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Seattle Chief Says City Lacks Enough Officers to Maintain Safety

ven when I was pushing out our budget for next year with the city council, I was explaining the need for us to have people that are going through the academy, that are going through our FTO phase, and then being able to deploy them out,” Chief Adrian Diaz said.

Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz recently told a local radio show, the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH, that the department is having a hard time fielding enough officers to maintain public safety.

The city's officers are leaving for other jurisdictions or retiring at unprecedented rate. City government is working to defund the department. And Diaz's predecessor Chief Carmen Best stepped down over anti-police measures enacted by the city council.

At the moment, Seattle is looking at approximately 1,200 deployable officers. Does Diaz believe that’s enough to keep the city safe?

“No. Even when I was pushing out our budget for next year with the city council, I was explaining the need for us to have people that are going through the academy, that are going through our FTO phase, and then being able to deploy them out,” he said.

“I’m trying to do everything we can to keep all of our officers. We trained them well, they’re doing excellent work day in and day out … I have to make sure that I have the right personnel as we enter into 2021 that’s able to keep this city safe,” he said.

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