Chris Pandolfo – Fox News Aug 2, 2023

Seattle-Mayor-Bruce-Harrell

In a move that has outraged police, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office issued guidelines calling for fewer White men and veterans to be featured in Seattle Police Department (SPD) recruitment materials, according to a memo obtained by “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH and shared with Fox News Digital.

The March 2023 memo, titled “SPD Marketing More and Less,” was written by Ben Dalgetty, a Digital Strategy Lead from the mayor’s office who is in charge of SPD recruitment efforts. In the document, first reported by Rantz, Dalgetty calls for more photos and videos of “officers of color” who are “younger” and of “different genders” to be featured in the department’s marketing materials.

Conversely, Dalgetty instructed there should be “less” images and videos of “officers who are white, male” and “officers with military bearing,” a directive critics have called “flat-out discrimination.”

“This doesn’t mean no officers who are white or male or only young officers of color, but guidelines to shift the proportions of our photo/video collateral to more of some things and less of others,” the March 2023 memo to SPD human resources staff emphasized.

However, the guidance infuriated Officer Mike Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

Sloan told Seattle radio host Jason Rantz that the police union fully supports “95% of what is listed in this recruiting document,” but cannot abide by “discrimination.”

“What I condemn and will forever continue to push back on is the verbiage within the recruitment document that calls for less of white male officers. Less of people in leadership positions, and less of humans with military backgrounds. This is flat-out discrimination. Period. It is an affront to decency, reasonableness and further divides our communities,” Sloan wrote in a statement to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH. “When politics is intentionally inserted into the public safety policing conversation, we all lose. It is embarrassing, shameful, and detrimental to a healthy functioning society.”

Harrell’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

The memo appears to be part of a diversity, equity and inclusion strategy that Harrell promised to implement as police recruitment lags. The mayor’s Comprehensive Police Recruitment and Retention Plan passed by the Seattle City Council last year, prioritizes applicants with “diverse racial and immigration backgrounds.”

Emails obtained by Fox News show the mayor’s office planned an ad campaign targeting minority communities for police recruitment. In March 2023, Dalgetty worked with SPD human resources staff to create promotional materials for the planned recruitment drive in April. The campaign would advertise with the Seattle Medium and Urban Contemporary station KYIZ, which are promoted toward Seattle’s Black community, classical regional Mexican radio station El Rey and the International Examiner, a newspaper focused on the Asian American community.

Police sources who spoke to “The Jason Rantz Show” expressed shock that the mayor’s office would put their racial preferences for the recruitment campaign in writing.

“I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? You put this in writing?'” one SPD source reportedly said. “It shows not only a lack of respect for officers, but a lack of respect for the military. They have no understanding of someone willing to put their lives on the line for their fellow man. They don’t have respect.”

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