Spokane’s new Council President bolts into his term with a 15 point agenda for reforming the city’s police department.
To read an update regarding the content of this story, go to The Agenda.
By Tim Connor
What a difference four years makes.
In 2008 then-Mayor Mary Verner and a moribund and politically cowed city council listened to an outpouring of public testimony advocating for major improvements in police accountability. She and the council responded with what amounted to a knuckle sandwich. Not for the police, but for the citizens seeking reforms. The dismal result was that Verner and the 2008-2011 council–and a fiercely resistant police guild–left the city completely hamstrung on police accountability, stuck with an ordinance that is a public laughingstock.
By contrast, both Mayor David Condon and new Council President Ben Stuckart are, in their own ways, now trying to move briskly to enact police and police accountability reforms.
Condon had barely taken office when, on January 2nd, he summoned the press to the Nevada-Lidgerwood COPS shop to swear-in interim police chief Scott Stephens. At the same time, he announced his support for a federal investigation of the Spokane Police Department and the formation of a new commission to review the SPD’s use of force policies. He also made clear that he was removing controversial Assistant City Attorney Rocky Treppiedi from representing the City on issues connected to the police department.
Nine days later, Stuckart guided the newly-constituted city council through a proposed list of police reforms at the council’s Thursday afternoon briefing session in City Hall.
Stuckart said his proposal is for the council to pass a sweeping resolution early this year. It would broadly lay out the police reforms the 2012 council intends to work on, Stuckart explained, while also identifying proposed reforms that may need to be addressed in rapidly approaching negotiations with the city’s police guild on a new collective bargaining agreement.
“It’s basically a list that says these are items we would like to work on over the next six months and really push forward on,” Stuckart announced at the outset. “So, it’s a statement that we’re paying attention and that these are the list of items that are important to us.”
The list is so long, Stuckart and the council only made it through 9 of the 15 items in the allotted hour. And one of the items—a call to enact a policy whereby SPD officers would be required to report when police firearms are displayed—was tabled. Other than that, the proposals discussed were generally well-received by council members and interim Chief Stephens, who sat in on the session with SPD Internal Affairs head Craig Miedl.
“I think it would be pretty telling to know how many times officers in our community are drawing weapons on citizens,” Stuckart said in response to Amber Waldref’s skepticism. “It might have a chilling effect on them [police officers] drawing weapons when they’re not supposed to be drawing weapons.”
You can read the full version of Stuckart’s list here. But here’s a summary of what Stuckart is proposing:
(1) Make public all SPD Internal Affairs Reports (with appropriate redactions to protect officer privacy) from 2009 forward.
(2) Add a “commendation” section to the Office of Police Ombudsman’s website that report all official commendations of Spokane police officers.
(3) Revise the SPD’s use of force policy, as informed by the work of the Use of Force Commission Mayor Condon announced on January 2nd.
(4) Move aggressively to put body (video) cameras on patrol officers.
(5) Adopt a new “best practices” policy for the SPD’s Internal Affairs office.
(6) Adopt a “discipline matrix” that would plainly and systematically connect acts and types of police misconduct to specific disciplinary consequences.
(7) Recruit and hire a civilian public information officer for the SPD.
(8) Create a display of force policy to document when weapons are displayed by officers.
(9) Re-establish the SPD’s property crimes unit.
(10) Re-certification of the SPD under terms of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement.
(11) Create a “Comprehensive Crisis Intervention” training program that would instruct officers on how to better interact with people under the influence of drugs, alcohol, and “untreated mental illness.”
(12) Pursuant to state law, “collect accurate data on race, age and gender of all persons stopped and searched by police.”
(13) In the upcoming collective bargaining negotiations with the Spokane Police Guild, a request that the Mayor and his negotiators include the following items related to the Office of Police Ombudsman
a) Restore independent investigatory authority.
b) Restore published closing reports and recommendations.
c) Remove the Guild’s pre-screening function for Ombudsman candidates.
d) Allow OPO investigations to be considered in the SPD disciplinary process.
(14) Council recommendations for the Office of Police Ombudsman:
a) Create annual goals for the OPO that would be voted on by the council.
b) Engage in discussions with Spokane County about contracting OPO services to the county Sheriff’s office.
c) Instruct the OPO to publish critical incident reports on all uses of deadly force.
(15) Use emergency budget ordinances to pay for the above items out of city reserves or police property reserves.
To be sure, the Mayor, the council and the police department have a ways to go to address the public imbroglio ignited last October when SPD formally announced that it was eliminating its property crimes unit. Given the earful that all candidates got this fall while campaigning, the council is clearly behind Stuckart in wanting re-constitute the unit in a form that can at least be described as a property crimes unit.
This push led to an illuminating exchange with Chief Stephens. The new chief didn’t dispute the need to put more resources into property crime enforcement. But Stephens made very clear he does not want SPD to go back to inefficient prioritization and investigation methods that, in his view, are not nearly as effective as a more “targeted approach” focused on arresting serial criminals responsible for the majority of property crimes.
The council heard Stephens out but the politics of the situation were bluntly summed up by newly-elected councilman Mike Allen, who told Stephens: “You’ve got to bring back property crimes.”
As for the police accountability reforms, the only serious headwind Stuckart faced came in response to his item #8—the call to initiate a policy where SPD officers would be required to report each instance in which they draw a firearm.
“My concern is that there might be an unintended consequence along with this though, if we were to require officers to document every time they display a weapon. I just wouldn’t want to have a chilling effect on them, using the appropriate tools at the appropriate time. So, I don’t know that the two things are in conflict with each other, but I think we just want to keep in mind that when you’re the officer and you’re in the field, you want to make sure you have the latitude to respond appropriately and the way you’ve been trained.”–Interim Police Chief Scott Stephens, explaining his resistance to a new firearms reporting policy.
Here, as with many of the other reforms that Stuckart is proposing, the internal impetus comes from police Ombudsman Tim Burns. Burns and Stephens seem to be on the same page, for the most part, and most notably in their enthusiasm for deploying body video cameras on patrol officers. But they don’t agree on either the need or practicality of having officers make a record of each instance in which they pull a firearm.
After Stuckart introduced the issue, it was councilwoman Amber Waldref who spoke first and sympathetically laid the groundwork for Stephens’s objections.
“It would be huge,” Stephens said, as he interjected to finish Waldref’s sentences as the council woman tried to describe what he’d told her during an earlier one-on-one meeting. “It would be huge. Drawing and displaying weapons is a daily occurrence across all shifts. And to require that a use of force be completed every time a weapons is drawn would be problematic and probably overly burdensome on the officer.”
Burns, however, didn’t back down.
“I think that we, as a community, frankly we need to know how many times our officers are pointing guns at people and why.”
“If an officer points a gun at you,” Burns continued, “you probably want to know [why]. If you’re a civilian or a citizen in this community you want to know why that really happened. And I think it imperative that we do have that knowledge.”
As we reported in May 2010, one of the high profile episodes in which Spokane police allegedly drew weapons without cause occurred two years ago today. That was when former Community Building maintenance supervisor David Edwards, having just left the 2010 Martin Luther King, Jr., parade in downtown Spokane, was pulled over for allegedly failing to signal for a left turn. Edwards alleged it was an episode of what some refer to, facetiously, as “driving while black,” and he was eventually confronted by two officers, both of whom drew weapons on him and one of whom, he alleges, was using gratuitous profanity.
In such instances, under Stuckart’s proposal, the officers involved in Edwards’s arrest would have been required to report they displayed their weapons.
“If I may just add one more thing,” Stephens said Thursday as he responded to Burns’s arguments for the new policy. “And I appreciate Mr. Burns’s comments, and I do understand them. My concern is that there might be an unintended consequence along with this though, if we were to require officers to document every time they display a weapon. I just wouldn’t want to have a chilling effect on them, using the appropriate tools at the appropriate time. So, I don’t know that the two things are in conflict with each other, but I think we just want to keep in mind that when you’re the officer and you’re in the field, you want to make sure you have the latitude to respond appropriately and the way you’ve been trained.”
Waldref then picked up on the Stephens’s concern, raising more questions about the purpose behind the new policy.
Stuckart responded.
“I think it would be pretty telling to know how many times officers in our community are drawing weapons on citizens,” he said, adding: “It might have a chilling effect on them [police officers] drawing weapons when they’re not supposed to be drawing weapons.”
Still the objections from Stephens and the questions from Waldref and others from Allen and new council member Steve Salvatori caused Stuckart to pull the item off the list until he researched it further. He said the main thing he wanted to look at is what the experience of such a policy has been in other jurisdictions that have implemented it.
Stuckart plans to take up the remainder of the items on his list at tomorrow’s (Tuesday, January 17th) meeting of the City Council’s public safety committee. Although Assistant City Attorney Mike Piccolo was on hand Thursday to help Stuckart give assurances that the vast majority of the suggested reforms could be implemented without having to bargain with the Police Guild, there’s at least one item on Stuckart’s list that clearly requires cooperation from the guild.
That would be item 13(d) which would allow Ombudsman reports to be factored into SPD disciplinary decisions. That, on its face, is would be a clear change in working conditions and one that the City would be required to bargain with the Guild. (The argument is less clear on the other reforms, specifically the Ombudsman’s rights to conduct independent investigations and file independent closing reports on complaints. The 2011 council chose not to exercise its legal appeals when a state arbitrator ruled that the City is bound, by contract, to bargain such features with the Guild.
Stuckart’s position is that there’s no harm in asking the Guild to consider allowing the Ombudsman reports (assuming the Ombudsman, at some point, is authorized to begin filing independent reports regarding citizens complaints) in the SPD’s internal disciplinary process. But it will be interesting to hear from City Legal and other council members when the item comes up for discussion.
Stuckart also reported to the council that he expects to receive, as early as Tuesday, a “matrix” from Mayor Condon identifying the police reforms the Mayor has gathered from his transition team and the public to date.
Of course, the City is nowhere near implementing any of the reforms that Condon and Stuckart have their sights on, but the atmosphere for public involvement and the openness of the discussion are, thus far, in stark contrast to what happened on Verner’s and former Council President Joe Shogan’s tenures.
In 2008, rather than enacting the recommendations of a city consultant to create an independent police ombudsman with robust independence, Verner met behind closed doors with the Spokane Police Guild. She emerged with an agreement that neutered the police ombudsman position that the consultant, Sam Pailca, had proposed. The deal also allowed the Guild a controlling role in the ombudsman selection process. Thanks largely to Verner and Shogan, that agreement still stands—the sad legacy of a peculiarly tone-deaf mayor and a hapless city council.
