Spokane groups working to bolster independence of police ombudsman office expected to meet next week with Mayor Verner.
Mayor Mary Verner has agreed to meet with representatives of Spokane citizen groups working to strengthen the independence of the city’s new Office of Police Ombudsman (OPO). This according to Liz Moore of the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, one of the members of the coalition of groups that has been working on the issue.
In addition to PJALS, the groups include the SHAWL Society, the Inland Northwest Business Alliance, the Progressive Democrats of America (Spokane chapter), the National Alliance of Mental Illness (Spokane chapter) VOICES, the Odyssey Youth Center and both the WSU and EWU chapters of the Chicano student organization M.E.Ch.A.
The date of the meeting is still being finalized, Moore said, and comes in response to a June 10th letter the coalition sent to the Mayor.
Following on the positions the organizations advocated at a May 29th rally and press conference at City Hall, Moore says one of the primary objectives of the meeting will be to persuade the Mayor to postpone filling the Ombudsman position until the office has been given the authority to conduct investigations independent of the Spokane Police Department (SPD).
As it stands, the Ombudsman’s office can only investigate when the SPD agrees to investigate a citizen complaint, and then can only shadow the police investigation. That restriction is a central part of the agreement worked out between city negotiators and police union representatives last spring, while the city was in the midst of concluding a collective bargaining agreement with the police guild.
The city is slated to begin negotiations later this summer on a new agreement with the guild.
In May the city announced three finalists for the new position that were selected by a search committee, consisting of two police representatives, two citizens selected from the community, and a fifth representative agreed upon by the first four. Under an ordinance passed last fall, the Mayor will select and seek council approval for one of the three finalists.
If the Mayor insists on going ahead with the appointment of a new Ombudsman now, says Moore, the coalition at least would like her to commit to “fixing” the office’s independence through the negotiation of a new contract with the police guild, in which the guild would agree that the OPO would be independent of the SPD.
What the coalition doesn’t want, she said, is for the city to move forward to fill the position without being firmly committed to overhauling the office’s independence.
“We want to avoid this ‘try it and see how it works approach,’” Moore said.
In the June 10th letter to the Mayor, the groups cited the 2007 effort, led by PJALS, to get the city to agree to an ordinance modeled on the ordinance for the Boise, Idaho, police ombudsman’s office.
“The [PJALS] proposed ordinance used the very successful City of Boise Police Ombudsman office as its model,” the groups’ wrote to Mayor Verner. “However, in April 2008, the agreement the city reached with the Spokane Police Guild stripped the Ombudsman office of any independent investigative powers.
“We continue to call for independent investigative authority in the office of the Police Ombudsman. We believe that this authority is necessary to fix the problem before this position is filled.”
–CFJ
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