But a year since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis, feelings toward the ongoing consent decree — the bureaucratic term for the police oversight agreement between Seattle and the federal government — are mixed.
At a time of tremendous grassroots organizing for change, the consent decree is heavy from the top down. The decree, a preferred tool of former President Barack Obama and possibly President Joe Biden, has a singular goal: to ensure that local policing is constitutional. But it doesn’t go deep enough to meet the demands of people advocating systemic change.
Activists demand a reshaping of the very definition of public safety. The result is a City Hall struggling to
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