Councilmember Tim Burgess
BURGESS ON TENTATIVE SETTLEMENT WITH POLICE GUILD
SEATTLE—Councilmember Tim Burgess, chair of the City Council’s Public Safety, Human Services, and Education Committee, issued the following statement this afternoon, in response to the tentative settlement between the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild.
“This tentative labor contract settlement is good for our city, good for our police officers, and good for enhanced police accountability and transparency. The authority of the civilian oversight auditor has been increased significantly by giving her the power to direct further investigation of cases. All 29 of the Carroll commission accountability recommendations will now be fully implemented.
“For many years we have been bogged down in squabbles over police accountability. This labor agreement resolves these issues in favor of strong accountability and transparency.
“This agreement will also make our police officers the best paid in the State of Washington, and they deserve that. We have the best trained, best equipped, and most sophisticated police service in the state. Raising their compensation levels will help to resolve our new officer recruitment issues and enable us to retain current officers. Retention of current officers is a real challenge; we lost 17 in the first quarter of this year, seven of them who left to join other departments.”
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