Mayor Bruce Harrell in a press conference at Seattle City Hall said that his administration intends to take a different approach to public safety including crime, homelessness and responses to 911 calls. 

Following through on the commitments made in his inaugural speech to take a more focused approach to these issues Harrell was joined by Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz, and Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scroggins as well as Deputy Mayors  Tiffany Washington, Kendee Yamaguchi, and Monisha Harrell. 

“I want to be very clear – we will not tolerate crime in Seattle. Whether organized retail theft, crimes of violence against our most vulnerable, crimes of hate, or especially gun violence, we will not look the other way while the fabric of our neighborhoods and city is destroyed,” said Harrell. 

The Seattle Police Department today released its 2021 Year-End Crime Report which showed increases in violent crime and gun violence compared to 2020: 

• Aggravated assaults are up 24%    
• Shots fired reached an all-time high, up 40% since 2020   
• Overall violent crime increased by 20%, reaching the highest level in 14 years  

WATCH: Mayor Harrell Addresses Public Safety Priorities  

“I have directed Chief Diaz to focus his efforts on those places in our City where crime is concentrated, disrupting the lives of the people who live and work there,” said Mayor Harrell. 

Chief Diaz said, "Overall crime last year in Seattle was up 10% Over 2020. Violent crime increased by 20%, and much of that violence is gun related. Nearly every month, last year saw more shots fired incidences than the same month from the previous year and homelessness related shootings and shots fired increased by 122% over 2021. 

We recovered over 3200 shell casings, an increase over the year before and 612 shots fired. That's almost two shots fired a day with an average of five rounds being shot on each incident. It's not just a crime that's unacceptable, but who is being impacted. Disproportionately 52% of all the shooting victims are black males between the ages of 18 to 25 years of age. 

Domestic violence and road rage shootings are up. I know this increase is disturbing to you. the people of Seattle. It disturbs me and the city and the entire SPD because we know we can do better, but we need you all to be part of the solution. We need the community's help in identifying those who prey on our community members." 

Diaz explained that his officers are often the first on the scene and ahead of the arrival of Emergency Medical teams police are "applying tourniquets, chest seals, and other lifesaving measures when we secure scenes of violence."

SPD is recovering more than 1000 guns each year as they have for the past five years.

Despite the fact that SPD has said they need more than 350 officers, many of whom left last year they are working hard to stay on top of the situation. "We've recovered over 600,000 fentanyl pills in 2021. Our officers with limited resources are making arrests for burglaries, robberies and homicides every day."

He mentioned that one goal is to drive down the 911 response time and noted that there are "hotspots" for criminal activity singling out 12th and Jackson Street downtown as one that is getting and extra level of emphasis.

Fire Chief Scroggins spoke and said, "The Seattle Fire Department ran over 94,000 calls for service, and that's pretty significant coming out of the pandemic here, where we ran about 80,000 calls. But what's more important to note is about 12,600 of those calls were to the homeless population to encampments to RV's to people living on the street. Which is up significantly from where we were in 2020 and 2019. That becomes very important because when we respond to these encampments and other places, often times these fires, they get into buildings. 

In January we ran about 5 fire responses a day to homeless encampments and about 33 medical responses a day to homeless encampments. That's pretty significant because of all the hazards that we face. 

Our Health One team has been deploying daily to try to do preventative measures to bring people out of homelessness and they have been working around the clock, building relationships and even with that work that continues to go on, these challenges are still in front of us and they're still very real, but our team is deploying each day to try to bring people out of homelessness. On the Scenes of Violence calls, in 2021 we ran over 400 scenes of violence calls, and that's up from just over 300 in 2020. That's how significant it is. 

We've had to change policy in the Seattle Fire Department on how we respond to these calls and just this week we sent out a new policy changing our deployment tactics. 

Now when we go on any of these 400 calls, we are deploying our ballistic vests and our ballistic helmets, and we're actually staging four blocks out. That's a change we left to the discretion of our company officers on when we would deploy our ballistic gear... 

Often times we have ended up in places that were unsafe for our firefighters to be where people have been assaulted, or there are stabbings or there are shootings. 

So we're being very intentional and how we connect with Seattle Police Department before we enter these scenes, that becomes very important for the safety of our firefighters."

Deputy Mayor Manesha Harrell addressed mental health issues and how the Mayor's administration intends to address it. She highlighted the fact that as a society we have come to expect the police to take on many roles, some of which they are not best suited for.

"As you all know, public safety is a much broader topic than just police and fire. Public safety is all of the tools that we need in order for people in this city to actually feel safe and that is going to also include mental health supports as well as support for substance abuse, for those who have gone through this very tough time. 

The one thing that should be very clear with this team is that we understand the holistic approach to what it is going to take to bring public safety to the City of Seattle. One of the most important things is resources. 

And that is taking an inventory of all of the resources that we have at our disposal. One of the things that we know is that over the many years of our society, whenever we've had a problem that we don't know what to do with, we've always thrown it on police. You call 911 and you know, not meant to be a joke, but even during the holiday season, during Thanksgiving, they have to remind people not to call 911 when you don't know what temperature to cook your Turkey at. 

So we have to understand that our challenges with public safety come also from right sizing how we direct people in our system to what they need. 

So you've heard from our police chief  and from our Fire Chief today, but also understand that our vision for public safety goes beyond just those two departments. It goes to how do we set up the proper mental health support systems It goes to 'do we need police or fire for every single response that we have out there. 

Every time we've not known what to do with a societal problem, we have thrown that directly on our Police Department to solve, and our fire department has done a fantastic job of stepping up in those opportunities where our Police Department has been depleted. 

But we have to do more than that, and that is where our focus will be over the next year. 

The other avenues that we will be taking in order to ensure that we are not throwing every single problem within our Police Department and spilling that over to our fire department. 

It is very important that we have the Community's input in these processes, and so you will see us reaching out to community, be it virtual or in person. 

We will use all the tools available to us to ensure that community is part of this process and to also ensure that through this we are also working with the Community to educate as to the other tools that will be available  instead of just calling 911 and expecting just strictly a police or fire response. 

We understand the challenges. We know that it goes far beyond the resources we have available to us right now, but we will be working to expand those resources you've heard from the mayor that we are aggressively seeking resources from the state. We will also be aggressively seeking resources from the federal government to be able to ensure that this great city can return to the to the safety that we know it can have."

Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, whose job is focused on homelessness referenced the Mayor's inaugural address as well and provided some updates noting that public safety and homelessness are not "one and the same."

She elaborated, "This is not an issue we can solve overnight, but in just one month we can point to needed action as we continue to develop new and more effective systems to act with urgency and compassion. 

This work includes partnering with CEO Mark Dones to successfully shift nearly 113 million of city investments in homeless services over to the King County Regional Homelessness authority. 

Who is responsible for leading a unified and coordinated approach to addressing homelessness across Seattle and King County. 

We know to be successful requires a true regional response, and I have great faith in Mark's ability to lead impactful change that is guided by executive leadership provided by Mayor Harrell and other members of the governing committee and the voices of people with lived experience. 

We are in the process of realigning existing internal city resources to increase system effectiveness. 

This means we can and are more efficiently deploying resources and improving our customer service and feedback. We will have one database that captures all resident issues and concerns and provides a response to residents in a timely manner. 

This will include development of a public facing dashboard to display key and accessible metrics about our work, helping clearly demonstrate our plan and our progress. 

Finally, we've begun concentrated work at Upper Woodland Park. A team of people meet every week to discuss how to meet the needs of both the housed and unhoused residents in that neighborhood. 

This collaboration includes Council member Strauss, the Phinney Neighborhood Association, The King County Regional Housing Authority, City Department staff, and the mayor's office."