(The Center Square) – The Seattle Police Department’s goal of increasing female officer staffing levels to 30% by 2030 as part of its 30×30 Initiative remains elusive.
According to data collected by The Center Square, SPD’s female entry-level hires made up 10% of the 1,163 candidates who were sent to the department for pre-employment screening. That is a 3% increase from 2023, but 3% less than hires made in 2022.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office told The Center Square in an email that Harrell is continuing to focus on recruiting more women and the city’s 2025-2026 budget has funded dedicated staff in SPD to work toward the 30% mark.
Seattle City Councilmember and Public Safety Committee Chair Bob Kettle said that the city needs to do better in recruiting women. He added that the Seattle City Council was able to pass a number of bills to address SPD’s staffing shortage as a whole.
The new data reveals that there were 139% more hires in 2024 (1,163) than in 2023 (487) as a result of the city council approving a number of initiatives to boost police staffing. This includes streamlining the hiring process, incentivizing people interested to join the department whether as an entry-level officer or a lateral hire, and approving a labor agreement with the Seattle Police Officers Guild.
Kettle notes that despite the growing number of candidates, he is still seeing a lack of women candidates through the department’s “Before the Badge” program, which is a five-week pre-academy course for recruits to learn about relational policing skills and officer wellness tools.
There is optimism that incoming Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes can boost the number of female officers in the department. Barnes previously served as the chief of the Madison Police Department in Wisconsin, where he advanced the department’s inclusive workforce initiative that has resulted in 28% of officers being women.
“Chief Barnes understands that you need to lead and produce that environment that fosters these pieces,” Kettle told The Center Square in a phone call.
Harrell also released his SPD Recruitment and Retention Plan in 2022 to address the department’s staffing issues. One goal of the plan is to expand the pool of law enforcement recruits to include people with diverse racial and immigration backgrounds who speak languages other than English.
Despite the significant increase in the number of candidates sent to the department for pre-employment screening, the ethnicity of candidates has remained consistent ,with white applicants at 40.1% in 2024, which is 6.3% less than the 46.4% of hires in 2022, when there were only 494 hires.
“One promising fact from the surge in applications is that 60% of applicants were people of color, showing that efforts to increase the diversity of people applying to join SPD has improved,” Callie Craighead, Harrell’s press secretary, told The Center Square. “We are hopeful that Chief Shon Barnes will be able to build on the momentum we are currently seeing in applications and hiring and work towards a police service that reflects the demographics of Seattle.”