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Seattle Police are now above 100 new hires in 2025 as the city and Mayor — and candidate — Bruce Harrell continue to tout a turnaround at the department after years of struggles to bolster dwindling ranks.
The latest update comes after last year’s 84 hires as SPD eked out a small victory by bringing on one more officer than it reported losing.
The press release from the mayor’s office touts the hundred-hire milestone but doesn’t include statistics on the department’s current ranks.
CHS reported here in April as Harrell and new SPD Chief Shon Barnes said that improved hiring totals were being driven by an influx of candidates with the department receiving 1,218 officer applications by the end of the first quarter this year, compared to 690 applications at that point in 2024.
The city’s data shows that applications fell slightly in the second quarter to just under 12 qualified applicants per day.
The signs of a turnaround have continued as Seattle Police officials late last year said the department’s ranks had fallen to the lowest numbers in 30 years as the Seattle City Council expanded a program that pays out a $7,500 hiring bonus to new recruits and boosts bonuses for so-called “lateral” hiring from other police departments to $50,000 as the Harrell administration said Seattle continues to face regional competition for officers.
SPD also launched a new recruiting advertising campaign this summer featuring “cartoon versions of police officers in various heroic scenarios.” The campaign is part of a $2.5 million budget in 2025 for police recruitment advertising and marketing.
The department has also vowed to improve its recruitment of women even as the city faces ongoing harassment litigation from the department under ousted Chief Adrian Diaz.
The starting salary for a SPD officer is now $103,000 for entry level recruits and $116,000 for lateral officers, Harrell’s office says.
The mayor and City Council president Sara Nelson, also facing reelection, have pushed for a goal of growing SPD’s ranks from the just under 1,000 officers on patrol in 2022 to nearly 1,500 by 2027.
Barnes, meanwhile, is holding a series of public safety community forums this summer. A date for a District 3 forum for neighborhoods including Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the Central District has not yet been announced.
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