Relentless

Center for Justice joins community coalition to launch new police accountability ordinance.

By Tim Connor
In a room crowded with supporters, the leaders of several Spokane citizen organizations upped the ante with the City of Spokane Tuesday by offering a proposed new ordinance for independent police oversight.

The press conference in the main hall at the Community Building on West Main came with some notable twists, one of which was the presence of the Center for Justice’s Chief Catalyst Breean Beggs. Beggs was there to give the Center’s moral backing and legal imprimatur to a proposal that squarely confronts a working assumption at City Hall that Spokane’s police unions–through their collective bargaining agreements–effectively control whether and how civilian oversight of the police department can be independent of the department’s internal affairs division.

Liz Moore of the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane (PJALS) opened the event by pointing out that the groundswell of public support for independent police oversight in Spokane goes back nearly thirty years. In addition to broad public sentiment, she noted, the city’s own consultant, Sam Pailca, provided a 2007 report that independence from the police department was crucial for the office’s credibility.

“The ordinance that we’re releasing here today is based on what Pailca recommended be put in place, not based on what the city actually was willing to settle for or what the police union was willing to agree to,” Moore said. “The police guilds’ resistance to independent investigations, which seems to come from fears about threats to their impunity, and City Hall’s willingness to settle for less than true oversight, are self-defeating. The failure to accomplish independent oversight has resulted in growing frustration, cynicism, fear, and lack of respect and trust for our police department, and lack of faith in our city leaders. Citizens are already suspicious of the new Ombudsman office. Without independent investigations, the money being spent to fund the Ombudsman is extra money being put to little more than a public relation’s ruse. It only fuels public cynicism further about both the police department and the city’s leadership.”

The reference to the Ombudsman is to the office the city finally created in October of 2008, after more than two years of intense public and media scrutiny of alleged police misconduct cases. Although the office has some of the features recommended by Pailca, it lacks what critics believe are the key elements for independence and credibility, including the powers to decide which complaints will be investigated, to investigate independent of the police department, and to issue narrative findings regarding the results of investigated complaints. Several top city officials have stated or implied that giving the office (currently staffed by former California police officer Tim Burns) such powers of independence is not possible without the consent of the police unions.

That was the issue that Beggs was on hand Tuesday to try to dispel. Even before the city commissioned Pailca’s report, he said, the Center was involved in assisting PJALS and other local organizations by carefully researching where the line was between those powers the city could invest directly in an Ombudsman’s office, and those it would have to negotiate with the police guilds.

“And the underlying rule is this,” Beggs said. “A city council can put in any ordinance for oversight as long as it doesn’t effect the daily working conditions of the officers. If it’s information, if it’s policy, if it’s management, that’s not a union issue. Daily working conditions. Their safety, how they’re treated, their hours, that gets bargained for.”

“In the movie Groundhog Day, the main character finds himself repeating the same day over and over again. He can only escape this repeating loop after he re-examines his life and changes his priorities. Similarly, our Spokane Community is stuck in a loop of our own repeating nightmare. And the city keeps finding one excuse after another why we can’t have official independent, police oversight. And then the problem just continues.”–VOICES Executive Director Kiondra Bullock

The wording of the proposed ordinance is laced with references to the Center’s legal research, and includes the reference to an important Washington Public Employment Relations Commission ruling last October that clarified where the boundary is in terms of the powers that city’s have to install independent oversight without compromising the collective bargaining process.

Beggs stressed that the investigative and reporting powers included in the proposed ordinance are essential not just for citizen oversight of the police, but for oversight of the police by elected officials as well.

“That’s what this ordinance does,” he insisted. “It interferes in no rights of union members. In my opinion, it is close to bulletproof in court. No lawyer will ever say anything is bulletproof because there’s always a new argument, or sometimes people don’t follow the law. But as far as existing law goes, it’s totally authorized.”

On numerous occasions Beggs has talked about what he and the Center see as a broken relationship between Spokane citizens and their police department, that needs to be re-built on the basis of public trust.

“I’ll tell you from the Center’s perspective and from my perspective,” he said. “On individual cases we’ll have opinions about who’s done wrong and who’s been done wrong to. But overall, to get out of the brokenness that we’re in, this is what we need to move forward.”

Moore and the other speakers at today’s press event emphasized how much of their commitment to reform is based on a solemn remembrance of Spokane citizens, like Otto Zehm, who’ve been killed or injured in the hands of local law enforcement officers.  Among the speakers were David Edwards, the building manager for the Community Building, who shared a harrowing encounter with two Spokane police officers as he was leaving the Martin Luther King Day observance two weeks ago. Another was Shonto Pete, the young Native American father who was shot in the head by an off-duty Spokane police officer three years ago.

“A member of my own family came to me because she had been stopped by the police for no apparent reason,” said James Troutt, the Deputy Director of VOICES, a Spokane non-profit that advocates for the working poor. “She was handcuffed, beaten and kicked before being let go, also for no apparent reason. The reason she came to me was to get advice as to what she should do about it. Sadly, it was the worst advice that I had to give anybody. But my advice to her is that she had to let it go. Let it go because I truly believed that she could get killed the next time she got stopped because she had reported some police officers.”

Edwards and Troutt are African-Americans.

Troutt offered his story as a sign of the frustration and despair he and other African -Americans feel about the lack of progress being made in Spokane to put in place a police oversight system that has credibility with people who believe they are victims not just of the police but of a city government that won’t give them access to a credible process to look into their grievances.

“Currently, we’re stuck in a loop” said Kiondra Bullock, the VOICES executive director, who noted the fact that Tuesday was Groundhog Day.”In the movie Groundhog Day, the main character finds himself repeating the same day over and over again. He can only escape this repeating loop after he re-examines his life and changes his priorities. Similarly, our Spokane Community is stuck in a loop of our own repeating nightmare. And the city keeps finding one excuse after another why we can’t have official independent, police oversight. And then the problem just continues.”

Bryan Burke, the Executive Director of Eastern Washington Voters, joined Beggs in describing the relationship between Spokane police and citizens as being broken and in emphasizing how the police “need the trust of the community to do their jobs.”

“We need a solution,” he said, “and the ordinance that’s being suggested today is that solution, that I think is badly needed.”

Spokane Councilman Bob Apple attended the press conference and acknowledged that he’s already forwarded the proposed ordinance to the city’s legal department for review.

“I like the idea,” Apple said. “I just want to make sure it’s gone through properly before it goes forward.”

Moore had said during the press conference that based on communications with the council there remains solid support for adding independent investigations to the city’s ordinance. (Last October, the council unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the Mayor to bargain for independent investigative authority for the Ombudsman, but no such language was included in the subsequent agreement.) Apple, in a short interview after Tuesday’s event, said he concurred with Moore about the new council being in support of the concept of independence for the office.

Certainly one of the more poignant moments in the press event came when Shonto Pete arrived and was greeted with applause and requests to say a few words. In the course of expressing solidarity with the organizers and their purpose he gently noted that he currently owes $17,000 to a hospital, and $18,000 to his defense lawyer. (Pete was acquitted of the charge that he was attempting to steal the off duty officer’s truck when the officer gave chase and began shooting at him.)

“Then what did I get?” he asked. “Ten dollars and 12 cents for being a witness. The cop got $150,000 in back pay, and his attorney paid for.”

“I don’t know how you all feel,” he concluded. “But I don’t feel as though I should have to pay for any of that. It’s like a ton of bricks on my shoulders. Every day.”