Former King County Sheriff says if residents want to defund police, 'so be it'

SEATTLE -- Amid talks of defunding Seattle Police, former King County Sheriff John Urquhart has weighed in about public safety and the major impacts it could have.

“You can’t take away without getting rid of cops. That’s just a fact of life and that’s what’s going to happen,” Urquhart said.

Urquhart said when he was running the sheriff’s office, more than 90% of the budget went to salaries and benefits.  A 50% cut to SPD, as supported by several Seattle City Council members, could mean losing half of SPD's roughly 1,300 officers.

“Fewer police on the street, the longer the response time, so if your home is burglarized it will take that much longer to get there. If you have a school shooting, it take us that much longer to get there,” Urquhart said.

Urquhart said things like property crime, something plaguing many residents, will be even harder to address.

“It’s more than just taking the report. There has to be follow up to those crimes to arrest the bad guys, and that’s always difficult to do. If there are less officers it will be more difficult to do,” Urquhart said.

Then there is law enforcement training, which the former sheriff says is expensive and would have to be scaled down with any significant budget cuts.

"For de-escalation, you would lose training for use of deadly force or force at all, tasers, which are all so important,” Urquhart said.

Despite all of the ramifications, Urquhart is not taking a stance on defunding police, he said.

“What I am for is the public making that decision. We serve at the pleasure of the public. It should be their decision. If the public doesn’t want as many of us now, so be it, if they want us to do something else, so be it,” Urquhart said.

He said the best leaders would be bringing the sides together to find a way to move forward rather than creating a deeper divide.

“The police needs the public to support them. We cannot survive, we cannot be efficient, if we don’t have the support of the public, and to a large extent we don’t have that right now,” Urquhart said.

Urquhart said although Seattle Police are the first to face calls of defunding in our region, he predicts many other departments will be faced with the same issue.

“What does the public want their police department to do? There is a lot of talk about it right now, and there should be. For too long, we the police have said, 'We are the cops, you are not. Don’t tell us how to do our job.' That is absolutely the wrong attitude to have,” Urquhart said.

Urquhart said if city leaders do end up significantly cutting SPD’s budget, they will have to come to terms with not only longer response times, but also officers not responding to some calls at all.

For example, Urquhart said police shouldn’t have to respond to dog calls, neighbor disputes and any incident involving someone in mental health distress. He said police are called upon to solve many of society’s problems, and they should not be expected to anymore.