Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and Police Chief Shon Barnes this week celebrated what they described as a major milestone in rebuilding the city’s depleted police force: the Seattle Police Department, they said, is on track to hire its 150th officer in 2025. The administration credited a new digital recruitment campaign, an increase in applications, and improved retention trends for what it called a “turnaround” in staffing.
However, internal SPD staffing documents obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI complicate that narrative, showing that while raw hiring numbers have improved, the department remains hundreds of deployable officers short of pre-2020 levels and faces a looming wave of retirements that could erase those gains.
In the press release, the city claims SPD will hire more officers in 2025 than in 2023 and 2024 combined. But SPD’s own year-to-date hiring sheet lists 141 new hires and re-hires for 2024, with projections reaching as high as 170 by year’s end. That is more than double the figure cited publicly. Understating the previous year’s hiring makes current numbers appear more historic than they are.
The city’s 2025 math lumps in recruits, trainees, and unavailable personnel.
None of these groups can independently answer 911 calls, yet all are counted as “sworn.” pic.twitter.com/TnvKey9NFF
— Ari Hoffman 🎗 (@thehoffather) October 30, 2025
More importantly, not all officers counted as “hired” are deployable. According to SPD’s internal data, the department currently has 79 recruits who are not yet sworn and 101 officers still in field training. Another 49 sworn employees are unavailable due to injury, leave, or other circumstances. Although these individuals appear in the department’s topline staffing totals, none are independently able to respond to 911 calls.
Right now, only 837 officers are actually deployable in Seattle.
In late 2020, that number was 1,129.
Seattle is still nearly 300 deployable officers short of pre-defund minimum staffing levels. pic.twitter.com/xdWzhQJsMC
— Ari Hoffman 🎗 (@thehoffather) October 30, 2025
The real figure that matters for public safety is SPD’s number of available, deployable officers. As of late October, that figure stands at 837. By comparison, SPD had 1,129 deployable officers in September of 2020. Seattle is still down nearly 300 deployable officers from the baseline staffing level that city leaders insisted was already inadequate at the time.
Meanwhile, a massive portion of the force is retirement-eligible.
Internal demographics show:
38% are 45+
32% are 47+
28% are 49+
A retirement cliff is approaching. pic.twitter.com/iIKrM0Z86M
— Ari Hoffman 🎗 (@thehoffather) October 30, 2025
The city’s optimism also ignores a demographic problem. Internal age-distribution data show that 38 percent of the department is 45 or older, and more than a quarter is 49 or older. Many of those officers are eligible to retire now or soon. Even if SPD’s hiring pace holds, a retirement wave over the next two to three years could wipe out any progress.
In response to questions about separations, an SPD spokesman noted that attrition has recently moderated. According to department figures, SPD recorded 97 separations in 2023, 83 in 2024, and 63 so far in 2025 as of September 30. The department projects 81 separations for the full calendar year — a decrease of roughly 16.5 percent. The spokesman cautioned, however, that retirement eligibility alone is not a reliable predictor of actual departures. SPD updates its staffing model annually, using recent data to estimate separations, noting that attrition rates have fluctuated significantly. Before the pandemic, attrition ran around 6.8 percent in 2018 and 6.4 percent in 2019. It jumped to 13.6 percent in 2021 before dropping back toward pre-pandemic levels in 2024.
SPD’s current staffing model assumes a 6 percent attrition rate for fully trained officers in 2026 — approximately 60 officers — consistent with projections for 2025. The department expects total separations among fully trained officers to increase gradually as the size of the fully trained workforce grows, unless attrition rates decline further. That model underscores the central tension: hiring can increase, but if separations follow suit, net gains remain fragile.
The city points to 3,300 job applicants in the first three quarters of 2025 as evidence of renewed interest in policing. Application volume, however, is not the same as successful completion. Historically, 30 to 40 percent of candidates fail background checks, academy courses, or field-training evaluations, and recruits take roughly eighteen months to reach full deployment. Meanwhile, experienced officers leaving the force take institutional knowledge and investigative skill with them, widening the gap between “sworn” and “street-ready.”
The press release also highlights the department’s marketing campaign, new recruiting website, and outreach aimed at military service members transitioning out of active duty. While these efforts may help broaden the candidate pool, they do not address the immediate shortage of fully trained officers available today.
By contrast, SPD’s own documents acknowledge the gap between sworn headcount and deployable strength. While the city publicly cites a total sworn staffing level of 1,123, that number includes recruits who have never been on patrol, trainees who cannot operate independently, command staff, and unavailable personnel. Residents calling 911 experience a department that is several hundred officers smaller than the city suggests.
The administration’s messaging reflects a political shift away from the “defund” rhetoric of 2020, but omits the continued consequences of those policies, including slower response times, reduced neighborhood patrols, and periodic suspension of specialized investigative units because of staffing shortages.
To its credit, the city has clearly improved recruitment, and 2024 may indeed become the first year since 2019 in which hires outpace departures. But hiring alone does not solve the department’s underlying challenges. The looming retirement cliff, the eighteen-month ramp-up time for recruits, and the loss of seasoned investigators all complicate the celebratory tone of the press release.
Put simply, Seattle is hiring aggressively, but it remains far from fully staffed. The gap between public messaging and internal data illustrates how difficult rebuilding the department remains, even under improved political conditions.
Seattle residents will ultimately measure progress not by how many recruits appear in glossy marketing videos, but by how many trained officers show up when they call for help.
