Editor’s note: The Seattle Times editorial board asked each of the 14 candidates running for the seven City Council races on the ballot the same question: Describe your approach to public safety and how it differs from your opponent’s. We gave them each 300 words to give us meaty answers. Where candidates opted to provide lists of endorsements, rather than specifics, we excised those references. Those can be accessed on the candidates’ campaign websites. Here are their answers. Read the editorial board’s endorsements in these races.
COUNCIL DISTRICT 1
We can’t suffer further inaction and delays. We need swift and decisive improvements to public safety immediately. Unlike my opponent, I have a clear, comprehensive, 5-point plan, which includes measurable outcomes and a funding strategy, that won’t increase the burden on working families and seniors:
1. Recruit, train, and retain the best possible police officers, while holding them to the highest levels of accountability.
2. Fully fund and expand the Mayor’s new CARE team so that it is set up to succeed, citywide and across District 1, so that we can send the most qualified professional to the call, thereby freeing up time for our armed officers to be available where we most need them.
3. Invest in proven community-based gun violence prevention strategies, to surgically address gun violence at the source and build community trust.
4. Invest in immediately available emergency housing, safe lots for RVs, inpatient crisis care centers, wraparound services, and well-paid, low-turnover social workers, so that our streets, our parks, and all of our neighbors — housed and unhoused — are safe.
5. Recognize and address the upstream issues of poverty, inequity and systemic racism, creating an economy that works for everyone.
As a senior leader in Big Tech, I worked across organizational divides to tackle complex problems while ensuring the community is engaged in the process.
The endorsement of all six of our former opponents speaks to my ability to build — not burn — bridges, and to form powerful coalitions that will help us tackle our city’s most intractable problems.
Public safety has always been my highest priority in this election. I never supported the effort to defund the police. I will partner closely with Mayor Bruce Harrell, who has endorsed my campaign, to bring our police back to full capacity while also investing in enhanced training, transparency, accountability, and trust-building measures. My opponent, however, has been totally inconsistent on this important issue. At a candidate forum before the primary election, she said that the 2020 vote to defund the police by 50% was not a mistake. Now, she seems to have switched positions because she knows that District 1 voters will not support that.
Our views on fentanyl are another stark contrast. Unlike my opponent, I support the recently passed council legislation to adopt state drug law by giving the City Attorney the tools to prosecute public drug use and the resources to divert those who need help into treatment. I also testified publicly in favor of this commonsense bill during the final crucial vote. Kids and families shouldn’t have to hop over people and paraphernalia when visiting our parks, downtown or our vibrant small-business districts like the Alaska Junction. People suffering from drugs should expect better from the city as well, not passive acceptance of the current conditions.
Finally, my approach differs on the issue of encampment cleanups. I spent half of my childhood being uprooted and moved between homes in the foster care system. It is immoral to turn our back on the unsafe conditions of these encampments. I believe the most moral approach is to use the instances when the city does enter these encampments as opportunities to connect vulnerable people with shelter and services. My opponent wants to end these efforts entirely. We have tried the “anti-sweeps” policies my opponent is championing; they don’t work.
COUNCIL DISTRICT 2
Public safety is paramount in my campaign for City Council, driven by escalating crime and the burgeoning fentanyl crisis in South Seattle. These urgent issues compelled me to enter this race, especially witnessing the current council coalition, including my opponent Tammy Morales, fostering conditions that have exacerbated these problems.
My opponent’s 2020 vote to defund the police was imprudent, lacking foresight and preparation for effective alternatives. This wasn’t an isolated decision; she has voted to take away officer positions, voted for a hiring freeze and, in 2022, voted against an incentive plan to recruit and retain officers. She consistently places ideology above consensus and tangible results for our community. I pledge to set aside politics and collaborate with all council members and the mayor to devise solutions that truly benefit our district.
My commitment to public safety is deeply personal and informed by hands-on experience. Leading an alternative to policing volunteer group, I’ve seen firsthand the impacts of our crises, providing aid to the unhoused, and sometimes, witnessing the tragic loss of life. This direct involvement contrasts sharply with Ms. Morales’ noted inaccessibility; firefighters and bereaved parents in our district have shared their struggles in trying to communicate with her.
Addressing public safety requires a nuanced approach informed by lived experience and a deep understanding of the issues at hand. We need both a long-term and short-term solution. We need more officers and a reformed police department that can be held accountable. We need to empower communities, produce more programming for our youth, help young adults connect to living wage jobs, offer more resources such as behavioral health and addiction treatment services. We need to hire more social workers and implement alternatives to policing. With this experience and insight, I am better equipped to serve and protect our community than Ms. Morales.
Tammy Morales, incumbent
Community safety is about creating vibrant places where our neighbors can flourish; where we are safe, healthy, and thriving. For too long, safety has been seen as a criminal justice issue without addressing underlying causes. Data shows us that the safest communities are fully resourced. That’s why I’ve always focused on keeping people in their homes, ensuring access to healthy food and good-paying jobs, and empowering young people to be community leaders.
My first term kept the promises I made. I secured funds for restorative justice programming in our public schools; pushed for gun responsibility by lobbying for state assault weapon bans and background checks; and supported almost $15M for a South End Community Safety Initiative.
I also: support youth employment through $1 million for our Maritime Academy for pre-apprenticeship opportunities; protect immigrant communities with $1 million in the legal defense fund; prioritize community-led solutions, like securing $440,000 for a Neighborhood Safety Model that increases street outreach; center mobility by creating dozens of new sidewalks, pedestrian improvements, and traffic calming in our district; created and translated the Chinatown International District Resource Guide; and restored all $333,000 for anti-Asian hate programming after it was cut in half.
My values and actions are consistent and progressive. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors contributed more than $60,000 to my opponent because it trusts she will protect their profit margins by keeping prices sky-high. It’s otherwise difficult to know exactly where she stands on any issue because she provides different answers to different audiences.
COUNCIL DISTRICT 3
The current situation on Seattle’s streets is deeply concerning. Gun violence and property crimes are tearing at our social fabric. Regarding public safety, we must do better.
And we can. We can increase public safety via effective, progressive solutions that are proven to deliver positive results. A few ideas:
First, let’s invest in diversion and shelter. Addiction is spurring street disorder and crime. We have innovative programs already in place — like Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion — but none meet the scale of the problem. I’ll get people indoors and stabilized by creating more tiny homes and other cost-effective forms of enhanced shelter, so we can move more people out of encampments.
Second, where is the urgency in setting up a non-armed 911 response? Given our officer shortage, we need to be smarter about how we use police, yet it took three years to launch the city’s new Community Assisted Response and Engagement team and it currently only has six staff members. Nationally, 20% of 911 calls are for mental health or addiction crises. Another idea: currently, when someone calls 911 to report a person in a mental health crisis, an officer is dispatched. Only then can the officer call in the Mobile Crisis Team. We should directly dispatch the MCT from 911 to free up police to address actual crimes.
Third, police recruiting, accountability, and reform: Last year city leaders committed to creating innovative recruitment strategies to hire officers who better reflect Seattle and its values. But those recruitment strategies have largely failed to materialize, and we still have too few deployable officers to respond to higher-priority 911 calls. I’ll push to ramp up recruiting, community accountability, and reform.
My approach to public safety is more progressive than my opponent’s. While police play an important role, I put more emphasis on building effective alternatives and crime prevention.
Our society’s failure to maintain a baseline level of safety has altered the way we navigate everyday life. This heightened awareness of our surroundings has impacted us consciously and subconsciously. To improve public safety, I will draw from my experience as a small-business owner, nonprofit leader, and youth enrichment mentor to help develop solutions that reduce crime, lower gun violence and connect vulnerable people to care.
Having recently lost my brother-in-law to addiction and gun violence, I understand the trauma experienced by individuals struggling with substance use disorders, and the impacts on families and communities. I would have voted yes for the recent ordinance — however imperfect — to give care providers and law enforcement stronger tools to save lives and remove people from dangerous conditions and self harm.
To meet this challenge, we must take the following actions:
1. Improve our Seattle Police Department training, and accountability. I am deeply committed to reforming our department to ensure that law enforcement is held accountable and strives for the guardian mentality mindset and culture.
2. Support the Mayor’s Comprehensive Police Recruitment and Retention Plan. We must recruit new officers from within our communities, end delayed response for priority calls, and train more detectives to carry out investigations.
3. Prioritize alternative approaches, including expanding the new CARE crisis response team, as well as community violence intervention, after- and in-school mentorship programs, diversion methods such as Seattle’s Youth Leadership, Intervention & Change Program and Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program.
4. Pilot on-demand crisis care and recovery centers. Recent voter-approved crisis care funding is a strategic start to get people immediate assistance, while at the same time investing in our behavioral health workforce.
5. Providing support and resources for our fire and emergency medical services department. They are on the front lines of saving lives everyday. Ensuring their staffing, resources, and safety is a priority.
COUNCIL DISTRICT 4
Seattle has the highest levels of hate crimes in 20 years; increased break-ins, car thefts and property damage; an epidemic of gun violence, and skyrocketing fentanyl use. We deserve better.
We must fully staff Seattle Police Department, achieve five-minute response times for all priority one calls, close open-air drug markets and give law enforcement the tools to interrupt drug use and dealing — prioritizing treatment for addicts, and utilizing prosecution when individuals are a threat to others. At the same time, we must rapidly scale up treatment services like JustCARE, Health One, drug-abatement centers, and mobile methadone clinics.
The council’s promise to defund the police was a mistake — as is their failure to take any significant steps to improve the culture of policing or put forth meaningful investment in law enforcement alternatives. There is no reason why we cannot enhance traditional policing through mental health or de-escalation professionals.
My opponent would be a continuation of the same kind of failed and divisive politics that led to this public safety and drug crisis in the first place. We cannot give the people of Seattle the choice of a bad cop, or no cop at all. My opponent has stated support for cutting funding from SPD and he opposes the prosecution of drug dealers — even when they are a threat to others. This is simply dangerous, reflects a lack of understanding of the gravity of this crisis, and a disregard for his constituents’ concerns.
As a dad, I worry about safety every day.
We need to staff up SPD, and be realistic. Seattle’s head count is down by 27%, but Memphis and Atlanta are similarly struggling. This shortage is national. SPD says it can add only 15 to 30 officers next year. It is wrong to lie to voters and promise 20 times the reality.
We also must lighten officers’ load. SPD says it can divert 12% of calls to behavioral health. Cameras can cover most traffic enforcement. Both can improve outcomes. With diligence, we can ensure police show up to stop violence, sex crime, retail theft and the drug trade.
SPD lags on accountability. We need independent civilian-only oversight and disciplinary power to root out bad behavior. Add de-escalation training and community policing, and we can heal SPD’s relationship with the community.
Despite false claims I support drug enforcement. To deliver the mayor’s promise to follow the evidence, we must expand low-barrier treatment like LEAD/CoLEAD, and the supportive services that make these work, like tiny homes, and embrace “diversion-first” practices pre- and post-arrest. I also support more enforcement than the mayor, for all public consumption, if paired with nearby overdose prevention centers.
To ensure fast, effective responses, deliver drug treatment, and clean up our streets, I support a 2% addition to the state tax on extreme capital gains to fund the above. Unlike my opponent, I don’t support cutting $200 million from the general fund, the source of our public safety, behavioral health, and shelter services budgets. My plan is practical, rooted in facts, not fear or fantasy, and I have a history of delivering.
COUNCIL DISTRICT 5
As a former King County Superior Court judge, I understand that public safety is the paramount duty of city government. It is also the most pressing challenge facing our city. Securing public safety requires a multiprong approach that begins with restoring police staffing levels by an additional 300-400 police officers. These additional officers are critical to reducing response times to violent crime, to staffing “emphasis area” work on gun violence, organized retail theft, sex trafficking, and to timely solving of crimes on behalf of victims. We must also work with King County to resolve staffing and booking issues at the jail.
We must enact a robust accountability and disciplinary structure for officers engaged in unconstitutional or unprofessional conduct. The Seattle Police Officers Guild contract is currently under negotiation. This contract must contain the tough accountability measures passed in 2017 but subsequently bargained away; first among these is limiting the power of a private arbitrator to overturn the SPD chief’s disciplinary decision.
Within our police department, there is still significant work needed to mitigate racial disparities in policing. To that end, the council must implement the recommendations contained in the Consent Decree Monitor’s 2022 Assessment.
Equally important to improving public safety is the newly launched third public safety department, the co-responder program, CARE; expand the civilian Community Service Officer program, too.
We need to utilize the new drug law as a carrot and a stick and aggressively pursue additional treatment moneys.
My opponent opposes adding additional police officers, proposes “reallocating” money from SPD to CARE rather than fund each as an independent public safety department, does not support the co-responder model of pairing behavioral health workers and police, and opposes the drug ordinance.
My approach to public safety is one of balance and solutions to root causes. “Public safety” is a broad term that includes infrastructure, accessibility, equity, and housing security alongside how we utilize policing.
Speaking only of policing: we need to invest in de-escalation training, community policing, and other proactive methods of addressing our police’s response to crime. By improving the relationship between police and the community, officers will be able to more effectively serve their community and their community can utilize their services to the greatest efficacy. These forms of training will increase police accountability by ensuring they’re aware of proper procedures, mitigating police incidents that lead to lawsuits and protests.
Being proactive about crime means addressing the root causes. As the only candidate in this race with hands-on experience in creating policy, I know what it takes to get the work done and provide services for those who need it most. By investing in housing, education, and social services, we can prevent crimes of need from ever happening. With this two-pronged approach toward prevention, we can eliminate petty crimes and ensure we have the proper protection and response to random acts of violence.
When we tackle issues at the taproot, we set ourselves up for a better future. That said, we need to support victims of crime. Here in District 5, we deal with the issue of sex trafficking along Aurora Avenue. We need to provide tangible support to the victims of trafficking and crack down on the pimps promoting this crime. We need to care for the victims of trauma in more than just thoughts and prayers, but real material support. Crime is solved at the source and I can get us there.
COUNCIL DISTRICT 6
The orange caps and needles that littered our streets a few years ago have been replaced by blackened bits and pieces of foil today. Our addiction and mental health crisis has become progressively more deadly, accelerated by fentanyl. Today, fentanyl dwarfs all other drug crises in American history, killing
over 77,000 last year alone, and we are all feeling its destructive force. The fact that we are not doing everything we can to keep this poison from harming and, in many cases, killing our most vulnerable population is a moral and civic failure.
We must lead with our progressive values, ensuring these vulnerable populations are safe and get the help they need. We must go after, arrest, prosecute and jail those preying on our brothers and sisters. On Oct. 8, Seattle Police arrested a known drug dealer with two kilos of fentanyl. The only problem is that this is the third time he’s been arrested in under two years. This is not a failure of the police, but the system upstream is not protecting its citizens.
Meanwhile, businesses and residents are feeling frustrated, and rightfully so. Despite a massive infusion of their resources, they continue to be on the front line of the negative effects of long-term encampments in our community.
At the same time, while we are doing outreach to those in need, we must find ways to ensure that people struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues accept services. That may mean requiring — yes, requiring — participation in substance-use treatment and mental health programs. Allowing people to slowly die on our streets is not compassionate. We are all accountable to each other and the greater community as a whole, even those who are struggling. We should and can do more.
Dan Strauss, incumbent
I will address public safety by using proven, successful models I helped to develop, and by supporting our police officers and first responders.
We need to expand my public safety task forces connecting small businesses, service providers, police, and my team with actionable steps to address public safety. My task forces ensure that problem areas with repeated issues have direct access to the teams that meet their needs. This has created many results, including removing a firearm from an encampment and stabilizing an individual who has had an outsized impact on the community for more than five years.
We need to hire public safety coordinators to work with these teams. Having one person in charge of a problem, linked to decision makers in each department, creates a team similar to an emergency operations center directing response and adjusting to real time information. I want to hire public safety coordinators in every neighborhood and expand our existing first responders, including Community Service Officers, Health One, Mobile Crisis Teams, Park Rangers — and I strongly support Mayor Harrell’s CARE Department.
I will continue to support fully funding police staffing, hiring, and recruitment plans every year. It was my amendment that brought the council’s budget into 99% alignment with the mayor’s SPD investments and fully funded the officer recruitment plan. Today we have the highest rate of officer applications in two years. We cannot afford to lose this momentum. I will continue to work with the mayor to fully fund the police, and on police reforms, so that policing is better and safer. Hiring police and expanding first responders and public safety task forces will make a real difference in city safety.
COUNCIL DISTRICT 7
Our public safety and public health challenges are integrally connected to the point that we cannot succeed in public safety if we do not also succeed in public health. They are indeed two sides of the same coin.
Critically, my opponent has been on the wrong side — or both sides — of every important public safety issue our city has faced and is facing.
Due in large part to my opponent’s pledge to defund the police in 2020 and subsequent legislative steps toward that, we’ve lost needed officers, created an atmosphere of distrust, and a permissive environment for criminals and random acts of violence. While my opponent will claim that many cities are facing a loss of officers and blame it on “urban disorder,” he’ll only speak of hiring 28 park rangers, ignoring his own responsibility in creating a deficit of more than 280 police officers. Notably, my opponent’s June vote to essentially decriminalize drugs — including fentanyl — and create the 105-day delay before accepting the mayor’s alternative further contributed to the permissive environment for crime.
I will work with the mayor to recruit more officers, retain more officers, and work with community non-police responders so that all Seattleites will feel safer as they go to work, frequent small businesses, or simply enjoy all that Seattle has to offer.
I believe that Seattle needs a two-pronged approach: one on the ground that’s focused on diversion and getting public drug users into treatment and supportive programs. And, yes, arrest may be warranted at times to ensure public safety. The second prong needs to be on tackling the criminal networks by fully staffing up our police department and working with county, state and federal agencies to cut off the supply of drugs to Seattle’s streets.
Ultimately, what Seattle needs is leadership that balances compassion with wisdom.
Seattle needs comprehensive public safety including police, mental health clinicians, and other professionals to make sure every 911 call receives a fast response. On the council, I have voted to fully fund the police hiring plan every single year and pushed strongly to expand our 911 responders and reduce response times. We also need more facilities to care for community members in crisis.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s recruitment incentives for police are working. The police department is receiving nearly 200 applications a month, more than any time in the past two years. I have voted to support the mayor’s hiring plan in its entirety and I am confident it will move us toward the city’s staffing goal of 1,450 officers.
We also need to expand alternative responses for calls police do not need to respond to. This month, Seattle is launching a new mental health response alternative through our new Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department. I am very proud downtown will be the first focus of this new service. In Denver, a similar program called Support Team Assisted Response has resulted in a 34% reduction in crime and disorder. This effort will complement the new comprehensive fentanyl statute I sponsored and passed. I salute the mayor for his leadership in making CARE a reality.
Response services can have their full impact only when paired with places to take people. I worked with King County Executive Dow Constantine and Councilmember Girmay Zahilay to advance a plan for five 24/7 crisis care centers in King County. This plan was overwhelmingly approved by voters and will provide an indispensable resource for our first responders to move people in crisis from the street to care. These new centers will also help relieve pressure on the jail to free up space for dangerous offenders who need to be detained.
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.