The Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC) has released its Police Accountability Recommendation Tracker (PART), giving community members unprecedented, centralized access to more than 275 recommendations made by Seattle’s civilian-led police accountability agencies.

The CPC is releasing PART to increase transparency in Seattle’s police accountability system. However, the tracker also highlights the need for the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and other city leaders to listen to and implement recommendations made by the CPC, Office of Police Accountability (OPA), and Office of Inspector General (OIG).

Recommendations made by civilian-led accountability agencies are often not implemented

PART shows all recommendations made by the CPC, OPA, and OIG since 2018. From then through now:

• The CPC, OIG, and OPA have made a total of 183 recommendations to SPD
  • SPD concurred with 120 of those recommendation (66%)
  • Only 61 of those of those combined recommendations have been fully implemented or reported as implemented (33%)

• The CPC specifically has made 44 recommendations to SPD
  • SPD has concurred with just 15 of the CPC’s recommendations (34%)
  • Only 5 of those have been fully implemented or reported as implemented (11%)

Many of the CPC’s most critical recommendations on issues regarding police contracts, crowd control tactics, and use of force policies have largely not been implemented. Some of the most serious issues with policing we have seen over the past year could have been avoided if these recommendations were implemented. This highlights the need for SPD to better engage with Seattle’s accountability agencies.

“For our city’s effort to reimagine policing to succeed, we have to center the voices of those most affected by policing,” said CPC Executive Director Brandy Grant. “As this recommendation tracker shows, SPD and city leaders must do a better job to center community in this process. Continued large-scale inaction on police accountability recommendations put forth by the CPC and others only serves to further undermine community trust in the Seattle Police Department and Seattle’s entire police accountability system.”

“I am proud that one of my first acts as Executive Director of the Community Police Commission is to launch our Police Accountability Recommendation Tracker. The CPC is strongly committed to increasing transparency around policing and police accountability. This is just the first step in that process.”

About PART

The tracker is part of the CPC’s commitment to transparency and will help community members review recommendations made by Seattle’s civilian-led accountability agencies and whether they have been fully implemented. While we have tracked these recommendations internally for years, as mandated by the 2017 Accountability Ordinance, PART gives community an unprecedented opportunity to review the recommendations.

This tracker is the result of work by the CPC in close partnership with the City’s other police accountability agencies. The OPA, OIG, and SPD were each consulted in the creation of the tracker. However, it was created, maintained, and will be regularly updated by the CPC.