See Bruce Harrell website
My 10 Promises to you as Mayor in my First Year
Seattle voters have less than 5 days to make their decision on Seattle’s next mayor. Our campaign has had the strongest message to move our city forward and make sure we include all our citizens in our success. I am the only candidate with a plan to fix our traffic and public safety issues. I will provide our schools the resources to succeed. During this election, we have had the most debates and forums and the Seattle Times wrote, “an ex-football star who has dominated debates this campaign season.” A network of neighborhood newspapers wrote, “When Harrell talks, he doesn’t parse his words; he says what he means, and he means what he says…Harrell may be the type of strong, capable leader who arises in the city once in a generation.”
I will listen and be a mayor you can trust. But most importantly, my job as Mayor is to help you succeed and improve the quality of life for you and your family. This is my promise to you as mayor in my first year:
1) “College for Everyone” – New College Endowment Fund
As mayor, I will allow every graduate in Seattle Public Schools the option of attending a local college tuition-free for one year. Our youth will see opportunity beyond high school.
2) 20 Community Service Officers
As mayor, I will hire 20 new community service officers who will come from your neighborhood and will walk your streets to protect you. Four will be deployed in each precinct, reflecting and knowing the communities they serve. They will strengthen our community presence, build relationships, obtain street intelligence and conduct outreach for our police department. Community-service officers will forge a stronger link in neighborhoods between police and residents.
3) Empowerment Centers
The City is underutilizing our community centers as a resource. As mayor, I will re-engineer our community centers into Empowerment Centers. In those facilities, we will empower students to be leaders; seniors to use technology and embrace physical fitness; young adults to develop self-esteem. These centers will provide better life skills for our community that go beyond basic athletics. I have met with Magic Johnson to bring this concept to Seattle to provide our communities access to resources and programming that educate, empower and strengthen individuals.
4) Implement “Street Bump” App to Solve Pothole Problem
Do you drive over an annoying pothole every day? Shouldn’t the city know about this pothole? As mayor, I will implement a new software system to automatically report a pothole to the City. The app is called “Street Bump” and would allow drivers with smartphones to automatically report a pothole to the City as soon as they hit a pothole. This is an innovative, smart public safety and technology solution to fix potholes as soon as possible, save the city money, and improve the drivers’ experience on the roads.
5) Office of Innovation
As mayor, I will create the Office of Innovation. The Office of Innovation will serve as the City’s incubator for pilot projects that will help residents and businesses. I will build partnerships between city departments, regional businesses and entrepreneurs to develop improved services that will make our city better and your lives a little bit easier. We will re-invent public-private partnerships and connect great ideas and the smarts of Seattleites to improve education, safety and neighborhood connectivity.
6) Make Seattle the hub for “the hottest job in the 21st century”
As mayor, I will spur job growth. Data science is a new field that will revolutionize businesses, government, health care and academia. Big Data is the embracement of technology, decision making and public policy. Data scientists examine large datasets, use mathematical models to analyze it, create visualizations to explain it and then make recommendations. In the next five years, there will be almost half a million jobs plus an additional 1.5 million in support staff positions. To meet the demand, the United States will need to increase the number of graduates in this field by as much as 60 percent. The Big Data market will grow to $24 billion by 2016. The size of the digital universe will grow to 40 trillion gigabytes by 2020, up from 130 billion in 2005. I will work with the University of Washington to ensure we are out-competing other schools in Big Data courses, degree programs and certificate programs. UW has opened the eScience Institute for studying data and has a new Ph.D. program in Big Data.
7) Deploy Body Cameras on Police Officers in First Year
As mayor, I will deploy Body-Worn-Video cameras to 800 officers. Studies from other cities report these results: police departments had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often, when force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift. All parties stand to benefit, the public is protected from police misconduct, officers are protected from false complaints and the city’s judgment claim fund reduces.
8) New Police Chief
As mayor, I will hire a new Police Chief that is inspirational, smart, thoughtful and proactive. He or she must command the respect of the rank and file and its leadership and give the equal amount of respect to them. He or she must be able to demand from the command staff accountability, transparency and zero tolerance for having a wedge driven between rank and file and command staff. Under my leadership, we will have a chief who is capable of openly engaging with the community, and committed to building an environment of excellence rooted in continual learning, development and improvement. Our chief will be bold.
9) Proactive Policing Plan, Advanced Data-Driven Policing, and Gun Shot Locator System:
Demanding arrest and charge data, I determined that between 2010 and 2012, the police identified 206 occurrences of Pedestrian Interference. This includes Obstruction and Aggressive Begging. But during that same time frame, only 24 people were charged for Aggressive Begging. The City prosecuted 20 and over 1/3 pled guilty. So what does this data mean? The law is effective and the problem is the lack of analysis between what is happening out there on the streets and what is happening in the courtroom. The percentage of arrests to prosecutions has to be higher and the percentages have to be defined and measured. As mayor, I will demand police metrics and performance through a Proactive Policing Plan that holds the police department accountable.
In 2010, I directed the City, through the Open Data Initiative (data.seattle.gov) to publish its data online in machine-readable formats. Applying that approach to SPD will enhance the crime prevention strategies by maximizing crime data analysis to proactively prevent crimes. Companies like IBM provide holistic and integrated data systems that pull information from several regional sources to help fight crime. As mayor, I will examine a 3 phase implementation plan for efficient operations, effective law enforcement and improved transparency in the police department. The analytics will recognize patterns in crime statistics, advance comprehension of the events that trigger crime, and proactively take action to deploy vital police resources.
I was the first elected official to bring up vendors to display technology that would determine the exact location of gunfire when shots occur and allow us to gain intelligence relative to who fired the shots and whether there was a victim. Mike McGinn proposed $957,000 dollars for an automated gunfire locator system, which would have provided 2 miles in coverage. The problem with McGinn’s proposal is that it cost $478,530 to cover a 1-mile radius. Research shows that better options exist that can cover 1-square mile for $40,000-$60,000. As Mayor, I will deploy a cost effective automated gunfire locator system. Police will know the exact location of gunshots, how many shots were fired, the original shooter’s location, speed and direction of travel and exact time of gunfire.
10) Seattle STRIDE: Safety Through Increased Daily Exercise
Seattle will begin building a network of walking groups throughout the city that allows community members to take organized walks in their neighborhood as a means to activate their streets, strengthen their neighborhood relationships and increase the health of its participants. We will make sure our streets are well lit and use our Community Service Officers to build a healthy community, even when our daylight ends early during the winter months.
See Bruce Harrell website
Seattle Action Network 