SEATTLE — The Seattle Police Department (SPD) has seen the number of use-of-force incidents significantly decrease over the last three years, according to a new report from the Seattle Police Monitor.
In 2019 and 2021, SPD had record lows in terms of annual use-of-force incidents, the report found. However, during the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd by a former Minneapolis police officer, usage of less-lethal gear skyrocketed to a record high in the city.
Still, the monitor reported the SPD’s use of force declined 33% from 2015 to 2019 and nearly 50% from 2015 to 2021. These declines represent record lows for the SPD when taking into account officer activity metrics, which is done to account for the decrease in the number of officers patrolling due to COVID-19 and other factors.
The most serious types of use-of-force declined 60% from 2014 to 2019 through 2021. This is parallel to the SPD’s use of tasers, which decreased month-to-month by 61% when comparing 2001-2010 and 2014-2021 data.
During the 2020 protests, the SPD notified the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of Police Accountability and the monitor that it would be out of policy in reporting, investigating and reviewing use-of-force incidents due to the sheer volume.
Indeed, the protests resulted in “historic levels” of protest-related uses of force and misconduct complaints.
One of the main issues the monitor found was in the SPD’s demographic reporting for those who were subjects in use-of-force incidents. The monitor found that it would be “impossible to reach definitive conclusions with any confidence” on how race relates to the SPD’s use of force because nearly a third of these incidents had subjects whose race was marked “unknown.”
With what clear data was available, the team found that while the most frequent subjects in force incidents were white, the most serious types of use-of-force incidents were most often focused on Black individuals.
The SPD responded to the issue in its race reporting via a statement posted to its blotter. It found that the lack of data regarding race in almost a third of its use-of-force cases was due to an issue in its reporting system and not because of a data integrity problem or a deficiency in officer reporting.
The statement says a “mapping error” between the system that collects the force reporting data and the analytics platform resulted in demographic data not loading properly. This resulted in race being reported as “non specified” in the data set.
“In other words, the source system data is accurate and complete, but the extract, transfer and load failed on this particular dimension,” the statement reads in part.
The SPD is working on resolving the issues and expects this data gap to be fixed before the monitor’s report is final.
“That said, as with any technology and particularly with a system as complex as [Digital Analytics Platform], errors will occur. As we continue to improve the way we consume and process data, the potential for error is included. To address such vulnerabilities, SPD maintains a data governance process, included in which is a retrospective where lessons learned are reviewed on a regular basis to assure gaps in process are also addressed,” the statement reads.
