The City Says "Significant Progress" Was Made on SPD Union Contract

Will SPD's officers finally get a contract? Ansel Herz

It looks like the city might be finally getting close to agreeing to a contract with Seattle’s largest police union nearly four years after the city’s last contract with the union expired.

The city said they are actively meeting with the Seattle Police Officers Guild this week, according to a quarterly update filed Tuesday with the federal court overseeing reforms in the department.

“The parties to the labor negotiations continue to meet, including multiple sessions this week, and have made significant progress toward an agreement,” the city wrote in the document, which was signed by City Attorney Pete Holmes and filed with the federal court on Tuesday.

The absence of a contract has heavily impacted policing in Seattle and both the city and the union are under pressure to make a deal.

Officers wages have not increased since the last contract ended, possibly hurting the city’s ability to recruit new officers. Some aspects of the city’s new police accountability legislation, including bringing body cameras to SPD and changes to how police officers are investigated for wrongdoing, are waiting on a union contract for implementation.

And perhaps the biggest pressure comes from U.S. District Judge James Robart, who has overseen federal-mandate reforms at the department since the city was sued in 2012 by the Department of Justice for systemically using excessive force and conducting biased policing. Robart has told the city that a union contract needs to be approved before his court will end its monitoring of the department.

Robart has not been shy about his skepticism of the union's negotiation tactics. When the city passed its new police accountability legislation last year key parts of the law were still being held up in the closed-door union negotiations. Robart responded to the situation by saying: “The citizens of Seattle are not going to pay blackmail for constitutional policing,” according to The Seattle Times.

Mayor Jenny Durkan’s nomination of interim Police Chief Carmen Best to be the new permanent police chief may have helped negotiations. Best is a 26-year veteran of the department and has strong support from SPOG leadership.

Three weeks ago The Seattle Times acquired an e-mail from SPOG leadership telling its members that “SPOG and the City have agreed in principle on some significant core issues."