Seattle police no longer face restrictions for misdemeanor bookings

SEATTLE – It’s been a little more than a week since jail booking restrictions were lifted, enabling Seattle police to book people into the King County Jail for low-level offenses, like shoplifting or property destruction, for the first time in more than four years. But not much has changed – yet.

Officers and sergeants are still adjusting to the shift and, with winter weather in full effect, there’s a reduction in the number of potential bookings to begin with, Deputy Chief Eric Barden said. But the lifting of restrictions first put in place at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic means officers can again weigh whether there’s a public safety benefit to getting someone off the streets, however briefly.

“We’ve had people tell us, ‘You can’t arrest me for that.’ Well, that was true, but now we can. We’re hoping to get a little bit of accountability back,” Barden said Monday. “We’re not running around looking to throw people in jail – that’s not our deal either. We’re just trying to provide the most efficient public safety to the citizens of Seattle that we can.”

King County’s public defenders argue that locking up misdemeanant offenders disproportionately impacts the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, often disrupting any progress they’ve made in securing housing, jobs and medical treatment. On the flip side, city Attorney Ann Davison said the booking restrictions have hindered officers’ ability to disrupt criminal activity and caused repeated delays in resolving cases, either through diversion programs or in Seattle Municipal Court.

Officers have always been able to arrest and book into jail people suspected of committing felonies and certain misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, including domestic-violence related offenses, DUIs and some weapons offenses. But people arrested for theft, property destruction and other low-level crimes were barred from being booked as part of an effort that began in 2020 to reduce the spread of COVID in congregate settings like King County’s two jails in Seattle and Kent.

Those restrictions were extended, even as the danger posed by COVID receded, because of a staffing shortage among the jails’ corrections officers, who for years were required to work mandatory overtime shifts to fill the gaps.

The number of jail staff vacancies has shrunk from more than 100 at the start of the year to just more than 60, said Noah Haglund, a spokesperson for the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. Mandatory overtime is also on the decline, although is still sometimes used, he said.

Hiring bonuses for new corrections officers and pay and hotel incentives for those who volunteer to work overtime shifts have helped ease the pressure, said Dennis Folk, president of the King County Corrections Guild. The incentives for current officers expire at the end of the year.

“Vacancies are going down … so I think we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Folk said, adding he’s heard from corrections officers who wanted to volunteer for overtime, but there were no shifts available.

A contract between Seattle and King County went into effect Nov. 1, opening 135 beds per day to people arrested by Seattle police for misdemeanor offenses. Before, Seattle police had access to roughly 200 beds for people booked on misdemeanors, but they haven’t been able to use near that number since the pandemic.

“The jail contract with the city of Seattle was structured to help King County jails manage operations at current staffing and resident population levels, while also providing Seattle with more flexibility on bookings,” Haglund said in an email.

Since the booking restrictions were lifted, around 70 of the 135 beds have been used daily. While nearly 90% of the current Seattle and Kent jail populations of just more than 1,400 people are awaiting trial on felony charges, many people who are booked don’t stay long. In the last couple of weeks, more than half of the people released were incarcerated for less than three days, with an average length of stay of around 45 days, according to the department’s data dashboard.

Matt Sanders, the interim director of the county’s Department of Public Defense, said in a statement that lifting the restrictions undermines racial equity, public safety and public health.

“Lifting jail booking restrictions puts people who are presumed innocent in jail for unproven allegations involving nonviolent misdemeanors that may never even be charged,” Sanders said in the statement. “Studies have repeatedly shown that this undermines rather than improves public safety and increases the likelihood of someone committing an offense in the future.”

Being incarcerated for even one or two days can disrupt someone’s progress when it comes to housing, employment and treatment for behavioral health conditions, Sanders said.

Davison, the city attorney, said there was a lot of frustration by officers and residents over the booking restrictions. She used the example of someone smashing storefront windows. A business owner or employee would call 911, an officer would respond and then have to explain why the suspect was being allowed to go free. Even if the officer referred a report to the city attorney’s office for charges and a warrant was issued, that same person couldn’t be booked on the warrant, even if they were stopped again, Davison said.

King County Executive Dow Constantine has twice issued exemptions to the restrictions that directly impacted people arrested by Seattle police.

The first was issued in early 2022 for the city attorney’s High Utilizer Initiative, allowing police to book roughly 100 people deemed frequent misdemeanor offenders. The second exemption was put in place for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan for people arrested in the downtown core.

But those exemptions required officers – who would otherwise just need to determine whether they had probable cause to make an arrest – to query whether someone was on the high-utilizer list or confirm the arrest fell within a specific geographic zone, Davison said.

“What we need is the entire spectrum of response that we have available,” Davison said. She said she’s been pushing to have the restrictions lifted since she first took office in 2022.

She said eliminating the booking restrictions is a tool for police officers “to be responsive in the moment, when we call and ask for them to show up because criminal activity is occurring.”

Given the Seattle Police Department’s own staffing crisis, Barden, the deputy chief, said officers are still being asked to use their judgment about when to book someone into jail on a misdemeanor offense, estimating it can take 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours of an officer’s time to complete a booking.

He said it was frustrating for officers to identify and detain someone creating a public safety hazard and then be forced to leave that person in the environment where they were victimizing others. He added that it’s not uncommon for officers to encounter the same person two or three times in a shift when that person is clearly decompensating and committing low-level crimes like theft or property destruction.

“That would be an appropriate time to make an arrest and book them, to try to get them out of the negative cycle they’re in,” Barden said. In jail, “there’s a stabilization – they’re fed, they’re warm, they’re dry and their basic health issues can be addressed.”