New Seattle Police contract includes pay boost, increased use of unarmed crisis responders

A new proposed contract between the city of Seattle and its police officers guild contains pay increases and a more significant role for the city’s unarmed responders to attend calls without a police officer.

Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the proposed contract covering 2024-27 on Wednesday, flanked by the chief of police and other officials.

The agreement calls for police officers to get a retroactive pay boost of 6% for 2024, and an increase of 4.1% for 2025, according to a press release. Officers will receive an additional 2.7% increase in 2026, and the boost for 2027 will be between 3 and 4%, depending on the Consumer Price Index.

This starts where last year's SPOG contract left off. That agreement provided members a retroactive 23% raise after police were without a contract since 2020.

Beyond base wage boosts, the latest contract also introduces new salary bonuses for police recruits with advanced education or multilingual skills, which police accountability advocates have said would be good assets for serving the public. Starting in January 2026, the contract includes a 1.5% education premium for those with a relevant a associate's degree, a 4% premium for bachelor's degrees, and a 1.5% premium for bilingual language skills.

Harrell touted the agreement as "groundbreaking" and a "paradigm shift" for the city's Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) agency, which has been constrained under a memorandum of understanding with SPOG that was due to expire at the end of this year.

Harrell said the new agreement allows "unlimited hiring and solo dispatch" for the team, the city's newest branch of first responders who have previously been restricted to having a police escort when responding to most incidents. Now, they'll be able to respond to crisis calls that don't present a public safety threat on their own.

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Harrell also said Wednesday that the city will hire more police this year than the previous two years combined.

Seattle Police Officers Guild members ratified the contract over the weekend, city officials said. Now, it's just subject to City Council approval.

CARE Department Chief Amy Barden said the update means that the city will double her crisis response team from 24 to 48, working across the entire city and “nearly around the clock” to provide welfare checks and other assistance, like rides and referrals to services.

The city launched the CARE teams two years ago. In that time, Barden said they have responded to 6,800 calls, included some cases involving domestic violence and people with suicidal thoughts. They requested SPD support only 15 times.

Barden said her teams have been operating under “pretty severe” constraints agreed to by SPOG and the city when the pilot program was launched, which required a police escort or handoff for nearly every call.

Barden said she considered that framework “very, very useful for the first thousand calls, but they’re not useful anymore, so I do celebrate this moment.”

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes said he supports the expansion of the CARE team, and said the salary increases for police officers in the latest contract will make police officers feel “valued and equipped.”

So far this year, SPD has hired 135 entry level officers and 17 “lateral” transfers, Barnes said.

“Their arrival marks the beginning of our transition from crisis management to proactive, community-centered policing,” he said.

Barnes said homicides, burglaries, and robberies all decreased this summer from last.

“But we also agree that policing alone cannot solve every challenge we have in this city,” he said.

Eci Ameh is executive director for the city’s Community Police Commission. She said the commission has not seen the proposed contract yet, but will be analyzing whether it adequately reflects community concerns around policing.

Ameh said the CPC will also be looking at which provisions from the city’s 2017 accountability ordinance “are also fully incorporated into the agreement and that SPOG leadership no longer holds veto power over police accountability.”

Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson said the proposed contract “unlocks the promise of alternative response,” which many in the city called for ever since Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Nelson also praised the agreement for allowing “unfettered expansion” of the CARE team, and its salary incentives for police recruits with multilingual skills and advanced education. Nelson said the council hasn’t yet set a date to consider the contract.

Andrew Myerberg, Harrell’s chief of staff, said another priority for accountability advocates is not in this contract but is still a priority for future negotiations. That’s subpoena power for the city’s oversight agencies, the Office of Police Accountability, and the Office of the Inspector General.

Myerberg said some important accountability provisions in this proposed contract include adopting the timeline for misconduct investigations specified in the city’s 2017 law, and the ability for an officer’s supervisor to impose discipline for minor performance issues like lateness, while continuing to route more serious complaints to the OPA.

Myerberg said labor negotiators reached an impasse on some other accountability provisions, which both sides will continue to pursue separately through what’s called "interest arbitration." They include standards for when a police chief’s disciplinary findings can be overturned by an arbitrator. If the city prevails, those provisions could be incorporated in the proposed contract at a later date.

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The proposed SPOG contract comes less than two weeks before the election in which Harrell is seeking a second term. His opponent is progressive activist Katie Wilson, who in her platform criticizes the city’s previous SPOG contract.

“With the $57 million in retroactive salary payments and additional $39 million for 2024-2026, we should have gotten more for our money," she wrote on her website.

Wilson said the CARE Department “has shown success,” but its deployment of crisis responders “has been stymied by a poorly negotiated police contract.” She added: “This crowds out proactive police work and limits the immediate availability of officers to respond to crimes in progress.”