The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday. The Seattle Police Department has been under a federal consent decree since 2012.
SEATTLE — On Wednesday, a federal judge will decide whether the Seattle Police Department should continue to be under federal oversight. The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. and is open to the public.
The department has been under a federal consent decree since 2012.
In August of 2010, then-Seattle police officer Ian Birk shot and killed a First Nations woodcarver, John T. Williams, giving him four seconds to drop a carving knife that wasn’t open.
A Department of Justice investigation revealed the shooting was ‘unjustified,’ and established federal oversight in the hopes of reforming use-of-force protocols, crisis intervention, supervision, and accountability for Seattle police.
In 2018, the federal court ruled the city had “achieved full and effective compliance with the consent decree,” and allowed the city to enter a sustainment period.
Then in 2020, as the department responded to protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, “SPD at times did not comply with its policies mandated by the Consent Decree relating to de-escalation, use of force decision making, officer force reporting and supervisory review of force.”
The federal court lifted several provisions in 2023, and SPD achieved partial termination of the consent decree. However, crowd-control and accountability systems remained under oversight.
Then, in July of 2025, the city of Seattle filed a motion to terminate the consent decree completely, with the Department of Justice filing a response in support of termination of the consent decree.
The Seattle Community Police Commission also filed an amicus brief supporting the termination, mainly citing its desire to return SPD oversight to local organizations as well as to the community.
This story is developing and will be updated with the outcome of the hearing.
