Seattle Mayor Exploring “Unarmed Civilian Response” to Police Functions
According to MyNorthwest.com (Seattle-KIRO-KTTH Radio) Mayor Jenny Durkin issued an executive order Thursday to begin exploring what Police functions could be transferred to civilian control.
This goes well beyond clerical and records keeping. The timeline lays out an analysis Durkin wants to see of Seattle's 911 response time, and a plan to develop what an unarmed civilian response to some 'police functions' would look like in the future.
That's a rather interesting statement. Based upon previous reports in Seattle and other cities that are pressing hard to defund, there's been suggestions of replacing officers with social workers or crisis control people. But civilians? Will be very interesting to see what 'functions' they would send a civilian to.
The city also wants to explore a "technological" solution to what it calls low priority 911 calls. Sounds like computers handling "low level" emergencies?
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