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The Justice Department announced today that it has jointly filed a proposed agreement with the City of Seattle that recognizes the city’s consistent compliance with the core requirements of a 2012 consent decree regarding the Seattle Police Department (SPD). The agreement includes important obligations that the city must take to continue the reform process.
The proposed agreement, which must be approved by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, describes the city’s and the SPD’s achievements in implementing the consent decree. For five years, the city has consistently complied with significant portions of the consent decree, including requirements regarding use of force (outside of the crowd management context), crisis intervention, stops and detentions, supervision and the city’s Office of Police Accountability.
The proposed agreement would replace the consent decree, but would require that the city continue to measure whether the reforms required by the consent decree remain effective. The city must also complete work in two remaining areas, use of force in crowd management and accountability.
“For over a decade, the Justice Department has worked to ensure that the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department undertake reforms necessary to bring about constitutional policing,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Our consent decree has provided the strong medicine needed to help cure problems and improve the way policing is carried out across the City of Seattle. Today we recognize the progress that has been made, the significant reforms instituted and the central role that the community has played and will continue to play in ensuring fair, non-discriminatory and effective policing moving forward.”
“The joint motion filed today acknowledges the significant progress of the City of Seattle and its Police Department, and very clearly lays out what must happen before all requirements of the consent decree may be terminated,” said First Assistant U.S Attorney Tessa M. Gorman for the Western District of Washington. “This proposed agreement allows the City of Seattle to focus on these remaining critical areas so that reforms in those areas become ingrained in the ways the Seattle Police Department engages with the community.”
The city has made notable progress in the areas where it has consistently complied with the consent decree for more than five years, and has adopted reforms that go beyond the explicit requirements of the consent decree. For example:
The proposed agreement, which must be approved by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, calls for continued work in the following areas:
This matter is handled by the Special Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Civil Division.
The Civil Rights Division continues to prioritize constitutional policing and currently has pending investigations into police departments across the country, including in Minneapolis, Phoenix, New York City and Louisiana. The consent decree, proposed agreement, as well as additional information about the Civil Rights Division, are available on its website at https://www.justice.gov/crt/special-litigation-section.