Policing the Police?

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The embroiled Seattle Police Department leadership has been left virtually untouched as a debatable topic in the upcoming city council elections. Although Nick Licata has proposed more oversight of the department from the council independently from the city's executive branch, there is nothing stopping us from electing people who will continue to offer up sacrificial lambs when there is public outrage, instead of much needed reforms and oversight in the SPD. For now, where would the debate be without the drugs-planted-on-the-guy-in-a-wheelchair investigation?

My own experience with the local constabulary has not been very positive overall either, and I'm not talking about unpaid traffic tickets. Once I was physically dragged out of a West Seattle cafe during a labor dispute, the cafe being far away from said dispute, the officer being on good terms with the employer, and of course all charges were tossed out. But the message was clear. Once I was detained in a dark Denny's parking lot on the Eastside, forced to bend over the hood of a police car, with my nose 3 inches from the hood, while two officers berated me and attempted to provoke a response. Keeping my cool, I left the scene nose intact, but the message here was also clear; I was attempting to talk to a dish washing crew about joining a union. Both cases predate the WTO protests, where the police attacked labor activists, amongst others. Things like this have been going on for a long time, goes with the territory for "troublemakers", and for some, is a way of life.

I have a friend who was the victim of an unprovoked attack by a handful of Seattle police who used deadly force, and then charged with felony assault. Not only was he and two others acquitted, they sued the City of Seattle and received a settlement. Over the years, it was from this person I heard the numerous stories about his friends and colleagues getting beat up and harassed by the Seattle police. Those stories hit home for me. And for every one of the media sensationalized stories of "isolated" incidents that represent "bad apples" there seems to be so many of these stories. So many that he and others started an organization of neighbors that was like a block watch, except they used video to document abuses by the police--both legal and physical. While that program no longer exists, many activist left groups borrowed the same tactic to document their interaction with law enforcement.

I only mention the above for those who might wonder why I'm critical of law enforcement. As for the idea that "there are some good cops", that represents more about the minority of people who can still maintain compassion and humility in spite of being a cop, and not because of it. We pay them to do the shitty work of dealing with "criminals" because as a society we haven't been very creative on alternatives to dealing with that element. But what if those that are supposed to handle that element, behave like that element? And what happens when the official questioning of the conventional wisdom that the police can investigate themselves, without a conflict of interest, blows up in everybody's face?

Why, the mayors office and the police chief can simply close ranks. This kind of thing is not new to Seattle; this is an account that is required reading. In doing so, you'll recognize some of the names.

An ironic challenge--at least from my point of view as being pro-labor, is that the police union is likely the main obstacle for reforming the institution, to bring it more in line with what people believe their function is--to protect people. Today we learn that the Seattle Police Guild has filed a charge against the City--the employer, saying the the Office for Professional Accountability (OPA) violates the collective bargaining agreement by making a targeted, rather then "random" investigation. But in this case, we, as in, the citizens, are the employer. The Guild wants to gut the ordinance on the city books that gives the OPA its (limited) power, and use the labor relations process--designed to protect people, to insulate the SPD from transparency.

Why is transparency such a problem?

What is troubling about this whole affair is that the Guild, the police chief, and the mayor's office are in agreement that oversight is not necessary. That puts the rest of us on the outside. With that arrangement, it seems like the police department can wield arbitrary power over anyone, at the discretion of each individual officer, and we are supposed to trust that this power won't be abused. But people don't work that way. Unregulated power by humans with the best intentions is disastrous. But that is what the Guild, mayor, and police chief want for their department. An e-mail, circulated by attorney Lisa Daugaard, underscores this:

"...If we cannot repudiate what [has] happened here, we may as well give up on any pretense that we have police accountability in Seattle. A culture of impunity will be reaffirmed within SPD that it simply doesn't matter what you do as an officer -- you can be caught on videotape in flagrant untruths, and as long as the only person harmed is a criminal suspect, no one will care..."

Daugaard encourages people to e-mail the city council. That's one easy way to make a difference. The NAACP is holding a rally on the City hall steps this coming Thursday, June 28th, at noon [update--time has been moved to 4pm, I'm told...]. Given that a call has been put out for the local Hip Hop community to attend, we may hear about it at the Georgetown Artopia on Saturday, with the heavily booked hip hop acts and events.

But for the long term, next time contract negotiations between the city and the Guild come up, the City's negotiating committee needs to have direct citizen participation in the negotiation process. That means public hearings, and independent community representation on the negotiating committee, who will participate in all sessions, closed and open, on the City's side of the table. What would be the point? To completely overhaul the police discipline guidelines to be in line with transparency and accountability, and with what the city has instituted as ordinance; not the other way around, as the Guild is trying to do now, in effect, rolling back years of work to make the police more accountable to the citizens.

Unions throughout history have made the argument that it is not okay to bolster the standing of working people at the expense of other working people. That hasn't always been the case in reality, and the Guild definitely is an example. Serving up another equivalent of another CEO (as with Stamper) as a fall guy will not do it this time.

So what city council candidate up for election, incumbents included, is going to tackle this issue? Will the press even bother to ask? In the meantime, we have to hope that those officers that are trying to keep an eye on the community from violent people are able to effectively do their jobs; the ones that are good people in spite of their organization's leadership.