The police force for the city of Washington has become so incredibly unstaffed due to the ‘defund the police’ campaign endorsed by the Black Lives Matter protests in response to George Floyd’s death not long ago. Unfortunately, this has placed enormous limitations on the force having the resources and man power to assign a detective to investigate one case of sexual assault on an adult in the last month alone.
BLM is fully responsible for wearing down the exhausted department to only four detectives on the sexual assault team and local NPR station KUOW has reported that almost all of the four detectives are entirely focused on child abuse cases at the moment.
An investigative report conducted by the outlet on the Seattle Police Department’s capabilities and operations discovered that investigations and enforcement actions taken in response to sex crimes have drastically diminished from 2019 to 2022.
This drastic decline is directly connected to the mass protests over calls to cut law enforcement funding gained traction with city officials.
In 2020, Seattle Council voted to decrease the police budget and officer job positions as a result of some of the most troubling Black Lives Matter protests in the country, which includes an ‘autonomous zone’ lethal without a police officer.
KUOW reported that the 1,281 deployable officers the force had at the end of 2019 were cut to just 958 at the end of last year.
Seattle’s new mayor, Bruce Harrell, recently decided to push for more police, pointing the finger at early funding and downsizing for a worrying rise in crime there.
That being said, anonymous sources for KUOW also made statements that the mayor has been pressuring the already stretched-thin police force to follow through on his campaign promise to crack down on ‘visible crime’.
They questioned why the number of detectives within an alternative response team that has assisted in the destruction of homeless encampments has seven members as compared to almost half that amount within the sex crimes unit.
“A general funding and personnel crisis for the SPD is exacerbated by politics,” an anonymous Seattle police employee stated on social media, according to KUOW, which said it confirmed its authenticity.
The news outlet sources documentation provided to it to share that no sexual assault cases involving an adult victim have been assigned to a detective within the unit for official investigation during this past March.
One source inside the Seattle Police Department shared with KUOW:
“The Seattle Police Department sexual assault unit is not at all investigating adult sexual assault reports or cases unless there was an arrest.”
The office of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, who took over the office this year, issued a statement in reaction to the lapse in focus on sex crimes, calling it “unacceptable.” Harrell said:
Any lack of urgency around sexual assault investigations or arrests is wholly unacceptable. Sexual assault cases must be exhaustively investigated, and offenders must be held accountable – period. When we assumed office, the SPD Sexual Assault Unit had a depleted number of deployable staff and our evaluation of these limited resources underscore the need for increasing SPD staffing to ensure justice for survivors. Chief Diaz is already in the process of providing our office with detailed and data-based information on the status of sexual assault investigations and what immediate improvements can be made in this area, including additional staff. Our administration’s proposed budget will reflect this priority by increasing detectives, resources, and specific training for investigations.
