one-size-fits-all" across the entire United States?

@14: Got it. If the city gets on the horse to staff up those roles it will solve the ostensible staffing crisis.

If the city wanted to waste time and money studying crisis response in the meantime, I'd think it was a waste but I'd take that deal.

I don't see much reason to believe that what works in Denver which has 2/3 of the homeless people Seattle has and also too works in NYC that has several times the homeless people Seattle has would work any differently here.

@15: “If the city gets on the horse to staff up those roles it will solve the ostensible staffing crisis.”

You’re still assuming the alternate responders will take up all of the work left by the missing officers. That assumption may or not be valid; a blatantly fallacious version of it sat at the root of defund, and still poisons community acceptance of alternate responders.

But since you seem not to care if your assumptions prove invalid, even at the cost of the lives of some alternate responders, or the prospect of resultant abandonment of an alternate-response program, I won’t bother arguing the point any further with you.

"and still poisons community acceptance of alternate responders."

LOL. Some "poison:" "A national poll conducted in March 2021 found that 65 percent of likely voters
support the creation of civilian emergency first responder programs to respond to substance use and mental health issues instead of the police, including calls to help a family member who is having a mental health crisis or
experiencing a drug overdose."

@17: How about something more recent, and closer to Seattle?

“Should King County invest in an alternative non-police response?”

“When looking at how respondents within the 50.96 percent who reported a level of disagreement answered the same question, it appears that several are worried that investment in an alternative response would mean a disvestment in the KCSO but also support investing in an alternate response.”

(https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/elected/executive/constantine/initiatives/reimagine-public-safety/Final_RPS_Report.ashx?la=en)

It appears that fear of “defund” was why a majority of respondents disagreed with King County investing in an alternative response.

By kneecapping alternative response, this contract will put Seattle at a disadvantage retaining and recruiting the officers we'd benefit from hiring most versus cities like (among others) LA:

"The Los Angeles Police Department’s rank-and-file union is proposing that someone other than police respond to more than two dozen types of 911 calls in a bid to transfer officers’ workload to more serious crimes, reports the Associated Press. The change is aimed at limiting situations where armed police officers are the first to respond. The proposal announced Wednesday by the Los Angeles Police Protective League lists 28 kinds of 911 calls to which other city agencies or nonprofit organizations would be sent first....

The league said officers would respond if the situation becomes violent or criminal, but only after the initial call goes to another agency or an affiliated nonprofit. “Police officers are not psychologists. We are not psychiatrists. We are not mental health experts. We are not social workers, doctors, nurses or waste management experts...I do believe that many people think we should be all those things but we are not. We should be focused on responding to emergencies, saving lives (and) property, and of course, engaging in community policing.”

The officers we want most agree, and are likely to pass if Seattle continues to insist on burning their time doing things other than why they chose the job.

https://www.ncja.org/crimeandjusticenews/limits-to-911-responses-proposed-by-l-a-police-union