MEMORANDUM

To: Port of Seattle Commissioners

From: Bookda Gheisar, Senior Director, OƯice of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion,

Chief Michela Villa, Port of Seattle Police Department

Date: October 10, 2025

Re: Policing Assessment Implementation Review Committee: Summary of 2025 Review

Executive summary

Motion 2020-15 led to the hiring of our consultants at 21CP and the formation of standing,

cross-departmental implementation teams that have sequenced and implemented policy,

training, hiring, transparency, and data improvements beginning in 2022.

In 2025, in response to Commission President Hasegawa’s direction to provide additional

analysis and oversight of 21CP’s work, Executive Director Metruck requested that a

committee review the 21CP annual progress reports to conﬁrm that the recommendations

are consistent with the Port’s equity and inclusion policies. This new committee, the

Policing Assessment Implementation Review Committee, will continue to meet in the next

two years to support and review reports from 21CP. For 2025, the committee has chosen

to focus on fourteen HR-related recommendations for additional independent review. This

memo describes the work that has been done to date on these items, as well as the work

that lies ahead as we near the ﬁnal implementation deadline for all 52 recommendations in

Q2 2026.

Background:

On September 14, 2021, after a year of comprehensive interviews and analysis involving

over 50 external subject matter experts, Port employees, and the Port of Seattle Police

Department (POSPD), the Port of Seattle’s Task Force on Port Policing and Civil Rights

released a ﬁnal assessment report. This report was launched as a result of Motion 2020-

15, which required a comprehensive assessment of POSPD utilizing “the highest

nationwide standards,” with speciﬁc direction on hiring panel diversity, training, equity,

use-of-force, oversight, transparency, and advocacy.

The report, which was brought together by consulting ﬁrm 21CP Solutions, covers the Port

of Seattle Police Department’s policies, protocols, and procedures impacting issues of

diversity, equity, and civil rights. External stakeholders, consultants, and staƯ identiﬁed a

total of 52 recommendations for the POSPD in the report.

In 2022, the Port established the Policing Assessment Implementation Team (PAIT),

comprised of an internal team of Port employees, which reviewed and prioritized adoption

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of the 52 recommendations. In 2023, POSPD contracted with 21CP for a second time to

review the progress of implementing the recommendations and to share its ﬁndings each

year in a report, making transparent the implementation process and outcomes. 21CP will

issue a report every April for the 2023-2026 period to report on the implementation

process.

In November 2024, Port of Seattle Executive Director Metruck requested that a committee

review the 21CP annual progress reports to conﬁrm that the recommendations are

consistent with the Port’s equity and inclusion policies. This committee is called the

Policing Assessment Implementation Review Committee, and its review (captured in this

memo) is meant to complement the 21CP progress reports.

Policing Assessment Implementation Review Committee membership:

Co-chairs: Chief Mike Villa and Bookda Gheisar

Internal:

1. Milton Ellis, Labor Relations

2. Ericka Singh, Human Resources

3. Delmas Whittaker, Maritime Division

External:

4. Monisha Harrell, King County, County Exec oƯice

5. Shaunie Wheeler, MLK Labor (formerly Teamsters, Local 117, Political & Legislative

Director, Joint Council of Teamsters No. 28)

This committee has met monthly since November 2024 and has reviewed all 52

recommendations and the most signiﬁcant ﬁndings and focus areas. For its 2025 review,

this committee decided to focus on 14 of the recommendations related to HR. Please see

below for a narrative of the Committee’s ﬁndings on these recommendations in 2025 and a

preview of the work still to come.

HR-related highlights and progress in 2025:

1) Improved interviews and panels. Command staƯ ﬁnalized new entry-level oƯicer

interview questions that will better assess character, integrity, and accountability in

prospective oƯicers. These have been in use since October 1, 2025. The Port’s interview

policy has also been updated to allow some limited clarifying follow-up questions so

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interview panels can pursue substance on critical interview questions while maintaining

fairness. The next step here is updating the interview questions for lateral hires.

2) Complaint routing and employee protections. Work advanced on the

recommendation to explicitly map which complaints go to POSPD Internal AƯairs versus

Workplace Responsibility (WR), the investigative team within HR. The general WR

investigation infographic is now available on Compass. Negotiations regarding the

OƯicer’s Bill of Rights continue with the goal of aligning the practices that will be used for

investigations by both POSPD Internal AƯairs and WR. One key note here is that the WR

investigation process will not include hard timelines (as these may compromise

investigations.)

3) A wider, more inclusive candidate pipeline. As of late 2024, POSPD employs a full-

time recruiter and has signiﬁcantly scaled outreach (42 events and counting in 2025) with

emphasis on venues that reach underrepresented candidates.

4) Increased transparency RE: specialty assignments. POSPD made signiﬁcant changes

that boosted visibility for candidates applying to serve specialty assignments. POSPD is

now using a ranking system in assessing applicants and all applicants are provided with

individualized assessment performance feedback.

5) Early signals of results. After several years with no female entry-level oƯicer hires, the

department hired one entry-level female oƯicer in 2024 and three in 2025 YTD. Even given

these positive early results, the Committee views continued improvement on gender

disparities as an important point of emphasis going forward. Please see below for a visual

on self-reported gender in POSPD.

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Policies. All Code of Conduct policies are currently under review, and the following have

already been updated: Anti-Harassment, EEO, Reporting Concerns or Violations, and Anti-

Retaliation. The next group for review includes Workplace Violence and our HR-18

Corrective Action and Progressive Discipline policies.

Areas of focus for the committee in 2026: Where we still have work to do

Data and accountability to promote gender and racial diversity: The Port began

consolidating applicant and hiring data to understand where candidates fall out of the

application process and to design interventions (e.g., coaching for physical ability, reﬁning

interview prompts, etc.) Port implementation team members, OEDI, and Business

Intelligence will continue to collaborate to access the vendor data and craft the solutions.

Standardize civilian/ERG panelist training and coverage. The Port has invited

ERG/civilian participation in oral interview boards, as a signal that hiring quality and

legitimacy are Port-wide responsibilities, versus solely internal police matters. However,

civilian/ERG panel involvement remains uneven outside promotional boards; we next need

to build a standing, HR-run training cycle (with OEDI) and a panelist “ready roster” to

normalize this practice across all POSPD hiring.

Language access incentives. Determine scope and implement a multilingual pay

premium and/or identify roles where language skills are mission-critical. This item is

subject to bargaining, and Teamsters 117 has opened this conversation.

Finish the data story and publish it. The Port needs a uniﬁed, validated hiring-funnel

dashboard (posting to application to eligibility to oral boards to background check to hire)

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that separates commissioned and non-commissioned roles and enables stage-by-stage

checks to tease out any equity concerns in any of these stages. This data is reported by our

vendors; the Port must standardize data cleaning, storage, and routine release to the

public.

Set Port-level benchmarks post-EO 14173. Even with changes to federal aƯirmative-

action reporting, the Port can still set availability/utilization baselines referencing the local

labor market and track disparities over time.

Sustain broad outreach. POSPD authorized and resourced a Recruitment Team, which

substantially increased outreach events and candidate generation beginning in 2022–2023,

with an explicit objective to align department composition with the demographics of the

communities we serve. The increase in outreach in 2025 should evolve into a deliberate

annual plan (which communities, which schools, which national associations), with

quarterly reporting to the Commission on total reach, conversion, and hires.