Federal judge chides the Seattle City Council for its calls to defund police

The federal judge overseeing court order changes at the Seattle Police Department chastised the Seattle City Council Thursday for its attempt to defund the department.

The comment came Thursday during a status hearing involving the city attorney, the U.S. Department of Justice and the court-appointed monitor overseeing SPD's response to the federal consent decree.

The court filing outlining details about the case can be found here.

U.S. District Court Judge James Robart accused the council of ignorance and not following through with the consent degree he approved nine years ago.

It was the first meeting of all the groups since May, which is when a series of summer protests began following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis by four of the city's police officers.

He called his own criticism of the council harsh but warned that City Council action past and future could jeopardize the consent decree which Seattle City Hall and the police department have been trying to satisfy.

The judge praised reform efforts made by police and the three accountability agencies overseeing police conduct but reserved his strongest criticism for council members.

He described the actions of the council to defund police as “ignorant of the circumstances" and later said the council’s actions were “catering to the wish of the hour as opposed to a plan that makes sense in the long term."

Robart suggested that council members could put the city in violation of the consent decree, saying, “they have lost sight of the fact that the 100 paragraphs in the consent decree are not commitments, they are obligations (and) orders from this court of things that will be done."

In an interview with KOMO News before the judge made his comments, interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz said he would follow the orders laid out by the court.

“Being that we've agreed to the rules and polices, the federal court is really the determining body for us,” Diaz said. “We’re really making sure that we are operating within the rules of the federal consent decree regarding crowd management tools and our policies."

The Seattle Police Department has been criticized for its use of force during last summer's protests, which Dr. Antonio Oftelie, the court-appointed monitor, said would be scrutinized.

“The events of this past summer are something we are going to be looking very directly at,” he said. “There were a lot of training issues, a lot of use of force issues and there were a lot of disciplinary issues. When you combine all that, it effectively moves the city out of compliance.”

Oftelie was appoint by the federal judge to oversee the city’s compliance with the consent decree.

During the hearing, he submitted a road map of accountability for SPD and its accountability agencies to follow for this year.

“We’ll be much granular looking at what happened over the coming months,” Oftelie said, adding that council actions that could impact compliance with the consent decree could cause issues. “If the City Council were to make a move dramatically that ran counter to the consent decree, at that point the court could move in.

After the hearing, Councilmember Lisa Herbold responded to KOMO News saying, “The Council did consider the implication of budget reductions on consent decree obligations. The Council has included 2021 funding sufficient to fully implement SPD’s 2021 staffing plan.

Herbold said officer staffing went by 135 during 2020 due to separations and the hiring freeze ordered by the Mayor.

“No officers have been laid off as a result of the Council’s SPD budget reductions” she said.

Robart said he did not want to tell the city how to conduct its business.

“I don’t want to lecture the city on what to do," he said. "I don't want to go there. I don’t want to say, ‘You can’t do that."