Tag: Seattle

$3 Million in Spending… For What, Precisely?

What’s happened to the $3 million that City Council allocated for research to feed into participatory budgeting?

The most concrete municipal commitments which arose from the summer of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle came in the form of multi-million dollar investment pledges, the first of which has already been allocated. But there are serious questions about what, precisely, Seattleites are getting in return for this spending.

The goal of this first tranche was to commission a research team with $3 million to do qualitative research to better inform the participatory budgeting process to follow. But recently, in an open letter to the community, the entity that was commissioned (which originally consisted of King County Equity Now and a research team within it) announced they are splitting up. This, just a couple weeks before their final report is due.

This sudden split apparently came as a surprise to the overseeing councilmember Tammy Morales, according to her quote to SCC Insight:

My office was made aware of a letter circulating from the Black Brilliance project.  I haven’t yet been briefed by my staff but I intend to get up-to-speed immediately and make contact with the stakeholders as we ensure that this vital research work is seen to completion to inform the upcoming participatory budgeting process.  While I learn more about the detailed grievances, the work itself remains critically important to inform policies that impact Black and Brown communities.

Councilmember Tammy Morales to SCC Insight, February 8 2021

That she was apparently caught off-guard by this raises further questions about the meaning of municipal oversight, as well as the wisdom of the hasty kickoff process here, which never was bid-out, and began without even narrowing down key metrics for evaluation.

I would encourage you to read SCC Insight’s list of questions posed to Councilmember Morales about the funding process and her response, here.

Background

During the summer of 2020, Mayor Durkan created the Equitable Communities Task Force, which will be distributing $100 million in annual funding to communities of color and program initiatives, after running their own resource allocation process.

$100 million is not a small sum. It’s 6.7% of the city’s fiscal year general funds budget, beyond existing city services.

The Seattle City Council allocated $3 million of this to the Black Brilliance Project and King County Equity Now late in the summer, to research community-led solutions public safety and health. The purpose of this research is to better inform $30.275 million of participatory budgeting investments which would follow. That $30.275 million is subject to future Council ordinances.

Specifically, the $3 million is to “research processes that will promote public safety informed by community needs.”

I have no problem with investments; we need them to strengthen communities, advance more opportunity and achieve better outcomes. But as I wrote on this blog back in July, our city’s history of allocating funds to third parties has been broken for quite some time:

Seattle has a terrible record of doling out funds to third party service providers; so little accountability, so little check-ins, audits, definitions of success metrics, and ongoing measurement. The result has largely been paydays for third-party service providers, who, once entrenched, are rather difficult to see into.

Seattle Plows Ahead with 50% Cut To Police Department. Where are the Metrics Which Define Success? – July 11, 2020

Which brings me to today’s post, a brief check-in on one of these components: the Black Brilliance / King County Equity Now research effort (i.e., the $3 million allocated.)

Let’s Improve Public Safety and Health

Let me first state that like you, I’m all for better approaches to public safety and health, particularly in minority communities, and also throughout the city. There are clear disparities in public safety outcomes by different communities in the city, and we should always strive to understand their drivers and close the gaps and invest in ways that deliver better outcomes.

But to me, the most sensible way to begin such a process of improvement is to first define which metrics most indicate the goal of improved public safety and public health, prioritize them, and work backward from there.

Everyone can and should say we want better public safety and public heath.

Specifically though, are we wanting to lower assaults by 10-30% in three years? Reduce property crime reports by 20%? Reduce reports of unwarranted and/or illegal police violence? Lessen addiction? Recidivism? Reduce calls to 911? Improve lifespan? For which age groups? By how much? What’s been the existing trend? Who will own the reporting, and how often will this measurement be done?

“Yes” to all questions isn’t actionable.

We can and should answer “yes, we’d like to improve!” to all of the above, but resource allocation is about tradeoffs. And “yes” to all questions isn’t actionable. The strategy for reducing assaults will likely look different than the strategy for reducing diabetes or COVID risks. The strategy for reducing youth violence will likely look different than the strategy for improving transit and work options.

Investing dollars and attention into Initiative A means that you necessarily will have less to invest in Initiative B. And unless you’re omniscient, you need to measure what the current baseline is, or else you might be swayed by anecdotal reports, when actual trends are moving in the opposite direction.

In other words, it’s important to first determine what matters (yes, it’s subjective, but choosing and ranking is part of leadership!), then measure the current lay of the land, and get past measures, to calibrate the trajectory.

OK, so which public safety and health metrics are most important right now? Which are most leveraged, where the return on investment goes highest, or where return can be most rapid?

Which metrics are we most alarmed by, and how can we measurably improve them? Who owns the measurement of those metrics? How are they trending? What improves them or worsens them?

Getting to the bottom of these prioritized metrics seems a worthy goal of research. So does softer qualitative research, which better informs things like attitudinal views, historic influence, and more — all of which might for instance encourage better take-up of new initiatives and ultimately better results.

But research must have a guiding north star to be actionable. “We need to invest in everything” is not any more helpful than what we know now. Without spending $3 million, I can make that statement. Prioritization and resource allocation is a key role that municipal leaders should play — setting the goals that we wish to improve.

But that’s not what Seattle leadership has done here. Let’s take a look at their knee-jerk approval process, and where we are today.

The process is now under state audit, and I’m guessing the full auditors report of this process is going to be pretty revealing. Let the distancing begin.

Mistake #1: Absence of Success Metrics.

When this process began, lots of city council members said we need to improve public safety and health outcomes in Seattle, particularly in BIPOC communities, but no one offered any metrics that identified what those might be. During the entire summer, I listened to Council Zoom after Council Zoom, waiting for anyone to state how we measure these laudable goals as we “reimagine policing to invest in communities for better outcomes.”

The only one to venture close to that was Dan Strauss, who said that he’d be looking at response times, and whether the right parties arrived on scene at the right time with the right resources. OK, that’s a starting point — but who measures? How often? Etc. The statement stopped there. Just as bad, the starting benchmark seems to be ignored. As Tim Burgess and others have pointed out, our police response time goals are not even meeting the bar today, nor are they moving in the right direction.

Further, though it might surprise some, there is considerable data both in Seattle and nationally that the vast majority of Black Americans do want to retain local police presence. They, and we, just want it to be better — more transparent, more accountable, more subject to scrutiny, less prone to use of force when not necessary, and more.

To me, all this suggests continued reform, rather than abolition. But what metrics, specifically, constitutes “better?” That’s where research can come in, and should. I’d say things like response times, reduction in assaults, shootings, property crime and more would be eligible for metrics to consider, as are many others. But the discussion never seems to venture into the metrics, and certainly never seems to get to the prioritized five or ten which best indicated success or failure in leaders’ views.

Mistake #2: This research appears fully disconnected from a parallel initiative, didn’t earn the Executive Branch’s support, and was already fractured.

Check out this article from The Urbanist: 19 Black Leaders Decline Invite to Durkan’s Equitable Communities Task Force | The Urbanist. It’s pretty clear these two efforts weren’t united from the start.

The Seattle City Council is the legislative branch of the city. The Mayor runs the Executive Branch of the city. Each has their own initiatives. It makes little sense to me why the Council-driven $3 million research plus follow-on $30.275 million investment is wholly separate from the Mayor’s $100 million initiative, especially when the council’s specific goals with this research are so unclear and un-prioritized. Shouldn’t there be some alignment there?

Mistake #3: It was a No-Bid Contract.

As SCC Insight pointed out in December in a must-read, much-more-informed backgrounder to this whole affair, the city’s municipal code requires that consultant services such as this be put out to bid.

This was not done.

Why not? Well, you’ll have to make your own guesses here. Publications like SCC Insight need to be a bit more generous in their assumptions than I need to be in my own personal blog. I’d say that given the evidence, reasonable guesses include the possibility that City Council had specific designated suppliers or community members it wished to engage in this work and receive the funds, or perhaps it had a timeline that was particularly urgent, or both, or some other rationale.

Regardless, the contract was not put up for bid. The city did not advertise this consultant contract as required by the Seattle Municipal Code.

Now, the municipal code does allow no-bid contracts to take place, but they must go to a “public benefit organization,” i.e., a 501(c)3 organization. But here again, there was a hurdle — King County Equity Now (KCEN) was not at the time a 501(c)3, though they are in process of forming one now.

So what did the City Council do? They enlisted Freedom Project, an existing Seattle-based 501(c)3 to be a “fiscal agent” — i.e., a money managing intermediary — to dole out the funds on a contract that was never put out to bid. And in fact, Freedom Project is also a participant in the survey research going on.

Mistake #4: Research Contract Was Awarded to an Entity With a Clear, Pre-existing Policy Agenda.

Either the City Council should invest money to advance a policy agenda that it believes is correct, or pay an independent third party with a clear track-record of independent research to gather input and evaluate alternatives. But not both.

Here, the City Council decided to award a lofty sum of $3 million to an organization — King County Equity Now — that has a very specific policy agenda (police defunding and reinvestment in communities.)

In fact, the principal researcher herself, Shaun Glaze, was by her own account in the BBR’s open letter a key architect of the “divest in police” blueprint: “Shaun was a principal drafter of the Blueprint for Divestment/Investment presented to the Seattle City Council this summer by KCEN and Decriminalize Seattle, and Shaun facilitated the development of the budget and blueprint for the $3 million Black Brilliance Research Project.”

Yet she’s also leading the research. That’s hardly independence from an agenda.

Perhaps hers is the right policy agenda. Perhaps it’s not. But why is the council paying $3 million — a pretty massive sum for research — to an organization when, in many ways, it appears that same group has already made up its mind what that research should conclude? Has the methodology been subject to any kind of independent review? Starting to sound a bit off? You be the judge.

Mayor Durkan was not in favor of this spending, at least not the way this spending was proposed, and so she vetoed the legislation. But the City Council overrode her veto, appropriating $3 million from the city’s Revenue Stabilization Fund to this research project. The vote was 8-0, with Councilmember Debra Juarez not present for that vote.

Open Question: Research Methodology

Beyond taking a few graduate-level statistics, applied math and marketing research classes, my research credentials honestly just aren’t strong enough to validate or critique the research methodology. The primary researcher, Shaun Glaze, holds a PhD from Boston College in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology, including plenty of research and analysis positions and projects.

I do wonder about how objective a process can be if it starts out being under the auspices of an organization which has a specific policy agenda, or at a minimum what safeguards City Council established to ensure that the advocated policy slate was not a fait accompli. The split, from that standpoint then, makes some sense for Seattleites if it signals that the output can be more independent in nature, without any pre-existing policy agenda it seeks to validate.

But the preliminary report was completed under the auspices of King County Equity Now, and KCEN has a clear policy agenda. Were any inputs or outputs be filtered through that lens? Were questions leading?

Put more directly, is the purpose of this research to validate a pre-existing set of recommendations, or is it truly open to whatever conclusions arise, even if, say, reduction in police isn’t something that’s favored?

A large part of the surveying effort surrounds the question “If you had $200 million to reinvest into creating more community safety and health, how would you reinvest it?” Note that they are not asking participants to weigh whether the local police force should be de-funded to achieve that $200 million, just starting with the assumption that it’s found money. Participants might plausibly answer differently if asked “The Seattle Police Department has 15 police officers per 10,000 citizens, where other cities like Boston have about 40. Should we further de-fund the police?” Or “Are police response times adequate for your neighborhood?” Or “Should we increase community policing in your neighborhood?”

Beyond that, it’s worth having research experts look at matters of statistical significance and sampling methods used. For instance, how representative is the sample of respondents to the overall BIPOC population in Seattle? In the preliminary report, the researchers indicate that they “heard from over 4,000 community members” but had, at the time of the preliminary report 1,382 respondents to a detailed survey. Were these sampled randomly? It doesn’t appear so.

To calibrate this, according to the Census, the makeup of Seattle’s 750,000 citizens is: 65.7% white, 14.1% Asian, 7% Black, 6.6% Hispanic or Latino, 0.4% Native American, 0.9% Pacific Islander and other. That means Seattle’s population is approximately 8%-16% BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), depending upon whether you include Asian, Latino and Pacific Islander in the BIPOC designation.

The 2016 Census suggests there are on the order of 50,000-60,000 Black individuals calling Seattle home, and perhaps north of 100,000 Seattleites who would fit in an expanded definition of BIPOC. One question — is 1,382 completing the survey, skewing significantly younger than the overall Seattle population — representative? On page 18 of the preliminary report, they state that 60% of the respondents are under the age of 45, but didn’t clarify how closely matched the various cohorts are to Seattle’s age distribution: According to the 2016 census, 5.6% of Seattleites were under the age of 18, 11.9% from 18 to 24, 38.6% from 25 to 44, 21.9% from 45 to 64, and 12.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.8 males.

I ask these questions not knowing the answer. I don’t know. And there is use in qualitative feedback and focus-group level work, for sure.

But these and other methodology questions and outputs are useful to know, as they are with any rigorous qualitative study.

SCC Insight posed some questions related to the methodology to Councilmember Morales. Here is her response, taken in full from SCC Insight’s piece Catching up with the Mayor’s task force and the Black Brilliance research project (sccinsight.com):

Thanks for your patience as I try to catch up from the budget process. To respond to your questions about the participatory research contract and process, I’ll start by saying that I reject the premise of some of your questions that the researchers aren’t ‘qualified’ or don’t ‘know what they are doing.’  

More to the point, the contracts which have predated this one haven’t received the same kind of scrutiny you’re offering here.  So, I find it interesting that this particular contract has received so much attention from the onset.

What I will say about this work is that the notion that a ‘bottom up’ approach is subpar misses the point of participatory research. The issue is not whether this is a typical research project but is instead entirely about how to teach community members exactly how to critically analyze the impact of policy on their neighborhood.  (It’s access to power that my community has never enjoyed.) We could have contracted with a university and had graduate students doing this research, but that would not have produced the outcomes we’re looking for.  Participatory research is about building the capacity of our neighbors to understand what’s happening in their community and to increase civic engagement so they can inform future policy-making. This is what we mean when we say “DEMOCRATIZING power and resources.”

To suggest that a greater standard or threshold is in order is to dismiss the people who stand to benefit most from this approach, which – while newish to Seattle – IS a standard in NYC, Chicago and Barcelona too.

The research methodology for this contract was developed by professional researchers, PhDs in research who are professionally credentialed, and who are also coordinating the research and the community researchers.

Regarding the contract itself, there are several approaches to contracting; and, it is standard operating procedure to use contracting through fiscal agents for organizations that have not established 501C3 status. The $3 million was based on the work and anticipated expenses included in the Blueprint proposal. And yes, I am very confident that this participatory research process and the investment in building community capacity will prove valuable to the City.

I hope that answers your questions.

Tammy

Kevin Schofield, editor/owner of SCC Insight added:

If Council member Morales thinks that this level of scrutiny is new or unique, then she hasn’t read SCC Insight’s prior articles on the soda tax, TNC drivers’ pay, court fines and traffic stops, the Point in Time count, SPD internal research, and e-scooters. And to reiterate: at $3 million, this is much larger than the vast majority of the city’s research contracts, and as such is deserving of scrutiny.

You can see the exchange here.

Deadlines are Approaching… and an Audit.

On February 1st, 2021, an update was delivered to city council on this $3 million project.

Here’s the presentation:

Presentation-2121

And here’s the preliminary report, all 1,045 pages of it:

Participatory Budgeting Preliminary Report (1045 pages) – DocumentCloud

Among the key pages is this chart:

Without metrics which define better public safety and health outcomes, no one can test the validity of the recommended strategies above, nor compare them to what has been tried and works elsewhere. For instance, the key recommendations in the leftmost column seem to directly conflict with Gallup’s polling here, as well as privately-funded analysis of ten years of calls for service by SPD.

Do we let evidence guide us? We should. Doing that requires measuring, developing comparables, and making adjustments.

On page 24, they outline the research methods by project:

Note that Freedom Project, the fiscal agent, is involved with several of these methodologies. It’s probably too early to judge the output based on the preliminary report, but remember, this is the preliminary output from $3,000,000 in your tax dollars. $3 million is enough to pay a team of 30 people $100 per hour for 25 weeks.

A final report is due February 26th, so we’ll be better able to make an assessment then of just what the tangible return on investment has been.

Meanwhile, the state auditor’s office is examining the contract. Per Crosscut‘s coverage of the audit, a spokesperson for King County Equity Now said, “the state has now chosen to place an unprecedented amount of scrutiny on a small research project contract to Black community organizations. Worse, though unsurprisingly, this small contract includes some of the only public funding designated specifically for Black community aid in 2020.” 

Expect some distancing statements by city officials as that report arrives.

KCEN and Black Brilliance Split

Meanwhile, prompting this writeup, in an Open Letter, researcher Shaun Glaze announced a big split between the two central parties this $3 million was allocated to.

Turmoil Surfaces in Seattle City Council’s Push to Reimagine Public Safety, Seattle Times, February 9th

Black Brilliance Research Project effort fractures (sccinsight.com)

We Must Change How We Allocate Resources

In my view, this whole episode sheds light into the shoddy process of resource allocation of city (i.e., taxpayer) dollars. Don’t we owe those who need these funds so desperately better oversight?

  • The City Council spun up a parallel effort to the Mayor’s $100 million community initiative
  • The City Council deliberately went around the existing municipal code to put research contracts out to bid.
  • The City Council, as clients, haven’t specified clearly what prioritized (or even top 10) metrics best define “better public safety” or “better public health”, and seems rudderless in the effort. It makes the resulting “research” an exercise in putting some data together, without any clear metric by which to measure “were we correct?” Will we know whether those $3 million are well-spent? Which numbers will move?

The state auditor will have much more to say about this soon, and I’ll link to the report when available.

A Better Process

Clearly, we can already see that there are major problems here, can’t we? Is this the best way to spend $3 million dollars from the City of Seattle’s Revenue Stabilization Fund?

Look. I’m just a guy with a blog who cares about our city. But even I can see that there are clear problems with the process.

Here are just a few ways this process should have been improved:

  1. Align the $100 million Equitable Communities initiative with this initiative. Get all the wood behind the arrow, and make it measurable.
  2. Leaders should first define what metrics constitute better safety and health outcomes. These should be measurable, and benchmarked. It is likely that some metrics are particularly poor and deserve extra focus, while other metrics are relatively good and deserve comparatively less attention.
  3. Municipal code should have been followed. It’s there for a reason, and a lot of those reasons have already shown up. A research contract should have been put out to bid. It was not. The organization should have been an official public benefit organization — the 501(c) 3 process imposes some structural elements that might have helped avoid this situation. Perhaps doing those two things — i.e., following the municipal code — would have put up some sensible guardrails here.
  4. The lead council member should not be surprised by news that the two key entities involved in this research are splitting. She appears to be, at least according to her statement at the end of this piece. What was the monitoring or check-in process? Is there any? It needs to be tightened. City Council has a fiduciary duty to the taxpayers of this city that the funds be well-spent. When the lead councilmember is as surprised as the rest of us about this split despite rumors which preceded it, I have no confidence that they are.

What is Participatory Budgeting?

The key goal of this research is to better inform the participatory budgeting process. What is participatory budgeting?

A good overview video is below, from King County Equity Now.

My opinion? I think participatory budgeting (in business this is often called “bottoms-up budgeting,” letting the key stakeholders define the needs) makes a lot of sense.

But I don’t think the several very good examples provided in the video should cost $3 million in advance of it.

And as clearly indicated in the video, such processes are pretty open-to-all, transparent, and collaborative. They also appears to be run by volunteers. So why $3 million? I’m guessing that these compelling examples from other cities about concrete found-wins (e.g., bus arrival signs and more) did not begin with $3 million blanket grants with very unclear deliverables and lack of oversight, but I’d be happy to be corrected if someone drops me a note that these cities all spent $3 million or so in preliminary research leading up to it.

Related Reading

Black Brilliance Research Open Letter to Community | by Shaun Glaze | Feb, 2021 | Medium

19 Black Leaders Decline Invite to Durkan’s Equitable Communities Task Force | The Urbanist

Black Brilliance Research Project, born from Seattle’s Black Lives Matter protests, moving on without King County Equity Now | CHS Capitol Hill Seattle

Black Brilliance Project | South Seattle Emerald

Seattle’s $3M contract to research public safety under state scrutiny | Crosscut

Black Brilliance Research Project effort fractures (sccinsight.com)

Catching up with the Mayor’s task force and the Black Brilliance research project (sccinsight.com)

Website: King County Equity Now

Postscript: Please Consider Supporting SCC Insight

Finally, a plug for a resource that I think is vital toward better city governance.

Beyond being a reader, I have no affiliation with SCC Insight, nor any of the entities mentioned above, other than being a fellow resident of this city which we all love.

But I strongly encourage Seattle-area readers join me in supporting SCC Insight on Patreon. At a minimum, follow them on Twitter. Kevin Schofield and his team of independent journalists do very good, detailed long-form research and reporting on municipal issues that is rarely offered elsewhere, at least without a driving agenda which distorts the output. SCC Insight is as close as you’ll find to “let the facts lead where they may” reporting on municipal governance in Seattle. It forms the background on much of my OpEd above. Continued thanks to them for their work.

Updates/Corrections

February 11 2021: According to this piece in Crosscut, the $30 million + $3 million is not separate and apart from the $100 million Equitable Communities initiative; Council divided up the $100 million pledge. Text has been corrected above.

…how that money gets out the door has been the subject of disagreement. Durkan pledged $100 million for projects identified by a task force of her creation. But trust in Durkan runs low in much of the activist movement and among some members of the city council. As a result, the council took her $100 million pledge — plus other investments of their own — and broke it up into different pots. 

The council left $30 million for Durkan’s task force while spreading out the rest elsewhere, including $30 million to be doled out via a “participatory budgeting” process — budgeting with heavy community input — that would be organized and led by King County Equity Now.

Seattle’s $3M contract to research public safety under state scrutiny | Crosscut

Seattle Plows Ahead with 50% Cut To Police Department. Where are the Metrics Which Define Success?

Seattle City Council signals a veto-proof majority for a 50% cut in police funding. But where are the metrics?

Note (July 2020): This post is a compendium of links, resources and commentary related to the proposed cutting-by-half of the Seattle Police Department budget. Like the rapidly-building “plan” itself, this article is pretty scattered and incomplete, and meant to be a holding tank of relevant articles, resources and perspectives to consider when developing your own view on the topic. It will be updated over time.

It is not intended to be one-sided. So feel free to suggest new Seattle-specific resources and links to me via Twitter, especially those which disagree with mine. If they better inform outsiders, ideally with concrete data, I’ll do my best to work them in.

In general, my own views are: supportive of police reform, supportive of more transparency and oversight, yet opposed to a 50% cut being the way to drive it. Rather, I’m in favor of defining success metrics that matter to all Seattleites, letting those drive the reform plan, rather than a top-down “let’s cut 50%, allocate a bunch of money to this or that organization, and figure it out” kind of approach. Seattle has a terrible record of doling out funds to third party service providers; so little accountability, so little check-ins, audits, definitions of success metrics, and ongoing measurement. The result has largely been paydays for third-party service providers, who, once entrenched, are rather difficult to see into.

I also feel improved public safety outcomes cannot also arrive without serious inquiry into the judicial (i.e., post-arrest) system that all too often lets frequent offenders cycle through the system without treatment, has a myriad abuses of freedom and liberties, doesn’t address mental health or addiction properly, and imposes too few consequences for repeat offender actions which truly harm others. The process of success metric definition need not be a long one, but it should be inclusive, and take into account the public safety needs of all Seattle dwellers, renters, owners, service and businesspeople, all identity groups, etc.

“Laws without enforcement
are just good advice.”

Abraham Lincoln

Law enforcement has been essential in every society. Seattle’s own history with policing is a varied and checkered one, recently involving a federal consent decree, strong crackdowns on protests, some recent success in diversifying its workforce, leadership appointment political battles, worsening morale and staffing problems, a highly contentious and long-drawn-out battle over renewing the police union “SPOG” contract, increased militarization, claims of targeting and racial profiling, and fierce allegations by activists that the Seattle Police Department (SPD) both represents and perpetuates institutional, systemic racism.

Fast-forward to 2020

2020 has involved these distinct, contentious events:

One of the most central milestones was City Council’s vote indicating support for…

50% Cut in SPD Budget

Seattle’s City Council is a 9-member body that sets the laws of the city of Seattle. It now has a veto-proof majority of 7 of 9 councilmembers to cut the Seattle Police Department Budget by 50%, a goal long sought by some of the most leftward voices in the City. It gained increased calls in 2020, particularly in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.

City Council’s decision to slash 50% of the budget is, at present (July-October), without any bottoms-up plan or even clear set of metrics which will constitute success.

Chief Best’s Thoughts

Police Chief Carmen Best published a video on July 10 2020, addressing the roughly 1,400 sworn Seattle Police Department officers under her command. There’s a companion memo, below, summarizing what SPD feels those cuts will likely mean:

Chief Best outlined some of the adjustments she feels the department would have to make with a 50% cut:

468745236-Mayor-Letter-Chief-Best-Council-Budget-Proposal

Seniority May Well Result in a Less Diverse Force

SPD notes that due to legally-binding union contracts signed by the City and the Seattle Police Officer Guild, the layoffs forced by these cuts would result in SPD becoming less diverse, at least in the short-run.

Image
Of course, contract rules can be broken to adjust this layoff priority. But since this is a legal contract, this will no doubt trigger a series of expensive lawsuits and/or increase the chances of city liability.

This claim was met with swift reaction from “defund” proponents on Twitter, including former Mayoral Candidate and attorney Nikkita Oliver:

[An aside. It just struck me that the two most forceful, clear and consistent advocates of the camps which will move this city in one major direction or another are two Black women. Progress worth noting?]

Council Member Lisa Herbold notes that it should be legally possible to lay-off out of order of seniority:

Here’s a link to the document that CM Herbold was referring to: Rules of Practice and Procedure. You’ll find the relevant piece on page 33, which indicates some other conditions:

Is there a risk that lawsuits will still be levied and lost? I think so. Worth taking? Perhaps.

Constitutional Law scholar Jonathan Turley outlines many ways in which this proposal may violate laws:

While [Herbold’s suggestion to fire based on racial makeup, out of order] would be the definition of racial discrimination, Herbold clearly believes that it is discrimination for a good cause. The federal courts are likely to disagree.  Most notably, Herbold’s call for racial discrimination against white officers would seek to undue the work of Justice Thurgood Marshall who insisted that racial discrimination unlawful and evil regardless of the race you want to disenfranchise or discriminate against.

– Jonathan Turley, Seattle City Council Member Suggests Firing White Officers in Massive Reduction of Police Department

Public Disapproval

Crosscut/Elway is out with a new poll that shows 73% of respondents are opposed to reducing SPD funding by 50%:

Image
Poll Margin of Error: +/- 5%

Where does SPD’s money go today?

The Daily Hive has a pretty good rundown here:

https://dailyhive.com/seattle/seattle-police-department-funding-2020

Mayor Durkan’s Position

As is often the case, Mayor Durkan has been trying to strike a pragmatic middle, “kind of a lukewarm water between ‘fire’ and ‘ice'” as so memorably stated by Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap. She is still reeling from a very hard turn to the left by City Council from the November election, and hard-left activists flooding her inbox, and even, shamefully, her driveway.

But her reality — and the reality for us moderates and taxpayers is that there is considerable momentum to defund at least 50% of the SPD budget without any clear plan or measures for success.

And as Carmen Best notes, all this momentum now arrives at the doorstep of SPD, without much proactive input from the police department itself. At present, the Mayor’s Office seems to be trying to elide the COVID-related cuts with these funding cuts. I’d expect her to continue along this angle, attempting to preserve as much of the current makeup of SPD as possible:

But it will be a huge challenge.

On July 13th, the Mayor came out swinging, blasting the City Council’s plan:

https://crosscut.com/2020/07/durkan-hits-back-pledge-defund-seattle-pd-50

Legal Impediments

Kevin Schofield at SCCInsight has a must-read article on all the legal impediments to cutting the budget by 50%:

“Defunding SPD” is going to be a lot harder than anyone thinks

Where are the Guiding Metrics?

My biggest question — what will determine success or failure with such a drastic change? How will we know when we’re moving toward something better, or moving toward worse outcomes for the Seattle community as a whole?

The statement by 7 of 9 Council Members to support a 50% cut in police funding comes without a bottom-up plan, and without any metrics which will help us know if the changes made actually improve things or move them in the wrong direction.

“I have been struck, again and again, by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.”

Bill Gates

You cannot improve what you do not measure. You cannot even know whether you are improving at all without measuring.

And thus far, any measurements or metrics are wholly absent from the discussion.

It seems to me that good people can disagree about how to best achieve improved public safety and equity. But can’t we first try to establish agreement on, say, the Top 10 Signals for what constitutes better outcomes? If not, how will we know if we’re making progress or moving further away from our goals?

I think clearly, all citizens and leaders should want to reduce the rate of bias and unjust outcome. Do the public safety needs of all identity groups also matter? I assume they do. Most citizens do care about reducing assaults, robberies, addiction, homelessness and more.

I’ve asked Council members a few times, respectfully, what are the outcome metrics that they’ll be using to judge whether these changes are successful or not.

That is a very basic question.

Where is the Seattle press?

We need the press to ask City leaders what the plan is, and how they’ll measure success. Do City leaders have a mandate to do this 50% cut? Do citizens know what’s being proposed? Do leaders know how they’ll do it, and what will constitute success?

I’ve asked journalists like Dan Beekman of the Seattle Times, repeatedly, whether journalists will actually press Council members to answer these questions. No answer. For instance, this thread.

Silence, thus far.

And thus far, only one council member — Dan Strauss — has mentioned anything that could be considered a measure for success. It’s confined to 911, but it’s a start. His view is that the metrics for success are “Response times, and whether the people who arrive, 24×7, have the right resources to do the job effectively.” That’s a good start it seems to me, but those are the only measurable goal I’ve seen thus far in the entire discussion of these major changes. And I don’t quite know how we best measure “arrive having the right resources to do the job effectively.” (Do we do a followup survey? Who measures? Etc.)

Instead, the entire discussion to date has been driven by inputs to the program, as laid out in the four-point “plan” that 7 of 9 members have agreed to, in principle. It has the feel of a fight over both policy and money, with the latter sometimes taking precedence. Public safety seems to be taking a back seat in the dialog right now, at least the traditional measures of public safety (some typical measures listed below.)

“Decriminalize Seattle”

Take, for instance, the “4 Point Plan” being advocated by “Decriminalize Seattle” which is included in the PDF below.

Points 1-4 are entirely about inputs and allocations. None of these points include metrics for success, or a plan for who should own those metrics, how regularly they’ll be reported, and what we might do if we’re on the wrong (or right) tracks. As we’ve seen in the past, it matters whether there’s an interested agency reporting the numbers.

Presentation-Decriminalize-Seattle

Decriminalize Seattle held a Zoom call “teach in”, which is available on Facebook but not embeddable here.

Good governance includes establishing what “success” looks like. Numbers are a key barometer of whether the new plan is getting closer to the goals, or further away from it.

Typical measures of public safety often include the metrics below. Anyone willing to go on record with predictions as measured in, say, three years? Reasonable metrics it seems to me include things like:

  • Response times
  • Violent crime rates (reported violent crime per capita)
  • Property crime rates (reported property crime per capita)
  • Whether those responding have the right resources to handle the situation effectively
  • Officer-involved shootings
  • Complaints against officers or SPD
  • Assaults
  • Shootings
  • Recidivism
  • Burglaries
  • Gun ownership and purchase trends
  • Gang activity
  • Non-violent crime rates/conviction rates
  • Homelessness counts
  • Overdose deaths

Are there other key public safety, equity and public health outcome metrics that make sense to measure with numbers? What happens to “response times” when the agency is under entirely different leadership, and how should they be measured? Should they be independently verified? What do we anticipate about the directionality of these metrics down in let’s say, three years from now?

Are you personally directionally optimistic in these metrics, neutral or pessimistic?

The Challenge of Repeat Offenders

Last year, two blockbuster reports came out profiling Seattle’s most prolific offenders. System Failure Parts I and II.

Just 100 individuals accounted for 3,562 bookings in the State of Washington. About 9 months later, a follow-up report showed that these same individuals accounted for another 117 bookings. It also found that the City Attorney’s office only filed charges in 54 percent of the non-traffic criminal cases brought to it by the police, meaning, 46% of the time, they didn’t file charges in such cases.

system-failure-prolific-offender-report-feb-2019

System-Failure-Part-2-Declines-Delays-and-Dismissals-Sept-2019

It also found that on average, it takes about a half a year for the City Attorney’s office to file charges once the suspect is arrested, and nearly 2/3rds of a year in the case of assault.

Will Council Live By Their Own Decree?

Minneapolis’ City Council members who voted to “defund” the police about a month ago. And they quickly then voted themselves their own private security, at a cost to taxpayers of $63,000.

In Seattle, one council member signaling her support for a 50% cut in SPD forces is Council Member Lisa Herbold, who last year was quick to use her position to call not just the police’s 911 line, but the Chief of Police herself when she suspected, wrongly, that a mobile home was parked in front of her home to troll her.

Does she plan to go through Community Service workers in the new world or civilian 911, or make use of other channels? And will Mayor Durkan hold equal concern when personal property of others is violated as though it were her own?

“Decriminalize Seattle” Zoom Conference

A key set of players driving this conversation comprise a group called “Decriminalize Seattle.”

No question, their voices, just as others, are very important to hear in the process. Their lens is an emphasis on racial equity, many of the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, funding affordable housing and more.

Given the rather large influence the group is currently having over major public safety decisions in the City of Seattle, it would be helpful to have an understanding of what kinds of public safety credentials and experience are represented by the group, and which cities of any size have adopted such plans, as well as their results. It includes groups like the Seattle People’s Party, Asians for Black Lives, the CID Coalition, La Resistencia, Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network, No Youth Jail, and more than 200 other organizations. What kinds of credentials in public safety and health policy, and what results of the collective group?

To be clear, my own public safety credentials are nil. They are nonexistent. But then again, I’m also not the one pushing a plan to reshape Seattle’s entire approach to public safety and cut the budget for the law enforcement organization of the city in half. I’m calling upon us to have metrics that guide our success, and I’m calling upon journalists to start asking that question of our leaders.

Has this combined group’s novel approaches been implemented, at scale, in cities of any size? If so, great! Let’s hear more about that experience and what we can learn. What can we learn from what works and what doesn’t? And if not, if we are truly donning the labcoats here, shouldn’t we know it? Isn’t that something that might make headline-level at The Seattle Times? What harm is there in bringing that fact to the attention of the public? And if true, isn’t it then ever more important to establish the metrics for success?

You can see a ZOOM call of a recent virtual meeting with council members and the Decriminalize Seattle group here:

https://twitter.com/madsnicolee/status/1281304357351260160?s=20

CM González on “Defunding”

In recent days, Council President González has apologized for supporting police budget increases in past years, saying she no longer believes the department can be wholly reformed.

Oath of Office

Some, like Chief Best, are questioning whether a 50% cut in SPD is consistent with Council Members’ sworn oath of office. Curious, I tried to make the connection as to what they’re alleging.

All City Council members, when sworn in, take an oath to uphold the City Charter. See the 11 minute mark, for instance, for CM Herbold’s swearing-in ceremony, for instance, below.

Now, the preamble of the Charter of the City of Seattle, says very clearly:

“Under authority conferred by the Constitution of the State of Washington, the People of the City of Seattle enact this Charter as the Law of the City for the purpose of protecting and enhancing the health, safety, environment, and general welfare of the people…”

Charter of the City of Seattle

I think reasonable people can disagree about the right way to ensure health and safety of a citizenry. And “Decriminalize Seattle” has certainly stated their desires to enhance health and safety.

But notably absent so far from the “Let’s cut the SPD budget by 50%” movement have been any kind of metrics around public safety and health, merely (a) adjustments to INPUTS and policies, (b) hopes that by making these changes, we will achieve better equity and outcomes and (c) claims that SPD is unfixable/irretrievably broken and needs to be entirely reimagined.

How will we know if we are making improvements? How will Council Members know if they’re truly upholding their oaths to ensure better safety and health?

Morale Crisis at SPD

Meanwhile, even prior to this, there was a growing crisis of morale at the Seattle Police Department.

“Culture is toxic; morale is low”: Survey of Seattle Police officers paints bleak picture, Crosscut

Speak Out Seattle, a public-safety advocacy group which I volunteered for last year, chiefly by livestreaming their City Council forums, put out a video a year ago on the Seattle Police Officer morale crisis, and how Seattle’s staffing levels compare to other cities. I share it below because the comparative figures at the end are I think worth noting in the context of this discussion:

The crisis appears to be accelerating:

https://www.q13fox.com/news/seattle-police-officers-send-out-dozens-of-job-applications-to-other-departments-amid-unrest

Finally, is all this premised upon real, or imagined human behavior?

As I wrote back in November, I really hope the human behavior that the current majority of City Council members imagines actually exists in real life. Because from that, all else follows.

  • Is compassion the same as lenience?
  • Are unarmed community service workers better at diffusing, say, assaults and domestic violence?
  • What do unarmed community service officers do when situations suddenly escalate?
  • All public safety situations come with risk. Do you design law enforcement response for the average/typical scenario, or the atypical scenario, just in case?
  • Are all observed discrepancies of outcomes mostly or fully explained by oppression or discrimination? Are we ignoring other factors that might also be at work?
  • Are some of Seattle’s problem with repeat offenders not a police problem at all, but a problem of revolving justice?
  • Is homelessness generally just a problem of affordability, not treatment (mental health or addiction) or other services? Do studies validate that?
  • Do fewer police officers mean less crime and a safer community overall?
  • Will a myriad of fragmented, private security forces (e.g., at larger retailers, perhaps for neighborhoods, gun-owning households, etc.) be a safer and easier-to-manage environment?

These and other questions will be put to the test in the coming years.

Real-world examples?

What cities serve as the best examples of what we’re trying to do? The example of Camden, NJ is often mentioned. But that story is also understood as one in which Governor Christie joined forces with police reform activists to essentially “union-bust” the police union. While it very temporarily did “abolish” the police, Camden now has more police officers on duty than it did before they were “abolished.” And Camden remains a high-crime city — in fact, it’s in the Top 4% of highest crime per capita in the nation; 96% of American cities are safer. Is that change we can believe in?

In the past two weeks, Seattle City Council has passed one of the largest progressive tax increases in the city’s history, and also signaled its desire to defund the police by half. None of this is directionally surprising to anyone following last year’s City Council election. Elections have consequences; I get it. They certainly appear to have full legal authority to enact these changes, and I’m not challenging their ability to press the accelerator on this bold new progressive direction.

But if we look at the recent experiment of CHAZ/CHOP, we see both that the SPD is in need of real reform in its unwarranted arrest and abuse of reporters and unnecessary use of force in teargassing protestors, but, with five shootings in a three week period, I’m also unconvinced we’ve seen proof that SPD standing down improves public safety. I’m not confining my views to this or that identity group. I’m talking about outcomes for all of us who call Seattle home.

Sworn Officer Levels

SPD Sworn Officer Levels (grey line) by year

Comparison to Other Cities

One metric that’s used to compare police coverage is officers per 10,000 citizens.

Seattle’s population is about 730,000. So we have about 1190 officers covering 730,000 people, or 16 officers per 10k citizens. By comparison, that number for DC is 65, Baltimore: 46, Boston: 33, SF: 28, Atlanta: 30, and LA: 26 (source: governing.com.)

More To Come

I’ll be updating this running post over time with major developments related to public safety in Seattle.

Seattle ended 2020 with the highest recorded number of homicides in the past twenty years. And police officers are meeting Priority 1 Calls (emergency calls, the highest level) in the goal time in fewer than half of all calls.

I love this city, and I hope this turns around. We need to find a way to get beyond the division, the grandstanding, the posturing — and literally improve public safety. Since resource allocation is about tradeoffs, I think that begins with defining what the most important metrics are which indicate public safety, be clear about them, and then optimize those. Personally, I put things like response times, shootings, reports of assault and sexual violence and validated reports of law enforcement bias-crimes/brutality fairly high on the list.

Without getting clear about the metrics which matter most, we pretend that we can make major cuts in one area and “reimagine public safety” without having any clear idea of what may lie ahead, nor even being able to measure whether our decisions were the right ones.

Updates

March 9, 2021 — Brandi Kruse shares several slides from SPD showing how understaffing is leading to poor response times:

Congratulations to Seattle’s New City Council

There’s a new City Council in Seattle. If human beings actually behave as our new City Councilmembers seem to believe, we’re in for some major improvements.

Congratulations to the victors! There was a big City Council election earlier this month, and it’s likely to set the course of the city for the next decade.

This isn’t the slate of leaders I’d have preferred. I’ve been clear about my own moderate political views on this blog, and this is not a moderate council. However, I do very much wish for their success. They now set the laws in a city I love.

Above all, I hope their imagined model of human behavior actually exists. Because from that, all else flows.

I hope that the key to ending homelessness is delivering publicly owned, affordable or even free-to-the-residents shelter, and that near-exclusive focus on that vis-a-vis homelessness pays the dividends they feel it will. That is, I hope that directing very little of our attention to treatment continues to be appropriate, and that results will show addiction to be mostly a second-order effect that can be — relatively speaking — ignored.

I hope the true addiction rate among those experiencing homelessness is in fact roughly what is self-reported (i.e., “only” about 35%, about 4 times rate for the housed.) I hope even that is high, by some mistake or something. Maybe lots of people who are not addicted are reporting that they are. I don’t know why they would, but it sure would be great if that’s the case. I hope a much higher level of addiction than 35% among the unhoused isn’t reality, because it would justify the near-silence on this topic at Seattle City Council hearings, and it would almost even justify the name-calling of anyone who dares to raise addiction and drug use as concerns worthy of addressing.

I hope it is the much easier-to-address problem of affordability, not addiction or mental health, that has driven and perpetuated the rapid rise in homelessness that we’ve been seeing over the past decade. Because 75,000 new units are currently under construction in Seattle, the $290 million Affordable Housing Levy is still in effect, HALA and MHA have passed with aims of creating 6,200 new affordable units, and the new slate of leaders will be pressing the accelerator very hard on affordable housing.

We will very likely try the Employee Hours Tax (EHT) and other taxes again, likely more aggressively than attempted in 2018. But this time, the group overseeing it will be a slightly different collection of resource-allocators, so perhaps the plans will be more comprehensive and robust — perhaps there will actually be a plan. But if it’s focused pretty much exclusively on building out publicly-owned housing as the first EHT was, I hope those who are addicted, if given warm shelter, get well largely on their own, because I hear a lot more about addressing affordability from these new overseers than I do the critical importance of establishing wraparound services such as treatment, pilot treatment programs with measurements, or frankly any kind of asks or gentle requirements for beneficiaries of these programs to try over time to get well.

I hope the crime and assaults which have been on the rise are truly driven by poverty and expensive rent, not by drug use or mental health. Because, once they have affordable or even free shelter, these second-order problems will greatly diminish. I hope that the Seattle Police Department (SPD) has largely been lying to us about the drug trade being a major source of property crime. Maybe it too is mostly about poverty.

I hope that “compassion” and “lenience” are pretty much interchangeable concepts, and that by doubling down on lenience, we create a more compassionate City for all who have been negatively impacted by assaults and other forms of crime.

I hope that by investing heavily in solving affordability with publicly owned housing and far more tiny villages in 12+ new areas, metrics like addiction rates, discarded needles, property crime and assault drift downward. That is to say, I hope Washington DC’s failed experiment in focusing on housing only was a complete anomaly, and I hope we’ve learned how to implement it better from Licton Springs.

I hope laws of supply and demand don’t apply to services. I hope that by funding a regionally and nationally generous set of policies without limits or requirements (“barriers”, in the parlance) in a mobile society, it doesn’t simply bring in more demand, taking us back to where we started. I really hope that it is indeed true that the term “Freattle” is just a hateful, invented pejorative spewed by the uncompassionate, and bears no connection to reality. Put another way, I hope that the laws of supply and demand are somehow suspended when it comes to services, and that there’s no such thing as magnet policies.

Or alternatively, if the laws of supply and demand are still in play, I hope we have a near-infinite capacity to fund shelter and services after the first 15,000 are served, because not a single one of the new city council leaders has really put forward any kind of limitations on service, nor are we prepared to discuss them without name-calling. Speaking of name-calling, I hope the whole “Seattle Is Dying” piece was mostly just staged and heavily edited to push an utterly false and hateful narrative, and that Sinclair somehow profits wildly by fabricating stories wholecloth. It would be a relief to discover it was fiction.

I hope that the third party service providers we taxpayers fund all sincerely want to do the right things by their clients and feel an obligation to make the most of taxpayer dollars, and don’t need much of any oversight, accountability or checks and balances. I hope it’s simply more funding that’s needed to have better results. Because with the exception of one new Council Member, I didn’t hear much about service provider accountability, measurements, audits, or any kind of payment-tied-to-results orientation.

I hope that it’s true that the best use of city-owned land is to put a few dozen tiny homes on it and allow more RVs inbound on city streets without really monitoring or caring about what anyone chooses to do with those spaces, or any kind of third party checks on who resides there. I hope for the sake of those subject to human trafficking, that an affordable place to live makes RV ranching and crime rings centered in some of those spaces disappear.

I hope it really does work that diverting repeat offenders away from punishment (like jail and drug court) and into lenient counseling really means they’re no longer likely to offend again, because it sure sounds like the compassionate thing to do, and who doesn’t want to be compassionate? I hope those diversion programs really do have tremendously beneficial harm reduction impacts on the communities where they’re deployed, even though that data’s not been made available, and what now 5-years-old data has been shared on recidivism suggests no statistical difference when “failure to appear in court” warrants are removed.

I hope that every time rent-control has been tried, its failure has been because it’s simply not been implemented right. I hope that this time it’ll be different, that a few tweaks will make it work, and that new renters won’t find all the most desirable affordable spaces taken out of inventory, and landlords won’t skimp on basic improvements for existing rent-controlled apartments, the way it has gone pretty much every time rent control has ever been tried.

I hope it’s actually true that among the highest and best uses of City Council time is to conduct and tolerate circus-like demonstrations in favor of, or protesting, various national and global issues which will never be decided within City limits, because I know that a great deal more “pack City Hall” events to “make statements” are in our near future.

I also hope their imagined economic model works, that lots of new taxes can be imposed on surgically-defined entities and segments without much unintended blowback, like regressive price increases on consumer goods and services, reductions in the number of people employed within Seattle city limits, companies or small businesses picking up and moving, reductions in levels of investment in new initiatives and resultant revenue-generation for our city, likelihood of attracting innovators here, or prices kept affordable on basic items like groceries, delivery and fuel. I hope shoplifting becomes less of a problem for retailers like Uwaijimaya and Bartells through our compassion, lenience and surging investments in housing.

I hope the MIT PhD candidate made lots of errors when he found that upzoning actually often sends prices upward, not downward.

I would be ecstatic to be pleasantly surprised about all this, so I do root for their success and not their failure, as they are our new duly elected lawmakers. We may even get a chance to see how well their model and formula all works through a national or global recession, which by and large is not something within our local control here in Seattle; we may only have a few months to a couple years to establish the set of programs we want when that arrives.

Though I disagree with a large number of proscribed policies this new group of lawmakers has espoused, we do fully align on many of the goals sought — i.e., far fewer people homeless, a safer city for all (at least I assume we align there), greater opportunity for all, fewer people addicted and living in tents, cars and RVs, a green city that protects its environment and welcomes newcomers with affordability, and much more.

The new Council absolutely has a chance (and no question, the votes) to fully establish the vision they want. That’s why I’m rooting for their success and for my fears to be dead wrong.

Meanwhile, we will don the labcoats. Because this is going to be an interesting several years of experimentation with a lot of things no city in this nation has really tried. We will be in the vanguard, we will be pioneering our own way, and it will be ambitious. Maybe it’s different here. We will watch and see how the various metrics respond: crime and public safety rates, within-city-limits employment, levels of addiction, care for our green spaces, ecology, mental health, affordability, activity of repeat offenders, public health and more, all play out. If human behavior really is as they imagine it, we’re in for some major improvements.

Which Seattle Restaurants Have Had the Most Closures Forced by Inspectors?

King County’s Restaurant Inspection Grades, which is based upon the average of red-card violations in the past four inspections

I’m exploring the Python stack for data analysis and machine learning.

I know I’m late to the party, but have only recently discovered the impressive Jupyter Notebook (formerly IPython) data analysis platform and community. It makes “storytelling from data” easy. But doing so with ease requires fluency with a sometimes unintuitive yet very powerful syntax.

Today’s question: Which Seattle-area restaurants have been forced to close the most often by restaurant inspectors?

For this morning’s project, I headed on over to a local Starbucks, tapped into wifi, and downloaded the King County Restaurant Inspection dataset.

King County’s restaurant inspection policies are spelled out here, and violations generally fall into “red” (serious) or “blue” (non-serious) violations. Red violations can and often do result in forced temporary closure of the restaurant.

Now, for this SQL-guy, importing the data file into a database and doing a simple GROUP BY query would make this question easy to answer, but for my Python learning purposes, that’d be cheating. I want to learn a bit about data visualization and pattern recognition.

After a little bit of munging of the data, I came out with the list below, which shows restaurant name and the total distinct closure-worthy moments. Surprising to me that some were such repeat offenders. Really, Anjappar Chettinad? Inspectors forced closure five separate times?

From January 2006 until March 2018, there have been 181 distinct restaurant closures in the Seattle area by inspection.

Some, like Anjappar Chettinad Indian Restaurant, King Buffet and 663 Bistro, have been closed multiple times. You can see that the list of inspection-forced-closures is heavily weighted toward international (i.e., Indian, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Mexican) restaurants, but also includes a few taverns, hot dog street vendors, delis and coffee shops.

Here’s a scatter plot of where these closures have taken place (as you can see, I haven’t yet gotten geo heatmaps sorted out yet — I’ll be exploring folium or other geo-plotters in the future.) But it seems to show that the major areas are South Lake Union and Queen Anne:

Pace of Closures by Year

Let’s see how closures have paced by year (2018 is partial, through mid-March 2018):

Interesting — what’s going on here? Why was 2007–2010 a down-period, particularly 2010? Was that a particularly careful, healthy year? That seems unlikely. Possible explainers: economic effects reducing inspections? Measurements not recorded in the same format? Or was something else going on?

Looking at total inspections by year, we can clearly see that it’s not because of cutbacks in inspections. Here are the total unique inspections (i.e., unique restaurant/date pairs) by year, through mid-March 2018:

So there’s a steady increase in inspections from year to year. Don’t know exactly why 2010 was such a closure-light year, or why 2008–2010 trended down; my current hypothesis is that there was a policy change, or perhaps less aggressive inspections, that made these more lenient.

Distribution of Grades

Just how bad is it, comparatively speaking, when you see a “Needs Improvement”, or even an “Okay” sign? You may have anecdotally noticed that it’s pretty rare when you glance at the door and see one of these two grades. Here’s a histogram — one per inspector visit — and the resultant grades assigned, since 2006 (1=Excellent, 2=Great, 3=Okay, 4=Needs Improvement.)

What I take away from the above is that “Okay” and “Needs Improvement” are real outliers.

For more info, you can check out the King County Restaurant Inspection lookup system here: https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/environmental-health/food-safety/inspection-system/search.aspx#/

https://gist.github.com/stevemurch/ccac0123600cefdc7314d0524a449f8b.js

Restaurants that have an “Okay” Grade as of March 28 2018:

0          ANJAPPAR CHETTINAD INDIAN RESTAURANT
1                                 ARAYA'S PLACE
2                                    BIG BAZAAR
3                                   CASA PATRON
4                                  CHAAT N ROLL
5                                   CHINA FIRST
6                               CROSSROADS CAFE
7                                     FOODSHION
8                                  GALLO DE ORO
9                     GOLDEN INDIAN CURRY HOUSE
10                                   GREEK PITA
11             GREEN LEAF VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT
12                       HALAL MARWA RESTAURANT
13                                   HAWAII BBQ
14    HOMEGROWN SUSTAINABLE SANDWICH SHOP-KIOSK
15                        HUNAN CHINESE KITCHEN
16                              HYDERABAD HOUSE
17                             Hung Long Market
18                              ICHIRO TERIYAKI
19                                   J B GARDEN
20            KING'S CHINESE SEAFOOD RESTAURANT
21                                    LOCAL PHO
22                 LOTUS ASIAN KITCHEN & LOUNGE
23                          LUNCHBOX LABORATORY
24                        MARINEPOLIS SUSHILAND
25                             MIRAK RESTAURANT
26                              Niko's Teriyaki
27                         PABLA INDIAN CUISINE
28                          PEN THAI RESTAURANT
29                                 PHO VIET ANH
30                                    RUBY THAI
31                          SAIGON VIETNAM DELI
32                           SAM'S NOODLE HOUSE
33                           SEOUL TOFU HOUSE 2
34                               SUNNY TERIYAKI
35                         SUSHIMARU RESTAURANT
36                     SZECHUAN CHEF RESTAURANT
37                            THAI CURRY SIMPLE
38                                  THAI ON 1ST
39                          TIENDA LATIN MARKET
40                                  U:DON FRESH
41                                   UDUPI CAFE
42                                      YU SHAN

Restaurant name, total number of red-cards shown below.

More than one red card can and often is handed out per visit — so the number of actual closures is significantly less than the numbers below:

663 BISTRO 57
ANJAPPAR CHETTINAD INDIAN RESTAURANT 53
KING BUFFET 49
SPICED TRULY CHINESE CUISINE 32
ROYAL INDIA 30
UDUPI CAFE 24
SICHUANESE CUISINE 23
MIDORI TERIYAKI 22
OH! INDIA 21
CURBSIDE (KC225) 20
BIG BAZAAR 20
CAFE PHO II, INC. 17
GOLDEN DAISY RESTAURANT 17
ICHIRO TERIYAKI 17
BLUE FIN & SEAFOOD 17
GREEN LEAF VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT 16
BEBAS & AMIGOS 16
TOP GUN OF BELLEVUE 16
YU SHAN 15
BENTO BOX, THE 14
MACKY’S DIM SUM 14
KING’S CHINESE SEAFOOD RESTAURANT 13
HANABI SUSHI RESTAURANT 13
YOKO 3 13
SAIGON DELI 13
TERIYAKI BISTRO 13
FORTUNE GARDEN RESTAURANT 12
J B GARDEN 12
HYDERABAD HOUSE 12
HANAHREUM MART 11
HARBOR CITY RESTAURANT 11
YUMMY PHO 11
MAYURI FOODS & VIDEO 11
KABAB PALACE 10
SEADLE HOUSE 10
SILVER SPOON THAI RESTAURANT 10
SAFFRON SPICE 10
CAFE PHO 10
MEDITERRANEAN MIX 9
KUNG HO GOURMET CHINESE RESTAURANT 9
LA PINA/TRES HERMANOS 9
SEATTLE DELI 9
HONG KONG BISTRO 9
ASIA BBQ & FAST FOOD 9
SEOUL TOFU HOUSE 2 9
CEDARS BROOKLYN DELI 9
HUNAN CHINESE KITCHEN 8
MAHARAJA CUSINE OF INDIA 8
IKIIKI 8
TOULOUSE PETIT KITCHEN & LOUNGE 8
SKILLET STREET FOOD, LLC 8
FEAST 8
SUNNY TERIYAKI 8
MAZATLAN RESTAURANT 8
RANCHO BRAVO TACOS #1 8
LOTUS ASIAN KITCHEN & LOUNGE 8
TAQUERIA GUADALAJARA 8
PALACE KOREAN GRILL 8
LOCAL PHO 7
PARKSIDE DELI & SUNDRIES 7
MIRAK RESTAURANT 7
COUNTRY SIDE CAFE 6
FAMOUS RANDY 6
MUNCH BOSS (KC465) 6
IMPERIAL GARDEN & HAPPY TUMMY 6
13 COINS 6
THAI ON 1ST 6
THAI CHEF 6
SMALL FRYE’S 6
PIONEER GRILL@VARAMINI COMMISSARY 6
MUSTARD SEED CAFE 5
PHO TAI 5
CHU MINH TOFU & VEGETARIAN DELI 5
GRILL CITY 5
NORTHWEST CATERING #9 5
LA RIVIERA MAYA #2 4
GOURMET DOG JAPON 4
JEMIL’S BIG EASY 4
RAM RESTAURANT & BREWERY 4
PEOPLE’S BURGER@VARAMINI COMMISSARY 4
ROMIO’S PIZZA & PASTA 4
TAQUERIA EL ASADERO 4
DONA QUEEN DONUT & DELI 4
DRAGONFISH ASIAN CAFE 4
SAM’S NOODLE HOUSE 4
SAMURAI NOODLE 4
LA PLAYA MEXICAN RESTAURANT 4
HOMEGROWN SUSTAINABLE SANDWICH SHOP-KIOSK 3
HALLAVA FALAFEL LLC 3
N W HASIMO FAST FOOD AND DELI 3
STOPWATCH ESPRESSO 3
MANCHU WOK AT SEA-TAC 3
RACHA NOODLES & THAI CUISINE 3
SUBWAY #25524-O 3
EL CAMION 3
CHUCK E CHEESE’S 3
THAI CURRY SIMPLE 3
BIG BAWARCHI 3
AL’S GOURMET SAUSAGE #5 3
RAIN DOGS SODO, CART #2 3
LANPONI THAI RESTAURANT 3
PHO THU THUY 3
TAQUERIA EL CORRAL #1 2
BEST CORN #1 2
SUNSET FRIED CHICKEN 2
BOUMBA HOTDOG 2
GREAT WESTERN PACIFIC 2
MCDONALD’S SAMMAMISH #5523 2
YUMBIT (KC298) 2
DANTE’S INFERNO (1) 2
CAFE ZUM ZUM 2
MAIN ST GYROS 2
QDOBA #2618 2
HOW TO COOK A WOLF 2
OASIS TEA ZONE 2
Hung Long Market 2
I LOVE MY GFF 2
LUNCHBOX LABORATORY 2
CAFFE BEE 1
BLAZEN (KC547) 1
THAI 2 G0 1
THAI BISTRO RESTAURANT 1
CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL #2228 1
LT’S FAMOUS BBQ 1
QUARTER CHUTE CAFE 1
BISTRO BAFFI 1
OSTERIA DA PRIMO 1
PHI KAPPA SIGMA 1
NEEMA’S 1
BENEVOR, INC 1
BEEZNEEZ GOURMET SAUSAGE (KC287) 1
TOSHI’S TERIYAKI 1
TUKWILA DELI 1
ART MARBLE 21 1
VOXX COFFEE 1
ANGELO’S PIZZA & PASTA 1
7-ELEVEN STORE #2361–27283C 1
WORLD WRAPPS — REI 1
MEDITERRANEAN KITCHEN 1
COWGIRLS ESPRESSO 1
CHURCH’S CHICKEN 1
GERALDINE’S COUNTER 1
RAM RESTAURANT & BIG HORN BREWERY 1
JUISALA 1
KFC #332 1
POTBELLY SANDWICH SHOP 1
KING OF PHO 1
SANDHU SHELL MINI-MART 1
Niko’s Teriyaki 1
HALLAVA FALAFEL 1
Genki Sushi 1
KIRKLAND AMERICAN LITTLE LEAGUE 1
PING’S FOOD MART 1
GARAM MASALA AND SPICES 1
CLASS ACT 1
FULL LIFE CARE 1
FREMONT HOT DOG 1
SUBWAY 1
LA RUSTICA 1
LA VITA E BELLA (KC222) 1
LADYBUG ESPRESSO 1
TACO GOL TAQUERIA 1
CROSSROADS CAFE 1
QDOBA MEXICAN EATS 1
COURTYARD BY MARRIOTT — STARBUCKS 1
COFFEE TIME 1
MARINEPOLIS SUSHILAND 1

Another question: What Seattle Zip Codes have had the most “type red” (serious) violations? I haven’t quite figured out how to display counts on a heatmap just yet, but it turns out the answer is 98109, which includes Queen Anne and South Lake Union:

Note that I haven’t yet divided by inspection frequency, that’s simply the nominal leader. It could certainly be because that’s where more restaurants are, or where more inspections have been scheduled. Will likely take a look at that in a future update.