Almost two years after the Seattle City Council instituted woke policies that slashed the police force, the city’s police department is so short-staffed it did not investigate any sexual assault cases last month, according to a report.
KUOW, an NPR affiliate, reported the understaffed department only has four detectives in the city assigned to sexual assaults, but almost all are investigating child abuse cases.
For instance, in March, not a single sexual assault case involving an adult victim was assigned to a detective, according to the publicly-funded news outlet, citing documentation provided by a whistleblower.
“The Seattle Police Department sexual assault unit is not at all investigating adult sexual assault reports or cases unless there was an arrest,” a source inside the department said.
The lack of police officers also means that in some cases, people calling to report a sexual assault are routed to the automated telephone reporting unit, designed to address non-urgent calls such as stolen checks, KUOW reported.
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Jamie Housen, the spokesperson for Mayor Bruce Harrell, said the sexual assault and child abuse unit was decreased to four detectives before Harrell took office.
“Any lack of urgency around sexual assault investigations or arrests is wholly unacceptable. Sexual assault cases must be exhaustively investigated, and offenders must be held accountable – period,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “When we assumed office, the SPD Sexual Assault Unit had a depleted number of deployable staff and our evaluation of these limited resources underscore the need for increasing SPD staffing to ensure justice for survivors.”
“Chief Diaz is already in the process of providing our office with detailed and data-based information on the status of sexual assault investigations and what immediate improvements can be made in this area, including additional staff,” the statement continued. “Our administration’s proposed budget will reflect this priority by increasing detectives, resources, and specific training for investigations.”
As CBN News reported, in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Milwaukee police officers in 2020, the Seattle City Council voted to slash its police budget by nearly $4 million and 100 officers.
The action led to the resignation of Police Chief Carmen Best, the city’s first black police chief.
In 2019, the police department had 1,281 deployable officers. After the city council approved more cuts, which took effect at the end of last year, there were only 958 left to protect the residents of the large city, according to KUOW.
In his first State of the City address in February, Mayor Harrell called for hiring more police officers to combat the city’s rising crime.
The depleted staffing we see today does not allow us to react to emergencies and crime with the response times our residents deserve,” he said. “It does not allow us to staff the specialty teams we need for issues like domestic violence or DUI or financial crimes targeting the elderly. It does not allow us to conduct the thorough investigations we expect to make sustainable change.”
Harrell said the city had the funding to hire 125 new officers this year and would be “rolling out a new campaign to recruit the next generation of Seattle Police.”
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