2010 SPD Stats

Anyone else out there feel like there's been a rise in the number of Seattle Police Department issues over the past couple years? My first thought here was that this was merely recency bias rearing its head once again. Or, perhaps, there were more media reports because the Infotainment Gods demanded more b.s. for the masses.

Well now there's data to help give some answers.

First, something to hold in the mind while reading the data: According to the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability's (OPA) 2010 Statistics Report, overall use of force by SPD decreased to 1/5th the national rate by 2009. Furthermore, the number of officers without a complaint within the year has increased from 2008 to 2010 by almost 3 percentage points (79.6 to 82.5 percent). This increase appears to be the result of a decrease in the number of officers with 1 complaint within the year.

Some good news to be sure, however, the percent of officers with 2 complaints has more than doubled over the two years from 1.3% to 2.7%. Looking specifically at use of force complaints, contrary to overall complaints, the number of officers with one complaint did not change in 2010 compared to 2008 and yet the number of officers with two complaints increased from 7 to 13. Additionally, while SPD's use of force was around 20% of the nation in 2009, it increased by 30% in 2010 and where that puts SPD is not discussed in OPA's report.

In his recent blog post, Tim Burgess mentioned that while the SPD argues that the use of force is substantially under the national average, "[s]ome members of the community believe that use of force complaints are underreported because citizens are leery of complaining or don't trust the OPA to properly investigate such complaints." The OPA plans to pursue this line of question through independent investigation.

So, what do these data suggest? My initial interpretation would be that the rise in the percent of officers with multiple complaints, and specifically use of force complaints, should be taken as more important than the increase in the percent of officers who have no complaints or reduction in those with one. Multiple infractions for a single officer seems more likely to indicate an issue that needs to be solved, and a rise in this number is troubling. Other data that would be interesting to see would be to look at the officer pool by the total number of complaints per officer. Do the same officers get complaints not only multiple times per year, but multiple years in a row?