Based on its two-part series on the Bainbridge Island Police Department, the Seattle Times has now penned an editorial: Rethinking law enforcement options on Bainbridge Island.
Their prescription? A department review from the ground up. More police training, especially in crisis intervention. And while we’re at it, we should think about outsourcing the police department to the Kitsap County Sheriff.
It seems a little odd for a newspaper across the water to write a couple of articles and then give us advice about our police department. Their ideas aren’t any more creative than those we’ve heard from local citizens for years.
Rumors and complaints about police conduct have been circulating widely on Bainbridge for a long time. No government official, past or present, can take credit for doing the right thing. One former council member, who was quoted by the Times about his lack of trust in the police, held office for a decade and did no more than anyone else to bring the problems to the front burner.
The shame of all of this is that it took the death of a human being for City Hall to take notice of the problems that have been simmering for years.
But this is an island problem, and it will be solved by islanders. I hope we are not too hasty in jumping to conclusions, but instead, take a deliberative approach, neither accusatory, nor defensive, but diligent and thoughtful.
Although we should consider all our options, I don’t think we have enough facts to decide that outsourcing the cops is the right answer. I do think hiring an expert in policing matters would be money well spent. These articles highlight some longstanding problems, the sources of which are still unclear. But they will likely provoke real conversation and possibility for change.
I agree with the comment made by “Mason C” to the Times editorial: “What is needed is citizen oversight and review with real teeth.”
Citizen oversight and review with real teeth is logically the exact right answer.
The hard part is how to make that happen.
“With real teeth” means to me a a citizen’s panel decision or recommendation would have to be more than just advisory to the City Manager or to the Police Chief. I don’t know of anything in state laws that would give a citizen panel and legal authority.
Should a citizen’s oversight panel have a say in who is hired, or should that remain the legal domain of the Civil Service Commissioners and the City Manager/Police Chief?
When incidents happen, and they always will, where and how would a citizen oversight panel fit in with independent agency investigations and prosecutor’s decisions? What about conflict situations where the prosecutor thinks one way and the citizen’s oversight panel thinks differently?
Anything with teeth is probably going to have to be negotiated with the Police Guild, and historically police unions do not embrace a public oversight committees that can effect their member’s careers. And if they do, then the Citizen oversight committee and its members could possibly get named in unfair labor practice litigation.
There might be some “best practices” cities to model a citizen’s oversight committee on, or the City could hire a consultant to come up with suggestions.
It’s one more topic to add to the City Council’s annual work plan.
While it is understandable that the Seattle Times would offer a two part story on the problems , past and present, of the Bainbridge Island Police Department, it is quite presumptuous on their part to follow up and offer corrective advice. Considering the documented misbehavior of the Seattle Police Department it would seem more appropriate for the Times to have focused their attention and advice on their own Police Department and leave problem solving strategies and options to Bainbridge Island’s residents. If the Times wishes to share the advice and counsel it offered to the Seattle Police to correct their misbehavior and too often use of excessive force I would be interested in reading the details. If the Times has suggested that Seattle outsource it police department then let’s read about the plan. If not, then I suggest that the Times stick to reporting news and stop trying to create it.
The Seattle Times could win an award for its investigative stories on problems with police forces dealing with the mentally ill. In the last couple of years, police forces in Seattle, Portland, Spokane, and Bainbridge Island have had mortal encounters with the mentally ill. Three of these, Portland, Spokane and Seattle have settled wrongful death suits recently. Portland’s settlement of $1.2 million, made just about two weeks ago, is reported to be the biggest police payout in Portland history, so big that the city had to rely on its secondary carrier since it had reached the limit of its primary coverage.
The Seattle Times has devoted considerable reporting time to these incidents, putting multi-person teams on the ground here and in Spokane as well as Seattle. Reporters spent hours and hours investigating locally, in some cases interviewing the same person three or more times over a course of several months. This is a level of coverage that no local paper could afford. The reporters dug so deep that they uncovered facts that former council members say they had never heard before.
The Seattle Times deserves special commendation for putting a single team of reporters on the case in the three cities, so that they could develop special expertise and insight into the common problems and factors in the shootings. In Spokane, it also appears that the Seattle Times may have stepped in to cover events when someone, scared off a local reporter who had been too aggressive in his coverage. That reporter came back from a trial one day to find his house stripped bare, with a copy of his story left face up on the back porch.
With intimidation like that it is very useful to have a strong and independent regional paper. The Times also ran a story on the lessons to be learned in Spokane, much of which was based on interviews with the former mayor, who lost her reelection bid after the city lost its wrongful death suit. She was contrite in admitting that Spokane should have been more open with its citizens about the details of the case, and that the lack of candor had caused ongoing division there. The Times article also noted the problems that can arise when the city attorney act wears multiple hats, as in-house counsel, defense attorney and risk manager. These are useful lessons for Bainbridge.
We should be thankful that the Times for its editorial recommendations. It has nothing to gain or lose from these and can be objective. Local newspapers could not be as forthright or they might lose advertisers. The Times recommendations will also be taken seriously by local readers.
Take, for example, the Times’ recommendation that we should consider outsourcing our police services. The last time a council member even raised this possibility, it caused such a backlash within the police department that the police chief had to send out a memo telling members of the force to essentially “buck up and shut up”. Now we can have a reasoned examination of this option. The Times was also forthright enough to say that the previous city council’s efforts at self-examination were shallow.
We should welcome these recommendations as one would welcome the findings and recommendations of an outside auditor, just as it took an independent state team to find accounting problems in the utilities.
Thank you, Seattle Times, for a job well done.
Excellent comments, Rod, thanks.
I might just remind you–and Althea–about the Times actual language:
“Contracting out police services might be an alternative to remedial training, oversight and lingering doubt.”
This doesn’t merit the inflammatory headline “outsource the cops.”
I bring this up for a couple of reasons. First, in these times of, shall we say, domestic factions, we’re all well served by taking the rhetoric down a notch.
Second, we need to move the policing debate beyond good/bad keep it/dump it manichean language. Are our cops dumb brutes? No. But we need to take errors seriously and get at their cause. Should we close the department? To me, this would be a great mistake. But we’d be fools not to pool our limited resources with other agencies, or explore ways to outsource certain functions.