Seattle cops won’t respond to alarm calls without ‘supporting evidence’: police chief

According to a Sept. 13 letter from interim Seattle Police Chief Sue Rahr, beginning Oct. 1, SPD will only dispatch officers to calls from alarm companies if there is supporting evidence of a crime, such as audio, video, panic alarms, or eyewitnesses that a person is illegally entering or attempting to enter a residence or commercial property.

Rahr wrote in the letter, "With depleted resources, we cannot prioritize a patrol response when there is a very low probability that criminal activity is taking place."

SPD has lost over 700 officers since the Seattle City Council began defunding the department in 2020 in response to the riots that rocked the Emerald City following the death of George Floyd.

The Seattle 911 Center receives approximately 13,000 annual residential and commercial burglary alarm calls from monitoring companies and according to Rahr, most of those calls are due to an "unintended sensor trip by a homeowner or business employee,” while others are the result of “old or failing equipment."

In 2023, less than 4 percent of the calls were confirmed to have a crime associated with them that resulted in an arrest or report being written.

Washington Alarm told KOMO News, "The verified response policy has been tried and rejected numerous times including by cities such as Dallas, Texas, and San Jose, California. It goes against best practices established through a collaborative effort by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriff’s Association.”

The new policy will affect over 75,000 alarm sites in Seattle as 911 response times have continued to grow in the city. Additionally, SPD is still seeing more separations than new hires and is at its lowest staffing levels since the 1950s while Washington is dealing with the highest rates of burglary and auto theft in the US and is the state most affected by retail crime.