Interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr: "I'm Super Optimistic About Where We're Headed"
We discussed hiring standards, police department culture, those weird recruitment ads, and much more.
By Erica C. Barnett
PubliCola sat down with Interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr last week to talk about police recruitment and hiring, how the department plans to enforce the new SOAP and SODA laws, and how the process of hiring a new permanent police chief is going.
We also talked about the mounted patrol, which I'll spare you, except to say that Rahr would really prefer that the city council doesn't force the department to keep the horses out of a misguided sense of nostalgia for the "good old days."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Erica C. Barnett (ECB): I want to talk about recruitment, starting with SPD’s advertising contract. I’ve heard there’s pushback from officers who say the ads (which show male officers performing heroic acts) that they're not really representative of what an officer does on a day-to-day basis. What do you think of the ads, and do you think that they're working?
Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr (SR) You know, I don't know how you measure if they're working or not. I know that the ads are not popular with police officers. I think there are more effective ways, in my opinion, to inspire and motivate people to apply the Seattle Police Department. One of the things that I have been pushing really hard for, and that we have actually incorporated into some of the videos that we have developed, show female officers doing action assignments in policing. And it's important to me that we portray what real police work looks like. And sometimes real police work is, you know, sitting down, talking to a child and comforting them. Sometimes real police work is running down the street trying to catch somebody. I just think we need to have realistic ads, and we need to make sure that we're showing all kinds of different officers doing the work.
ECB: And what about the hiring bonuses? Do you think that they're the reason more people are applying to be police officers, or are the recent raises a bigger factor?
SR: There's many different things that impact recruiting numbers—it could be the recruiting campaign, it could be the pay raises, it could be a whole number of things. I don't have the expertise, and I don't know who has the expertise, to parse out which one of these different factors increased recruiting.
But I do know that our numbers are up. The way that civil service is processing the applications and administering the testing—that's being done differently. So instead of getting very large batches of names, it's metered out so we're getting a more manageable number of applications. We have really enhanced our backgrounding capacity by contracting with two different organizations that do some of the basic, mundane work of background investigations.
We're just getting ready to sign a contract with a company that's developed an app. When a recruit applies, they download the app on their phone, and the app is enhanced with AI, so that we're staying in constant contact with that applicant. It's called a high-touch strategy. We know with Millennials and Gen Z, a huge component of effective recruiting is to stay in close touch with them. Once a recruit has expressed interest in coming to work for us, we want to bend over backwards to make them feel welcome. We're putting together a mentoring-type program where we assign applicants to a person in the department who then stays in contact with them.
Because what we're really up against is, who can hire good recruits the fastest, and because we're a large organization, historically, we've had a fairly slow process, and we're trying to get more nimble at that so that we can offer a job much more quickly.
“I believe that the best predictor of future behavior is, how did this person behave in their previous job? What behavior have we seen them demonstrate? As opposed to, how are they responding in a testing environment?”
ECB: There has been a narrative on the current city council that the police test the city uses is too challenging, and that the city should shift to a test that most people pass. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission [the agency that administers the tests] has pointed out that the test was designed to help SPD comply with the consent decree by weeding out people who lack the aptitude to be police officers. You’ve defended adopting a test that lets more people through the gates. Why?
SR: My goal is to get the largest possible pool of candidates, and so I'm just looking at this pragmatically. That is, if I'm a person who wants to apply for a police job, I'm going to [choose] the website [with] the test that sends my results to, you know, 100 different agencies. It would take extra motivation for me to go to the other website that tests for a much smaller number of agencies. The things that we're looking for, we will discover in checking references and doing background investigations, I don't know of a written test that can predict bias or future intention of using force. It would take a lot to convince me that.
And again, I want a huge caveat. I am not an expert on this. I am simply saying from a pragmatic, common-sense standpoint, I believe that the best predictor of future behavior is, how did this person behave in their previous job? What behavior have we seen them demonstrate? As opposed to, how are they responding in a testing environment? In my experience, learning about previous behavior is where I would find the most value, and that's where I want to put my focus.
ECB: What you’re saying makes me think of Kevin Dave [the officer who struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula, who had a history of alarming incidents in his previous position], to be honest. There was so much previous behavior there that SPD, I think, should have caught and didn't. He obviously made it through the testing and hiring process. So how do you prevent people like that from getting hired in the future, especially if you make it easier to pass the test?
SR: We have to do a much better backgrounding process. I don't know what happened in that case. To be honest, I haven't reviewed the case yet, because I'm still waiting for [the Office of Police Accountability] to do their investigation. So when I get the investigation from them, I will review the entire file. I'm really, really surprised to hear that he was hired with that that information in his background, and I am going to look at what happened. How did we miss that, or if we knew it, why on earth did we hire him? I don't have the answers to that. But that's disturbing. I can't defend that. I don't know why it happened.
“I don't think the polygraph should ever be used as a conclusion to anything.”
ECB: One of the things that you have talked about is changing the minimum qualifications to be an officer and considering potentially disqualifying factors on a “case by case basis.”
SR: So I'll give you two specific examples. One: I have directed the unit to stop doing the oral board panels, and that's based on what I've learned—[that] the value added by an oral board panel is very, very low. And there is research that oral board panels are more likely to introduce bias. [In an oral board], you have a panel of representatives, usually from the department, and what you're testing is the person's ability to conduct themselves well during an interview. We do an extensive personal interview of the applicant so we get an idea about their communication skills, their ability to engage in a human conversation, I just don't think that there is a lot of value added by conducting an oral board. It takes up time and it slows down the process, and I am very skeptical about the value that it adds.
We had another practice: If a person failed their polygraph exam, they were immediately eliminated. I don't think the polygraph should ever be used as a conclusion to anything. I had experience in the sheriff's office where we had candidates that had excellent backgrounds, they had excellent job references, and failed the polygraph, and my practice was, let's interview them and find out why they failed the polygraph, and if we came up with a plausible explanation, then we're going to go ahead and hire you because all of the predictive behavior that we know about you, like prior performance, all that. Even the state Criminal Justice Training Commission requirements don't set a threshold for what constitutes passing a polygraph. It simply has to be administered, which I think is fine.
ECB: What about other things in people's backgrounds that might be disqualifying under SPD’s current standards, like reckless driving?
SR: I do know that driving behavior is another one of those areas where past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. So depending on what the what the person's age was [and] how often they got traffic citations, that would be more of a case by case basis.
I certainly don't want to unnecessarily weed out a good candidate. And I think as we, as we open our mind to people with different backgrounds and different life experiences, I think we need to really be thoughtful about, you know, is this really a disqualifier?
I mean, I remember when having a tattoo was a disqualifier. My God, we wouldn't have any cops if having tattoos was a disqualifier. And, you know, wearing a beard. Those two things, 20 years ago, were unthinkable, and there were all sorts of beliefs about the kind of people who get tattoos and have beards.
“In an organization where you have supervisors that are emotionally intelligent and have good communication skills, people will feel like, I can be successful at my job. I can try new things. I don't have to do things the way they've always been done.”
So times do change, and that's one of the areas that I think we have to remain open-minded about. Most kids have a little theft or shoplifting in their teenage years. That's not very disturbing to me. But if you're in your mid-20s and you're still doing that sort of thing, to me, that's like, “Nope.” That's a pretty bright line. So we really have to put the behavior in the proper context. How old was the person when the behavior happened, and how much time has elapsed since that behavior happened? And what we're looking for is things that are predictive of future behavior.
ECB: Speaking of making SPD a more welcoming place for different types of people, you've talked about increasing work flexibility and making SPD, essentially, a better place to be a mother. But that isn’t the only barrier to women joining the police force. So what other measures do you want to put in place to recruit and retain women?
SR: I think [we have to] make the work environment a place where people feel welcomed in the workplace. So, yes, the flexibility and those types of things are really important for women. I think for all employees, having a workplace that is generally viewed as fair [is important]. I don't know that the public broadly thinks about procedural justice. In my experience, that's probably the most important element or trait of an organization where employees feel welcome, because they feel like they're going to be treated fairly. Inside an organization like a police department, employees need to feel like they are respected. If they do something good, they're going to be praised. If they do something wrong, they're going to be held accountable, but there's going to be a fair process for them to speak up for themselves or defend themselves if they've made a mistake.
We're going to be starting [a pilot program] this fall, and our plan is to put over 200 internal leaders through this program. And the program focuses on emotional intelligence, communication skills, and how you use those two skills to build a culture that is intentionally just where people feel like they're they matter, they're being listened to, and they can grow. In an organization where you have supervisors that are emotionally intelligent and have good communication skills, people will feel like, I can be successful at my job. I can try new things. I don't have to do things the way they've always been done.
ECB: Turning to the issue of officer capacity, I have heard that the High Risk Victims unit and the vice unit have been effectively eliminated.
SR: They're not eliminated, but they are much lower than they should be. It’s, heartbreaking that they are as low as they are. And you know, it kind of goes back to having two bad choices. Our property crimes unit is, I don't know, one-tenth the size of what it used to be, because we have to focus our resources on crimes against people—but then there are people who are getting their cars stolen, their houses broken into, asking us, why is there no accountability for property crimes? So we are stretched way too thin when it comes to units like the vice unit.
The suffering that happens in sex trafficking is horrific. I just watched an indie documentary called “Sweetheart Deal.” I thought, Gosh, I wish the whole world would watch this. The downside is, it was made 10 years ago. It looks a lot different now on Aurora, because most of the women being trafficked are managed by pimps, and a lot of those pimps are associated with gangs, and so it is much more violent now, and it's virtually impossible for a woman to engage in sex trafficking without a pimp, because she's just simply not safe—not that she's safe with a pimp, but she's even less safe on her own. What it would take to get a woman out of that is an extraordinary amount of work.
ECB: The council has directed SPD to arrest people for prostitution loitering and for violating orders to stay out of certain zones of the city because they’ve been accused of drug and prostitution misdemeanors. Do you think SPD is equipped to enforce all these new laws, given current staffing levels?
SR: One of the things that the SOAP and SODA orders make easier for law enforcement is that if there's an order saying, “Tom Smith cannot be in this area,” and an officer locates Tom Smith in that area, it's a straight-up arrest. They don't have to do surveillance, they don't have to gather evidence. It's a much, much more direct way to make an arrest and have a consequence for that person being back up on Aurora. So it's a very helpful strategy for pimps and johns, to be blunt.
“I want to make it really difficult for people to buy and sell stolen property and to buy and sell drugs. I have much less interest in prosecuting the cases. I just want to break up the business that's going on in the street and causing so much violence and disruption.”
Same thing with staying out of drug areas. To make a case [that someone is] selling narcotics, you have to do surveillance, you have to gather evidence. If there is simply an order for a person who has a track record of dealing drugs, it's much easier to make that arrest and get them out of the area. Our strategy is to break the business cycles in these high-intensity areas. In the Pike-Pine corridor, one of the biggest problems is it's a very, very lucrative drug market and stolen property market. I want to make it really difficult for people to buy and sell stolen property and to buy and sell drugs. I have much less interest in prosecuting the cases. I just want to break up the business that's going on in the street and causing so much violence and disruption.
ECB: But you've been around Seattle for a long time. You've seen these areas. It’s a perennial issue.
SR: I just took another driving tour around Third and Pine this morning. For the last three weeks, it's been relatively clean.
ECB: But they haven’t gone away—they’re just somewhere else in the area. When Third and Pine is cleared, 12th and Jackson gets worse.
SR: They may be somewhere else in the area, but now people who live and work in that area can walk the streets without being frightened and being victims of crimes. I know that the police cannot solve the problem of addiction. They can't solve the problem of untreated mental illness. We can't solve those problems. The only thing we can do is try to make the public area safe for people to walk around.
We are going to be focusing up at 12th and Jackson. The strategy will be a little bit different than it was in the Pike-Pine corridor, because there's different resources available there. Our goal is for it to be safe for people to just walk through the neighborhoods. In the CID, there are so many elderly people that that literally are hiding in their apartments because they're afraid to go out on the street.
ECB: I totally get the problem statement. What you're describing as the solution, frankly, is kind of Whac-a-Mole.
SR: It is, but doing nothing doesn't work either. And what we know is that just having social workers go out and talk to people, in and of itself, is not working. If it was working, we wouldn't have so many people out there. I think you need to have a multi-pronged approach, and if nothing else works, there has to be a backstop.
And again, the goal is to make the streets safe. If somebody is inside their home or their apartment and they're not bothering anybody, it’s not my business, not the police's business, we don't care. But we have an obligation to keep the streets safe for everybody, and if somebody is engaging in behavior in a public area so that other people can't use it, then it's my problem. Doing nothing isn't one of the choices. Last, last
ECB: You’re pretty close to the end of the six months or so that you said you would serve as interim police chief. So how is the police chief recruitment process going? I have heard that multiple candidates dropped out.
SR: I know one candidate has dropped out, but I don't because I'm not managing it. I don't know how many candidates there are. I know of two people that that I am reaching out to that I think would be good fits. But it'll probably be a couple months. It would be lovely if it was all resolved by the end of the year, but I'm not going to make that promise.
In my time here, I really have come to love this department, and I'm not going to walk away until we have identified a really good candidate, because there's so much potential in this department. We do a lot of things really well here, and we have opportunities to do a lot more things really well. And so I'm super optimistic about where we're headed.