Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best tendered her resignation yesterday after the Seattle City Council voted to cut the Police Department’s budget by roughly $4 million (around 1% of the entire budget).
The cut in funding would result in a reduction in force of the Police Department by about 100 officers. Some officers will be laid off while others will not be replaced through attrition.
“To the Women and Men of the Seattle Police Department,” Best wrote in a letter to her officers last night. “I wanted to notify you that I will be retiring from the Seattle Police Department, effective September 2nd, 2020. I wanted you to hear this from me, but some media have reached this conclusion on their own.”
“This was a difficult decision for me, but when it’s time, it’s time,” she wrote.
Best has been at odds with city officials for several months over how to best respond to violence and riots that erupted there in the wake of the George Floyd killing.
Last month she warned that the police would not be able to protect property from anarchists after the City Council vote to ban crowd control tools.
In June she criticized a 6-block area taken over by rioters that would become known as the Capital Hill Occupied Zone, or CHOP.
Two African-American men were killed within that zone in the span of two weeks.
“It’s very unfortunate that we have yet another murder in this area identified as the CHOP – two African-American men dead at a place where they claim to be working for Black Lives Matter,” Best said.